The Sexiest Man Alive (17 page)

He cleared his throat. “My grandaunt didn’t know your favorite color of flower, so I got one in every shade.”

“What?”

He adjusted his glasses. “You
are
Mazie Maguire?”

“Yes, but—”

“She didn’t tell you I was coming, did she?” he said sadly.

“Who?”

“My aunt Minnie. Minerva Pfister.”

Suddenly things became dreadfully clear. This must be Mrs. Pfister’s grandnephew, the
good catch
. “Are you Lesley?” Mazie asked.

“
Lester
. Lester Pfister.

“How did you get my address?”

“From my aunt. She phoned the place where you work and they gave it to her.”

His face was slicked with sweat and his glasses slid down his nose. “Did you tell my aunt you’d go on a date with me tonight?”

“Umm … no,” Mazie said, softening her tone. “I’m sorry but—”

“Aunt Minnie never listens to anything she doesn’t want to hear.” He thrust the flowers at Mazie. “You might as well take them—I’m allergic. I hope I didn’t freak you out or anything.”

“No, it’s okay.”

He ran a finger around the inside of his collar. “Aunt Min said you were pretty,” he mumbled, staring at his feet, “but her eyes aren’t that good so I didn’t believe her. But you really
are
pretty.”

Mazie looked down at the flowers, embarrassed. “Thank you.”

“Not that I’m superficial. I don’t judge women by their appearance, seeing as how I’m not exactly Mr. Universe myself.”

“I guess you could come in for a couple of minutes,” Mazie said. “Would you like a glass of water or juice?”

“Yes, thank you.” He wiped his feet on the doormat and shyly stepped into her living room. “I should have known better. Every time Aunt Min sets me up it’s a disaster. This one time she set me up with a woman from her multicultural club. My date came out wearing a veil over her face. I touched her elbow to help her down the front steps, and she screamed and ran back in the house. A man with a big mustache rushed out swinging a curved sword and threatened to cut off my guy parts.”

Mazie didn’t know exactly how to respond to this. Finally she said, “It’s not that I don’t want to go out with you, Lester, but I already have other plans.”

“Sure. I know. Girls always have to shampoo their hair. They explain to me that it takes three or four hours.”

Mazie laughed. “No, I’m not doing my hair. I’m going to a Roller Derby.”

“Roller Derby?” Lester beamed. “Oh, wow—that’s my favorite sport! Derby girls are hot—not that I judge a woman by her hotness. I mean I’ve gone out with girls who are so un-hot they’re ice-cold, but—”

“Lester,” Mazie said. “Stop talking.”

“Okay,” he mumbled.

“I’m not a derby girl. Sorry if that punctures a fantasy, but I just help out, make sure the players’ laces are tight, check the elbow pads and stuff. My friend Juju is on the team, though—the Brewer City Brawlers, in case you’ve—”

“The Brawlers! That’s totally awesome!” Lester’s eyes glowed. “I’m like the Brawlers’ number one fan. I watch them on cable all the time, but I’ve never seen a real game. Do you think I could come with you—it wouldn’t be a date or anything, I mean you’re probably embarrassed to be seen with me, I could just follow a few feet behind—”

“Do you have a car?”

“No, sorry. I’m not allowed to drive.”

“OWI?”

“ECS. Extreme car sickness.”

TMI.

“I throw up if I ride in a car,” Lester explained. “One time when my family drove to the Wisconsin Dells I threw up six times. My mom made me sit on a plastic sheet and we had to keep the windows open the whole way. Which gave me an earache, so I couldn’t go in the water. If I need to go somewhere, I ride my bike or take the bus. Where do the Brawlers play?”

“The Pettit Center—the one just off the interstate? Hockey gets the top floor and the Brawlers get the basement.”

“We could take the bus. I know all the bus schedules. The number forty-five goes out there, but you have to transfer to it from a thirty, which you pick up on Prospect. We could be there in”—he pulled his cuff away from his sweaty wrist to expose a huge Timex—“thirty-two minutes.”

A few minutes later, they were on the number thirty. It was crowded, but they managed to snag end seats across from each other.

“I hope you don’t mind that I’m wearing a pink tie,” Lester said, pulling the end of his tie out of his belt. “I read in
GQ
that pink ties are in this year, but a guy has to be really certain of his masculinity to wear pink.”

“I think your tie is terrific.”

“Thank you.” Lester’s face went a pink shade that closely matched his tie. “I don’t usually get compliments on my clothes.”

“What do you do, Lester?”

“I just pretend it doesn’t bother me.”

Mazie smiled. “For a living, I mean.”

He squirmed in his seat. “I’m in sanitary technology,” he mumbled.

“That sounds impressive.”

Lester took a deep breath. “This is usually the point where the woman bails on me, but—well, here goes. I own a fleet of portable urinary devices.”

“Like, bedpans?”

“Porta potties. But technologically advanced porta potties. Odorless and eco-friendly. All the waste gets turned into fertilizer. They even have little side pockets where you can put flowers.”

“A rose by any other name.”

“Ha-ha. Literary allusion. But most women don’t see it that way. When they hear what I do for a living, they get turned off. Even though it’s a very good living—I made over two million last year. Dollars, I mean.”

“Impressive.”

“I have a degree in mechanical engineering. I have patents, too. Not to brag, Mazie, but I have seventeen different inventions registered with the U.S. Patent Office.”

They switched buses at the transfer station downtown, getting on an express crosstown bus. Mazie hadn’t dated on a bus since high school, when she’d gone to away football games on buses and used to sit in the back making out with her boyfriend.

“How come you don’t get carsick on buses?” Mazie asked.

“I think it has something to do with being high above the ground.”

This didn’t make any sense to Mazie, but she let it go. Lester was growing on her. He would have made a great puppy. He was eager to please, already housebroken, and really very sweet. She decided to make it her mission to find the right woman for him.

The bus dropped them off at the arena’s front door. The parking lot was full because hockey and Roller Derby were both on the ticket tonight. The Milwaukee Snowplows hockey team was playing the Racine Raptors, Mazie noted, skimming the event board as she and Lester hurried across the lobby. So Labeck was here tonight. Ordinarily she’d have been in the stands, cheering him on as he played. Well, that part of her life was over, thank goodness. Let Olivia freeze her perfectly proportioned, designer-clothed tush instead.

The Roller Derby game was held on a ninety-foot track in the arena’s basement. When Mazie had first been introduced to Roller Derby, she’d expected a slanted track, like the ones on televised games, but tilted tracks were too expensive and most tracks nowadays were flat. The
bleachers were jammed, nearly half the seats taken up by fans of the despised Skokie Scorchers, who’d driven up from the Chicago area to cheer on their team and cause mayhem. The Scorchers were the Brewer City Brawlers’ archenemies and currently the league champions, known for their willingness to play rough. Rival fans were already catcalling and jeering at each other, ready to rumble—which probably explained the presence of a few police officers stationed around the rink.

Mazie spotted the Brawlers, already suited up and gathered in a huddle at the west end of the track. There were seven women on the team—five regulars and two alternates. They all turned to stare as Mazie hurried up, Lester in her wake.

“Everybody,” Mazie panted, “this is Lester. My—uhh—date.”

Lester’s chest expanded.

“Pleased to meet you,” Lester squeaked, nodding politely around at all the skaters, who regarded him with hard eyes. They were in game mode, not girly mode, pulling on their tough chick personas to armor themselves for the game. Juju was the only one who shook Lester’s hand—and was it Mazie’s imagination, or had something just ignited there between them?

“I watch all your games. I’m your team’s number one fan!” Lester babbled. “I can’t believe I’m meeting you all in the actual flesh. Not that I mean flesh in the sense that I can see a lot of your skin showing—which I can and it looks very good, but I’m not like, ogling it or anything, I just mean—” Alarming splotches of color were blooming all over Lester’s face and neck. “I mean … excuse me for a second, ladies—but I think I’m going to faint.”

Lester’s eyes rolled and his legs buckled, but he didn’t collapse. Mazie managed to steer him to a seat in the front row of the bleachers. She made him put his head between his legs and, when he was able to sit up, gave him a drink from her water bottle.

“I disgraced myself,” he moaned.

“Yes, but in a good way,” Mazie assured him. “Wait here for a minute. I’ll be right back.” She hurried over to the inner track to help the women with their last-minute gearing up. The Brawlers rocked a Catholic schoolgirl look—striped ties, white shirts that tied at the midriff, and red plaid skirts so short, they’d have gotten the wearer expelled from an actual Catholic school. Beneath, they wore stretchy black panties and fishnet panty hose.

Mazie helped Juju, whose skate name was Lady Whambamya, adjust her tie. The preferred method was to wear the tie slung low at a rakish angle, so it’d flap in the breeze. “How’d your discipline session go last night?” Mazie asked.

“I had my first flogging job.”

“Was it fun?”

“No.” Juju scowled. “Everything went okay at first. I slapped cuffs and chains on the submissive, then I yanked him over to the flogging block, a metal thingie that makes the guy bend over. I told him he needed to be punished and I was going to hurt him. He was loving it, quivering with excitement.”

Juju tightened the Velcro on her elbow pad. “I picked up the whip and cracked it on the floor a couple of times like I’d been practicing and yelled, ‘This is just a taste of what you’re going to get, vermin!’ Then I brought the whip down across his bare butt. I didn’t think I hit him that hard, but the guy screamed like he was being tortured. He had this big red welt on one of his butt cheeks. I dropped the whip, ran out of the room, and threw up. Another dominatrix had to go in to finish the punishment, so I didn’t even get paid.”

“Maybe you should stick to dog collars.”

“No, I’m done with being a dominatrix.” Juju bent over to lace her right skate more tightly. “I’m obviously not cut out for it. Maybe I should—”

“Hey, Whambamya, get your ass in gear and let’s go.” Jackie O’Sassin, the Brawlers’ team captain, skated over and handed Juju her helmet. A solidly built woman in her mid-forties with overprocessed hair the texture of cotton candy and safety-goggle eyeglasses, Jackie looked like a schoolgirl who’d repeated sixth grade about twenty times. The other Brawlers were doing last-minute battening down of braces and pads. Bootsy Bumpsalot was a slim African American woman who was the team’s best blocker; Carmen Maulranda had artificial fruit hot-glued to her helmet, and Lady Shatterly had a living-dead thing going—green facial makeup, black lipstick, and festering pustules stickered onto her cheeks.

“You want to watch out for Girlzilla,” Jackie O’Sassin warned Juju. “She’s vicious.”

Juju snorted. “You think I can’t handle her?”

Jackie set her own helmet on her head and adjusted the strap. “Just watch your back. Also your front and your sides.”

The lights dimmed, spotlights played across the floor, and the crowd whooped as the Brawlers suddenly zipped onto the track like shooting stars, pumping their fists, blowing kisses, and flinging candy to their rowdy, cheering fans. Then it was the turn of the Skokie Scorchers, who took a turn around the track, whipping up their own fans.

The skaters got into position, the starter whistle blew, and the action began. Mazie squeezed into the bleachers next to Lester and watched. Skokie jumped off to a quick lead, but then Juju lapped three players, putting the Brawlers in the lead.

“Do you understand how the game is played?” Mazie asked Lester.

“I don’t know the exact rules,” Lester confessed. “I just like to watch cute girls in skimpy outfits. Not that I judge people on their—”

“Okay, it’s simple. There are four blockers on each team and one jammer. You can tell who the jammer is because her helmet has a star.”

“That’s Juju, right?” Lester said.

“Right. She has to get through the defending blockers. She scores a point for every player she laps. Her blockers try to keep the other team’s jammer from breaking through.”

“I think I’m following—ooh—that was dirty!” Lester was on his feet, pointing.

The Scorcher’s lead blocker, Girlzilla, had abruptly whipped her arm backward, whacking Juju in the face.
An accident
, she pantomimed to the ref, all innocence.

“Isn’t that illegal?” asked Lester.

“Technically, yes,” Mazie said. “But it’s like wrecks in auto racing. It’s why people come to the track. They expect to see women beating each other up.”

Juju flashed past, her tie flying back over her shoulder, her skirt flipping up to reveal her skimpy black panties and artfully ripped fishnets. She whizzed between two Scorchers before they even realized she was moving up on them. Because Juju was smaller than the average middle schooler, she was quick, elusive, and capable of weaseling through impenetrable blockades. Tonight, though, Girlzilla was giving Juju lots of trouble. Tall and muscular, Girlzilla had long hair dyed the exact shade of the Scorchers’ flame orange jerseys and inner tube–sized boobs that were living advertisements for silicone. There was no mistaking that she was out to get Juju, elbowing, shoving, trash talking, and tripping.

The lead seesawed back and forth. As the clock ticked down to the last minutes of the game, the level of brutality increased. Bootsy was tripped, went flying into the bleachers, and fractured her wrist. Her sub, Ida Tripter, went in for her. Carmen got kicked out of the game for punching an opponent, forcing the remaining sub, Dirty Harriet, to go in for her. The Brawlers were behind by two points when Juju, ambushed by Girlzilla, wiped out, skidded across the floor, and hit her head against the rink railing. As the ref whistled for a time-out, the Scorchers’ fans cheering and the Brawlers’ fan screaming in outrage, Mazie rushed over to Juju, who was hauling herself to her feet.