Dating for Two

It was then that he realized that things were decided by the whimsy of fate and although he was always prepared, always did his best, he never lost sight of that humbling lesson.

Coming before the class now—Mrs. Reyes had vacated her desk, so he stood behind that as he spoke—Steve remembered beginning, remembered his mouth moving as his brain raced from point to point, trying to hit all the points he’d jotted down for himself earlier.

He was acutely aware that while his audience of seven-and eight-year-olds all sat at their desks listening politely, not a single face in that audience looked the least bit interested, much less inspired by either his vocation or anything that he had just said to them.

Not that, he silently admitted, he had said anything terribly interesting or inspiring.

And certainly not very memorable.

When he was finished, applause came after a beat. Polite applause as if they had been coached to applaud anyone who appeared to have stopped talking. He was glad to reclaim his chair and sit down.

“And next we have Ms. Erin O’Brien.” Instead of announcing the next career, Mrs. Reyes smiled at her class. “You’re in for a treat,” she promised. “I think you’ll find Ms. O’Brien’s career very interesting.” Mrs. Reyes looked toward the next speaker, exchanging glances with her as if they had a shared secret. “Ms. O’Brien, the class is all yours.”

Rather than the young woman saying anything in response to Mrs. Reyes, another voice was heard. A muffled voice as befitting one that came from inside a suitcase.

“Hey, it’s dark in here, Erin. Lemme out.”

Erin’s hooded eyes covertly took in the room. Apparently, she had the entire classroom in the palm of her hand as children exchanged giggles and nervous glances with one another.

Erin looked at the valise on the floor next to her chair. She had a pseudoexasperated look on her face. “Tex, I told you to be on your best behavior.”

“This is my best behavior,” the voice coming from the valise insisted.

“If I let you out, you have to promise not to scare the children,” she warned.

“Children?” the voice asked, sounding very intrigued. “Tasty children?”

“That’s something you’re never going to find out. Now, do you promise to behave?” she asked.

The voice sighed. “Do I hafta promise?” Tex whined.

“Yes, you do,” Erin said, crossing her arms before her as she continued talking to the “occupant” of the valise. “I’m afraid if you want to come out, Tex, that’s the deal I’m offering. Otherwise, you’ll have to stay in the suitcase until we leave.”

There was another, louder sigh from the inside of the valise. Then the voice said, “Oh, okay, I guess. I promise.”

“That’s all I wanted to hear,” Erin told the voice.

Snapping the locks open, Erin quickly took out the valise’s mysterious occupant. The latter turned out to be a large green dinosaur whose head was bigger than his body, in direct contrast to an actual model of a Tyrannosaurus rex.

This T. rex was also wearing a white cowboy hat, which was in keeping with his Southern twang.

Once in her arms, Tex did an exaggerated long visual sweep of the boys and girls seated at their desks. “I know I said I’d behave, but can I just nibble on that little one over there?” The puppet nodded vaguely to his left, pretending to drool.

“No, you cannot,” Erin insisted. “We came to talk to these nice kids.”

“You talk, I’ll nibble,” Tex said, leaning over as he eyed certain children.

Erin drew herself up and gave the dinosaur a very stern look. “Tex, do you want to go back into the valise? Think carefully now.”

The puppet hung his head, ashamed. “No, ma’am, I do not.”

“Okay, then no nibbling,” she pretended to order him sternly. Her eyes swept over the eager young faces on the other side of the room. As always, a feeling of gratification washed over her.

Tex, however, was ever crafty, ever hopeful. “Then how about—?”

She shot the T. rex down before he could mention a single name—she’d taken care to ask for a seating chart and the names of all the children when she’d agreed to giving a talk. Using names made everything ever so much more personal.

“No.”

The dinosaur was nothing if not persistent. “Not even—?”

“No,” she said emphatically, cutting the T. rex off before he was finished.

The children’s laughter grew with each interaction between the woman and her puppet. “Now remember why we’re here,” she told the T. rex.

Drooling again, the dinosaur eyed his potential snack. “You remember. I’ll chew.”

Erin gave the puppet her very best glare. “Tex, you’re impossible.”

“No, I’m very possible,” he assured her. “But I’m also just very hungry. Hear that?” He looked down at his midsection. A noise was heard. “That’s my tummy growling,” he protested. Instead of the rumbling of an empty stomach, an actual lion’s roar echoed through the classroom, bringing more giggles.

Steve had to admit that he was as captivated and as hooked as the children were, except that to them, the exchange between the strawberry-blonde woman and the dinosaur in her arms was very real, while he found himself enthralled by an extremely good ventriloquist who was very easy on the eyes.

He watched her lips—something he realized he became caught up in with great ease—and couldn’t really see them move, yet he knew that somehow, they had to because the exchange was so lively.

* * *

In the end, Erin gave, all in all, a very entertaining “talk.”

She had brought more characters with her, toys that had hitchhiked in the valise only to jump out—with a little help from her—in a semiorderly fashion when she called to them. Some of these characters spoke, some did not, but the running thread through all the toys she did display was not a single one of them required a battery, a power strip or even a windup key of any sort.

All they uniformly required, Steve discovered, was imagination. Imagination by the bucketload.

The other thing that the toys she’d introduced had in common was that each and every one of them—and she almost presented them as family—was initially her brainchild. Toys that came into being out of some childhood adventure or childhood need to keep the darkness at bay.

The young woman with the talking green dinosaur had created all the toys she’d brought with her, Steve thought. He found himself being more than a little impressed by her efforts, her creativity and her very real dedication to jump-starting children’s imaginations again. Moreover, though she didn’t come out and say it, he got the impression that Erin O’Brien had put together and built up her toy company all on her own, not an easy feat in this day and age.

He couldn’t help but admire her determination. A man could learn from a woman like that.

And so could a classroom full of energetic seven-and eight-year-olds.

Chapter Three (#ulink_aefe4c29-3426-5521-9e2f-531d8ef43cbe)

The woman really did have a way about her. While the second graders had listened to him politely, there had definitely been a certain lack of enthusiasm among them.

He didn’t really blame them. Very few seven-year-olds aspired to be lawyers—as a matter of fact, he doubted if there were any seven-year-olds who even remotely contemplated that. He would have had to have been something along the lines of an astronaut in order to have sparked their imaginations.

But the moment Erin O’Brien took center stage—even before her T. rex started “talking,” he saw a definite shift in the pint-size audience. They appeared to be hanging on her every word, anticipating something funny or just plain fun. It was almost as if they seemed to sense what she was about to do—entertain them by bringing make-believe into their world.