The Sleeping Beauty Proposal Read Online Free PDF Page B

“Guess my little girl’s grown up.” (Okay, Dad, I’m thirty-six. I think I’m grown-up.)
    Meanwhile, Hugh—oblivious to the fact that half of the East Coast and certain areas of the Midwest are under the impression we are tying the knot—is somewhere over the Atlantic, reading the morning paper and drinking his coffee on a flight to England, possibly with her, his real fiancée, Miss Hot Tamale. Likely she has a father just as proud as mine and a mother who also screamed nonstop for five minutes.
    Or maybe not. Maybe she is from New York City, the Upper East Side, where engagements and marriages are all very passé.You know, they’re what the masses do between buying megapacks of toilet paper at Wal-Mart and watching reality television.
    Then again, I don’t know anyone like that at Thoreau (we all steal toilet paper from the ladies’ room). Wait. What if she’s from Thoreau? When Hugh wasn’t on campus, teaching or writing, he was hanging out with me, so where else could she be from?
    It doesn’t make sense. None of this makes sense. I mean, who can this other woman be?
    Here, so far, is my list of potential candidates. Women I know who have harbored suspected crushes on my boyfriend. Or, rather, ex-boyfriend.
    Alice, Admissions Department Secretary
    Age: 25-55, no one’s quite sure.
    Weight: Permanent diet.
    Marital Status: Living with on/off boyfriend,Trey Ray.
    Favorites: White shoes. Extensive coffee breaks. Tight pants. Kool Menthol Ultra Lights. The electric bull at the Somerville Tavern. Brandon, the guy who fixes the copy machine and other sundry appliances.
    How she knows Hugh: Met when the rear left tire on her Grand Marquis blew out on Ballou Drive. Flat caused by Trey, who was ticked she threw out all his beer the night before. To this day, Alice considers Hugh her knight in shining armor and, until last night, she wasn’t the only one.
    Connie, Admissions Counselor
    Age: 36, though claims 30.
    Weight: Struggling to keep it under 129.
    Marital status: Single and not loving it.
    Favorites: Online dating. Speed dating. Coffee club dating. Books on How to Date and How to Meet Men and Why They’re Not Into You When You Do Meet Them.
    How she knows Hugh: Through me and she’s none too happy about that—despite her claim that she finds British men “effeminate.”
    Isabel, Spanish Literature Professor
    Age: Young.
    Weight: A lithe 115, and one of those who can eat anything she wants and never put on a pound, curse her.
    Marital status: Divorced.
    Favorites: Swaying hips while walking.Talking with a thick, sexy Spanish accent. Looking like Penélope Cruz.
    How she knows Hugh: Because she knows all the men on campus and they know her.
    Simone,Women’s Lit Professor
    Age: Forty. Do you want to make something of it?
    Weight: That’s not important. Why are you concentrating on a male-defined paradigm?
    Marital status: Do you always judge a woman according to her relationship with a man?
    Favorites: Black coffee. Shawls. Using words like deconstruct and phrases like “employing the feminine speculum.”
    How she knows Hugh: Corners him at every chance to badger him about why he failed to include Anzia Yezierska in the freshman canon.
    Nope. None fits Hugh’s type. Except for Isabel. I’ll have to keep an eye on her, the hot-blooded Spaniard.
    Speaking of hot-blooded Spaniards, here comes Jorge the cat staggering through the doorway in his blind pursuit of a sun patch and leftovers. He collapses on my carpet of roses and green vines, exhausted from having hiked all of five feet, and looks up at me with the equivalent of feline disgust.
    My alarm clock claims it’s seven thirty, though as it is a largely untrustworthy piece of junk, that could mean anywhere from seven twenty to seven forty. Still, enough time to make it to work and be reasonably efficient. I just need a cup of coffee, a shower, and a jiffy blood