Kissing Booth
By Anne Mikusinski
“Nora, you have got to be kidding,” Jack McCoy exclaimed. “Me, man a kissing booth? No one will pay to have me kiss them—even if it IS for charity!”
“Yes, Jack,” Nora sighed…”but think of all the widows of policemen and their children you’ll be helping.” And widowed DA’s, she thought to herself. For Nora had a plan.
The day of the “Hogan Place Fair” arrived, and Jack set up his booth under a shady tree. Five minutes later, a line had formed, full of blushing young women…many of them, strangely, from the secretarial pool. In about twenty minutes, the line stretched to the end of the field…and out onto the sidewalk.
Some of the women were content with a five-dollar peck on the cheek, but a few presented twenty-dollar bills “if they could get a little more.” Jack took the first twenty and was rather shocked when he found out what ‘a little more’ entailed. A petite brunette sat on his lap and ran her hands through his hair, sighing. She leaned in to kiss him full on the lips, then jumped up giggling, and ran over to her friends.
By the end of the day, Jack was tired but happy, despite the fact that his lips felt a little bruised by their encounters with some of the more generous women. It reminded him that he really hadn’t had much luck in the romance department, and he sighed. He had to laugh, though, at the pieces of paper containing phone numbers that he’d found folded inside some of the money. He was just about to call it quits when he heard someone clear their throat in front of him. He looked up to see Nora standing there. She handed him a blank check. He looked at her, to the check and back again…she was grinning.
“Whatever amount you think is fair, Jack,” she told him. “And I’ll collect on it later.”
Now it was Jack’s turn to blush, but he found his heart beating faster…he realized what she meant. It was something he’d been hoping for since she’d come to work at Hogan Place. He’d thought she’d been looking at him “that way”, but was never sure. So he decided to take a chance. He thought a minute, and wrote out an amount on the check, and handed it back to her.
She raised her eyebrows, and her grin got bigger.
Jack walked out from behind his booth, smiling. “Are you doing anything for dinner?”
“No,” she answered, “but YOU’RE paying!”
“I have a feeling,” Jack whispered, “…in more ways than one…” He kissed her on the cheek and took her hand as they walked off to hail a cab.