Fluke (16 page)

9.

Classes began two weeks after we moved in together.
 
I had started my job already (which quickly replaced Perry’s, winning the “easiest job I’ve ever had” award, as I told Sara and Sean), and stayed busy enough with that.

I was unintentionally meeting a lot of people that I would be in school with.
 
I worked at the bookstore, and of course, everyone needed textbooks, so I met people as they came into the store.
 
You could tell who the new kids were by the fact that they usually left with a pile of school pennants and whatnot, filled with some teen movie idea of college: parties, football games, date rapes, stereotypes.
 
I quickly used this to my advantage to sell off almost all of my stuff.

"Oh, hey, taking Psych 101?" I would ask, ringing up the inevitable Whitecaps mugs, T-shirts, binders, and moving on to the Psychology 101 textbook they handed me.

"Yeah.
 
Are you?" the freshman would ask me.

"Tuesdays and Thursdays from 12 to 3.
 
You?"

"Oh, so am I," they would reply.

"
Whaddaya
know, we’re classmates.
 
I'm Adam, good to meet you."

"Nice to meet you, I’m Jon, man."

There would be a pause at this point in the conversation as I finished ringing the person up on their parents’ credit card.
 
Then I would continue, "Wouldn't happen to need some furniture, would you?"

The new kids, the ones that didn't have anything yet, bought my dilapidated couch, worn furniture, and out-of-date stereo.
 
Sara had a stereo already; there was no need for two, not to mention no room for it.
 
I was a little moved by the sale of this item in particular,
and I probably overcharged for it, but I couldn’t help myself…the stereo and I had been through ten years’ worth of music together.
 
I only wondered if the guy that bought it would play the same quality music through its speakers that I had.
 
Probably not, I decided.
 
In the end, I made enough money to ensure my old bills were paid and to actually carry my weight in my new place with Sara.
 
For a few months, anyway.
 
I was suddenly a debt-free man, living with the woman I loved, pursuing life.
 
I wasn’t just Fluke anymore, not the popular opinion of Fluke, anyway, and it felt good being where I was.

And, of course, I owed it all to Sara.

****

After my first day of classes we went out to one of the karaoke bars along the coast, a place called Toucan’s.
 
I had surprised her by showing up at the museum (setting foot inside of it for the first time ever, after having spent my entire life in Hazel Beach).
 
I saw her leading a tour through the Spanish acquisition of Florida section of the gallery and followed stealthily along, listening to her speak from a distance.
 
My attempt at prowess ended abruptly when I collided with the brass pole that roped off part of an exhibit, which sent the pole crashing and clanging on the floor.
 
The noise brought sharp stares my way, and Sara looked to see what was catching everyone’s attention.

I smiled sheepishly, scrapping any ideas I had had previously about sneaking up and giving her a kiss, and stood the pole back up, adjusting the velvet rope.
 
Recognizing me and my failed attempt, she returned the smile and continued talking to the group.
 
“So, feel free to look around, and I’ll be back with you in just a moment,” she told them, stole my way, and hugged me.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, seeming pleasantly surprised.

“I just had to see you,” I told her.
 
And that was the truth.

So, we went to Toucan’s, drank our imported beer, ate a pile of hot wings, and got pleasantly drunk.
 
We listened to everyone else singing and having a good time.
 
Occasionally, there was someone that really got into it, singing like they were on the stage of American Idol or something.
 
We laughed about those, but after some prodding on Sara’s part we took to the miniature stage ourselves, and sang a duet version of “Sweet Child O’ Mine.”
 
There was a good deal of applause at the end, which couldn’t have been because we were any good.
 
I figured it must have been the fact that I was up there with the most beautiful woman in town.
 
The way the drunks were ogling her legs as we walked back to our table confirmed this, and it didn’t upset me; she had great legs, after all.
 
It just made me think again about how fortunate I was.
 

Two mornings later, I had arranged for the morning off from the bookstore.
 
Sara didn’t have to be at the museum until the
afternoon, so we were sleeping in.
 
The doorbell rang, and I pretended to be asleep so she would get up to go answer it.
 
I rolled over and smiled to myself when she left the room.
 
A few minutes later I heard the front door shut, and Sara squealed in delight.
 
She ran into the room holding the dozen red roses I had arranged for delivery to her that morning.

“For the five best weeks of my life.
 
I love you,” she read from the small card affixed to the bouquet, smelling the flowers.
 
Her eyes filled quickly with tears as she set the roses on the nightstand and jumped back into bed with me.

“I love you, too,” she told me as we lay together, and I dried her tears with a corner of the sheet.

****

There were weekends when Sara would have to go in to the museum for one reason or another, so I tried to time it so that my weekend assignments coincided with her work.
 
I only had three classes, and the bookstore only took up 5 hours of each morning.
 
My weekend assignments didn’t normally take much time.
 
This meant I found myself alone in our place on the occasional Saturday or Sunday.

When I was alone, I sometimes found myself wandering around soaking up every little part of what made Sara who she was.
 
I looked through photo albums at people I had never met, inspected how she arranged her things in the restroom and delved into her music and book collections.
 
Though not as large as mine, I was very pleased when I found it was as methodically arranged and cared for as any I had seen. Ah, organization, I thought to myself.
 
She had a predominantly feminine touch to her collection; Sarah McLachlan, Belly, Juliana Hatfield, PJ Harvey, Cocteau Twins.
 
Yet thrown into the mix were many bands with a harder edge to them: a
Fugazi
here, a Jane’s Addiction there, and, of course, an ample supply of 80’s material, which was after my own heart.
 
Usually, at the beginning of one of my days alone, I began by popping one of her CDs in while I did my homework.
 
The Sara music always made the homework easier.
 

“And I would be the one, to hold you down…kiss you so hard…I’ll take your breath away…”
Sarah McLachlan would sing while I pushed through equations from my Algebra textbook.
 

One particular Saturday, a couple of months after I started school, I found myself in her closet looking at the clothes she wore.
 
I imagined her in each outfit as stunning to me in my mind as the day I met her.
 
More stunning.
 
A lot of them I had already seen on her, but there were many that I had not.
 
I was perusing all of the neatly hung items (organized by color, which I loved), when I saw that there were several shoeboxes that I hadn’t noticed before stacked together on the upper shelf in the corner, partially hidden by a stack of sweaters.
 
I moved over to where they were and studied the outside of each of the three.
 
I hadn’t violated her privacy with my little weekend
adventures, and I never set out to actually go through her belongings.
 
I trusted her implicitly.
 
Yet, I was drawn to these shoeboxes.
 
The brand “Bass” stamped boldly along all of the sides of the top one, along with “size 7” on the ends.
 
I glanced warily at the entrance to the closet as I picked up the box and popped a squat on the floor.
 
Placing it in front of me, making a mental note as to how it had been stacked in the corner, I went ahead and lifted the cover, flipped it over, and placed it on the floor in front of the box, so as to replace it correctly when I was finished.

Inside the box were stacks of old photos.
 
There were a few that were framed, but most lay in two neat piles, filling the space within.
 
Just extra pictures
, I thought to myself.
 
I did the same thing, except not quite as neatly, and nicely.
 
It often took me months, and on a couple of occasions, years, to actually get the film developed, much less buy the physical albums needed to store them.

I picked up the first stack of pictures and began to look through them.
 
I saw pictures of a little girl that I recognized as a very young Sara.
 
She was standing in a large plastic pool next to a swing set in a backyard, playing and smiling.
 
Her hair was tied up in pigtails for most of the pictures, and I thought about how cute that was.
 
Seeing the younger version of what came to be the woman I love was quite amazing to me.

I flipped through picture after picture and laughed out loud at how cute some of them were.
 
I was almost to the bottom of the first stack of photos when I came across a picture that made my heart skip and then thud.

Holy shit; she wasn’t kidding.

I broke into a nervous sweat and set the photos down in front of me so that I could wipe my hands off on my shirt.
 
My heart was beating frantically, and I wondered briefly if it was possible to have a heart attack at age 26.
 
My stomach groaned at me, and I shook myself looking down at the pile of pictures again.

I picked them up and studied the top one closely.
 
It was at that moment that a flutter of movement caught my eye at the closet door, and I jumped, tossing all of the pictures into the air as Killer leapt into my lap.
 
In his wake he had knocked over the other stack of pictures, and left a heap that I was positive I could not work back into any semblance of the same order they had been in.
 
I cursed
under my breath as I gave him a few quick, half-hearted strokes along his wiry fur.

“Bad Killer,” I said to the dog, picking him up and setting him just outside the bedroom door.
 
“You stay out here.
 
Bark if your mommy comes in.”
 
I was shaking a little bit from the scare when I began to push together the second stack of photos and put them back in the shoebox, on top of a framed photograph that was upside down at the bottom.
 
I rearranged the others that I had already looked at and set them back down on the floor face down.
 
I picked up the one I had been looking at when Killer charged me and leaned forward to study it closely again.

There were two people in the photograph.
 
One was obviously Sara when she was maybe 5 years old, sitting in the seat of the swing I had already seen.
 
The eyes gave her away, even when she was a little girl.
 
Man, how many hearts has this beautiful woman’s eyes sent packing through the years?
The second person was a grown man who was turned and smiling at the camera.
 
He looked to be about 30 years old.
 
He was pushing young Sara in the swing.
 
The photo held my attention like nothing ever had before in my life.
 
I sat and stared, dumbfounded.