The Dumb About Men Club

"How will we know when we've found her?" I said. "Assuming that she's not wearing a T-shirt with 'Out of the broom closet' printed on it."

"That's easy," Kenni said. "She'll be the one with man problems."

Chapter 29

"We all have appointments for massages at five-thirty p.m.," Shalimar said when I came out of my room now wearing one of my CNN T-shirts.

"Bless you," I said.

"Hey, after the hair cut and before the spa maybe we'll take a quick walk around the city and see what we find," Kenni said.

"Who is this woman?" I asked Shalimar while pointing at Kenni.

"I don't know. She wandered into the hospital looking homeless and wearing a blanket."

"Come on, let's get going," Kenni said.

"Only if you stuff that hair under a hat," Shalimar said.

We loaded ourselves into her van.

Christopher's was an old blue and purple Victorian house that had been renovated to something that could be photographed for southern living. The bottom was the beauty salon. Christopher and J.D. lived on the top floor.

A gaggle of beautifully-quaffed older ladies sat in rockers on the wrap-around porch.

"Egad!" I said when I opened the door. Both Christopher and J.D. had gone blond. Very, very blond. I wished I had my Strickland Lawn Care sunglasses.

"Well, there's blond for you," Shalimar said under her breath. Her mouth didn't move.

"Shalimar, Kenni, and... Dahlya, the superstar producer," J.D. came over to me and air kissed both cheeks. His hair was platinum. Shiny, bright, many shades of white, platinum. Christopher always experimented with blond hair and blonder or white tips. But J.D.?

"Um," I said touching my hair and looking at his.

"I know!" He said with a big hand wave. "Isn't it just ghastly! Chris and I are going to a black and white formal tonight and he thought it would be great if we'd both go as Ken. We'll look like the top of a gay wedding cake. I can't wait until tomorrow when I can dye it back to my normal, beautiful mahogany-brown." He sighed and rolled his eyes in Christopher's direction.

"Oh, ugh!" J.D. looked at Kenni. He reached over and took out the pony tail holder. "Ergh." He held his stomach as if in pain. "You're right about this being an emergency. You moved out of town didn't you? Where did you go, Borneo? All right, that's all right, it's going to be all right. Nobody panic. We can fix this. Let's get you in the shampoo chair."

"J.D.," I yelled at his retreating back. "Know any petite Hispanic blondes?"

"Not offhand, why? Are you planning on doing a foursome?"

"Yes."

"Make sure to invite us. We'll bring champagne. My hair will be back to normal by then. Chris and I don't do girls, but we're still men. We always want to watch."

Chapter 30

"If you really want to entrance Jake so he doesn't know what hit him, you should use magic," Kenni said.

I stared at her like she just grew an extra head.

"What? I'm serious."

"I know, Sista," Shalimar said. "That's what scares me."

I rubbed my face. I looked at Shalimar for help.

"We never should have let her watch so many episodes of Charmed when she was in high school," I said. "I knew it would rot her brain eventually."

"No, no. See that's just it," Kenni said. The Charmed philosophy goes on 'the power of three' something that was always us. But if you study ancient magical rites, most rituals really require a square of power, one person for each of the four corners of the earth. That's why when we did our magical wishes, spells, whatever, in middle school and high school, we only got sketchy results. We were missing a fourth."

"I don't want to talk about this," I said. I looked at Shalimar for help. She shrugged.

"Listen, if you just want to catch Jake with your skinniness, that's up to you."

"Low blow, Kenni," I said. Hey, I had more going for me than my almost thinness right? Yeah, right. Like my crazy obsession to get away from shock and pain.

"Come on, what could it hurt?" Kenni said.

"Look at my beautiful house," I said. "We could blow it up."

"You always loved exaggeration," Kenni said. "No wonder you went to work in television."

"I doubt my insurance covers self-inflicted magical spells gone awry."

"Nothing will go wrong."

"Famous last words," I said.

"As long as there are four of us, and we do it not for Dahlya's personal gain, but for the general world in general it will really work," Kenni said.

"Oh, Sweetie, this is not the way," I said.

"Right," Kenni said. "First we have to do something magically good for another, then watch out, Jake, here you come."

Chapter 31

I groaned. Kenni was going to need serious therapy.

Then I got a vision of myself, strutting down a tree-lined street, looking like a goddess. I was wearing a short black dress and strappy heels and the wind blew around me in a way that screamed sex appeal. If I could borrow some of Shalimar's beauty and confidence and Kenni's smarts and talent, I would be irresistible. I blinked.

"Girl, did you just see the same vision of you that I did?" Shalimar said to me.

I looked at Shalimar. I nodded.

"You look good in black," Kenni said.

"Humph. That's an understatement," Shalimar said.

"Kenni," I said as a sinking suspicion washed over me, "Did you give us that vision, on purpose?"

"Yup."

"Since when could you do that?"

"Since you re-met Jake. I'm using my natural talent of 'The Influence' and capitalizing on Shalimar's talent as a telepath."

"Criminey," I said.

"Dang."

"So you and Ms. Thang aren't the only ones with a super power."

I stared at her. "Good grief. Man the battle stations. Loose cannon."

"To get you looking like that we need to get you feeling like that," Kenni said. "And I think to get you feeling like that we want to find one more..."

Poor misguided crazy woman, Shalimar thought at us.

"...Witch to help us out," Kenni finished.

"I guess," I said. "I hate to admit that you might be right but I was so focused on the probability of Rick's imminent death that I hadn't thought that there might be other warnings coming down the pike."

"Like what?" Kenni asked.

"I don't know," I said. "I don't know."

I looked over at phone.

"Phone," I said and pointed.

Kenni and Shalimar looked at it, then at me, then back at the phone again.

It rang.

"It's the spa," I said.

"Sista, did I ever tell you how freaky that is?" Shalimar got up and answered. I heard her um-hmmn and ah-hum-ing. Then she hung up.

"They had to..."

"I know, I know," I said.

"Re-schedule for tomorrow," we both said at once.

"Forget a job," Kenni said. "Let's open up a psychic hotline."

"I just want Jake," I said.

"Well, I understand that obsessing about him is helping distract you but you're going to need at least one or two other things to think about," Shalimar said.

"I have a bad feeling that's not going to be a problem," I said.

Chapter 32

That night I slept like the dead. I woke up when I heard noise outside and peeked out the curtains, two television vans were packing up.

Kenni and Shalimar were in the kitchen sipping coffee. I looked over at them. "What gives?"

"Ms. Wives over here went out there and gave a speech," Kenni said.

Shalimar was wearing a lavender T-shirt that read 'Wives of Musicians and Artists Rock it Harder'. I could tell that she didn't wear that while talking to the cameras because there was an eight hundred dollar business suit on the couch.

"She told them the grieving widow was so overcome with shock, outrage, loss, and grief that she had would be unavailable, perhaps even out of town, for a few days."

"Brilliant." I smiled. "Shal, nicely done. That will keep the reporters out of our hair until we are ready to feed them the story we want to feed them the way we want them to report it."

"Exactly."

"So, Ms.-Do-It-All," Kenni said. "What's on the agenda for today? Besides our massages."

"That's basically it," Shalimar said.

"We should walk around the city looking for our fourth." Kenni said. She was wearing a dark blue and white T-shirt that stated, 'I have the body of a God; It's a Budda.'

"Sounds like a plan to me," I said. "Let's go down to River Street first. I'm not going to be the only musketeer without a fun saying on my chest."

"We'll figure out a disguise for you," Shalimar said. "Just in case you run into anyone from the media who want to press you for a story." I smiled. It actually sounded like fun.

Shalimar made us a decadent breakfast of fried chicken, fried green tomatoes, and fried grits with cheese on them, which after eyeing warily, I actually ate.

Shalimar rummaged through my closet until she came up with an ensemble including a loud Hawaiian T-shirt of Rick's, a huge hat, big sunglasses, and Bermuda shorts. In minutes she transformed me into a gaudy tourist.

We got ourselves together, piled into Kenni's Astro and headed downtown.

We went to a few T-shirt shops. Shalimar bought a few shirts. One had "I Dyslexia Lvoe" on it. One read "I used to be conceited but now I'm perfect." One had a line near the waist. Right above the line it read, "I had it up to here with midgets."

Kenni bought a few T-shirts. One read, "Pagan: Don't piss me off I have way more Gods than you" and a T-shirt with a frog on a lily pad that read, "You have to kiss a lot of frogs to ... okay, you just have to kiss a lot of frogs." She debated about a shirt with a tombstone on it that read, "My HMO said I was fine," and decided to get it.

I thought, in a very vague way, about two Tees, one "Objects in rearview mirror are larger than they appear", with a mirror across the breasts and one that read "Contains no artificial liquid or gels" also across the front. When only breast humor appeals to me, I know I'm not myself.

"I don't see anything for me here, let's go to some other shirt places mid-town," I said.

Kenni bought a few more shirts, including one that read "Wicked Witch. I taught the Good Witch in me to be naughty." I left empty handed.

We found a tiny parking space on Gwinnett and Kenni wedged the van back and forth into it. We cut through one of the overgrown lanes, Savannah's word for alleys, heading towards Shirts for Flirts, a new boutique that Shalimar thought sounded promising, and our favorite coffee house, The Sentient Bean.

Trees grew into the lane so that we had to walk single file at one point in order not to brush the magnolia and oak leaves and their drape-like curtain arms of Spanish moss. Shalimar was first, then Kenni, then me.

"Hottie alert," Shalimar made the sound like a newswire hot bulletin with the AP wire SOS sounds. "Hot, hot, hot, hottie alert."

I looked around Kenni. There at the end of the lane, walking towards us, was Jake.

"Aw, we know that hottie. That's just Jake. He's taken," Kenni whispered.

"I'm talking about the hottie behind him." I swear Shalimar could throw her voice because it sounded like she was mumbling right next to me.

"Oh, my." Kenni said. "There's hotties in tandem?"

"I can't see him," I whined very quietly.

"Black hair, blue eyes, about 170 lbs of oh, yeah."

"Kenni, we've discovered Shalimar's super power, she can see through people to spot a hot guy a mile away."

"He's totally behind Jake. I can't see him at all!" Kenni stage whispered.

"Your loss, Sista, he looks like that actor, Gabriel Bryne, but shorter, cuter, and Italian."

"You two are making this up just to test me," Kenni said.

"I only see Jake," I said. "I only have eyes for you, Mr.-Knight-in-very-faded-blue-jeans." I sighed softly. "He's vibrating good energy. Maybe he's our fourth!"

"He's limping." Shalimar said. "Bad limp, right side."

"Jake?" I whispered.

No the other guy, Shalimar thought at us.

"Oh, that would be Tony Coraggio then," Kenni said. "From the motorcycle accident."

I could see a little bit of grey hair wobble in and out from behind Jake.

"Why does that name sound familiar?" I asked. But they couldn't answer, because then the men were in front of us.

The lane widened a little because it was the back of someone's driveway, and we all stopped there. I stood a little bit behind Shalimar and Kenni but Jake and Tony stood side by side. Tony wasn't my knight but definitely cute. Radiant in fact.

"Three beautiful belles. Be still my heart," Tony said and put one hand over his chest. He was missing the top part of his forefinger and his thumb. Now I remembered where I heard the name before. The experiment.

"Ah, a bull-shitter," I said.

"I speak only the truth when it comes to beauty, inside and out." Tony smiled and looked me directly in the eyes. "I reserve the right to lie about everything else."

"Truce," I said.

"Not quite peace," he said holding up his hand in a peace sign. "Almost peace," Tony said. The top thirds of both fingers were missing.

I smiled.

"Tony, this is Shalimar Leggond, McKennzie Wong-Levinson, and Dahyla..."

We all held our breath for a second. "Waters," I said. Using my maiden name for the first time in months.

"Dahlya Waters," Jake said.

"The triple crown," Tony said.

"Y'all, this is Short Speed, also known as Stubby, also known as Tony Coraggio."

"You were the shortest basketball player at Jenkins that year, and the fastest." I said.

"You remember," he said.

"And you blew off the tips of four of your fingers holding the top of a pipe bomb so that cap would stay in place."

"That would be me."

"Learn anything in the last twenty years?" Kenni said.

"Beautiful women trump bombs and basketball."

"Shalimar is married," Jake said. "Dahlya is the one I was telling you about, who became a widow just days ago."

"Beautiful women trump everything," Tony said. He lowered his voice "Especially fabulously, beautiful redheads."

We all paused as we watched Kenni smile at him.

"Especially redheads wearing funny T-shirts and lots of diamonds," Tony said.

"We were just going," Jake said loudly. Jake hit him on the back forcing him to step past us.

We turned and watched them walk away. We didn't even pretend otherwise. Tony sort of loped, with a hitching up of his right hip and a swinging around of his right leg because his right knee didn't bend at all.

"Why didn't you ask her out if you were so into her?" I heard Jake hiss at him when they were nearing the corner.

"Are you kidding? Did you see those diamonds? I'm hoping she'll ask me out. To the best restaurants. In Paris maybe."

Tony was considerably shorter than Jake. While Jake didn't strike me as tall, because he felt so comfortable to me, he was probably close to 6'1". Which I guess made Tony around 5'10.

Tony turned around just as they were at the end of the lane and saw us watching him. He put his partial fingers up like an imaginary gun, albeit a stubby one. He put it to his heart, shot it at Kenni, and then shot it into his heart again. Tony didn't have Jake's great rounded butt either, although I couldn't be sure with the lose slacks he was wearing.

"That knee doesn't bend at all, does it?" Shalimar asked.

"No, I remember hearing about Tony when he was in the hospital," I said. "In the motorcycle accident he basically rode on that knee until he stopped. He would get a two percent bend one day, the physical therapist said, if he worked at it. When he gets to his mid-fifties he'll be eligible for a total knee replacement, but not before."

"Two percent bend. Might make some sexual positions difficult," Shalimar said.

"He looks like a man," Kenni said, "who never let any challenge stop him."

Chapter 33

We arrived at the spa early. In a room nearby I could hear sniffling. The crying kind of sniffling. I wasn't sure if Kenni and Shalimar could hear it because my hearing is much better than most people's, and this was through a wall.

The owner, a gentleman in his nineties, told us that two of the massage therapists were held up with a flat tire but would be there shortly. Did one person want to get started or would we prefer to all start at the same time?

"We'll all start at the same time," Shalimar said.

"But we'll talk to the masseuse who's here, in the meantime," I said on whim.

"Okay. She got some bad news a little while ago, but she's fine. Just give her a second to pull herself together and I'll send her out here."

"What made you say that?" Shalimar hissed.

"I don't know. Somebody's sniffling, can't you hear sniffling?"

"No."

The owner came back with his hand firmly on a young girl who barely looked old enough to work.

"Y'all, this is Elena. Her English isn't great, but she's the best massage therapist in Savannah."

I looked into the red, swollen eyes of a blonde who was maybe five feet tall. She looked down. "I'm from Argentina. I don't speak perfectly, but I understand everything."

"Argentina." I looked at Kenni, "Is that south enough for you?"

But I don't think Kenni heard me. She was smiling at Elena. Her Kleenex were migrating upwards from little pockets on her sleeves and lab coat to her face.

"Static cling," Elena said. "Follows me everywhere."

"I bet," Kenni said. "What upset you?"

"Letter from my boyfriend in Argentina. He's supposed to come here, but now, no. He dumped me for my younger cousin. I should have seen it coming, but I am blind for love, always. I am man dumb. School smart, hands smart," she made a kneading motion, "but completely man dumb."

"You and the rest of the world, Sista," Shalimar said.

"I should start a club. The very dumb when it comes to men club."

"That should be the new name of our coven," I said. "The dumb about men club."

"Really?" Elena said. "You're witches? Thank God. I've been praying and praying for someone here but I didn't know how to find anyone to practice witch with."

I blinked.

"My brother will be overjoyed. It's been just the two of us for the six months we've been here and the two is not as strong as the many. You three have goals, yes?"

"She has a hunk she wants to entice," Kenni said pointing at me. "And now, ha, ha, he, he, he, so do I. She," Kenni pointed at Shalimar, "already has everything."

"Enticing men isn't all that hard. You could borrow make-up tips from your friend who has everything."

I groaned.

"Getting men's interest is easy. It's keeping men I don't know how to do."

We all looked at Shalimar. She shrugged.

The other two massage therapists, a man and a woman, came in, covered in tire grease. "So sorry, we'll just be a minute," the man said.

"I'm in mourning," I said when the two massage therapists went in the back to clean up. "Special privileges, I get the guy."

Chapter 34

We gave Elena directions to my house and agreed to have her over on Wednesday, for a pre-Thanksgiving pow-wow.

Elena arrived at my house at noon. She was carrying three bottles of wine and was drenched from a sudden fall rain. She looked smaller without her lab coat.

"Come in," I said.

"Wow," she said looking at a portrait Rick had painted of me.

"What?" I said. "Oh, yeah. My friend did that. I just married him a few months ago and he died, horribly, at Candler earlier in the week."

"Oh, no!" Elena said covering her mouth for a moment. "Not the toe."

My eyebrows shot up. "News carries fast."

"My brother is a janitor part-time at that hospital. He said it was the grossest, I mean..."

"It's alright."

"I mean most grossly wrong thing he has ever seen. It didn't surprise him much. American doctors are much worse than Argentinean doctors. They are always in a rush and never pay attention."

"Sista," Shalimar said nodding.

Elena came over and gave me a hug.

"It's alright Elena. I knew something like this was coming. Rick and I had four months together. We never would have gotten married if I didn't have the premonition."

"You never told us about the premonition, exactly," Kenni said. "What was it like?"