Fluke

Copyright © 2012 David Elliott & Bart Hopkins

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 1475225660

ISBN-13: 978-1475225662

For all the women in my life: Abigail, Madelyn, Evangeline, Ruby, and Donna

- David

For
Perla
,
Racquel
, Ryan, and Jacqueline.

- Bart

1.

I quit my job the day I met her.

Now, I can't say that she was the only reason I came to be unemployed; it was only a matter of time before delivering pizzas sucked my soul away completely.
 
I can say, though, that I haven’t had many women ask me out.
 
And a beautiful woman like Sara?
 
Not at all.

I was standing on her front porch, decked out in my "Perry's Pizza Palace" T-shirt, medium cheese pizza in hand, and miraculously, I made her laugh. I made her laugh several times, and Sara said that she would like to take me out.
 
She was free that night for the first time in months, she said, and she needed to celebrate.
 
I drove straight to my apartment and called in my resignation to Perry.

I don’t remember exactly what I told good old Perry, but knowing my mumbling, fumbling tendencies when potential conflict is in the air, I kept it short.
 
It didn’t matter.
 
Perry didn’t, the pizzas didn’t, the T-shirt didn’t.
 
All that mattered was getting out of my tiny, sparsely furnished, off-white, apartment and back to
Batts
Lane, to Sara’s house.

Thoughts screamed through my head as I rifled through the shirts hanging in my closet that night.
 
The thoughts were conflicted and confusing, much like my ability to pick out a shirt.

Could I survive without my minimum wage pizza boy job?

Couldn’t wear the blue and white striped Polo oxford…the collar was too frayed (or was that in?).

What exactly had I said that made Sara laugh?

Couldn’t wear the Calvin Klein polo…weird stain on the left sleeve.

Was Domino’s on Airport Road hiring?

My questions remained unanswered, but I did manage to choose a shirt—an innocuous, dark blue button down.
 
I combed my
hair as best as I could, which wasn’t very helpful.
 
The cheap ball caps Perry made his employees wear were murder on my already unruly thick black hair.

Two squirts of Grey Flannel to hopefully mask any lingering pizza odor, one on the neck, one on the wrist, and I was ready.
 
I kicked a Hustler magazine that was lying on the floor out of view, under the couch, just in case the gods smiled upon me, and Sara graced my shoebox home that night.

I grabbed my keys off the table and headed for the door, ignoring my current thought:
What would a beautiful woman like Sara see in a pizza delivery guy?
 
The question was more troubling after I reminded myself that I was, as of twenty minutes prior to that moment, an
unemployed
pizza guy.

Again, it didn’t matter.
 
Negative thoughts were suddenly secondary.
 
My vision was tunneled. Only Sara mattered, I thought as I half-walked, half-skipped to my old, beat-up Honda Civic.
 
Adrenaline coursed through me at a steady, elevated flow as I peeled the “Perry’s Pizza Palace” magnet-sign off of the driver’s side door.
 
I tossed the sign in the trunk and climbed into the driver’s seat, knowing (hoping, at least) that I was bound for some sort of pleasure that night.

I’ve heard the expression “hindsight is always 20/20” a hundred times, but I wonder, even now, if that’s always accurate.
 
You see, I
have
to wonder that, because even if I knew then what the future had in store for me, I couldn’t say whether I would do anything differently.

2.

The drive to Sara’s place was uneventful.
 
"
Shyness is nice, and shyness can stop you, from doing all the things in life you'd like to…
" Morrissey sang from the speakers as her townhouse came into view.
 
I made a mental note to myself, more of a desperate plea to my psyche, really, to not let shyness ruin my night.

I pulled into the drive and purposely chose an out-of-the-way parking space along the side of her building, which was comprised of three town homes.
 
There were some final, obsessive checks on myself I had to do before I marched the last nervous steps to a new girl's door.

From my glove compartment I withdrew a tin of
Altoids
mints and tossed one into my mouth, and, after a moment of thought, followed it with a second.
 
I dug around in the glove box again and came out with my
Pepto
caplets.
 
I worked two free from their foil wrapper, and their nasty pink foamy taste followed the
Altoids
.
 
My nervous stomach, usually swimming with rum and Coke, had caused many visits to barroom bathroom stalls that would make a grown man wince.
 
I didn't need that that night.

I could just imagine my night with this gorgeous woman without the
Pepto
:

“I’ll be right back, Sara,” I’d tell her, my bowels churning, aching for sweet relief.

“Okay, Adam,” she’d say, smiling sweetly.

Fifteen minutes pass, and she realizes I’m sitting on a toilet in a bar.
 
Goodbye, Adam.

I must have the chalky, pink caplets.

Almost immediately, I became paranoid that she might actually be able to smell the
Pepto
on my breath.
 
That is, of course, if she ever got close enough to smell my breath.

So, one more
Altoid
went in.
 
Just in case.

Breath and stomach in order, I moved on to the rearview mirror.
 
My hair, aside from its normal unwieldy appearance, was okay.
 
Nothing foreign in my teeth.
 
I had tweezed away the
uni
-brow earlier that day.
 
A nose check yielded nothing obtrusive and no visible hairs.
 
I smiled a couple of times at myself and studied my reflection.

Here goes nothing.

I opened my door and started to get out of my car.
 
I stood up in the open doorway of the car when I realized I was being watched.

“Hey there.”

It was Sara.
 
She had a small dog on a leash next to her.
 
Had she seen me perform my ritualistic acts of boy-meets-girl
timidness
?
 
I could feel my face redden just a little.
 

"Hi,” I stammered, “How long have you been standing there?"
 
She was gorgeous.
 
My palms moistened with sweat, my nerves prickled.
 
How did I swing this?

I watched her walk towards me and had a brief flashback to earlier in the evening.

It had been a busy night at work, and I didn’t look forward to any more deliveries.
 
After returning to the Palace from a run that landed me a 49-cent tip for a twenty-seven dollar order (I mentally noted the address on that delivery, determined to push all future runs to that house off on someone else), things had slowed down a bit.
 
I found a few minutes to duck out back with one of the phone girls, Heather, for a cigarette.

Heather and I got along pretty well, and we always had good conversations at work.
 
She wasn’t quite the standard, magazine-cover definition of beautiful, but she was definitely not homely or plain.
 
There was something sexy about her, though, driven mostly by her extremely bright blue eyes (nobody knew for sure, but the general assumption was colored contacts).
 
The blue in her eyes contrasted her tan skin nicely, and she always had a big smile on her face.

She was smiling as we smoked and joked behind the Palace.
 
The topic of conversation for that particular five-minute block of time had been Perry’s annoying habit of rubbing his generous gut, which stretched his red T-shirt to the limit, against the female workers’ bodies every time he walked by.
 
Heather was mock
shuddering, telling me “it feels like a big, wet Nerf ball.
 
It gives me nightmares.”
 
She pleaded for me to, “Help…save me from the pervert.” We enjoyed a good laugh at that.

We were finishing up our smokes when Perry opened the back door and poked his bald head out.
 
The happy mood was instantly transformed into a tense moment.
 
A quick glance between Heather and I communicated our dread at whatever Perry could possibly have in mind this time.

He looked at me with his beady brown eyes and said, “Come on, Fluke, quit screwing off.
 
I sent John and Kevin home, so you’re the only one left tonight.”

A sinking feeling spread in my gut.
 
I had hoped to get off a little early and stop off at the Tune Hole for a little CD shopping. Now, as the only delivery guy left, it meant I was closing. As a result, I could plan on being home by 11:30 at the earliest, a full ninety minutes after the Tune Hole locked up.
 
Another quick glance at Heather yielded a sympathetic look, and I turned to Perry.