"What?" I was suddenly aware that she was talking to me.

"You asked what my favorite color is," she said patiently, "and it's cerulean."

"Jesus," I said, taking a drink of beer, "what would Freud say about that?"

Leonie laughed. "He'd say that sometimes cerulean is just cerulean."

"Blue. Your favorite color is blue. Why can't you just say blue?" I have to admit it irritated me that she had to pick a color so obscure that Crayola didn't use it. And these are the folks who came up with periwinkle.

"Cerulean, like the color of your eyes when I make love to you."

I tried not to let the fact that my body was already getting hard distract me.

"Fine. I concede that your favorite color is a ten-dollar word for blue."

Leonie grinned. "And yours? Didn't you tell me once that you liked blue?"

I stuck out my chin defiantly. "No. I have grown as a person over the years. My multitude of experiences have enlightened and shaped me into a mature adult." I paused dramatically. "I like red now."

Leonie laughed again. You know how there's a frequency of sound that only dogs can hear? Well, there was something in that laugh that I swear only my dick could hear.

"Have I answered the question to your satisfaction?" She arched her right eyebrow.

"You have won the day this time, evildoer," My loins were begging me to end this stupid line of questioning. "But I'll be back, and when I am, you will submit to my interrogation."

"Do your worst," she challenged, "but for now I will claim my prize." Leonie pulled me toward the bedroom. As she pushed me onto the bed I thought that at this rate, getting to know her intellectually was going to take a long, long time.

Cerulean! I mean, really! really!

Two hours later we found ourselves sitting in the kitchen (me in my boxers and Leonie in my shirt-and she looked better than me in it) eating whatever was in my fridge.

"Mmmmmmm." Leonie licked some honey off her fingers. "This is so good I could go into brain lock."

I paused from eating cottage cheese out of the container with a spoon. What? What?

"Brain lock? Is that dangerous?"

She shrugged. "When iguanas have too much information to process, they go into a kind of brain lock where they shut down to figure out how to deal with it."

"You can't be serious."

"It's true." She grinned. "I once had an iguana."

"An iguana, eh?" I asked. "You were into lizards?"

"Hey!" Leonie said, a little defensively. "Cecil was great. I don't think they're as affectionate as dogs, but he liked to climb on me for the body warmth."

"I guess I have something in common with Cecil then." I winked at her. "Whatever happened to him?"

"It's a long story," she said, biting her lip, and I got the feeling she didn't want to tell me.

"It looks like we have time. Besides, we are trying to learn more about each other, right?"

"A friend of Mom's gave him to me. He had outgrown his cage and at six feet long was beginning to threaten their cats. I only had him for a little while. He died three months later."

"What happened?" I couldn't believe I was in love with an iguana lady.

"His owners had been feeding him cat food for two years. That's okay for a baby, but once he was six months old he needed fruits and vegetables. His organs calcified."

"Did you know something was wrong?"

"His toes would tap, like he had Parkinson's. I took him to the zoo, and they sent me to a vet. He sent me home after drawing blood and told me to give him a warm bath. I left him in the tub for a minute, and when I came back he was lying on the bottom, underwater."

"He drowned?"

"No, iguanas are good swimmers. He just died. Anyway, are you sure you want to hear more?"

"Absolutely."

She gave me a stern look. "You're not mocking me, are you?"

"Never." I placed my hand over my heart. "Go on."

Leonie took a deep breath and continued. "I took him out of the tub and put him on the floor. He opened his mouth and gasped. So I did what any other iguanatarian would do."

"Iguanatarian?" Could she just make up words like that?

"I, um, gave him mouth-to-mouth and chest massage."

I'd bet Leonie had gotten used to the eruption of hysterical laughter over the years. For some reason, she'd never been smart enough not to tell the story in the first place.

I finished laughing and wiped my eyes. "I'm sorry. Did you really try to resuscitate him?"

Leonie nodded, and I had the feeling she didn't want to take the story any further. Unfortunately for her, I'm a cruel bastard.

"Did it work?" I pressed.

"No. Adding oxygen does nothing for organs that have been petrified."

"How do you dispose of a six-foot-long iguana?" I asked, not sure I really wanted to know the story.

The love of my life sighed. "Well, it's not like you can just throw him out in the trash can. The garbage men probably wouldn't come back. So I decided to bury him."

"Oh. Go on." She was getting pissed now, but that didn't stop me.

"Well, the only way to do it is to dig a six-foot-long trench or a six-foot-deep hole. I opted for the trench. But it was a very hot day, so after three feet I gave up. I thought it would be easy to bend him in half and I'd save myself some labor. Unfortunately rigor mortis had set in, so I had to jump on him to break him to fit him into the trench."

Once my laughter subsided, I smiled at her. "I love you even more than I thought possible."

It was her turn to have wide eyes. "Why? It's a repulsive story!"

I took her hands in mine. "No, it's a great story. It shows compassion in trying to resuscitate him and wanting to give him a proper burial."

"I don't know if jumping up and down on the corpse shows much respect," she said with a frown. "I doubt I could get away with that at work."

"It doesn't matter. I love it. And I love you." There. I'd finally said it. And I was glad I said it. I love Leonie Doubtfire and her dead iguana! I love Leonie Doubtfire and her dead iguana!

Of course, her cell phone chose that moment to ring. For the first time in my life I'd told a woman I loved her. Couldn't she ignore it?

Leonie grabbed her purse and pulled out the cell. She frowned at it for a long time, then, with a stony look, told me she had to leave.

"Whoa! You can't go now. I just told you that I love you!" In spite of my best efforts it came out as a whine. "I've never done that before! This is a major breakthrough for me!" And why didn't she say, I love you, I love you, back? I'm hardly an expert in these matters, but it does seem like it's a reciprocal thing. back? I'm hardly an expert in these matters, but it does seem like it's a reciprocal thing.

She disappeared into the bedroom without answering and in a few minutes reemerged fully dressed. Leonie kissed me on the cheek. The cheek! What the hell was going on?

"Sorry, Dak. I've got to go." And Leonie Doubtfire walked out of my condo, leaving me standing there alone, in just my boxers, feeling like an idiot.

As if, these last few months, that was a first for me.

Chapter Twenty-six.

"Listen up, maggots. You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else."

-Tyler Durden, Fight Club Fight Club

I didn't hear from Leonie the next day, or the day after that. I wondered if this was what the women who'd dated me before felt like. I didn't like it. It hurt. I left a number of messages on her voice mail, but she never responded. I felt like a washed-up loser.

Louis knew something was wrong, but wisely didn't mention it. Mostly he talked about school, our trip, and his training. I just listened halfheartedly. What could I do? I felt like my heart had been ripped out, then eaten by Magua in Last of the Mohicans. Last of the Mohicans.

"Dad!" Louis shouted, even though he was standing right in front of me.

"Huh? Oh, hey, buddy. What's up?" I responded glumly.

Louis rolled his eyes. "I'm trying to tell you that I want to join the Boy Scouts! They have a form you need to sign." He presented me with a form requiring my signature.

"I used to be a Boy Scout," I mumbled, taking the pen he handed me. Maybe this was what Louis needed to give him more of a normal boyhood. Something that could cancel out the assassin training.

After he was asleep I shifted my focus from feeling sorry for myself to my Cub Scout days. I'm pretty sure I liked it. Yes, I know I did. Paris and I were in a den together, and I started to think about campouts, pine wood derbies, and newspaper drives. We always hit bull's-eyes in whatever type of target shooting we did. I think that unnerved the other kids, but since it had been part of our rigorous assassin training, we just shrugged when they asked why we were so good.

I looked at the form. The meeting was next week, and I had to accompany him. Okay. That sounded like something typical fathers did with their typical sons.

I thought about Leonie once more before banishing her from my brain. I didn't need another sleepless night feeling sorry for myself. Instead I went to sleep dreaming of navy blue uniforms, square knots, and trying to remember what the hell Webelos stood for.

Day three found me unwashed, in rumpled and dirty clothes, sitting in Paris's apartment.

"Let me get this straight. You told her you loved her and you haven't heard from her since?" Paris frowned. "Talk about karma."

He shook his head. "I mean, they say 'what goes around comes around,' but, man, this is pure poetic justice."

I stared at him. "Wow. You are so so supportive." supportive."

"Maybe not, but I know irony when I see it." Paris handed me a cup of coffee and sat down.

"So, what do I do now?" Paris might not have been the best person to ask. Don't get me wrong-he'd had his fair share of women. But as far as I knew he'd never fallen in love either.

"I don't know." He shook his head. "She's an odd chick. Not like your normal breed. This one has a brain. Did you say anything to offend her?"

I related the cerulean and dead-iguana stories almost verbatim.

"It's hard to say. Maybe she's got a lot going on at work?"

Now, why didn't I think of that? Of course that was it! Maybe there'd been a mass murder or something and she was up to her neck in dead bodies and their bereaved.

"So, you're saying I should go over there?"

Paris cocked his head to the side. "No, I don't think I said that. If she's busy, you're likely to bother her."

"I should go over there!" I repeated a little louder, with enthusiasm.

"What are you going to do? Start crashing funerals just to see her?"

I jumped up from the couch and hugged Paris. "That is exactly what I'm going to do!"

Even as I showered, shaved, and donned a clean suit, I wondered why I hadn't thought of this before. Of course she was swamped!

Being at Crummy's was a way to demonstrate that I supported her. Leonie would see that and tell me how wonderful I was. It was a foolproof plan.

I pulled into the parking lot, parked, and checked the newspaper. It was the Lutz visitation, and although I'd never met Dean Lutz or any of his family, I was attending his wake.

One final check in the rearview mirror told me that Dak was back. I locked the car and made my way into the funeral home. A different mortician greeted me at the door and sent me to the correct room. The receiving line was short, and I had to play the part.

"I'm so sorry for your loss," I said quietly to the widow.

"How did you know my husband?" she asked through her tears.

"Oh." How did I know him? Well, it hardly seemed prudent to say that I had just spotted his visitation notice in the paper today. "I'd met him through work. Just a few times. I didn't know him well but wanted to pay my respects." I thought it was a great cover story. So why, then, was the widow looking at me with her mouth open?

"Could you come with me, please?" Someone tapped me on the shoulder and I saw that it was Leonie. My heart soared as I excused myself from the widow and followed her into the hall.