A/N: This is another pre-Double Date chapter (last one and we'll move on, I swear).

The title is a song from the musical/movie Damn Yankees. Because when I don't know what to title a thing I end up digging through my substantively old-school music collection until I find something that amuses me. It will probably happen again.

Whatever Lola Wants

Patricia sat comfortably knitting in the living room, pretending not to notice Lola's obvious, noisy creeping down the stairs. She waited until her daughter had reached the last step before making her presence known.

"Where're you off to in such a hurry?" she asked.

Lola froze in a trademark sneak position with arms poised and one foot hovering off the ground, caught. "Nowhere. Supermarket. Nail salon." Lola rattled off in rapid succession.

"Which is it?"

Lola sagged, her entire posture admitting defeat. "I'm going to Bugs's," she relented.

Patricia had thought as much. "Sweetheart, don't you think you're overdoing it? You've gone over there four nights in row."

"Well, he wasn't home the last two," Lola offered. "And the night before, he went to bed crazily early. I mean, who shuts their lights out at 7:30?"

"So, you've been there every night and only saw him once?"

Lola pulled her arms behind her back, all at once slipping into the skin of the artfully shy little girl she had never completely grown out of. "Technically, yeah. But I won't see him at all if I don't try."

Patricia put her book down. Her daughter meant well but her tendency to focus all her, quite substantial, energy on one solitary thing was eventually going to backfire.

"Honey, did I ever tell you about the first date I had with your father?" she asked.

"Sure," Lola shrugged, parroting as if she'd heard the story a thousand times, "You had the same history class in college, you asked him to go to Aunt Cherie's engagement party, it was a huge disaster, everything went wrong, the salmon gave everybody food poisoning, Aunt Cherie broke up with what's-his-name that she was engaged to, there was a huge fight, Grandpa broke somebody's knee, you snuck out of the house with dad to get a drink and you fell in love."

"That's partly it," Patricia said, "What I didn't tell you was your father had been… well he had been interested in me for some time before that. He left a vase of flowers on my desk every morning before class, he memorized my entire schedule, he asked me out every weekend…"

"I thought you got him to go to the party with you?" Lola asked, cocking her head curiously.

"I did, let me finish my story. Your father wanted to date me so badly he was coming off far too strong. And the harder he tried the more uncomfortable I was at the thought of giving him a chance. So one day I pulled him aside and told him to back off, and he did. Well, he also left town for spring break shortly after so we didn't see each other for awhile. But even after he came back, he never left me flowers, he never tried to talk to me. He completely ignored me. And that drove me crazy. All of a sudden I actually wanted to give him a chance because he wasn't trying so hard to impress me. And he waited until I was ready to take the initiative to chase him."

"So what you're saying is I should go away on spring break?" Lola asked.

"No, Lola, I'm saying you shouldn't try so hard. Give Bugs time to come to you."

"How do I do that?"

"Don't do anything. Don't go over there for awhile. Wait for him to call on you instead of you being the one to call him all the time."

Lola glanced down to the floor in a rare uncertain look.

"But what if he doesn't call?" she asked quietly, as if saying it out loud would jinx it into coming true.

Patricia brushed her shoulder in sympathy. "That's a chance you're just going to have to take, dear."

Lola sat at the edge of her bed with her freshly painted fingernails splayed in front of her fan. Since she'd decided not to drive out and see Bugs she'd painted and then repainted her nails four times. The green had clashed too much with her dress, the fluorescent pink seemed too desperate and the baby blue too subtle. She had settled this time on a deep purple, though even as the polish was drying she was debating trying something else. She wasn't ready to admit yet that she was simply bored.

Her cellphone went off and she sprang up from the bed like lightning. "Hey, Bugs," she said cheerfully into the phone.

"Uh… what?" a strange voice sounded through the phone. Lola deflated.

"Who is this?"

"Ummm, I'm a representative from the department of motor vehicles looking for a Miss Lola Bunny…"

Lola shut off the phone without ceremony and tossed it onto her pillow. She broke out the polish remover and started wiping her nails clean. What was she thinking with a color that dark? She wasn't going to a poetry reading. Or anywhere for that matter…

Bugs peeked from behind the shades of the living room window. Night had fallen and the cul-de-sac had gotten sleepy and quiet as suburban cul-de-sacs do. The curb across the street was still empty.

"Your girlfriend show up yet?" Daffy remarked, flipping through the channels while munching on handfuls of Cheetos.

"She's not my girlfriend," Bugs retorted automatically. "And I don't see her car. I guess she had better things to do tonight than…"

"Stalk you." Daffy interrupted.

"Not the word I was gonna use, but yes." Bugs stretched out on the couch. Lola had agreed to stop following him into places, but apparently staking out his house was still on the table. He had been able to avoid her for the most part but she still showed up at his door with an unreasonable frequency. A quiet, Lola-free evening was something to look forward to at this point.

"I don't see what the big deal is," Daffy said, "She's not that bad looking if you squint a little."

"She's not bad looking at all." Bugs countered. "She's a nutcase. You're too close to the type, you wouldn't understand."

Daffy made a disdainful face, "Alright, then set her up with some other stooge. Make her someone else's problem," Daffy suggested.

"No good. You remember the wedding? She left with someone else and came back anyway. Like a boomerang." He pulled out a carrot and bit into it, crunching.

"So tell her she looks fat. Problem solved." Daffy turned the bag of Cheetos over, dumping the remaining contents into his open beak in a puff of orange dust.

"I'm not gonna tell her she's fat. She probably wouldn't hear me anyway."

"Then get her picture on the Most Wanted list."

"Daffy…"

"What? You wanted my help, these are great ideas!"

"In the first place, I never asked for your advice," Bugs said, raising one finger, "And in the second place, those were all terrible ideas. I think I'll deal with this on my own."

"By putting the house under lockdown and hiding in your room every time a yellow car drives by?" Daffy asked between licking Cheeto dust off each finger. "Y'know what I think..."

"No, and I don't care to."

"I think you like being chased."

Bugs swallowed down the rest of his carrot in a rough choke. "I whaa..."

"You like being chased," Daffy repeated. "Need I remind you of the Wagnerian soprano incident?"

"That was a completely different situation..."

"The redhead chick with that suspicious look in her eye..."

"Daff, she was after you."

Daffy paused for a short moment, his face scrunched in thought. He sat up all at once and snapped his fingers.

"Milly Broadavich."

Bugs cringed. "That still doesn't prove anything."

"I'm just sayin'. You know if you keep running and hiding, she's gonna keep chasing you. It's the laws of gravity."

"I'm not hiding, I'm just ignoring her," Bugs clarified. "And she hasn't shown up yet tonight, so it's probably working."

Daffy shrugged, unconvinced. "Either that or she's trying to lull you into a false sense of security. Seriously, pawn her off on somebody else or you'll never get rid of her." Daffy picked up the remote.

Bugs rolled his eyes, choosing not to get into an argument with the duck on how creepy and wrong that sounded.

The commercial segment had ended and Daffy changed the channel to an Off Duty Cop rerun. Then he changed it again to a cooking show for a few seconds, then back to Off Duty Cop. Soon he was flipping back and forth between the two shows so quickly it was hard to distinguish what was on.

"Daffy, cut out the channel flipping, just pick one," Bugs sighed.

"I can't! They scheduled Off-Duty Cop and 50 Ways to Serve Green Peas in the same time slot. Blame the network."

"50 ways to serve green peas? I've never even seen you look at a vegetable."

"Who said anything about vegetables? They're baking them into pies, those skills are transferable," Daffy explained. "And besides that the hostess is a stone cold six. Grrrrrrll…" he rolled his tongue, inadvertently spraying half the room.

"Oh, brother. " Bugs rolled his eyes. "I don't know how you can watch anything flipping back and forth like that. It's like trying to watch a strobe light."

"I blame the network."

"Daffy, we have DVR. Why didn't you just record one show and watch it later?"

"Because I don't know how to work it."

"Gimmie that," Bugs snatched the remote and set up the cooking show to record. How Daffy couldn't know how to use the thing when he spent so much time in front of the tv was a mystery best left unsolved. "There. Now you can watch one show at a time like a normal person."

A knock sounded at the door. Bugs solidified like he'd just been dunked in liquid nitrogen, eyes wide, ears perked stiff and straight. He didn't even breathe. The only piece of him that appeared to be moving was his rapidly thumping heart.

The front door shook as it was knocked again, harder. "You gonna get that?" Daffy asked, as unaffected as possible.

That broke whatever spell held Bugs to the couch. He shut off the tv, plunging the house into darkness and sprang off the couch and up the stairs in a millisecond. He poked his head down just far enough to hiss at Daffy, "If you tell her I'm here, I'll ship your body to Antarctica. Got it?"

"Please, discretion is my middle name. Daffy Discretion Duck." He preened, making his way to the noisily abused door. "Deal with it on my own, my tail-feathers," he muttered under his breath. He pulled the door open and then shouted a sentence neither he nor Bugs ever thought they'd hear in their lifetimes.

"Bugs, good news, Yosemite Sam is here."

"I've got five bars and no connection. A voice-mail box like death valley. There hasn't been rain in months. A girl could use some service around here."

Lola snapped her fingers. The spotlight sprung to life. She sat perched on a high stool. The conga drummer padded a few sharp beats, loud at first and then steadily softer.

"What is it that you think of me?"

She paused for emphasis, letting the question hang in the silence of the room.

"Operators are standing by. Standing around," she gestured broadly. "What do you do with all that time? Silent as a mime." she covered her mouth for a moment. "You start running mad, or maybe open a bagel shop."

The conga drum rumbled another riff. She snapped again.

"You want one thing. And it's the want of the one that kills you."

"Whatever you want. No matter how little. A sound. A bell. A chime. Stop me on a dime." A xylophone ran several chords after each sentence.

"But it isn't right, it's all off-key. Tell me what you think of me." Another chord. Another snap.

"I order a coffee. Venti. Hot. Two shots of cream and chocolate. Whatever you want."

"Operators are still standing by." The xylophone ran another chord that bled seamlessly into the dull monotone of a busy signal.

"Boost the signal. Clear the static. Do something automatic. Ring me. Sing me. Bring me."

"All I hear is..."

Click.

The monotone shut off, as did the spotlight, right on cue. A chorus of appreciative snaps sounded from the audience. Lola removed her black beret and bowed, accepting the applause.

She returned to her seat and the next performer took the stage. It wasn't her first choice of activity for a Friday night, but the poetry group was actually pretty fun. It was a good outlet for expressing emotion, and Lola had a lot of excess emotion to express.

Lola let the next reading fade into the background and doodled all the words she could think of that rhymed with carrot on her napkin.

"Pardon me, neighbor, but I was a-wonderin' if I could borrow a cup o' salt for ma bar-be-que?" Sam asked with all the politeness he could muster.

Daffy cupped his hands over his beak and yelled, "Bugs, he wants salt!"

"Not so loud, I'm right here," Bugs muttered, appearing behind Daffy, rubbing a finger in the ear Daffy had just yelled into.

"Why's everything so dark over here. Y'all got a problem with yer electric bill?"

"No, nothing like that," Bugs switched the lights back on.

"Bugs is hiding from his girlfriend," Daffy explained.

"She's not my girlfriend!" Bugs snapped back, growing very tired of having to repeat it.

"Methinks y'all dearth protest too much," Sam's leaned forward conspiratorially, his drawl butchering the famous line.

"Was there something you wanted, Sam?" Bugs narrowed his eyes disdainfully at the shorter man.

"I need some salt for ma bar-be-que. Used all o' mine up on the potato salad."

"You're having a party?" Daffy asked. Yosemite Sam had been living next to them for months and never once seemed to have any friends over.

"What? Nah, I usually cook up some steaks on Fridays. And some potato salad and smoke ribs and corn on the cob. Good for the digestion." He patted his stomach.

Bugs disappeared into the kitchen and came back to the door with a box of salt. "Here," he handed it to Yosemite.

"Much obliged, neighbor. Say, now that I think of it, I used up the last of my bar-be-que sauce last Friday. Y'all wouldn't happen to have any, would ya?"

"No," Bugs responded automatically.

"Could ya check?" Sam asked with a familiar lilt. Bugs briefly considered slamming the door before realizing that would probably make Sam harder to deal with in the long run. He wordlessly left for the kitchen.

"So, you make all this food every week and eat it by yourself?" Daffy asked.

"Or whenever I have a hankerin' for a good tri-tip steak," Sam shrugged. Bugs returned with the sauce and handed Sam the bottle. "Hey," Yosemite brightened, "Why don't you bring yer ladyfriend over for a bite?"

"I told you she's not my girlfriend," Bugs replied.

"Well, what's the matter with her? She ugly?"

"No."

"She try to use ya for yer money?"

"No."

"Her parents gunnin' for yer neck?" He mimed a noose wrapping around his neck and pulling taut.

"No."

"She playin' hard to get?"

"No. If anything she's hard to get rid of."

"Ah, so she's the clingy type," Sam stroked his outrageous mustache in thought. "You try tellin' her you're movin' to Antarctica? That's worked for me before."

"Sam, the only way that would work is if she wanted to believe you're moving."

"Well you could ask someone ta take her off yer hands. Maybe in exchange fer a new bar-be-que pit..." Yosemite Sam let the statement hang for a beat. "Y'know, hypothetically," he added.

Bugs slammed the door shut without comment.