Chapter One

 

GUY STUFF, by James McCoy—

Women love to whine about their biological clocks. They think they’re the only ones under pressure to do certain things before they lose the chance. Don’t they realize that men measure their lives by the biological clock, too? Come on, guys: it’s our turn to whine.

Granted, we don’t have our alarms set for babies. But we do have to race the clock, trying to get certain stuff accomplished before we’re no longer able. This, in case you were wondering, is why men are so resistant to the concept of growing up.

Take, for instance, basketball. When men hit the big 3-0, they lose their jump shot. Oh, they might be able to score a lay-up here and there, just as women in their middle years still manage to get pregnant. But by and large, attempting a jump shot past the age of thirty isn’t safe. The percentages aren’t with us. That’s why you see so many guys in their late twenties elbowing their way toward hoops in gyms, school yards and driveways across the land. We’ve got to get as many jump shots in as we can before the clock strikes thirty.

Or beer. Until a man blows out thirty candles on a cake, he can drink all the beer he wants without having to pay the price. He might find himself emptying his bladder in inappropriate places and saying things he’ll regret once he regains full consciousness, but his gut will remain a thing of beauty…until the dreaded biological timepiece declares otherwise. The minute a man crosses the thirty-year mark, abs abruptly turn into flabs, steel into jelly—and the prime culprit is beer. This is why you see so many twenty-something fellows chugging brewskie after brewskie. They know Father Time is gaining on them. Gotta drink now, while “six-pack stomach” still refers to said organ’s shape and not its contents.

Some women like to whimper about how if they don’t get preggers by their thirtieth birthday, a horrific time bomb is going to explode. Their priorities are pretty skewed, if you ask me. Sure, I’d like to have a baby someday, maybe, if I ever choose to make an acquaintance with maturity. But right now, folks, I’m recovering from my thirtieth birthday. And I’m in mourning for that beautiful, smooth-as-silk lay-up I used to have. I guess I’ll just drown my sorrows in a glass of mineral water. Beer? Not hardly. Tick-tock, tick-tock.

***

AS IT WAS, Jamie McCoy was drinking coffee—a double-size mug of Java, black and strong. Leaning back in his hinged chair, he skimmed the text on his computer monitor and sighed. He needed four hundred more words for the column, but he wasn’t going to come up with even four more, not until he drugged himself with a bit more caffeine.

It was only ten a.m., a bit early for him to be awake and at his desk. Maybe he was feeling his age, after all. Maybe the fact that he was at work before noon meant that, at long last, he was ready to behave like a responsible adult.

He’d spent the weekend celebrating his thirtieth birthday at his buddy Steve’s cabin on Lake Waramaug. They’d rowed around the lake in Steve’s dinghy, pretending to fish but catching nothing and not really caring. They’d dined on charred red meat off the grill, washed down not with beer but with a bottle of vintage Bordeaux. They’d lounged on the porch into the wee hours, reminiscing about their Dartmouth days and arguing over which one of them had the lower grade-point-average, which one of them had the prettier girlfriends, and which one scored more goals in lacrosse. In all cases, it was Jamie, but Steve didn’t want to admit the truth.

Jamie was admitting the truth now, the truth being that his glorious male-bonding weekend was over and he was going to have to squeeze out a thousand words for his weekly column if he wanted to continue living in the style to which he’d grown accustomed. He lifted his mug to his lips, realized it was empty, and shoved away from the desk.

His office occupied a wing off the kitchen. Both rooms shared a glorious view of the woods behind his house. He’d planned it that way. On those rare occasions he actually ate at his kitchen table, as opposed to at his desk, or on the screened porch attached to the rear of the house, or in front of the wide-screen TV in his den, he liked to gaze out at the untamed forest that extended north of the sprawling ranch house he and an architect had created by tacking rooms and extensions to the ugly little cottage he’d bought five years ago, before he’d gone into national syndication and gotten rich.

There wasn’t much logic to the lay-out of Jamie’s house, but that was fine. There wasn’t much logic to the lay-out of Jamie’s life either. And despite that lack of logic—or maybe because of it—he was having a blast. Things happened to him serendipitously, jumbled, unplanned but usually welcome and always manageable. He rolled with the punches, and so far, the punches had sent him staggering in the right direction.

He pushed himself to his feet, stretched and glanced at the Monday morning Arlington Gazette, which lay open on the desk beside his computer. Somewhere within its pages he might find inspiration. When he was stuck for a column idea, he often harvested plenty of fodder in the pages of the local daily newspaper. There were always weird occurrences, silly to-do’s, items of greater interest than Jamie’s thirtieth birthday.

He’d already read the sports pages, but he would need more coffee in his blood stream before he tackled the other sections of the paper. He carried his mug down the short hall to the kitchen, moving directly to the coffee maker, which stood on one of the clean white counters rimming the room. People entering the stainless-steel and tile kitchen would probably get the mistaken impression that Jamie was neat, and also serious about cooking. In truth, he was neither. His kitchen was always spotless because he never cooked.

He filled his mug, inhaled the aromatic steam rising from the hot brew, and heard the mew of a kitten. Frowning, he glanced around the room, searching for the source of the sound. He didn’t own a kitten. Pets were nice, but they required care. Jamie was still too new at being thirty to want to take on that kind of responsibility. And if he suddenly became softheaded enough to get a pet, it would be a dog. Cats were so girlish.

He heard the mewing again. Somewhere in the immediate vicinity, a small animal was whimpering. Perhaps the critter had gotten lost in the woods and had emerged into his yard. If it belonged to someone, it would be wearing a tag and Jamie would be able to get it home.

Tracing the sound to the rear of the house, he surveyed the screened porch through the glass door before opening it. If there happened to be a sickly animal on the porch, he didn’t want to let it indoors. It could be a bat, or a rabid raccoon. Did bats and raccoons mew?

Other than his deck furniture—cushioned chairs, a glass-topped table and a lounge chair—he saw nothing. Cautiously, he pushed open the door and stepped onto the porch. The screened walls let in the scent of an early summer morning, dewy grass and flowers from the late-blooming rhododendrons bordering the house.

The cries sounded louder, filtering through the screens. He padded barefoot across the porch to the door that opened onto an unscreened deck and the back yard.

An animal was definitely out there—only it wasn’t a cat, or a bat, or a raccoon. He heard a feeble wail, thread-thin yet anguished. His frown deepening, he shoved open the door and stepped outside.

There, on his deck, was a baby.

He stared for a long, stupefied minute. A baby. On his deck. Crying.

It was tucked into a boat-shaped plastic seat framed with hefty metal struts and lined with padded plastic cushioning in a pastel yellow pattern. The seat cradled the baby, who was strapped in with a belt and covered with a downy yellow blanket. Without stripping the baby naked, Jamie couldn’t say whether it was a girl or boy.

What he could say was that it was tiny. It must be incredibly young. Golden hair lay in gossamer wisps on its head, its nose was a shapeless little button of flesh, its lips were puckered and its skin was ruddy. Its hands, smaller than the top joint of Jamie’s thumb, clenched and splayed, clenched and splayed.

“Hey,” Jamie murmured, hunkering down next to the baby. Its eyes were so glassy with tears, he couldn’t tell what color they were. On the far side of the boat-shaped seat stood a large suitcase and a shopping bag filled with packages of disposable diapers.

As if Jamie McCoy knew how to put a diaper on a baby.

“Who left you here?” he asked, feeling like an idiot. The baby wasn’t going to answer his question.

He was afraid to pick up the baby. If he touched it, it might bond with him or something. Or he might leave fingerprints all over it. Or hurt it. He had no idea how to hold an infant.

Scowling, he circled the plastic seat to the suitcase, hoping to find a luggage tag fastened to the handle. No tag, but he discovered a sealed white envelope taped to the side of the suitcase. Jamie had to resist the urge to tear the envelope apart. It could be evidence. He would have to open it carefully.

He did, peeling the flap back along its edge, managing to avoid ripping it. A folded sheet of stationery fell out. “Dear Jamie,” it said, “Remember Eluthera? Well, guess what? Her name is Samantha and she’s yours.”

Jamie sank onto the step next to the baby. Eluthera. He’d gone there for a wild vacation week last September. The Bahamian resort had been hopping with hot-to-trot studs and stud-ettes. One stud-ette, a breathtakingly gorgeous New Yorker named Luanne Hackett, had found her way into Jamie’s hotel room. They’d spent nearly the entire week trying out a generous number of Kama Sutra positions.

Jamie had liked Luanne. More than lust had been involved, for him at least. He’d asked for her phone number back in the real world, and she’d given it to him. A few days after he’d returned to Connecticut, he’d dialed the number and wound up having a bizarre conversation with a confused woman with a Spanish accent who had insisted that he’d dialed correctly but no one named Luanne Hackett had ever lived there.

Jamie had been ticked off. If Luanne hadn’t wanted to hear from him once their vacation had ended, she should have said so. Jamie wouldn’t have had anything to do with her in Eluthera if he hadn’t thought she was worth his time back home, too. Much as he loved sex, he didn’t make a habit of engaging in it with women he didn’t like.

But so much for that. She’d been a pleasant memory until he’d found out she’d given him a bogus phone number, whereupon she’d become a somewhat less pleasant memory. And then he’d pretty much forgotten about her.

Until this Monday morning in late June, nine months and two weeks later.

Could this little baby be two weeks old?

Wait a minute! He’d used precautions with Luanne. Even though he’d been a mere child of twenty-nine last September, he had been responsible enough to protect himself and Luanne. If memory served, they’d burned through quite a few boxes of condoms. Condoms were supposed to be, what? Ninety-nine-point-nine percent effective?

Damn. He’d never really thought about that other point-oh-one percent. Not until now.

He stared at the baby on his porch, fussing and squirming and swatting the air with her miniature hands. “Samantha,” he said aloud, and then terror seized him, tightening his throat and making him feel as if he was going to throw up. Fortunately, all he’d consumed so far that morning was coffee—not enough to fuel his brain at maximum function, but at least coffee didn’t make him nauseous.

Samantha did.

No, not Samantha. The situation. The realization that Luanne Hackett, a woman who hadn’t even had the courtesy to give him her real phone number, had somehow found Jamie and dumped this baby on him.

Oh, God. Oh-God-oh-God-oh-God. He was in major deep trouble.