Fluke (11 page)

“Don’t want
Flukey
to get hurt,” she laughed.
 
I couldn’t help it when I was with her, I laughed raucously, not unlike a hyena.
 
We left the carnival with Sara driving, me riding shotgun, and
Flukey
chilling in the back seat.

“Maybe I should get him a car seat?” Sara wondered aloud as we left the carnival.

The moon was bright that night, a big shiny disc in the sky, with its companion reflection wrinkled and shimmering on the water’s surface.
 
We stopped about fifteen feet from the edge of the water, and I closed my eyes.

“This is what makes life worth living, Sara,” I told her, tilting my head back, sucking the salty air in through my nose, filling my lungs.
 
I wiggled my toes in the sand, trying to cover my feet with the cool, slightly moist grains, listening to the slight grinding sound as my feet dug in.

“It’s so beautiful,” she commented, and her hand tightened its grip on mine.
 
I had found the perfect person to take to the beach with me at night, during the day, anytime.

We sat down, and she leaned against my side, my left arm wrapped around her.
 
We felt like a perfect fit, sitting like this, and I felt like I wanted to say something thoughtful.
 
I wanted to commemorate the moment, but the words jumbled in my head, and I ended up saying nothing.

Neither one of us said anything for several minutes.
 
We just sat quietly, occasionally adjusting our positions in order to get closer.
 
The song “Enjoy the Silence” started playing faintly in my head.

As if reading my mind, Sara sang quietly, “All I ever wanted…all I ever needed…is here, in my arms,” and this woman once again blew me away.
 

I added the next line from the song, in my warbled baritone, “Words are very un-necessary.” She looked up from my shoulder and smiled, and the connection between us grew tighter and more unreal that very second.

She moved in front of me and sat with her back to my chest, her legs lying over mine, spread in the sand.
 
I wrapped my arms around her waist, my biceps resting against the side of her breasts, and she spoke.

“You know, that girl at the fair likes you.” She said it nonchalantly, and I fought to not tense up.

“You mean, uh, Heather,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant myself.
 
I had an inexplicable feeling of guilt creeping up in me, though I had done nothing wrong.

“You know what I’m talking about, Adam.
 
Did you see the way she looked at you when I touched you?”

“I didn’t really notice,” I fibbed.
 
“What makes you think she likes me?”

“I told you earlier tonight.
 
I’m a woman,” she said, turning her head up to face me.
 
She smiled and elaborated, “We can change our mind when we want, and we can see right through other women.”

“Well, I guess I’m just a dumb guy, because I didn’t get that feeling at all,” I said.
 
I hoped I wasn’t digging some kind of hole for myself.

“Whatever.
 
She was jealous of me, trust me.
 
She wanted to be the one that grabbed that cotton candy off of your face,” she said, and I didn’t respond.
 
The sound of small waves breaking filled the silence.

After a few moments she spoke again.
 
“Do you think she’s pretty?” she asked.

As soon as the question ended, I felt my guts tighten up.
 
Oh, man, how do I answer this?

By being honest, Adam-boy.
 
That’s how you answer this.

“Yeah, she’s attractive,” I said.
 
There, it was out.
 
Time to prepare defenses.

“I thought so too,” she agreed, and I eased a little bit.
 
“Would you go out with her if you didn’t have me?”

“I don’t know, Sara,” I answered, carefully.
 
“Truthfully, I haven’t really thought about anything in the context of not having you.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.
 
She sat up and shifted her body sideways to look at me.

Man, when did this wonderful, relaxing beach moment turn difficult?

It wasn’t the question that I minded; it was the answer I had that worried me.
 
I was afraid that no matter what I said or how I put it, she wouldn’t like it.
 
I had been accused by friends before of falling for women too quickly, of giving too much of myself too soon, and I was inclined to believe it, though I denied it to my friends.
 
I had probably scared women off before by my eagerness to get serious quick.
 
I didn’t want to do that now, not with Sara, but I had to be honest.

“I don’t know.
 
I mean, I just don’t really think about things like other women.
 
When I think of people in my life, I think of you first,” I paused, trying to gauge her reaction, looking for signs of panic, signs of fear, signs of flight.
 
There were none.

I continued, “I’ve had the most fun with you than I’ve ever had with anyone, male or female, and when I think of Heather, I think of a friend.
 
When I think of you, I think of a woman that I want in every part of my life.
 
I think of the only person I want to see when I fall asleep, and the only person I want to see when I wake up.
 
I mean I’ve fallen for you in a huge way, and you’re all I want.
 
That’s what I meant.”

She didn’t respond, and I worriedly added, “I don’t want to say too much, or seem pushy, or be too forward, Sara, but I can’t help how I’m feeling, and I have to admit, it feels good to tell you these things.”

She was silent, and she looked down.
 
I watched her take a finger and drag it in the sand, making letters, possibly forming words.
 
Or hatching an escape plan, I thought briefly.
 
I was curious what she was writing, but her shadow blocked the letters.
 
She leaned back, and I saw two words: Me too.

“I’m nuts about you too, Adam Fluke,” she said, and a wave of emotion came crashing down over me, washing me, nearly drowning me, and all I could do was pull her as close to me as humanly possible.

7.

Sara’s interest in the fact that I was adopted seemed to have stoked the embers of my own curiosity; I found myself, over the course of the next couple of days, thinking about it for what seemed to be the millionth time in my twenty-six years.
 
As I said, it was something that finally had died down years before, that burning need to know who and what I came from and why.
 
The idea of biological parents became so abstract to me that it was nearly impossible to believe.
 
It was something I couldn’t see, which made it terribly hard to believe in (sort of the same thing I’ve heard people who don’t believe in God use for reasoning).
 
Couple that with the fact that it takes nearly an act of congress to open an adoption record, and you can see why it was just easier for me to forget about it, to let it remain hidden.

Once, when I was 18, Kevin and I were at the
Seabreeze
Mall.
 
It was a Saturday, the weather had been terrible, and there hadn’t been much else to do.
 
The mall was our default hangout for boring situations such as bad weather Saturdays.

We had been there for a couple of hours, having killed most of that time playing air hockey at the Aladdin’s Castle arcade (I beat Kevin four games out of five; air hockey was the only “sport” I dominated at) and sucking down shakes from the Orange Julius.
 
After doing a cursory stroll through the aisles of Camelot Music, we found ourselves in the center of the mall, the pavilion, as it was called.
 
It was the place where all the holiday heroes sat with endless lines of screaming children.
 
Santa showed up after Thanksgiving, and the Easter bunny was there in March and April.
 
They held scaled-down fashion shows there from time to time, and, when there was nothing else exciting happening along those
lines, you’d find a new car or two sitting there for guys like me to gawk at longingly.

And, on occasion, artists from the local area would set up displays of their work on the pavilion, which, being in a beach town, usually consisted of watercolor sunsets and charcoal drawings of piers with seagulls flitting around them.
 
It seemed like all the local artists thought that the general public didn’t get enough of the beach from living within a few miles of it; they must have felt that we wanted the insides of our homes covered with replicas of it.

This particular Saturday was a local art show day, and Kevin and I found ourselves, spent from air hockey and Orange Julius, meandering through the pavilion, browsing the various beach scenes and seagulls.
 
It was a mindless way to kill some time, and it provided me a platform to reaffirm my stance that it was just too much beach.

“I see the beach every damn day.
 
Why would I want to hang a painting of it over the couch?” I posed.

“Don’t be so damn cynical, Fluke,” Kevin answered.

“Dogs playing poker,” I said.
 
“Now there’s art.”

After a few minutes of this, we came across a few easels standing off to the side.
 
A disinterested man sat in a metal chair next to the easels, reading a newspaper and looking as if he could care less about being there.

The pictures that rested on the easels looked strange, like some sort of abstract art. They weren’t paintings, they were prints, and looked very “busy,” with many different colors creating patterns across the print.

“What’s this?” Kevin asked the bored man.

“
Three-d
,” the man said, not looking up.

“Okay…” Kevin said, waiting for elaboration.

Realizing we were genuinely interested (and that we weren’t just going to leave him alone), the man sighed, folded his paper into his lap, and looked up at Kevin.
 
“Read the sign below the picture.”

I glanced down below the print I was looking at and saw a small white card that read, “Stand close to the picture and allow your eyes to go out of focus.
 
Slowly step back from the picture, keeping your eyes out of focus.
 
A hidden picture will appear.”

“Oh, it’s like some optical illusion stuff,” I said.

“Yeah, something like that,” the man answered.

The print I was looking at was an explosion of different colors.
 
The background started off red at the top, then morphed into a deep brown color by the bottom.
 
Four “lines” crossed the print horizontally.
 
These lines were more like odd, different colored shapes. There were bright yellow seashells, aqua fish, green sand dollars, and black sailboats. The colors were somewhat entrancing, and made it interesting to look at.

I tried to follow the instructions on the white card, but I couldn’t find any hidden pictures.
 
Kevin, who was looking at one next to mine, yelled out after a few seconds, “Holy cow, man.
 
There’s an airplane in here!”

I was instantly annoyed that he had discovered a hidden picture before I had been able to, but I pushed that aside and said to him (never taking my eyes off the picture in front of me), “I can’t see shit in this one, man.”

“Step aside, Fluke,” Kevin said, nudging me out of his way.

As he settled in and started looking, I went to the one he had been looking at.
 
I knew that there was an airplane in it, so I followed the instructions, and willed my mind to pick out the airplane.

“Hey, Fluke, it’s a shark,” Kevin said, tapping my shoulder.

Fifteen minutes later, Kevin had seen all of the hidden pictures, and I had seen none. My frustration was peaked, and Kevin enjoyed that to no end.

“Open your mind, brother,” Kevin said.