LITMIR.BIZ

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behind him when he heard Elena say to Cecily, “He needs confidence, that one.”

      It was an embarrassing thing to hear about himself, but true. He needed a lot more than confidence, though. How could a guy be confident when he didn’t have anything to be confident about?

      By now it was time for lunch, so he grabbed some bratwurst and sauerkraut at Big Brats and settled in at one of the café tables in the stone courtyard adjacent to the popular sausage stand. This was a perfect day for outside dining. The sun warmed his back and a mountain breeze worked as a counterbalance to keep him from getting too hot. A cloudless sky provided a blue backdrop for the mountains.

      During weekends the eating area was so crowded you had to take a number. Today, however, it was relatively quiet with only a few tables occupied.

      Ed York, who owned D’Vine Wines, and Pat Wilder, who owned Mountain Escape Books, sauntered across the street to place an order. They stopped by Jonathan’s table to say hello but didn’t ask him to join them. No surprise. Pat and Ed had a thing going.

      According to Jonathan’s mom, Ed had been interested in Pat ever since he moved to Icicle Falls and opened his wine shop. But Pat had been mourning a husband and wasn’t remotely interested. It looked like that was changing now. Watching Ed’s romantic success kept the small flame of hope alive in Jonathan. Maybe, if a guy hung in there long enough, getting the woman of his dreams could become a reality.

      Or maybe the guy was just wasting his life dreaming. Jonathan crumpled his napkin. Time to get back to work.

      His next client was Gerhardt Geissel, who owned and ran Gerhardt’s Gasthaus with his wife, Ingrid. Gerhardt was a short, husky, fifty-something man with gray hair and a round, florid face. He loved his wife’s German cooking, loved his beer and was proud to celebrate his Tyrolean heritage by wearing lederhosen when he played the alpenhorn for his guests first thing every morning.

      He played it even when he didn’t have guests. Recently he’d gotten carried away celebrating his birthday and had decided to serenade his dinner guests after having one too many beers and had fallen off the ledge of the balcony outside the dining room. He’d fallen about twelve feet but fortunately had broken his arm instead of his back.

      “Jonathan, wie geht’s?” he greeted Jonathan, raising his cast-encased arm as Ingrid showed Jonathan into his office. “I hope you are here to solve all my problems.”

      “That is an impossible task,” said his wife.

      Gerhardt made a face. “See how she loves me.”

      His wife made a face right back at him and left. But she returned a few minutes later with a piece of Black Forest cake for Jonathan. “You’re too skinny,” she informed him. “You need to eat more.”

      “You need a wife to cook for you,” her husband added.

      “My youngest niece, Mary, lives just over in Wenatchee, and she’s very pretty,” Ingrid said.

      “And very stupid.” Gerhardt shook his head in disgust. “Jonathan’s smart. He needs a smart woman.”

      “Mary is smart,” Ingrid insisted. “She just makes bad choices.”

      “Well, uh, thanks,” Jonathan said. “I appreciate the offer.” Sometimes he wondered if everyone in Icicle Falls over the age of fifty wanted to match him up.

      Heck, it wasn’t only the older people. Even his sister had been known to take a hand, trying to introduce him to the latest someone she’d met and was sure would be perfect for him. Of course, those someones never were.

      Gerhardt’s computer problem was simple enough. Jonathan reloaded his operating system and he was done.

      “You’d better get out of here before my wife comes back with Mary’s phone number,” Gerhardt advised after he’d written Jonathan a check.

      Good idea. Jonathan left by the side door.

      After leaving Gerhardt, he fit in two more clients and then headed home.

      May’s late-afternoon sun beamed its blessing on his three-bedroom log house at the end of Mountain View Road as he drove up. He’d originally planned for two bedrooms, but his folks had talked him into the extra one. “You have to have room for a wife and children,” his mother had said. Good old Mom, always hopeful.

      Fir and pine trees gave the house its rustic setting, while the pansies and begonias his mother and sister had put in the window boxes and the patch of lawn edged with more flowers added a homey touch. Someone pulling up in front might even think a woman lived there. They’d be wrong. The only female in this house had four legs.

      But Jonathan often pictured the house with a wife and kids in it—the wife (a pretty blonde, naturally) cooking dinner while he and the kids played video games. He could see himself as an old man, sitting on the porch, playing chess with a grandson on the set he’d carved himself. The house would’ve, naturally, passed on to his own son, keeping the property in the family.

      His grandpa had purchased this land as an investment when it was nothing more than a mountain meadow. Gramps could have made a tidy profit selling it, but instead he’d let Jonathan have it for a song when Jonathan turned twenty-five.

      He’d started building his house when he was twenty-seven. A cousin who worked in construction in nearby Yakima had come over and helped him and Dad. Dad hadn’t lived to see it finished. He’d had a heart attack just before the roof went on, leaving Jonathan on his own to finish both his house and his life.

      Jonathan had become the man of the family, in charge of helping his mom, his grandmother and his sister cope. He’d been no help to his widowed grandmother, who had tried to outrun her loss by moving to Arizona. He hadn’t been much help to his mom, either, beyond setting her up with a computer program so she could manage her finances. He’d tried to help Julia cope but he’d barely been able to cope himself. He should never have let Dad do all that hard physical work.

      “Don’t be silly,” his mother always said. “Your father could just as easily have died on the golf course. He was doing what he wanted to do, helping you.”

      Helping his son be manly. The house was probably the one endeavor of Jonathan’s that his father took pride in. It wasn’t hard to figure out what kind of son Dad had really longed for. He’d never missed an Icicle Falls High football game, whether at home or away. How many times had he sat in the stands and wished his scrawny son was out there on the field or at least on the bench instead of playing in the band? Jonathan was glad that he had no idea.

      “I love you, son,” Dad had said when they were loading him into the ambulance. Those were the last words Jonathan heard and he was thankful for them. But he often found himself wishing his dad had said he was proud of him.

      As he pulled up in his yellow Volkswagen with Geek Gods Computer Services printed on the side, his dog, Chica, abandoned her spot on the front porch and raced down the stairs to greet him, barking a welcome. Chica was an animal-shelter find, part shepherd, part Lab and part...whatever kind of dog had a curly tail. She’d been with Jonathan for five years and she thought he was a god (and didn’t care if he was a geek).

      He got out of the car and the dog started jumping like she had springs on her paws. It was nice to have some female go crazy over him. “Hey, girl,” he greeted her. “We’ll get some dinner and then play fetch.”

      He exchanged his slacks for the comfort of his old baggy jeans, and his business shirt for a T-shirt sporting a nerdy pun that cautioned Don’t Drink and Derive. Then, after a feast of canned spaghetti for Jonathan and some Doggy’s Delight for Chica, it was time for a quick game of fetch. It had to be quick because tonight was Friday, poker night, and the guys would be coming over at seven. Poker, another manly pursuit. Dad would have been proud.

      * * *

      The first to arrive was his pal Kyle Long. Kyle and Jonathan had been friends since high school. They’d both been members of the chess club and had shared an addiction to old sci-fi movies and

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