Fluke Page 2

As it turns out, Sara didn't want to eat, and neither did I, so we decided to go straight out for drinks. I had always found eating to be a hindrance, when I wanted to drink, anyway. The two didn’t mix well with me if I ate initially, at the beginning of the night. At the end of the night would be a different story. I normally found myself craving food, like a junkie craves his fix, at the end of one of my drinking sprees.

  We found ourselves parked along the street about 15 minutes later, just outside of Cherry Street Pub. It was a drinker's bar, but not an alcoholic’s sanctuary. It hosted a twenty and thirty-something crowd, and (thankfully) had no dance floor. People were there to drink, talk, listen to music. I had been there before, and it was my kind of bar. We chose a corner booth near the bar and sat down.

  "Hi, I'm Amy," the girl with red-framed glasses said when she came over to our table, "What can I get you guys?"

  "Two shots of Hot Damn, Amy," Sara replied, taking charge, ordering for both of us, "and two Killian's.” She turned to me and smiled. "Good?"

  "Perfect,” I told her. It was perfect.

  ****

  We smoked our cigarettes; we drank our beers. Every now and then we added a shot for good measure. Any residual nervousness slowly melted away with each swallow, and Sara DuBeau and I had good conversation, which eventually morphed into drunken conversation, but it was still good. We clicked on a variety of subjects: television (Seinfeld is the best show ever, we agreed), music (“Depeche Mode still makes great music, but nobody listens,” she said. Is this wonderful, wonderful woman for real?), and movies (“Dead Poet’s Society is amazing!”). It almost seemed as though we were clicking too well, if that’s possible…we liked so many of the same things. The night took on an ethereal, dreamlike quality for me as I realized this woman beside me, this beautiful woman, had done and said nothing wrong.

  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 h
ere 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.

  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.