First, I had to stop envisioning Coral as an angel. A piece of cake seeing how she'd treated me like dirt that first day in the orchard. Second, I had to kill the crush I had on the all too human Coral. A piece of cake seeing how we writers could dig dirt with the best of them.
I dug my feet in the dirt, quick drew my pad and pen, set about composing dirt.
Come noon, I pocketed my pad and pen--had no dirt; only lines to win angels by. Deflated, I searched for a new game plan. And, damn, I'd better hurry; Coral would be working the Front Desk soon.
Wait; maybe going in unprepared was the better approach. No, that's how they do it on the Big Screen--the leading man goes in with no lines, no expectations. Goes in on his leading woman as if she were the girl next door.
"Tell me, Coral," I might say, "what's an all too normal girl like yourself into?"
"Shopping," she might say.
And away I went, lost in fantasy. No, you girls next door don't know shopping till you go out with me, the alpha boy-next-door.
An hour later I approached The Center, spent. Turned out, a shopping date with the girl next door was not the stuff of fantasy. So I had tweaked my fantasy a bit. And, that's where my fantasy had run afoul. No, who knew halo shopping for a brunette would prove so difficult?
Before going in, I thought I'd take stand outside The Center, gather myself. A good way to gather oneself is to grab onto something. No, once I got a grip on the ashtray sand, here, I'd look up, take in mortal Coral through the glass door, there.
Then again, I'd read somewhere where looking at a halo was a good way to go blind.
Squinting, I looked up.
Coral, at the Front Desk, appeared to be reading. By her frown, reading something heavy. Though no halo, there was light from above--light from the skylight. This light, spilling over her frown, had created shadows--shadows that had turned my blooming angel into a grizzled professor.
A grizzled male professor.
Desperate to have Coral's clean voice restore her angelic mystique, I burst into The Center. But when she looked up, saw me, anxiety struck. A good way to mask anxiety is to rub at the eyes, yawn at the mouth.
"Hi Coral," I said, bellying up to the bar-high counter. "I heard you were working the desk today."
"It's my work-study," she said. "Why are you so tired?"
"Tired?" I said, going for my eye again--had some damned ash tray sand in it.
"You, yawning." she said, "What, rough Saturday night?"
"No, I have no social life." Oops, that hadn't come out right. Though a loner, I didn't want her to think I was some kind of loser. "But I was up late--Deirdre. Boy, can that girl chew on an ear." Oops, that hadn't come out right. "I mean, on the phone, Deirdre . . . just a friend . . . I mean, boy, can that girl talk."
Coral didn't say anything.
Feeling bad for lying--Deirdre had not called--I came clean. "I couldn't sleep is all."
"I can relate," Coral said. "I used to have trouble falling asleep. But then I found a solution."
I didn't say anything.
Coral, having eyed a couple of students within earshot, stood up, leaned over the desk, whispered. "Next time you can't sleep, try this:" She looked left, right. "Pretend you're an angel living in the clouds. The order comes down from the higher-ups that you must descend, save some wayward soul. If you're like me, you'll fall asleep before you ever reach your soul."
Cry me a creed! The girl identified with angels herself. Nodding, I thought of my short story back home on my laptop. Nope, angels were going back in it, writer of my caliber, or no.
Coral returned to her seat, raised her book, went show-and-tell on me. Of course, I wasn't listening so much as assessing which parts of her I deemed angelic.
I came out of my trance, to hear Coral ask, "Do you know how?"
"How what?"
"How god Shiva got his blue neck."
"I don't know," I said, tugging on my blue collar. "But I'd sure like to."
"Well, the idiot tried to save the world by drinking all the poison that came out of the milk of the universe. Thank god Shiva's wife stepped in, choked him before he could swallow it. But even so, some got down in his throat--enough to dye his neck blue."
"Idiot is right," I said, "a god should know better than getting himself a wife."
Coral gave me her feminist look. And, boy, was she ever good at it. No, I'd never received a look that had so much gelding going for it.
"No, Coral, what I mean is . . . No, see, wives are great for us idiot mortals, but for a god, see, a god should be above getting himself a . . . What I'm trying to say is . . . is . . . Hey, if a god's got to dye his neck, blue's not a bad hue to go." I laughed.
Coral didn't.
So, I got down to business, talked Coral's job in relation to my job. I showed her my pager, battery fully charged. "And the number--the pager's number--is taped right here somewhere." I hooked a hand over her side of the Front Desk.
Coral looked left, right. "Where?" she said. "There's so much posted here."
I stepped behind the snaking receptionist corral. Bending over, I reached for my reading glasses. Thinking better of it, I left my reading glasses in my breast pocket, left my hand over my heart.
"Mmm, it's here somewhere," I said, rocking my torso left of the number, right of the number, my neck vein throbbing in anticipation of my bare arm contacting her bare arm--by accident.
"Here it is," Coral said, pointing.
I stopped rocking to and fro. "Ohhh," I said, heartsick for lack of accident. "There it is."
I straightened up. Whoa. What's with the dizziness? I reached for the wall, fixed my eyes on the painting my hand had found. But my eyes wouldn't fix. I blinked and I blinked, but the two blackbirds in the painting kept flying out of my field of vision. It came to me then; the cause of my dizziness. Wow, how seventh grade of me; forgetting to breath in anticipation of touching a school girl's arm.
Breathing, my eyes uncrossed. How about that; the two blackbirds weren't birds at all. Just two black patches in a farmer's field.
I turned to Coral. "So, that's my pager number. So, if anything breaks, or you need me for anything--anything at all, page me and I'll come to you."
"OK," Coral said.
I stepped out from behind the Front Desk, took another breath, proceeded with my training session. But, to my surprise, Coral already knew everything. I asked how she already knew everything.
"Because I'm also working the desk 11:30 to noon, Monday through Thursday, and I had a training session last week."
"I see," I said.
What now? Here I'd been rehearsing for days my long-winded tutorial so I could get maximum one-on-one with the beaut. But now I had nothing to teach. Let's see, what would a real teacher do under the circumstances?
Instead of saying 'Class dismissed,' I stepped to the right of the Front Desk, faced the open-faced mail boxes imbedded in the wall. I had no office, so I used my mail box as a file cabinet of sorts. I pulled my stack of worn papers from my mail box, pretended to read what I'd read a hundred times before. Now all I needed was a new topic of conversation.
Searching for a topic, I thought of Coral's schedule--11:30 to noon. No, I was usually off campus at that time--attending a matinee, walking in the woods, writing. Perhaps those midday breaks were irresponsible of me. Yes, 11:30 to noon, Monday through Thursday. If that wasn't the best time to check my box, I didn't know what time it was.
Failing to come up with a topic of conversation, I jammed my files back in my box. "Good," I said, "nothing too impacting in my box."
Coral didn't say anything.
"OK, then," I said, giving the counter a couple of bangs with my hand, "I best get out there. Yep, lot's of work . . . out there . . .today." I looked at the door. "Nope," bang, bang, "No end to the work . . . out there . . . today."
But, no, Coral voiced no interest in my work.
Before exiting the front door of The Center, I took a knee in the foyer area, took a high interest in some literature down there.
Oh, it's hard for a working man to walk out a door when all the work he wants to do is on the girl indoors.
Walking down the asphalt drive leading away from The Center, I thought of what was waiting for me in the pine grove behind Metals. Weeks ago I'd purchased a cedar shed kit for storing my garden tools, and I really needed to get the damned thing banged together before the Fall rains kicked in.
It was a ways to my pines. A longer ways, still, if a guy pulled out his pad and pen, squeezed the literature out of the ways of the world. Or, better yet, squeezed out a protagonist who had, by his own hand, shaped himself despite said ways.
"Most guys were born with a hammer in their hand, a pencil behind their ear, a power tool in their pants. I wasn't like most guys. I liked working with the earth with my hands, and when I wasn't doing that, I liked walking in the woods for the hell of it. Or, laying words on paper for the heaven of it. Oh, sure, I knocked out the Great Work every now and again, but that was old air in a tire. No, real men didn't deal in inflation. Real men stepped on ego that they might get an ear up to where the air was rare, up to where the erupting universe was cutting that singular edge--the only edge in town."
In my pines I took a seat on my up-side-down bucket, pressed my back against my pine, waded through the shed instructions full up with shop-talk every straight guy, but me, had been tossing about since he'd signed up for scouts.
Be prepared.
What's this? My shed required four pier blocks not included in the kit. The four stepping stones at the entrance to the orchard came to mind. I stood up. Nope, that's where those bastards were going; buried for eternity under my shed. I loaded up my barrow, wheeled on down.
Approaching the stones I spied two crows flying into the orchard.
Omen.
I'd learned from my book on sorcery two crows spelled ill omen. Not needing ill right now, I took the two square crows I'd run into in my search for arm at the Front Desk, added them to the two living crows landing in the orchard now. That gave me four crows. Though four was no lucky number, neither, it was my number, and if there was one thing my four was good for, it was getting work done.
At the portal to the orchard, I pulled up beside the stones, stared them down. "I got to hand it to you, you bastards, you fight a good fight. But today the fight is over. Today you're going by by."
"Fight?" I had the stones say. "We have always just laid here; it's you who have fought yourself."
"Ya, Ya, spin it all you like, but today you're goners. Gone, because today I've come prepared."
"Prepared? Go ahead, give it your best shot. We stones could use another laugh. Ha, ha."
Reaching for my pick-axe, I remembered something--these stones were as thick as car tires. I looked at my wheelbarrow tire.
Seizing my wheelbarrow, I wheeled her up and out of the orchard.
Up at Wood, I used the compressor out back to pump up my tire--pumped her up like she'd never been pumped. Done, I held the air chuck in my hand, looked down at it like God looks down on one of his sheep.
"Mark my word, little lamb, no damned stepping stones are going to get away from me. Not on this fine four-crow day, anyway."
****
No comments:
Post a Comment