I'm this week's show Perfect Miss Matches.

We'll find out what happens if your best bud has antlers, the love of your life doesn't

like your shoes, and a piano lesson is out of tune.

Join me, Meg Wallitzer, for stories where two halves don't make a hole.

You're listening to Selected Shorts, where our greatest actors transport us through

the magic of fiction, one short story at a time.

We revel in stories about Perfect Matches, Romeo and Juliet, Harry and Meghan, Beavis

and Butthead, but tales about the wonderfully mismatched can also be gold.

The odd couple or Turner and Hooch say, Perfect Miss Matches works so well in stories,

by which I mean they are fascinating to witness.

You never exactly know why two people are together as a couple or as friends, or as whatever

they are to each other, nor do you know what they talk about when no one else is around.

It's the mystery of attraction and its exact opposite that powers these fascinating

duos, and on this show we have three very different examples of that attraction.

In one story, a man takes an unusual surprise guest to a stag party.

You're going to remember this, in the second a prolonged flirtation leads to a moment

of truth, and Elizabeth Stroud tells us about a favorite William Trevor story.

Our first story is by Ben Laurie, a favorite of ours who writes playful fantasies in such

works as stories for nighttime and some for the day.

You might have heard his story the book on a recent show.

This time we're happy to share an unlikely friendship in the man and the moose.

Our reader is a selected short regular Michael Cerverus, a two-time Tony Award winner whose

...