Moore to Lose

by Julie A. Richman

  Mia snickered. It appeared to Tom that she wanted to say something, but checked herself and left him with, “Have a good one.”

  Tom was alone in the classroom – his stall tactic had yielded the results he wanted. As he turned off the light and locked the door, he wondered why Mia Silver was hiding behind dark sunglasses. Was it to appear cool and affected? Maybe, but he didn’t think so. It felt like she was putting up her force field – something no human could penetrate.

  He shrugged into his brown corduroy blazer as he exited the building. The crisp afternoon air cooled his cheeks as the late afternoon sun illuminated campus, bathing it in a golden glow with its side lit beauty. There was nothing like fall in the northeast.

  Chapter Three

  That same side lit golden light was bathing the park early Saturday morning and although the air still held the chill of the Indian summer night, Tom was bathed in sweat. Slowing down from his run, he began his cool down. It was the first time he really noticed the leaves and decided it was going to be a brilliant autumn. The yellow leaves popped against the flawless blue of the sky. Tom breathed the air in deeply and closed his eyes for a moment as he walked. Running allowed him to get lost in his own head, work out plot elements for his screenplays, visualize the nuances of his character’s personalities and just dump all the shit that was bothering him.

  He knew it was her by the unruly mane cascading over her shoulders. She was on her knees, bent over a camera on a low tripod with its legs splayed flat to the ground. Her camera lens hovered over a tangle of wildflowers – blooming goldenrod and purple asters, the last vestiges of fall flora. He quietly approached, not to disturb or alarm her. Tom found himself smiling as he noted the worn Levi’s, hiking boots and open hoodie sweatshirt. It was quite the juxtaposition to her classmates and their designer everything, with labels prominently displayed.

  It was interesting to watch her focus and intensity as she manipulated the lens, testing out different focal points. There seemed to be almost a surgical precision to the minute adjustments she made and her concentration was absolute.

  Tom shifted his weight and some leaves crunched under his back foot. Mia shot up from her position in a single fluid motion, her eyes wide and flashing fear, her autonomic nervous system snapping into fight or flight mode.

  “Whoa, sorry I scared you.” Tom apologized. She looked like the proverbial deer caught in headlights. He could see the fear in her big green eyes and in the stiffness of her spine and shoulders. He felt terrible for scaring her.

  It took Mia a minute to realize that she was not in danger, and he could see that as he watched her process the situation. He felt just awful for scaring her. He could see how visceral her response was – the rosiness from the cool morning air, drained from her face.

  “I’m really, really sorry, Mia,” he apologized again, “I saw you here and wanted to say hi. I was trying not to disturb you while you were working.”

  Mia nodded and Tom could tell that she was not able to speak yet – or at least not without her voice cracking. He had an overwhelming urge to hug her and reassure her that she was safe, but his gut told him it was best not to make a move toward her.

  “Hey, no sunglasses.” He needed to get her to relax.

  Mia smiled and nodded, “Would make it really hard to see through the viewfinder. I just got contacts,” she explained, “and my eyes are really light sensitive. I’m really not trying to be a jerk in your class.”

  That admission elicited a smile. So that was the mystery behind those sunglasses and the reason for hiding those striking green eyes. “I didn’t think you were being a jerk.”

  Mia nodded. “Want to see what I’m taking pictures of?”

  Tom got to his knees in the dew damp grass and looked through the viewfinder of her camera. “Wow.” He had not expected the amount and clarity of up-close detail or how large every minute element of the flowers appeared.

  “I’m shooting with a macro lens and that allows me to get really close to the subject.” Mia sat cross legged next to Tom while he continued to check out the colorful new world in the viewfinder. “On the end of the lens, I have two diopters stacked and they magnify everything, which is why you are able to see the amount of detail in the flowers. Pretty cool, huh?”

  Tom looked up at Mia. “Very cool,” and he was not just referring to the subject at the other end of her lens. He cocked his head to the side, “You’re only a sophomore?”

  Mia smiled and nodded. She looked up at the sky, squinting. “Looks like the good light is gone.” She started to break down her equipment – removing the camera from the tripod, the glass diopters from the end of the lens – and loaded them into her backpack.

  “There’s a great little bakery on the edge of the park. Join me for coffee?” Tom didn’t have anything (or anyone) to do until noon and Mia Silver seemed sweet, shy and intriguing.

  Thirty minutes into their coffee, Tom changed his assessment – Mia Silver was not shy, she was very funny – bordering on bodacious, still sweet, but with a big bite of spice and very intriguing. And those eyes – damn. Three weeks in his class and this was the first time he was seeing those expressive green pools. And she was cool. He could definitely see being friends with her.

  “So, you were in California last year? What was that like?”

  “It was like being in a Heinlein novel.” Mia played with her muffin.

  “I don’t know if I grok.”

  Mia looked up and smiled at Tom and their Stranger in a Strange Landii banter. “Ok, well it started at freshman orientation.”

  He saw a flash of something in her eyes. Pain, maybe?

  But she continued, “I was the only freshman girl in jeans. Literally, the only one.”

  Tom looked at her, confused. “What was it, a nudist school?” He laughed. “What were they wearing?”

  “Dresses.” Mia whispered, as if it were a nasty word not to be mentioned in public, her eyes wide, and then a devilish grin overtook her face.

  The sip of coffee that had just passed through his lips was spit onto the table in front of him as he began to laugh.

  Mia laughed even harder at his reaction.

  “Dresses? Seriously? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a dress on this campus.”

  “I definitely don’t own one.”

  “So, you didn’t fit in? Certainly you had some friends?” What was going on with this girl? He was interested to find out.

  Mia smiled, “Yeah, I had some great friends. I didn’t know I would miss them so much.”

  Definite pain in this one’s eyes. Tom wondered why she had come back east. There was a story there. Part of him wanted to peel back the layers on this girl, find out what made her tick, but with Sherri and Jacqueline, he already had his hands full.

  “I expect a great poem from you on Monday,” he changed the subject on her.

  “Don’t hold your breath. My poetry sucks. You’ve seen it.”

  “Tell me, what makes writing great?” He challenged.

  Without missing a beat, “It has to be honest.”

  Tom smiled. “Bingo!” Ok, even more impressed, he thought. He had asked that question a week ago in another senior level writing seminar and not one of the students knew that simple, yet essential answer. “Just be honest. Do whatever you need to do to get there. Smoke a joint, drink some beers, run, shoot photos – but get to an honest, raw place and give me one badass poem on Monday.”

  Mia was looking at him intently. Her eyes teared up. She grabbed a napkin and dabbed at them. “Freaking contacts,” she muttered.

  Contacts, my ass, thought Tom.

  And with that she stood and grabbed her backpack. “Hey, thanks for the coffee and muffin.”

  “Anytime,” he smiled.

  And she was gone.

  Tom sat back in his chair wondering what the hell was going on with that girl. She was witty and bright, but there was something going on there and he could not put his finger on it. Maybe it would
come out in her writing during the semester, because if she was in pain, she needed to use that. She needed to take that pain and let it serve as the cornerstone of her creativity.

  Tom Sheehan left the bakery at 9:30 A.M. on Saturday morning with the gut feeling that the girl in the back of his writing seminar with the dark sunglasses might just be the surprise talent of the semester.

  Chapter Four

  Tom sat down in the brown faux leather recliner in his furnished apartment. Coltrane filled in the silence and with an ice cold LaBatt Ale in one hand, he started to go through the class’ last poetry assignment. There were definitely a few not making eye contact with him today and he hoped that meant they had bared their souls in the assignment. Jacqueline, usually fairly brazen, seemed almost shy, while Sherri, on the other hand, spent the class looking at him like she was undressing him. Mia, as usual, took her seat at the back of the room, sunglasses back in place.

  An hour later, Tom was mostly unimpressed. Why did they all feel the need to rhyme? Jacqueline’s assignment was next in the stack and two stanzas into her three-typed page ode, Tom didn’t know whether to blush or get a ticket for a Greyhound bus and high tail it out of town. Jacqueline had clearly taken their casual tryst as something more important than it was, and as was typical with an ode, elaborately glorified both the event and the person. And in this case, the person was Tom. “Oh crap,” he thought, “I need to figure out a way out of this one.” Jacqueline clearly did not understand casual.

  Sherri’s assignment, on the other hand, was so self-absorbed that Tom had to laugh. He opened another beer, and sat down with the assignment of one of the guys in the class. Finally, promise – a lot of self-loathing and angst – but at least promise. Tom finally gave out his first “A” to Rob Ryan.

  Next up, Miss Mia Silver. Tom looked down at the page and groaned out loud. Damn it, Mia, he thought. He really had high hopes for her to turn in something substantiative and there were like five lines on the page. He shook his head, feeling overwhelming disappointment and thinking, “C’mon Mia, I know you have more in you.”

  He started to read. Sky Diving Blues. Ok, good title. Sky, she starts high. Diving, she’s descending. Blues, she’s hit bottom. Ok, good start. C’mon Mia, surprise me.

  Sky Diving Blues

  Flying high

  a flirtation with the sun

  The slow descent

  to a burned Rome

  The neighborhood hasn’t changed

  Tom felt like he’d been punched in the gut. He put his beer down and read it again. Holy shit. She did it. Eighteen words in the body of the poem. Three words in the title. Twenty-one words. Twenty-one words and she gave it all. She put it all out there. He wasn’t wrong. He knew she had it in her. He read it again. She understood raw. It was all there. It was succinct. It cut to the heart of it. No fluff. Mia Silver got to the net/net in twenty-one words.

  Oddly proud of his youngest student, Tom wondered if the neighborhood that hadn’t changed was her college campus in California. A burned Rome. Destruction. Devastation. Maybe a Nero fiddling – someone dancing over the ashes of her smoldering city, of her heartache. A flirtation with the sun. Someone who shone brightly for her, someone she held up in exalted esteem. Damn, she cut to the heart of it with a few words and the Rome burning imagery. Beautiful. Her cohorts were giving pages and pages of rhyming dreck – pure shit and in twenty-one words she nailed it.

  When he finished the stack of papers he pulled out Rob Ryan’s and Mia Silver’s poems again and reread them. These were his two – the conflict was there within them. He could work with that. He’d teach them how to take that pain and use it as the fuel in creating. Two out of fifteen. Not bad. He couldn’t wait to get his hands on Rob and Mia and mentor them the way George and others had mentored him.

  Tom Sheehan was loving life.

  Chapter Five

  Mia took her seat at the back of the classroom. It gave her a great vantage point to observe her classmates and check them out. She loved observing people and listening and definitely knew more about them than they knew about her. Not that anybody in the writing seminar had made any real effort to get to know her, but she could tell a lot about them through her observations.

  Tom Sheehan entered the classroom and put a stack of papers down on the desk at the front of the room. Mia was nervous about getting her poem back. She hoped he didn’t hate it. Hanging out with him on Saturday had been really fun – he was very cool, although a little intimidating, and she felt like a kid around him. Mia wondered if she would ever feel as sophisticated as some of the other girls in the class. They seemed so sure of themselves around him. Mia felt self-conscious.

  He started to walk around the room, returning the assignments by slapping them on people’s desks, face down. Uh-oh, he does not appear to be happy was her initial thought. When he got to her desk in the back, he smiled at her and gently laid the paper down. A look passed between them, but Mia wasn’t quite sure what he was trying to relay. It made her uncomfortable and she was pissed that she hadn’t worn sunglasses. She wanted to hide. And he was so damn cute. Not smart to have a prof crush on a twenty-seven year old single guy. Her prof crush on Rick Stevens was safe – he was older and married and definitely would not sleep with his students. Tom Sheehan, on the other hand, was a player. Smart, sexy, witty – but definitely a player.

  Mia took a deep breath and turned over the paper. She let out a little surprised “Huh” sound. Tom had given her an A+ and written on the paper was, “I’m so proud of you.” Mia looked up and Tom was looking at her, gauging her reaction. She beamed at him, surprised. His face remained neutral, but his eyes were sparkling. Mia smiled at him, a full devil grin and he returned her smile briefly. She looked back down at her paper, feeling very proud.

  She read over her poem and could feel the sting at the back of her eyes. Did you ever really love me, Schooner? Why the elaborate ruse? Flying high, a flirtation with the sun. She was Icarus. He was the sun. And that brief flirtation melted her wings. Who was she kidding? Her wings were the least of the damage. He had her heart. And she didn’t know if she’d ever get it back. She hated him for the betrayal and missed him and loved him and hated him. He and CJ probably had gotten a good laugh over it. Why had he betrayed her like that? She could feel her throat closing up.

  Tom was at the front of the class talking and she had not heard a word he had said. She focused in. Holy shit, he was ripping the class a new one, embarrassed for them that they would turn in what they turned in. Wow – only two people got a passing grade on the assignment. Was he serious? She wondered who the other person was with the passing grade.

  Tom sat on the edge of his desk. “What makes writing great?” Mia smiled to herself, but did not raise her hand. Clearly, he was trying to see if anyone else in the class could answer.

  Jacqueline’s hand was the first up, “Strong subject matter.”

  Tom nodded his head, “Ok. What else?”

  Chrissie raised her hand, “Descriptive writing. I mean, like heavy use of descriptions and imagery.”

  Tom nodded again and moved on. He pointed a finger at Matt, a thin, geeky kid. “Uh, the ability to get your point across clearly.”

  Tom didn’t even acknowledge Matt. “Mia, what makes writing great?”

  Mia locked eyes with Tom. “Honesty. Writing needs to be honest.”

  “Thank you. Writing needs to be honest to be great,” he sighed, punctuating each word while pacing to the front of the room. “How many of you feel that your work, the assignment that you just turned in, came from a place of complete honesty?”

  Hands shot up like flags in a stiff breeze. Mia gingerly raised hers to half-staff.

  Tom shook his head. “Seriously? You really think your writing was honest? Was it gut wrenching to write those words? Was it hard to see the paper in front of you through your tears? Did you want to throw your guts up writing it?”

  Mia could feel her eyes getting watery. Fuck, I wish I
was wearing my sunglasses, she stressed. She couldn’t see the paper in front of her while she was writing Sky Diving Blues. He was her sun, her light. And to betray her with that shallow, mean bitch? Expose her darkest secrets and pain. And to her? Why, Schooner? Actually, she didn’t even want to know why. Just the fact that he did it – betrayed her, broke their trust, sent her hurtling from that exalted place he had taken her to depths so painful. Yes, writing that poem had made her sick to her stomach.

  Mia looked down at her desk. I hate you, Schooner Moore. I hate you so fucking much. If you were standing in front of me right now, I would pummel my fists into your chest. I would take my nails and scratch that pretty face of yours to ribbons. So why do I still just want you to hold me, you cruel mother fucking bastard? I want you to hold me and tell me it was all a mistake, Baby Girl. But it wasn’t because you fucking betrayed me. How could you love me and betray me? You couldn’t. So, you didn’t love me. You never loved me. Was it all a big fucking joke to you and that witch? I want you out of my head. I want you out of my heart. Why did I ever meet you?

  Mia heard Tom saying her name. She and Rob Ryan were the only two that did not have to redo the assignment. She knew she needed to concentrate on what Tom was saying, stay there in the present, in the class, and not go to the place she had just disappeared to for the last few minutes. Mia groaned inwardly as Tom asked Rob to get up in front of the class to read his poem. Fuck that means I’m next, she cringed. Her stomach was already in knots from thinking about Schooner. Ick, I just want to go throw up, Mia could feel the bile rising. And Tom was calling her name. Thank God it’s a short poem, this will be over quickly, was all she could think.