Saturday 9:15 p.m.
"He's late."
Peggy's husband was in the living room sitting on the couch in front of the television. Channel 25's new roving reporter was giving an update on a barn that had caught on fire from a lightning strike earlier in the day. A siren still was blaring off camera as the owner of the farm described how he barely was able to get all his cows out before the fire spread out of control.
"It was a fire and a rainin' and I ain't seen never nuthin damnedgum quite like it, no ma'am!"
The reporter gently reminded the farmer to be cautious in his choice of words because he was now live and on camera. She then took a step back away from the man and motioned the camera to the smoldering shell of the barn.
The farmer, undeterred, stumbled back into frame and leaning closer into the reporter continued on, "Am I uh on the picture tube right now? Can I say hello to my friend Harold? Hey, Harold?" the grinning farmer said, "It's me, Clarence! I done made the news!"
The female reporter, sensing the potential for losing control of the situation, cut the man off and tried kicking the feed back to the instudio anchor when the farmer yelled in, "Boom! It was a loud boom! And lightnin'!"
The excited man, clearly enjoying the attention, now attempted to recreate the events with his flailing arms. He quickly raised his hands, surprising the reporter and knocking the microphone out of her grasp and into the air and out of view.
The astute cameraman, following the trajectory of the rocket launched mic, caught its splash down squarely in a pile of brown manure, then swiftly panned back to the wide-jawed reporter, and finally, once more, to the farmer in time to get him sheepishly shrugging his shoulders and mouthing the word, "Oops."
The worst of the storm had now passed through most of the surrounding area, but a steady downpour still was drenching the county. The storm, the TV, and the comedy routine that had just unfolded were all white noise to Peggy's husband as he casually turned the pages of his favorite fishing magazine.
The reporter was Donna Greggs and she would be wearing a puffy, slightly oversized blouse that was either pink, white, or a combination of both. Ms. Greggs's best intentions for respect in her craft by displaying modesty in her clothing selection still could not hide her busty figure.
He did not have to look up at the tv to know all of this.
Throughout his life, Peggy's husband had prided himself on his intuition of reading the wants, mannerisms, and behavior of people and, even better, his foresight and planning off of this sixth sense of his. He naturally became a police officer, quickly rose through the ranks to become a detective, and left the police force to then start a successful private investigations business. He parlayed his knowledge of deductive reasoning to the stock markets enough to acquire a modest sum of wealth. So much so, that when circumstances forced him to face an earlier retirement than he had hoped, that he was able to easily choose walking away from the work he enjoyed without much worry of a financial burden.
Relaxing because one could never appealed to him. He struggled with this new shift in his life and depression slowly came over him. He stayed in bed, losing track of hours and days, aimlessly staring at the popcorn patterns on the ceiling of their bedroom. It took him waking up craving breakfast one morning and finding out that it was really three in the afternoon to finally begin to snap him out of his post retirement gloom. He went into the bathroom and showered and shaved and made a promise to himself that keeping his mental senses sharp was going to be his new job.
Now, with this renewed outlook, he began to enjoy life again. He timed how fast he did crossword puzzles. He started to fish the creek that ran along their property. He built wooden models of WWII airplanes and he grew fond of watching the Game Show Network. Correctly guessing the answers himself was always a fun test, but he enjoyed more watching the thought processes people went through before giving an answer that could leave them either a bit wealthier or with nothing at all.
He turned the pages of his fishing magazine to the review of the newly anticipated lure that was supposed to 'change bass fishing forever!' He shook his head and rolled his eyes, "Just like every other ad claims," he thought.
His gaze then went to the scroll of the day's college football scores and he smirked at how Channel 25 ran its programming. He gave them till the end of summer before Ms. Greggs was permanently in studio, in better lighting, and with access to a wardrobe that featured tighter fitting tops.
Lights began flashing inside his head because the former cop in him knew that a statement so bold demanded some sort of accountability.
"There's gotta be a wager, a consequence and a penalty if I'm wrong," he thought to himself. "Wait? Did I just think that?" he paused from again looking at the shiny lure and frowned at second guessing himself. "Wrong? I always get these things right and the current anchorman should probably be polishing up his resume."
"Did you not hear me? I said, he is late!" Peggy said more sternly.
Peggy was now standing in their bedroom doorway and clearly expecting a reply.
Her voice snapped him from his mindwander and into the present. He already knew what time it was but, sensing her increasing agitation, he put down his magazine and made a show of looking at the clock mounted above the TV.
"I know. I know. We've called and texted and..."
"It's over an hour now!" Peggy blurted in.
He placed his magazine under his arm, got up from the couch, and went to look out their front window. He could see any car traveling down the road a mile away from the east and two miles from the west in the light of day. Nothing was coming from either way and he didn't have to get up from where he was sitting to know if a car had turned off from the road to come down their driveway.
"There were thunderstorms earlier. It's possible that he is caught in traffic. The reception is bad or a tower is down. It's easy to confuse the intersections of Mills Crossing and Millers Avenue. Or, maybe, there was a stray, runaway, half burnt cow in the road. It could be any one of those things."
He didn't have to turn back around to know that his rattling list of excuses was not going to satisfy her or that she didn't find his little joke the least bit funny. He could feel her stare burning into his back. 40 plus years of marriage will do that.
"It was actually 41," he reminded himself, "41 years of marriage and 45 years of falling in love with her."
He remembered how her family had moved into town halfway into the school year. There weren't too many things a teen could imagine going through that was worse than being the new kid. Starting over in a different place, being behind in the curriculum, and having to navigate cliques of kids who've known each other from preschool to try and carve out new friends at his one school town was not easy for her.
She stood firm and quiet between the flag and the chalkboard before being introduced into his 9th grade math class. A halo of stars spun around her head and her arms were wrapped tightly around her books as she waited for
Mr. Riley to finish calling out roll. No one else in class noticed the erupting volcano ripping the school and his heart into bits and pieces.
"Young lady, in my class, you'll learn that science and biology are just math covered in flowers."
Mr. Riley repeated his old and tired line that never brought the laugh he expected and as he led her to her new desk, she couldn't have seen her future husband floating behind riding the air on the wake of her scent.
"Lavender! It was lavender and cotton candy! So natural a combination!" he recalled as if he were again now seated in class and he wondered how no one had ever before put the two smells together.
Her hair was a shoulder length blonde and it shimmered gold whenever she was outside. She had a walk that was more of a joyful skip and drew even that much more attention to her firm, bubble of an ass. Other boys noticed it, men too, but she was oblivious to their stares.
Her first few weeks in town he did nothing but slyly watch her every move and observe her daily routines. He learned she always had a handful of Tootsie Rolls in her pockets. She rolled her shoulders and pinched her ear lobes to stay focused when class became boring and whenever she was called upon, or was in conversation with anyone, she would slowly lift her head towards the person talking and then take a deep breath, push out her bottom lip, and blow out a puff of air that would lift any strand of her hair from over her face. Her eyelids would always remain closed, just for a long second, and then they would slowly be drawn open, like a Broadway theater curtain, to dramatically reveal a set of piercing, steel blue, bright eyes. Ta-da! It seemed as if she had perfected and personalized her very own magic trick to be sprung on the always unsuspecting and surprised audience of him.
She was terrible at math. She would raise her hand and be engaged in any other subject, but her struggles in math took her off the unapproachable pedestal he had first placed her on and he came to see her for what she really was - young, confused, and anxious, just like him, trying to figure out this growing into an adult thing. This newfound realization slowly bolstered his courage to approach her and he started forming a gambit on just how many chess moves he would need to seduce this queen.
Mr. Riley would hand all tests to the person sitting in the front of the row to pass back to each subsequent student and he handed back the results the same way and it was always best to be sitting in the front if you valued the privacy of your test scores. And there it was, laid out right before him, a plan so clear and plain that he felt he could physically mold it in his hands like soft putty:
A: He would need to become her friend.
B: He would have to prove to her that she really needed him in her life.
C: He would need to be ready to fend off other boys.
D: He would need to save money because neither one of their parents would know of Plan E - Eloping!
But what he really needed, more than anything, was an F!
A big, fat, red lettered F is what she got.
And everyone knew it because Kathy Ball held up her test results for all the class to see before passing it back.
Teary-eyed and embarrassed - he already knew what her answer would be when he took the seat across from her during lunch and, out of the kindness of his heart, volunteered to help her pass their math class.
"Yes!" she said.
And so fell the first pawn in his seduction game.
He chuckled to himself reminiscing on the cockiness of his youth, "45 years still seemed like yesterday and she really could have done better in math and have had no use of me had she been a little bit more patient and ignored the bad puns and jokes of Mr. Riley until he eventually got to the lesson at hand.
"It's fine," he remembered once telling her early on into their marriage after she had sat at their kitchen table and struggled adding up their bills for over an hour, "You never have to be good at math because I'll always be here, now and forever, to add things up for you. I promise."
