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Franck slept right through his little travel alarm. Usually it was enough to wake him because he wasn’t a heavy sleeper, but this morning he was out cold.
Still, a little alarm in his head seemed to go off about ten minutes before he had to leave for work, and he leaped up to get dressed, dashing to the bathroom, racing back to his dresser, bleary eyed, throwing clothes on, and reaching for his hair brush in the top drawer of the dresser, before spotting the wooden box and ancient newspaper sitting quietly in front of him.
He stopped in his tracks. He considered calling in sick but couldn’t afford it. If he wasn't prompt these days, he'd never get a better shift. He’d have to hold off for now, and look in the box when he got home. Yesterday came flooding back to him. He had broken into the house. He had stolen something. It was almost painful not to sit down with the box and examine the contents. He cursed his alarm clock, cursed his job, and muttered prayers for freedom from money under his breath as he grabbed some cereal for breakfast. He was late, but had to step back into his room and stare again at the box. He pushed on the clasp but it didn't yield. Who knows how many years it had sat on the floor of the parsonage house attic. It could wait a few more hours. He dashed out the back door into a gray, rainy day.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
At lunchtime, Bob was quieter than usual. He found himself eyeing Julie more often than not, and she smiled at him more, maybe a little awkwardly, he imagined. Maybe she had been thinking about him. That time she had brought him coffee had been a nice moment. She’d even been noticing how he liked his coffee.
At afternoon break, the crew gathered in the coffee room and talked about the foreclosure crisis. Someone said there was a foreclosure every eight seconds somewhere in the country.
Bob noticed Julie’s crossed legs open a little as her shin rested on her knee and opened up some space so he could almost see her underwear. It flashed through his mind that she meant for him to see something. She wasn’t looking at him, but then she did and smiled.
He probably blushed because he felt suddenly caught in the act of thinking something he shouldn’t, and to cover for himself, he got up and returned to his desk to get back to work early. He was sure that if he didn’t, he would have said something totally irrelevant to the discussion, or something embarrassing or out of line. There was never a rush to talk to people, he felt, and especially not when he felt a surge of confusion. He blocked out the whole thing and focused on the title he was working on, not even looking up as Julie passed his desk on her way back to work.
The best plan for him, he thought, was to find some specific thing to do with her, and see if she’d like to go. He reasoned that asking her out without inviting her to something specific would be like saying, “Do you like me?” and he didn’t want her to say no. If she had to say no, he’d rather it was because she didn’t care to do the one thing he selected for them to do, and leave it at that. OK, back to work, he told himself. The titles took him longer than usual that afternoon; he kept debating with himself and feeling Julie’s presence behind him. Don’t just ask her out to dinner, he told himself. Find something specific. But what? He berated himself for acting as if he were half his age.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Franck found the day totally gloomy. The gray sky, the rain, street and sidewalks lined with limp wet leaves, dim lights in the restaurant. Even the food seemed boring today. Regina, the waitress he couldn’t stand, was more annoying than usual. She found several chances to make fun of Franck’s pinstripe hat, and maybe out of gray boredom found more opportunities to taunt him physically. She would get in his way in close places such as when he was at the cash register, and squeeze past him, rubbing him quickly, or sometimes even slowly, and then glancing back and saying, “Oh, sorry, big boy, I couldn’t resist,” in a snide voice that never failed to make Anthony or Alice snicker. Today while he waited for an order by the kitchen, she came up to him and placed her hands on the wall on both sides of his head, and said, “So do you have a girlfriend yet, Franck?”
He said, “Leave me alone, Regina.”
And she retorted, “I’ll take that as a no. Did anyone ever tell you, Franck, that you have a cute ass?” and as she walked away, she said, “Well they lied!” and snorted a little chuckle, pleased with herself.
Bob said maybe Regina actually liked Franck and this was the only way she knew how to show it. Franck thought that was the stupidest idea. Regina was disgusting and arrogant.
But this day was so gray and dismal and boring that he entertained the notion that Bob was right, just to fill the time. He found himself eyeing Regina differently, just to imagine that she was in love with him. She caught him looking at her, and gave him a dirty look which would have translated, if she were close enough to him, into words such as “what the fuck are you staring at, pinhead?” She sometimes called him pinhead, after the one time he explained that his hat wasn’t a prisoner’s cap but a pinstripe hat.
But he kept watching her around the restaurant, and she gave him more looks, usually under pouty, stormy brows. He started to actually feel he was throwing her off balance. This was a little fun, for a change.
At the end of the day, it occurred to him to issue a coup de grace. Regina was leaning against the cash register, poring over her food entries, and no one else was around at the moment. Franck passed her by slowly and rubbed against her ass, and as she abruptly turned with a vicious scowl, he said, “Sorry, baby, but I was wondering if you’d like to see a movie.”
It’s not often you actually see someone’s jaw drop, Franck reflected, in that long drawn-out moment before she gathered up a response to his outrageous impertinence. She seemed actually speechless for a moment, and Franck started to smile and turn to go on his way, when he heard her say, “Okay.” He stopped, floored, and if someone had been in front of him they might have noticed that it was his turn to drop his jaw. He turned slowly, almost majestically, and said, “Are you kidding?”
She said in a quiet but high, clipped voice, almost nonchalantly, “No.” And then in almost a whisper, she said, “Let’s do it, big boy.”
Franck again felt panic in his chest but maintained his composure. “OK, tomorrow, after dinner shift,” he said, and turned to go on his way before she could rethink anything. It was the end of the day, and time to get everything cleared away and head home. Nice to have lots to keep him busy right now.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
It was the end of the work day for Bob. It ran against his grain to act without reaching a considered and reconsidered decision but he knew he couldn’t take another day of this fretting about Julie. He was ready to make a bad decision if it meant having it over with.
He delayed leaving his desk until Julie started making her way past him. He closed his eyes, took a breath, and said, “Julie.”
She paused just past his desk, “Hey, Bob, you okay? You seem real quiet.”
“No, I haven’t been feeling okay, really.”
“Coming down with something?”
“No, Julie, I’ve just been preoccupied with a problem. My roommate is driving me crazy,” he found himself saying, and part of him was saying to himself, is that really true? “I just have to get out of there sometimes. Last night I went out for dinner by myself just to get away. Don’t get me wrong, he’s okay, but in the proper doses, if you know what I mean?”
“Oh, yeah, I’ve been there.”
“Julie.”
“Yeah?”
“Would you like to have dinner this weekend, maybe? Nothing serious, but just a chance to get away from home, you know, and not go out by myself, nothing serious really, you know.”
“Okay.”
Bob was taken aback. He drummed his fingers on his desk for a long moment, and thought, what now? And then he realized what he had to say. “Okay. We’ll figure it out tomorrow. Have a good night.”
“See you tomorrow. Hope you handle your roommate okay tonight!” she called as she walked down the aisle toward the door.
Bob sat for a while, feeling a little stunned. Then he collected himself and his raincoat and umbrella, and headed toward home.
I'm looking forward to catching up on your chapters when I have time to read again...