Love in the Time of Climate Change (35 page)

I had spent a sleepless night rehearsing what I wished (well, sort of wished, but not really) I had the balls to say to her:

“Samantha. Darling. You clearly have no idea how much I like you. Absolutely no clue. But here's the deal. I can't go on like this. I honestly cannot do this a moment more. As much as I worship our late-afternoon chitchats, if you stay after class one more time I truly believe I will have a total and complete nervous breakdown. Not a whiney, oh-poor-poor-pitiful-me, get-over-it-in-a-week, pissy kind of thing, but a bring-it-on,
Titanic
-sized, permanently institutionalizable implosion. Right here. Right now. Right in front of you. And believe me, it will not be pretty. Far from it. I don't think either of us want that to happen, now, do we? So from now on, please, for the love of God, if you have one shred of humanity or decency or
whatever
left, STOP TORMENTING ME LIKE THIS!”

Here is what I actually said:

“I swear I hate this computer. It is so slow. I have got to get IT up here to deal.”

“So,” Samantha repeated.

There was something about the tone of her voice. Something different. I stopped fiddling with the mouse and turned to her.

“I changed my mind.”

“About your final project?” I replied. “Why? It's brilliant. Your kids will love it. It's a fabulous idea.” I knew she had been working hard on her “ABCs of Global Warming” and I thought the concept was terrific.

“No not that. Adolescent psychology.”

“Really? How so? Don't tell me you've actually deluded
yourself into thinking your seventh graders are rational thinkers rather than crazed, hormonally challenged, electrified bundles of directionless chaos?”

She laughed. “God no. I'll never backtrack on that one. I changed my mind about the class. The Adolescent Psychology class I was going to take. I dropped it. I really don't know what I was thinking.”

“You what?” I said, feeling my heart beating in my toes.

“Dropped the class. Yesterday.”

“Dropped it?!”

“Dropped it.”

I caught my breath.
Careful, careful
, I told myself. I was not going to allow myself to be blindsided by yet another clever ruse destined to shatter what was left of me into a thousand jaded pieces never to be put back together again, not even by all of the king's horses and all the king's men.

“Well, truth be told,” I said, “the professor actually sucks. Big time. I could recommend a child development class, if you haven't taken one already.”

She smiled. “No need. I'm not going to take a class next semester. At least not here.”

My toes were now throbbing. I could see my shoes pulsing with every beat.

“No class?”

“Nope.” She smiled.

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“But … I thought you needed to do the professional development thing? The PDPs and all that?” My shoes had vibrated to the point where my laces had come untied.

“I do. But there's no real rush. It can wait. And, you know,” she looked right at me, smiling that smile, twirling that tail, “I want to keep my options open. I have this awesome feeling that something much better than PDPs is just around the corner. Just waiting to happen.”

The heart/toe spasms had moved from my feet to my
ankles, past my calves, and all the way up the back of my thighs to the point where I found my legs crumbling beneath me.

How could I have ever thought ill of this woman? How could I have ever doubted for an instant that she was faultless—the perfect human being? Whatever possessed me to question that she was trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous … wait a minute … I was confusing her with the fucking Boy Scout Law! But it was all true!

No classes! That meant she wasn't going to be a student! No student! That meant I could …

Trying to maintain balance and keep from tumbling over, I lurched wildly, inadvertently getting my index finger caught up in the handle of the emergency shower pull-cord, dangling next to the white board for science-lab catastrophes. I lurched again, this time giving the cord a solid yank. Water poured from the showerhead, just for an instant, but enough to give me a solid soaking.

“Shit!” I said.

Samantha burst out laughing.

“I was wondering how you'd take it,” she said, finally able to get words out. “I didn't think it would be so …”

“Moronic?” I replied, wiping my face with my T-shirt.

“How about theatrical. I know it's my turn to lend you clothes, but …”

With impeccable timing, at that very moment who should walk in but the dean.

There I was, T-shirt pulled up over my head, spastically mopping my dripping hair, belly button and stomach and God knows what else exposed for all the world to see. Samantha giggling like one of her students, and the goddamn dean walks, or rather limps, in. Word on the street was that he only did that when I was around.

He stopped dead in his tracks.

“Please tell me I'm not interrupting something!”

“No, no, no. Nothing. Really nothing.” I stammered,
frantically attempted to rearrange my wardrobe. “I pulled the shower cord. You know. For emergencies. Chemical spills. That kind of stuff. My bad.”

“There's been a chemical spill?” he asked, alarm in his voice.

“No, no. She just, Samantha here, said that she dropped Adolescent Psychology and I … you know …”

Christ! I was rambling like an incoherent fool.

“Dean Moosowski,” the dean said, extending his hand to Samantha. His hairy, bushy eyebrows could not have been arched any further. “I believe we have met before, under, ahem, similar circumstances.”

“We have,” Samantha stammered (just like me!), shaking his hand. “I was just explaining to Casey here, umm, Mr. C, how I don't want to be a student here, I mean, how I dropped a class so we can … umm …” My god, she was actually tongue-tied! And was that a blush?

“Which led to him taking a shower,” the dean sighed.

“Exactly,” I said.

“Exactly,” Samantha repeated.

“Well, that explains everything,” the dean said, the eyebrows—God knows how—arching up even higher, extending somehow beyond his hairline, almost floating up over the top of his head. “I am certainly pleased to see that he has no articles of your clothing on.”

“Funny thing you should mention it,” Samantha said. “I was just—” She stopped midsentence. “That would be rather awkward.”

“Rather,” the dean's eyebrows continued to arch away. “Professor, once you get, ahem, decent, I am in urgent need of that E3 form in my office before tomorrow morning. Just a friendly reminder.”

“E3 form. Yes. Of course. I'm on it.”

One more scowl at me, arched eyebrows at her, and off he waddled, this time forgetting to limp.

“Sorry about that,” Samantha said, still giggling. “I didn't mean to get you in trouble.”

Trouble? Trouble? Was she serious? I was in ecstasy! Heaven! A hop, skip, and a jump from rapture!

I laughed, my voice bubbling over, manic, my legs quivering again, making ripples in the puddle on the classroom floor. “Trouble? No way. That was like …”

This was the moment. It was being handed to me on a silver platter. I could do it. I could ask her out. The timing could not have been more perfect!

“Yeah, it means that … you know … I mean …” I was discombobulated, wet, elated, and—surprise, surprise—terrified. Try as I might, the words refused to come out. The “ask” remained stuck in the back of the throat. Glued to the palate.

“You mean?” Samantha asked.

“You have no classes here next semester.”

“No classes,” she said.

“None.”

“Nope.”

“Okay then.”

“Yeah. Come the last day of school I'll no longer be a student. Hooray for me!” She paused, looking at me expectantly.

“Hooray!” I yelled, perhaps a little too loud, a little too enthusiastically.

“Good luck with the E3,” she said, again staring right at me with that new kind of look.

“Oh God,” I sighed. “You know what it's like. One of those bullshit forms only a dean would care about. Pardon my language.”

She nodded. “Tell me about it. Anyway, I'm glad I dropped the class. I really am. Can you believe in two weeks the semester will be over?”

“Amazing. Two weeks.”

“I'll see you Thursday.”

Two weeks. Two short weeks! Fourteen days … three hundred and thirty-six hours … twenty thousand one hundred and sixty minutes.…

“Thursday,” I repeated. Even though I had blown the “ask,” the news was still too good to bum out about. Beyond good. Jesus, I was walking on water.

—

“So,” Sarah said. “When was the last time you actually asked someone out?”

I had, of course, recounted the entire conversation, word for word, half a dozen times.

“What are you talking about?” I replied. “It hasn't been that long.”

“Two and a half years,” Jesse yelled from the bathroom. “Maybe more.”

“Do you have to continue to mind other people's business even when you're taking a shit?” I yelled back.

“You're not other people,” he yelled again.

“All right, so it's been a while,” I confessed.

“Wow. Long time. Is that how long you've, you know, gone without it?” Sarah asked.

“No way. Of course not. It hasn't been that long.”

“Over a year,” Jesse yelled again. “He didn't ask that one out because she didn't speak any English.”

“Do you want to go for a walk?” I asked Sarah.

“Sure,” she said. We left Jesse crying foul in the bathroom.

“You know,” I said. “It's not easy for me. It never has been. God knows, in high school I used to sit by the phone for hours trying to get up enough courage just to call a girl up to get a homework assignment. I didn't date until the end of college, and since then it's been, well, pretty sporadic. You know, I'm sort of a social spaz.”

“You are not,” Sarah said soothingly, putting her arm in
mine. As of late, she had become my confidante. I could tell her anything. “You're just shy around women. It's sexy. Most guys have this bullshit bravado that is such a turnoff. You're refreshing.”

“
Sexy
is not exactly the word I'd use,” I said. “Nor
refreshing
. More like
clinically awkward
. Beyond awkward. It's like a disease. I turn into a sniveling buffoon every time I'm around that woman. The thought of asking her out is terrifying.”

How to manage the big moment when I'd pop the question to Samantha had totally consumed my last few days. I spent most of my waking moments rehearsing lines in my head, all of which fell ridiculously flat.

“You're going to do fine,” she said reassuringly. “However you say it, you know she's going to say yes. You know it. Just be yourself.”

“Sarah, that's what I'm afraid of. Myself. I'm short of breath, my socks are soaked because my toes are oozing sweat, and I've a got mild case of the spins just talking to you about it! How's it going to go down when the real thing happens?”

There was a huffing and puffing noise behind us as Jesse came running to join us. “What'd I miss?” he gasped. “Fill me in.”

From one buffoon to another. We couldn't help but laugh.

“Sarah thinks I'm sexy,” I said. “She's thinking of dumping you for me.”

“I figured,” Jesse replied, still trying to catch his breath from his thirty-second jog to catch up. “I knew all along she was just using me to get to you. It's been so damn obvious. Don't worry though, I'll still love both of you.”

“Oh God,” Sarah said. “Are we never to be rid of him?” Sarah put her arm in his and the three of us walked on.

“I've got an idea,” Jesse volunteered. “You know how Sarah knows the school nurse at the middle school where
Samantha teaches? How about you ask Sarah to ask the school nurse to ask Samantha out. Would that make it any easier?”

“I feel way too uncomfortable asking Sarah to do that,” I said. “How about if I ask you to ask Sarah to ask the nurse to ask Samantha? That would be much less awkward!”

“One problem,” Sarah said. “I don't think the nurse knows Samantha all that well. But she does know the seventh-grade math teacher who does. How about you ask Jesse, who can ask me, and I'll ask the nurse, who can ask the math teacher, who can ask Samantha?”

“Eureka!” I cried. “That's it! That's the solution! Praise the Lord, my problem is solved.”

Arm in arm the three of us skipped all the way home.

Doha, Qatar—An area of Arctic sea ice bigger than the United States melted this year, according to the U.N. weather agency, which said the dramatic decline illustrates that climate change is happening “before our eyes.”