Joseph was nonplussed to discover that Lucy was his date, not the plumber come to repair the upstairs toilet, especially since she only told him after she had repaired it.

At first, Lucy was impressed by his lack of fixed notions of gender roles, but the fact that taking the lid off of the toilet tank and reattaching the chain to the handle was beyond his capabilities made it hard to respect him.

It didn’t help that he was only slightly more intelligent than an average cellular phone.

He looked like a former college baseball player turned businessman, and she soon realized that he was the sort of big, gruff, sweet guy that people just naturally liked. He actually was a former college second baseman and Lucy, like everyone else, naturally liked him.

He was an account manager, or a sales manager, or some other job with the word “manager” in it that didn’t actually involve managing anyone, but it paid more than “unemployed bookstore clerk,” so Lucy ordered steak to go with her expensive drink.