the love life of joel hoagland (page 4)

Joel set his coffee spoon down on the soggy corner of his paper placemat and then looked at Tamara. “Haven’t you been listening? It was Karenne, obviously. She had golden hair; big hair! I’m not made of stone, you know.”

“Anyway, Karenne had a cousin whose family lived on the campus of the summer camp, and so, to my unutterable delight, Karenne stayed on after camp for a couple of weeks.

“Of course, Nichole had to leave. Karenne and I would finally have the chance to spend some time together. I remember one day she and I sat on the swings together, looking out across the beautiful late summer. I wanted to talk with her, but I was afraid to attempt to speak to her in French. So I paused for a long time. Then I decided I should just speak up. I should say something, anything, on any topic. My heart flopped in my chest. We still sat, gently swinging, neither of us speaking. Another kid came along, the kid brother of Karenne’s cousin. He spoke no English, but he and I exchanged some words easily before he went on his way. There, I thought, that was no problem, so now I can just start talking to Karenne. I paused for one more moment. A long, long, long moment.

“We sat there, side by side on the swings for over an hour. It was an eternity. A million witty ideas came into my head which I knew would instantly beguile her, but I attempted none of them. It grew quite awkward. I couldn’t look at her. I took to staring out at the horizon intently, pensively, as if my father were coming home from the sea any minute now. She took to following my gaze, no doubt wondering what on earth I was staring at. Perhaps she first thought I was angry at the horizon, and then concluded, sadly, that I had fallen madly in love with it. Eventually my younger brother labored up the hill to announce that dinner was ready. Thus ended our interview; our precious verbal triste was concluded without a single caress.

“Things went slightly better when I joined Karenne in the company of her cousins. We would go everywhere together, we four. Once I snuck them all into our apartment, and, in attempting to maintain the ruse, rushed us all into the bathroom and closed the door. My siblings must have been on to us, for they pounded on the door at length, and demanded that whatever hanky-panky was happening be stopped. If only they had known how safe we were together, the gold-haired girl and the plumbum boy; adjacent, but inert.

“Finally, at the end of the summer, Karenne had to leave, and I forgot her.”

“You forgot her?” Tamara asked.

“Certainly. It was kind of a relief. I had plenty of time later to reflect on the fact that she had bad posture. And I can’t remember a thing about her face. But that hair…” Joel trailed off.

Fid feigned snoring and slouched over against Tamara, who ignored her.

“So that was it? Did you ever see any of them again?”

“Actually, I did see Nichole again. It was utterly serendipitous. My family made a trip up to Quebec City about a year later. While we were wandering through the stone cobbled streets of that fine old town, we bumped into Nichole, completely by chance. I was surprised to realize my own delight in seeing her. We conversed fluidly, like old friends, and she tagged along with our family on our siteseeing for an hour or two, and then bid me goodbye. I have never seen her since.”

“That has got to be the stupidest girlfriend story I’ve ever heard,” Tamara said, ripping open a packet of sugar and dumping it onto a saucer.

In your comment please indicate which of these options you choose and give a reason why.

A. Joel guzzled the last of his coffee, smooshed his mouth with a napkin, and replied, “Yes. Look at the time. Shall we go?”

B. “Are you kidding?” Joel retorted, “I haven’t even told you about the fourth girl from summer camp!”

C. “Ok,” Joel allowed evenly, “but I bet you don’t still think I’m gay.”

D. “Maybe you’d like to hear about my very first girlfriend,” Joel replied.