Chapter 7

Tommy’s turn:

It’s comforting, knowing Mimi. All of a sudden there’s a friend in my life who’s not threatening, who doesn’t seem bent on putting me in spaces where I don’t want to be.

I mean, I’ve dated girls. At least a few. I know guys who’ve seriously dated more than I have. I know guys who’ve, in contemporary parlance (don’t you LOVE a good English education?), ‘hooked up’ with uncountable numbers. I can’t do that. I tried, with some modicum of success, at least by whatever measures one might measure such things. Grandpa is notorious for popping out some rather unusual sayings.

“My grandson’s in college,” he acknowledged at a family gathering. The men of the family were in the den of Mom and Dad’s house and Grandpa was being feisty. “Boy,” he said, fixing me in his gaze, “You getting your knob polished regularly?”

I turned so red I think I glowed.

“Pop!!!” Dad spat.

“Well, boy,” Grandpa said, “Thet’s what college kids do these days.”

Grandpa looked at me, smiling. “You don’t have to answer.”

The answer was a qualified ‘yes’. I felt empty. Wrong. So, since, as Dad says, ‘Nobody’s holding a gun to your head’, I stopped. I mean, you can be social, even friendly, and to a certain level, sexual, without crossing the line I’d accepted.

Now there’s Mimi. Mimi, folks, will never grace the centerfold of Playboy. That’s okay. That’s carefully prepped, made up, worked over, to fit a template. I don’t need that. I don’t want that. Oh, I can see where it would be impressive, but I’m thinking, as Dad sat me down and told me, “Son, after the showin’ ‘er off to your friends, after the sex, then there comes a time when you have to LIVE with ‘er. If she’s not your friend, not your intellectual equal, then that’s gonna be hard. Marriage might not stand the stress.”

“Might not be about marriage,” I told my dad.

“We raised you better’n that, son,” he returned.

I recognized my mistake. Serious talk. Not a place for me to be flippant. “You’re right, Dad. Sorry.”

“You’re a young man, Son. You’re going to college. I can’t look over your shoulder all the time. I hope you realize that there is One who does. Honor, Son. We don’t always make the grade, but we always know what the grade is.”

I wonder who had that talk with Mimi. Cute Mimi. Brown-harried, brown-eyed, face lights the room up when she smiles Mimi.

I did an assessment of myself, came up with two currents in my life now. Career. Okay. Electrical engineer, but I did a lot of different things for 3Sigma Robotics. I guess I was as much a mechanical guy as an electrical guy but I wasn’t THE mechanical engineer. My diploma said ‘electrical engineering’ and THE mechanical engineer was the unlikely property of my twelve year old boss, the fearsome pTerridactyl.

The other current is Mimi. Mimi doesn’t know what to do about herself and I don’t know what to do about me and we haven’t ever talked about what to do about each other. I like hanging around with Mimi. She’s not one of those pop music and fashion and TV show girls. I’m surprised, I admit. I mean when you pick up a girl on the side of the road and she admits to being a teenaged prostitute, you sort of scratch off much hope of intelligence.

For a while I didn’t even think about what Mimi said of her past. Actually, I hardly thought about her in any sexual manner other than to note that she’s kind of short and kind of cute and kind of smart.

Now she’s kind of taking over parts of my mind that I haven’t been paying attention to.

And she’s got a job. I made the mistake of calling it ‘babysitting’. Got a huffy response.

“I, sir, am a nanny. And I love it.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. Lovely set of kids.”

And now that she’s a couple of weeks into the job, she’s keeping the same story and she just assumes that when the weekend comes, she and I will be at the pavilion the company owns, listening to music, playing games, eating, talking...

Conversely, she’s accompanied Terri to one of the campus intramural playing fields and together they watched me and Jerry join a bunch of college guys in a game of rugby. Since I’m keeping my ‘student’ status, as is my friend Jerry, we can play with other students. Rugby’s good. Lots of exercise. Organized mayhem. I need something physical to keep me in shape. And it’s fun. And further, it lets a female see you doing manly things with other vigorous young men. Mimi’s the first to show up to watch me. This is the second time that’s happened. She and Terri are on the sidelines with a few other girlfriends, alternately cheering and looking worried. College rugby makes football look like ballet.

Afterward, Jerry and I are muddy, sweaty and totally unsuitable for public display. I receive a chaste kiss on the sidelines after the game. I note that Jerry gets one, too. It looks like two couples walking away to their cars after the game.

“You can drop me off,” Mimi says when we get in the car. “I heard the others talking about going out for beer...”

“Yeah, that’s what I wanna do,” I said, “go out with a bunch of college boys and start drinking...”

“You’re a college boy,” she said. “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?”

“I’m a graduate student, and no, that’s NOT what I’m supposed to do.”

“What’re your plans, then?”

“I’m going to drop you at your apartment, go home, shower and change clothes and then come get YOU so I won’t have to eat dinner by myself.”

“Uh, Tommy, you could save a trip, you know...”

“I have to shower and change clothes.”

“You could take me to YOUR apartment. I mean, if you don’t think that me being there is going to cause you to lose control...”

“I think I can maintain control, Mimi. I didn’t want to presume...”

“And I appreciate that, Tommy. I’m here because you’re a nice guy. Always been a gentleman with me. I think I can risk this, you know.”

“I shall restrain myself.”

“Plus, I get to see what kind of slob you are in real life...”

“This IS real life.”

“Yeah. Uh-huh. I never knew anybody who actually PLAYED rugby. Now I have doubts about your sanity.”

“Jerry plays,” I said.

“Yeah, but we KNOW he’s crazy. Terri’s pet. What goes through the guy’s mind? I mean, she’s twelve. If he touches her, he goes to jail.”

“He won’t make it to jail. The community’s tighter than that. Guy tells me that it’s inexplicable. Something about her that works for him. Worth the wait.”

“Strange,” she said.

“Never know what floats someone’s boat,” I said. As I said it, I think that my own boat is barely touching bottom. We arrived at my apartment. It’s nice, but not palatial, clean, not cluttered. MY space.

She looked around quickly. “Not as bad as I imagined,” she said. “Acceptable levels of clutter.”

“Make yourself at home, punkin,” I said. “I’ll be quick.”

She giggled. “I’d rather you be thorough.”

I laughed, headed into the bedroom, grabbed some clothes, then hit the bath. Shower felt good. It always does after rugby. I know that tomorrow I’ll have aches and pains and bruises, but there’s a certain small honor in having them. I had one particular whack on the back of my thigh, though, that was going to keep getting worse and I’d have to work hard not to limp.

Shower. Shave. Okay, a bit of aftershave won’t hurt, I think. And then a clean rugby shirt and jeans. More or less matched the level of attire that Mimi affected for the evening.

I walked out of the bathroom, a balled up pair of socks in my hand, sat down next to Mimi to pull on my shoes. She had the TV remote in her hand, something on the TV. I put my shoes on. I was getting ready to stand when she twisted, put her arms around me and gave me a GOOD kiss.

“Now we can go,” she said.

Mimi’s turn:

Terri explained the rules of rugby to me while we watched our guys, along with a couple of dozen others, chase each other and an oddly-shaped white ball up and down the field, punctuated by free-for-all brawls.

“So animalistic and primal,” Terri told me. She watched my face. Out of the many people associated with the 3Sigma community, most are college-educated, and not in that ‘I gots me a dee-gree’ veneered version. They’re actually smart, educated. I think Terri’s still sizing me up, hence the little glance when she dropped ‘animalistic and primal’.

So okay, I can do this. Mikayla Gundresen might be a high school dropout, but she’s no dumb-ass. “This is how they work off the energies they would’ve expended defending the homestead and killing a beast for food.” My turn to glance at her, in time to see her smirk. Make that ‘charming smirk’. “That white ball is a vestigial mammoth.”

“You know you belong here, don’t you, Mimi?” she said.

“I dunno, Terri. I’m a lot different.”

“We’re very diverse in a lot of ways, you know ... My engineer’s got brown hair. Yours has that almost reddish thing going. Cindy says redheads are special.”

“He’s not MY engineer,” I said.

Another glance. “Yeah, okay ... Sorry.”

By the end of this, the second rugby game I’ve ever seen in my life, I was beginning to understand when to cheer for my team.

Game’s end. Tommy gathered me up, we were walking to his car. “You can drop me off,” I said.

“Why? I was thinking...”

“I heard those guys talking about going out to get a beer afterward. I figured that was more of that male bonding thing.”

“I was thinking of getting cleaned up and taking YOU out for dinner. Maybe a movie.”

“No bonding?”

“Babe,” he said, tossing that term like it was familiar and comfortable to him, “One of those guys just about UN-bonded all the teeth in my head. I see a choice between going out drinking with a bunch of guys and taking a pretty girl out to dinner...”

“I’m not pretty,” I blurted, bowing my head.

“Mimi. Listen. I get to say you’re pretty. So? Dinner?”

“I can afford a burger...”

“I can afford a nicer meal than a burger if you let me pay for yours. I’m a successful young engineer.”

We solved that problem. Next one. “You could save some time if you didn’t drop me off.”

“Huh?”

“Take me to your apartment. Uh, that is, if you can restrain yourself from losing control...”

“I can maintain control.”

“I get to see what kind of man you are, then. See your lair.”

“That, I can risk. Movie?”

“Let’s look at what’s playing. I didn’t read comic books when I was younger and I darned sure don’t want to pay good money to see Hollywood’s version of them.”

“Are you SURE you’re not my dad’s estranged daughter?”

“Pretty sure. My dad laid claim to me right up to the end.”

“You’re different.”

“I am.”

We walked into his apartment. I gave it a quick inventory. Nope, not a spread from Southern Living, but not dirty and not particularly cluttered. It could use a picture or some other artistic touch.

“Make yourself at home,” he said. “I’ll be quick.”

Here’s one of those places where things can go off track. I’m in the guy’s apartment and I’m here voluntarily. Some guys would take that to mean...

‘No,’ I tell myself. ‘I can’t be that wrong about Tommy.’ I pick up the TV remote and turn it on. News. Just to catch up and just to have something on. Doesn’t stop me from looking around. I hear the shower stop running, then a bit of subdued thumping from the closed bathroom door. Then he comes out. He’s fully clothed. He plops down beside me on the sofa, puts his socks and shoes on.

I’m relieved more than I should be, I guess. There were many ways I played this out in my mind, many of them ending with me being accosted on the sofa, more or less against my will.