Fluke

by David Elliott

  The appreciative looks and occasional shouts of “Show us your tits!” that Sara was getting had caused me to walk with my arm protectively around her waist as we pushed through the dense jungle of people. I didn’t mind the attention she received; in fact, it was a twisted sense of flattery I felt. I just wanted to make sure that the drunkards roaming Bourbon Street were well aware that Sara was unavailable for their little tit-showing games…she was with the Fluke.

  And, admittedly, I enjoyed the envious looks I received. Each time I got one (which I always recognized immediately, having given so many myself), I knew that some guy was thinking to himself, or asking his buddies, “What the hell is she doing with that guy?”

  You know what? I liked that feeling.

  Soon enough we came to Peter Street, and hooked a right onto it towards Pat O’Brien’s “world famous piano bar.” Being one of the staples of New Orleans and Bourbon Street, I had been there a couple of times before. Unlike those other times, though, I was with a woman that I loved this time.

  A night never passed at Pat O’s without at least a dozen requests made by men caught in the throes of love for songs to be sung for their ladies. Every now and then, someone actually got on the stage and sang to their significant other.

  I debated as to whether I should do this tonight.

  Women love that kind of thing, Adam.

  But, I hate getting in front of crowds like that.

  For god’s sake, get a pair of nuts, and impress the woman you love…

  But I’m going to fuck it all up!

  Maybe…but fucking it up isn’t going to matter when she is giving it to you in the sack tonight like you’ve never gotten it before in your life!

  My final thought sealed it for me. I was going to have to get some liquor in me, and quick, if I were going to do anything like that.

  The crowd had thinned out quite a bit off the main thoroughfare of Bourbon. We made our way easily to the large burnt-orange building with dark green shutters that housed Pat’s. The 19th century design never failed to stimulate my imagination, causing me to feel as if I were really in another time. The French Quarter always felt like a completely different world.

  “Adam?” Sara said, snapping me out of my daydream.

  “Yes, beautiful lady?”

  “Hurrrricannnesss….” She said, drawing out the name of the drink they were known for.

  “Mmmm,” I agreed. We pushed the large swinging green doors open and stepped through, hand-in-hand.

  We walked down the brick corridor and showed our ID’s to the man at the doorway who quickly ushered us through. Someone was talking over a microphone, and he was answered by a roomful of laughter. I thought again about singing something to Sara in front of all those people, and my stomach rolled a couple of times.

  “I love this place,” Sara said, throwing her arm around my waist and giving me a playful slap on the chest.

  “Umm…Me, too,” I told her, praying that my nerves would settle. I needed a drink. Several drinks.

  We went to the only open table, near the front of the room, and sat down. We were within 10 feet of the stage, on which were two pianos, back-to-back, in front of mirrors that covered the entire wall behind them. I glanced at the ceiling and the steins that dangled from hooks on every beam. The crowd was in a great mood, and the two men at the pianos were yukking it up, working them.

  “Okay, all-right. This next little ditty that me and Bill…” the first one began.

  “That’s Bill and I, Chuck,” Bill corrected him.

  “This next little number that Bill and I are doing is dedicated to Ron. You out there, Ron?” As Chuck finished a roar went up from two large tables at the end of the room. The tables were jammed full of couples, and Ron stood up, giving a little bow. “Anyway, as I was saying…this one is for Ron. Ron’s a native of Texas…hmm, don’t see any horns on you there, Ron, and we all know that only two things come from Texas…”

  “STEERS AND QUEERS!” the crowd finished for him. I flashed a quick smile at Sara, my Texas girl, who simply rolled her eyes.

  “Well, I wasn’t going to say anything, but, yes…that is what I have heard, Ron. To cut to the chase, Ron just got hitched, as they say back on the ranch. And, this is a special little number we do just for guys like old Ron. Guys who have decided to devote their lives to that special someone. Hit it, Bill!”

  The two broke into a quick-and-rowdy song about strapping on the old ball-and-chain. Sara and I ordered Hurricanes from the waiter while we listened, and laughed as the two men poked fun at Ron. I could hardly pay attention to the words as my own fears nagged at me. Our drinks arrived before the song ended so I paid the waiter and ordered two more before he left, and began sucking mine down.

  “Whoa! Take it easy, big boy. I don’t think I can carry you back to the hotel,” Sara said.

  She didn’t know my intentions, and therefore, my need for a quick buzz.

  We continued watching the show, and when I finished my third drink I excused myself for a restroom break. I walked away, and seeing that Sara was raptly watching, and laughing, on cue with everyone else, shot over to the bar where I passed my request along to the man there. Twenty bucks and a song title. I waited a minute longer, watching Sara’s beautiful profile as she laughed. Her face was reddening just a little in the cheeks from the alcohol, and my heart stopped in my chest. I went back to the table.

  “That was quick,” she commented, glancing at me, smiling.

  “I’ve got a bladder like a little girl,” I told her. “ I go every 10 minutes. It’s horrible.”

  We laughed and turned our attention to the stage again. I watched, my stomach growing slightly queasy with nervousness, as the bartender sent my message with the waitress to the stage. She spoke to Bill about it, and I saw them chuckle.

  What the hell have I gotten myself into?

  But it was too late to stop. No turning back now, Adam-boy. Bill grabbed the microphone from atop his piano and looked around the room. “Got a special request, ladies and gentleman. Adam Fluke, where are you, man?” he asked to the room, and I very briefly thought about grabbing Sara and running for the door. I wished that, at the very least, I had gotten another drink.

  “Adam? Stand up!” Sara prodded me, smiling, unaware yet that I had brought this on myself for her. I stood up, and I lifted the back of my hand to wipe the sheen of sweat forming over my brow. I smiled at Bill, and around the room.

  “COME ON DOWN!!!” Bill shouted into the microphone. “Don’t be shy, love is in the air, and alcohol is in your blood. Come tell your lady what you think of her!” With that he began chanting “Adam! Adam!” and the crowd quickly joined in, Sara included. I grinned sheepishly at her and started working through the few tables in front of us to get to the stage. I tripped over the leg of a chair on my way and almost took a digger face-first. A large man righted me and pushed me on my way, helping me avert disaster and more embarrassment. I made it up the stairs without incident, and Bill was waiting with an extra mike, all for me.

  “Adam, here, is making a little dedication to his girlfriend, Sara. Take it away, Adam.”

  I passed the microphone from one sweaty palm to the other, and looked across the crowd. A few seconds passed, and I wondered if I was going to say anything at all. Then I saw Sara.

  She was sitting practically on the edge of her seat. I can’t say that I had ever seen her so excited. Her eyes sparkled at me from across the room. She winked and gave me a thumbs-up.

  “Sara,” I said, my voice shaking a little bit. I was only slightly caught off guard by how loud my voice was with the microphone, and I realized that I might be the cause for some bleeding ears very, very shortly. “I can’t think of a better way to say it than my life has never been this good. It’s because of you.” The crowd applauded, and I saw, even over the distance between us, that Sara had tears in her eyes. I nodded at Bill, and he started to play.

  Then I sang “You’re the Inspiration,” by Chicag
o, to Sara. After a slightly shaky start, resulting from a millisecond in which I forgot the lyrics, I warmed up. By the end of the song the ham in me had flourished, and thrived, and taken over. I clutched the microphone in a death-grip, my free hand balled into a fist in front of me, pulling back to my chest, accenting my badly-sung lyrics. I walked back and forth on the stage, keeping my eyes focused on Sara, occasionally pointing at her when I sang the word “you.” When I finished, and the last piano key had been struck, I held my arms up in victory. I had done it.

  And the crowd had loved it, but that didn’t matter.

  Sara had loved it.

  I left the stage to cheering, surprisingly, and Sara and I embraced. The crowd cheered more and Sara whispered in my ear, “That was wonderful, Adam.”

  Knowing that it couldn’t get any better in Pat’s, we grabbed up our hurricane glasses and made our way back out to Bourbon.

  Back out on Bourbon Street, we walked aimlessly, my arm around her shoulders, hers around my waist. I felt like the king of the world at that moment; my confidence was at an all-time high. People walked and stumbled by us, totally unaware that I had just stepped in front of a huge crowd and sang a love song to this beautiful woman in my arm. I wanted to tell them; I wanted them to know that I was the luckiest man in the world.

  Instead, I asked Sara, “What shall we do next, Inspiration Lady?”

  She stopped and said, “Well, we just passed a little place called Papa Joe’s Female Impersonators. The slogan said ‘Where boys will be girls.’ Looks like a blast, don’t you think?”

  She laughed and poked me in the ribs, and I laughed also.

  “Funny you should mention that place,” I told her. “Sean and I actually ended up in there somehow one night.”

  She raised her eyebrows questioningly. “You ‘somehow’ ended up in there?”

  “Yeah, you know, just goofing around, we figured what the hell.”

  I quickly recounted the story to her, telling her about Sean getting dragged on stage and danced upon in an obscene manner by a “chick with a dick,” which happened as a result of me slipping her (or him?) a ten dollar bill. Sara looked at me with a giant smile, ready to burst into laughter.

  “You did that to poor Sean?”

  “That’s what friends are for,” I told her. “It probably would have been me if he had thought of it first. But, you know what? The guys love Sean just as much as the ladies.”

  There was a bar with a walk-up window on the side of the street (another wonderful, wonderful feature of the French Quarter), so we walked up and bought two Long Island Iced Teas, served in plastic cups, for eleven dollars. We stood there, smoking cigarettes, sipping our drinks, debating where to go next.

  “Wanna go dancing?” she asked me.

  Yikes.

  “Um, sure, if you want to,” I said, already making up excuses for why I wouldn’t dance once we got to a dance club. I had my standard ones prepared: I have absolutely no rhythm, old football injury prevents me from shakin’ my booty, my leg is broken.

  We found the Goldmine, which actually turned out to be a pretty good club. The music was quite varied for a dance club…they played music by the Beastie Boys, Brian Setzer, and Nine Inch Nails, none of which I had ever heard in a dance club before. I danced a little bit with Sara, but the self-consciousness became overwhelming, so we spent most of the time at a pool table, where Sara’s skills were right around the same level as mine.

  The waitresses brought shooters upon shooters; I wasn’t even sure what kind they were, but Sara and I had several test-tubes filled with various colored liquids. We ended up mingling with a crowd of about six college students from Birmingham, Alabama who had road-tripped down that morning and were staying at the Holiday Inn on Canal that I had joked with Sara about.

  One of the guys, wearing a burgundy sweatshirt with the letters “UAB” on it, pulled me aside and told me, “Dude, you are a lucky man. She’s hot!” He pointed at Sara, who was chatting and laughing with one of the girls in the UAB crowd.

  I couldn’t do anything but agree with him.

  The night ended after several greasy, square-shaped cheeseburgers at a two-storied Krystal were ingested, which we both agreed would probably do our stomachs in the next morning.

  “Or at least yours,” Sara said. Yep. Standard Fluke.

  Back in the hotel room, we collapsed on the bed, drained of energy from the alcohol and the heat in the bars. Rather than go at each other like wild animals, we just fell asleep in our underwear, holding each other closely, contentedly.

  13.

  I would be meeting Sara’s mother in a matter of minutes, and I was scared shitless.

  My mind went to the last 48 hours. They had been amazing, and only sealed my feelings for the woman beside me. Biloxi and New Orleans were exactly what the doctor ordered, and I couldn’t think of a better way for us to release some tension before coming here.

  We had taken Interstate 10 into Texas. We were both still high from our quasi-vacation when we left. Somewhere along the way our skies got a little grayer, and our moods changed as we approached, then entered, Texas. Running quite a bit behind schedule after our drunken tear through New Orleans, we opted to stop, and quickly clean up at the first rest area within the borders of Texas. That would allow us to make visiting hours at her mother’s home. Neither of us liked the idea of washing in sinks alongside the varying degrees of humanity that we undoubtedly would see, but we didn’t have many options to get there in time to see her mother today. We weren’t excited, and although it was left unspoken, we weren’t willing to put it off another day. In preparation for meeting Sara’s mother I changed into some slacks, dress shirt, and a tie. Sara smiled at me, a little sadly I thought, when she noticed my change of clothes, but she didn’t comment on it. We just continued on our way.

  A quick turn South from I-10, and we made our way to the outskirts of North Houston. Sara quietly navigated me through the unfamiliar highways and streets. I didn’t know what to expect, and I wasn’t sure Sara did, either. I spent most of the drive wondering about her having been sexually assaulted as such a young girl. I had thought about it quite a bit, but usually didn’t spend too much time speculating on the details of it all. In the end, I just could not even begin to understand what would drive a human being to do that to a child. I had, of course, heard countless related stories in the news, but this hit home, and it hurt. I pushed it away again, as we reached our destination.

  We pulled through the gates of Glendale Specialized Retirement Community, and followed the long circular drive. I couldn’t erase images carved into my mind from having read One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, even though this wasn’t a ward for insane people. Still, unable to help myself, I pictured people in white jumpsuits pushing a refrigerator through one of the windows and jumping out after it, madly dashing for the vehicle, and escape. It wasn’t a humorous image; it was one which horrified me.

  I pulled into the visitor’s parking area in front of the main building. I brought the car slowly to a stop before pulling up the parking brake, engine still running.

  “Sara?”

  “Yes, Adam.” She was quiet, looking out the passenger window into the distance, and didn’t turn toward me when I spoke.

  “I’m not the strongest person, I know,” I began, “but I want you to know that I mean everything I say to you. I love you more than anything, and nothing will change that.”

  She turned to me, slowly, and looked at me. She reached over and took my hand, squeezing it reassuringly. “I know.”

  We sat for a moment like that, and then we got out of the car. I straightened my tie and walked around to where Sara stood on her side of the car. We looked at each other again. She placed her hand on my forearm, and we made our way inside.

  The buildings were large, made of giant gray stones. At the doorway, Sara placed her hands on one of the stones, steadying herself, and bowed her head slightly. I waited, knowing she needed a second, before we co
ntinued in through the glass doors. The lobby was all off-white linoleum, and had a certain hospital-sterilized look to it. The only thing missing was the smell of rubbing alcohol and medicine.

  The receptionist sat behind the counter in a rather crisply pressed uniform that swished as she stood up, and said, “Hello.”

  “Hi,” I said, and Sara stood quietly beside me. I glanced at her then back at the receptionist. “We’re here to see Maggie DuBeau.”

  The lady looked back and forth between us, then down to her desk. She rifled among papers briefly, her hands emerging with a clipboard and a pen. “Okay. We take information on all of our visitors here, if you don’t mind. Are you family?”

  “Yes,” was all Sara said. We moved closer to the counter, and Sara silently began to fill out the questionnaire. I shoved my hands deep into the pockets of my slacks and looked around. There were large paintings on the walls, and I noticed couches to the left of the entrance that had escaped my attention before. Small end tables were here and there, with magazines on each. I felt a trickle of sweat in my left underarm and was glad I had worn an undershirt.

  Sara pushed the clipboard across the counter to the woman who told us to have a seat. “Someone will be right out.” She said.

  I wondered about this as we sank into one of the couches. I picked up a magazine, and flipped through it without looking at the pages.

  “A doctor will escort us,” Sara said, reading my mind. “All of the serious cases are under constant watch. Alzheimer’s patients are considered serious when they get to a certain point.”

  I nodded my head and continued to not read the magazine.

  “Isn’t this a terrible way to meet your girlfriend’s mother?” She asked me, letting out a small, nervous, and unhappy-sounding chuckle.

  Before I had a chance to tell her that, no, Sara, it’s not terrible at all, I heard a voice.

  “Hello, Sara,” a deep voice said. I looked up to see a large man standing near us. He must have been pushing 6’4”. I glanced down at his hands, and noticed that they were amazingly small for this man’s size. They were soft, and pink, and looked as if they had never seen rough labor.