Three Alarm Tenant. Christa Maurice
twenty-four hour shifts and he’s cooped up in the apartment the whole time.”
“Twenty-four hour shifts. That must be difficult.” Katherine folded her hands in her lap before she forgot herself and laid the left on the seat between them where he could lay his over it. As if he would want to.
“It’s not so bad. We’re really just waiting most of the time.”
“Waiting?”
“Waiting for runs. We usually get three or four a shift, but it’s not always an emergency. Occasionally it’s a prank, sometimes it’s only somebody overreacting. Sometimes they decide they don’t need us after all. In between, we do maintenance, physical training, and white board sessions.” He shrugged. “What about you? What do you do? Besides rent an apartment.”
“I teach high school English.”
“Oh. I guess I better watch my language.”
Katherine grimaced. Every time someone asked her what she did, and at least once every parent-teacher conference day, she heard that joke. They never seemed to understand it wasn’t funny after the first dozen times. Of course, she reminded herself, it wasn’t old to them. “Well, I promise not to grade you too hard,” she answered by rote.
He chuckled, and the sound of it banished any annoyance she'd felt. It went straight to her knees, turning them to rubber and making her glad she was sitting down. “I bet you get that a lot,” he said.
“Yes.” Katherine hoped she didn’t sound as breathless as she felt. What happened to friends? No one reacts to their friends like this. Maybe Pam was right, and she’d lost all her one-on-one people skills.
“Well, I promise not to say it again if you promise not to say ‘where’s the fire.’”
“I think I can manage that.” She opened her purse and started digging through it for Chapstick. Suddenly she felt as if she needed to occupy herself, particularly her hands. Out the window, familiar landscape slid past. It felt reassuring. Traffic seemed light for a Saturday, but then everyone probably had some place to go, and had gone before now.
“So do you like teaching?” he asked, a little too loud.
“Sometimes. It has its rewards and its challenges.” She found the tube rolling around in the bottom. Without flipping down the visor, she applied it. It gave her a moment to gather herself. And then he chuckled again.
“You probably have a bunch of students like I was. Bad kids who sit in the back of the room and don’t finish their homework.”
“I tend to move them up front and ask them questions. Sometimes they start doing their homework to keep from being humiliated in front of the class, and then sometimes they decide they like knowing the answers and getting good grades. Sometimes they hate me more.” Katherine closed her purse, folded her hands together and wished she’d stayed home tonight. She really didn’t know how to do this anymore, if she’d ever known.
“Really? My teachers gave up on me most of the time.” He stopped for a traffic light and looked over at her. “As long as I was quiet and didn’t interrupt the kids who were trying, they didn’t care if I fell asleep.”
“I don’t like to give up on anyone. But then that’s how I ended up here.” Katherine grumbled before she remembered where she was and who she was talking to. Her jaws clicked shut too late. Not only had he heard, but he'd been looking at her when she said it.
He blinked, a little taken aback. “Well. Seen any good movies lately?” The light changed, and he focused on the road.
Katherine stared at her hands in her lap. No wonder she never went out, she wasn’t fit company.
“Seriously, seen any good movies? We have a guy at the station who’s a big movie buff. He’ll watch about anything. Old movies, foreign movies, B movies. It’s kinda neat the stuff he brings in. I think he’s got a deal with the little video store on McKinley so he can rent a bunch of stuff and return it late without having to pay a fee. He brought this one in a couple of weeks ago…”
Katherine let him babble on about movies, half listening and glad it was dark. Did he think she meant here as in here with him? Should she explain she’d always believed the police force would bail her out if she needed them, and by the time she’d realized they wouldn’t, she’d been in over her head? Would that make her look even more silly and pathetic to someone who lived by the same code? Or would he be able to make her understand why they left her the way they had? Pam never understood why she felt so betrayed, but maybe Jack would. If she only had the courage to ask him. But how much of herself did she want to expose on this first not-date?
They passed the Wendy’s she knew. Only half the tables were taken, but she suspected fast food wasn’t the dinner of choice for most couples on Valentine’s Day. Last Valentine’s Day, she’d sat at her desk with one light on and the heat turned down as low as she could stand to save a couple of bucks while she added up the state of her debt and graphed her decline into bankruptcy.
“So.” Jack cleared his throat. “Have you seen any good movies lately?”
“I don’t see many movies. The last thing I saw was Laurence Olivier in Hamlet when I showed it to the class.” Katherine looked out the windshield at the strip malls on either side of the road. This whole area had expanded since the last time she’d had extra money to shop with. At least she hadn’t blurted out how her DVD player had started eating DVDs nine months ago, and she’d given the TV to the school janitor in trade for some work he’d done because she ran out of cash.
“Is it any good?”
“It’s restrained.” Katherine focused on the film, forcing thoughts of strip malls, cops and Jack’s easy smile out of her mind. “Olivier plays Hamlet as a very tightly controlled character. The kids have an easier time with the Mel Gibson version because he plays it more tortured.”
“Why didn’t you show that version to your class?”
“I couldn’t get a copy. The district only has one and somebody else got to it first. Fortunately, I have my own DVD of To Kill a Mockingbird for when my sophomore class gets to that point in the Spring.”
“I read that in school. It was great.”
“It’s one of my favorites. I teach it every year.” Katherine looked out her window and noted a bus stop. So buses did run out here. Now the question was, why was she so sure he would strand her?
“Doesn’t that get boring? Teaching the same book year after year?” Jack flipped on his left turn signal and angled the truck into the turn lane.
“No, I teach it to a different group of students every year.”
He turned onto the access road to the Crossroads Plaza. “I don’t read much. I used to read those military mystery novels, but they all started to sound the same after a while. You know, militant nut decides to take over the world and the hero has to find him and stop him before he can succeed. Maybe you can turn me on to a new author or something.”
“Maybe.” Katherine licked her lips, tasting the cherry Chapstick she’d put on. The phrase ‘turn me on’ caught in her mind and changed context. Turn him on? Certainly. Just say when. Then she realized it sounded as if he were making plans for the future with her. That probably meant he wasn’t going to desert.
“Here we are. The new Wendy’s.” He turned into the parking lot.
She surveyed the area. This had been an empty field the last time she came here. Now there were a couple of restaurants and a jewelry store. She felt as if, after years of living in a cave, she’d emerged into a new century. Of course large portions of last summer had been spent in the basement, which was as close to a cave as she ever wanted to get. “I didn’t know there was anything new out here.”
“It only opened last summer. Nothing but the best for us.”
“Well, it is Valentine’s