Dysfunctional Literacy

It’s not often a man gets to hear two or more women talking when they don’t know they’re being listened to.  I don’t mean eavesdropping in a public place like a restaurant or library.  I’m talking about overhearing a conversation that is meant to be completely private, a conversation where nobody else was supposed to be around.  This has only happened once in my life (I think), and it happened with Danielle.

Danielle had a big bruise on her head from where Vin had punched her, but she flipped her hair over it, so hardly anybody saw it, and even when she danced crazy at Nero’s, the lighting was so bad (and men weren’t staring at her forehead) that nobody noticed it.  We didn’t talk about it much after our discussion in the car.  I was still trying to convince Danielle to come up to meet my family for Christmas.  Even though she was reluctant, I think I was getting close to convincing her.  At least I hoped so.  I had already bought the airplane tickets.

I came home from work at lunch one day.  I wasn’t feeling well, and I called and left a message (this was in the early 1990s before cell phones; we had to use land lines and answering machines, and some people still didn’t have answering machines, so we’d let the phone ring and ring and ring), but Danielle never picked up.  And when I got home, she wasn’t there.  I figured she was at the gym or at a movie.  I was pretty sure she wasn’t at the library or bookstore.

Once I was sure she wasn’t home, I fell asleep on the bed.  I didn’t even bother eating lunch.  I was dozing in and out with a bunch of weird half-dreams that I couldn’t remember afterwards when I heard the door to the apartment open and Danielle’s voice, which sounded distant and conversational.  She wasn’t talking to me from the living room, and it was weird that she was speaking because I’d rarely heard Danielle talk to herself (unless she was randomly cursing).  For a moment, I wondered if a guy was with her.

But then I heard a familiar female voice, but I couldn’t make out the words and I couldn’t place the voice.  After listening more closely (and waking up a little more), I figured it out.

Linda, Kirk’s ex-girlfriend.  They had broken up after Halloween because she wouldn’t spend the night with him.  As Danielle and Linda talked in vague distant voices, I heard occasional words, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying.  I thought about calling out to them, just to let them know I was there.  I knew that was the right thing to do.

Instead, I propped myself up and began listening more closely.

“Which one do you think?” Linda asked.

“Take Emma,” Danielle said.  “I think I’m tired of Jane Austen.”  Pause.  “Here’s Jane Eyre.  But it’s not written by Jane Austen, so I think… I’ll read this next.  Do people get Jane Austen confused with Jane Eyre?”

“I don’t like book titles where it’s only the character’s name,” Linda said.  “That doesn’t tell us much.”

“I know,” Danielle said.  “Who the hell is Emma anyway?  At least Jane Eyre has a last name.”

“If anybody writes a book about me, I hope it’s not called Linda.  My name is boring.”

“Why don’t you go by Lynn?”

“I don’t know.  A one syllable name?  That’s even more boring.”

“My name is really Daniella, but… people kept leaving out the ‘a,’… so I just said ‘fuck it.’ And now I’m Danielle.”

What?  I didn’t know that.  But then again, Danielle (or Daniella) could have been lying.  Danielle lied a lot, but I couldn’t complain about that because I supported a lot of her lies (and plus I was eavesdropping when I should have let them know I was there).  I wasn’t sure why she’d lie about her name being Daniella. The name Daniella actually made sense.  She looked more like a Daniella than a Danielle, but I’d never tell her that because then I’d have to explain why I thought that, and I wouldn’t have an explanation other than “You just do.”  I got so lost in thought that I lost track of their conversation.

Linda said something about LA Law, and Danielle said that LA Law sucked.  Linda claimed that LA Law wasn’t as good as it used to be but it didn’t suck, and Danielle said it sucked.  I’d had this conversation with Danielle before (but not about LA Law).  Once Danielle decided that something sucked, it sucked, and nobody was going to change her mind.  They talked about a couple other TV shows, and I got bored.  They weren’t talking about me, and they weren’t talking about Kirk.  The least they could do was have a pillow fight.

“I think I’m going to quit my job,” I heard Linda say.

“Why?”

“I hate teaching.  I thought I’d like it.”

“Why?”

“I like books.  I like writing, but my kids all hate it, and they hate me.”

“So?  Kids are supposed to hate you,” Danielle said.

“I thought I’d be different.  I thought I’d be a cool teacher.”

“I hated the cool teachers,” Danielle said.  “You should never just… quit your job.”

“But I hate it.”

“I hate my job too, but they pay me money, so I go.”

There was a pause.  “I thought you didn’t work,” Linda said.

“I just tell people that. I’m embarrassed by my job.”

This was getting interesting.  Danielle was about to tell Linda that she was a stripp…a topless dancer.

“I’m a paralegal… for… Darren B. Smelley.”

There was another pause.  “That guy?” Linda said

I knew who Darren B. Smelley was.  He was a defense attorney who ran really cheesy television ads about how he could get you off if you’d been falsely accused or arrested by crooked cops.  He wore loud clothes on his ads and had a cheesy slogan: “Darren B. Smelley… because getting arrested stinks!”  I had no idea if he was any good as a trial attorney.  I just knew his ads sucked.

“I didn’t know that,” Linda said.

“I don’t talk about it.  Some people get really mad when they find out I work for a slick lawyer.”

“Is he any good?”

“He keeps a lot of guilty people out of prison,” Danielle said.

“That’s good… for them, I guess” Linda said.

For a moment, I was angry that Danielle hadn’t told me that she worked for Smelley.  Then I remembered that she was lying to Linda.  Then I got angry that Danielle hadn’t checked out her lie with me so that I could back it up, but I wouldn’t be able to talk to her about this because I wasn’t supposed to be here in the first place.

“I hate my job,” Danielle said.  “But I never know when I’ll need the money, so I work.”

There was another pause.  Then Danielle said, “Find another job.  Then quit.”

Linda sighed.  “You’re right.  But I really hate those kids.”

“Then it’ll be fun when you get another job… and you can tell those kids to fuck off.”

I laughed out loud.  I shouldn’t have laughed because part of eavesdropping is staying quiet, but the way Danielle had said it, the inflection, the way it came out of nowhere, it was funny.  Danielle was funny sometimes, even when she didn’t mean to be.  But she wasn’t going to think this was funny.

“Jimmy?” she said.  There was part caution, part anger in her voice.

“Yeah?” I answered slowly.  This wasn’t good.  Luckily, I was already wearing a robe and my hair was messed up from sleeping, so I stuck my head out of the bedroom door.

“You guys woke me up,” I said as groggily as I could.

Danielle was walking down the hallway toward me.  “How long were you…?”

And I closed the door in her face.

But I reopened it before she could kick it hard or beat on it or start a loud argument that I couldn’t win in front of Linda.

“I promise, I didn’t hear much,” I said quickly.  “I’ll close the door and turn music on.”  I could tell from the look on her face that I would hear about this later.

20 minutes later, Danielle opened the door a lot more quietly than I had expected.

“So… what did you hear?” she said.

I told her that I agreed with her that LA Law sucked.  I asked how much of the Darren B. Smelley stuff was true.  She said that when she smashed the bottle on her ex-boyfriend’s head, that Smelley got her off (in a legal sense) and that she got to know him pretty well.  I almost asked the obvious follow-up question, but it would have sounded vulgar and I might not have liked the answer.  Then I asked her the question that was really gnawing at me.

“Is your name really Daniella?”  I figured I might as well ask.

She blew some air out of her lips and then quietly said, “Yes.”

“Should I call you that?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It’s your name.  I don’t want to call you by the wrong name.”

“Then… call me Daniella.”  And she smiled a little.

I pretended to introduce her to invisible people. “Mom, Dad, I’d like you to meet my girlfriend… Daniella.”  I liked the sound of that.

“I never said I was going,” Daniella said.

“Mom, Dad, I’d like you to meet my girlfriend… who reads Jane Austen and puts ex-boyfriends in the hospital… Daniella.”

“Shut up!”

“I will, but I really want you to come up with me for Christmas.”

“Okay!” Daniella said with her arms folded.  I could tell that she had already made her decision, that it had nothing to do with anything I’d said or done.   “I’ll come meet your family.  But I have one condition.  And you’re not going to like it.”

When your girlfriend gets punched out by another guy, it can cause some issues.  For one thing, the girlfriend should never get punched out by a guy.  That’s understood.  But in this situation, I knew Danielle had done something to set up the violence.  She had managed to get herself alone in public (if that makes sense) with Vin, get decked by him when I wasn’t there, and then have the police show up at the Mexican restaurant within minutes.  Danielle could be vindictive, and she could plan stuff out.  She had intentionally kept me out of the restaurant when she confronted Vin.  What else had she set up? It wasn’t something I could just come right out and ask, especially since she had just been punched out.

As we got into the car, I asked, “Did you find your bag?”

Danielle peeked under the passenger seat.  “I guess I left it at the apartment.”  She saw my grimace.  “I just got knocked out, okay?  My memory is messed up.”

“You told me about the bag before you…”  I stopped.  It wasn’t that important.

Danielle was quiet for the first minute of the drive, but as soon as she saw an exit ramp for the freeway, she pointed to it.  Normally, the driver picked the route, but this was an unusual circumstance, so I just took the freeway.  Danielle rolled down the window all the way, so much so that the noise of the 65 mile-per-hour breeze prevented any talking. Danielle closed her eyes with a grin on her face.  Until I brought the car to a complete stop.

“No!” Danielle said, opening her eyes.  In front of her (or us) was a seemingly endless mass of cars come to a complete stop.

“I think there’s a wreck up ahead,” I said. It was a Sunday, and there weren’t any road construction signs.  I heard sirens in the distance.

“At least we know those aren’t for you,” I added.

Danielle reached for the radio, but I said, “I think it’s a good time to talk.”

Danielle closed her eyes and said, “Shit!”

“So, what really happened in there?” I asked.

“I have a headache,” Danielle whined.

“Then I won’t grope you when we get home.  Who was that Vin guy?”

She half shrugged.  “An asshole.”

I had that part figured out.

“I was trying to keep you out of this,” Danielle finally continued.  “You said you can’t handle crazy shit.”

I knew it. I had told Danielle a while ago that I wasn’t emotionally tough enough to handle any of her “crazy shit.”  So instead of having me by her side and dealing with Vin together, she had sent me outside so she could deal with him by herself.  She had to get punched in the head in order to get rid of Vin.  That was the kind of boyfriend I was to Danielle.  I could pay her bills, but I couldn’t stand by her during her “crazy shit.”  We both knew it, but this was the first time we’d really begun to talk about it since the furniture incident.  I didn’t want to admit that I was that kind of boyfriend, but I was.

“It’s not just me,” I said.  “You can’t keep putting yourself into these situations.”

“I know,” she said.  And then she turned and looked out the window at all of the unmoving cars.  We heard our first honk a few car lengths back.

“Vin was a friend of an ex-boyfriend,” Danielle finally said.  “This boyfriend hit me once, about a year ago.  That’s the kind of person he is, that Vin is too.  I got hit by another boyfriend in high school, and I never did anything about it, and it pissed me off for a long time, so when this boyfriend, Vin’s friend, hit me, I freaked out and got arrested. ”

‘You?”

“I hit him back.”  She paused.  “I smashed a bottle on his head and then stabbed him with the bottle neck.”

“Kind of bloody,” I said.  “But wasn’t it self-defense?”

“No,” she said, then hesitated.  “I had two guys holding him down when I hit him… and scratched him up.  And it was a few days later.”

“I guess that’s not self-defense,” I said.

“He started it,” she said slowly with an exaggerated southern drawl.

I laughed.  It was short, and I stopped myself, and I shouldn’t have done it, but I did.  Danielle was a badass.  She might have dressed like a librarian, but she was a badass at heart, and the idea of me living in sin with a badass who probably had a criminal record was…

“Shut up.  It’s not funny,” she said, exaggerating the motion of rubbing the icepack on her head.

“I know.”

“Stop laughing at me.”

“I will,” and I did, but she still fumed, and I couldn’t tell how serious she was.

“Vin blamed me for what happened.  Vin knows a lot of friends of mine… people that I know, anyway, maybe they’re not friends anymore.  I want them to leave us alone, but we’re going to run into them sometimes.”

“Let’s figure out another way to do this,” I said reluctantly.  I really hated some of that stuff from the other part of Danielle’s life, but I also hated that I was scared of it.  “It’s not fair that I have you do this alone.  I don’t know how to talk to people like Vin, but maybe… I should do more.”

“More than pay my bills?”  Danielle wasn’t grinning when she said it, and I remembered how I had spouted off about that when I’d been drunk at the Halloween party.

“Yeah.  Pay your bills and not let you get knocked around by other guys.”

“It’s not your fault,” Danielle said.  “I told Vin to go **** his mom.  I knew he was going to do something.”

With guys like Vin, if you put the words “mom” and “****” in the same sentence, you’re going to start a fistfight, even if it’s with a girl.

“Are you serious?”

“That’s the part I didn’t tell the cops,” Danielle said.  “And now he’s in jail, and we’ll make sure he’s prosecuted to the … full… something of the law.  And word will get out to leave us alone.”

Traffic was starting to move, but not enough to kill conversation with the windows open.

“You know what would make me feel better?” Danielle said.  “Tell me what happened the first time you got drunk.”

Before Danielle spiked my drink at the Halloween party, I had only been drunk once, and I had never told anybody what had happened.  It was embarrassing.  I cringed every time I thought about it.

“Okay,” I said.  I didn’t want to do it, but since Danielle had gotten punched in the head and had shared some information about her past with me, maybe we were past keeping secrets from each other.

“I was at a toga party in a frat house,” I said. “I don’t know what I was thinking.  I was drunk and being an asshole, I guess.  I stripped down to my underwear, wrapped a bed sheet around me without anybody’s permission, and climbed onto the roof, and shouted ‘I am Spartacus!’ about fifty times, and then cussed out everybody because they didn’t laugh.  I’m lucky I didn’t fall off the roof, and I’m lucky I didn’t get punched out.”

“That’s your secret?” Danielle said.

I shrugged.  “If you’d been there, you would have smashed a bottle on my head.”

Danielle was quiet for a moment and then said, “Can I ask you something?”

I was expecting the worst.  Her tone was serious, and it had been a serious day.  I could see her asking some deep question because I had asked her questions that stirred stuff up, and it would have served me right for bringing all this “crazy shit” up when she had simply wanted to have the breeze in her face on the way home. I still had a lot of questions for Danielle too.  I wanted to know more about the stolen furniture, about why she spiked my drinks at the Halloween party, and I really wanted to know more about her job at Nero’s.  If I was going to get her to talk more about the other part of her life, I’d have to answer her own serious questions about me.

“Sure,” I said reluctantly.

Danielle sat up, put down her icepack and said, “Who is Spartacus?”

*****

My girlfriend Danielle sometimes got into situations that were tough to explain.  For example, Vin, this creepy (and maybe violent) guy from her past, had shown up while we were eating at a Mexican restaurant, and he had threatened Danielle right there in front of me.  She’d sent me out on a crock errand to get her bag out of the car when two guys and a busboy told me Danielle had paid them to make sure I didn’t go back into the restaurant.  It was tough to explain to them that Danielle and Vin were the crazy ones, not me.

While the three guys were keeping me out, a commotion went on inside the restaurant, the police showed up, and now we could see officers bringing somebody out.  Knowing Danielle, I figured there was an even chance she had done something to Vin and had made sure I wasn’t there to stop her.  And maybe whatever she had planned had backfired.  Whatever had happened, the police were there and somebody was getting arrested.

I really hoped Danielle wasn’t getting arrested, but I couldn’t tell.  From my view in the parking lot, I couldn’t tell for certain what was going inside the restaurant.  Between the distance, the glare in the windows, and the people in the way, all I knew was that the police officers escorting somebody from the back of the restaurant.  It could have been Danielle.  It could have been Vin.  It didn’t appear to be both.

Please don’t be Danielle, please don’t be Danielle, I thought.

Two police officers came barreling out the double doors with a handcuffed Vin. Vin seemed calm and in good health.  He didn’t have any scratches on his face.  No silverware stuck out of any of his body parts.  There were no food or drink stains on his clothes or hair.  I was puzzled.  Whatever had happened, I expected more damage.

When Vin noticed me in the parking lot, his eyes narrowed and he shook his head at me.  I was offended that a guy getting arrested would shake his head at me, so I narrowed my own eyes in an attempted look of disgust, and I shook my head at him too.  We were both shaking our heads at each other when the police officer made sure Vin hit his head on the way into the squad car.

The tall guy watching over me asked, “Who was that?”

“That… was the ‘crazy shit’ from Library Girl’s past,” I said.  I had no idea what had just happened in the restaurant, but I figured it was about time to find out.  “I’m pretty sure she thinks it’s okay for me to go in now.”

I expected the restaurant to be a disaster area with chairs knocked over and shattered dishes strewn all over the place, but everything looked intact.  Most patrons were getting reseated, while a few were still milling around, talking about what had just happened.  The couple that Danielle and I had mocked for sitting on the same side of a booth were by the bar now, watching me with sad eyes.  That kind of worried me.  I picked up the pace and entered the dining area.

Danielle sat at our booth holding an icepack on her forehead, and several wait staff stood around while the remaining police officer her asked her questions.  I saw her nod and speak quietly.  Her glasses were on the table next to our copy of Pride and Prejudice.  Even though Danielle was usually confident (maybe too confident) and loud, now she seemed physically small and vulnerable.  I stood still, unsure what to do.  Something had happened to Danielle.  Whatever it was, I should have been there.  I had a vague sense of what had gone on, and I felt guilty.

“What happened?” I asked cautiously.

“Vin hit me,” Danielle said.

“And?” I asked.  There had to be more to the story.

“I fell down.”

I probably appeared to be a horrible boyfriend (and maybe I was).  I should have been beyond furious that a guy had punched out my girlfriend, but I stood there almost emotionless.  Yeah, I was a monotone guy, but still, I had to have a better reaction than nothing.  I was relieved that she had only been punched.  I had expected a knockdown, drag-out brawl with “crazy shit” woman, and instead I watched quiet, vulnerable Library Girl hold an ice pack on her head.  Internally, I was relieved, but I couldn’t act relieved.  I had to act outraged.  And I wasn’t a good actor.

“Oh my God!” I said, trying to put inflection into my monotone voice.  “Are you okay?”  Right then, I knew that was a stupid question.  “How bad is it?”

Danielle lifted her ice pack to show a red spot on her right forehead.  She had a hard head.  Maybe Vin broke his hand on it.

“I’ll… I’ll..!”  I was about to make some vague threat about what I’d do to the guy who had hit my girlfriend and was already arrested, but I was a skinny guy, and I didn’t carry myself like a fighter, and I had a monotone voice, so if I tried to act tough, I would have been laughed at, but I still had to show that I was outraged by the violence that had been committed.

“I’ll… I’ll make sure that piece of… is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law!”  That made me feel better.

A couple other wait staff who had witnessed it explained what had happened.  Danielle and Vin had been talking quietly when Vin just belted Danielle out of nowhere.  There hadn’t been any arguing or signs of disagreement.  Danielle had collapsed to the floor, and Vin just stood over her, frozen.  He hadn’t tried to hurt her anymore or help her or apologize.  He had seemed shocked by the whole thing as well.  After a couple waiters pushed him away from Danielle, Vin had just sat down at a table and waited for the police.

Once they were done explaining, Danielle got up, put her arms around my waist, and guided me back to the booth.  We sat on the same side this time, and Danielle answered a few more questioned from the police officer.

“This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t sent me out for the bag,” I said after the last officer left.  This was for the benefit of the witnesses.  I wanted them to know why I had been wasting time in the parking lot instead of defending my vulnerable girlfriend from an assault.  “The next time I tell you that you didn’t leave your bag in the car, you should believe me.”

“You didn’t see it?” Danielle said, a hint of annoyance in her voice.  “It’s under the seat.”

“I checked under the seat.”

“You didn’t check good enough.”

“How do you check good enough?” I asked.  “You either check, or you don’t check. And I checked, and it wasn’t there.”

“You didn’t… check… good enough!”

I realized I was pushing it by arguing with a girlfriend who’d just been punched out in public.

“We’ll check again when we get back,” I said.

An older lady on the wait staff, probably the manager, said our lunch was on the restaurant, but I knew that what had happened wasn’t their fault (it was partially Danielle’s, I was certain, but I couldn’t say that out loud), so I placed more than enough money (bill plus excessive tip) on the table.  I grabbed Pride and Prejudice and handed it to Danielle, and she held my hand as we walked to the exit.  The busboy was cleaning tables and didn’t make eye contact.  I was pretty sure everyone was glad to see us leave.

The two guys (minus the busboy) Danielle had hired to keep me in the parking lot were still out there, but now they seemed kind of sheepish.  I guessed they had heard what had happened and were feeling guilty.

Danielle waved at them and said cheerfully, “Thank you!”

The two guys took that as a sign to approach us.  “Are you okay?” the tall one asked.

“I’m fine,” Danielle called out.  “I just fell down.”

That was the end of their part of the conversation.  Danielle took my hand again and brushed up against me as we walked to the car.  Then Danielle turned to me.  “If this bruises really bad, everybody’s going to think you did this to me.”

She was right.  I groaned.

“I hope you use your power for good,” I said.

“I always do,” she replied.

Danielle was giving me her cheese-eating grin, but she was also walking wobbly, so I knew she needed to rest, maybe to get herself checked out.  I was relieved that Danielle was taking everything in stride, but there was still a lot that she needed to tell me.

Who was Vin?  What was his relationship with Danielle?  What had really happened in the restaurant?  How much was Danielle NOT telling me?  How many people like Vin did Danielle know, and how were we going to deal with them?   I knew she had gotten me out of the restaurant on purpose, but I couldn’t be a good boyfriend (or a real boyfriend) and let Danielle take on situations like that by herself.  If Danielle and I were going to stay together, I was going to need some answers.

*****

To be continued in… The Literary Girlfriend: Past Secrets .

And to read “The Literary Girlfriend” from the beginning, start here.

When Danielle put on her thick, black glasses and pulled back her hair, people thought she was a cute college coed or a librarian.  Even I forgot that she cursed too much, was vindictive, and did a bunch of crazy stuff that made my life more interesting than I wanted it to be.  But I wouldn’t forget for long, and I would then wonder what I had gotten myself into by living in sin with a woman I hardly knew.

It had begun as a peaceful enough Sunday afternoon before Vin, a guy from Danielle’s past, disrupted our lunch at a Mexican restaurant.  After a few uncomfortable moments, Danielle sent me to the car to retrieve a bag with pictures that she wanted to show Vin.  All three of us knew this was a crock.  Danielle was getting me out of the restaurant for a reason, but I didn’t know why.  She hadn’t brought her bag, and it wasn’t in the car, and I knew she was going to do something while I was wasting minutes walking all the way through the parking lot to her car and back.

Even though I already knew the bag wasn’t in the car, I checked so that I wouldn’t have to lie about it later.  Then halfway back to the restaurant, I noticed three guys eyeing me.  One was a thick busboy, and the other two were guys that I had barely noticed sitting at the bar just inside the restaurant.  They (not the busboy) were my age and dressed nicely in sweaters and slacks.  One was taller and had a little longer hair than the other guy.  None of the three looked menacing, but they definitely were in my way.

“You Jimmy?” the tall guy said.

I paused.  I was tempted to say no, but I didn’t think they’d believe me.  I had a weird feeling.  I didn’t feel like I was in danger, but in the city sometimes you didn’t know you were in danger until it was too late.

“Yeah?” I said.

“Your girlfriend told us to tell you to wait out here,” he said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Crazy shit,” the tall guy said.

“Crazy shit?” I repeated.

“Those were her exact words,” he confirmed.  “She said you’d understand.”

“Why are there three of you?”

“Just in case.  We’re supposed to stop you.”

“You’re friends of hers.”  I understood that Danielle knew a lot of guys through her job, but still, that seemed quick.  How did she get three friends in just a few minutes?

“No.  She paid us,” the tall guy said.

That made more sense.  “With cash?” I asked.

The guy nodded.  I hoped it was her own money, but I doubted it.  Well, that was more of my money down the drain because of her.

We stared at each other in silence.  I wasn’t a fighter.  I would have had a tough time getting past one of these guys much less all three of them, but I was worried about Danielle.  She had been scared of Vin, and I didn’t know why, and I didn’t know how dangerous he could be.  I didn’t know what kind of scene she would make with him.  With Danielle, things could get out of hand really quickly.

“You guys do this much?” I asked.  “You know, keep people from going into restaurants.”

The tall guy shook his head.  The other two looked around the parking lot.

“So if I bolted for the restaurant, what would you do?” I asked.  “Beat me up?”

“Tackle you,” the busboy said.

“We’d do whatever it takes,” the tall guy said, but he smiled when he said it.  “She just doesn’t want you to do anything crazy.  No ‘crazy shit’ in the restaurant.”

Crazy shit?  Danielle had convinced these three guys that I was the crazy one.  I wanted to laugh, but that would have made me look crazy.  There was no way that I could have explained to them that the quiet cute chick with the thick glasses and the copy of Pride and Prejudice was the one with “crazy shit” in her life.  If I did anything except stand there and wait, they’d interpret it as acting crazy.  So I remained quiet, which was easy for me.

I was kind of (or very) relieved.  Now I didn’t have to go back inside and witness whatever was going on.  If Danielle was swapping spit with Vin, or dumping a drink on him, or going after him with cutlery, I wouldn’t be a part of it.  I had no idea what kind of crazy stuff was happening or about to happen, but I was grateful that Danielle had gotten me out of it.  That probably wasn’t boyfriendly of me, but that was how I felt.

The tallest of the guys said, “You been going out for a while?”

I stared him in the eye proudly, and said, “A few weeks.”

“We called her ‘Library Girl’ before she talked to us.”

The other guy who wasn’t a busboy said, “We give nicknames to all the women.”

‘Library Girl’ made sense.  Danielle had her big glasses on and had carried her Pride and Prejudice around so that anybody paying attention would know that she was reading it (even though she wasn’t).  As far as nicknames went, ‘Library Girl’ wasn’t demeaning.  It was downright respectful.  Danielle would appreciate the nickname.  Her literary façade seemed to be working perfectly on people who didn’t know her.

The tall guy continued.  “That short waitress with the big knockers is Little Miss Cleavage.  And that woman at the bar with the spandex is Camel Toe.”

The guy kept talking about other women and their nicknames, and I made a mental note to check out ‘Camel Toe’ when I returned to the restaurant, and then…  Ugh, I needed to focus.

I looked at the bus boy.  “Shouldn’t you be cleaning off tables?”

He suddenly looked pissed off at me.  “I’m on break.”

Right after he said the word “break,” the restaurant doors flew open, and a family came running out and fled straight to their car on the other side of the lot.  A few couples power-walked out and then stood by the door and peered into the windows to see what was going on.  Through the darkened panes, I could see movement, groups of people moving around.  Something was going on in the restaurant, something crazy.  I felt vindicated.

“That’s Step One,” I said to the three guys.

I turned to the busboy.  “You might want to go inside… since you work here.”

The busboy looked at the other two guys.

“I’m not going in there, I promise,” I said to the busboy.  As far as I was concerned, if Danielle or ‘Library Girl’ wanted me to stay out, I was going to stay out.

The busboy ran across the lot into the restaurant, and I hoped that he would be able to keep his job.

“Whatever’s going on,” I said to the two remaining guys, “this is only the beginning.  Just wait.”

And then I heard sirens in the distance.  “That’s Step Two,” I said.

The two guys seemed nervous.  One tapped his foot.  The other couldn’t keep his eyes in one place.  None of us had any idea what was going on.

Moments later, two police cars pulled up to the restaurant’s front door, and three uniformed officers ran inside.

“That’s Step Three,” I said.

By then, I probably could have run inside myself, and the two guys wouldn’t have stopped me.  Maybe I should have.  If something bad enough for the police had happened, then nobody would have blamed me.  But whatever was going on, I wouldn’t have been able to help.  I would have been a useless boyfriend.  I knew I was a useless boyfriend standing outside with the two guys who were half-heartedly holding me back, but at least I was where I was told to be.

I knew somebody was going to be escorted out of the restaurant.  Either Vin was coming out handcuffed, or Danielle, or both.  I was guessing both.  It would be just like Danielle to get herself arrested in order to get somebody else arrested too.  She was vindictive enough to do it.  I thought about the petty cash I had lying around the apartment and whether or not it would be enough to get her out of jail.  That would be another bill of hers for me to pay.

A few minutes later, I could see the police dragging somebody out of the restaurant, but I couldn’t tell who it was between the crowd and the shade of the windows.  In a moment that door was going to open, and I was going to see who and how many people were being escorted out or arrested.  I was going to see how crazy the cute and quiet ‘Library Girl’ had gotten.  This was going to get interesting.

“And here comes Step Four,” I said to the other guys, and I took a deep breath.

*****

To be continued in… The Literary Girlfriend: Response Time .

And to read “The Literary Girlfriend” from the beginning, start here.