Night Watch, Part 14

David had never seen his house so busy at four o'clock in the morning. Angela was having contractions about every seven minutes. David had tried to appoint himself the official timekeeper but was fired after Victoria took away his wristwatch. He tried napping or reading but was too restless. Olivia announced she was hungry and had started fixing breakfast. Jade had left after extracting from David a promise to get her email turned back on. She explained that she was running a legitimate "dating special" in order to get people to step out of their comfort zones and meet new kinds of potential partners.

"The trouble with many singles is that they are fixated on a certain type of person," she had said. "But I know that the perfect partner may not seem perfect at first glance."

"That is so true," Olivia had said, coming in from the kitchen wearing an apron. "I have this friend. She's from a liberal New England family, went to a private college. Her boyfriends were usually academic types, you know, very brainy, but not exactly exuding warmth. But she was convinced she could only marry that type of person. Then she gets talked into going to a party; it was actually kind of a blind date. She only went because her best friend couldn't go at the last minute and so my friend agreed to substitute. It was a favor to the couple hosting the party. Well, she meets this Army officer from the South, who's Catholic, from a conservative family, and she falls totally in love with him. Who would've thought? No dating service would ever have set these two up. But, they clicked, and they're still together."

Jade had snapped her fingers. "That's what I'm talking about. You see, when you run a dating service, you let the client create a profile and they get to say what their preferences are, and, to a certain extent, you have to try to honor them. But, I like to think of tricks for getting them to drop some of their preferences. You know, go out on a limb. Take a chance on somebody who might not seem right at first."

Then Olivia had turned to David emphatically, "You must help Jade with her project."

"Okay, okay." He had made a call to the data center to vouch for the legitimacy of Jade's email campaign, after which Jade planted a big kiss on his cheek, which he continued to feel for several minutes after she left.

Now he listened to the clanging of Olivia preparing eggs and toast in the kitchen. He thought of his own first meeting with Angela. There were some parallels with Olivia's story about her friend: David was the son of an Army officer, and had grown up in the South. Angela was the Catholic daughter of an Italian plumber from New Jersey. They didn't seem to have much in common.

David got to know Angela gradually. He was a cook at a diner near the Auburn campus; she came in almost every Saturday morning for breakfast. Pigging out on bacon and eggs was her reward, she had said once, for eating cheap and healthy during the week.

The first time David saw her she was with three other women. He recognized one of them, Louise, as a regular. They sat in a booth. From his position at the open grill he had a commanding view of the room and saw everyone who came in. There were two good reasons for doing that: one was so he would know how busy it was and how fast he had to work, the other was to keep track of any beautiful women who entered the diner. His radar went off when he spotted Angela. In fact, all four of them were attractive. But there was something about her dark eyes and dark hair, and friendly smile, and the way she filled out her tank top, that set his mind wandering. When the order came in, he echoed each dish as he read it from the slip of paper; this was to avoid any misunderstanding about what was being ordered. It was part of the routine at the diner, along with the morning reggae music. Angela had ordered the Slimp Special: eggs, grits, bacon, and a side of salsa. The dish was named after the man who originally owned the diner and ran it for several decades before retiring. The women ate and talked and then left.

The next Saturday Angela came in alone and took a seat at the counter.

"What happened to your friends?" David said.

"They went camping," she said.

"And you didn't go?"

"I have a paper due on Monday," she said with a frown.

"I guess you need the Slimp Special to cheer you up."

"How did you know?" she said.

"That's what you ordered last week," he said. "Did you like it?"

She laughed. "It was good. I didn't think I would like eggs with salsa, but it's nice to have a little zing in your life on a Saturday morning."

"You should always have a little zing in your life," he said with a wink.

She looked away when he said that. A server handed him an order. "Blue shorts," he called out. That was a short stack of blueberry pancakes. Another came in. "French strawbs," he said. French toast with strawberries.

"Where do those names come from?" asked Angela when David poured her coffee. Sometimes he served counter diners when the wait staff was on the floor.

"Ol' Slimp made them up. Some diners use numbers, he wanted short catchy names."

"That's clever," she said.

He paused, holding the carafe of coffee. "So where did you have your Saturday morning breakfast before you came here?"

"I used to go to Denny's, but then my friend, Louise, took me here and I fell in love with it."

"I recognized Louise. She's a regular. I'll have to thank her for bringing you here."

"What do you mean?" Angela asked.

"I mean, for, you know, referring new customers, to the diner, that is," he said, and then ran back to the safety of his grill.

The next Saturday she came with Louise and they both sat at the counter. David overheard Angela say, "This is the place to sit if you want to be entertained."

He did his best to entertain them, echoing the orders with a little more gusto than usual.

Angela came to the diner ten Saturdays in a row, basically the rest of the spring semester of her freshman year at Auburn. Sometimes she sat at the counter, alone or with a friend; at other times she came with a group and sat in a booth. When she did she made it a point to catch his eye and wave. He saluted with his spatula.

When they talked, it was about classes, about their families, books they had read, movies they had seen. He listened to stories about her large family and it sounded so different from his quiet, reserved household, where his father was gone much of the time and he and his sister, Paula, entertained each other because they moved a lot and didn't have many friends outside of the family. It sounded to David like Angela came from a different world.

One evening, not long after meeting Angela, he was cruising the busy block of fraternity houses with his friend, Josh. It was Auburn's annual A-Day celebration, during which the football team plays a spring scrimmage before a packed stadium. It's a rowdy time that spills over into the local town and the fraternity and sorority houses. The frat houses were all open, and it was a perfect opportunity to drink free beer.

It was fairly late in the evening when they entered the Sigma Nu house, where there was a band and six kegs. The place was trashed. As David entered the lobby with Josh, he saw the backs of two large men. Suddenly, Angela peeked out from around the wall of flesh and said, "Oh, there's my boyfriend now. We were planning to meet here."

The two men turned. David recognized them as members of the Auburn football team. They glared at the intruders. "And he brought my date." The other voice was Louise's. It took David half of a second to understand that he and Josh were expected to rescue Angela and Louise from the advances of these two, um, gentlemen. Several things passed through David's mind at once: he and Josh were unbelievably tiny compared to these guys; David had never thought of himself as the rescuing type; Angela had referred to him as her boyfriend.

David glanced around in mock disgust at the lobby of the frat house. "This place is a zoo. Thank you for keeping an eye on our dates," he said to the two men.

Angela darted to David's side and put her arm around his. "I'm glad you could make it." His head zoomed off to another place for an instant.

"Wait a minute, we were talking to these ladies," said one of the men, whose arms were as thick as David's legs.

"Tell you what..." David reached into his wallet and withdrew two cards. "Have a meal at Slimp's on me. I work there."

They took the coupons. David calculated that food was important to them. "Hey, pretty cool," said the one with the ham-sized arms.

"No problem. You guys have a good night."

Louise quickly joined them and the foursome made a hasty exit from the frat house. Angela paused on the sidewalk. "I don't know what we were thinking, to even go in there." She kissed David's cheek and clung to his arm. "You could not have come at a better time." But David didn't hear a thing she said.

***

Olivia placed a plate of eggs and toast in front of David. "Earth to David..."

"Sorry, I was daydreaming."

"About what?"

He glanced toward the bedroom, where Angela was recovering from another contraction. "About how this all started."