Worst Picture Ever: Attempt 1

concept:

man and a woman uniting

man has stomach problems? (hence the weird hurried
shuffle)

they are supposed to meet

they don't

she instead, the next night, goes to local bar & meets an old high school acquaintance - they are at the edge of the age where it is neither ironic nor desperate to be reuniting with a fellow high school alum - they never knew each other anyway

his obituary is not in the chronicle of higher ed

he's a teacher - reading the chronicle of higher education

Write, write, write

I am the shabby professor.  Tenured, sweater unraveling, corduroys worn to the quick, boots unlaced, hair oily.  If my appearance is going, my mind is sharp.  And perfectly sharpened to the task or repetitive student lectures; the same witty accounts term after term have my
students falling head over heels for evolution.  Do I know that my students wonder their way imaginarily into my divorced bed, wondering what it might be like to have mothered my three similarly sloppy and brilliant children?  I like to think I don’t.  If I am potentially grotesque, surely I have a boyish charm and a reliably provocative ability to make you feel like the cleverest girl in the classroom. 

She is likely rounder and softer than her picture, but still with flair.  Perhaps she wears scarves or boots.  She tells me she is an environmental engineer and works from home.  She doesn’t meet as many people as she used to.  She could do better, but he’s not the one to say.

They connect online, sharing the sciences.  Of course, he reminds her of that feeling: singled out for her probing questions and praised with fingers grasping the air.  He would have been the proud professor and she, the ready protege anticipating the ends of his sentences.  If she’s aware of the teacher-student complex that feeds the online attraction, she doesn’t admit it, least of all to herself.  Yet, on the phone, it’s obvious.  She purposefully puts it aside as she lifts her sleeping cat off the keyboard. 

“We can meet at the Cornerstone Café.”  She calms a slight shiver as she says this.  She thinks, there’s no need for these nerves.  “What time are you free?”

He calculates travel time and replies, “4:30 work?”

“Yeah, so I’ll see you then?”

“Yup, Thursday.”

“Bye now.”

He likes how she says that.

When the day comes, it’s not one of his best.  The cafeteria may have served him something questionable or perhaps he’s just been working too much.  Do the students ever understand all the other hours it takes?  The office hours, the reading of papers as repetitive as his lectures, but with none of the wit and wisdom, they all take their toll.

The toll is paid that afternoon.  Sitting at a table in the window, reading the Chronicle of Higher Ed, just like I’d told her, I’m suddenly alarmingly awanare
of my stomach.  We mostly go through our days blissfully naïve that our stomachs even exist.  I curse nature for poorly selecting this response to a wayward bacteria.  I rise from the table, satchel across my chest, hunched and shuffling quickly down the sidewalk.  If I’m going to take a lover, today is not a loving day.  An excuse can wait.  It never comes.

She arrives a few minutes later.  The Chronicle is spread across the table so she sits and waits for him.  Perhaps he stepped up to buy a coffee or to take a phone call.  When he never returns, she frets, but not too much.  She knows she could do better.

And she does.  A week later.  She is home and wonders how many more Thanksgivings her parents can host.  She gladly escapes to the local bar with an old friend also home for the holiday, both too old to be single and sleeping in their childhood bed.  When her path crosses Glen’s, she remembers him from high school.  They are both at the edge of the age when it’s no longer ironic, and not quite desperate, to end up with someone from high school.  They never knew each other anyway.    

Two years later they wed.  Two years later she sees the shabby professor.  She recognizes his voice, speaking on birds and habitats and conservation at the conference on campus. 

So what?  This is almost the end?  What happens? Does she regret it? Has she “dodged a bullet”? Does she introduce herself? Let me think.
. .

Write write write, I don’t like this

He looks too old

But I like the concept of “at the edge of the age”

Bah - screw it - the spacing is all f-ed up from using Word - I gotta go make dinner. . .