Sexy Nurse
You are seated on the examination table when the nurse enters. She’s tall and raven-haired, with enormous blue eyes and candy-red lips. She says hello with a husky Eastern European accent, which reminds you of a recent episode of “The Daily” about Polish elections. As she takes your blood pressure, you casually ask her whether the new centrist government will be able to sustain broad support among an increasingly populist electorate. Her eyes flash with delight, and you spend the next three minutes chatting knowledgeably—but not obnoxiously—about the challenges facing emerging European democracies in the shadow of Russian aggression. When it’s time to summon the doctor, she lingers in the doorway for a moment, nibbling her lip seductively, and says, “You are quite well informed.” And it’s true. You are.
Forbidden Layover
You are standing at the United Airlines counter at O’Hare, having just learned that your flight is delayed three hours. The agent taps on his keyboard. He’s six-three and distractingly handsome—green-eyed, olive-skinned, and bearing an uncanny resemblance to that bad-boy tennis player, Nick something. You explain why you need to get home today: it’s your night to pick up your daughter from gymnastics, and your dog has some weird diarrhea thing but your wife can’t take him to the vet because she has back-to-back Zooms with clients in Malaysia. The agent nods with genuine sympathy and says that although he can’t rebook you, perhaps a pass to the first-class lounge might make up for the inconvenience?
Two hours later, you are in a leather armchair sipping small-batch mezcal beside a heap of olive pits while bingeing Season 8 of “Top Chef” on your iPad. The P.A. crackles to life, announcing that your flight has been delayed an additional four hours. A wave of euphoria washes through your body, and you wonder if this is what heroin feels like.
Bad Babysitter
When you arrive home, you are dismayed to discover that not only are the kids still up but the sink is filled with dishes and the dog has shredded the new throw pillows. You discover the babysitter—an auburn-haired coed from a nearby liberal-arts college—sitting on the floor of your home office. When you ask her what happened, she crumples, tears streaming down her freckled cheeks. She confesses that while looking for your son’s stuffie she stumbled on the manuscript of your unpublished novel, and once she started reading she found herself so transported by the finely wrought characters and dreamlike prose that the world seemed to melt away.
“I feel like I’m babysitting for Tolstoy,” she whispers.
You gently deflect her praise, saying that nowadays no one would give Tolstoy the time of day until he amassed twenty thousand followers on #BookTok.
“Is that all?” she replies, surprised. “Because I’ve got half a million.”
Naughty Therapist
You are grabbing lunch at a Mexican fast-food chain when you spot your therapist deep in conversation with a colleague. You start toward her to say hello, but freeze when you realize that she is talking about you.
“I know we’re not supposed to have favorites,” you hear her say, “but in ten years I’ve never encountered someone who combines such oceanic depths of emotion with raw intellectual horsepower. Plus, he’s hilarious!”
Her paean continues for five minutes, as she extolls every cranny of your psyche. “I don’t think he knows that I’m only charging him one-third my rate. To be honest,” she continues, “I feel guilty charging him at all. Just his company is payment enough.”
Sitting in her office the next week, you casually mention that you would be open to a pro-bono situation. She looks up, nibbling her lip seductively.
“I’d like that,” she says. “I’d like that very much.”
A Star Is Born
Back at the airport, you are in the boarding line when you feel a tap on your shoulder. You turn around and are astonished to see the acclaimed actor-director Bradley Cooper, a sheepish expression on his face. “I swear I never do this,” he says, then asks if you aren’t the author of that unpublished novel everyone is talking about. And, if you are, would you consider selling him the movie rights for several million dollars?
You hesitate, lost in his Arctic-blue eyes, then tell him that, while you are flattered by his interest, your Art isn’t for sale, and that a massive international audience would betray the sacred compact between author and reader. He nods, clearly disappointed but also sort of awed.
Two months later, you and Bradley Cooper are riding motorcycles together in Jalisco when he asks, almost as an afterthought, whether you might partner with him on a line of small-batch mezcal.
“I’d like that,” you say. “I’d like that very much.”♦
