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maladroit|05.10.03 She had ink smudges on her fingers from a book I’ve never heard of about the triumph of the human spirit in the face of adversity, or theories on dark matter, alternate realities, and the possibility of time travel, or maybe the socio-political ramifications of the food industry’s advertising tactics and Congressional influence. I don’t know, I couldn’t see the cover. Draped over the back of her chair was a sweater much too thick for this time of year that leaves little blue fuzzies all over everything it touches and an umbrella, refusing to succumb to the advances of an early evening breeze, nearly rolls over then tips back to its original position at her feet, despite assurances from the weekday morning weatherman, whom I’ve convinced myself for no good reason is having a torrid affair with the weekend weatherman, that a low pressure system from the Gulf of Mexico would keep the rain well to the north of us.
As I handed my highly recommended copies of Catch-22, The Frog King, and an overused MasterCard to a sexagenarian cashier that looked more worn out than my credit line, I noticed the table next to hers was empty. So, I decided to temporarily lift my self-imposed ban on Starbucks that probably won’t last very long anyway, ordered a Grande White Mocha, let the corporate coffee monkey put my eighty-nine cents change in the tip jar her own damn self, and ran outside to claim the unoccupied seat before another group of disenchanted Hot Topic patrons could drip their acquiescent nonconformity all over it.
I managed to produce half an embarrassed smile when she looked up at me while I was making probably a little too much noise removing the contents of the bag with the cover of a Hemmingway novel I remember wanting to egg my high school English teacher’s house for making me read printed on it. Then again when I kicked the table trying to find my lighter in the mess of shit I keep in my pockets. Hoping a cigarette would help the excess of blood in my cheeks find its way back to the almost audibly thumping mass of sticky nervousness in my chest, I lit one up and grabbed the book on top. I couldn’t concentrate on the words; she kept tucking an especially errant lock of hair back behind her ear only to have it jump back into her field of vision after a few seconds. So I just waited what I thought to be sufficient enough time to finish a page before turning to the next. She must have thought the glances I was stealing from the corner of my eye were out of concern that my smoking was bothering her (which I would have been concerned about, you know, had it occurred to me), because she said it didn’t, but that it was bad for me and I really should quit like she was the first person to ever relay this information to me. But she wasn’t condescending about it. There was a, I don’t know, a sweetness to her voice, like she was genuinely concerned about my health and shit. I forget exactly how I responded, but I do know it sounded better in my head and was directly responsible for the eon and a half of awkward silence that followed.
On page ten I realized how fucking absurd my little act was. I was thirteen years old again, pretending to tie my rollerskate when they made us play Snowball because I was too scared to ask the cute brunette that must’ve gone to another school because I had never seen her before that I'd been exchanging smiles and googly eyes with all night to hold my hand while we skated around in circles for forty seconds or so to that God damn Bryan Adams song from the Robin Hood movie. Or afraid that she wouldn’t pick me, depending on which one of us got out there first. I closed the book so I could put it back in my Old Man and the Sea bag a second before she commented on my Pinkerton shirt that I really only purchased recently but washed a bunch of times to make it look a little more “old school” because I’m a dork like that. I made her repeat herself even though I heard her just fine so I could try to figure out how long she had been watching me stare at the top of page ten like I was waiting for the short bus to pick me up.
”Good album? No, not good, sweetheart, the best.” Except I didn’t say “sweetheart” since I can’t pull off shit like that. I could see speckles of green swimming in her otherwise brown eyes as she laughed and agreed, as far as Weezer goes, that probably would have gone unnoticed were it not for the slight magnification from her lenses. I really am a sucker for a girl in glasses. We lost track of time going on about the oodles of shit we had in common and bagging on the shit we hate, or I made a top five list of ways to kill yourself with ordinary household cleaning products and duct tape in my head during another eon of silence before she got a call on her cell phone and I decided to leave, or maybe she had to go and looked at me with uneven eyebrows like I was supposed to say something more than just “bye.” I don’t know, I was watching all the water fall from the sky. previous|next |