Somethin' Extra (2000)

Patty Rice's first novel, published by Simon & Schuster in 2000, is narrated by Genie Gatlin, a twenty-something Washington-area cake maker with her own business, whose run of bad relationships has convinced her, as the jacket puts it, that men are good for only two things: their bank accounts and their bedroom skill. Her no-strings rule leads her to date married men until David Lewis, a man with money, looks, prestige and a failing marriage, forces her to second-guess what she calls the Genie Gatlin Theory on Men. (Open Library)

Watches

Pulsar watch: On the day of a blind date her friend Paulette has set up, everything goes wrong for Genie: the first wedding cake falls, she runs out of gas in hair curlers, she gets lost driving to Whitman University and leaves her résumé in the car. Dressing for the date, she snaps on her tennis bracelet and a link breaks, so she puts on her Pulsar instead, a watch that does not work because it needs a new battery, and hopes nobody will ask her the time. She then loses twenty minutes hunting for keys left in the front door and races from Lanham to Greenbelt to meet James Caldwell at Jasper's. The maker is named; the model is not.

Source text: I got ready for my date with some time to spare, but as soon as I snapped my tennis bracelet on my wrist, one of the links broke. I threw it on the dresser and put on my Pulsar watch that doesn't work because it needs a new battery. Hopefully nobody would ask me for the time. (Patty Rice, Somethin' Extra, scan cataloged as Simon & Schuster, 2000, p. 66; the hostess seats "a Genie Gatlin" with James Caldwell on p. 67; Internet Archive scan OCR)