Page 110 of The Last Viking

Meredith frowned. Where was Rolf’s talisman belt? Now that she thought about it, he hadn’t been wearing it last week when she’d seen him, either. And he never went anywhere without that blasted belt. Unless…

“All I wanted to do was build a really impressive powerboat,” Tim was complaining to his buddies. “I don’t see why Jill is so upset. The damage wasn’t all that expensive. Women!”

“You weren’t here when she needed you,” the logical Al reminded him. “Remember. Jill told you that she was having problems with her job. The boys were driving her crazy. And she needed to lose ten pounds before her class reunion next week. Her female psyche was calling for a male ego boost—sort of like the positive and negative electrodes on a battery.” Al shook his head hopelessly at Tim. “Tsk-tsk! You let Jill down, Tim.”

“You may have a point there,” Wilson said. “Yes, indeedy!”

“Nah! She just needs a battery charge. Ha, ha, ha!” Tim quipped. “Real men know how to keep a woman’s motor humming.”

“Real men? Hah! I’m more sensitive to a woman’s needs, Tim,” Al declared with an air of self-satisfaction. “That’s because I’m attuned to the feminine side of my brain. Just as you should be. Just as all men should be.”

“Huh?” Tim and Rolf exclaimed.

“Where did you learn that bit of wisdom, my good man?” Wilson had moved into Tim’s yard and his face was now hidden by…oh, good Lord!…a pair of huge breasts. Was that Ingrid he was attempting to affix to the front of the dragonship?

It was. A “real man’s” figurehead, to be sure.

“Oprah,” Al answered.

“That figures,” Tim and Rolf said at the same time.

As he considered Al’s advice, Tim’s helmet slid slightly off center and his horns went askew. “But Jill should be sensitive to my needs, too. A man’s got to fulfill his…his…”

“Destiny?” Rolf prodded.

I’d like to show Rolf his destiny, all right.

“Yes!” Tim concurred. “Every man has to follow his destiny.” The other men nodded.

Dolts! They are all dolts.

“It’s true, Tim,” the sage Wilson opined. “Yes, indeedy, when I was in Pango-Pango, I learned from a village chieftain that every man has a life goal to complete…a destiny, so to speak. Sometimes women don’t comprehend when a man’s honor is at stake. Isn’t that the way it is in the Viking culture, as well, Rolf?”

“Yea, some things ne’er change, no matter the culture, no matter the century,” Rolf stated nervously as he shifted from foot to foot. “A man must protect those under his shield—wife, father, mother, friend. ’Tis the woman’s place to demur to his better judgment.”

Andrew Dice Ericsson—that’s who he is. The ultimate Viking chauvinist pig.

“Yeah!” the other three idiots whooped.

“If a woman loves a man,” Rolf continued, addressing the camera again, as if directing his words to her, “she should have confidence in her man to follow the right path. She shouldn’t dishonor him by questioning his loyalty.”

But what about the man having confidence in his woman, Rolf?

“Did women nag their husbands in Viking times?” Tim interjected, steering the conversation to a more humorous vein.

Rolf snorted, muttering something crude under his breath, which was bleeped out.

All the men, Rolf included, were laughing heartily, lifting long-necked bottles of beer to their mouths in salute to that bit of shared universal maleness.

Meredith plopped down on the couch next to Thea. “Did you know about this?”

“No. All I knew was that Rolf asked me to tape tonight’s show for him.”

Meredith decided she had much to think about. The men were now on the set of Tim’s TV workshop, constructing a clinker-built longship.

“The most important thing is that the woman…uh, wood, be pliable,” Rolf explained, flexing a strip of green uh, wood, that had already been cut into a wedge shape. “That allows a man to bend them in the right direction.”

“Right on, man!” Tim shouted, pumping the air with a fist.