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This essay first appeared on Anthony V. Toscano's excellent web site, Spilled Beans.
NIGHT CLASS
copyright 1999 by Nora M. Mulligan
We met more through my actions than hers. I admit it freely: when she slouched into the desk next to mine, that first night of the class, I decided that I wanted to meet her.
That's a funny and not entirely accurate word: decided. If you think that a piece of iron decides to get closer to the magnet, then, yes, I decided. It was that kind of conscious effort.
She was so cool. I used that word to myself the first time I saw her. She wore a calf-length skirt, while I lived (when I wasn't at work and had to wear the business costume) in blue jeans and flannel shirts. She had long straight black hair, curtaining the incredible fairness of her face, and her eyes, which I once compared to chocolate, struck me instantly as the kind of eyes which had seen things I'd never dreamed of.
If you can imagine attraction without a sexual slant, then you could call this attraction.
The class was a night class in Irish Literature. I'd taken it because it fit my schedule and because I thought of myself as Irish American. I never entirely figured out why she took it.
She arrived late, and as soon as I saw her, I thought to her: sit over here. There was an empty desk next to me. I know perfectly well that I have no telepathic powers because so often I've thought things like that to people without any discernible results. But this time my efforts seemed to be successful, though it was as likely that she sat next to me because it was an empty desk and near the back of the room.
Surreptitiously, I watched her while I was taking notes on the professor's lecture. She appeared frustrated or bored. Gradually she slumped farther and farther down in her chair, until the inevitable happened: the coins she had in the side pockets of her skirt cascaded out of her skirt onto the floor. They fell, it seemed to me, slowly, each piece taking its turn before the next one, like polite children at a diving board. They were loud, though. There's something about the sound of coins crashing on a tile floor that arrests the attention. Half the class turned around to look, and as I recall, the professor made some snotty comment.
She kept her face resolutely to the front of the room, pretending that this racket had nothing to do with her.
This was my chance! I leaned over from my desk, perhaps a foot from hers, and began scooping the coins up off the floor, to give them to her. I saw myself as doing a good turn, and earning her gratitude, or at least her attention.
I got her attention, but not quite the way I'd intended. Maybe I was nervous, or maybe it was just my innate clumsiness, or maybe those coins had mischievous wills of their own, but I dropped half the coins as I tried to pick them up. Undaunted, I continued with my task, and the coins continued their experiments with gravity.
She hissed down, without looking at me, "Leave them!"
I looked up at her from my awkward position leaning toward the floor. "Am I embarrassing you?" I inquired.
"Yes!" It sounded like an angry snake.
OOPS. I levered myself back up into my chair, crushed. So much for gallantry. So much for earning her gratitude.
I scrounged around in my backpack. Yes, I'd brought them: the Jolly Rancher watermelon candies which were, at that phase of my life, little short of nectar and ambrosia to me. I waited till the professor had turned his back and the class had settled down again, and then, without a word, I placed two candies on her desk.
We became friends after that, good friends, very close friends. It turned out that Jolly Rancher watermelon candies held a special place in her emotions and memories as well.
Perhaps it was fate.
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