Uh-oh. I smelled trouble on the Love Boat.

“How could I have been foolish enough to fall for a guy who waxes his chest hair?”

“He waxes his chest hair?”

“Says it cuts down on drag time when he’s swimming laps. Anyhow, remember I told you he had something important he wanted to ask me? Guess what it was.”

Something told me it wasn’t, Will you marry me?

“He wanted to know if I was interested in investing in a tae kwon do studio.”

“What a jerk.”

“It gets worse. After dinner, we went on one of his irritating after-dinner walks. He was so damn annoying with all that constant exercising. So there we were, walking along on a quiet side street, when we heard footsteps coming up behind us. We turned around and saw a huge guy with a shaved head and tattoos up and down his arms. I swear, he looked like an escaped convict.”

“Yikes.”

“The guy glared at Matt and said, I need cash. Now normally I would have been terrified, but I wasn’t really scared because Matt is a martial arts expert. I figured, Haha, you lowlife thug. You’ve met your match. But Matt took one look at the guy, and you’ll never guess what he did.”

Something told me the answer wasn’t, Beat him to a pulp.

“He took one look at the guy, and started running.”

“No!”

“Yes! He left me all alone with this ghastly thug.”

“My God,” I gasped. “What did you do?”

“What could I do? I handed him my purse and said—Move your ass, you stupid moron!”

“You said that to the thug?”

“No, no. I was talking to that idiot in the Camry.

“If you were going any slower,” she shouted to the car in front of us, “you’d be going backwards!

“Anyhow,” she said, resuming her story, “it turned out he wasn’t a convict. He was a Romanian exchange student, and he’d ran out of gas. With his thick accent, it came out sounding like ‘cash.’ He just wanted to know where the nearest gas station was.”

“Oh, honey. What an incredible ordeal.”

Of course, there was a bright side to all this. At least I wouldn’t have to sit through any more Isn’t Matt Wonderful? stories.

“Can you believe he ran off and left me like that? And I didn’t even have my car.”

“How did you get home?”

“Oh, Stanislau gave me a lift.”

“Stanislau?”

“The Romanian exchange student. He’s actually very nice. He’s taking me to the movies Sunday. And afterwards we’re going to his favorite Romanian restaurant.

“You know,” she said, giving the finger to a dawdler in an adjacent Cadillac, “I’ve always been fascinated with the Slavic nations.”

I sat back and took advantage of the lull before the onslaught of Isn’t Stanislau Wonderful? stories.

Kandi dropped me off at my Corolla, where I was thrilled to find a $60 parking ticket propped on the windshield. A little gift from the City of Los Angeles.