I was in this tired strip plaza coffee shop looking at this woman, with her short dark hair. She was sitting across a kid-sized plastic table from me but I couldn't think about the hard plastic chairs just then. I couldn't look at anything but her face. I couldn’t hear anything but the words. They flowed out of her mouth and headed in all directions. I didn't know what she'd say next. It was glorious.
“Is it OK that we walked to this place? I mean, you won’t get in trouble or anything will you?” her finger walked the lip of the paper coffee cup.
“No. It’s fine. I’m a field counter, and I think that this place counts as the field.” I am pathetic, I thought. Good pun, but pathetic. Honestly, though, we almost never interviewed outside of the homes. This was huge. And then she did the stranger's prerogative, the "unexpected personal insight."
“It’s just that I don’t want to be home right now. Someone was supposed to stop by and I don’t think that I want to be there when he does.”
“Oh,” Crap. I was suddenly embarrassed for the way I felt crossing the street to get here. Swept along for the ride. What I sensed now was a cliché forming. Local evening news stuff. Domestic trouble. It happened in every third house in this income bracket. She was probably hiding from someone who "really loved her." Too bad, and now that I noticed, she wasn't as cute in the indoor lighting.
“I’m afraid of how great I've been feeling when a certain friend stops by.” I heard the words and she had me again. Feeling "great" around here usually only came with a lottery scratch card. I noticed her breasts for the first time. They seemed to be nearly perfectly round. Four-thirds pi times the radius, cubed.
“You see, he’s a photographer and he’s been taking these photos of me.”
“Oh? Well, I mean, Mrs. Kelley this is really none of my …”
“At first I just pulled my shirt up on the side, but you know, the more you do it … the more you want to take off. It's surprisingly sexy, you know?”
I had no earthly response to this. If you'd have told me that morning that by noon I'd be talking about secret nude photo sessions, I'd have bought you another round. My head was getting the floating feeling. I smiled and noticed she smelled good too. I waited for more.
“Anyway, the pictures are really beautiful and he tells me that he wants to take more. Really great shots."
And?
"And he says that he’ll have the time to do more shoots as soon as he leaves his wife. He’s gonna leave her really soon he says." Now she's tugging at her wedding band. "It's one of the reasons I'm nervous. Excited but nervous.”
That floating feeling ended and my brain dropped to the bottom of my skull and rolled around a bit. We were home. Back in the garage. This was what I knew. This was the stereotype in action. She had been doing so well too. It’s not her fault, though, the charm of strangers can only last so long. Then you see them. Their patterns. And I noticed she had this creepy mole on her cheek anyway.
“Well, we’d better get to these census forms then, OK?” I said.
She shifted in her seat and straightened her back, smoothing her skirt with her hands. “Of course. Of course. What’s the first question?”
8, 5, 4, 9, 1, 7, 6, 3, 2, 0. The patterns are always there. Sometimes it’s all in how you look at them. Try squinting an eye. Turn your head at an angle. Try turning your brain in the opposite angle. These numbers are in alphabetical order. Eight, five, four, nine … Tricky. Yeah. This one took me a few seconds, but then, I’m a bit weird that way. My question, though, now that you can see it, now that I've told you the trick, do the numbers seem any less special? The joy gone from them? I bet it is. I know this feeling all too well.
next chapter
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