Might Have Been Ch. 03

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Sidney had a round face and long red hair that she liked to wear in a french braid. Her green eyes were usually hidden behind bug-eye sunglasses. She removed those glasses now to rub bloodshot eyes, indicating either not enough sleep, or too much alcohol. "God, I'm hungover," she said after a few minutes of small talk.

"Where did you go last night?"

"Amber and I drove to Mankato."

"You had dates?" They were both seeing Mankato State University football players and had previously mentioned visiting their boyfriends during August training camp.

"No, we just went to this seedy bar downtown. They don't card us there."

"Amber in a seedy bar..." My brain couldn't process that one. "How does she respond when some ex-con with biker tattoos starts to chat her up?"

"You just keep moving and don't let them buy drinks for you, and they leave you alone. We spent most of the time on the dance floor anyway."

"How do you avoid the tattooed ex-cons on the dance floor?"

"Oh, Amber and I danced with each other, and we gave a good enough show that no one interrupted."

"A show? This I've gotta hear."

Sidney made sure no kids were within earshot, and lowered her voice. "Okay, so Amber's dancing like she's doing a pole dance? Like strippers do?"

"They had a pole?" I asked.

"No, she was faking it -- she has the muscle control to hold her leg up in the air like it's wrapped around a pole. But then I put a dollar bill in her shorts, and she starts giving me a lap dance!"

"Get the fuck out of here."

"No! She was like grinding against me and everything! The bar starts cheering!"

"I can imagine." I really could.

"So then I tucked some bills deep into her boobs, and they cheered even louder!"

I glanced over at Amber, sunning herself, with a knee bent upward, catching the last rays of the summer -- the picture of Midwestern virtue. "Bullshit."

"I bullshit you not!"

A twisted part of me really wanted to believe her. "How long before you had to run for your lives to avoid getting molested?"

"Yeah, we left after that. The bouncer escorted us to the car."

"Smart bouncer."

"It was fun getting the guys all worked up." She held up the swimming ring that Amber had played with earlier and flashed a wicked smile. "We could have played ring toss with all the hard-ons around the room." Sidney nodded over to Amber, who was now walking toward us. "She's wilder than you think."

Amber relieved me, and I rotated to staff the office. I watched Amber and Sidney chat for a while, and that was it. The rest of the work weekend was uneventful. At the close of business on Sunday, we locked up the pool, hugged goodbye for the summer, and went home, leaving for college later that week. I never saw either of them again.

At the time, I was surprised by Sidney's story. I knew people could act different while drunk, but it was a side of Amber I couldn't imagine. Sidney and Amber both had reputations as cock-teases, but I had suspected most of the guys in question had only been wishfully thinking that Amber was interested, or they were blaming Amber for Sidney's actions.

As I thought back on the story over the years, the stronger my hunch grew that Sidney had been lying. Giving a mock-lesbian lap dance in a biker bar? That wasn't Amber. Sidney was laying out bait for my sexual fantasies, but I didn't understand why.

The only connection I saw was that Amber and Sidney were both trying to lead me to think about Amber in a more sexual way. Amber was boring, but I had often wondered whether that was a facade, and whether there were depths to her personality left unexplored. Later in life, I met several beautiful women who were somehow trained in adolescence to hide anything interesting about themselves. It was a form of child abuse, I thought, but they had been afraid guys would be scared off by a woman who was both beautiful and clever. A few grew out of it as they aged and gained confidence. Was Amber one of those girls with unexplored depths, or was she just not all that interesting?

I had missed something that day at the pool and had always wondered what it was. Now I had a chance to find out. In contrast to my expectations with Courtney and Amy, I felt I would be immune to disappointment this time. This was a long shot, and I would be happy if I merely satisfied my curiosity. I didn't have any lingering romantic feelings for Amber -- just a condescending fondness and a set of completely physical sex fantasies. Having convinced myself I would be immune to heartbreak this time, I pulled the resonance array from my dresser -- complete with the prepared power supply -- and set it on my desk. I connected the stripped wires to the array with electrical tape and plugged the power supply into an outlet.

Deep breath. Could I make it work a second time? I had spent most of the morning rehearsing what I wanted to say to Amber, and how I wanted to respond to Sidney's bullshit story. I had my Cunning Plan.

I focused on my memory of Amber spinning the swimming ring. It was easy, because the ring was shaped like the resonance array itself, and the image of Amber's tanned thighs and calves had already been seared in my memory for almost a decade.

Amber's voice floated up from my memory, asking, "I thought guys liked to be sucked?" I grabbed the array tightly and flipped the switch on the power supply.

The world shimmered and my nostrils stung with the acrid scent of chlorinated water.


∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞


August 31, 2002


My eyes adjusted to the sun. It helped I was suddenly wearing a pair of Wayfarer knock-offs.

"Lance? Am I getting too personal?"

Eureka! I was sitting on a bench at the old municipal swimming pool, with Amber next to me. My hands were numb from the electrical current, and I was holding the resonance array. I casually tucked the assembly into the pocket of my swim trunks.

I was still getting my bearings, but started delivering the lines I had prepared. "No, that's fine," I began. "Heather didn't deserve to have those stories spread about her, but since they're out, I don't mind setting the record straight. All things in moderation. It's the most sensitive skin on a guy's body. Just like you don't appreciate your football-player-boyfriend going all Dracula on your neck and leaving you black and blue, Heather was doing far worse. It was her first time and she didn't know any better."

"What was she doing wrong?" Amber was throwing side glances my direction and spoke hesitantly. She was playing with the swimming ring again -- making it orbit elliptically in a figure-eight pattern around her ankle.

"Heather and I were both drunk at Dave's party. My memory is pretty hazy, but my pants were down around my ankles, and I remember teeth and believing I was being attacked by a giant leech." Making a joke out of it should put her at ease that it was okay to talk about this.

Amber laughed a little too hard and then whispered, "So she shouldn't have used her teeth as much or sucked in as hard?" Her face was red with embarrassment, but she mostly held eye contact.

Oh, the big mystery was that she just wanted advice on oral sex techniques. I was disappointed -- she hadn't been hitting on me after all. My experience with Heather the Human Hoover made me the foremost expert in town on how a girl should not give head. Amber knew me well enough that she was just able to work up the courage to ask.

Thinking about it more, I decided that couldn't be all. Why did she need to know in the first place? Why was she asking me, instead of someone like Sidney? Both girls had been dating college guys for almost a year. In a year's worth of dating, they must have given their lucky boyfriends all sorts of head. My curiosity was piqued.

I first answered her question. "Teeth are evil when it comes oral sex, unless you really know what you're doing. A little sucking is fine. Be a little more gentle than when you kiss a guy's neck, and you should be alright. Think kisses, licks, and lollipops, not a vacuum cleaner full of starving piranhas."

She laughed really hard at that, blushing furiously, and briefly grabbed onto my bicep before letting go and covering her face with her hands. It was adorable.

Your turn. "Amber, I don't mind talking about this with you. I can go into exacting detail about how a woman should use her tongue and lips when orally worshiping my manhood." (Her face turned even more scarlet.) "But isn't this a conversation you should be having with that boyfriend of yours? He would probably enjoy telling you what he likes and dislikes even more than I do."

Amber flushed with embarrassment and mumbled, "There's no boyfriend."

Interesting. "You broke up? When?"

She got more flustered. "No, no, I mean, um, there never was a boyfriend, for either of us. Please don't tell anyone else."

My curiosity was aflame, but I said nothing, waiting for an explanation.

She sighed. "Sidney and I made them up. Look, this is so embarrassing. You know my dad? Ever since he became a judge and everything, he's so concerned about his reputation. He wouldn't let me date. He was afraid I would get in trouble and embarrass him."

"The judge holds you in that much contempt?"

She missed the joke. "No kidding! But I would have felt like such a dork if I told everyone my stupid dad wouldn't let me date. Sidney had the idea of telling everyone we were dating two college guys from Mankato?" I had forgotten her habit of occasionally ending statements with the tone of a question. It had annoyed me in high school, but today it was cute. "We even drive up there together on weekends, but we just go shopping or catch a movie."

"So you haven't dated at all?"

"No," she said with clear regret.

"Sidney didn't date either?"

"She dated a few guys earlier in high school, but not this past year. She said high school guys were all immature jerks anyway?"

"It's true, we are."

"Not you, Lance! You've always been nice! And you aren't in high school any more." She touched my arm again -- her hand lingering this time.

"Correct on both counts."

She laughed like I had said the funniest thing in the world.

I reconsidered whether she was hitting on me. That hadn't been funny at all, and she had touched me twice now.

Amber continued talking. "So anyway, I'm heading to North Dakota State next week? Now I'm scared I won't know anything about boys, or dating, and I'll do something stupid, and everyone will laugh at me."

Ah. She didn't want people to gossip about her, the way they did Heather.

I spoke the rest of my thoughts out loud. "And you don't want to ask your girlfriends because they will be miffed you haven't been honest with them."

"Yes! You do understand! Sidney said you would."

Sidney was walking over. It was 12:30 -- time to switch shifts.

Amber stretched before she stood up, arching her back. I couldn't help glancing at her chest, watching her breasts stretch the black fabric to its limits. I forced my eyes to her face. "Amber, I would be happy to give you whatever coaching you need. What are friends for? We can talk more later."

"Thanks, Lance!" She scampered over to the office, and I watched her crack open a Diet Coke.

Sidney sat next to me and I listened to her recount the story about how she and Amber had lap-danced in a seedy Mankato bar. Hearing it a second time, I believed the story even less.

I asked a few more questions this time. "Which bar was this? My dad represents a few of them."

"Uh, I don't remember the name."

"Where was it in Mankato?"

"Oh, down along the river."

"Near Riverfront?"

"I don't remember which one. We were kind of drunk."

"Oh, I'm glad you got home alright. You should have called. I would have been happy to fetch you and drive you home."

"We weren't that drunk, now let me tell the story..."

By the end, I knew the story was bullshit. I decided not to call her on it, for now. If nothing further developed, I would ask later in the afternoon.

I also watched Sid more carefully. She was easy to watch. She had a pretty face, despite her complexion, with round cheeks made for smiling, which she did often, but her body was what drew the eye. Sid must have noticed the attention I gave her form, but she hid any reaction. She was friendly, and we joked, but there was none of the gentle teasing or bodily flaunting that I had seen from Amber. Given Sidney's usual cock-tease behavior, I figured she either respected me too much to tease me, or she just didn't find me attractive. That added more weight to the possibility that she had concocted her story to point me at Amber.

When Amber relieved me, I drank a Coke in the office and watched them. They were engaged in an intense discussion, moving quickly from agitation, to giggles, and then solemnity. They kept glancing in my direction. It appeared as if Sidney was trying to persuade Amber of something, but Amber wasn't sure.

"I see you're working with The Toothsome Twosome today."

With my attention focused on the girls, I hadn't seen Dave arrive. He would visit once a day, to steal one of my Cokes and chat.

I turned to greet him, smiled, and shrugged. I never called Amber and Sidney the Toothsome Twosome out loud. In anyone's mouth other than Dave's, it became a tongue twister, and not one person in a hundred knew what "toothsome" meant anyway.

Dave's presence was a convenient chance to test something. "What do you remember about the Halloween Dance last fall?" I asked.

"You mean the S&M thing?" He popped the tab on a purloined Coke. "Hard to forget it, when half the class refers to you as 'The Gimp' for the next six months, in revenge for all the names I concocted." He sat on the edge of the desk.

"Do you remember me hooking up with someone?"

"Not that you told me. You were still inside when we left. Did you hook up with someone? The Exquisite Sarah watches your love life like a hawk, and if she missed that, she'll be pissed."

I had been wondering which timeline I was in, after I jumped this morning. Was I in the August 2002 of my original timeline, or of the new timeline from my last two (subjective) days? I had my answer. I was back in my home timeline, unchanged except for whatever I would do today.

"What do you and Sarah have planned tonight?" I asked. Sarah had won a scholarship to Julliard in New York City. Her mother had family in New York, and had only been staying in Monroe so Sarah could complete High School. Sarah's Dad had moved out to California when her parents divorced, so Sarah wouldn't even have family around here. I had never seen Sarah again after she left, and it occurred to me that I had never even said goodbye to her, except in a nasty email I sent a few weeks into September, chewing her out for the way she treated Dave.

Dave was planning to study computer science at Madison. He had been accepted at MIT, which was within driving distance of New York, but his parents couldn't afford the tuition. Dave and Sarah had decided to break up rather than attempt a long distance relationship, and tonight was their last date.

Taking a pull from the Coke as if it were liquor, Dave answered my question. "Dinner at a Japanese restaurant in Rochester, and then a hotel. If we have time afterward, I'll stop by the Mayo Clinic for a physician-assisted suicide."

I had no response. Sarah was the one who insisted they end it, but I always thought Dave had surrendered too easily. If I had been in his shoes, I would have found a college near New York -- any college. When you found someone you loved, you owed it to them, and yourself, to do whatever was necessary to make it work.

Dave sighed.

"Are you driving her to the airport on Monday?" I asked.

Dave stood, restless. "No, her mother is taking her. I have to return her late tonight, and she made me swear I wouldn't see her tomorrow. The Exquisite Sarah needs to prepare for her trip, and wished to bid farewell tonight." I could hear bitterness in his tone.

"So what are you doing tomorrow?"

"Something that numbs the pain in my soul. Do they have opium dens anymore?" Dave had been reading George Eliot novels this summer, and was unconsciously affecting an accent more appropriate to someone wearing a top hat and cravat.

"No, but there are a few absinthe bars in Minneapolis."

"Really? Do they allow brooding?"

"The bouncers require you to show proof of melancholia at the door."

"I should bring The Exquisite Sarah. She would love it." He included Sarah reflexively, and once he realized the impossibility of that scenario, he flinched. "Fuck. I have one more day with her, and I'm not going to spend it moping."

"I thought you were going to brood, not mope." This sort of word game usually cheered him up.

"That's tomorrow. Today, I have one more chance to drink from the Cup of Heaven."

A surge of anger welled within me at his idealization of the pain of break up. Was he allowing their relationship to fail, just so he could compete when tortured artists got together and measured their dicks by seeing who had experienced the worst romantic loss? "Then why the fuck are you letting it end? Follow her to New York." My tone was an accusation, and I realized I needed to temper it with humor. "Become one of those guys who only acts to make a living, before they can fulfill their dream of being a waiter."

Dave gave a wan smile. "I suggested that very thing. She said if I did, she would dump me anyway."

"What?" The bitch! I knew Sarah had forced the issue, not even bothering to try a long distance relationship. That was bad enough, but I hadn't known this -- that she had turned down Dave's offer to follow her to New York. My feelings toward Sarah had moderated in her presence lately, but all the rage came back now, amplified.

Dave was taken aback by my obvious anger. "I'm the one getting stabbed through the heart, not you."

"You're right. Never mind." This was Dave's last night with her, and I wouldn't be a friend if I told him just what I thought of his Exquisite Sarah right now.

Dave threw the Coke can in the recycling bin. "On that discordant note, I must depart." He walked back to his car, shoulders hunched in misery. Despite his earlier protestations, he was starting his brooding a day early. I sympathized, but there was nothing I could do.

I turned my attention back to the pool. The swimmers' break had already been blown and was almost done. Amber and Sidney had stayed talking on the bench the entire time. I walked out to relieve Sidney, who stared meaningfully at Amber before heading in.

Amber gestured to the lifeguard chairs. There were more than twenty kids now, so we had to sit on perches instead of the bench. No more talking.

I wasn't able to talk to either Amber or Sidney for the next couple hours. We were either in the chairs, or alone in the office, except during swimmers' breaks, during which I was usually supervising the boys' locker room to prevent the towel fights and accidents that always occurred when dozens of kids roughhoused barefoot, on wet, painted concrete.

On one of those patrols of the locker room, I studied myself in the bathroom mirror. I had forgotten how good my physique had been. My shoulders, arms, and legs were strong from swimming. My normally brown hair was sun-bleached to blonde, and my skin had a carcinogenic bronze hue I had foolishly cultivated. I gazed at my reflection more with regret than narcissism, recalling I was out-of-shape and flabby in my real timeline. More bad decisions.

During the shift changes, Amber behaved oddly. As I was following Amber in our rotation, I could watch her descend from the chair twice an hour. She was taking longer than usual, always folding her towel first. She used baby oil to keep her skin from drying in the sun, and the towel kept the chair from getting greasy for the other guards.