Love Monkey Read Online Free PDF Page B

son from an earlier marriage. Now that’s awoman who knows how to hurt a guy. And make him beg for more. Because he knows it’ll take him a lifetime to figure her out. You don’t hang on to the crossword puzzle after you’ve finished it, do you?
    What would Bogart do with Liesl? He’d take her out to a cool dive. A mildly pretentious Frenchy cafe, the kind that makes girls want to drink because it’s such a European thing to do. Luckily there’s one right in my neighborhood. It’s one of the main reasons I picked this apartment: I’ve closed many a deal at Cafe Frog.
    We get a table in the sunshine. I give her the old, “Do you want to get a bottle of wine?”
    â€œNo,” she says.
    I get a half bottle for me. She orders one beer, makes it last. That scotches my evening right there. Never hit on a woman who could pass a Breathalyzer.
    Mmmm. Scotch.
    She agrees to come back to the apartment afterward. My arsenal is prepared.
    Weapon number one: my baby pictures. This a) humanizes me; b) makes me look sensitive; c) makes her think we would make beautiful babies (I was one, after all); and d) shows me at my best, since frankly I looked stellar at five, but rarely since. Who doesn’t look good in baby pictures? Clear skin, matched outfits, induced jollity. Plus your unbroken heart is in mint condition. Your hairline hasn’t begun its retreat and your gut has not yet made the acquaintance of Messrs. Anheuser and Busch. Baby pictures are the Doomsday Machine of getting play. Press the button, it’s all over.
    There are pictures of my parents at Niagara Falls for their honeymoon, pictures of me abusing the seams of various Little League outfits (Why were they always too small, year after year? Couldn’t they have just given me the next year’s uniform ahead of time?), pictures of me in a Bugs Bunny costume, pictures of me arm in armwith my best friend, Bucky, both of us in white T-shirts and navy camp shorts. It is always summer in these pictures, or a holiday. I spot a pattern. There were the Gosh-Darned Adorable Years (0–6) and the Really Quite Acceptably Kid-Looking Kid Years (6–11). Then there were the Wonder Years (11–32), as in, I wonder how two such foxy parents managed to produce such a chimp?
    As I hand each picture to Liesl for adoration, I realize she is meticulously putting them in chronological order. She is not even issuing the requisite “Awww’s.” Come on: me in a Donald Duck hat, age six? Who could resist?
    â€œWait, wait,” she says as I give her a picture of my dad and me at Disney World circa 1979. I’ve got on huge plastic glasses and an Electric Light Orchestra T-shirt.
    Liesl looks at this one, flips it over, peers at the date, finds the exact right place for it in the stack. I’m tempted to shuffle the deck on her to see if it will make her cry.
    I take the Beach Boys’ Greatest Hits off the CD player (I played it with manboy sarcasm; it contains both “Caroline, No” and “God Only Knows,” but Liesl didn’t seem to notice my point) and unsheath weapon number two: Cowboy Junkies, The Trinity Session . In times like these I always choose The Trinity Session . This is guaranteed stuff. Over the years it’s fifteen for fifteen in delivering at least a gropefest. Don’t think I don’t keep charts for these things.
    â€œWhat’s this?” Liesl asks.
    â€œCowboy Junkies,” I say.
    â€œIs that a joke?” she says.
    â€œNo,” I say. “It’s actually their name.”
    â€œIs there anything on TV?” she asks.
    After we watch a sitcom about (hint, hint) horny girls in New York (“I didn’t think it was very funny,” she informs me), I fetch her a glass of water (isn’t that supposed to come after the sex?).
    But we talk and chat and then we chat and talk and ponder and talk serious stuff about the future when all I want