Greta climbed out of her car in the grocery store parking lot and looked around for the weirdo who'd been hanging out there lately. For a second she thought he was leaning against the Coke machine, but mercifully, it was not he. Sure resembled him though - same receding chin, straggly hair and tattoos up the biceps, but when the guy turned his head, she saw he was someone else. Someone just as weird, but not a familiar weirdo.
Expelling a breath of relief, she darted inside the store and grabbed a cart. It was refreshing to be in the air conditioning after tossing on damp, wrinkled sheets all night under the impotent breeze from a fan so old her grandmother had used it. All she wanted was to get some strawberries and melon to make a big fruit salad and, other than ice cream, that was all she planned on eating until this heat wave broke. Sultry weather turned her quite testy.
But just as she was beginning to check the bottoms of the strawberry containers for the moldy ones that usually lurked down there, she caught a whiff of a familiar and unpleasant odor, a combination of unwashed crotch, ripe underarm and gum disease. Before she raised her head, she knew who its source was.
"Hey," said the man she'd been dreading, "you out shopping, huh?"
With resignation, Greta stood back up and faced him. It appeared that it was becoming impossible to do anything in town without running into one of these weirdos. The town was crawling with them. Benches in the tiny park the town council had constructed in an unlikely ditch were filled with them. Each corner held at least one, more often two, discussing whatever it was that weirdos talked about. It seemed she couldn't go anywhere anymore without being pestered.
She tried to ignore the man but he was standing only inches away. Having a well-developed sense of smell, it was practically all she could do to keep from throwing up. Why didn't everyone have the decency to bathe? They made such a fuss about second hand smoke - well, what about offensive body odors?
He pushed closer until his foot was touching her foot. "Hey, what's your name anyway?" he asked with a big, lunatic smile.
She backed off violently but tried to be polite, although why she was bothering,
she didn't know. "Um, Greta," she answered, mentally kicking herself. She whirled the cart around and headed down the aisle as quickly as she could. He followed.
"You're pretty," he said, letting out another gust of rotten breath. "You wanna go out sometime?"
Oh God, help me, she wailed inside her head as she pushed the cart so fast she almost ran into the foot of an arthritic old lady. "Sorry," she muttered and whizzed around the corner, just missing a cardboard display stand.
He did not chase after her, but while she checked out, he stood by the magazine rack, holding his large, drooping eyes steadily upon her. It seemed to her he was looking through her clothing, her skin, her mind.

Greta decided to see the new Christopher Walken movie. It was, as expected, another oddball flick full of blood, shadows and sunken eyes in pale faces, but it was the only way to see her favorite star. No one else wanted to go. As soon as she walked into the darkened theatre and seated herself, a man popped up from where he had been sitting and moved to the seat directly behind her.
Oh no, she thought, sensing immediately what he was: another weirdo. She could tell by the way he was breathing; wheezily, as if he suffered from some wet, stuffy allergy. Something that would cause snot to trickle from his oddly shaped nose and she was certain he had one.
He leaned forward while Greta cringed inside. "Don't I know you from somewhere?" he asked. At least he didn't have stinky breath.
"No, I don't think so," she hissed back, not turning her head to look at him.
"Oh, I think we have met," he insisted. "At somebody's house or something."
Exasperated, she squirmed around to look at him, knocking half of her popcorn into her lap, putting grease spots all over her khaki pants. Immediately, she saw that his hair was limp with oil and he had one of those unfortunate, huge, bobbing Adam's apples. Of course, what had she expected?
"If you don't leave me alone, I'll call the manager," she told him, and he sat back temporarily chastened.
He did not bother her again until she was on her way out of the theatre when he stared at her in the manner of a serial killer sizing up his next victim. She was careful to lock her car doors before pulling out of the parking lot.

"I'm starting to worry," she told her friend, Regina, next time they went out for lunch. They enjoyed sampling different ethnic foods and were seated in Jo-Jo's, a new soul food place in Binghamton. The heat wave had broken and the air was deliciously cool. The waiter had just set before them a wonderfully aromatic basket of cornbread.
"About what?" asked Regina as she slathered butter on a nice sized slab.
"That I only seem to attract weirdos," said Greta. "I mean, there must be something wrong with me. The count is up to six now. Six, Regina."
"Doesn't the guy in the movies make five?"
"No. You're forgetting the one at the greenhouse. The one wearing the StarTrek shirt and the Mr. Spock eyebrows."
"I forget what he said," said Regina, her eyes glazed with pleasure as she bit into the soft, warm bread.
"He said, 'The Vulcan mating season is arriving for me in less than two months and I would like to take you as my mate.'"
"Okay, I remember now," said Regina. "Well, maybe you're just having a season of weirdos. Most women get hit on by the occasional weirdo and maybe you're just having your lifetime's worth all at once."
Greta shook her head sadly. "I don't think so. I think the universe is trying to tell
me something. It must be that something is weird about me."
"There is nothing weird about you," said Regina firmly as she reached for her third chunk of corn bread. "Just don't encourage them in any way," she added.
Unsure, Greta began to eat. From across the room, she caught a man winking at her. He was dressed in a cowboy outfit from top to bottom. Snake skin boots, string tie and a huge hat flourished with a silver eagle and foot long turkey feather. She sighed, having suddenly lost her appetite.
"I know I'm an artist," she said, "and that I live alone in a barn and that I have two pet lizards, but other than that, am I a weirdo myself? My hair is cut in a normal looking bob and my clothes are just regular. I use deodorant."
"You're not a weirdo," repeated Regina firmly as the waiter set before them their plates of fried chicken and greens. "You're just having a bad streak, that's all."
Greta tried to believe her.

The barn she lived in was halfway made over into a house. The people who'd been working on it quit suddenly when they got divorced and after the woman won it in the settlement, she rented it out as-is. Greta, who lived on part-time jobs as companion to the elderly or confined, along with whatever she could sell in gift shops of her stained glass pieces and mobiles, could not be choosy about living quarters. She felt lucky to get the barn with its surroundings of fields and woods, even if it was hideously drafty and the plumbing was temperamental. Occasionally animals lived with her, such as squirrels, chipmunks, snakes, and once a fox, only he remained under the floorboards. Her lizards were kept safely in a terrarium.
She took her baths in a well-preserved claw foot tub the owner had rescued from her grandmother's house when it was torn down. Greta loved nothing more than her daily soak in hot water. When for any reason she was deprived of this pleasure, she grew outrageously cranky.
After she returned home from her day out with Regina and stripped down, whistling, for her bath, she received a nasty shock. When she stepped into the tub, the water was ice cold. "Damn!" she said. "Damn, damn, damn."
Exasperated and naked, she whipped open the telephone book and flipped through the yellow pages until she located the plumbers. Not in the mood for lengthy perusal, she picked out the second "A" name and punched in his number on her phone. Amazingly, he answered. More amazing, he would be right out that afternoon.
She sponge-bathed in chilling water, then got dressed to wait. In about an hour, a truck pulled up and out of it stepped a most unattractive man. As she watched him cross the yard from the dirt driveway to the front door, she could see he was painfully skinny with anemic skin, long bony limbs and stringy black hair. His glasses were thick and greatly magnified his eyes. He had on workman's overalls and high topped black sneakers. There was a pink zit or wart on his left cheek and his ears stuck out like airplane wings. Only she would call a plumber and have a weirdo show up. She sighed as she let him in.
"George Arno," he said as he stepped over the wide threshold. "You're outta hot water, I take it?"
"That's right," she said, looking at him with fascination. A weirdo up close, and one that did not smell bad. In fact, she thought she detected a faint odor of mincemeat pie, which she had always liked. Why would a person smell like mincemeat pie?
"Interesting place," he said as he headed towards the tub, which wasn't hard to spot. It sat right out in the open, as did the toilet. In fact, there were no interior walls anywhere inside the barn. He turned on the tap, stuck his hand under the flow and turned it back off. "Yep, cold as ice. Where's your hot water heater?"
She led him to it where it stood next to a kitchen cupboard. "Weird set-up you have in here," he muttered.
He immediately set to work, opening up the water heater and feeling around. She watched him, fascinated by the fact that he had a hole in the seam of his pants and his jockey shorts were showing through. Should she tell him? But then weirdos, and this guy could certainly be classified as one, didn't seem to care about aberrations in their clothing. In fact, they seemed to actually cultivate them. She said nothing, but looked at the hole now and then.
Suddenly he straightened up and said, "Your thermocouple is shot." He rummaged in a metal toolbox, cursed under this breath, then looked at her. "I thought I had one with me, but I don't. Can I use your phone?"
She handed him her cordless and he pressed in a number. "Hey Ed, you heading back to the shop now? Do me a favor. You pass through New Milford on your way home. Bring me some thermocouples." He gave the directions to her place. "Should be about twenty minutes, right? Good." He hung up.
Her heart sank. That meant he'd be hanging around for God only knew how long. Was she expected to talk to him? Her stomach was growling and it was time to fix dinner. Would she be expected to offer him food? "Um, you'll excuse me while I make my dinner?"
"Don't mind me," he said. "I'll just read a magazine or something."
She sighed, and handed him an old Newsweek, then walked to the kitchen area and took out her wok and some vegetables. When she began chopping the vegetables, the back of her neck told her he was watching and she spun around.
"You're doing that wrong," he said.
"What?" she replied, almost cutting her finger.
He stood up and walked to the kitchen. "I like to cook. Here, let me do it." She was so shocked she handed over the knife to him.
Immediately and without further comment, he chopped the carrots, celery, onion, broccoli and garlic like a maniac. The knife moved so fast, there were times she lost sight of it and the slices of vegetable materialized in neat rows as if by magic.
"Did you work in a Japanese restaurant or something?" she asked, astonished.
"Huh?" he said, looking up startled. "No. I just like to cook." Then he poured oil into the wok, heated it to sizzling and whisked the chopped veggies into it with one sweep of his hand. "You have rice made?"
She showed him the rice she had in a container from the fridge. He turned up his nose as if smelling dog poop. "Not fresh? And white rice? Ick. But, I suppose it'll have to do. Warm it in the microwave. Where's the soy sauce? The ginger?"
She did as ordered with the rice and fetched him the ingredients he asked for, then watched him pour soy sauce into the wok and shake it expertly as everything sizzled. He took two plates (two!) from the exposed cupboard and plopped them down on the tiny kitchen table, then dished out the low class rice and dumped half of the stir-fried vegetables onto each pile. "Got forks?" he had the audacity to ask and when she produced them, he pulled out a chair, sat down and dug in.
What the hell was going on here? Was he planning on taking over the house next? They ate in silence. The food was delicious. If she'd cooked it herself, the stuff would have been soft and tasteless. But that didn't mean it was all right for this jackass to barge in and take over.
As soon as she'd swallowed the last bite, there was a knock on the door and a short, fat guy stuck his head in. "Hey George!" he yelled. "Here're the thermocouples!" He set them on the floor and then he was gone. George got up from the table and went to retrieve the parts. Without a word, he walked to the water heater and started to work.
In a few minutes, he had the whole thing apart and strewn over the floor.
Standing at the edge of the mess, Greta could see the actual weave of his underwear through the hole in the seat of his pants. She couldn't take her eyes off it. It crossed her mind that even his ass was flat. You would think that nature would compensate for all of the rest by giving him a nicely rounded butt.
What was there to do with herself while he worked? Since the place consisted of one large space, she would feel awkward trying to have a conversation with anyone on the telephone. There was something wrong with her cable connection, so she couldn't escape into TV. Desperate, she finally plopped into a chair and opened the same stale magazine she'd handed George earlier. While he tinkered, she felt oddly restless and couldn't find a comfortable position to sit in. Finally, after a while, he turned on the heater and she heard the healthy roar of its starting up. He got up and took the Newsweek back and settled down with it on the floor by his toolbox.
"What are you doing now?" she asked, frantic for him to leave.
"Waiting to see if this heats up all right," he replied without looking up.
She sighed, feeling almost hysterical. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, he stood up and walked to the tub. Out of sheer frustration and boredom, she jumped up to join him and watched his long arm as he reached down to turn on the water. A biceps muscle moved under the sickeningly white skin and she felt a sudden and inexplicable stab in her clitoris. My God, what was happening to her? Was this weird guy turning her on?
Suddenly and without warning, the plumber looked up at her and smiled. It was the sexiest smile she had ever seen in her life. He turned on the water, stuck his hand under it and said, "It's getting hot," and then it was as if her mind went utterly blank and before she knew it, the two of them had stripped down so fast they'd both torn off buttons and probably broken zippers. He had the presence of mind to regulate the amount of water entering the tub and they both climbed into it. Even though claw foot tubs were not designed for comfortable coupling, they managed to arrange themselves in a way that pleased them both. He was an excellent kisser. His lips were soft and he squished them against her own with perfect pressure. She had kissed men who were far from weird who'd smeared her face with saliva or broken her lip with their teeth. His tongue explored every corner of her mouth while his hands were all over her, smoothing, slipping into crevasses, tweaking where tweaking was wanted. They moved fast but with quality. Somehow, she and he found themselves outside of the tub and on the bathmat. She was on top and riding him, oblivious to the fact that her foot was slamming against the bathroom scale. She came loudly and happily with him following within seconds.
As soon as it was over, she was embarrassed, but this emotion was tempered with a feeling of peaceful wellbeing. She could feel her skin glowing.
"Well, I'd better get going," he said.
She thought that sounded exactly like something a weirdo would say. But that was all right. She didn't want him to ask her out. For that matter, how did she know he wasn't married, perhaps to a female weirdo? The thought struck her then that he probably would make this weirdo wife very happy.
"Are you married?" she asked, curious. All of this was so unlike her. In all of her life, she'd only had three lovers and all of them in serious relationships.
"Hell no," he said. "You want me to call you?"
"Um, I don't think so," she said.
He scribbled on a pad, then ripped off a piece of paper and handed it to her. "Your bill is for $62.30," he said as if nothing unusual had occurred between them.
How like a weirdo, she thought and wrote out a check. He left without a backward glance.
When Greta and Regina attended a blues concert the following weekend, Regina noted that the crowd was dotted with weirdos. But none of them even looked in Greta's direction, not even when she actually spoke to one.
"How strange," remarked Regina. "It must be that your long siege with them has run its course."
"I'm immune now, I think," remarked Greta. "I've been inoculated against them." And she smiled a Mona Lisa smile, not having yet decided whether to clarify this for Regina or not.

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