Fiction Friday #30

Tuesday came too fast after I talked to Karen's mother. It was like after I spoke with her on the phone I sneezed and suddenly I found myself outside of the campus pub. It sat off near a field of wheat or corn or whatever crop was being studied at that. I guess the builder wanted to be able to pretend that it was a pub in some country village because it was built to look like those house in the pictures of Stratford-Upon-Avon, all support beams showing through plaster with a high peaked roof. It was pretty nice, until you turned around to see the giant block of concrete that was the history department or got hit by some jackass on a bicycle. That was life on campus, though.

The Pub, which was the name some clever student or alumni named it thirty or forty years ago after a drunken trip to England or Scotland or Ireland gave it, was the place to eat on campus, if you had money. Most of the staff went there if they didn't brown bag it or didn't want to go out into the town. There were always small groups of teacher gathering for lunch or an early dinner or a drink after a meeting, whispering about how they were going to rise up in revolt and destroy the dean of their college. It was also where all the students who were totally funded from home ate when they lived in the dorms. Those people used their meal plans to get water, soda, and chips from the dining hall then used their "emergency" credit cards to take their friends and themselves out for all meals and many of them headed down to The Pub.

Inside the place was clean, but a little dark, for my taste. There was a long, polished, wood bar to the back, tables set up for two or four on the floor, and booths that were comfortable for six but could cram in ten or twelve were along the walls. Spread out around the floor were, what I assumed were, support beams that were sometimes hard to dodge sober, and were nearly impossible to miss drunk. Behind the bar and on any part of the wall that wasn't a window were pictures of famous people who had come to campus; any that were taken after The Pub was built were taken inside. My favorites were the candid pictures of people drinking, talking, laughing, smoking, writing, or staring wistfully out the window; too many of them were posed to make the bar and the subject look good, but they all struck me as unreal.

The Tuesday I met Karen's mom was a warm and sunny one after a weeks worth of wind, clouds, and rain, and we were meeting at eleven, so there weren't many people in there. I saw some professors huddled around a table whispering. Some guy sat at the bar with some really dark drink, wearing spectacles, and writing in a note book. And the bored bar tender stared out the windows probably wondering if heading out to toss a Frisbee around was worth getting fired over. And there was a waitress standing in the door to the kitchen blowing purple bubbles.

The waitress spotted me and started to come over. I mouthed to her, and flailed my arms a bit, that I was meeting someone and wanted to take a quick look. She shrugged, but still walked toward where I stood. I poked around the place and saw that there wasn't anyone else there. She asked me how many and then told me to pick where I wanted to sit. I choose a booth with a window.

She left me with two menus then brought me some water and left. I fiddled with my fork and knife, remembering how I used to use them as an airplane when I was a kid. I unfolded then refolded the paper napkin the fork and knife had been rolled in, and then sort of pushed it around the table. I wished that I brought my backpack with me; at least then the waiting wouldn't have been wasted time.

After dividing the contents of a sugar packet five times, I a woman clear her throat. I looked up to see Karen's mom looking a lot like I remembered her. She was pretty, but not beautiful, like Karen was. She was strong, built like a fortress. She was tall, taller than me. She had wide shoulders and comparatively narrow hips. She stood like she was waiting for someone to try to push her over just so she could prove she couldn't be. Her hair was cut short and she always seemed to have a little frown around her lips, but she may have just disapproved of me.

I tried to stand and caught my gut on the table. I sat down, hard, gasping for breath.

"Leopold," she said sitting down.

"Mrs. Mayreux." I nodded and offered my hand. "Can you call me Leo?" I asked. "My mom only introduces me as Leopold because it makes me blush."

"Only if you call me Sonya, Leo." She said, shaking my hand. "You're old enough to call me Sonya now."