The Lesson

by Welch, Virginia

  Gina burned with embarrassment. What a relief that Burk couldn’t see the disturbance in her face. The burly man put his head down and minded his own business after that, saying nothing more while he finished his lunch, which didn’t take long. He paid his bill and left.

  Gina took Burk’s order, the Caesar salad, dressing on the side. When his salad was ready she picked it up and brought it to him. As she set it in front of him, instead of thanking her as usual, with his hand he felt around the surface of the counter awkwardly until he found hers. Gina thought he looked unusually thoughtful, but that thought was quickly eclipsed by her realization that his hand was touching hers.

  “Gina, you’re always so nice to me when I come in here.”

  Her heart began to beat wildly as he wrapped his large hand over her small one. His touch was sensual, strong and warm; it thrilled her. The moment was a little awkward but she didn’t pull her hand back. That would have offended him, and she would never offend Burk. The seats near him were vacant, thankfully. She would have been mortified to be receiving such attention from one customer while another watched. If the next counter seat had been occupied she would have put a stop to it immediately. But she knew that Burk, even without sight, sensed the temporary gift of privacy. She could tell, also, that he wanted to say something. His hand lingered on hers as he turned his head to face her.

  “You’re not like the other girls. You’re different. I’d like to get to know you better. And I’d like to thank you for helping me with the menu like you do. Could I take you to dinner sometime? Maybe this weekend?”

  Chapter Eight

  Gina stood there, silent and staring into those sightless eyes, her heart pierced by a familiar pain. For a moment more she allowed her hand to be enveloped by his, then thinking better of it, she gently pulled it away. He was so sweet, so well bred, so distinguished. She liked everything about him. Had he not been so old, she would have dated him in a minute. He was educated and suave, sophisticated and gentlemanly. She daydreamed from time to time ... but the fact remained: he was old enough to be her father. She was so very sorry, and so very, very sad. Pain upon pain. When would it end? She chose her words carefully.

  “Burk,” she took a deep breath here so that her voice wouldn’t waver and give away her discomposure, “I’m here to serve you. It’s my job. I’m happy to read the menu to you, and I very much enjoy your company when you come in. But I would read the menu to anyone in need.” She paused to let that sink in. “So I think it would be best if I just keep reading the menu to you when you come in. I’d like to do that, okay?”

  He nodded silently in understanding and pulled his hand away from hers. With a heavy heart she wrote up his bill, told him the amount, and placed it in the usual place so he could find it. After that she made a point of busying herself with other customers so he wouldn’t have a chance to speak to her before he left, which he did shortly. Sadly she watched him use his cane, tapping and sweeping, to find his way toward the door. She hoped he would not be reluctant to return just because she had turned him down. Her counter shift would be just plain hard work without the thrill of seeing Burk walk through the door.

  After her shift ended she visited the bookstore in Benson to buy her daily chocolate bar and licorice, crossed The Alameda to devour her candy while reading her political science text in Orradre—an utterly enthralling analysis of the differences between democracy, fascism, and communism—then walked to Toso Pavilion to swim laps.

  The women’s locker room was shaped like a shoe box. Swimmers entered the narrow end of the box from the basketball court. At the opposite narrow end was the entrance to the pool. Between the narrow ends were rows of high, institutional style lockers, positioned perpendicularly so that swimmers could not see from one narrow end to the other. This afternoon, just like every afternoon, the women’s locker room was unnervingly quiet, because serious swimmers performed their aquatic exercises long before lunch. The afternoons were for amateurs.

  So like every day, before changing into her swimsuit and showering before entering the pool, Gina performed a sweep of the entire locker room to ferret out any muggers or rapists. First she checked the showers to the left, pulling aside each curtain. Everything looked okay there. Then she walked the long side of the shoe box on the right, looking down each row of lockers. Once she had swept the entire locker room and was certain she was alone, she changed rapidly into her swimsuit, locked up her belongings, showered, grabbed her towel, and walked out to the chilly pool.

  While she glided through her backstroke she stared at the ceiling, which of course is impossible not to do when you swim on your back. The “ceiling” was constructed of sixty thousand square feet of fabric, an inflated bubble that the university had installed as an inexpensive roof over Toso Pavilion. Today she didn’t contemplate, as she usually did, how she would escape if the tons of Teflon-coated Fiberglas were to suddenly collapse onto the surface of the pool. This tragic possibility ordinarily nagged at the back of her mind every time she swam underneath the hulking gray tent-roof, which was held up by nothing more than eleven enormous fans, a giant fabric bubble that could be popped, so to speak, with the pull of an electric plug. If the fans should suddenly stop turning, she could only wonder how long it would take for the bubble to collapse, drowning all the hapless swimmers in the pool under a silent avalanche of canvas. This picture wasn’t terrifying enough to keep her out of the water, owing to its remoteness. It did, however, improve her speed.

  Today she didn’t care if she succumbed to death-by-canvas; her mind was occupied with dreamy thoughts of Burk, interrupted only by thoughts of the phone in her living room. Besides, a quick death by drowning was more civilized and promised a more tear-evoking epitaph than being propositioned by truck drivers, dated by guys who heard voices, followed home by geeky sailors who wore double-weave polyester pants, and pursued by middle-age blind men. No, being entombed in tons of canvas was the easier way to die. Or at least it made more sense, and you could be certain your parents wouldn’t nag you about it.

  Clearly her heart was not in her swim today, but being the diligent type she forced herself to finish forty laps. When she was done she dried off and went home to face another lonely weekend.

  As she entered her little apartment, she was struck by the silence. Then it occurred to her that her entire weekend would be like this, and in a moment, that single, piercing thought caused the flood gates to open, and, falling onto her bed, she began to wail.

  “Lord! Why don’t you send me somebody NORMAL?” she cried, angry. “I want to get married! I’m tired of being alone! I miss Michael. When will you bring me somebody to replace him? I’m lonely, Lord, so lonely! And I’m getting old! Send me someone very special, Lord, someone to love. Someone to love me.” She managed to blubber out a few lines about height, at least six feet tall, and ideally, someone with similar sentiments about the most important things in life. Might as well be specific. She thought of asking for someone fabulously wealthy with lots of education, but that seemed greedy. It didn’t seem wise to ruin her chances of getting her prayer answered by offending the Giver.

  Gina sat up on the bed, legs tucked underneath her, her head resting against the wall a long time while she calmed down, wiping her eyes, blowing her nose repeatedly, and staring into the silent room. She was thinking that the logical thing to do was to call Bonnie so that they could do something together over the weekend to fill up the long hours, but the girls had already agreed to get together so there was no use calling again.

  Suddenly the living room phone rang, rudely crashing her little pity party. She braced herself. She knew who it was. After the usual greetings, Kevin wanted to know what she was doing.

  “Planning my weekend.” Her nose was still stuffy from crying so hard, which gave her voice a distinct nasal quality.

  “Are you okay? You don’t sound good.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You don’t sound fine. You sound stuffed up.”
>
  “I’m not stuffed up. I’m fine.” She grabbed a tissue and blew her nose, loudly.

  “I hope you find time in your weekend for me.”

  Gina took a silent breath. Get it over with! Quit stalling! Stalling doesn’t help.

  “Kevin, I’ve been meaning to talk to you. I think it would be a good idea if—hiccup!—excuse me.”

  “Excused.”

  “I think it would be better if we quit seeing each other.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea. I think that’s a terrible idea. You should have consulted me before coming to this conclusion on your own. What’s the problem?”

  “There is no—hiccup!—problem. I’m sorry, Kevin. I think I’ve developed a bad case of hiccups.”

  “Nothing to apologize for. Hiccups are good for you. And coming from you, they’re cute.”

  “Please Kevin—hiccup!—I’m trying to have a serious conversation here!” And these blasted hiccups were ruining everything.

  “I realize that, Gina.”

  “What do you mean they’re good for you?” She’d never heard anyone call hiccups good.

  “Some scientists believe hiccups help with peristalsis, though they’re mostly from the evolutionist camp. They say we needed help to get food down our esophagus back in the days when we walked on all fours.”

  “Do you sit around—hiccup!—thinking up ways to make fun of me?”

  “I would never make fun of you, Gina.” At least he sounded serious.

  “How do you know anything about peristalsis and evolution and—hiccup!—hiccups?”

  “I read the encyclopedia in the ship’s library when I run out of military history books at sea. It doesn’t take long on a six-month Westpac to run out of reading material. Sailors donate all kinds of novels to the library, but I don’t read fiction. There’s the Navy Times weekly and All Hands monthly. They’re good, but you can go through back issues fairly quickly. And they tend to be a little too focused. You know. On the Navy.”

  “You’re a really nice guy—hiccup!”

  “Thank you.”

  “And I—hiccup!—like you a lot. What’s a Westpac, by the way?”

  “It’s a Navy term for a trip to the West Pacific.”

  “Oh ... Kevin, I’ve thought about this, and it’s just that … it’s just that you’re not my—hiccup!—type. I don’t see a future in this for either of us.”

  “You think too much. What type do you see in your future? From the sounds of it you might be better off dating a med student type.”

  There was a long pause. Hiccup! Med student. Gina started to laugh, which certainly didn’t follow the script she had carefully written. But then again, it hadn’t occurred to her that Kevin had a role to play in her little drama. Her mind went completely blank. She had no idea how to respond.

  “You dating some law student from the university?” he asked, without waiting for an answer to his other question. He said law student as if it were a big hairy bug that squirted something smelly from a gland beneath its shiny black abdomen.

  “Would it matter if I was?”

  “Well, it would make a lot more sense than, ‘You’re not my type.’ What’s that supposed to mean? I don’t think you know what your type is. For that matter, I don’t think you know what type I am, either. Actually we don’t know each other very well at all. That’s why you ought to go out with me tomorrow night. I have tickets to a Gilbert and Sullivan show at the Montgomery Theater. Why don’t you come? We’ll have a great time.”

  “I can’t, Kevin. I’ve made up my mind. I don’t want to string you—hiccup!—along. I’m just trying to be honest with you.”

  She felt like she was begging. He didn’t make it any easier by charming her with humor.

  “Please. String me along.”

  “You’re making this awfully difficult.”

  “Exactly.”

  “No, Kevin. I can’t go out with you anymore. Please—hiccup!—don’t call again. Please understand. This is best for both of us.”

  “This is lousy for both of us.”

  “I gotta go, Kevin. Please don’t call me again. I’m going to hang up now. Good night.”

  She hung up the phone quickly. She had been worked up before he called. Saying good-bye touched a nerve that was already sensitive. Before she had a chance to dissolve into spasms of sobs, she picked up the phone again to call Bonnie.

  Chapter Nine

  The Apartment, Lincoln Street

  Another Friday night, another true crime book. Another torpedoed relationship.

  Gina got into her favorite white baby dolls and settled into bed for some pleasure reading. She never opened her textbooks on Friday nights—even the Greatly Dreaded One would never be that desperate. Around eleven-thirty she got hungry and went to the kitchen to bang around the pots and pans, entirely with the lights off. Remembering what Kevin had told her about being able to see into her dark kitchen, she moved quickly, continually looking over her shoulder toward the minipanes, wishing all the while that she had money to cover the windows; asking her parents for it was unthinkable. Hurriedly she popped a little popcorn in vegetable oil in an aluminum pot on the stove and then returned to her bedroom to munch and read.

  She was still up around midnight, reading a book she’d picked up at a garage sale. It was a wretched tale of a man who had married a series of women only to kill them soon afterward to collect on their life insurance policies. All of his unsuspecting victims had died violent, macabre deaths, which the man had elaborately staged to look like the work of others less clever than he. Gina kept telling herself to put the book down and get some sleep, as if sleep were possible after she had mentally ingested a plate full of chains awed arms and a few glass jars of severed heads. She had just reached the part where the police were following a trail of blood into the master bedroom when she heard the phone ring in the living room. The unexpected bbbrrringgg! caused her heart to pound hard a few seconds, and for a fleeting moment she actually hoped it was Kevin—at least she would be spending the last part of her Friday night with someone who didn’t keep a chainsaw in the trunk of his car. The thought of Kevin that popped into her head surprised her as much as the ringing phone, but she pushed it into her mental filing cabinet. She would make time later to analyze it to death. Right now someone was calling. She hurried to the living room to pick up the receiver.

  “Hello?” she said.

  “Open your front door.”

  The voice was a man’s. She didn’t recognize it, but she was certain it was not Kevin’s. It was deeper than Kevin’s. It could have belonged to any man between the ages of twenty and forty—she couldn’t tell. But she noted also, with disappointment, that the voice most certainly was not Michael’s.

  “Pardon me? Who is this?”

  “Open your front door,” the stranger repeated. Then she heard the familiar click of a phone being set on a receiver.

  She hung up too and stood there, wondering what to do. Open the front door? Should she open the front door? It was the middle of the night! What was on the other side of the door? Or worse, who was on the other side of the door? Who was that guy on the phone? What was going on? Was this a prank?

  Gina was overcome with the heart-pounding realization that she, or at least her apartment, was being watched. Someone whom she did not recognize knew where she lived. Likely that person was outside right now and knew she was home—alone. Her car was parked at the curb as it always was, and the glow of her bedroom lamp could easily be seen from the street. Perhaps this sinister character was watching right now to see what she would do. How great a risk, was it, to open the front door? She could see the door from where she stood by the phone. She stared at it, half expecting it to burst open on its own, something unspeakable rushing through it, something with knives and a chainsaw and crazed eyes and …

  Should she open it?

  She stood, feet frozen to the floor, for a very long time, staring at the door and listening for th
e slightest sound that might come from that direction. She heard nothing but her own breathing. Finally she decided to take a few, tiptoed steps toward the door. No. Bad idea. She reversed herself and tiptoed to the kitchen. Nothing was more than a few steps away in her cracker box apartment. In the pale streetlight that streamed through the curtainless wall of windows, she slowly opened the oven door to retrieve the cast-iron frying pan. The grating metal of the door mechanism made an awful racket. Worried that her movements might be heard from the stoop, she froze in place to listen. She heard nothing, so she reached into the oven and grabbed the frying pan, but she left the door wide open so that whatever or whoever was on her stoop wouldn’t hear the sound of her raspy oven door closing and guess which room of her apartment she was in. Gripping the lethal cookware in her right hand, she crept silently back to the living room. She stopped several times to listen for sounds coming from the door. When she sensed that her movements weren’t causing anything monstrous to burst through it, she took a few more light steps, each time stopping to listen for sound outside the door. Finally she was within reach of the chain. She hesitated again, figuring whatever horror lurked on the other side of the door would hear her fumbling with the chain and prepare to pounce.

  She whispered a prayer and then reached for the chain and pulled it quickly. While gripping the frying pan above her head with her right hand—poised to whack the daylights out of anyone waiting on the other side of the door—slowly, ever slowly, she opened it a crack with her left.

  “Whoever you are, you should know that I’m armed!” she yelled through the crack in the door, using an air of authority every bit as menacing as any Hollywood police officer. She glanced up at the cast iron frying pan in her hand. ”I’m trained to use it too!”

  She was almost surprised when, from the black stillness of Lincoln Street no one returned a threat. She stood a moment more, the frying pan still poised to bash the brains of any unsuspecting bad guy. But when nothing reached into the apartment to grab her, she bent her head a little closer to the door, but not so close as to risk thrusting any part of her body outside the apartment, not even a nose.