Flyboy Action Figure Comes With Gasmask | Page 2

you do* , and *Oh, I think she thinks I'm leading up to asking her out to go dancing* , and *Oh dear, should I? how very stressful --*
"It's all right," she said, giving me a sideways look that I was utterly unable to decipher. She sauntered away in that way I so admired, getting some old guy his check.
Admission: up until that day, my admiration of her was based mostly on her body. She would wear these track pants and T-shirt combinations that *tried* to contain those heavy breasts, *tried* to hide her wonderful bum, but failed delightfully. I had always considered *voluptuous* a polite euphemism, but then I met Cass.
It was more than that. I won't pretend that it was a whole lot more, but she had a casualness that amplified her appeal immensely. No make-up, an Aunt Jemima handkerchief that barely kept her wiry, kinky mop of shoulder-length hair in check. And the clothes that looked like she might have slept in them. The sexiest of Sunday-morning-just-don't-give-a-damn looks.
But of course it wasn't just a *look* . For the two years I had been living in the area, she had been working here full time. When she took your order, fixing you with her dark eyes, you knew better than to mess with someone who'd been on her feet all day. Her breasts drooped slightly, but her slow and silent energy rolled like a thundercloud.
"So now you come back to us, now that their patios are cold."
I thought that was a poetic turn of phrase, but I didn't know if she intended it to be. So I just smiled and said, "Well, now I *appreciate* the blast of hot, greasy air when I come out of the cold."
She laughed, but I felt bad for calling it greasy, even when it was. So I babbled, "I totally love it. I'm thinking of getting a heater that pumps out Sok air."
She mimed turning a dial to different settings, "Hot and Greasy... Smells Like Eggs . . ." She did all this with her hand on one hip, a menu under her arm.
I laughed, surprised and happy to see a quick wit. It wasn't the only thing she would surprise me with -- but it was the first.
* * *
I was doing a lab with Mary later that week.
"Did I tell you about her saying 'Now that their patios are cold'?" I had been going on about Cass all class.
Mary nodded, smiling. She adjusted the microscope focus with a deft finger and peered in. "I think I've got it. It's the second-section legs we're supposed to be examining, right?"
"I don't know." I hadn't been concentrating on anything but recounting my "conversation" with Cass.
Mary squinted at the blackboard. It always bothered me that she didn't wear glasses. She was such a sensible girl otherwise. She didn't get involved with jerks, she lived frugally, it just didn't make sense. She would look fine in glasses -- I could clearly see her in a pair of no-nonsense wire frames. But then, being a twenty-two-year-old virgin, I perhaps wasn't the definitive authority on what was socially attractive.
Thinking this, I paused for a second, but then used my extra-powerful glasses to read the board.
"Isolate second... section of subject. Note the... differences in the second set of legs. Add to... cake mix."
Mary snorted, and crossed out *Add*.
"What the heck is that?!" I stared in amazement at the board, my voice rising slowly but surely. "Cake mix? What's *wrong* with this professor?" I enjoyed the minor attention I got from some worried-looking people nearby. In *this* class, I was the loudmouth.
"The entomology and cooking classes are being held together," Mary deadpanned, sketching in her notebook. "Part of the cost-cutting measures, I understand."
I chuckled. I opened my notebook and started copying the insect Mary was drawing. Mary was the only reason I believed I had a chance of passing this course. I had taken it for good reasons, but about a month past the drop-out date I realized that it wasn't something I wanted to study. My particular area of interest, specialized as it was, would be for someone with a PhD to take on -- not a dabbler like me. My major was English, and at one point I was thinking of making it a biology/English double major. I thought again.
It was just my latest abandoned plan for solving the mystery of my kinship with the *Musca domestica* . None of the answers at the back of the textbook were the ones I needed.
"So other than the way she looks, and some witty lines, do you know anything about her?"
"Nope."
"I don't know anyone who waitresses full time. Judy does two shifts a week, and she's always complaining about how rude everyone is."
"I know she's been doing it for