Rick hitched up his jeans. “Yeah? How many do I need for another round of me on top?”
“You were listening.”
“I always listen to you, sweetheart.”
It was difficult to feminize a snort, but Evie managed. Frannie was impressed.
“Okay, so lettuce is a girl word for green, right? I can live with green.”
“For heaven’s sake, Drew, your masculinity will survive.” Frannie gave him a hard tug, caught him by surprise and actually moved him. “Now, come on.”
“No, Frannie, wait. This is a learning experience. I want to hear more about this point thing.”
She pulled again, gained another few inches. “We are not going to stand here and listen in like a couple of voyeurs while they discuss the merits of…whatever. Remember my virgin ears. Now come on!”
Frannie finally got Drew into the kitchen. “Here, sit down.” She pulled out two chairs from the kitchen table, pushing him into one. “I’ve done some figuring. Tell me what you think.”
Drew rested his head on his hands. “About what?”
“I went out and bought a tape measure.”
“Yeah?” Drew was thirsty. He thought about getting up and checking the refrigerator for another beer but it seemed like an awful lot of effort.
“Yes. So I measured. My waist is twenty-four inches. I wasn’t too sure exactly where to get the hips, but I figured take the biggest measurement, right?”
He forgot about the beer. “Uh, sure.” Twenty-four-inch waist? That was pretty good, he thought. His own was ten inches larger. Man, he wouldn’t miss spanning Frannie’s waist with his two hands by much. Should he ever get the urge to try, that was.
“And that would be thirty-seven.”
“Thirty-seven?” Thirty-seven what? Oh, hips. That’s what they’d been talking about. Wow. He could hardly wait to hear the math on that.
“Yeah, so anyway, I divided it out and got sixty-five percent. That’s pretty good, don’t you think? You said you thought it was between sixty and seventy percent and I got dead center. But the thing is…”
Drew pulled out a pen from the checkbook in his pocket and did some quick calculations on a napkin from the napkin holder. Sixty-four-point-eight-six percent rounded off to sixty-five, all right. “Hmm? What thing?”
“Well, do you know anything about the bust?”
Staring at Frannie blankly, Drew asked, “What?”
“Didn’t it say anything in your reading about ideal bust measurements? You know, bust-to-waist or bust-to-hip ratio?”
Man, he was dying here. Sixty-five percent waist-to-hips ratio and she wanted to talk breasts?
“Uh…”
“I’m a thirty-six C. How does that sound?”
It sounded fine to him. Better than fine. How in heck could he not have noticed a C-cup right under his nose all this time? “Thirty-six? C?”
Frannie sat up straight, smoothed her hands down the sides of her chest, an act that pulled her snug knit shirt even more tautly across her breasts. “I was always under the impression that most men were interested in a woman’s chest. I mean they certainly stare at it enough. But all you’ve said so far was this waist-to-hip thing. So I was just wondering.”
Drew swallowed. Hard. When had Frannie started wearing tight tops? A man would have to be dead—or very involved in avoiding lettuce wear—what was wrong with khaki, for God’s sake?—not to notice Frannie’s chest in that shirt. “Uh—” he grabbed the first piece of trivia he could recall and was extremely grateful he could even remember his name, let alone a bit of trivia “—I think I read somewhere that average is good.”
Frannie pouted a bit at that. “Average?” Women spent an awful lot of time and effort to make an impression and appear unique. Bummer.
“Extremes of anything are bad. Somebody eight feet tall, man or woman, is going to have trouble finding a mate just like somebody who’s really, really fat or super anorexic looking. So, if you put bust size into that context I guess that would mean that like, flat as a board or—” Drew made an exaggerated gesture in front of his chest “—you know, humongo, your breasts precede you by three feet, well that wouldn’t be good. But C, well that’s right in there. At least that’s what I would assume.”
“B is average. C is better than average but still not overboard,” Frannie decided.
Drew was more than happy to accept her word for it. In fact, it was so disconcerting to think of little Frannie as even having breasts, he cast around for another topic. “Symmetry. I remember that now. Symmetry’s important. The closer you are to being perfectly symmetrical, the better looking you’re perceived.”
Frannie looked down, a V forming over her brows. “I’m symmetrical. One on each side. It doesn’t get much better than that.”
Drew got up and went to the refrigerator. He was going to need that beer after all. He couldn’t take much more of this. “I’m talking about your face, not your…you know.”
“Oh. Well, same goes. One eyebrow, one eye, half a nose, half a mouth on each side. I pass.”
“It’s the side part in your hair that throws everything off.” He came back to the table, raising a hand to wave off her objections. “Just kidding. Just kidding. Here’s the thing. We all think we’re symmetrical but if you ever took a picture of your face, cut it in half then flip-flopped the half that’s left so both sides were exactly the same and printed it out, supposedly we wouldn’t even recognize ourselves.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Drew shrugged. “Fine. I’ve got a digital camera. Come over tomorrow. I’ll take your picture and we’ll try it.”
Frannie slapped the table top. “Done. I’m absolutely positive I’m symmetrical.”
By the time Frannie and Evie left, Drew and Rick had missed the last of the ball game. It was okay by Drew as they managed to pick up the score on the late-night news—Drew’s team was still in there, and he had more important things to discuss with Rick anyway. He picked up beer bottles and carried them from the living room to the kitchen, tossing them into the recycling basket. Rick followed with the empty popcorn bowls.
“I think she’s really serious about this, Rick.”
“I keep telling you, man, you’ve got to pick your fights especially when it comes to women. So we wear green cummerbunds for a few hours, even pastel green ones. Next time you want a night out with the guys, you’ve got leverage. I wore lettuce for you, babe, that’s what you say and off you go. They can’t say anything because it’s the truth. Weddings are important to women. Don’t ask me why, they just are. To the guy, it’s a means to an end. But women are born planning the big day.” Rick shrugged. “Go figure.”
“Rick, could you stay with the program here? I’m not talking about your wedding. That was just a little detour we took because Evie and Frannie showed up at the door. If you don’t care that you’re going to look like an idiot, then neither do I. I was just taken by surprise is all. I’m talking about your sister. Frannie. Remember her? She’s coming over tomorrow so I can take her picture and put it into the computer to check on her facial symmetry. I mean she’s serious.”
Rick started the hot water after emptying the unpopped kernels into the trash and shaking out the leftover salt from the bowls they’d been forced to use once the girls had shown up. He dropped the bowls into the filling sink and added a healthy squirt of soap. “Will you quit worrying? Nobody’s going to marry Frannie. She’s a midget