We were on a roll. We had successfully introduced Bonnie and Sammy to the fold, followed by Lisa and Chris. This was working better than we had ever imagined. Just as gamblers get cocky and stock investors get cocky, we got cocky.
Who was going to be next? Since Victoria and I had selected Lisa and Chris, we thought letting Bonnie pick the next couple would be fair. After all, we wanted to be fair, didn't we?
At our next luncheon meeting, attended by Sarah, Bonnie, Lisa, and me, we had a long talk. Sarah and I were gratified to see how Bonnie and Lisa gushed about their relationships with their sons. Lisa, especially, talked about how she had despaired about ever getting Chris to show some ambition. Since they made love together, she said that Chris was sending resumes out and was talking about possibly going to graduate or law school. She was bubbly at how well it had worked for her.
"I just wish I had done this before. I always knew he was attracted to me, but I thought it was just one of those Oedipus phases, or something. I had no idea he still had those desires. If only I had known. I've always thought he had become a handsome man. I won't say I hadn't ever thought of him in that way, but for it to come to what it did? It still blows me away."
I jumped in. "I think that about sums it up for all of us, Lisa. The only problem I have is trying to keep up with that youthful vigor Bill has. After the change I thought I didn't need sex anymore. Boy, was I wrong!"
Bonnie giggled. "Same with me, Victoria. I've started calling him 'Sammy the Bull.'"
"Do we call it quits here?," I asked the group. "Or do we see who else we can help?"
Bonnie raised her hand.
"Bonnie, you may think you're a teen-ager again, but we're not in class. You don't have to raise your hand."
Everyone laughed, then Bonnie said, "My best friend is Susan. Her Matt is graduating from college this year, and he still doesn't have a good job lined up. He's getting a degree in computer science, so he's got a lot of potential, but she says all he wants to do is lay around. His grades are falling, at a time when he needs to be focused and doing his best. He's been doing some contract work, but she wants him to show some fire."
"Do you think we can trust her?"
"Oh sure," Bonnie said. "She's my best friend."
"Do you think there is some spark between her and her son?"
"He's a guy. Of course there's spark with him. Susan has never said anything about it, of course, but she has to notice how he looks at her. I do, and I'm not around him nearly as much as Susan is."
"Everybody in on it?"
A chorus of assents resulted, so the next members of the club were selected.
We invited Susan to lunch later that week, with only Bonnie, Sarah, and me. We didn't want to gang up on her, and thought three of us would be a good showing. Susan came in, and I was floored. She had bright red hair cut in a cute bob, and she was a stunning beauty. She had on a green sweater that showed off her breasts, which made me feel somehow cheated by the Great Fairy. Suddenly I felt dowdy.
She sat down and Bonnie introduced us. We had some mutual friends, so in no time we were all chatting away. While I wanted to dislike Susan because of her looks, I found she was bright and warm. She was the type of woman who you like immediately, and I warmed quickly to her.
Bonnie finally broke the ice, asking her, "So, how is Matt doing at school?"
"I don't know what I'm going to do with him. I just can't light a fire in that boy's butt. His grades are falling, and I don't think he's sent a single resume out. We ask him to come home so we can work on his resume with him, and he won't even do that. Were your guys like that?"
Perfect opening, so Sarah took it. "Exactly like that. They reach that age where you can't control them anymore. What you need to do is give him some focus."
"Yeah. As if. There's no focus in him. He's perfectly content laying around doing nothing. That's not the way I was raised, and I don't know where we went wrong with him. Maybe I gave him too much."
Bonnie giggled a little, and said, "Maybe you didn't give him enough, Susan. Maybe you should have given him what he really wants."
"If I knew what he wanted, I'd give it to him if it would light a fire under him."
I jumped in. "You know guys that age, Susan. You remember what they're like. All they want is to get laid. That's usually the only focus they have."
She snorted. "He doesn't even care about that. I tried to line him up with the daughter of a friend of mine." She looked at Bonnie. "You know, Linda's girl. She's cute. He wouldn't even call her."
"Maybe what he wants is what only Mom can give him."
Susan paused, looking at us. "That's not it. I offer to cook him any meal he wants, if only he'll come home for the weekend. He doesn't care. I think all he does is lay around his apartment drinking beer."
We had made every cute allusion we could think of to the real solution, and Susan wasn't biting.
Bonnie said, "If there was something you could do to focus him and get some ambition into him, would you do it?"
"Sure, within reason. What are you talking about?"
This was the critical moment, and I didn't feel good about it. Susan seemed smart, but she wasn't picking up on anything.
I jumped in. "Well, think about it, Susan. There has to be something he wants more than anything else, and when you figure out what it is, he'll come around."
We broke up the lunch and went our separate ways toward home. Later that afternoon, we had a group chat.
Bonnie led it off. "I don't think she gets it. She didn't have any idea what we were talking about."
We all agreed. I said, "Look, I hate to say it about another woman, but she's hot. You know her son is drooling over her. He gives all the signs we saw. He avoids her. He doesn't come home. All the signs."
Bonnie agreed. She knew Matt, and said she could see the lust in him when he was around Susan. "What man wouldn't want her," she added. "My Sam knows him. He's always looked to Sam as a big brother. I'll ask Sam to get him to come home, maybe, so they can get together, and maybe Sam can put a bug in his ear."
So Sam did that. He called Susan, got Matt's number, and called him. Matt didn't want to come home, but Sam hinted that he could help Matt get what he wanted more than anything else, and Matt's curiosity was aroused.
That weekend, Matt came home and Sam invited him over with the excuse of needing some computer help with his router. Matt was cool about it, of course, because computer science majors quickly learn they are everybody's IT guy. When he got there, Sam told him the computer seemed to have healed, and Bonnie took them beer, salsa, and chips in the den. Bonnie retired to the kitchen, but sat at the door so she could listen to them. When Bonnie told us about that, I imagined her leaning against the door, and couldn't help but laugh.
"We're incorrigible. We're like a bunch of cougars, trying to hook everybody up."
They all laughed. "May be some truth in that," Sarah said, under her breath.
