Red

They always used to start with, "I can't believe it happened to me!" Those were my favorite when I was a kid.

I had gotten that book from the crazy guy with the question mark suit; the one that's supposed to be full of free government money. It wasn't very useful to me being that I don't give out my social security number if I can possibly avoid it. I did find out how to take free classes being offered at the Santa Rosa County Library though, and I already had a library card named after my favorite video game gangster. Creative writing seemed like a staple for any proper dork, so I signed up for the Tuesday night class that was held in a classroom down a hallway I had never noticed before.

Class was six-thirty to eight at night and was immediately the only hour and a half of my week that mattered. I think there were around ten or twelve regular students, but I'm not sure because there this girl... If I had paid any attention to the class I might be able to describe her.

The first time I showed up I had actually picked out my clothes in advance, which is something I've skipped doing for non-religious weddings. I made it to class early and took the desk on the middle-right of the front row. There were an even number of aisles so I wasn't able to lock down alpha nerd status by being dead center at the front of the room. I was glad to find myself feeling enthusiastic. I had always hated school, but not being forced in did make a difference.

I had arrived with a cow patterned composition book and a mechanical pencil and was sitting in my one piece desk/chair tapping one against the other. A mustached guy with a Boston accent who looked like he had been in the Navy was standing by the teacher's desk chatting about the little known fact that Richard Bachmann is in all truth a pen name used by Stephen King. The teacher was a nice enough looking southern lady with a flower print dress and pearl earrings. She had drawn her eyebrows back on in a slightly surprised expression and when she politely raised them at his informative revelation she looked as though she had seen someone violate a donkey.

When Miss Thing walked in I wasn't the only one who stopped breathing, but I was the last one to start. She knew she was taking over the room as soon as she arrived but when she saw me she did react, if only in the slightest way.

We had picked the exact same black and red and we both noticed, and pretended not to. I know she noticed because her Keds were the exact same scarlet as her golf shirt. The laces were the same color but just a tiny bit lighter where they went through the eyelets so I knew she had dyed them herself. She had long jet-black hair that was shiny and straight and perfectly matched the pleated black skirt that came exactly halfway down her gorgeous little kneecap. She was wearing one black sock and one white one of the same cut and a little chain of silver beads around her left ankle, the black one. I did look at her legs more than I meant to.

She didn't stop dead by any means but when she saw that I was wearing a scarlet golf shirt like hers, jet black cargo slacks and my black Reeboks with the red stripe, the same red that she had probably spent three hours getting just right, she slowed her fabulous self down just enough to notice for someone who was really watching, and I was. I nodded and looked at the wall in front of me and tried to act like I wasn't already sweating bullets while she walked to front and center left and took the seat right next to me. It might have been three minuets later that class started and the gentleman from Boston took his seat, but it felt like a long time that I sat looking straight ahead but only seeing her nice calves and devil red Keds.

The teacher stood up and took the floor. “Good evening everybody, we have a couple of new classmates. My name is Miss Spurlock. And you are?”

She gestured towards me and I simply said, “Tommy,” then towards the girl who introduced herself as “Melissa.” She had a nice voice too. She must have been some kind of witch.

“And how do you two know eachother?” It was funny how we both jerked our heads back the same way and looked at the teacher as if that were a strange idea.

“We don't know eachother,” Melissa stated sounding certain but not quite offended. We had walked in separately, but we really did look like we had gotten dressed together. Miss Spurlock let it go with a shrug.

Before I took that class I had never realized just how much of my attention could be channeled out of the corner of my left eyeball while I pretended to look straight ahead for an hour and a half at a time. Her eyes always seemed to float at the very edge of my vision so that I could never be certain how often if ever they flicked in my direction. She was deadly and she knew it, but I still got the sense that she had noticed me at least enough to be curious. She wanted to know how bad I had it for her, and I was going to hold out as long as I could.

I think the discussion was about adverbs. Supposedly, it's best to limit words like 'angrily' and 'quickly' and instead find a way to describe the action in question. It sounded smart, but I was busy building a brick wall in my head and trying not to get caught peeking. Melissa was taking notes but her feet always seemed to keep moving. She was either crossing or uncrossing her legs, making little circles in the air with the toe of one of her shoes, or using her heels to tap out some secret rhythm. Maybe she'd had too much caffeine or maybe she just loved those Keds. I think she knew exactly what she was doing.

There are very few things in life that are more degrading than being toyed with by an attractive girl. When a woman gets raped she can at least hold on to the independence of her heart and mind. The female power gets inside you though and starts to dissolve the boundaries of your ego. By the time she gets done with you, a girl will have permanently etched herself into the very root of your being. She will be forever exalted in your eyes no matter what you tell yourself.

When class was over I made myself proud by standing up, nodding at the teacher, and walking out without having said anything to Melissa. I smiled and waved at the librarian who was working the checkout counter. Melissa wasn't the only cute girl around. She wasn't getting into my head.

On the drive home I tried to bat away the thoughts of her that swarmed around the naive corners of my brain. Of course she had a boyfriend or four. There was no way we liked the same music. Wearing the same colors as her had made me look like a queer. She had just spent the whole class dreading the moment when I would look her way with a stupid expectant grin and say, "We're wearing the same color clothes! Isn't that weird?"

I hadn't though. I had made it through that round. She didn't get her chance to give me a one word answer like, "yeah," and look the other way while I sat there and made a fool of myself.

It also occurred to me that I might be over thinking things. I was getting a little bit intense over a girl that I hadn't quite made eye contact with. That's what girls like Melissa want though. She wanted me driving around running red lights just because I had been in the same room as her. She wanted me to turn on KRZA Klassics at that exact moment and hear that song and loose all will to resist thinking that it should be our song and that she was driving along listening too. Of course she was thinking about me. She was such a sweet person.

Thankfully, the spell faded as the week wore on. I was working at a shop that sold swimming pools and overpriced chemicals to dump in them. For some reason, people assume that the dress code for a pool shop is the same as that of a pool. It's nice to see a good looking girl in a swimsuit on the beach but somehow, when you're fully dressed and standing inside in the air conditioning, the intrusion of a mostly naked wet-haired young lady is pure pornography.

For six days Melissa's hold on my thoughts was whittled away. Bit by bit her shining black hair was dulled by lemon juice blondes. Her delicate white calves were attacked by tanned athletic legs in nylon soccer shorts. Even that carnal Scarlett golf shirt that only magnified her feminine curves with it's masculine cut was faded by doing business with so many coconut oiled breasts that were only a string pull away from total freedom.

Somehow, it was those little red Keds and the silver chain on her ankle that remained. That was the part that I couldn't ignore, literally. I could have kept my eyes forward and pretended that most of her wasn't there but to not see her feet I would have had to set my gaze on the upper right corner of the room or turn my head sideways and look out the door. Either of these actions would be strange enough to notice and would have made attending class pretty much pointless.

I thought about just ditching the class and being done with it. After all, I hadn't paid any money towards it. I was an adult who might theoretically have things to do. True, I didn't have much of a life and spent most of my time playing games about characters who did, but getting chewed up and spit out by some overgrown Stacy doll was still something I didn't have time for.

By the time I locked up the shop on Monday night I had eased up a little. Melissa was just an attractive girl I had met and I was even thinking about creative writing.

I've always loved science fiction. There are two kinds of sci-fi as I see it. There's the idealistic kind where the author explains how far we've gone and how bright and unstoppable the future is, and there's the fatalistic kind where we get to see how horrible things get when we loose sight of the past and our greatest mistakes are amplified by undeserved power. They're both great in my opinion.

I decided to write a short story like the ones in Asimov's monthly. I had gotten a subscription on my fourteenth birthday and had kept it up for the past eleven years. Some of those stories were masterpieces, but a lot of them were just entertaining stuff to read before going to sleep. You didn't have to be a genius to get published there; you just had to be clever. I figured that if I kept going to class and fiddling with it, I stood a chance of having my work put in the magazine with my favorite writer's name on it. Realism had never been my strong point and after some thought I was convinced that it would happen.

I stopped on the way home and grabbed a twelve pack of apple flavored Smirnoff Ice since writers are too sophisticated to drink beer. My plan was to get drunk and Google words like 'science', 'space', and 'robots' until an idea popped into my head. I succeeded in getting drunk, but after about fifteen minutes of research I was playing Counter Strike and having a great time trying to click on people's heads.

I must have been awake pretty late because when I woke up the clock said two thirty and I had no desire to get out of bed aside from a ridiculous need to pee and a thirst that verged on panic. After taking a leak, guzzling a quart or so of water from the bathroom sink and taking a shower, I put on some jeans and made coffee. While the coffee maker brewed I cleaned up the forest of Smirnoff bottles that had sprung up next to the computer. The smell of sour apples and clear malt was totally foul and I tossed out the three unopened bottles that were left in the fridge.

It was six-fifteen when I pulled into the library parking lot. I had decided that whatever story I was going to write would be the idealistic kind, and was trying to think of some social issue to have solved in the future. Making my way inside I found that I was the first student there. I took the same seat in the front and looking at the empty desk to my left, I had my first thought of Melissa for the day. I wondered if she liked sci-fi.

The teacher was busy at her desk and since I didn't feel like chatting before class I decided to follow suit. I opened my composition book and for lack of any real ideas I started writing the names of any authors that came to mind. I started with Asimov of course and as I was writing the other students trickled in. I had gotten down to Heinlin and was running out of names when she walked past my desk.

I kept my eyes trained on my notebook but that didn't save me from the nicest pair of stone washed hip-hugging blue jeans I'd ever seen. Her simple white button up shirt had sleeves that ended in a cuff at the elbow and had a curve at the bottom so that either side showed off slightly less than an inch of skin above her empty belt loops. She walked to the same desk on my left and as she passed I didn't notice perfume of any sort but just a breeze of fresh cotton as if rather than sweat, she walked around exuding cool clean air. I hated her.

The class started and once again I tried to focus on either my notebook or the teacher but before long the left side of my vision tingled with the urge to turn straight towards her and just look. I wanted run my eyes all over her just like she was daring me to, and who would blame me?

Maybe I didn't have to stare though. Maybe I could just casually take her in until she looked back at me. Then I could smile and look away not as if I had been caught, but as sort of a silent compliment. I knew better though. I had been in similar situations with girls of Melissa's type.

The first time would seem perfectly normal. I would just glance across the aisle, a natural thing to do any person that's near you, and my eyes would be instantly glued to something. Maybe I had the perfect angle on the space between two of her buttons or maybe her lips would be unconsciously parted in that perfect way. Whatever it was would trap me like a fly until she noticed and looked back at me. At that point I would not be able to pull off any sort of charming flirty smile. I would never be able to hide the attraction and would end up glaring at her like a dog who's seen a bacon covered cat with two broken legs. I still wanted to though. I wanted to just let go and let her win. Then she provoked me in a way that was direct and purposeful.

She crossed her left leg over the right one and stretched a little in her desk, giving me a better view of the neon blue flats she had on. They were cute. What I also noticed were her luminously white ankles. She wasn't wearing socks made of cotton or wool or even satin, but tightly stretched gorgeous white silk.

When she resettled herself from stretching, her legs were crossed so that her left foot dangled into the space between our desks. Then she curled her toes and the heel of her shoe slid off without friction. She dangled the little shoe from her foot and actually bobbed it from side to side. She was mocking me.

She must have noticed that I had been able to keep myself from looking and wanted to make sure that I took note of her high quality footwear. There were even little flowers of different colors printed on the inner sole of the shoe as if it were made for the exact move she was pulling on me at that moment.

The dangling flat did give me something to look at while turning her way though. I raised my eyebrow and tried to wear an expression of bemusement. I turned my eyes directly across the aisle and snatched them right back. It was too late though. She was deadly. I sat and considered the image that had just been burned into my retinas. A little more than halfway up her thigh there was a small but not tiny hole in her jeans and through that hole I had glimpsed the same lustrous white I had seen on her ankles. Although the hole wasn't large and I had torn my gaze away almost immediately, I had seen the line where the cloth got a little thicker. She was wearing expensive looking thigh-high silk stockings underneath her stone washed blue jeans. It was cold blooded murder.

She had seen me too. My eyes hadn't made it to her face but I had seen her turn her head. She was clearly aware of the hole in her jeans and had almost certainly put it there herself. She knew exactly what it showed off and what effect it would have. She had seen my gaze rest on that spot and seen me avert my eyes like a torture victim being shown a corkscrew. It was clear to both of us that while I was feigning resistance, I was just a mouse in a tiger's paw.

I tried paying attention to the teacher. She was talking about the difference between connotation and denotation. According to Miss Spurlock, there are certain words that can have extra meaning aside from their technical definition.

"For instance,"she lectured,"the words childlike and childish sort of have the same meaning. But if you say that someone is childlike, you probably mean it in a nice way. You're probably saying that they're innocent or cute. If you call someone childish though, you probably mean that they're being petty or selfish."

That made some sense, but I was staring at Miss Spurlock as if she had just told me the meaning of life. Melissa wasn't finished with me though and now that I carried the curse of knowledge, I was helpless. While still glancing between her notebook and the teacher, she uncrossed her legs and rubbed her ankles together as though one of them had an itch. Then she used the toe of each foot to remove the shoe of the other and let both flats lay next to eachother on the floor. She rested her right foot on the left one which stat atop it's discarded shoe.

Miss Spurlock was either unaware or indifferent to the blatant terrorism happening right in front of her because while her gaze swept back and forth across the classroom as she lectured, she paid no special attention to Melissa.

There was no helping it. Someone could have offered me a billion dollars to not look and I would have blown it. Even when I pretended to crack my neck and turned my head completely away, I remained aware of her glowingly pure white feet as if my brain were still looking at them through the back of my skull. Trying to focus on the teacher was useless. At least twice a minute my eyeballs would decide that one little glance wouldn't hurt and that no one would notice. It might have been true at first, but after about thirty glances I felt more ridiculous than if I had just kept looking the entire time. There was no way that Melissa missed this. I could see under her desk without seeing her face but everyone in the room must have seen my pupils darting back and forth like I was at a tennis match. I had to do something.

I put my elbow on the desk and rested my head on my hand so that I was blocking Melissa's view of my eye. It was an obvious move and wouldn't fool her, but it saved me from the discomfort of her directly observing my boorish behavior. It made me a little too comfortable though and before I realized it I was leering.

I could not have been more enthralled. I forgot every other thing in the room. The stockings she was wearing were seamless as far as I could tell and hugged every detail of her skin so that her feet looked as though Michelangelo had carved them out of animated marble. I started to understand the secret of the Eskimo people and why they cling to life amidst frozen emptiness. They must have seen that same infinite white that I was seeing. They must know that perfect color that is the essence of endless possibility. It occurred to me that this must have been the first color to have ever shined in the cosmos; the whole color from which every other hue is refracted.

My trance was broken when I noticed that Miss Spurlock had stopped pacing and lecturing and was standing in front of the class looking right at me. When I looked at her she flicked her gaze to Melissa then back to me. I heard Melissa make a noise that sounded like a stifled chuckle and I wandered how long she had been watching the teacher watch me stare at her feet, and how many other people had seen the same thing. I honestly had no idea how long I had been ignoring everything else in the room. I may as well have been knelt down with my palms stretched out on the floor in complete supplication. It was pathetic.

Class ended a few minutes later when Miss Spurlock felt that most of us were done writing whatever she had suggested to us while I was busy making an idiot of myself. I rushed but didn't run to my car and drove out of the parking lot telling myself that I was not coming back.

The following week was miserable. I worked six days in a row including three days open to close. It was just as well though because Melissa was waiting at all times. Any idle moment was hers. She didn't just wander in and out of my mind. She was the background for every thought that I had. If I wasn't concentrating on work or dead asleep, every thought led back to her. I thought of everything whether I liked it or not.

I imagined her telling her friends about the creepy nerd in her creative writing class. I wondered where she worked and lived. I thought about meeting her parents and lifting her veil. I thought of her leaving me for my friends and how I would be powerless to stop her and so would they. She was an angel from above sent to save my wretched soul. She was the God damned devil.

On and on my thoughts raced around her until my mind was worn to the point of collapse. Out of that chaos, I formed an idea. I knew what issue I would attack in my story. I had changed my mind and decided to do the fatalistic kind of sci-fi. I was going to destroy the beautiful people.

I decided that there would be a rebellion. Perhaps genetic engineering had gone too far and there were only a small number of 'naturals' left. These people would be forced together and marginalized. Next I needed a conflict wherein being a normal scumbag was better than being perfect. I left work at about three o'clock on Monday afternoon. My thoughts were still buzzing with what's her name, but the story that I was writing in my head gave me a foothold. In another place and time I was hatching a plot.

I went straight home and got on the net. I was looking for firey, us versus them oration. I wasn't interested in Churchill or Doctor King. After all, I was being fatalistic. What I wanted was Stalin and Malcolm X. I plugged in the term 'hate speech' and was richly rewarded. I'd like to say that my research was strictly intellectual and that I was far too advanced to be sucked in by the language of conflict, but when I woke up the next morning, it was with an air of vigorous purpose.

I wanted to build a character who was very human. I got in the shower and it occurred to me that a human character should start out nude. Getting dressed at the beginning of the day was the perfect start. I turned off all of the hot water and stood still as if I were used to it. After a minute or two I actually didn't mind. It felt fresh. I used cold water to shave in the sink but decided that a trimmed beard would be better for the story.

I needed a name and 'Jacob Still' worked for the moment. A short story could take a little cheese. I slicked my hair back and got dressed in a white button up shirt with black slacks. The belt I put on had a shiny silver buckle but Jacob's would be gold. Jacob was a priest who lived on Desere', the only planet in the Solarian empire that completely banned genetic engineering or augmentation of the body beyond pace makers and spectacles. My loafers were black but Jacob's would be brown.

I took a trip to Wal-Mart and fetched a box of black hair dye. Jacob dyed his hair too but it was a nervous secret. Hair dye was legal on Desere', but the Church considered it immoral along with tattoos and piercings. While I waited for the dye to set, I worked on his tone of voice. I looked myself down in the mirror and practiced saying, "The Beautiful People." I kept my hands down and made secret fists when I said the word 'Beautiful'. The chemical stink was helpful, and by the time I washed the dye out, the word tasted like puke. I still hadn't thought of what the enemy had done wrong, but creating a separation was all that really mattered. Conflict was sure to follow.

I donned my slate colored army surplus trench coat with lapels. In lieu of a priest's collar I undid my top button and added a sterling silver chain that I had been given years ago but had never worn. It was a little bit macho, but if Melissa could show off her fancy underwear then I wasn't going to feel cheesy about my necklace. I liked what I saw in the mirror. Dying my hair black brought out the green in my eyes and gave my face a certain kind of energy. I almost took a picture.

I got to the library around five 'o clock and went looking for books about the Soviet revolution. I was also practicing looking severe but not mean. I tried to make eye contact and give a curt nod to anyone that I passed.

I felt that Jacob would prefer ink-and-paper books to other more advanced kinds of media. He liked writing letters by hand. I thought about the Unibomber and used the library's computer to look up the crazy manifesto he had once published in a newspaper. It was long and rambling and wordy but filled with a tense energy that suited my purpose. I copied some of the good parts and saved them as a draft in my e-mail account.

Twenty minuets before class started I went into the classroom and took my seat. I got a curious look from Miss Spurlock but she didn't make any comment on my sense of style. I took my seat and felt ready for battle.Then Melissa walked in and Jacob Still died a swift and silent death.

Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail except for a stray lock that was curled behind her ear. She was wearing a pair of little round glasses with purple lenses and earrings made out of green feathers that looked like leaves at first. She had on a pair of brown corduroys and purple converse that almost matched her shades. Most of all, she was wearing a brightly colored tie-dyed shirt with a big white peace sign on the front. The stony expression disappeared from my face and I didn't even try to bring it back.

She walked to her seat and as she passed she reached out and lightly dragged the fingernails of her left hand across the fake wooden surface of my desk. The silver chain of beads was on her wrist now. She looked at the teacher and kept her hand on the opposite side of her body while she did this. Miss Spurlock couldn't have cared about such a thing but keeping the gesture a secret was very charming. It was trivial and silly, but it was just between us.

I watched her as she sat down and gave me a mischievous grin. Her smile could have pierced the armor on a tank. There was no way to keep myself from smiling back. She had won, and I didn't mind at all. She looked me up and down and asked, "What are you supposed to be? Some kind of square?"

I narrowed my eyes and said, "Shut your bong hole hippy." She laughed at that and it was very encouraging. Without considering how weird it might sound, I mentioned the story I would probably never write. "I'm trying going to write a story about a crazy guy who takes over a planet." I explained. "I want to start out with him getting dressed and thinking about the proper look for a militant revolutionary."

"So, he's a disco Nazi?" She raised her eyebrows and looked at my collar. Glancing down I saw that my second button had also come undone and I was showing everyone what my gay friend Denis called 'man cleavage'. So much for looking severe.

I fixed my shirt but Melissa was still smiling so I kept talking. "I didn't want to use the word Nazi, but yeah, he's pretty much nuts."

"Who does he hate?", she asked, seeming genuinely interested.

"The Beautiful People." I said just like I had practiced. I even clutched my hand into a fist when I said the word 'Beautiful'. I must have gotten it just right because her face froze as if she wanted to laugh but also wondered if she should be worried. I think it was the weirdest compliment ever.

Miss Spurlock saved the day by starting class. She greeted us and rose from her desk to start her usual pacing as she lectured. "Tonight", she began, "I would like to discuss something that I think we'll all enjoy. Let's talk about comedy." The room filled with the sound of a dozen people sitting up to pay attention. "Would anyone like to share their thoughts on what makes a good joke?"

Several hands went up but the gentleman from Boston blurted out, "When something turns out different than you thought."

Miss Spurlock nodded her head and pointed at a more polite student behind me. "Lots of jokes are about saying something you already know but in a weird way.", a girl's voice said. "Like relationship humor or jokes about people's jobs and stuff."

Miss Spurlock nodded her agreement and chose another student.

"Comedy is usually about exaggerating something.", came the answer.

Most of the hands had gone down and the teacher moved on. "Does anyone have a favorite comedy writer?"

I shot my hand up so fast it hurt my shoulder. Melissa raised her hand too and of course she got called on first.

"Douglas Adams", she said as if it were the only answer. I put my hand down.

"And what would you say it is that makes his writing funny?", asked the teacher.

"Well", Melissa thought for a second, "It's not just the situations he writes about. It's sort of the way he says things."

"Can you think of an example?"

Melissa chewed on her pen and tried to recall. I went ahead and chimed in. "The spacecraft hung in the air, in much the same way that a brick does not."

"Exactly!" Melissa slapped the top of her desk. Again, I felt encouraged.

"Drinking a pan-galactic gargle blaster is a lot like having your brain smashed out by a slice of lemon..." I paused and crossed my fingers in my pocket.

"Wrapped around a solid gold brick!," Melissa shouted and pointed at me. She really had read Hitchhiker's Guide. Possibly more than once. She must have been ugly in high school or something.

The discussion kept moving and it was made clear that there is no definitive formula for a good joke. Eventually we came to the subject of dark humor. A male student who I couldn't see suggested the example of the big dumb cat from Loony Tunes who wants a pet to pet and pet and pet but always ends up crushing whatever he gets his hands on.

"That's from Of Mice and Men", I mentioned. "Faulkner wrote that."

"That wasn't Faulkner.", argued Melissa. "That was Steinbeck."

I knew it was Faulkner even though I had never actually read it. What I had read was a satirical essay titled "Take it from a Faulknerian Idiot Man-Child" It had been posted on the Onion years ago, but I clearly remembered it and its obvious connection to the book in question.

"It was totally Faulkner." I stated trying not to sound condescending.

"No. It wasn't. Of Mice and Men was written by Steinbeck! I know that for a fact!"

"Why don't you go look it up?" Miss Spurlock interrupted, "We have internet in the library."

"Good idea." said Melissa as she got up and went to the door. "You coming?"

She didn't turn to see if I was following but of course I was. I followed her up the hallway and over to the row of computer terminals. When we got to the nearest terminal she quickly punched 'Of Mice and Men' into the index and hit enter. Without delay the computer returned 'Of Mice and Men' by John Steinbeck. The library had two copies and one was available.

Melissa took her hands away from the keyboard, crossed her arms, and stood looking at me through her groovy little shades. I wanted to double check or try to show her the essay from the Onion to save some face, but sometimes even idiots like me manage to say the right thing.

"Oh. I was totally wrong. Sorry about that."

"No sweat." she uncrossed her arms, "Adams is better than Steinbeck anyway."

She turned and walked back to the classroom and I was more than happy to follow.

Class was over before long and this time I was a little slower to leave. I couldn't think of anything to say to Melissa but we walked out of the front door together. She took a left as soon as we were outside and said over her shoulder, "I'll see you around"

"Peace!" I replied and got one last smile.

For the next week I was a total wreck. I don't really remember the drive home or exactly which days I worked. I do remember thinking about Melissa twenty four hours a day. I remember turning up every single love song I heard. I remember rolling my eyes over and over at the mostly naked amateurs who liked to prance around at the pool shop. It occurred to me more than once that I was obsessed in the exact way that I had warned myself about. I didn't care though. She was worth it.

When Tuesday came back around I hadn't cooled off at all. I was trying to coach myself on exactly how to go about talking to her. I wanted to find out what if anything she had been writing and maybe get her to e-mail it to me. She wasn't dumb and would see through something like that, but I had a feeling that she was a decent writer on top of everything else. I wandered if she had ever failed at anything in her entire life.

I had agonized about what to wear to class but as it turned out I got off work at six and only had thirty minutes to be at the library. I switched my uniform shirt out for a navy blue golf shirt and went in my khakis and white Reeboks. I rushed to the library and made my way inside to the classroom. Melissa was there ahead of me and was sitting at her desk with her head down and still looked better than ever.

She had dyed her hair flaming sunset orange and tied about half of it back letting the rest go free. She had on a dark pink blouse with short poofy sleeves that only covered her shoulders and a pleated black skirt just like the one she was wearing on the first day of class except shorter. She was also wearing a pair of beat up cross trainers and black stockings that stopped right above her knees to show off a hand's width of her aggressively nice thighs. I walked quietly to my seat and tried to think of something to say.

Before I could come up with anything Miss Spurlock stood up and started the class. Melissa picked her head up and yawned while the teacher launched into a lecture about dialogue and the special rules for conversation in literature. She was writing on the white board and had her back turned to the class when I thought of something to say.

"Hey Melissa," I said quietly, "I like your hair. That's a really nice color."

As I said this she turned and looked me square in the eye. It felt like someone had hit me in the skull with a sledgehammer and the word 'color' came out as a timid whisper. Somehow I had missed it. In all the time I had been falling for her I hadn't gotten a good look at Melissa's eyes.

They were a blue that wasn't ocean and a blue that wasn't sky, but a blue that glanced and glared and stared and only in her eye. I shit you not. I had thought that Melissa was a tiger but I was wrong. She was an immortal dragon. I was completely screwed.

She saw me paralyzed with my mouth agape but instead of wrinkling her nose and looking away she held my gaze. It seemed to me that the rest of the room got darker as every photon crowded jealously around her supernatural eyes. She shifted in her seat and faced me more directly. She blinked twice, obviously aware that the word color hadn't been directed at her livid sunset hair.

Slowly, like the minute hand of a watch, a warm smile worked it's way across her face. "Thank you." she finally said in a quiet voice. She kept the smile as she turned her attention back to the teacher and released me from my helpless bondage. She gave me another quick glance, clearly telling me that I wasn't being dismissed. We were at the front of the class after all, and people had noticed our little staring contest.

Miss Spurlock was working on a smart alec question about using a quote within a quote and pretending to not be annoyed. As satisfied as my eyes should have been I found myself once more stealing glances at Melissa. Aside from taunting my carnal instincts, her clothes gave me a few clues about her.

For one thing, her colors were slightly faded. The dark pink blouse she had on might have been hot pink when she bought it and her stockings were not quite as black around the knees and ankles. The stonewashed jeans she had worn with the perfect little hole had been made to look faded whereas the clothes she presently had on showed a few snags and other signs of wear. These were her natural clothes. This was how she dressed when she was alone and not trying to impress anyone.

I imagined her coming home from work, ditching her 'man clothes', and putting on something like this. It was easy to imagine her laying back, pointing her foot at the ceiling, and rolling on her favorite black stockings. She didn't wear them to look good for someone else, but because she honestly liked them. She liked to adorn herself. The girls of Penthouse were just posers trying to act like Melissa.

I also noticed something useful. On her well used running shoes there were what looked at first like random dots of paint in a variety of colors. Looking closely however, I noticed that there were no two dots of the same color next to eachother and both shoes had roughly the same amount of paint. She had put each dot right where it was on purpose. Maybe the first few were a mistake, but most of them were not. Regardless, those dots gave me exactly what I wanted, an excuse. I thought for a second about how to say it.

"Is it any good so far?" I asked, trying to make her curious.

"What?" she replied, although I had a feeling that she knew exactly what I meant.

"Your painting." I answered as though it were obvious.

"Oh!" she seemed happy that I had brought it up. "It's alright," she said while making a so-so gesture with her hand. "I have fun with it though and that's what matters." Her tone of voice suggested that she was being modest.

"You should take a picture. I'd love to see what you've done." I surprised myself by talking to her with so much ease. There was a certain liberation in admitting defeat. I felt like a Kamikaze pilot who once resigned to his fate, lets go of fear and flies the best mission of his life. Melissa had won, and I was going to carefully hit on her until I crashed and burned.

"You should come see after class. I live right next door."

The room spun for a moment and I had black dots in my vision. "Yeah, that sounds great." I heard myself say. Some part of my brain was still attached to my mouth and able to operate. Thank God.

I spent the rest of class trying to wipe the astonished look off of my face. I was convinced that every other person in the room including the teacher was waiting to see if I was actually going to leave with Melissa. Surely she had just said that for fun and didn't actually expect me to follow her home. I tried not to fidget or sweat while the class carried on its discussion in a strange language that I had never heard. More than once I wondered if she had actually said anything to me at all.

Again, I found myself taking peeks at the desk to my left without being noticed. I wanted to know if she was casual about people visiting her home of if this was something rare. She seemed to be listening to the teacher but she didn't ask any questions or make any comments. She had her pen out and looked like she was taking notes but after a few glances I saw that she was just doodling. She was making circles on top of circles without lifting her pen. She moved her hand as she went so that the circles started to make a shape.

By the time eight o'clock arrived I hadn't said a word to anyone and had no clue what the discussion was about. All I knew was that Melissa had drawn a tornado that looked like a question mark with a little house as the dot. It wasn't 'Tommy' with a heart for the 'O', but at least there was something on her mind.

Miss Spurlock bid us goodnight and I walked out into the hallway. I waited there trying to decide if I should ask if I were still invited or if I should just feign confidence and offer her a ride. I had settled on just following along and letting her make the decisions when she walked out of the classroom, hooked her elbow around mine, and pulled me along towards the library's front door.

"I really hope you like it!" she said in an excited whisper, "I just finished and nobody's seen it yet." Part of my mind registered that as a good thing, but most of my attention was focused on the four inches of her skin that was touching mine.

She led me out the door and to the left the same way I had seen her go the week before. At the edge of the library's parking lot was a row of trees and we followed a path between two of them that led through a small patch of woods and let out behind a two story apartment building. Still holding my elbow with hers she took me over to the breezeway and up to the second floor. We stopped in front of a door that had a light patch on the concrete where a doormat had been. She produced a key from the waistband of her skirt, opened the bolt lock, stepped inside, and motioned with her hand that I should follow.

I went in feeling a strange sense of ease that may have been my body simply running out of adrenaline. Inside I saw clear signs that either she had just moved in, or more likely that someone had just moved out. There were indentations in the carpet near one corner of the living/dining room that made up the front area of the apartment. There was also an entertainment center with a television but no couches or chairs facing it. I decided to not ask any questions that might spoil her friendly mood.

Melissa closed the door behind me and walked across the living room to a drafting desk with an angled surface and opened a wide shallow drawer. She drew out a painting that had been done on a thick piece of paper that was half again as big as the notebook I was carrying. She placed it on the desk and turned on the built in lamp. My heart sank a little bit while she stepped back and watched my face. It really was a serious piece of art and she really had brought me here to see it.

The painting was of a little girl holding a gerbil. She was kneeling and holding the tiny creature in front of her face with her gently cupped hands. The two subjects were looking at one another, the girl's expression was loving and sympathetic. The gerbil's face was mostly taken up by an over sized pair of tall shiny eyes that were caught between fear and affection. Most of the colors were soft and had been applied with a kind of paint that soaked into the paper without leaving strong borders or brushstrokes. The background was a light red that got lighter in the space between the gerbil's and girl's faces and drew the energy of the scene between the two. It would have been one of the cutest and softest things I had ever seen except for what was behind the girl's back on the floor in the bottom left corner of the page.

There were three dead gerbils lying on their backs in various states of decay. On the farthest left lay a skeleton. To it's right, a rotten pile of fur with the very tips of it's bones sticking out of the top. Closest to the girl was a fresh corpse with bulging eyes frozen in terror and multicolored entrails gooping out of its mouth. The fresh gerbil had four indentions that gave it the shape of a squeezed ball of dough. Each rodent also had one of its paws thrust upward in a gesture of clutching desperation. It wasn't just good. It was one of the best paintings I'd ever seen.

The expression between the girl and the living gerbil was so gentle, so removed from the carnage on the floor behind her back, that the viewer was as moved by the plight of the unwitting killer as they were by that of her victim. Melissa was waiting while I took in her work. I didn't have to exaggerate my opinion.

"That's really really good." I said. She smiled but didn't seem satisfied by that. "She's childish and childlike." I offered. That seemed to have more of an impact. Another thought hit me. "Can I borrow Of Mice and Men?" I asked and turned my attention to Melissa who was smiling so much her eyes were half closed.

"I took it back today. I told you I was certain." she said.

"This is very well done Melissa. I'm glad you showed it to me."

She just nodded and kept smiling. I stood there, enjoyed a nice long look at her, and decided to go for it. If she wasn't in to me then I'd already gotten as far as I would get. I took a step closer to her and tried to look calm.

"That gerbil," I motioned my head towards the painting, "reminds me of this guy I know."

I'm not sure if that was the right thing to say but it wasn't completely the wrong thing because Melissa took the last step between us and grabbed the front of my shirt with both hands. She stood on her tiptoes with her face about an inch away from mine and whispered.

"What" she asked, "is your real name?"

It was clear from the way she used the word 'your' that her name was in fact, not Melissa. I also knew right away that she had me. I didn't even toy with the idea of not telling her, but first, I stole the nicest kiss I've ever even heard of.

She won of course, because she didn't tell me her real name. It wasn't a total loss though because she did say mine, a few times actually. It was pure fucking magic.