for automobile  insurance; and advertisements, one each, for membership in a music club, a cell phone that worked underwater, an emulsion specially compounded to kill banana slugs, and either a solicitation to buy porno movies or the ubiquitous hook for the male with erectile dysfunction.
    
That evening, Rudney, in rare form, decided he would read a bit.  Lacking the usual assortment of reading materials found in most households, he dipped into the discard receptacle, coming up with the aforementioned ad of uncertain purpose.  As it turned out, Rudney’s guesses were both wrong.
        It touted a kind of perfume for men—designed to attract women.  “Chick-magnet,” it proclaimed.  “Beautiful women (all races), fall at the feet of any man: young, old, handsome, ugly, short, tall, fat, thin, clean, filthy, disfigured, or diseased, who use it.  Try it on your wife, girlfriend, the girl in your office, at the supermarket, on the street.  Never fails, satisfaction guaranteed. Safe, odorless, non-staining, effective for hours.  Only two drops needed.  Send today for a one ounce (1 oz.) vial of Colossal Cologne, only ninety-nine dollars and ninety-eight cents ($99.98), plus ten dollars and ninety-eight cents ($10.98) shipping and handling.  Works like a charm.”
        Either it is so potent they need to ship it in an inch-thick, hermetically-sealed lead container, or their handling crew is unionized, thought Rudney.  He already had his checkbook in hand.
    
Rudney could hardly stand the wait,
as six weeks plus crawled by.  He chomped at the bit—biting his tongue, itched where he couldn’t scratch, rarin’ with nowhere to go, ready for action in traction.  At last the day dawned.  The promised enhancer arrived: a sobering moment.
     Rudney had a certain woman in mind, but with the means in hand, he had reservations.  It would be best he thought to see how, and if, it worked, first.  He decided to walk the street after applying a half dose, one drop.  He readied himself at eight in the evening, but decided first upon a dry run.  He would walk just a few blocks before coming back and making the application.
    
He encountered his first female as he left the secure confines of his building—his landlady, Mrs. Dugsag.  He would have to make sure the coast was clear before venturing forth.  He certainly wouldn’t want to arouse her—she was bad enough in her natural state—keeping watch with her eye, as hard as flint, penetrating into a person’s very mind.  Her toothless gums halted their almost constant motion, as she spat out a stream of tobacco juice into her petunias.
        “Sit with me a while, Rudney,” she coaxed.  “I’ve got a beer in the fridge for ya.”
        Somewhat shaken, Rudney made a hasty excuse and continued on his way.  Old Mrs. Liverspots, almost blind, with her walker, shuffled along just ahead. What a cruelty it would be to excite her.
        At the corner he saw the corporate climber lady, right on schedule.  Dressed in her smart suit and heels, she clicked along briskly, erect and aloof.  Rudney would like to see her begging favors from him, groveling at his feet, but he wondered if she had any feelings whatsoever, other than the pursuit of the dollar, and promotion.  Frostbite entered into his equation.
        With but a block to go before his turnabout point, Rudney approached an alley, out of which two little girls, about ten he guessed, rapidly emerged.  As they ran, one would grab and pull the other one forward, then they would reverse their roles.  Forgetting to watch for traffic, they almost ran Rudney down.  They stopped.  The one with the missing upper front tooth made a face at him and stuck out her tongue, while her freckled companion stepped on and scuffed Rudney’s freshly-shined left shoe.  Then they were off, one on either side, headed for the corner store.
    
Little girls could be dangerous.  The instructions said nothing about them.  If he responded to their advances, it would mean five to ten behind bars.  Even if he didn’t do a thing, he might be prosecuted…and probably convicted.  Rudney promised himself to contemplate this hazard and to think of ways to circumvent the undesirable consequences.
        In this state, Rudney continued his walk, beyond his intended terminus.  He had to step off the sidewalk, into the street, to let five young women walking abreast, pass.  They were wearing heavy black shoes or boots at the end of their long skinny legs.  The heels were as big as beer cans.  Their skirts were short and amazingly low-waisted.  Three of the five were showing all the cleavage they had in front, and all five, too much in back.  The jangle of the jewelry in their piercings almost drowned out the sound of traffic in the street.
        Rudney could imagine the tragedy that might have ensued had he been primed for action.  Descending upon him en masse, they would have dismembered him and fought over his body parts.
        Danger lurked in that little bottle of great promise.  Rudney turned back, resolved to plan out another strategy.

 letting many inferior specimens pass, until a police officer made him move on, and told him not to come back.
        Rudney tried an even more secluded spot, one so far from the road he was sure no police officer would bother to patrol.  Rudney’s assessment proved accurate.  Fifteen minutes after he arrived, five toughs surrounded him, beat him up, took his money, and broke his little bottle.
    
His replacement order arrived while he was recuperating.  Rudney resolved to stop fooling around and cut to the real deal.  Three years before this little story started, Rudney’s dentist had referred him to an oral surgeon for a root canal.  The dentist wasn’t much of a catch, but he had four young female assistants; and there, Rudney spied the flower in the quartet.  She wasn’t much: small in stature, plain of face, flat in front and back, and painfully retiring.  Rudney found out her name—Jenny—and followed her home, where she apparently lived with her mother.
        Her social life amounted to going to church, where she arrived an hour or more early, and left long after Rudney tired of waiting—two hours after services were over.  Evenings she knitted or something. Tuesdays she took a bus to go shopping.  Saturdays she either cloistered herself at home, or drove to a friend’s or a sister’s house, about twenty miles away.  Sometimes she would stay all day, and sometimes she would come out in a few minutes with three children, who would keep her occupied until she brought them back.
        Not much to go on there.
    
Rudney then concentrated on her workplace.  What can you do about a young woman who works in an oral surgeon’s office?  Do you just drop in and say, “Hi, that root canal was so much fun, I’d like another.”?  The dental surgeon worked Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, and the assistants also worked those days, and on Wednesdays, when the doctor took time off to play golf.  Each day after work, except for Wednesday, one of the assistants was assigned to clean up and get the office ready for the following day.  The object of Rudney’s desire did her duty on Friday nights.  Clean-up didn’t take long, from forty-five to one-hundred and five minutes.
        The foyer of the building where the oral surgeon’s office was located remained open after regular business hours, though few of the suites were staffed as late as his.  Rudney could hang out in the lobby, keeping an eye out for Jenny through a glass door that offered a view of the hallway.         When Jenny broke cover, she would always detour into the Ladies’ Room a few doors down, for just a few minutes. 
        This time, while the dental assistant was engaged in her ministrations, Rudney applied his enticement.
    
You might presume that this young woman had no admirers other than Rudney, but along with Rudney, you would be mistaken.  Only two weeks before Rudney placed his faith in two drops of Colossal Cologne, the nearby art house theatre had engaged an entertainer named Nickola to put on demonstrations between film showings.
        Nickola, all 323 tattooed pounds, overwhelmed the word “ugly,” bent iron bars with bare hands, and performed other prodigious feats of endurance and strength.  No doubt, Nickola was a mental giant as well; in former shows, Nickola’s act included lifting 500 pounds with the teeth.  For this, or perhaps other reasons, Nickola had visited the oral surgeon who employed Rudney’s infatuation.
        Rudney, not interested in seeing iron bars bent with bare hands, or other acts of endurance and strength, took no notice of the posters plastered all over town and the ads in the local papers announcing Nickola’s performances.  So Rudney was as surprised to see Nickola emerge from the Ladies’ Room, dragging Jenny, the girl of his dreams, as Nickola was to see Rudney, blocking the exit.
        After brushing brusquely past Rudney, Nickola had a change of heart.  The exhibitionist abruptly let Jenny go and wrapped her monstrous, calloused left hand painfully around Rudney’s upper arm, nearly dislocating his shoulder.
        “Works like a charm.”  
 
 
                         About The Author
  
        Gordon Graves writes from Seaside, Oregon, where the sun would be welcome before it sets or appears at all.  He says that lately, “I am not doing much, other than wearing out faster than I would like.  It is small comfort that in spite of this, I seem to be outlasting many of my contemporaries.”
        Gordon is a long-time contributor to Calliope, writing witty and wry letters to the editor, articles, and short fiction.  He has earned honorable mentions and has placed in many of Calliope’s fiction contests.  His work has also been published in a variety of small press publications, and is scheduled to appear in Aoife’s Kiss, NutHouse, Artella, and Sinister Tales.

It looked like a junk mail day.  Rudney leafed through the mess on his way to the table where he piled up paperwork.  Most of it wouldn’t be worth opening; he separated a few bills and a diatribe sent out by the well-intentioned folks trying to get the banana slug on the list of endangered species.  The remainder he consigned to the round file: ten seeking donations; eight offers for credit cards; three for life insurance; two

 Rudney rightly surmised that the ideal method would be to apply the potion just before meeting the female, in a secluded place; but if he could get one in his bedroom, what would he need an expensive attractant for?  Rudney searched his mind for secluded outdoor places, where he might meet a good prospect, one where he would have time to apply the lure.  Several places came to mind.  He waited and waited at one,

Copyright © Gordon A. Graves