Fluke (3 page)

The intimidation factor I was feeling intensified when she told me about her education and her current job.

“I took forever, around five years, to finish my degree.
 
My major was history, with a minor in anthropology,” she told me over our fifth beer.

And I could barely muster up enough will to stay in community college the short amount of time that I did.

Slightly dull from the alcohol, I asked her, “So, uh, what does that make you?”

Jesus, you must look like a genius, Adam-boy.

“What does that make me?”
 
She paused, as if contemplating.
 
“Well, it nearly made me unemployed.
 
A history major with an anthropology minor isn’t as marketable as it may sound.”

The waitress, Amy, came over, perky as a kitten, and asked, “You guys all right, or can I
getcha
something?”

“Two more Killian’s,” Sara answered instantly.
 
The woman seemed to have drunkenness planned.

“
Okey-dokey
,” Amy chirped, and ran off with her tray.

“Old Amy Red-glasses and I had something in common,” she said, watching Amy as she disappeared behind the bar.
 
“I ended up waiting tables for three months with my degree hanging on the wall
at my apartment.”
 
She seemed a bit distant as she said this, staring off at the bar, but not really looking at anything.
 
I gulped down the last of my beer, and prodded her.
 
All I wanted to do was watch her and listen to her talk.

“And?
 
After the waitressing gig?”

“Oh,” she said, turning her head back to me, wrapping her tan fingers around the beer glass in front of her.
 
“Well, that was when I lived in Texas.”

“You lived in Texas?”
 
Inexplicably, this intrigued me.
 
I knew better than to assume most people living in Florida were natives, or had lived there even half of their lives. Nearly everyone in the city was transplanted, though normally from somewhere in the mid-western or northeastern part of the country.

“Yep, I’m a born and raised Texan,” she said in an exaggerated southern drawl.
 
“Got my book
learnin
’ at the University of Texas in Austin, by
gawwd
.”

We both laughed, and I thought to myself that I never would have guessed her to be from Texas.
 
She had no trace of
any
accent, much less a southern drawl.

“And you ended up here how…?” I led her.

“Well, like I said, when I graduated college, I worked as a waitress for a bit, but it was killing me.
 
I hated that job.
 
I’d come home, sweaty, tired, pockets heavy with change from tips, and see my degree hanging on the wall and want to scream.
 
All I wanted to do was work in a museum, something with history, relics, artifacts, and all that gee-whiz kind of stuff.
 
I just wanted things to change, I mean, I was miserable, and there was no way I was going to make a dent in my student loan debts working as a waitress.”
 
She downed the last of her beer and I made a mental note that, ounce for ounce, she had matched me in alcohol consumption.

Does that make her a drunk, or does it mean I’m slowing down in my old age?

Amy came back to the table and set two frosty glasses of beer down on cardboard coasters, picked up our nearly overflowing ashtray, and dumped it onto a napkin on her tray.

“You two let me know if you need anything else, okay?”
 
She smiled as we nodded politely at her, then she was gone, making her rounds.

Sara went on with her story.
 
“I had a professor that I’m fairly certain had a huge crush on me.
 
He was a sweet old man, but couldn’t keep his eyes still when he talked to me.”
 
I know how he felt, I thought to myself.
 
“Anyway, he came into the restaurant one night, and sat in my section.”
 
Her eyes were sparkling as she told the story, and I recognized the spark as something I experienced on more than one occasion: nostalgia for a time that was miserable, but doesn’t seem so bad, in hindsight.
 
She continued:

“I went over to take the drink orders, and he recognized me.
 
‘Miss
DuBeau
,’ he said. ‘I would have thought you’d be running a museum by now,’ he laughed.
 
He was a happy guy who loved to stare at me, and he was doing it as we talked.
 
I got a little uncomfortable, with his wife sitting right there, but I just ignored it.

“So, I took his order, and he introduced me to his wife.
 
I felt humiliated, serving one of my professors his dinner.
 
That’s something you’re supposed to do while you’re still a dorm rat in college, not after you’ve received your bachelor’s degree.”

I nodded in agreement, even though I had no bachelor’s degree.
 
I was reminded of an instance when I delivered a pizza to my English 101 teacher.
 
He stared at me, trying to place me, and I gave him his pizza and beat feet back to my car before he recognized me.
 
It was an awful feeling.

“Wow, I’m taking forever with this story,” she laughed, and we both paused to sip our beers.
 
I lit a cigarette for myself, and then held the lighter for her.

“That’s okay,” I joked.
 
“I have nowhere to be in the morning, I’m unemployed.”
 
At the moment, the buzz in my head felt too nice for me to worry about that particular fact.

“Anyway, the professor and his wife finished eating and were leaving, when he stopped by the drink station where I was catching my breath and having a soda.
 
‘Miss
DuBeau
,” he whispered, and I thought,
man, he’s
gonna
hit on me
.
 
I was thinking of ways to blow him off when he told me, ‘I have a couple of museum connections that may be useful to you, if you’re interested.’
 
I instantly felt like an ass for thinking he was
gonna
hit on me, and I said, ‘Heck yeah!’
 
So, I went to his office at the campus the next afternoon, and he had the information right there.”

“So, he never hit on you, huh?” I asked, jokingly.

“Well, yeah, but it was after he gave me the name and phone number of the director of the City Museum of History,” she smiled.
 
“I went home afterward and called Mike, and we talked for about half an hour, and he said he wanted to interview me in person. I loaded up my little
Volks
, headed east, and a year later I’m still employed.”

“So, you work at the museum, huh?”

“Yeah.
 
I got lucky.
 
Most museums like to hire someone who has their Master’s degree or Ph.D. already.
 
At the time I just didn’t want to stay in school any longer.
 
I knew I could do the job.
 
And lucky for me, Mike liked me.
 
So he gave me a chance as an assistant curator, and here I am.”
 
She picked up her beer, and I watched her long, elegant fingers while I thought.

I hadn’t even been to the City Museum of History.
 
I had a bad feeling that the clicking that we had been doing was about to come to a grinding halt.
 
On one side of the table sat Sara:
 
beautiful, smart, gainfully employed with an interesting job.
 
On the other side sat Adam Fluke:
 
tired-looking, no desire to learn, abruptly unemployed from a job delivering pizzas.
 
I thought briefly of the theory that opposites attract and held onto that straw.
 
Our lives seemed so different, but our personalities eerily similar.
 
I prayed silently that Sara and I could find a happy medium, and that tonight wouldn’t be our only night together.

“It doesn’t matter who the hell you are or what the hell she is,” Sean was fond of saying.
 
“When the lights are out and you make the beast of two backs, it just doesn’t matter, brother.
 
All that matters is that moment.”
 
His logic was twisted, and I didn’t necessarily subscribe to that set of beliefs, but I paraphrased “all that matters is that moment” and let it guide me at the Cherry Street Pub.

A few hours later, I found myself paying a taxi driver in front of her place, and we stumbled up to her front door.
 
After a rough bout with the keys and the lock we careened inside, kissing, and fell to the floor.

"Shit…" we made no attempt at getting up as we bumped into things:
 
the coffee table, a stereo speaker, a bookshelf.
 
"Get your clothes off," she told me, laughing, "Now!"
 
She pulled her dress up and off of her body as I fumbled out of my clothes.
 
I leaned back, my elbows digging into the carpet, as she moved over and on top of me.

3.

I woke up an indeterminable amount of time later.
 
I was on my back, confused…a state of mind I had experienced before.
 
I waited for it all to come back to me, and only a few seconds later I was remembering.
 
Beautiful Sara, screaming as she climaxed, rolling off me, falling asleep.
 
Me, pulling a blanket-like-thing down from the back of her couch down on top of us, and falling asleep myself, wondering if that night had actually happened.
 
Judging by the unfamiliar surroundings and the faint, but pleasant, soreness below my waist, it had.

I smiled in the dark, and moved my hand over to where she had been but felt only carpet.
 
I rolled over to feel around for my clothes in the darkness.

After locating my khakis, but not my boxers, I went ahead and slid them on, thinking about a song my friends and I used to sing in instances like this:
“Now I’m free…
freeballin
’…”

I wandered around slowly and carefully in the dark, not wanting to step on and crush little Killer. I found Sara sitting in her dining room, staring at the table, naked and still as a statue, holding a cigarette in her right hand.
 
The air smelled of sex and cigarettes, and my brain was buzzing lightly from it all.
 
She exhaled smoke slowly as I sat down next to her.

"Sara?" I asked, but she didn't answer.
 
She continued her study of the wooden surface.
 
I grabbed a cigarette out of her pack and used her lighter to fire it up.
 
Uncertain of just what in the hell was happening here, I went ahead and let the idiot side of me come out.
 
I stood up, let my khakis drop down around my ankles, and sat back down naked.
 
"That's better, there we go," I said, stretching my legs out, my pants bunched around my ankles.
 
“
Ahh
…”

My idiot side was my first and favorite tactic for alleviating uncomfortable situations. I didn’t deal with moments like these too well, so I defaulted to humor, which I thought of as the ultimate medium.
 
Mostly, it was humor at my own expense, which was, of course, a crowd pleaser.
 
I was certainly a ham, and loved the attention I received for it.

But I was getting nothing from Sara.
 
She didn’t even glance at me as I crossed my legs and sat back in an over-exaggerated arms-over-the-chair-back pose, cigarette clamped between my teeth, looking like a naked fool.

She had been such an easy and receptive audience the evening before, laughing at nearly every stupid comment and silly gesture I made, whether my intent was humor or not.
 
She nearly sprayed me with beer at the pub when I attempted my trick where I flip my cigarette up and into my mouth, and all I did was poke the tip of my nose with the cherry.
 
I slapped myself in the face, knocking the ashes from my nose and feeling the uncomfortable burning for several minutes after the cigarette fell to the floor. I felt incredibly stupid, but she seemed pretty amused by it.