Deja vu All Over Again

by Larry Brill

  “Tell me. Tell me. Tell me,” she pleaded. “We got all six numbers?”

  “What, are you crazy? Of course not. I said it was an omen. Not a miracle.”

  Julie’s breath returned to normal as she plopped into a chair at the kitchen table and watched coffee drip off the edge of the counter onto the floor. That’s how she felt, too.

  “Carla, what the…?”

  “Oh. Sorry. But I was right. The first four numbers drawn last night? Your birthday and his birthday. It’s an omen. You missed the Mega Ball by only one. If you had been leaning a bit to the left, maybe, you would’ve picked that one number lower instead.”

  She asked Julie if she knew what four numbers in the drawing was worth. Julie answered without hesitation, then suddenly ashamed that she kept those numbers in her head.

  “Ninety-six dollars.”

  “Better than nothing. What’s my commission?”

  Carla stopped by Julie’s office before lunch to apologize again. “I didn’t mean to set you off like that.”

  Julie sniffed. “You almost gave me a heart attack, though. You did use that word. You did say jackpot.”

  Carla drummed her fingers on the edge of Julie’s desk. “I meant Nate-wise. First he shows up here out of the blue. Then he makes it clear he’s interested in you. Then you use your birthdays, like you were meant for each other, to win the lottery...”

  “That was your idea.”

  “And a fine one it was. I should have played the numbers myself. What I’m saying, though, is you watch. He’ll be somebody’s Plan A in no time. There are worse jackpots to hit than having someone like Nate interested in you.”

  “Wishful thinking. On your part.”

  “Not yours?”

  “Russell. Remember him? So there’s nothing to think about.”

  Except there was if Julie wanted to be honest, she knew. There was nothing to feel guilty about, but it didn’t stop her. Julie never did tell Russell about the notes Nate had left for her in her mail slot. She would have if Russell had only shown some interest, but that one was long forgotten. She did confess to Russell that after going for a milkshake with Nate and the others after school, she walked back to campus with him alone. But Julie waited until Russell was preoccupied with the Warriors’ game on TV and it barely registered; he acknowledged it without taking his eyes off the screen. She definitely didn’t tell him about how she asked Nate to recall their first kiss, or the truce she had with him after he made a pass at her. Well, it was more of a sweet, numbskull, unrealistic but not indecent proposal.

  The worst part was that, when she added up all the things she didn’t tell Russell, it made her fidgety when he was around and more critical of him when he wasn’t. Take the other day, for example. She had found the cutest blouse at Nordstrom’s over the weekend and only flinched instead of putting it back on the rack after her good sense was assaulted by the price. It made her look great, and she needed a little of that right now. First, he didn’t even notice when she pranced into his office to show it off. Then when she called attention to her outfit, his compliment left her cold.

  “I really like it,” he said. “My mother had one that was a little like that. It looks much, much better on you.”

  It hurt when he said it. It infuriated her after the words smoldered all afternoon. Naturally, Nate made things worse when he stopped to chat as she was headed to Carla’s classroom. She couldn’t recall the conversation except for the part when he noticed the blouse.

  “Is that new? Looks great. I’ll bet you slayed around the office, and if you keep that up, you’ll be giving Emma Lane a run for her money.” Emma was the current most popular, prettiest-girl, prom princess and queen bee of the MHHS student body. She knew it was BS, but she loved that he said it.

  When she hit the jackpot—as Carla put it—Carla suggested she take Nate out for dinner with the money. “He deserves something since you used his birthday. And what’s my commission, again?”

  She was still trying to decide if and how to tell him she used their combined birthdates on the winning ticket when they were sitting next to one another at the football game the following Friday. She didn’t want him to get ideas about why he would figure into her fantasy of winning the lottery, but that became the least of her worries after the fool she made of herself that night.

  Russell was late and Julie sat with the usual group of faculty. No one, not even Julie, had any reason to think it unnatural that Nate sat right next to her. Everyone laughed and cheered their heinies off. The Mt. Hamilton High Raging Poets even pulled out a rare win. Julie had a good time, so good through the first half of the game she never missed Russell. The Poets scored a touchdown, and everyone jumped, clapped and hugged the person next to them. For her, that happened to be Nate. And it was he, not Julie, who pulled away first, but not before he winked at her as if there was some conspiracy in it.

  He said, “I like what you’ve done to your eyes. They look so mysterious in a fun kind of way. Nice.”

  “This? It’s not much.”

  “You have those extra little thingies at the corners, that the really hot girls like to do. Do they have a name?”

  “They’re called wings.” She added them just for fun after he compared her to Emma Lane, and after she found herself studying Emma’s face in a chance encounter in the office. Until now, only Carla noticed. She didn’t do it for him, but Julie liked the fact that, once again, he noticed the tiniest, albeit frivolous, effort to add a touch of spark to her appearance.

  “They make your eyes younger. Or maybe that’s the natural sparkle there.” And then he turned away looking at…what? The scoreboard? The concession stand at the corner of the field?

  It wasn’t until Russell arrived that she felt guilty for flirting—yes, she had to admit it—flirting with Nate. Whatever spell he cast vanished and then she overcompensated. She went out of her way to pay more attention to Russell than she did to the game, slipping her arm through his, taking his hand in hers, sitting hip to hip and leaning into him when he made her laugh. She kissed him when the Poets scored again, and he was unusually receptive to her show of affection that night, considering they were in public. He wasn’t embarrassed with the kiss, held her hand for no reason at all, and even put his hand on her knee, only to slide it higher on the inside of her thigh when he thought no one would catch him. He acted almost as if the others ceased to exist and they were alone, with the kind of attention that reminded her how complicated he was to love. Carla ribbed her about it after the game. She had noticed. Julie hoped no one else did, least of all, Nate Evans.

  “You and Russell were so cute together I almost threw up,” Carla said over coffee the following Monday.

  “Was it really that bad?”

  “Let’s just say it was… well, let’s just say it was.”

  Julie growled at no one in particular. “It’s silly. It was nothing all that special.”

  “You could have fooled me. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you wanted to score a point with Nate, show him that he shouldn’t be so nice to you.”

  Julie got defensive. “You’re crazy. Nate? Ha.” Yes, she had a twinge of guilt, maybe, but she wasn’t sending any message to Nate. She didn’t think that was it. “I just wanted to let Russell know how much I love him. I owed him more attention since I’ve been spending so much more time with Mom lately and with Tiffany and her kids before they move.”

  “And spending time picking omen lottery numbers?”

  Julie played with the ring and studied the diamond with little focus.

  “You’re not having second thoughts, are you?” Carla asked.

  “I wouldn’t call them that. Just questions.”

  “Sure. Like?”

  “Things are a little crazy. Nate said he came back to teach here because it was like reliving the old days. But sometimes I think he wouldn’t have done it if I wasn’t here.”

  “You think maybe this is all about you?”

  “He
hasn’t said that, exactly. But he makes it hard not to wonder what he was thinking before he showed up and started causing trouble.”

  “You call this trouble? You have two guys who are crazy about you.”

  “That’s one too many.”

  They sat there, reading each other’s thoughts. “Don’t do anything to embarrass me, okay?”

  “Okay. But what?” Carla tilted her chin lower and raised her eyebrows. Oh, she loved this, Julie knew.

  “If the subject comes up, just happens to come up if you’re talking with Nate, and you could find out if he really...”

  “Really… what?” Carla was having far too much fun.

  “If he knew I was working here and if that made a difference when he decided to take the job.” Julie sounded tentative, her words soft and shy to her ear. The more she thought about it, the more she wanted to know how important she was to Nate. What was he thinking? What if she was reading too much into the attention he was giving her? The best solution, tried and true through the history of dating, the way she would have handled this if they were still teenagers, was to have her girlfriend talk to the boy and find out before she made a fool of herself.

  “But you’d have to find out without being obvious. Oh, forget it. What am I thinking? You don’t have a subtle bone in your body. Just forget it.” She turned and randomly picked at the files on her desk.

  “I knew it. You still have a crush on him. Or is it just since he got back?”

  She was intrigued, she admitted, but she would have to nip this in the bud. It was getting out of hand. The flirting was fun, and it was flattering. Unless she was going to break up with Russell—and there was little chance of that—she shouldn’t encourage Nate anymore.

  “That sounds sensible, but now you’re curious. I am, too. We know Nate’s hot for you. How hot? That is the question.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Free Falling

  Trying to stay young was a pain in the ass. Or so Nate thought as Chelsea did the final rinse on his hair. He was seeing her every month for regular maintenance, a cut and color touch-up. She had convinced him to avoid going totally with the chestnut color of his youth, the one he had found on a box of Lady Clairol, and left a hint of gray at the temples. She said it was distinguished in a way that he’d have to beat off the women with a stick. She was nearly as good a liar as he was. He got only quizzical looks from the other customers, all ladies in various stages of cut, color and perms at Chelsea’s Salon and Barber Emporium. Thank God they didn’t call them beauty parlors these days, but finding a good, old-fashioned barber shop, manned by old guys with scissors and piles of outdated Sports Illustrated magazines on the table next to the waiting chairs, proved to be impossible, as impossible as getting through an entire Friday night high school football game without making a trip to the restroom every twenty minutes for bladder control through the second half. It was annoying, not only for the effort it required, but he was starting to identify with the old guys in those prostate drug ads that bombarded him on TV. At least he got a lot of exercise going up and down the stands, but the sore muscles in his legs reminded him all day Saturday what a pain that was, too.

  And it was Saturday. After Chelsea finished with him, Nate went to the Barnes & Noble on Stevens Creek Boulevard. Christmas was coming, and he had a mind to spend what was left of his settlement with the Air Force on leather-bound notebooks for his students. Last week he decided to incorporate journaling into his classes, and he hoped that one or two fancy notebooks might actually get used without a class assignment. Maybe one or two might spark a creative thought; maybe one or two might plant a seed in a young mind and lead to a novel or a movie someday. The feeling of hope that came with being a first-year teacher was a natural high. You existed for the impact you would have on the future. That morning, it made the aches and pains of going back to school worth it.

  He sat in the café of the bookstore sipping green tea. Hooray for the antioxidants. His mom would be proud of him until she saw how much artificial sweetener he used to make it palatable. He typed on his laptop, sending an email to his agent with an update on his story. He continued to steal liberally from his own experiences, adding details like the Friday night football games, chaperoning the fall dance and taking a spin around the dance floor with Julie to shock and amazement of the kids, and interacting with the students in a way that convinced him how, at its core, high school life hadn’t changed much. The bigger problem was that even with as much fun as he was having, nothing was turning out the way he wanted. Jack thought sabotaging the relationship between the girl and her fiancé by setting him up with blind dates harvested online was promising and full of potential comic repercussions, but the fact that he didn’t have a clue how the boy and girl would end up in each other’s arms as the final credits rolled was a two-ton chunk of writer’s block on Nate’s head at the moment. Jack had mentioned it in passing to a couple of people of potential but wanted to know where the story was going, and so did Nate.

  He finished an email full of excuses to Jack and an update to Woody, checked his favorite news sites, and responded to an email from Mary, the wing-woman for the blind date he had sicced on Festerhaven. Mary wanted to see him again, and to set up a double date with Nicolette and FesterFace. She dropped a vague line that Nicolette was interested in his friend as well. That was encouraging. He shut off his laptop and was in that netherworld when Julie walked in. He almost missed her, and probably would have if she hadn’t noticed him first and waved.

  “Hey, lady. Pull up a chair.”

  The bookstore and its café were unusually quiet for a Saturday; the weather was cold and miserable, keeping anyone at home who wasn’t desperate enough to fight the Christmas shopping crowd at the mall. Julie sat down with a Frappuccino and bright eyes.

  “This is a nice surprise,” he said. “What have you got going today?”

  “I’m on my own. I thought I’d do a little shopping.” She said Tiffany had taken the kids down to see her in-laws in Hollister for the weekend. Russell was also out of town. Oh, yeah. He went down to Los Angeles to meet some college buddies and root for their Oklahoma University football team while it got the snot stomped out of it by UCLA. Even their friend Carla was gone for the weekend.

  “Mom was doing really well and had a friend over for coffee when I stopped by this morning, so I decided to take a day for myself.” She leaned back, deep into a brown leather chair in the corner of the coffee shop, and crossed her legs. She wore black stretch knit pants that flattered her figure and white rubber-bumper-toe tennis shoes. Her teal sweater was as shaggy as an unshared sheep and oversized to the point of hiding the rest of the lady’s charms. “The only definitive thing on my agenda today is a nap.”

  Nate leaned forward with elbows on his knees in an identical comfy chair angled toward her. “Sounds perfectly boring in a good way.” He pointed to the bag full of journals for his students and said that would be the highlight of his day. He asked her about her plans for the holidays. She had convinced her son to come down from Oregon and join them for Christmas at Mom’s. With Tiffany and her family moving to Texas, this could be the last time they all got together for a while.

  “I’m getting used to the idea of her leaving town. I think I’m okay with it now.” But she talked with melancholy that nicked Nate’s heart like a dull knife about her daughter and her grandkids and how much she loved them. Now they were moving. “It might as well be a different country,” she said. She reached out and patted his hand. “Oh, God. I never thought I’d be one of those women who are defined by her children. But here I am.”

  “I’m glad you’re here, for one.”

  She asked him why he never had children.

  “I’ve thought about that a lot. The best answer, I suppose, is that when we got married, we were waiting for Valerie’s biological clock to start ticking before we did anything about it. Either she never had one or turned off the alarm early in the marriage. We never tried.”r />
  “Do you wish you had?”

  He shrugged. “She was convinced she’d be a terrible mother, and I would never, ever dream of arguing her into something she didn’t want. Not something that important.”

  Julie sat back in her chair—considering that, he supposed—and then, thankfully, changed the subject. “You know, I’ve never been to one of our class reunions.”

  “Yeah. I kept thinking I’d see you there. You know what a sucker I am for that stuff.” He asked what kept her away.

  “You’re going to think this is vain, or stupid, but I haven’t gone to any because I haven’t done anything interesting. I dropped out of Stanford after only one semester to raise the family. That’s about it. When James died, I took first one, then another job, just to pay the bills. I hated both of them. I’ve never traveled anywhere. And then, since I’ve been working at the school, it’s like I never got out. I never had anything worth talking about.”

  “Crap. You’ve raised a family. On your own, not to bring up a sore subject. Your kids are great, and you’ve got this job helping other kids get from here to college. You’re a superstar in my book.”

  He could see the gratitude in her eyes. “You make it sound… You make me feel better. You were always like that. Gosh. We haven’t talked like this since…”

  “Since we were sixteen? I remember coming home from a Day On The Green Concert, and we sat on your porch until God knows what hour. Your mom turned on the porch light, and we stayed out there and talked.”

  Jules laughed. “And she started flicking it on and off, and we ignored it until she gave up.”

  She went on, but Nate’s attention soared and he didn’t register any of it. He imagined a shift, the first perceptible wave in a calm ocean before the tide turned. He imagined an opening where she might be convinced to dump FesterLoser. That would solve everything. Unless it was just his imagination.

  “Do you know what the most exotic vacation I’ve ever had is? Disneyland with the kids. Look at you. You’ve traveled to other countries.”