FirstLineFiction beta

from Contest #7

"She's a local." Mike warned me. "A townie."

 

"So," I said, with a mild protest. 

 

"Townies only exist for one reason - they're stuck here."

 

He was probably right. In this town of 90,000, one third were undergraduate students at the prestigious state university located here, and most the rest were painfully poor and sequestered in the ghettos at the edge of town. Very few non-students frequented the hipster pubs that filled the near-campus downtown area. With no real industry to pursue other than academia, these "townies" were usually starving artists of some sort, all hoping to lead mediocre lives doing something they loved, most failing. 

 

I wasn't much better. I was enrolled as a phD student, fluent in Plato and completely broke. In hindsight, I should have studied business or at least obtained a teaching certificate, but at the time, I was still a card-carrying idealist. Life was about fairness, an ideal I had loosely defined as equal opportunity. 

 

My own life was a little less than fair. Like many of my graduate student peers, my parents were of the upper-middle class mold, both lawyers. They cut me off when I refused to study finance, science, or some other field with a high probability of financial success, the only kind in their eyes. I sat in this pub in the afternoon with a history of proud rebellion and an expectation that I'd be happier poor than my parents had ever been moderately wealthy. 

 

The mysterious woman's likely failure in the world of music or the arts did not weigh on my attraction to her. She was beautiful and probably interesting, good enough for me. Even her beauty was interesting, a frail, untidy bit with a face that seemed nearly overpowered by a head of thick, honey-hued curls. 

 

"I should talk to her," I said to Mike, after a few minutes of quietly eating my cheap bar burger.

 

"You're still thinking about that chick in the corner? What's so special about her anyway?"

 

"She's hot," I answered, in a way he'd surely understand. 

 

"There are plenty of hot girls in this town, man. Don't get hung up on one." His point was vaild. Undergrad girls here were notoriously promiscuous in nearly ever aspect of their lives, sexually, financially, verbally. There'd surely be a few that would go slumming with me.

 

"I'm going for it," I announced, after throwing the idea around in my head. With that I stood up, stretched my arms casually, then walked over to her booth. As I got closer, I saw that she was working on the crossword puzzle from the university's student run newspaper, a crossword I had completed a few hours earlier. 

 

"The Friday puzzle can be a doozy," I said, hoping to strike the intricate balance of smooth yet quirky that a quick analysis of her clothes and style had told me she was likely to appreciate. 

 

She hadn't noticed my approach and upon being addressed smiled a polite smile and quickly scanned the room with a flick of her eyes, as if in search of an explanation. Seeing none, her eyes moved back to me, and in the kind of tone one would used to speak to a stranger in an airport said, "Yeah, they're definitely more difficult in the late end of the week."

 

A well-mannered repeat of an opening statement is rarely a green light. Typically, it either indicated that the person in question  couldn't think of a flirtatiously clever response (a yellow light) or was trying to kill the conversation before it even took root (a flashing red light). Being one with a perpetual urge to ignore traffic symbols and their conversational equivalents, I proceeded then with a friendly introduction. 

 

"Hi. I'm Christopher." 

 

"Hi," she replied, still in that stilted, overly formal tone, and still using her crossword puzzle as a visual haven from my attempts at meaningful eye contact. 

 

"You mind if I sit down?"

 

At this her eyes widened for a second and she bit her bottom lip. "I guess not," she said in a way that implied otherwise, with an emphasis on "guess." She still had not told me her name, and without it I couldn't open any real conversation. 

 

"Sorry. I didn't get your name." 

 

"Well, I didn't give it to you, did I?" I would have liked to assume she was joking, but her mouth pulled nervously to one side, giving no hint of a smile. 

 

"Well. Nice to talk to you," I managed to say, though in an obviously defeated sort of way.

 

"Listen, it's nothing personal. I just don't mess with college students."

 

back to Contest #7