chapter 14

Mike Dombrowski was on the kitchen staff at DePaul University Hospital, barely. His official "title" , if you could call it that, was Culinary Assistant III. In reality, he was essentially a dishwasher/busboy. It was the lowest of the low, paying just a smidge over minimum wage. But, on the whole, Mike was satisfied with that. What would expect from someone who could hardly be called an ambitious world beater.

Mike was 35 years old and lived in a one room apartment in Chicago's Austin neighborhood, hardly a prestigious address. But the rent was $400 a month. He had his CD player and his desktop computer and by and large that was good enough.

A lot of the people at DePaul thought Mike was kind of a weirdo. He kept pretty much to himself, didn't socialize much and barely said a word to anyone unless spoken to first. He gave the impression that he was kind of a simpleton, which would have been VERY misleading. For one thing, he was a member of Mensa, the high IQ organization. For another, he held a Master's degree in Hegelian philosophy from the University of Chicago. He might have been simple, as in uncomplicated, but stupid he was NOT.

Mike was also one of the few males at DePaul who DIDN'T cast a covetous glance in the direction of Amanda Frazek. Frankly, she wasn't his type. For one thing, Mike loved women with BIG appetites, passionate women who embraced life with both hands and gave it an enthusiastic hug, women who loved food, and music and film and art and politics and who would talk with you for hours on end until the wee small hours of the morning. This was something Amanda WASN"T. That is, it was something Amanda wasn't until she became enthralled with Max Braverman's food and started to expand her horizons AND waistline.

Then one day in early January, Amanda came into the kitchen for breakfast. Well at least Mike THOUGHT she was Amanda, although it was hard to tell since there was so much MORE to her than there had ever been before. What caught his attention was the huge breakfast she ordered and the gusto with which she downed every single morsel. What HELD his attention, however, was the aplomb with which she handled her split skirt situation. Not a lick of embarrassment, and a self-conscious second. She just waddled her way toward the Bio-Lab with a shit-eating grin on her face that got Mike to chuckling a bit to himself while he thought no one was looking.

"Now THAT'S the kind of woman I've been looking for all my life!", Mike said to himself. And not being at all shy or retiring, Mike wandered over to the Bio-Lab, knocked on the door, introduced himself and asked Amanda out on a date, a date with which she accepted with a huge smile and a hearty laugh. "Who would have thought", Amanda said to herself, "that someone would finally ask me out on a date AFTER I got myself so FAT?'. She didn't know who this Mike Dombrowski was or what he was doing at DePaul. All she knew was that he was intriguing, personable, and, at least from HER perspective, kind of cute!