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Jimmie, this is Dolly.”
    Now, I wanted everybody to go home and leave me alone, but I stood a moment waiting to see who would leave first.
    Dolly shot a last hostile glare at Jimmie and his car, and said, “Well, dear, call me if you need me. Oh, and Bearess is about out of that food from that health food store that you feed her.”
    Despite the fact that Bearess had moved in with Dolly, I still had to buy her food, take her to the vet, and pay for her expenses. All this because Dolly’s official stance was that she just baby-sat for Bearess while I was gone, and I was gone most of the time, so Bearess was still officially my dog, she just didn’t live with me anymore, and I was lucky Dolly didn’t charge me for dog-sitting. Bearess woofed good-bye at me and bounced off with Dolly.
    When they were gone, Jimmie looked at me and grinned. “I’s wondering if I might borrow your second bath and take me a shower?”
    “Why can’t you shower at your place?”
    “Ah, I got me some plumbing problems. Serious plumbing problems. Gonna take me a while to get it all fixed up.”
    Okay, that explained his less than daisy freshness earlier. “So, you’re the home handyman, aren’t you?”
    “Yeah, and I’m fixing to fix it, but right now I needs a shower. Can I use yours or not?”
    “Of course. Come on in. You can shower,” I said, though I wanted Jimmie in my guest bathroom about as much as I wanted him to bring me another used poetry book full of gosh-knows-what germs and viruses. But it didn’t seem nice to send him out smelly in the world on a weekend. In other words, I didn’t see any other option—other than coldheartedness—and no way could I be coldhearted to Jimmie. But after his shower, I was going to run him off as fast as I could.
    Which I did, but not before he promised to return first thing in the morning and cut my grass.
    But the next morning, when Jimmie banged on my front door and wanted to know if I had any bacon, coldheartedness didn’t look so bad. Especially since my own beloved, Philip Cohen, the criminal-defense-attorney genius who had once rendered me nearly mute by touching the inside of my arm while talking in his Dean Martin voice, was sitting across the table from me when Jimmie barged into the kitchen. Philip, who had arrived before Jimmie had, came bearing gifts of organic, stone-ground, whole wheat muffins, organic fresh-squeezed orange juice, and a dozen red roses, lust on his agenda. He had been just about to remind me of why I was considering marrying him when Jimmie rang the doorbell.
    Having barged into my kitchen, Jimmie glared at Philip, then grinned and stuck out his hand. “I knows you. You got me out a the jail that time I’s in for driving drunk. The second time. Jimmie, Jimmie Rodgers. Good to see you.”
    Like this was his house, like Philip was his guest.
    “Lady, I’ll cook it myself, if you got any bacon,” Jimmie said, turning his attentions back to me. “Them plumbing problems done spread to my kitchen, and I can’t cook nothing right now.”
    “I’m a vegetarian,” I said, eyeing Philip, who, being Mr. Manners, had naturally stood up and taken Jimmie’s hand, and was waiting for Jimmie and me to shut up so he could speak.
    “Philip Cohen,” he said, and gestured toward a chair. “Join us?”
    “Thank you, thank you. I jes’ might at that,” Jimmie said, edging toward a chair, then veering off toward my French press. “That coffee?”
    “Help yourself,” I said, but Jimmie was already getting a cup from my cupboard.
    Jimmie poured, sipped, made a loud, “Ahh,” and then turned back to me. “You loan me the money and I’ll go and get us some bacon. It’d be real nice with those muffins.”
    “I’m a vegetarian. Vegetarians don’t eat bacon. Bacon is a dead pig with carcinogenic chemicals added for flavorings and I don’t eat dead pigs.”
    “And I’m Jewish and we don’t consume pork either,” Philip added.
    “Well, okay, but if you