Even before she kissed him for the second time, Princess knew he was a frog. That she kissed him in spite of that was less a sign of optimistic hope that another try might prove more fruitful, than it was an indication of Princess's pleasure in that first kiss. Besides if you turned your nose up et every failed frog, there'd be a hell of a lot of cold nights on the lily pads. What was a girl to do?

Princess had spotted the frog from the minute he opened the door of The Pond and made his grand entrance. How could you miss a body clearly the result of hours in the gym wrapped in a shirt a half size too small just by way of emphasis? His face might have left something to be desired, the eyes a little too small, the nose a little too big, the hair a little too sparse, but it was getting late, and since nothing more promising had yet showed up, sometimes even a princess has to make do.

"My name is Princess," she said, "May I buy you a drink?"

"Baby doll. For you anything."

Princess winced. Perhaps second thoughts were in order.

"My name is–"

"Frog, I know. What else could your name be?"

"How about Steve. Frog? Frog isn't a name."

"Just my little joke, Stevie. Just my little. . . ." Sometimes a frog got her little joke, and though when that happened, it often presaged a pleasant few hours, in the end the frog was still a frog.

"Joke?"

"Stevie, Baby, don't bother your head with it. It's not important."

She bought him a beer. She drank wine. White. A second glass helped her listen to him talk about how important it was to work on the abs, and the necessity of following a strict routine, oh and eating right, none of that processed garbage, and, oh this, well I'll have a few beers every once in awhile. Carbs. But you can't make a habit of it. Why, she wondered, were frogs always so obsessed with themselves, their bodies, their jobs, their games? After awhile she simply nodded every once in awhile, and curled up in her fairy tale, her dream that this frog was the frog.

"What say we go up to my pad? I've got some–"

"I thought you'd never ask."

The frog was quite obviously impressed with his own magnetic attraction. Princess was no mean conquest even for a frog with a six pack for a head. Princess was the kind of woman that could make a frog feel like a prince. When she was on a frog's arm, even all the other frogs could mistake him for a prince. But Princess knew, a frog is a frog, and no matter what he felt, no matter what the other frogs felt, you can't get a prince out of a frog unless that prince is in there to begin with, something to do with silk purses and sow's ears, no doubt. Though that, of course, never stopped a frog from feeling like a silk purse, and in the process giving Princess the opportunity to check his credentials, so to speak.

That there might be some danger in such promiscuous testing of frogs had certainly occurred to Princess, a bright woman well aware of the fruits of excess, and bright enough to choose the subjects for her tests with care and insist adamantly, even in the height of, but most usually well prior to that height, that protective measures be taken. Now while tonight's frog might seem a contradiction to at least part of that assertion, Princess always took pains to ascertain that those places in which she hunted attracted the right sort of frog, the sort likely to be, or at least with some scintilla of royal potential. Any frog, she felt, who could afford the prices in a bar like this, was a frog who could be trusted to be a gentleman.

They left, his hopes high, hers, much less sanguine.

And, of course, that first kiss had proved her right; still as long as she was there already, it was more pleasant to be crushed gently in the power of his arms than to lie awake atop a pile of mattresses incapable of masking the pea of loneliness. And so she stayed and rewarded the frog with a second kiss and was herself rewarded with the blissful sleep that follows passion satisfied.

The next morning Princess awoke to the whirring of blender. It was the frog making breakfast.

"Fruit smoothie. Make it myself. Every morning."

Princess would have preferred coffee and maybe a muffin, although to expect a frog to make muffins was perhaps too much. Now a prince on the other hand, a prince at least would have found a bakery. Not that the smoothie, served to her in cocktail glasses while she lazed under the frog's sheets, wasn't pleasant enough; it just wasn't coffee.

She left while the frog was in the shower. She didn't leave her number. There was no use in wasting her time on an ordinary frog.

In the days that followed there were other frogs: a graying professor of anthropology, an Irish clog dancer in town on tour, and fittingly dressed in green, a mutual fund salesman with a lateral emission lisp, a – but why go on? Princess saw no need to keep such a list. A frog was a frog, and what they did for a living and what they were called and what they looked like made little difference. Princess kissed the professor. She kissed the clog dancer. She kissed the lateral emission lisp. They were frogs.

Two months later, maybe a year, or possibly even five, Princess found herself again in The Pond. Ordinarily she visited more often, and while she had never come across the body building frog whose name she couldn't quite recall in any of her previous visits, she thought it would be wise to avoid the place for awhile in case he might have some idea of looking for her. Some frogs found her departure difficult to accept. But now that his face and form had blended into that one frog in her mind that stood for the multitudes she had kissed and found wanting, she thought another visit would be safe.

He probably would never recognize her, and she would certainly never recognize him, that is until a very well built frog, not quite young any longer, with much thinned hair and a nose that wasn't as big as it might have been, approached her at the bar.

"Don't I know you from some–?"

"Not that old chestnut," she cut him off, turning away. "You really don't expect to pick up a girl with a line like that."

"Pick up? No you've got me wrong, princess."

She turned around thinking he had in fact remembered her name, but realized from the look in his eye that his princess was generic.

"Right, I've got you wrong. You're not here looking for a little action."

"I'm not here looking for a little anything," he held up his left hand and pointed to a smiling young lady sitting alone at the other end of the bar. "I'm here to meet my wife. You just look so damn familiar."

Jimmy took out a cigarette and lit it.

He turned and walked to the other woman. They spoke for a moment and then she kissed him.

Princess watched as frog turned to prince.