She is showing me a watchband when a good looking man dressed in a white uniform saunters by. Her head spins around like she's possessed.

Leaning over the counter, she whispers, "That's the new optometrist. He's done checked my eyes four times."

"Bad vision?" I ask.

She shakes her head. "Nuh uh. It's got nothing to do with vision. The man's a virtual hunk, Girlfriend. X-treme! I'm the X-pert."

"Really?"

"I oughta be. Been married six times."

"You going for some kind of a record, Ivy Lee?"

"Nuh uh. I just like getting married and divorced." She waves her hands in front of my widened eyes. "You don't think I got all these rings from Walmart, do you?"

"Oh." It's the only word I can think to say.

"My first husband was Italian. (She pronounces it Eye-talian). Didn't have a grain of sense - couldn't even speak English-isamo. But, hey, we didn't get married so we could talk to each other, if you know what I mean."

"Uh huh." Her vocabulary appears to be contagious.

"His daddy never did like me, so he hired a Mafia guy to kill me."

A hit man in Brunswick, Georgia? I don't think so, but I keep my mouth shut, just in case.

"My last husband, now he was different." She rears back, crosses her arms and sighs. "It was love at first sight so we got married. Just like that!"

She snaps her fingers. "Then one day I went to mail some letters, and I see his picture hanging on the post office wall."

"My Lord! What on earth did he do?"

"Well girlfriend, he was one of America's Most Wanted. Now, that's X-treme."

"You know you lying." My good ol' gal lexicon is oozing like watery grits.

"Shoot! I'd up and married myself a cold-blooded murderer."

"Did the court grant you a quickie divorce or what?"

"Yeah, well, everybody over to the courthouse knows me pretty good by now, so the judge warned me about picking out my next husband. He said it's gotta be my last one. Seven husbands is IT in Georgia. It's the law."

I nod as though it is something I must be sure to remember.

"My next husband was a male stripper." She's off and running again. "Law, he was so pretty! I do love pretty boys, don't you?"

I shake my head. "Actually, I like my men weathered and broken-in good, like a comfortable pair of sneakers. Ya know?"

Ivy Lee does not hear me. "Sad to say, Sean was more attracted to mirrors than he ever was to me. I figured I'd catch him sooner or later with another woman, but I figured wrong. I caught him with a man and in broad daylight on a Monday. Believe me, that ain' no way to start off your week."

Reaching out, I take her hand. For a nano-second, I feel we've known each other since first grade.

"How long was it after Sean before you took another husband, Ivy Lee?"

She looks up and stares at the ceiling of florescents. "Lemme think," she says. "It was prob'ly close to a whole month."

"Holy cow! Why so quick?"

"Well, what 'cha gonna do? When you're on a roll --"

Before I leave, I promise to return soon and listen to more of her love-swept tales. Ivy Lee is convinced that her experiences in the love department just naturally makes writing Romance Novels her true destiny. " All I need," she says rather pointedly, "is one more husband and a friend who can type."