Fluke (12 page)

“Shut up.”

“You can’t see that shark?” he asked, incredulous.
 
“It’s right there, man!”

I was beginning to get a headache when Kevin said, “Let it go.
 
If you haven’t seen it by now, then you aren’t going to see it.”

I hadn’t seen any of the hidden pictures in the mall that afternoon; in fact, I still haven’t seen any hidden pictures.
 
Every Friday in the newspaper, a smaller version of the ones in the mall is printed, and I still can’t see them.

The shitty thing about it is that practically everybody I’ve ever asked about the
three-d
pictures says something to the effect of, “Yeah, those things are pretty neat.”

All I ever think about them is that they’re frustrating, and I wonder why it’s so hard for me to see the damn hidden pictures.

So I just quit looking at them.
 
If I pass them in the mall, I look the other way; if I see them in the paper, I just turn the page.
 
I have to do that, or else I’ll drive myself crazy, trying to find pictures that I just can’t see.

Let it all remain hidden, Fluke—easiest to forget about it.

****

Two nights after the carnival, Sean called me up.
 
I had received a couple of messages from him over the last week or so, always asking where I was and when we were going to make it out for a beer.
 
I was so caught up in my time with Sara that I never bothered to call him back.
 
He managed to catch me at home this time, though.

“
Yo
, Fluke, what’s up, man?” He started with.
 
It reminded me of how everyone in my life, except for my parents and now Sara, called me Fluke.

I didn’t mind being called Fluke, after all, it’s my name.
 
I had grown so used to it by high school that I was more confused when people actually called me Adam.

“Hey, Sean, not much.
 
A little bit of this, a little bit of that,” I responded with the standard answer.

“You’ve been missing for a while now, bro.
 
It’s time to go out, get a beer, and stare at the women.
 
What are you up to tonight?” He was enthusiastic, and like everyone else, I had a hard time resisting his charisma.

“Umm…” I paused.
 
What do I say? Do I tell him that I’ve been spending nearly every waking hour with a woman I’m absolutely crazy about? How would I possibly articulate that over the phone? It was better to talk to him in person.

“
Fluuuuke
—are you there or what?” He wasn’t going to take no for an answer, I could tell.

“Yeah, man, I’m here.
 
Let’s hit the Tap Room tonight.
 
We need to talk, anyway,” I said. “We need to talk” was our code for “something big is happening, and I need to tell you about it.”

“Shit, we do, huh? All right, man, I’ll pick you up at eight.”

“Cool.
 
See you then, man.” I hung up.

At eight-thirty, Sean showed up, and we hopped in his Blazer, bound for the Tap Room.

Once inside, we each ordered beers from the bar, got several
dollars worth
of quarters, and picked a pool table.
 
As Sean racked the balls, I went to the jukebox and selected six songs.

It was quiet in the Tap Room, which was typical for a Wednesday night.
 
Aside from Sean and I, there were about six other people, two couples in a booth that appeared to be on a double date, and two girls sitting at the bar.
 
The girls at the bar had obviously been drinking for a while, speaking in the loud way that drunk people do, all the while thinking that no one can hear them.
 
Sean gave the girls a glance while we waited for our beers, and they stared back at him, obviously in lust.

Sean was a good-looking, charismatic guy, and he had the ego to match.
 
He and I were opposite ends of the spectrum, which may or may not have been the reason we got along so well.
 
He spent a lot of time using women for his own pleasures, and I spent a lot of time with these women after Sean was done with them, having my shoulder soaked with tears and my ears filled with the cries of “Why?” from a countless number of heartbroken young women.

I knew my position; I was the
sweet friend
, someone that women could talk to, a shoulder to cry on, someone that women never thought of in “that way.” It wasn’t always the most desirable position to be in, but on a couple of occasions, I was able to work my role to my advantage, scoring dates with the victims of Sean’s heartlessness.
 
The dates were always the only dates, however, as the vulnerable states of the girls ended and they realized that I was just Adam; I was Fluke, and I wasn’t for them.
 
Not in “that way.”

Tonight was different for me, though.
 
I didn’t enter into the room with him, watching the women eat him up with their eyes and feel the old familiar jealousy stirring inside of me.
 
I wasn’t worried about him meeting some women for the both of us.
 
I felt like I was the guy with the upper hand, I was the one with a reason to be cocky.
 
I was the guy that was in love with a beautiful woman, a woman who reciprocated the feelings.
 
This gave me an unusually relaxed feeling, a nonchalant attitude towards the women at the bar, a sort of peace inside.
 
I was high on Sara, and nothing could change that.

The jukebox started pumping out a song by Radiohead, my first choice.
 
Sean had the balls racked, and I chalked up my stick.

I wasn’t a very good pool player; most games I played went on in marathon-length hunks of time due to my inability to make shots.
 
 
Even the easy, straight-ahead, lined up with the pocket shots
went crazy on me, balls spinning all over the table, nothing falling in.
 
It was normally a miserable sight to see.

“Crack ‘
em
,” Sean said.

I leaned forward and lined up my patented Fluke break shot.
 
After a dramatic pause, and several pumps of the cue, I smacked the cue ball and watched it jump over the triangle of balls.
 
I heard the clunk of the ball hitting the wooden floor, and I smiled at Sean.

“You fluked that one up, brother,” Sean said, laughing.
 
“But I wouldn’t have you any other way.
 
I love your breaks.”

“Thanks, sweetheart,” I responded.
 
I heard clapping behind me, and looking back, I saw the two girls from the bar, looking at us, applauding my mastery of billiards. Slightly embarrassed, I took a half bow in their direction and looked back to Sean, preparing to take over the break duties.

“Sean,” I said.
 
He was leaning forward, lining up his shot.
 
I knew already that it would be a thing of beauty, a sharp crack as the balls exploded out from one another, several of the same balls dropping.
 
He was a great pool player, much better than me.
 
It wasn’t just women he dominated me at.
 

“What?” His arm shot forward, the cue ball hit the one ball, the crack was loud and sharp, and I watched three solid colored balls fall.
 
He looked up at me.

“I’m in love, bro,” I told him, not knowing what else to say.
 
I was filled with things I wanted to tell him, things I was fairly certain he would appreciate, but I didn’t know where to begin.

“What? Did you get laid or something?” He looked doubtful.

“No, no, that’s not it.
 
I mean, yeah, I did, but that’s not why I…” I stuttered.
 
“I mean, yes, I got laid, but that has nothing to do with why I say I’m in love.”

Sean leaned forward and said, “Side pocket.” He sunk one more and stood up.
 
“Love, huh?”

“Yeah.
 
I met this girl named Sara.
 
She’s amazing, man.” I watched him miss a shot off of the corner pocket.
 
I leaned over the table for my shot.

“You know my feelings on love,” he said.

“Yeah, yeah, it doesn’t exist outside of a bedroom.”

“Don’t simplify my complex thoughts, Fluke,” he said, snickering.
 
“Love doesn’t happen, man.
 
Lust happens.
 
You have sex with someone, and you enjoy it more than you did with the last chick you nailed.
 
Suddenly, you’ve found someone who makes you enjoy the most pleasurable thing you can do with a human body, and you mistake that for some kind of emotional attachment, and bam! You’re buying flowers and rings and matching clothes.
 
It’s sick, really.”

We stood silent for a minute after I missed my shot, just standing, staring at one another, and listening to the music.
 
I contemplated what he said, though I’ve heard it at least fifty times before, and I knew he was wrong.
 
I might have bought into that theory two weeks earlier, but not anymore.

“Sean, this woman is incredible.
 
We are like kindred spirits or something cheesy like that,” I had trouble finding the words to describe my feelings about Sara.

“Don’t get all Oprah on me, brother,” he laughed.
 
He sank three balls in a row, then missed on a bank shot that I’d seen him make a hundred times.
 
He was showing me mercy, either to not hurt my feelings or to at least make the game last more than five minutes.

“I’m not, I’m not.
 
It’s just that…” I worked my mind, searching for words.
 
Nothing came, except for, “She’s it, man.
 
She’s the one, and I know it.”

The Radiohead song ended and the Tap Room was silent except for the low buzz of conversations behind us.
 
Sean looked up at me and raised his eyebrows.
 
We stood on opposite sides of the table, holding our cue sticks in front of us like a military drill team awaiting orders.

“Dude, I don’t know how much I believe in one person being ‘it.’ I think the idea that there’s one person out there for us goes against biology and nature,” he leaned his stick against the table and crossed his arms.
 
“I mean, come on, there’s, like, what? Seven billion people on this planet? But we’re supposed to believe that only
one
of those seven billion is who we’re supposed to be intimate with?
 
It seems fucking ludicrous, man.

You may meet only five thousand people in your life.
 
What about the rest of them? You’re going to tell me that you beat the odds? You take what you can get only because, in a lifetime, you’ll
never have the opportunity to do all the ‘research.’ It doesn’t make any sense at all.
 
You just can’t say, not with any sort of certainty, that you’ve correctly answered the question or solved the riddle until you’ve explored all of the possible answers.
 
All seven billion of them.”

Two weeks ago, his argument would have made sense to me.
 
But, yes, somehow I knew that I had done it, I had beaten the odds in this big, stupid world.
 
I started to tell him this, but he wasn’t finished.

“But, it’s a strange world, filled with people who need the idea of ‘it’.
 
I’m sure there’s a miniscule percentage of humans out there who actually achieve that.
 
I don’t know that it will happen for me, but I’m not particularly concerned about it,” he said, glancing at the girls at the bar.
 
I looked in that direction and noticed the girls smiling at Sean.

“I don’t mean to be a downer, Fluke.
 
I’m not saying you aren’t in love; I’d never question that with you.
 
We’re too close, and we know each other too well.
 
I just like to get on my soapbox occasionally, and you’re always there to listen for me,” he laughed quickly as he said this, and I realized that I was seeing something no woman has seen, and may never see, in Sean: true, honest emotion.