Heels Over Head

It was the morning of May Eighteenth, Nineteen Hundred Eighty. Mount St. Helen’s was erupting in Washington State, and Thomas was taking his morning walk in Penshaw, Ohio. He stood on a familiar street corner in a drizzle, watching a tall, slender woman cross the street. She wore a raincoat with a plastic hood. With her collar turned up, he couldn’t see her face, but she had glanced at him without making eye contact. Was it Sherri? He raised his hand to greet her but stopped, not wanting to appear a fool. Instead, he followed her from a distance.

           She slipped into The Morning Class Café just as the rain began to pour. Thomas hesitated at the door, but the rain drove him inside. What the hell? He was hungry anyway.

           He looked around but didn’t notice Sherri. No, he thought. He shouldn’t call the woman Sherri. He wasn’t the least bit sure it was her.

           Selecting a stool at the counter, he stared at his reflection in a wall-length mirror. His face looked disheveled, his wet hair dripping and plastered against his forehead. A droplet of water formed at the peak of his nose. He wiped it away with his sleeve, but there wasn’t much he could do about his appearance.

           The woman he’d followed was of similar height as Sherri but not likely to be her, though she’d had a similar gait. Sherri had moved to New York City to pursue her dream. She wouldn’t have returned to the college town of Penshaw.  

           Then, the woman—with a coffee pot in her hand—appeared behind the counter, blocking the view of his reflection and taking him by surprise. Her skin was cracked at the corner of her mouth, and a mole blemished her cheek. The veins in her hand, gripping the coffee pot, bulged out. It was Sherri. He’d forgotten that she would have aged too, but he didn’t care about that.

           Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and she leaned over the counter, hovering over him. “What can I get you?”

           Her eyes still had those dark specks, but not her signature, haughty glare.

           She’s going to pretend not to recognize me, Thomas thought. He couldn’t believe she’d forget him. He stared back at her, wondering how to handle her playacting.

            Her eyes smoldered with impatience. Oh, she was still quite the actress. Thomas looked down at the menu.

           The woman shifted her weight and finger-tapped the counter. There were rings on every finger except the one that counted.

           “I’ll have coffee and a croissant, Sherri.”

           “Right-oh, Thomas,” she said: Right-oh, a Sherri expression.

Ten years earlier, they had been students who came across each other in the Penshaw College Campus woodlands, at an intersection of paths not far from the college dorms. By chance, they were alone. Thomas wanted her in that very first second. She was in a trance, it seemed, dancing more than walking on the trail and unaware of the world around her. Maybe it was the joyfulness of her dance, or the wispiness of her orange dress, the lifting of her leg, or the way her arms unfolded to show the lovely leanness of her body that possessed him.

           Suddenly she became aware of him watching her. She pulled off her sunglasses and glared, “Haven’t you seen anyone dance before?”

           Thomas stammered, “I didn’t mean to intrude.

           “Your dance was beautiful,” he added after a long silence. He knew he should leave, but his feet were lead.

           Sherri blinked. “No, I’m sorry. Let me make it up to you.” She’d gone from anger to friendliness in a flash.

           “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

           She put her sunglasses back on and smiled a wicked smile. “Well, give me a chance.”

           She led him by the hand and took him behind the giant rock, and kissed him. He slid his hand between her thighs, up that sheer, garish dress, expecting a rebuff that never happened.

           She slipped off her panties, turned around, and placed her forearms against the rock, offering herself and laughing through the whole act. When they finished, she faced him, still wearing that smug expression she wore while dancing. He touched her face and moved to take off her glasses, but she slapped his hand away. “Don’t get fresh,” she said

           “Sorry,” he said, taken aback. “What’s your name?”

           Then, of her own volition, she lowered her glasses, sliding them down her nose and looking out over them. “Sherri.”

           Her eyes were brown with those mysterious black specks that he never forgot.

           “I’m Thomas,” he said, even though he always went by Tom.

           She hiked up her panties, smoothed her dress, and said goodbye. Then she ran down the path before Thomas could answer. He watched until the woods swallowed her whole. College life, he realized, was a lot different than high school.   It was weeks later before he saw her again.

           He’d ducked into the warmth of the Campus Pub and ordered at the bar. Eating a burger and sipping a beer as slowly as possible, he hoped the weather would clear before he headed back to the dorm. Suddenly, Sherri walked past him on her way to the ladies’ room, wearing a police uniform with a blue cap tilted back on her head. Thomas, confused by her outfit, couldn’t say a word.

           Sherri wasn’t so befuddled. “Thomas, I knew I’d see you again.”

           An image of their first encounter flashed through his mind. He fumbled to say something. “Sherri, what’s with the uniform?”

           “Oh, this,” she said, making a downward waving gesture with her hands, “We’re rehearsing a play, not rehearsing, actually. It’s the first reading. We thought it would be fun to dress the part. Wait for me. I’ll introduce you to the others.”

           Of course, there’d by others. A girl so alluring wouldn’t be alone. He could never compete. As soon as she disappeared, he threw money on the bar and headed for the door. Outside, dusk had fallen, and the rain had slowed to a drizzle. Instead of heading home, he stood outside the bar entrance, considering whether to go back in or not. It was rude to walk out on her, but he didn’t want to keep company with a bunch of actors. He hadn’t known she was an actor. He knew nothing about her, still yearned to get her alone, like before. She wouldn’t want me anyway, he thought. She probably has an actor boyfriend, and they’d both mock me in their actor ways, with their flippant use of language.

           So, he started walking home. It was dark except for the glare of automobile headlamps that swept by, creating long shadows of his image against the brick of the Campus Pub wall. He caught a glimpse of her and her actor friends through the steamed windows of the pub. He hung his head, ashamed of his cowardice.

           Afterward, he saw her sometimes on campus, but not up close, never close enough to speak. He read about her in the school newspaper, how she’d be moving on to big things in the world of acting.

A few days after their rendezvous at the Morning Class Café, Thomas and Sherri dined at the Campus Grill. “Just to catch up,” they’d agreed. Sherri wore jeans with a white button-down blouse, open at the neck. She ordered a shrimp salad, and Thomas got a steak. They waited for their dinners with Manhattan’s in hand.

           “You’re an English professor?” Sherri asked.

           Thomas nodded, a bit embarrassed. “I’m afraid that while the literary world is vast, my real world has been rather small. I’ve never left Penshaw. I was born and raised here. What about you? Didn’t you go to New York? Everyone expected big things from you. Everyone expected you to become a star.”

           Sherri looked at Thomas through her eyebrows.

           “It never happened. Either I was unlucky or not good enough. It doesn’t matter now. I’m done with that. The most I’d managed was bit parts in small plays. The audiences were larger here in Penshaw. I never got my degree, but I’m thinking about going back once I gather enough money. I’ll take up something more practical.”

           Thomas took a deep breath. “I never date students, but that’s because they’re generally too young.”

           Sherri leans back in her chair. Her eyes widened. “Who said anything about dating, buster. Ten years ago, you stood me up. I’m not the type who forgets.”

           “Ten years ago, I’d have said I’m sorry and left. But I’m not going to do that now. You were too wild. You weren’t serious about me; you were just out for fun. I knew I’d be hurt, so I ran.”

           “Really?” Sherri asked. “Of course, I was having fun. We’d met five minutes before we fucked. How could you possibly take that as serious?”

           Thomas shrugged. Of course, he knew she wasn’t serious, but he wasn’t the same kind of person as she was. Not one with lots of options. “You’re right, of course.”

           Sherri’s eyes softened. “You are, too. I may have blown you off. But that was back then. I take life seriously now. I have more respect for others.”

           Thomas wondered if that were true. She seemed more restrained, more mature, wary even. “So what do you say? Forgive me, and let’s give it a try.”

           Sherri smiled and reached across the table, touching Thomas’s hand. “Okay,” she said, and Thomas was heels over head all over again.