Fluke (29 page)

“No television,” she ordered, and turned off the Weather Channel.

“Okay, then, just a nap,” I said, quickly flipping over, turning my back to her, being an idiot.

I had just started fake snoring when she pinched my butt, causing me to jump, and said, “Not so fast, buddy.
 
I think you owe me something.”

I flipped back over to face her, already feeling my adrenaline pumping with excitement. Though I knew exactly what she was talking about, I allowed the idiot demon to possess me, and I played dumb.

“What? I paid for lunch at the casino.
 
Did the room cost more than we had planned on?” I raised my eyebrows, looking genuinely confused.
 
“You know, I’m not made of money, Sara.
 
Remember, I was born to poor sharecroppers…” I trailed off, unable to continue without laughing.

She laughed and out came the come hither look again.
 
She reached to her waist and started unbuttoning her shor
ts.
 
Other parts of my body bega
n to feel the excitement.

“Don’t play dumb with me, Mister Fluke,” she said, kicking her shorts off so hard that they landed on top of the television.
 
She leaned over and turned the lamp off, sending us into darkness.
 
In the darkness, she grabbed the front of my t-shirt and pulled me closer and said, “You know exactly what I’m talking about.” I could smell the toothpaste on her breath.

“Okay, jeez,” I moaned, as though it were all sorts of trouble.
 
“I guess I can help you out, if it’ll make you happy.”

“It’ll make us both happy, trust me,” she said.
 
Her warm legs pressed against mine, and I started kissing her, moving south.

I bet I’ll be happier
.

Four
hours later, we sat in a little Cajun restaurant in the Quarter.
 
Neither one of us were all that hungry, after our slight binge at the casino that afternoon, so we just ordered a huge plate of spicy Cajun fries and beers.
 
Most of our efforts had been focused on the beers, and I made the occasional joke to Sara how my beer money fantasy had come true.

“Hey, Sara, think we could have the bathtub filled with beer?”

Several
hours were spent playing, napping, dreaming, and, well, menstruating.

After I returned the favor I owed Sara, which I did with such vigor and passion that she was forced to grab a fistful of my hair and pull me away from her, both of our bodies soaked with sweat, we smoked cigarettes in the dark, and then drifted off to sleep for approximately an hour and a half.

In that time, I had a dream that
Flukey
and I were back in room 224, only this time, instead of panicking on the floor, terrified of being beaten or shot, we were sitting in chairs around the man’s bed.
 
The man and his female companion, who sort of reminded me of Heather due to a similar hairstyle, were lying on the bed naked, while
Flukey
and I each had our own chairs, facing the bed from the foot corners.

We were both smoking cigarettes, and by both, I mean
Flukey
and I.
 
He was puffing away, with a strange enthusiasm…of course,
any enthusiasm on a stuffed bear’s part while smoking would be strange, I suppose, but he seemed very into it, even for a stuffed bear.

Flukey
and I were talking while the man and woman on the bed were kissing, their naked bodies pressed against each other.
 
The beautiful thing about dreams is that this seemed like the most normal situation in the world for me.

“You know, Adam, it’s really not so bad,”
Flukey
said to me, in a very deep,
bassy
voice that you wouldn’t expect from a small teddy bear.
 
He tapped his ashes over the arms of the chair onto the carpet.

“What’s not so bad,
Flukey
?” I asked.

“That,” he said, motioning to the couple on the bed, who continued kissing and rubbing hands over each other’s bodies.

“No, I don’t suppose it is,” I agreed.
 
I leaned forward a bit, after noticing marks on the bottoms of the naked couple’s feet.

On the bottom of each of their right feet, there was a stamped UPC code, like they put on products in the grocery store.
 
They were identical, from what I could tell.
 
Beneath each of the UPC codes, stamped in stenciled characters was a red letter “I,” just the right shade of red as to be considered scarlet.

“
Flukey
, are those scarlet letter ‘I’s?” I asked.

“Yep, they are, Adam.
 
And, it’s not so bad, is it?” he turned his shiny black plastic button eyes to me, and I sensed he was trying to convince me more than query me.

I awoke in a start from the dream, confused, as I always am when I have strange dreams.
 
I looked over at Sara, barely able to make out her form.
 
She was sleeping soundly in her panties and t-shirt, serene and peaceful looking, probably not dreaming, I guessed.

Okay
, I thought to myself after seeing
Flukey
sitting on the dresser next to the television.
 
Maybe there are still issues.

It was pitch black in the room, other than one thin slit of sunlight, which sliced its way between the not-quite closed curtains.
 
I fumbled for the pack of cigarettes on the nightstand and lit one, smoking quietly and thinking about the dream.

A scarlet letter I.
 
I had seen enough movies in my life to know the importance of a dream sequence, often as some sort of meter of the dreamer’s sanity.
 
Although, in the movies, the complex mysteries involved with dreams were normally played down to
make it easier for the average moviegoer to comprehend, so as to not interrupt the popcorn munching or making out.
 
In real life, dreams were rarely that obvious.

I guess I had dreamed up my own scarlet letter, thinking of the book by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
 
I had read the book for my sophomore English class in high school, and was bored terribly through most of it.
 
(I struggled when reading most of the 19th century “classics,” and out of frustration, often railed out against what society had deemed “classics.” I mean, could it really be a classic if all it did was torture high school English students?)

At the time, I had trouble caring about Hester’s plight.
 
The language used, the old style English, made it virtually inaccessible to me, and it wasn’t a fun read.
 
In fact, I probably wouldn’t remember anything about it at all, had it not been for the movie version that was made out of the book.

Her scarlet letter was an ‘A’ for adulterer, since she had screwed around on her hubby a bit.
 
Those uptight ass-heads made her sew the big letter on her clothes, so she would be publicly shamed, which, admittedly was a pretty good idea…I mean, how many people would be proud of wearing a scarlet ‘R’ on their clothes if they had been convicted of rape, for example?

That was neither here nor there, though…I had my own issue to deal with, my own scarlet letter.
 
I started trying to solve my subconscious’ riddle of what my scarlet ‘I’ could be.

Ignorance? Idiocy? Inanity?

Those traits were definitely Fluke-isms; I had plenty of all three.
 
But, they didn’t quite seem right.
 
Those were obvious traits of mine, and I was fairly certain my subconscious was more creative than that.

Insanity? Incontinence?

I felt a little insane sometimes, but never more serious than moments like falling over in strange men’s hotel rooms, or when the sensory overload at carnivals became too much to process (I think that hearing “You
Ain’t
Seen
Nothin
’ Yet” about forty times in one night over a Tilt-
A
-Whirl’s giant speakers would be enough to push most people to the edge).
 
I doubted I was more insane than your average disgruntled-pizza-guy-turned-madly-in-love
bookstore clerk.
 
As far as incontinence went, yes, I had problems sometimes
with the famous Fluke bowels, but they have remained mostly under my control.

The next ‘I’ word that skated across my brain did so rapidly, without much warning, as it had at one recent beer-and-oyster-filled afternoon at PJ’s:

Incest.

It didn’t carry the effect it had that first time, that sucker punch effect, but it was still disturbing.
 
It yanked me out of my perfect little road trip mood that I had been in, and brought me back to the reality and the reason behind the road trip.

I decided to let it go, as much as was possible, anyway, and not worry about it.
 
It had the potential to make me crazy if I thought about it too much.
 
And there was no point
to
feeling crazy when not a thing had been proven.

We’ll find out soon enough though, I thought, stubbing out my cigarette.
 
Hopefully.

I went to the bathroom and flipped on the light, intent on washing my face.
 
After the initial, near-blinding glare of the fluorescent lights, my eyes adjusted, and I reached down to turn the faucet on.

And that’s when I noticed the red stains on my fingers.

Huh?

I glanced up into the mirror, ignoring the twisted up hair on my head, the crust in the corner of my left eye, and focusing on my chin and cheeks.

Stained red, just like my fingers.
 
A faded red, smeared down my chin, off the corners of my mouth, like I had had on too much lipstick and tried to smear it off.

Or, like you’ve been eating blood, Adam-boy.

“
Fuck
!” I hissed.

I grabbed the small bar of hotel soap, tearing off the paper, and turning the hot water on full blast.
 
Furiously, I worked up a thick lather and washed my hands and face, scrubbing with my hands, then grabbing a washrag from the silver rack over the sink.
 
Once my face was clean, I worked on my fingers and nails.

My toothbrush was still in the suitcase, so I grabbed the complimentary bottle of mouthwash, and poured half of the blue liquid into my mouth.
 
The minty,
mediciney
taste immediately
burned my mouth, but I rinsed thoroughly, gargling and spitting. After repeating the process, I rinsed with water, and inspected my face and hands, making sure I was blood-free.

Jesus Christ, man.
 
How’d you miss that one, Adam-boy?

It had been dark; I hadn’t seen–or noticed–anything out of the ordinary.
 
Of course, when I was involved with that activity in particular, I always zoned out, so busy concentrating on what I was doing, determined to perform my best.
 
I had zoned myself right out of the fact that Sara had started her period.

Blech
.

Once I worked through the preliminary issue of cleaning myself, then the insight of the source of the blood, I went through a brief inner dialogue, deciding how I felt about the knowledge.
 
Deep down, I felt a tentative sense of relief.

Does that make me an asshole?
I asked
my
reflection in the mirror.

The question hung out in the air, unanswered, and I went back into the room to wake Sara up.

I sat on the bed next to her, and gently shook her.
 
Her eyelids lifted halfway, and I said, “Sara, honey, wake up.”

Her voice, all mumbles and cottony sounding, came out.
 
“Did we sleep too long?”

“No, no, that’s not it,”

“Okay,” she mumbled.
 
She lay completely still, and her eyes closed again.
 
I was just about to shake her again when she reached her fingertips to her eyes, inhaled deeply through her nose, and said, “I’m awake.”

I turned the lamp on and asked her, “Are you with me now?”

“Yeah,” she said, nodding with her fingers still pressed against her eyes, moving in small circles, like she was trying to massage her eyeballs awake.
 
“I’m here, honey.”