Страница 11

"My sister hired her to clean my house," Russ said.

Greg laughed. "You've got to be kidding me. Fishing off your own dock, huh?"

"She's not going to clean my house anymore. But, er."

Greg raised his brows, waiting.

Russ sighed. "I rented my old apartment to her."

Greg's mouth dropped open. Several speechless moments went by, and then, "She must be fucking gorgeous."

"I thought I was helping out. Then suddenly we had a date pla

"Why do you want to get out of it?"

"She's ten years younger! She lives in a completely different world. She's immature. She's trying to find her place in the world."

"And she's hot. Let's not forget that she's hot."

Russ rolled his eyes.

"That's why you're talking to me," Greg said. "You know it's hopeless, but she's hot and you want her."

"If that thought doesn't make me want to break it off with her, nothing will. I don't want to be a creepy old fart."

"Stop being so hard on yourself. Frankly, I'm proud of you."

"What?"

Greg sat back, crossed one ankle over his knee, and said in an expansive, professorial tone, "It means you're getting on with life. And what a way to get on with it!"

"You're not much help."

"You don't want help. You want someone to validate your choice to jump her. You want to be absolved of guilt for being a lech."

Russ scowled. "I have to cancel this date."

Greg put his foot back on the floor, leaning forward and slapping both palms onto the table. "Don't do that, Russ," he pleaded. "You're living the dream, man! You're single, you're rich, and now you've got a hot young thing eager to jump your bones. You have to let her. Keep living the dream! For me. For your teammates. For every man who wishes he still had all his hair, a thirty-inch waist, and sex without begging."

Greg turned toward their teammate Tom, a forty-six-year-old accountant sitting at the other end of the row of tables. "Tom! Tell Russ what your wife did last week!"

"She went down on me," Tom said, a note of awe in his voice. His eyes gleamed as if recounting a visit by a saint. "For the first time in three years. And I didn't even ask. It was a beautiful thing." He touched the corner of one eye and made a noise suspiciously like a tear being sniffed back. "Beautiful."

Greg nodded at Russ. "You see? Three years without a blow job. That's what the future holds."

"You're depressing me," Russ said. "This is what life holds?"

"You're the last of the wild cowboys. We look at you as our symbol of freedom. That's why everyone's wife tries to set you up, marry you off. They want to take away our hope. They want us to forget that we, too, once ran free."

"Then why do we all end up married in the end? Why aren't the lot of you out roaming the range?"