Fluke (14 page)

Shit, it’s happening again, I thought.
 
I felt the first bristles of panic in my stomach, pushing aside the previous feelings of heartburn from the hash browns.
 
I moved my hand to Sara’s back and said, “Sara? You okay?”

I got the response I had feared, but expected: nothing.
 
She continued staring off, back in the foreign zone, far away from me, far away from Sean, far away from the Waffle House.
 
Suddenly, horribly, it was that first night all over again.

Sean waved his hand up and down in front of his face, his palm about six inches from his nose.
 
“Sara?” She continued to stare, and he looked at me.
 
“Is she okay?”

Ignoring Sean, I said, “Sara, honey, let’s pay and go home.” I rubbed the palm of my hand up and down the slight bumps of her spine.
 
She didn’t move, though, and I looked at Sean, who looked back at me, helpless.
 
I didn’t know what to do, so I started telling
Sean about the first time it had happened.
 
I looked at her one more time to make sure she was still gone, and spoke.

“She did this our first night together, man.
 
I don’t know what it was, but she wouldn’t look at me or talk to me for a half hour.
 
All she did was sit and smoke,” I whispered to him, mindful of Yvonne and the rest of the staff, as well as the two other customers inside the restaurant.

“What did you do?” he whispered back.
 
He seemed nearly as desperate as I did.

“Actually,” I started, thinking about how ridiculous it was going to sound, “I made breakfast.”

Puzzled, he said, “What?”

“I just went about my business, you know, whipping up some grub at her place, and she snapped out of it after a little while.
 
She actually did speak to me once while she was like this.
 
She told me ‘don’t go’.”

I held back the comment she had made about me looking “so much like him,” though.
 
I didn’t want to open that can of worms with Sean, not with my already doubtful thoughts on that subject.
 
The last thing I wanted to hear was Sean sounding rational with his theories about the comment.

I suggested to Sean that we just relax, and when she was back with us, we’d leave. The jukebox was quietly playing “Caught Up In You” by .38 Special.
 
I lit a cigarette and we sat quietly.
 
Yvonne, by the register, called to us, “
Ya’ll
need anything now?”

I started to shake my head no, when Sara called to her, “Can we get our check?” I felt her body moving under my hand; she was back.

Sean and I both shot our eyes to her, and she said, “I’m tired.
 
What do you guys say we get out of here? Adam?”

“Sounds good, Sara,” I replied.
 
Sean agreed, staring at me, confused.

So, we got our check, and Sean offered me a ride home as we stood in the parking lot.

“Sorry, Sean, he’s mine for the night,” Sara giggled, wrapping her arms around my waist, pulling me towards the Volkswagen.

Sara, back to normal.
 
Distant Sara had made her appearance, enough to amplify my confusion and initiate Sean’s.

“Nice to meet you, Sara.
 
You kids have fun,” Sean said, waving.
 
A stern glance my way from him was his way of saying, “Are you
gonna
be okay?” I answered him with a nod.

“Let’s go get
pantsless
,” Sara laughed.

And the night ended with Sara and me
pantsless
, shirtless, underclothes less.
 
We made love and fell asleep, and another night was over.

8.

The “magic” that came from Sara began to leak into other parts of my life.
 
I started writing again while she was at work.
 
I wrote until my fingers began to hurt, and then I typed, after that.
 
Magic?
Is it magic or that I’m in love?
 
I wrote in one of my many notepads, Maybe “love magic,” a subtle, albeit a bit cheesy-sounding, combination of the two.

Whatever it was, it was all around me.
 
In just under three weeks, we were Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in my mind, and everything was singing and dancing in my life now.
 
But, Fred’s dancing shoes were wearing thin, and he no longer had the means to go pick up some more.
 
I thought about the conversation we had that morning while we were both waking, for some strange reason, before the sun had time to send its rays to penetrate the window.
 

“I need to find a J-O-B.
 
Argh,” I bemoaned, the words moving down and around her beautiful head while it rested on my chest.
 
I tried to make the daunting task sound dreadful.
 
I enjoyed exaggeration and milked it for comic value as often as possible.
 
“I wonder if the city is hiring any garbage men.
 
Then you could meet me at the curb each morning, give me a peck on the cheek, and hand over your Hefty bag full of trash for me to throw in the truck and squash with that big
squasher
thing.”

“I hear they make pretty good money.
 
And, a medical and dental plan, 401K, the whole bit,” she replied.
 
“Seriously, though, maybe you could work with me?” she had said.
 
We were both quiet for a bit while I mulled over this.
 
I just didn’t know if I could handle a hand-me-down job from my perfect girlfriend.
 
Something in my mind whispered that accepting a job that Sara got me would decrease me in her eyes, reflect poorly on my
manliness
.

“What would I do in a museum, Sara?”

“Well, you could be a tour guide, or work in ticket sales, maybe.
 
I don’t know.
 
I’d have to talk to Mike.
 
He does all of the hiring.
 
I am sure there is something.
 
And, besides, we could work together!”
 
She lifted her head, and kissed me on my chin.

“Okay,” I told her.
 
“I’ll think about it if there aren’t any openings as a waste management technician for the city of Hazel Beach.”
 
I laughed at my own joke, and she gave me a couple of playful punches in my side, which only made me laugh harder.
 
Finally, I conceded, and said I would think it over if today didn’t go well.
 

Sara was the assistant curator at the City Museum of History.
 
It just so happened that she had spent several weeks traveling around Florida, trying to procure some historical items for the museum to display, right before we met.
 
She had flown back home from south Florida the afternoon before I delivered that fateful pizza to her.
 
When I thought about all of this it made my head spin at how much she was doing, and how little I had done, and how quickly my life was changing.
 

“Or,” she said, turning her head to look at me, “you could go back to school if you wanted.”

“
Ahhh
, but I never let schooling interfere with my education,” I said to her, using the only words of Mark Twain’s that had ever caught my attention.
 
This was likely because they were so fitting for an underachiever like myself.
 
“Anyway, how would I pay my bills?”

“Well,” she said, drawing in a breath, “you could move in with me.
 
Here.
”
 
I wondered if she could feel my heart leap against my chest when she said that.
 
If I had been standing up, I might have been thrown backwards and forwards with the movement of my heart.
 
I certainly would have dropped anything in my hands, and probably would have toppled over.
 
Thankfully, I was already lying down.

Three weeks ago I was kicking a dirty magazine under my couch
.

“And then,” she continued, “you can quote Mark Twain to me every morning…if you want to.”
 

I had agreed to think about that, too.
 
I admitted that to myself, now home in my recliner, as I perused the classifieds…again.
 
I wanted to live with her.
 
She excited me every
day.
 
I had never been with anyone like her.
 
On top of being incredibly sexy and incredibly fun, she was intelligent.
 
I had never been with a woman that could recognize anything I quoted except for movie lines, and occasionally, song lyrics that weren’t too obscure or off the beaten popular music path.
 
Sara amazed me.
 

So that morning I gave the big effort.
 
I made phone call after phone call in my quest for employment.
 
After
feeling
out the possibilities of everything listed in the newspaper, I made some calls to places that I thought I might like to work that weren’t listed in the paper:
 
Library, The Tune Hole, even one of the clothing stores in Oakwood Mall that I liked.
 
I couldn’t see myself actually working in a
mens
’ clothing store when I thought about it; they seemed to hire only beautiful women, even though it was men’s clothing.
 
Oh well, it would be worth it if I could get some employee discount, I thought as I spoke to the girl on the phone.
 
“We always take applications!” she told me cheerily, right before we were done.
 
Great.

I showered, shaved, and threw on some khaki pants.
 
Browsing through my shirts, I decided that looking for a job was a good reason to wear a tie, so I chose a white Ralph Lauren button-up.
 
I loved wearing ties, and tried to make an excuse to throw one on whenever I could.
 
I felt a person could rarely be too overdressed.
 
Back in the day (just a few weeks ago) Sean and I had a theory about how wearing khakis increased your odds of picking up a woman by about 50%.
 
“They love that shit,” he would say, “You stand out.
 
You appear to be exactly what they want…as if khakis, and maybe a tie, mean that you are going somewhere with your life.”
 
We always laughed at that.
 
Sean was the same guy that would get sloppy drunk, stand up next to the bar, and announce to all the women in the room, “All right.
 
Now, who’s coming home with me?”
 

Being “Mr. GQ,” at least one of the women was invariably attracted by his antics, saw past that obnoxious, male chauvinist side to him, and graced his bed that night.
 

Today, however, I wasn’t wearing these clothes to give me a nickel advantage on picking up someone.
 
For the first time since probably puberty, I was only thinking about one woman.
 
I thought about Sara as I tied a Windsor knot, and looked at myself in the mirror.
 
“You look very employable, Mr. Fluke.
 
People want you to
sell CDs for them.
 
They want you to marry their daughters and spend long boring holiday dinners with them.” I said to my reflection.
 
I grabbed my keys from their home on the table, and locked up my place.
 
The magic was working its way into me as I got into my car.
 
Nothing can go wrong right now, I thought.
 
I turned the key, and the engine kicked in immediately.
 
I backed out of my parking spot in the gravel, and saw the neighborhood thugs, already at it, music full bore, drinking out of paper bags and whooping it up, as Sara had described.
 
I thought again about moving in with Sara and decided that I wanted to do it pretty badly.
 
I should probably wait to see if she asks me again, I thought.
 
Okay, I can wait.
 
I heard some music that I actually recognized from the roustabouts’ boom box as I left to go find work.
 
“
187 on the
motherfuckin
’ cop,
beotch
…
”