Slow Hands

again, whispering, “Nineteen.”
    He could easily envision nineteen things he’d say to the brunette when they met. Nineteen ways to bring about that meeting. The nineteen minutes it would take to run out from behind the curtain, grab her hand and drag her to his place. The number of times he wanted to make love to her and the number of positions he wanted to do it.
    “Nineteen? Hello?”
    Jake jerked his attention back toward the stage manager who was watching him with an expectant—yet slightly exasperated—look. He’d obviously been visualizing for several minutes. “The guy before you is done.”
    “What’d he go for?” Jake couldn’t help asking.
    “Thirty-five.”
    Thirty-five. Oh, God, thirty-five bucks? He’d whip out his checkbook and pay ten times that if he could get out of this. Then he’d go straight out and introduce himself to the brunette in blue.
    “Thirty-five hundred ,” the woman added, obviously reading his expression.
    “Holy shit.”
    He could barely scrape up one times that amount, and if he had ten times it in his checking account, he sure as hell wouldn’t be living in a one-bedroom apartment over a flower shop in Hyde Park.
    “They’re reading your bio right now, so we need to move quickly,” Miss Pencil Tapper said, actually reaching out to grasp his arm. She must know he wanted to bolt. He doubted he was the first to feel that way tonight.
    “Fine, fine,” he muttered, not even listening to the announcer, whose voice was droning through the hotel sound system. He let go of the black drape curtain, regret making his fingers glide against it for a moment longer than necessary. Then he was being pushed onto the stage, blinded by a spotlight, deafened by the roar of a hundred tipsy women.
    This must be what those Chippendales dudes felt like. The thought of doing this dressed in leather cowboy chaps and nothing else was enough to make his stomach heave.
    “Who’s going to start the bidding?”
    “Five hundred!” someone yelled.
    Okay. It was a start. Five hundred…that was a worthy donation. That’d buy a lot of Christmas presents for needy kids. Like, you know, a hundred games of Go Fish or whatever that crap sold for now. But, man, it sounded pathetic considering the pretty boy stockbroker went for seven times that much.
    “Six.”
    “Seven!”
    The numbers started flying at a dizzying speed, and Jake couldn’t keep up with them for a while. Not until a loud, determined female voice cut through the catcalls to shout, “Five thousand dollars!”
    Everyone fell silent for an infinitesimal moment. Jake included. He didn’t know what the highest bachelor had sold for, but at least he wasn’t going to be rock bottom.
    “We have a bid of five thousand dollars for this excellent cause,” the auctioneer preened. “And I imagine our handsome bachelor will be worth every penny of it.”
    Ahh, the joy of being pimped by a fat guy with sweaty jowls and a smarmy smile.
    The searing heat of the spotlight suddenly left his face. Jake watched as the large, golden circle washed over the crowd, turning to illuminate the woman who’d ignored auction protocol by upping the ante so dramatically.
    Jake held his breath, something in his brain telling him it had been her. The brunette. The one he couldn’t stop thinking about had heard his mental 911 call.
    The spotlight finally came to rest on the top of a very blond head.
    Shit.
    The middle-aged woman trying to look ten years younger sat at one of the exclusive, reserved tables up front, with a few other equally jaded-looking upper crusters. She smiled, well pleased with herself for having silenced the entire room.
    But the complacent silence didn’t last for long. Because suddenly, as if they all had one voice, her three companions jumped into the fray.
    “Fifty-one hundred.”
    “Fifty-two.”
    “Fifty-five.”
    It went on for at least a minute, until Jake’s head was spinning. These crazy rich females were willing to lay out what amounted to a down payment on a house to go to dinner and a ball game with him? Insane.
    It’s for a good cause . True, but damned if he wasn’t getting tired of hearing that refrain in his head.
    The figure had hit eight thousand, the blonde and her three friends laughing as they tossed it higher and higher like a volleyball being lobbed over a net. Jake had hated volleyball ever since he’d been an oversize, clumsy fourth grader who always got picked last for the team in gym. And he