Entering The Center I trained my man-eye on Coral reading at the Front Desk. Of course, the man-eye was prone to drift. Outside the Library was a display case. The case was loaded up with student sketch books. A sketch of a nude woman had caught my eye. I detoured on over.
Boy, that was a nice sketch.
The nude woman held a ball over her head. I held my hands out, moved my fingers in that way that says, 'Here, now, throw me the ball.' That's when I felt Coral's eyes on me.
Hands out, I walked on over, all systems go for asking the girl out--out for a tour of my shack. "Boy," I said, pulling up at the Front Desk, "I can't believe these hands of mine--what they just banged together."
Coral didn't say anything.
"A shack--they banged together a shack." I hammered some air. "Ya, out back of Metals. Came out pretty nice, too, considering I hate anything to do with carpentry."
Though I stood well above Coral seated at the Front Desk, somehow she looked down on me. "You know, Anton, it's not wise to engage in activities you don't care to engage in."
"True," I said, placing an elbow on the desk, "but you can't always only do what you want."
"That's a different subject."
"It is?"
"Yes," Coral said, standing, "doing what you want, and not doing what you don't want, are completely different activities."
"Oh," I said, planting a second elbow. "Wait," I said, standing straight. "I'm not sure I get you."
Coral came out from behind the desk, squared off in front of me. "It's like this," she said. "Doing what you want is closing the door to growth. Not doing what you don't want is leaving that door open."
Say, I liked that--not doing what I didn't want sure summed up my life plan. What I liked even more was Coral's delivery. Instead of laying the entire lecture on me, she offered up these snippets--snippets that pulled me into the game. And it came to me then; this is how she and I would make love some day.
"Mmm," I said, finger to lip, "doing what one wants is closing the door to growth, huh?"
"Exactly," Coral said. Then, waving her hands like a professor with tenure, she took to lecturing me.
I took to lectures--took to giving them. Getting lectured caused my eye to drift. Take that display case outside the Library. If a guy turned his head a bit, narrowed down on the aperture of his eye, he just might--Damn, from this angle I couldn't see my sketch. Thank God we old souls had photographic memories--where nude women were concerned, anyway.
I closed my eyes. There she was; my nude, about to throw me the ball. But, just like an imaginary girlfriend, the more I worked at bringing my nude to life, the more she dimmed.
How about that; the very words I'd laid on Drucilla the other day. A clear cue for the elder, here, to launch a lecture of his own. I waved my hands. "Wise sounds easy enough, but doing what's wise is what's complicated. Take--"
"It's not complicated."
No, you want to piss an elder off, just cut him off.
"See, Anton, what complicates life is chasing wants. And one only needs to examine want to see why chasing want is not wise."
Upstart. "Please, Coral, examine want for me."
"OK. Want, for you, is seeing something shiny off to the side of your spiritual path. Chasing what you want is stepping off the path to pick the diamond up. Getting what you want is inspecting the broken piece of glass in your hand."
A good way to disarm an upstart is to make light of her heavy. "Don't tell me; the broken piece of glass cuts my hand, right?"
"No, the glass is simply a--" Coral tried to say more, but couldn't for the laugh she kept checking.
Wait; checking a laugh? Cry me a creed! The cement wall was on the verge of busting up. Screw obstinacy, I had a shot, here, at making the girl laugh.
"Oh, I got it," I said, giddy as a schoolboy. "The want junkie puts the hopeful piece of glass in his pocket, looks up, and there, still further from his path, he sees another shiny. He runs over, picks the diamond up. But no; just another piece of glass for his pocket. But then he looks up yet again, and guess what? You got it; another shiny. And another shiny. And another shiny. And away goes his life chasing shinys."
"Exactly," Coral said, getting serious. "Your want junkie cannot be fulfilled by want because want is not about getting. Want is about indulging in the need to want."
All I wanted was to make Coral laugh. I gave it another shot, but I guess I went too far, for here she was now, giving me that dirty laundry look a boy first gets from his mother, then gets from every girl he looks up to ever after. And that's why man fears woman. He knows how she sees him--the shabby pair of soiled britches she was put on earth to launder and starch.
A man--if he's wise--runs for the hills about now. Why? Because once a woman irons the Huckleberry out of a man, he's dead.
Of course, I wasn't any boy; I was alpha any boy. And, as such, I could hold my soil where washerwomen were concerned. Back to Huckleberry.
"So, Coral," I said in that tone that used to get my sister seething, "what self-help book did you steal all that broken glass out of?"
Coral seethed. "I don't read self-help books. Nor do I steal. I keep my eyes open, observe the workings of the universe, and live accordingly."
When a boy achieves success, he moves his neck like a rooster atop a barn. When a girl sees a boy cocksure she takes the sails out of him by throwing him the deep-hurt look all women keep in their dirty bag of tricks.
The trouble is, the deep-hurt trick always works; makes all boys reach for the soap.
"Well, Coral, I do steal." I pulled out my pad and pen. "That broken-glass material; that was good material. Just the kind of material that will go good in a short story of mine."
Coral wasn't through, dropped her knife eyes below my belt. "How manly of you, Anton, stealing a woman's material for your shorts."
Boy, that really hurt. Which, in boy terms, meant she had really scored. Which meant--by the rules of the playground--that hurt was really funny.
I laughed all out.
But then I got serious. No, things were getting serious. Here the girl had almost laughed, and now she was showing signs of a sense of humor to boot. No, Huck had better be careful. No, once Huck checks off these two items on his girl list, Huck's a goner.
A good way to keep from falling is to take the schoolgirl your falling for to school. "Here's the deal, Coral; stealing's not all that big a deal. Why? Because everything's already been said before. So, see, all that's left a writer, really, is to say it better than it's ever been said before. And, see, Coral, what you just said concerning wants and don't wants, well, that's as good as I've heard it."
I don't know if Coral bought into all that--or if she was just exhausted--but she walked back around the snaking Front Desk, sat down.
I know I was exhausted. No, all a boy wants is to get the girl out on the playground, mess around a little. Why that little always turns the playground into a full blown battlefield had been confounding Adam's since the Eden exodus.
OK, then, back to asking Coral out.
A student appeared then, needing the dye cabinet key. I knew what that meant; a search of every key in the cabinet. What else it meant was--
Omen.
Yes, a clear sign for me to call it a day. No, some days the gods shine down on the courting boy. Other days, no.
Heading for the door, something caught my eye. I detoured on over, held my hands out. "C'mon, girl, you can do it--throw me the ball."
The nude didn't throw me the ball, so to make her pay, I took an interest in the sketch next door.
My story went like this: I was out picking up sticks one day when a scary girl dropped by to check out the college. I told the scary girl she should come. She came.
Though flattered Betty saw fit to make a sketch of me--say nothing of using her artist's license to take the silo out of my nose, lodge it in my chin--I was livid over what she'd done to my hair. Ya, she'd rendered her own hair right; why had she rendered my hair wrong? Hell, I hadn't combed my hair flat like that since high school.
Coral must have found the dye key, for here she was, standing next to me. "Anton, that guy in that sketch looks like you. The hair, anyway. That's how it gets when you get it all sweaty."
"No way is that me."
"I hope not. You wouldn't give a girl a bunch of flower stems, would you?"
"Those aren't stems; they're sticks. I mean, they look like sticks to me."
"And that hook you have for a hand; what plans do you have for that?"
I showed Coral my hand. It had a lot of claw going for it--from gripping my broom from hours on end, but . . . "I ain't got no hook for a hand."
Coral wouldn't have it, and away she went, hauling off her once-upon-a-time; a full blown fairy tale about the helmet-haired boy who sets out to hook a girl with a bouquet of sticks. Well, of course, this scares the girl so bad she has a bad hair day ever after.
Coral must have thought herself funny, for there she stood, checking her laugh again. Of course, a laugh at my expense wasn't the laugh I wanted her to have.
Coral had it then; an all out laugh at my expense.
Time to change subjects.
"So, Coral, tell me, how did you decide to come to our school?"
"Do you know Trent?"
"Well, I know of him--I see him with you."
"His mom . . . she took a workshop here and made all this cool stuff. She didn't think we'd like the college, so we had to check it out. It was small, but Trent liked Ezra, and I liked Ivy, so we applied."
****
No comments:
Post a Comment