To Protect and Serve (10 page)

             
Nancy loved everything about autumn.  She loved the smell of the air.  The crispness that heralded the coming of colder weather.  She even enjoyed the Santa Ana winds that kicked up now and again.  This time of year always made her feel good.  Another thing that made her feel good lately was whenever she spied a black and white unit drive slowly past her house.  She liked to think that it might be that nice Officer Saunders.  Then she would squelch the thought as though it was something forbidden.

             
Nancy was really enjoying her class at the private school where she worked.  Although she was first and foremost a drama teacher, they’d found she had a natural talent for making math understandable to students who were previously having trouble, so they’d also given her a couple of math classes a week.  With only ten students in each class, it was more like tutoring than teaching.

             
She felt that she was making a big difference for these kids, watching them comprehend fractions and long division.  The look on the students’ faces when they finally understood the concept was worth all of the struggles and frustration getting there.

             
Also, the school was having her favorite fundraiser that afternoon; the annual Halloween Carnival!  Two years ago the school had vacillated on whether to call it a Halloween Carnival or a Fall Festival, after one of the new moms became upset that they were “celebrating the devil.”

             
Well, it turned out that the lady wasn’t interested in having any sort of conversation about it, since she knew that she was right and the school was wrong.  In the end, the woman removed her child (who had never been able to do anything up to her mother’s standards anyway) and homeschooled her.  Nancy felt sorry for the little girl.  The girl liked to sing and had an excellent voice, but the mother felt that singing was against God.  Even though it was difficult, sometimes you just had to let some of them go and hope their lives turned out okay.  It was heartbreaking.

             
The rest of the families were just fine with a Halloween Carnival and enjoyed bobbing for apples, the bean-bag toss, fishing for prizes and pie eating contests that were part of the festivities.

             
One of the booths that raised a lot of money for the school was the Fortune Telling booth.  Nancy as the Performing Arts teacher, and a couple of the older girls would deck out one of the outside lunch areas with a tent, put up a bunch of scarves, tassels, and old jewelry, light some incense and pretend to tell fortunes.

The fortunes ran along the lines of “Ah!  I see that you need to work harder on your math homework!” or “I see that you have a boyfriend!  Does his name begin with a ‘G’?”  The kids loved it and it was fun for everyone.
             

             
Nancy had fun with it, too, since she got a chance to perform (with a very bad accent, which ranged throughout the evening from Middle Croatia to Minnesota.)  She wore an awful wig that looked as though someone had put the world’s largest brillo pad on her head, and more clanky jewelry than any respectable fortune teller would ever wear.  It was clichéd, but fun.

             
The carnival finally got underway and Nancy had been telling fortunes for about an hour.  The draped door was pulled aside as Nancy’s next customer entered.

             
“Come into my parlor,” Nancy tried to make it sound mysterious.

             
“You have come to have me tell your future - yes?”  Nancy looked up just then at the person standing in front of her.

             
And stopped.

             
Doug Saunders was there in all his uniformed glory.  Shiny black lace-up shoes, pressed slacks, heavy utility belt, crisp uniform shirt over Nancy’s favorite part, the Kevlar vest.  When her eyes reached his, she realized that she’d been staring at him with her mouth hanging open.

             
Her mouth snapped shut in mortification.  Nancy couldn’t believe that only the third time he’d seen her, she was now in one of the most ridiculous costumes imaginable.  She sighed inwardly.  Well, at least it’s different than her cleaning-house ensemble.

             
“Ah!  A member of our protection forces.  A modern knight in armor!  Please sit down and allow Madame Futurenata to tell your fortune.  Yea, mon?”  Now the accent had moved to Jamaica.

             
Doug removed his cap and sunglasses and settled himself into the cushy draped chair across from the small round table in front of Nancy.

             
It didn’t help that he was starting to smile as he took in all of Nancy’s gloriously over-the-top attire.

             
“You look...ah...in character?”  Doug’s grin threatened to get even wider.

              “Madame Futurenata sees all and tells all.”  Nancy was trying her best to pretend that she wasn’t absolutely dying inside.  “Are you here to see into your future?”

             
“Yes, please.”  Doug put his cap on the floor next to his chair, sat up and waited.

             
Nancy raised both her arms a few inches, shook the forty bracelets she was wearing, so that they clamored and reached out her hands toward Doug.  “Give me your hand.”  Nancy always looked at the person’s palm as though she could actually read it.  This gave her time to make up a fortune, based on the facts she already knew about the person.

             
As she took Doug’s hand and turned it over she felt her chest get tight.  Then she started to blush!  She couldn’t believe that holding this man’s hand would cause this sort of reaction in her.  The sort of reaction she hadn’t felt in years.

             
“I see much hard work in your life.”  Nancy’s voice now sounded like she was from Louisiana, as she ran her fingers over the calluses on the palm of his hand.

             
He leaned in closer, like he was also looking into his palm to see what was there.  Their heads were inches apart.

             
Nancy’s first thought was thank goodness she was chewing peppermint gum.  She didn’t like to offend the students with “coffee-breath” so she always chewed mint gum.  Coffee was one of her remaining bad habits.  She’d given up smoking after trying it for two months after Jonathon and she had split up.  She didn’t drink much more than a glass of plum wine or a cold beer once in a blue moon.  And she sure as heck hadn’t had sex for several years now.  She’d been able to bury that urge when she realized her girls needed her first and foremost.  Okay, okay, so approaching menopause had helped too.

             
But right now she was holding the hand of one of nature’s more excellent specimens of human male.  She could smell him.  It was a clean crisp smell, Dial soap and 100% male, blended with the subtle undertone of pressed cotton and gun oil.  When he exhaled she could smell coffee on his breath.  It was nice, not sour.  He smelled healthy.  And virile.  And entirely too good.

             
“I also see a female...”  Nancy let her voice trail off, waiting for him to fill in the blank.  She thought she was being subtle.

             
He saw right through her ploy and just grinned.  “Huh-uh.  I’m not giving any hints.  I want my money’s worth!  Fifty cents is a lot of money and I expect to find out my future.”

             
Nancy smiled back and then realized that he was probably staring at her mouth because of the garish purply-red lipstick that was part of her character make-up.  Her guess was that it was also on her teeth. 

Even though she had to consciously make herself relax, she hoped she appeared to not react at all to his proximity, while she tried to surreptitiously run her tongue over her teeth.

              “I see a female.  A blond.  The picture is vague and blurry.  Please let me concentrate for a moment.”  Nancy was struggling to come up with something, anything to say.  Usually this was just plain old fun, but now it seemed her mind had gone on vacation.

             
While inhaling all the pheromones that were swirling around and affecting her in oh, so many delicious ways, artistic inspiration struck. 

             
“I see flashing red and blue lights.  I see a small curly-haired blond, clinging to you.  I see many people grateful to you.  I see...”  Nancy stopped as Doug pulled his hand back.

             
She looked up into his face and saw his face.

              “I’m sorry… I’m… What did I say?  I was just making it up.  Doug, I’m sorry… I’m…” Nancy was stumbling around trying to find the words that would put him back at ease.

             
He swiped his hand over his face, inhaled deeply, and exhaled in a whoosh.  His smile was shaky, but the color was coming back.

             
“Sorry about that.  I forgot for a minute it was pretend.  You hit really close to something for me.  Give me a minute.”  Doug’s voice was getting back to normal.

             
Nancy instinctively reached out and took his hand back, but this time she held it between both of hers giving comfort.

             
“I’m sorry.  I really didn’t mean to cause that reaction for you.  Do you want some water?”  Nancy reached under the table and grabbed one of the bottles of water she kept there during the carnival.

             
“Yeah.  I’d like that.”  He accepted the bottle, unscrewed the cap, put the bottle to his lips and drained it, similar to what he did with the coffee at her house.

             
Now seeming to be fully in control and back to normal, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, put the cap back on the bottle and looked around for a trash can.

             
Nancy reached out her hand for the bottle.  “I don’t keep a trash can in here.  I’ll just put it with the rest of the bottles under my table.  Recycling.”

             
Doug handed the bottle to Nancy, but held onto it when she tried to take it from him.

             
“Dinner.”  He looked straight into her eyes.

             
“What?”  Nancy was so startled, she dropped the accent.

             
“Dinner.”  He still held onto the bottle.

             
“Okay.”  What was she thinking?

              Now it was his turn to pause.  “Okay?”

             
“Yeah. Okay.”  Nancy gave a small smile.  “When?”

             
“Tonight?”  He was starting to smile, too.

             
“No.  Not looking like this.”  Nancy waved her free hand towards her wig and outfit.

             
“Just change out of your costume, or whatever you call it.  We can go after I get off my shift.”

             
“No.  You don’t understand.  When this wig comes off, my hair is plastered to my head, this awful lipstick has stained my mouth, and I’ve been sweating in this ‘gypsy tent’ for five hours.  You would NOT want to be around me then.”  Nancy was nothing if not honest.

             
Doug found her honesty charming.  She sure wasn’t trying to impress him.  He found that intriguing and so unlike any of the other women he’d dated.

             
“When, then?”  Releasing the bottle, he stood up and gathered his cap under his arm.  The arm that was right next to his Kevlar-vested chest.  Nancy shot her eyes up to his and blushed again when she realized Doug had caught her ogling.

             
“Uh.  Tomorrow?”  Her voice sounded somewhat breathless.

             
“Sorry, no.”  He just looked at her.  Nancy bet those eyes could make any criminal confess on the spot.

             
Then Nancy’s insecurity kicked in.  Maybe he really didn’t want to go to dinner with her and this was her chance to back out gracefully.  “Oh.  Okay.  I’m not sure then.  But, thank you anyway for the offer.”  Nancy put on her best pretend smile; the one she’d perfected getting through the divorce.

              “Tonight.  9:00.  That should give you plenty of time to go home and do whatever it is you do to get ready.”  He didn’t sound high-handed, just sure.

             
“Oh!  9:00.  Oh, well, I suppose that could work.  I’ll have to see if my aide and the older girls could help put all this away after the carnival.”  Nancy stood up and waited for him to precede her through the draped door.  He just stood there smiling at her and her insane outfit.  She finally took a deep breath and squeezed by him when it seemed he wasn’t going to move an inch, and pulled the drapery door back to ask Tess for her help. 

             
As Nancy opened her mouth to speak, Tess, Kate, Christy, Jackson and the two high school girl helpers each said some form of “Go already!  We’ll clean up.”

             
Nancy realized that her encounter with Officer Saunders had an audience.  She turned around, embarrassed beyond belief to see Doug’s grin.