Chapter Thirty-one

Across the hallway from Cindy's lecture hall was a classroom that was rarely, if ever, used. Best of all it was rarely, if ever, locked. It was furnished with a dozen or so of those wraparound desks with attached plastic chairs. Wraparound desks and I don't get along. Mostly because they were made for people half my size.

So I positioned two of them near the classroom door, where I used one to sit and the other to prop my ankles up on. From that position, sitting in near darkness, I could see down the hallway in either direction, and had a clear shot of the elevator that opened onto Cindy's floor.

It was late, almost 10 PM. My feet were up on the desk in front of me, ankles crossed, hands folded across my stomach. In the hallway next to my door, the drinking fountain gurgled. The gurgling kept me company, like an old friend. An old mentally challenged friend. I had spent the last ten minutes trying to discern the different chewing gum scents wafting up from under the desk, when the elevator chimed open.

A heavy-set, middle-aged woman stepped out, blinking rapidly and peering around. Unremarkable, if not for the fact she was wearing a heavy coat, as this wasn't exactly heavy coat weather. Hell, this wasn't exactly heavy coat country. Sensing a clue, I watched her closely.

She came hesitantly toward me. Or, at least, towards my part of the hallway. She had short black hair, perfectly trimmed bangs, and thick eyebrows that needed to be plucked or weed-whacked. She stopped in front of me, her back to me, and gazed up at Cindy's lecture hall doors as if they were the gates to Heaven.

There was a slight hump in her upper spine, and I wondered if the Humanities building here at UCI had a bell tower. Then again, maybe she was carrying something heavy inside her coat.

The hallway was silent. The fountain gurgled. I could hear her breathing through her nose, saw her shoulders rise and fall with each breath.

And then, amazingly, she turned. I have no idea why. Maybe she heard me breathe. Maybe she sensed my overwhelming manliness. Maybe she had eyes in the back of her head.

Either way, she turned and looked right at me. We stared at each other. Her nose was a little wide, complete with a mini hump. Chin absent. Certainly not beautiful, but neither was she unattractive. I judged her age to be about forty. Didn't look much like a student, but she certainly could have been. In the least, she looked like she was up to something.

"Hello," I said.

Her mouth dropped open. Her tongue spilled out over her lower teeth like a pink tide. And then she was moving. Quickly. Back to the elevator. There, she punched the button hard enough to have hurt her hand. The elevator, which hadn't gone anywhere, opened right up. She turned her face away from me as the door closed around her.

I would remember that face. Especially those eyebrows.

When she was gone, I eased my feet off the desktop and onto the floor. I stood and moved over to the bank of classroom windows. From there, I had a clear shot of the main entrance to the building below.

I waited.

My breath fogged on the window before me. I resisted the urge to write: I Heart Cindy.

The door opened below, yellow light spilling out. A male student exited, followed immediately by Bushy Brows.

A tall man met her outside. He came out of the shadows of the building and the two argued for a bit, and then left together. They headed down a side trail that led to the Staff parking lot, where Cindy kept her Jetta. I watched them go until they blurred into oblivion.

I think I just met her two stalkers.

Chapter Thirty-two

Cindy was attending to a throng of admiring students. I waited in the back of the lecture hall and watched her. She spotted me and beamed me a full wattage smile that sent my heart racing.

When the last of the student groupies had dispersed, I made my way down to her desk and set a polished red apple on the corner of her desk. Cindy, who had been hastily shoving books and scraps of paper into her oversized handbag, paused and looked at the red delicious.

"Is that for me?"

"Call it a school boy crush."

Tonight Cindy's hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She knew I liked her in a ponytail. She crammed the last of her junk into her bag and walked around the desk, looked around her room, saw that we were alone, and kissed me full on the lips.

"Mrs. Franks never did that," I said.

"Who's Mrs. Franks?"

"My fifth grade teacher."

"You had a crush on her, too."

"Yes," I said. "May I carry your oversized handbag?"

"Would be a shame to waste all those muscles."

Outside, I draped my free arm over her small shoulders. Because I was a foot taller than she was, holding hands was difficult. She was, however, the perfect height for hugging, and so we worked with nature rather than against it.

"Have you ever noticed that you were naturally selected to be the perfect height for me to hug?" I asked.

She nodded. "I'm nearly certain that's what nature intended when I grew to be five foot five, on the off chance of meeting you someday."

"Nature works in mysterious ways."

"The Lord works in mysterious ways."

"A Darwin quoting the Bible." I said. "What is the world coming to?"

We were walking through a verdant, tree-filled section of the campus the students called Middle Earth, although I had yet to see a hobbit. Beyond, the sun had set, although the sky was still alight with its passing. Our smog-enhanced sunsets, with their pinks and oranges and purples, are out of this world.

Along the way to my car, I described my encounter with the bushy-browed woman. Cindy, amazingly, knew of her, flunking her last semester.

"You think she could be one of the vandals?"

I shrugged. "No way to know. Tell me more about her."

Cindy frowned. "Well, she was an older student, very opinionated. Outspoken Christian. Seemed to take it as a personal affront that my great grandfather was the evil Charles Darwin."

"For some, akin to Hitler."

"I'll buy that, at least on the hate-o-meter."

Now we were driving west along University Way, wending our way between stately trees, behind which were dormitories. The Mustang's windows were down. The evening air was laced with a 50/50 mixture of nature and exhaust, which, out here, is a pretty healthy percentage. Cindy looked good in my car. Her brown eyes were watching me drive. She often watched me while driving. I think she might have thought I was cute. With her ponytail, and in the old Mustang, we could have been two teens back in the sixties out getting milkshakes.

"She ever threaten you?" I asked.

"Never."

"Why did she flunk?"

"Failed every test."

"On purpose?"

"Hard to say," said Cindy.

"If so, maybe by failing the tests, she was refusing to allow a Darwin to influence her thinking. Thus keeping her spirit pure."

"I think you might be right."

There was something in her voice. I glanced at Cindy. There were tears in her eyes.

"You okay?" I asked.

"You don't think I'm the devil do you?" she asked.

Cindy was a rational person. Intelligent, maybe even brilliant. Athletic and beautiful. And she was a Darwin. But she was a person with feelings, and she was hurting.

"Only in the bedroom," I said.

She laughed and I pulled her over on the bench seat, stretching the seatbelt to the max. She put her head on my shoulder, and I took my little Darwin to dinner.