“Lawyers rank in job dissatisfaction second only to proctologists.”

“Well, then,” she said. “I guess things could always be worse.”

“But the rubber gloves are so cool, don’t you think? That’s why everyone uses them now. Lunch ladies, cops. Remember the good old days when dentists stuck their hands in your mouth after just a quick wash?”

“Do we have to talk about dentists?”

“So let’s talk about another despised profession, newspaper reporters.”

“Are we despised?”

“Oh, yes. More than lawyers, even.”

“I doubt that.”

“The things I’ve heard. Do you like writing?”

“Not writing, really. That’s the chore at the end of the chase. But I’m a very goal-oriented person and my job fits right in with that. When I need to find a story or get an interview, I usually find a way. Sometimes I ambush the target, sometimes I use my charm.”

“Like now.”

“I’m trying, although it doesn’t seem to be swaying you much.”

“Try harder.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” She dropped her hand casually on my forearm, looked at me straight with her captivating eyes. “But either way, Victor, know that I will get it done. I’ll find Charlie, with or without you, because it is what I do.”

“Take it easy, Rhonda. It’s just a story.”

“It’s more than that, Victor. People aren’t adjectives. You can think of yourself as kind and sweet and funny, but how you think of yourself doesn’t mean a thing. People are verbs.”

“What verb are you?”

“I eliminate. Distractions, obstacles, impediments to my success. I’m someone who gets what she’s after, no matter who or what gets in the way.”

“My God, you sound ruthless.”

“Does it excite you, Victor?”

“Oddly, yes. You seem so sure of things. No doubts?”

“What’s the point of doubt? You make a decision, go down a certain road, and there you are. You can whine and dither, or you can keep going and get it done. I’m not sure how I ended up here, but I’m not backtracking. Pick a path, do your job with neither fear nor hesitation, that’s the only way I know.”

“So if you never let anything get in your way, how come you’re still just a stringer?”

“I started late, switched careers in midstream.”

“What did you do before?”

“Animal control.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, I’m not. Dogs and cats. Ferrets and snakes and squirrels. Lots of squirrels. You’d be surprised how dangerous they can be.”

“Squirrels?”

“After alcohol and lawyers, they’re the number one health threat in America.”

“Really?”

“No, but don’t ever mess with an angry squirrel.”

“I bet you looked hot in your uniform.”

“I still have it.”

“Yowza.”

“So what verb are you, Victor?”

“I question, I suppose. I trust uncertainty. I’ve found out that whenever I’m sure of something, I’m dead wrong.”

“What are you sure about right now?”

“That you talk tougher than you really are.”

She pursed her lips, sipped her drink. “Maybe you’re right.”

“You’re not so tough?”

“No, that’s not it,” she said, leaning close enough so I could smell the triple sec on her breath. “You’re right about being dead wrong.”

Later that night she lay naked beneath me, facedown on the bed. I was naked atop her, my thumbs gently kneading the taut muscles of her back and neck. She was purring like a lioness stretched out in the noonday sun, I was vibrating like a hyena over a freshly felled giraffe. But it was not mere animal lust that was driving me, though I freely admit to lusting like an animal. No, I was filled with some sharp emotion as I stroked and massaged.

I leaned down, kissed the knife’s edge of her clavicle. She reached up with her hand to rub the nape of my neck. I nuzzled her earlobe and with my tongue flicked lightly the flesh beneath it.

I have heard tell that the capacity to love is a sign of mental health, which meant, I suppose, that I was just then the healthiest man in the city, mentally wise at least, seeing as I was falling in love with every woman I laid my gaze upon. I pined for them, I felt lost without them, I was sure that each of them, the woman beneath me being no exception, could save my life.

I kissed her again. Her bracelets jangled lightly as she rubbed my neck harder than before. I wasn’t even sure who she was, really, in her soul, but the raw emotion she coaxed out of me with every purr and every touch cut like a jagged shiv through my heart.

But even in my besotted state, I knew I couldn’t be feeling true love so indiscriminately. No, what was flooding my blood that night, along with the lust, was a potent cocktail of fear and desperation, of loneliness and need, of a pathetic yearning for the merest breath of salvation. What I was searching for, in my deepest soul, was someone to pull me out of a bottomless hole whose dimensions I couldn’t fathom.

I nibbled her flesh. Her fingernails dug into my scalp with a lovely pain.

Yet even as I recognized the fallacy of my emotions, I couldn’t give up the hope that maybe, just maybe, this woman, this one, here, now, not womanhood in general but this specific woman in particular, could actually be my savior. The others might have been counterfeit totems to a false hope, but maybe this one, here, was actually the true answer to my questing heart.

Suddenly she arched her back, lifted her torso out of the bed, bent her legs back and locked them around my own, like a breaststroker doing a scissor kick. I felt myself being pulled under.

“Wait,” I said. “What are you doing? Whoa. Whoooa.”

She was laughing as we fell into a rhythm, and I started laughing, too. My God, maybe it was the real thing, maybe I had found it after all.

You are the one, no you, no no you are the one, beneath me, right now, you.

“Right there,” she said. “That feels good. Oh, yes.”

I wanted to kiss her just then, not on the shoulder or on the back of the neck but on her mouth, hard and clean, as we gazed at each other eye to eye.

I slid down and out, rose onto my knees, reached under her arm, gently spun her around until I was staring with a longing heart straight into the face of Sheila the Realtor.

I AM AS appalled writing this as you must be reading it. But there is a simple explanation. Really.

So I was drinking with Rhonda Harris upstairs at the Monaco Living Room, feeling the love, so to speak, and hoping that things might actually lead somewhere with someone this time, when she glanced at her watch and leaped out of her seat. “Got to go,” she said.

“Really?” I said, trying to keep my crest from falling.

“Sorry, Victor.”

“I was thinking maybe dinner. Maybe Italian.”

“Can’t. Not tonight at least. Will you talk to Charlie for me, please?”

“I guess.”

“I’ll call you.”

“I’ll be waiting,” I said, like a puppy.

I was sitting forlornly, alone with my drink, when the pretty young waitress brought another round that I had optimistically ordered a few moments before.

“She coming back?” she said, indicating Rhonda’s spot.

“Not tonight,” I said.

“Too bad,” said the waitress, cleaning Rhonda’s side of the table. She was lean and athletic, with long black hair and big eyes. “I guess you won’t be needing the Cosmo, then,” she said. She had a fresh rosy complexion that said soy milk and yoga. I didn’t know about the soy milk, but I could learn yoga.

“Since the drink’s already ordered,” I said, “you want to join me?”

“Can’t. Against the rules.”

“When do you get off?”

“December,” she said.

I lifted up my new Sea Breeze. “Merry Christmas.”

By then I was a little too comfortable in my seat and couldn’t quite face going home to my ruined apartment to flop down on my ruined couch and spend another night watching the reception flicker on my cableless portable television. So I reached for the phone in my jacket pocket. I was going to call Beth, whom I hadn’t spent enough time with lately, or maybe Skink, who could cheerfully turn the evening in a more sinister direction, or anyone in the directory who could provide a little company. But with my phone I inadvertently pulled out a card that had been sitting in the same pocket. Sheila the Realtor’s card. And I remembered the way her eyes had shone when she told me to give her a call.