The Lesson (12 page)

“Suit yourself.” Gina shrugged and reached into the booth for her purse.

#

When they arrived at her apartment and were still seated in his beetle, she handed him her car keys and then he left to continue to Scott Boulevard to check on her car. With some unease she had given him a judiciously vague idea of where it was parked. She was careful not to give him the exact address though she knew it; Kevin did not need to know that her car had broken down squarely in front Rolando’s apartment. Kevin couldn’t possibly know that anyway, but she was taking no chances. She didn’t want him to connect any dots.

Kevin would be a while so she decided to call Bonnie as she had promised.

“Gina!” Bonnie became animated when she realized who was calling. “Where did you meet him? He’s wonderful!”

“He’s not wonderful, he’s just Kevin. Don’t get excited.”

“
Ooh Gina, this is one to hang onto.”

“No, no, no. You don’t get it. I met him at the Menzies recently and he’s been hanging around ever since. I can’t get rid of him.” The minute the words passed her lips she felt her chest compress with the weight of guilt as surely as if an elephant had sat on it.
That wasn’t true.
She hadn’t really tried, yet, to get rid of him. In fact, if anyone had asked Kevin, he might reply that she’d been saying “yes” a lot lately.

“But why would you get rid of a guy like that?” said Bonnie.

“Did you see that suit?!!!”

“Clothes make the mannequin, Gina. They don’t make the man. You know I love clothes, but I wouldn’t use them as a benchmark for manhood.”

“He’s not sexy.”

“He can change. And he can buy new clothes.”

“That will never happen,” said Gina. She sighed. “He’s got a mind of his own. He’s not the type you change. Furthermore, it’s not just the clothes. He’s not my type. I’m not going to see him again after today.” Now she’d done it. She’d committed herself—exactly what she should have done all along. “I’ll tell you more when we’re together. I don’t want to talk about it over the phone.”

They agreed to get together later in the week and then hung up. Shortly afterward Gina heard a knock at the door. When she opened it there was Kevin, wiping black grease from his hands onto an old rag. She was surprised to see that somewhere between her apartment and Scott Boulevard he had found a place to change into his Navy dungarees, dark blue pants and a medium blue, long-sleeve shirt. Over his shoulder she saw her rolling lemon, taunting her at the curb. She was shocked to see her car, but she was even more shocked at how Kevin looked in Navy dungarees. Working man’s clothing: plain, durable, and masculine. Like her father’s blue post office uniform. She had a sudden, absurd desire to reach out and touch the fabric of Kevin’s shirt. She wanted to smell manliness again. She wanted to lose herself in the way a man made her feel so feminine when she leaned up against a chest that was big and hard and that enveloped her in safe and tender embrace.

But that was silly. This was Kevin.

“Kevin, you got it home!” She was truly surprised. “Fast too.”

“I couldn’t find anything wrong with it. It started right up.”

“But I couldn’t even get the engine to turn over.”

“Well, either you forgot to pull out the choke or you flooded your carburetor. I got underneath the engine to look around and I didn’t see any sign of leaks, so I don’t think loss of fluid was your problem. I suspect you flooded it, because I found the fuel tubing disconnected and wet, like someone had pumped too hard on the gas pedal, which could have caused the fuel tube to blow off. I found gas stains around the crankcase and the cooling head too. So gas wasn’t getting to the engine the way it’s supposed to.”

“Oh.” Gina nodded her head in supposed understanding.

“Remember,” he continued, “When you press on the gas pedal with your foot, you have to do so in a controlled manner. It looks like you had been pumping the gas pedal like mad, like you were trying to get away in a hurry. You gotta watch that.”

“I have to break it off. Soon too. I’ve let this go on way too long. But I don’t want to call him.” Gina paced her living room carpet, one hand gripping the phone base to keep the long cord from entangling her legs.

“You don’t have to break it off, Gina. This is not life or death. Quit agonizing,” said Bonnie.

“I don’t want to call him. It’ll kill him if I call him.”

“Then don’t call. Let things develop naturally.”

“THEY ARE DEVELOPING NATURALLY. THAT’S THE PROBLEM! He’s doing exactly what guys do. I’m trying to stop it.”

“Well, if you feel that strongly, then perhaps you should call him,” said Bonnie, this time with a touch of exasperation in her voice.

“But I don’t want to call him!” In the background Gina heard Sarah crying.

“Gina, I have to go. Don’t do anything until I talk to you on Saturday, okay? We’ll do our laundry, okay?”

“Okay. I won’t,” said Gina.

Bonnie hung up, and Gina put the receiver back down and sank deep into the couch. She had to break it off with Kevin, and she had to do it soon, but she didn’t want to call him on the ship. Calling the ship was the worst thing she could do. He had explained to her the lengthy process, how sailors received personal calls aboard the
Flint and other naval vessels and what a public event it was. No sailor aboard ship could be called directly. Callers on shore phoned the quarterdeck. The quarterdeck officer took the message and put the caller on hold while he tracked down the sailor being called. During work hours the officer would call directly to a sailor’s assigned work area. In Kevin’s case the call would be patched into the CO2 shop, where he spent a lot of time filling and maintaining fire extinguishers and handling ship supplies. If the caller tried to reach a sailor at night, the quarterdeck officer would get on the ship’s intercom system, the 1MC, and page the sailor in his berthing space. The sailor would hurry up the ladder, sometimes several ladders, to the quarterdeck to receive the call before the caller got tired of waiting and hung up. The sailor’s anxiety would be heightened if he first had to get dressed before running up the ladders. Kevin had said he normally received few calls aboard ship. No, getting his first phone call from her, and a Dear John call at that, would only get him all excited just to let him down. That wasn’t the way to do it. That was cruel. She would have to wait until he called her.

Inevitably, she knew, he would call.

Meanwhile she dragged through the week, her dread of the weekend making her nearly physically sick. The weekend was the logical time for him to call. Overshadowing Gina’s Modern English Literature class in Bannan Hall, like a menacing black cloud threatening to dump its chilly contents, was the oppressive thought that she had to tell Kevin the truth. Using him for company because she was lonely and for an occasional meal out because she had no groceries was wrong. There were no two ways about it: she had to break it off. What’s more, this angry cloud of guilty thoughts would follow her everywhere until she did. It blotted out her personal sunshine while she suffered through Fundamentals of Accounting in Kenna Hall. It dampened the taste of her chocolate bar and red licorice in Orradre library, where she curled up just behind the NO FOOD OR DRINK IN THE LIBRARY sign to do her required reading. It sucked energy from her so that it was more difficult than usual to complete her forty laps across the pool at Toso Pavilion in the Leavey Center, where she swam every afternoon under the bubble roof to burn off the candy she’d snuck into the library.

Friday finally arrived. When she woke up that morning, as she was
lying in bed contemplating the day, a new thought entered her mind that made her feel suddenly worse. If Kevin stopped coming around, she’d be alone again. He would call that day, she knew it. He’d call as soon as he got liberty from the ship. And she would tell him the truth: he was a nice fellow but she felt it was best that they not see each other anymore. She had it all practiced; she would deliver her speech with grace and every kindness. Then … then she’d be alone again on Friday night. She’d be alone on Saturday morning and Saturday afternoon and all of Saturday night. The entire weekend would go by, hour by hour, with nothing but her books, her laundry, her little bit of housework, and her endless thoughts of Michael. But she had a class to attend, and Friday was the busiest lunch shift at the restaurant, which meant the most tips. She got up.

By eleven-thirty she was in her Big Bick’s uniform, had put on her smile, and was greeting customers. She had counter duty today, which was good and bad. Mostly men ate at the lunch counter, alone, so turnover was quick, which increased the jingle in her apron pocket. But a few of the men were forward, sometimes brazenly so. You never knew what you were going to get at the lunch counter. It made her tense. She was pouring coffee when someone she recognized walked through the front door. Her heart did a little jump, and although she needn’t have bothered, she smoothed her hair and instinctively looked down to make sure her uniform looked right.

“Burk! Over here!” She stopped pouring coffee to watch him make his way toward the lunch counter.

“Hi Gina.”

Gina watched as her favorite customer tapped his white cane to make his way through the crowd. As she knew he would do, he changed directions slightly to follow her voice. She arranged a place setting at the counter while keeping her eyes on him, by far the most pleasant of her chores at Big Bick’s. Burk was middle-age like most of the other men at the lunch counter, but his model good looks and polished ways made Gina notice everything about him other than his blindness. He was a chemist, and he had told her he worked in a lab somewhere in Palo Alto, where he had lost his sight in an accident years earlier. He was dressed in his usual crisp attire: pressed slacks; complementary button-front plaid shirt, open at the neck, also pressed and starched; and conservative but stylish brown dress shoes, recently shined. He had a full head of dark hair, sort of auburn, with a spray of gray at his temples—fairy dust, Gina liked to think. She guessed him to be about forty.

Sigh. She wished he were younger.

“The end seat is open, Burk. Help yourself.”

“Thank you.”

He carefully tapped with his cane to find the end of the counter, apologizing to other diners when he brushed against them. Gina felt sorry for him, as she always did, but she did her best to keep any whiff of sympathy out of her voice. The least she could do was to treat him the same as any other customer; she wanted him to feel like any other customer.

“Right here, Burk.”

When he heard her voice he stopped tapping and leaned his cane against the counter. With his fingers he felt around the counter and the red vinyl seat bolted in front of it and then slid onto it, gripping the edge of the counter as he did to steady himself. They exchanged the usual pleasantries while she pulled a heavy white mug from the open shelf.

“No coffee today, Gina. Make it a diet cola.”

Burk’s keen hearing compensated for his lack of sight. She hadn’t even started to pour his coffee. He was amazing.

“Sure, Burk.”

She filled a clean glass with ice and soda and set it on the counter in front of him. He pulled a freshly ironed hanky from his front pocket and wiped the rim of the glass. He wiped his mug when he ordered coffee too. Must be a chemist thing, she surmised. All those years of graduate work and lab research. Chemists are trained to consider things ordinary people never think about.

“How’s work? Make any exciting discoveries lately?” said Gina.

She didn’t care about his work. She just wanted to hear his voice, especially when he said her name. She could smell his musky cologne as she stood behind the lunch counter across from him. Brut? Old Spice? Royal Copenhagen?

Did it matter? He was academic testosterone served up on a plate. Cologne was just parsley garnish. She could hardly believe he even stooped to talk to her lowly undergraduate self.

“Actually, Dr. Chalmers and I—I’m sure you’ve heard of my esteemed colleague, Doctor Jacques Chalmers—he and I have been working—as a team of course—do you know that he has conducted research at the University Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg? We’ve been involved in highly complex studies of equilibrium constants. If one can determine the degree of reaction, the resulting data can be very useful to engineers who study optimization of product yield in bioreactors.”

“Oh.”

If it’s possible for a one-syllable response to have a swoon in it, hers did
. Beautiful … and brilliant.
Gina tried not to stare at his gorgeous face. The fact that she could stare all day without embarrassing herself or him made it too tempting. She was still fluttery, mooning over this manly specimen oozing with brains and beauty when, from the grill area she heard an angry
Ding!
Reluctantly she floated back down to Earth.

“Now for the special,” said Gina. “Turkey with gravy, sage dressing, mashed potatoes, your choice of green vegetable, roll and butter.”

“Turkey doesn’t appeal to me today.” He turned his head toward her voice as he spoke, his sightless brown eyes focused on nothing.

“Then would you like me to read the menu to you?”

From the side of her eye Gina saw a head jerk up from the lunch counter and glare at her. The head belonged to a burly man she had never served before. She felt a little self-conscious but ignored him.