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“What brings you tonight?” Woodruff asked, apparently waiting for an answer to the exact question that I, myself, wanted an answer to. He could only be this efficient by accident.

“Well,” Mindie began, sounding oddly giddy, “it’s supposed to be a surprise for Corky, so I can’t tell you. But I think you’ll like it. I really, really think you’ll like it!” Her voice practically sang out, cockatiel-like.

“Who’s that?” Ms. Nuckeby asked.

“My…uh…er…old family friend,” I said, trying not to sound in any way interested. Curiously, my erection died like a carnival goldfish.

“Really? Because you sort of stiffened up. And not in a good way.”

“Did I? Fascinating. Because there’s no reason for me to. None whatsoever. Zip. Zero. Nada.” I considered continuing, but I still hadn’t learned Swedish.

Outside, Mindie forged on, talking about how much she loved my place, how it had everything one could want, except a woman’s touch, and that someday someone would make me get rid of all those damn cartoon books and pictures messing up the walls. She laughed. Others laughed. I gulped.

“None whatsoever?” Ms. Nuckeby asked, somehow unconvinced. What was she, psychic? “So, she’s not…like…an old flame, or anything?”

“Hardly,” I said, trying to come off as shocked and annoyed, but sounded mostly like I’d sucked helium.

“So you wouldn’t be nervous that she might find us in here, together. You in your ‘state of undress’ and all?”

I snorted derisively and felt something fly out of my nose. Please, God, don’t let it have landed on Ms. Nuckeby.

Outside, as if on cue, Mindie laughed, loudly and overly enthusiastically. Like Brad Pitt had dropped ice down the front of her pants and was holding it there while licking her neck.

”Wouldn’t bother her in the least,” I said confidently. If there was one thing I was certain of, it was Mindie’s indifference to my body. “She might be amused by it, as you can imagine. But bothered? No. Oh, no. Not in the least.”

“Then she couldn’t possibly mind if we were both naked, now, could she?”

Gloop.

It was just an up-and-down kind of day.

“I…uh…what are you saying, Ms. Nuckeby?”

“Well, I was just thinking,” she said leaning closer, “that since it seems we might be stuck in here a good, long while and all, that there’s no sense in you continuing to feel awkward because you’re the only one naked.”

I heard a button pop, and she began doing things that, mere moments ago, I would have paid her to do. But somehow the timing, now, was…ehhh…not so good.

Outside, Woodruff was directing the guests into the study with Grandfather, and I knew he was mere seconds from opening the closet door, yet again, with additional coats and derisive comments.

“Woodruff’s coming,” I said.

“I’d rather you were.”

I gasped in a very unmanly way for a man, yet for some reason she still moved closer and popped another button somewhere. Inexplicably, I was truly uncomfortable with her newest idea. Why, when a woman goes from being cute and sensual to overtly sexual it should oftentimes give men pause, I’ll never know. Something I’d learned in college about a Madonna and her whore slithered through my mind, but left only a slime trail. As I said, the thinking cells simply fail us males from time to time.

Maybe it was my inexperience with romance. Or maybe it had something to do with the growing number of people one panel of wood away, coupled with the fear of being caught and ridiculed by said people. They were family, after all, and that’s what family does in these situations—laugh scornfully and then dredge up the material at each and every opportunity thereafter until the end of time. Parties, family gatherings, wedding banquets, Internet blogs. Familial humiliation lives on forever, and grows funnier and funnier (to them) every time it’s remembered publicly.

It was bad enough to think of Grandfather lurking around out there, and possibly catching me illicitly engaged with an employee then disinheriting my ass. At least he might keep it a secret out of shame and lawsuit paranoia. But Morgan? Mimsi? Rupert? Daniel?

And