Free Adventures of a Salsa Goddess by JoAnn Hornak Page A

dating in New York?” asked Lessie with a sideways glance.
    “Well, come to think of it, the last few liked to beat on their chests, swing from vines, and had foreheads like Cro-Magnon men.”
    I took a bite of the first bratwurst of my life. Not bad. Not as greasy as an Italian sausage and much better than a hotdog.
    “My philosophy is, if a woman meets a man she likes, she should go after him,” said Lessie. “I don’t agree that there are rules about who can pursue whom. It’s just a load of crap.”
    “Crap! Crap? How can you say they’re crap?” I cried. The woman seated in front of me turned, glared, and tipped her head in the direction of her son, apparently warning me to watch my language. The kid looked about fifteen and probably had a better sex life than I did. Then again, at the moment, sea slugs had a better sex life than I did.
    “Are you sure the guy on the beach was flirting with you?” asked Lessie. “Maybe he was just being friendly? Remember, you’re not in New York anymore.”
    “He held hands with me,” I told her, “and then he did that thing where he looked into my eyes and brushed the hair from my forehead with his index finger, and he told me he thought I was beautiful.”
    “That’s serious below-the-belt flirting,” Lessie agreed with a nod. Just then, I heard the sharp thwack of the bat hitting a ball, which was caught on a fly by an outfielder. The Brewers’ second baseman had just struck out for the third time. The sixth inning was over.
    Then I saw something strange, something very strange indeed. Four giant sausages emerged from a gate at the far end of third base line, their elfin arms waving at the crowd, which cheered wildly and rose to its feet. My bratwurst had come to life in the form of a giant lumbering foam casing that had sprouted human legs and arms.
    “It’s time for the sausage race,” said Lessie, grabbing my forearm and pulling me up. For the next few minutes we cheered and shouted as the giant wieners with tiny legs careened around the baseline for a thirty-second marathon rounding home plate and finishing directly in front of us. The Brat crossed the finish line by a casing, just in front of the Italian.
    We sat back down to continue our in-depth analysis of the situation, a situation, I might point out, that was completely hopeless since I was never going to see Zack again. If men only knew how much, time women spent analyzing them, their gonads would shrivel, and they’d all move to cabins in the woods, swear a life of celibacy, and write self-help books for men. “Maybe he was married?” Lessie suggested.
    “Definitely not,” I told her. And then, suddenly, I wasn’t so sure. Thanks to Wayne the bug man, I now know that if a man tells you he’s not married, he may be single, but that could be only on a part-time basis, strictly in his fantasies and while geographically estranged from his wife.
    “Cops don’t wear rings,” Lessie suggested. “I’ve dated a couple. One turned out to be married but he justified it because he said fifty percent of them cheat on their wives. So I guess that made it okay that he did it too.”
    “Zack said he was a pilot for Midwest Express,” I said.
    “He could tell you he is the heir to the Miller brewery fortune. How the hell would you ever know?”
    “When did you become so cynical?” I asked, and looking closer saw that Lessie’s eyes had become all watery. “Is everything all right with you and Eliseo?”
    “He hasn’t called,” she said sadly.
    How many times a day are those three words uttered by women across the planet? A trillion? I used to think getting rid of your telephone would solve the problem until a friend of mine who’d volunteered for the Peace Corps in Africa a few years ago told me that no one there had telephones, which meant that her prospective dates would promise her they were going to stop by her house and then just not show up. I remember being devastated to learn that it