I smile the lopsided smile that women have told me they find endearing, and hope the mimicry softens her.

Oh, that's very nice.

"Not that,' she says, waving the thought away, like it was more of my squadroom theorizing. "This," she says, sticking her fingers in her mouth and waggling them to approximate fangs. "You had so much to live for, Munchkin." Her voice breaks...it tears me up. Nobody ever sees that side of Kay Howard. A couple times on her mom's birthday. The anniversary of when her mom died(which is also Valentine's Day...what kind of cosmic joke is that?! Ok, that was her excuse...what was yours?) A couple of times with rough cases with kids...not that she ever went to Bayliss Country, just got sort of withdrawn and touchy. I'm touched at the use of the nickname, (ironically self- bestowed in the middle of one of my bitchfests but since either a target of Meldrick's "humor" or a symbol of Howard-affection) worried for her, and wondering what yardstick on earth she could have used to determine that.She hasn't started getting high, has she? No, we covered that.
"It's just like everything else in my misspent life. Done by accident, to impress a blonde."

Deena, that part wasn't too schmoopy, was it? Cause I liked that image too, but I have to be really careful about the schmoop with these guys.

No, I don't think it was too schmoopy at all. It was calculated, and that's intriguing, that bit of plotting in him during a sort of schmoopy moment. I liked it.

Well, he's been around some women. And in whatever way, he makes them unbelievably angry with him...I suspect occasional "monogamy issues" combined with their "mental health issues". I'm thinking as much trouble as he gets in, he must be able to get out, sometimes. It's not all shtick but some of it must be.

And he's got to have something that gets them involved in the first place.

Yes, definitely. And I'm being honest here, it's not that I don't love him, but he can't rely on the the physical impression. The Munchkin has to grow on a person.(And I can hear him right now saying "Great. Like mold, like fungus." But that's not what I meant.)

He's got a certain look, sometimes, though, that I find attractive, and I can imagine him using it on purpose.

Probably practiced in the mirror before dates until he was twenty. And, yeah, I see it too, but he got me with the wordplay first. Although, writing him? His sentences go on for six years, sometimes. Or they are not sentences at all, just kvetchy fragments. Feast or famine.

But Munchkin - like Portnoy - is all about the kvetchy fragments, damnit. They work fine.