Fluke (4 page)

God
, I moaned to myself.
 
Did I really try the cigarette in the mouth trick with her?

Despite how into me (and my antics) she may have been earlier, she didn’t even seem to be there that morning.

Umm…what the fuck?

I uncrossed my legs and shifted the lower half of my naked body under the table.
 
Being naked around beautiful women wasn’t something I was all that experienced with, and I felt myself growing more uncomfortable and more self-conscious with each passing second of silence.
 
Sara remained elsewhere, in some zone completely inaccessible, staring at the tabletop.

She stubbed out her cigarette in the glass ashtray sitting on the table.
 
I tried to use the slight break in her statue-like state as an opening for some conversation.

“You okay?
 
Can I do anything for you?”
 
I felt myself treading on very thin ice.
 
I worried that I had done something or said something that had effectively destroyed the fantasy.
 
I had no idea what that might have been, but I felt hope breaking down.

My idiot side seemed to have failed me, and it was time for me to consider my plan B for alleviating uncomfortable situations: leave.

“Should I go, Sara?” I asked, reaching down for my pants, puddled on the brown carpet.

I watched her face for a sign, anything.
 
She continued staring at the table, her bright green eyes a little duller than when I first drank them in.
 
Still beautiful, though… still Sara eyes.

“Sara?
 
Should I stay or should I go?” The Clash song came into my head, and I thought of the next line in the song:
 
“If I go there will be trouble…if I stay it will be double…”
Trouble either way
, I thought to myself.
 
I leaned forward and started to put my pants on.

She reached over and laid her fingertips on my shoulder, very lightly, as I started sliding my legs into my pants.
 
I felt the very edge of her fingernails, painted maroon like her dress. Her fingertips rested on my skin.
 
It felt good, warm and soft, and I hoped it was a sign for me to stay.
 
I glanced up at her, my pants up to my knees.

She never took her eyes away from the table, but she said, in a voice barely more than a whisper, “Don’t go.”
 
Her hand moved from my arm back to the table.

I was relieved, and eagerly, said, “Okay, Sara.
 
I didn’t want to go, anyway.”
 
I did, however, want to finish sliding my pants back on, and I did, standing up and buckling my belt.

A sense of relief surged through me.
 
Time to move forward.

“I’m a little hungry.
 
How about you?” I asked her, attempting to bring some life back into this dining room.
 
“Any food in the kitchen?
 
I’d love to let you experience the world of my
hungover
culinary concoctions.”
 
My stomach punctuated the sentence with a strange gurgle that was probably only audible to me.
 
I moved my hand to my stomach, as though I would be able to suppress any more outbursts.

She nodded very slightly, but enough so that I could see it.

“Great…get that stomach ready,” I said, smiling, searching for the right words, still trying to work the humor.
 
I wanted desperately to see her smile again.

I walked into the kitchen and found the light switch.
 
It was neatly decorated and spotless, with blue oven mitts hanging by the stove and shiny white appliances lining the counter.
 
It was a sharp
contrast to my own small, crumb-covered, dirty dish-ridden kitchen.
 
I noticed a wall clock in the shape of a coffee cup over the sink.
 
If it was correct, then it was 5:45 a.m.
 
We had been back at Sara’s house for five hours, and I estimated that I had slept for about three and a half.

The first thing I zeroed in on was a white Braun coffee pot sitting next to the microwave oven.
 
My head ached for a steaming cup of bitter black coffee as I searched through cabinets and drawers, praying for the grounds and the filters.
 
I finally found them in the cabinet over the pot.

I wonder how she likes her coffee, I thought as I filled the carafe with water from the shiny silver sink.
 
Probably lots of cream and sugar, like most of the women I knew.
 

The coffee started brewing as I rooted around in her kitchen for various breakfast components.
 
I had a vision of a giant spread of eggs and pancakes and bacon and toast, but I figured some poached eggs and toast would be enough.

“Do you like poached eggs, Sara?” I called from the kitchen.
 
There was no answer, and I continued on.

Oh well
, I thought.
 
Looks like I’m on my own here.

I started the eggs after finding a pan and dropped two slices of wheat bread in the toaster.
 
The smell of fresh coffee became stronger, invading my senses, making my mouth water.
 
I found two flowery coffee mugs in a cabinet and filled them.
 
After a moment of contemplation, I added two scoops of sugar from a matching flowery canister and a dollop of milk from the half-gallon jug in the fridge to her cup.

As I carried the steaming cups to the dining room, I told her, “I didn’t know how you liked your coffee, so I added some cream and sugar.”
 
The idiot side spoke out: “You know, I take my coffee like I take my women, hot and black.”
 
I allowed myself a slight chuckle at the bad joke, which never ceased to amuse me.
 

She was still staring at the table as I set the mug in front of her.
 
She had lit another cigarette, which sat burning in the ashtray.

I stood and watched her for a moment, taking a sip of my coffee.
 
As the cup touched my lips, an involuntary twitch rocked my hand, jostling the cup and sending a burning splash of coffee on my tongue and down my chin.

The involuntary twitch was one manifestation of what had become affectionately referred to as the “Fluke Factor” by my friends. It was an unfortunate and frustrating curse of mine, and an all-too-common occurrence, happening at the most inopportune times.
 
Often, I found myself inexplicably dropping things or tripping over things. I might be talking to a customer at their door, and out of nowhere, the pizza-carrying bag might go flying. Or, a can of soda or beer in my hand might suddenly jump from my fingers at a party.
 
I couldn’t explain it any
more than I could prevent it; all I could ever hope for was to not look like too much of a fool when it came.
 
My efforts to recover and try to minimize any resulting damage only made things worse; I often ended up covered in soda or beer, soaking a carpet or a person in the process.
 
I joked with my friends often that if I had a dollar for every time I dropped my keys in an average day, I’d buy Perry’s Pizza Palace and make Perry the chief dishwasher.

“Maybe you’ve got some condition, Fluke,” Sean theorized one night as I swept shards of broken beer bottle from his driveway.

“’Condition?’” I asked, wiping beer from my shoes.

“I’m no doctor, bro, but it’s just weird how you drop shit. What triggers it?
 
What’s the factor, man?
 
Is it because you’re a Fluke?”

Thus the Fluke Factor was born. Or at least christened.

“
Ow
! Shit! Hot!” I set the mug on the table as gently as I could with one hand, while wiping my chin with the other.
 
Dammit, what is with me burning myself tonight?

“You just look so much like him,” Sara spoke softly, her voice catching me completely off-guard, halting my frantic attempts to stop the burning.
 
I froze and looked at her, one hand on my chin, one hand still extended over the table.
 
I probably looked like a mime, mimicking a moron.

“What was that?” I asked, “I look like what?”
 
Just then, I heard the chink of the toaster as the toast popped up.
 
The eggs sizzled and popped quietly; they needed to be tended to, or we would be eating hunks of rubber for breakfast.

“Hold that thought,” I said, walking backwards into the kitchen, pointing to her with an index finger, “I’ll be right back.”

What was that all about?
 
You look so much like him, she had said.
 
Who?
 
I wondered.
 
And, is that a good thing or a bad thing?

I took the hot toast out of the toaster, and replaced it with two more slices of bread, pushing the button down.
 
I found flowery plates that matched the mugs in the cabinet and removed two of them.
 
I took a black, Teflon-coated spatula and used it to put the eggs on the plate.
 
I was buttering the toast when I felt her hands on my bare back.

“Wow, and you cook, too!” Her voice was normal and lined with laughter.
 
She wrapped her arms around my belly, joining her hands over my belly button.
 
I heard her take a deep sniff, and she said, “Damn, that smells good.
 
I’m starving.”

Gone was “Distant Sara,” arriving on the scene was “Confused Adam.”
 
A wave of confusion washed over me.
 
Okay, what’s going on now, I wondered silently.
 
Lots of beer, amazing sex, dramatic mood swings, cryptic comments, all within the first eight hours of our time together.
 
Dare I ask?

I put two slices of buttered toast on the plate and waited for the next two slices to pop up.
 
“Are you okay, Sara?” I asked.
 
I said it a little more seriously than I meant to.

“Yeah, I’m great. Are you okay?” She laughed nervously, confused by the serious stare on my face.
 
She genuinely seemed to have no idea why I would ask such a thing.

“I’m…” I paused,
just wondering where you were half an hour ago, gorgeous
, I thought.
 
Instead, I said, “I’m great.
 
Couldn’t be better.”

Roll with it, baby
, I told myself.
 
Toast popped up, butter was spread, and breakfast was served.

4.

Mornings were terrible for me; I held waking up early in genuine contempt.
 
My theory was that the body’s internal workings would wake you up when it was ready to do so, when it was rested and prepared to start back up.
 
Alarm clocks, I felt, were nothing more than a plague rained down by an evil force, possibly even Lucifer himself.

Of course, my theories brought accusations of melodrama from my friends.
 
My friend and co-worker Kevin was an early riser, and his theory was that the earlier a man got up, the earlier a man could start his quest to grab his own destiny.

“What if you missed out on true love because you wanted to sleep another hour?” Kevin, the dreamer and eternal optimist, would ask.

“My true love would never wake up an hour before me,” was my standard response.

Sara and I had done our share of sleeping in over the last four days.
 
The normal waking time had been anywhere in between 10 a.m. and noon.
 
When she woke up first, she was playful, poking my sides or pinching my nose shut, startling me awake.
 
The one time I woke up first, I propped myself up on one elbow and watched her sleep for five minutes before she woke up, smiling.
 
“I was dreaming you were watching me,” she had said.

After waking up, we spent at least another half-hour in bed, smoking or talking, and enjoying the occasional invigorating burst of wake-up sex.
 
They were good mornings, better than any other mornings I had experienced, and I had no desire to spend them anywhere else, with anyone else.