Tunnel Vision

by H. R. Kitte-Rojas

  “Or what, bitch?” Hector retorted, reaching out toward another girl.

  Celeste whipped out her cellphone. “I"m calling your parents right now. If you don"t go to your desk right now, sit down, and shut up, I"m calling the police.”

  “Police? What they gonna" do?”

  “What you just did is sexual assault, Hector. It doesn"t matter that you"re under age when you commit sexual assault.”

  “Wasn"t no assault. I just sampled some titties, is all.” He and some of the other boys snickered at this.

  “That"s it,” Celeste said. “ Forget your parents. I"m calling the police.”

  Hector"s smirk faded, and he ambled over to his desk. But he still tried to look cool, hand on his crotch, running his mouth.

  Celeste speed-dialed 911. The little psycho had crossed a line today. She gave the address and her classroom to the dispatcher while Hector watched her, quieter by the second.

  After the call was placed, Celeste went over to Karen, the girl who was crying, now surrounded by a circle of other girls lending moral support the only way they knew how: trash-talking about Hector and otherwise spouting off their opinions about what should and would be done to him.

  The circle opened up when the girls saw Celeste approaching. She stood beside Karen and placed an arm around her shoulder. “Would you like somebody to take you home for the day?”

  Karen glanced around at the other girls, then shook her head.

  “You should probably have your mother look at where he pinched you, Karen.” Celeste knew the emotional damage the girl suffered was probably much worse than whatever bruises Hector inflicted, but by stating it this way, it allowed Karen to save face and not seem wimpy for seeking refuge. The girls at this school were, in some ways, just as obsessed as the boys about appearing streetwise and ghetto hard to their peers.

  Some of them really were hard—too hard for their own good. Karen agreed to go home, and Celeste placed another call.

  Almost half an hour after the 911 call, Patel appeared in the classroom with two city cops. One cop was overweight; the other was just plain fat. By their demeanor, both of them would rather be doing something else. Preferably sitting in a donut shop.

  Celeste answered their questions and it was interesting to observe Patel"s façade now. She suddenly transformed into a strict disciplinarian who ran a tight ship and couldn"t tolerate hoodlums like Hector ruining the educational opportunities of all her other underprivileged students.

  The rest of the day was pretty much ruined. She tried teaching them about proper sentence structure—something English teachers in the previous grades had obviously failed to do with these kids—but they were all too restless and never settled down before the final bell.

  After the mass exodus of students to the buses, Celeste remained at her desk, grading papers.

  She scribbled furiously with red ink on one boy"s paper, while muttering, “Punctuate! Why is it so hard to grasp that sentences end with a punctuation mark? And you don"t say a question, you aska question!”

  “Are they driving you crazy?” a male voice asked.

  She looked up from the papers. She hadn"t noticed the fine-looking brother with the perfect teeth come through her open door. He wore business slacks, a shirt and tie, and very nice shoes.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I didn"t see you. I only talk to myself when I think I"m alone.”

  The man nodded, flashing those perfect teeth again. “I think Charles Manson was the same way.”

  She laughed, nervously.

  “My name is Larry Fisher,” he said. “I"m Karen"s father.”

  “Oh,” she said, climbing to her feet, extending her hand. “Miss Turcotte.” She didn"t remember ever meeting this man. And she would have—so few fathers were everinvolved in these kids" lives to any degree.

  “Karen"s mother and I alternate custody,” he explained. “This is my week.”

  “Oh,” she said, again. “Well, I"m very sorry about what happened today. Unfortunately…”

  Karen"s father held up his hands to interrupt her. “I came here to thank you. About how you deal with my daughter in general, and today in particular.”

  “Oh.” She sure was saying that a lot. “I really didn"t do much, Mr. Fisher. I"ve got a class full of kids, and what she probably needed was some privacy where somebody could talk to her one-on-one—”

  He interrupted again. “I understand your hands are tied in a lot of ways. There"s only so much you can do. But Karen says you were great, today. Even before that, you were her favorite teacher. She"s never had anything but good to say about you.”

  Celeste didn"t know how to respond to that. She knew very little about Karen—the girl very rarely drew any attention to herself and her grades were about average. Just another child she tried to make a difference with, unsure whether she succeeded or failed.

  “You"re very good with kids,” Karen"s father said.

  “Do you, um, live in the district?” Celeste asked.

  “About four blocks down, off Salem,” he said.

  Too many of the black men in the surrounding neighborhoods fit the ugly stereotypes: couthless, illiterate, willfully ignorant, abusive deadbeats, drunks and drug dealers. Mr. Fisher was a breath of fresh air.

  “It"s nice to meet you,” she said.

  “Nice to finally meet you,” he said. “I"ve got to run, but thanks again.”

  She returned his farewell smile, then stole a glance at his retreating form as he exited the class. Not bad, she thought. A nice overall package.

  8 Frank had been doing most of his work from home lately. As long as his assignments got done on time, nobody seemed to mind. By now, he could edit the commercials he put together for Avcom in his sleep. He went out with the crew to shoot the raw footage, and sometimes he used the equipment at the office to generate some effects that took scads of memory. Other than that, he preferred to work out of the video room in his house.

  He paced himself so that, unless the project was something unusual, he put Avcom commercials aside at six o"clock and went to work on his own projects.

  Two of his music videos had made it to MTV so far. He had his foot in the door, and needed to build on his momentum now that some people in the industry were beginning to hear his name mentioned.If he didn"t have to hold down a regular job, he could have had half a dozen videos MTV-ready since his first one. But then, music videos didn"t pay like they used to, before the world-wide-web, and he needed a steady income.

  He sat at his huge L-shaped desk, watching footage from the band he was working with now. He had it narrowed down to four songs, but couldn"t yet decide which one he should script first.

  Like every other band, The Grass Stabbers would have preferred a montage of medium close-ups of them playing their instruments through an entire song. But Frank found such videos unimaginative, narcissistic and just plain boring. He preferred to tell a story in his videos, with minimal shots of the band playing.

  “Come on,” he urged the invisible muse. “Inspire me. Which one of these should I go with? What story does it tell?”

  He heard what sounded like the lock on his front door rattling, then the door swinging open. He stood and reached for the baseball bat in the corner. This was a young, college-oriented neighborhood, but crazy stuff went down anywhere, these days.

  “Hello? I"m ba-ack…!” a familiar voice called out.

  He replaced the bat and sat down again. Violet. So she found the key again. “I"m back here,” he called out.

  He heard her approaching , but kept watching the concert footage.

  “Did you miss me?” she asked, at the door.

  He looked up and did a doubletake. “What did you do to your hair?”

  Violet was a five-foot-four Japanese-American knockout with dynamite legs, a face ready for the cover of Cosmopolitan, and long, straight, shining jet-black hair that put the smoothest silk to shame.

  Only now, that hair was completely blonde.

 
“You like it?” she asked. “You wouldn"t believe how hard it was to bleach it to this color.”

  Violet still had stunning looks, Frank admitted. And the blond hair made her dark, almond eyes stand out even more. But it also made her look kind of cheap and slutty.

  “I"ve already had three agents slip me their cards,” she said. “I think the new look is working. But that"s not all.” She set her enormous purse on the desk, then shrugged out of her stylish leather jacket. She wore a miniskirt and a halter top.

  She had breasts.

  Violet was a small “A” cup last he saw her. Now she was a heavy, perfectly globular “C.”

  “No way,” Frank said. “You had a boob job?”

  “You like?”

  In a way, he did like it. Visually, it made her body technically perfect. “Technically” because, though shaped nicely, her hips and butt were a bit on the thin side for his taste.

  He also didn"t like it. That she would stoop to artificial enhancement only reminded him of her insecurities that he already knew far too much about.

  “Violet, I haven"t seen you in weeks. Last time I saw you, you threw a can of Diet Pepsi at my head and called me a Bohemian pig.”

  She picked up her purse and strode toward him, prancing as if on a fashion runway. “Actually, I called you a muscle bound Bohemian wannabe asshole.”

  “Why are you here?” he asked.

  She stopped at arm"s distance from him and gave him that smoky look she had perfected.“I was kind of hoping to fuck your brains out.”

  Damn it all, she had given him an erection. “Just like that?”

  “Just like that,” she said. Then she tantalizingly peeled up her halter top to show off her new headlights. “Don"t you want to play with them?”

  She was playing with him. Again. It gave him a sickening feeling. And a shameful one, because despite everything, she was turning him on just as she planned.

  With a smug look, she said, “You know you want to touch them. Just be careful—they"re still sore.”

  It had been too long, and his lust-o-meter was boiling over.

  “I"m trying to get some stuff done, Violet.”

  She stepped close and tickled the traitorous erection through his pants. “I"ve got stuff in mind that"s a lot more fun.Can"t we finish this discussion in our bed?”

  Hours later, Frank lay in bed alone, with aching blue balls, trying to convince himself that he had done the right thing. Violet still could make him horny as hell, and his body wanted release with her. And as she so arrogantly assumed, he would have loved to play with her new accessories. But having sex would have only put them right back on that damned emotional roller coaster again.

  Not only did he turn down a wild night of fabulous sex with Violet, he insisted she give back the door key, too.

  She didn"t scream or get violent this time, just looked kind of sad. Still, being Violet, she was never too out of sorts to promote herself. Before stepping out the front door, she suggested one or more of his videos could probably benefit from some provocative clips of a “sexy blonde Asian model with a great rack.”

  Remembering this gave Frank a sad feeling. He had often wondered if other models and actresses he had known were only a few steps away from prostitution. They shamelessly sold themselves at every opportunity. It was their vain, fickle, mercenary attitudes that bothered him most.

  He had done the right thing.

  Frank slept only restlessly, then awoke in the middle of the night. He laid there staring at the dark ceiling, examining the state of his life.

  Self-hatred was an all-too-familiar emotion to him, and it crushed down on him now. He should have never got involved with Violet. He spotted the red flags early on. But she was so smoking hot, with a fun personality, and was all up on his nuts, to boot.Succumbing to Violet"s seduction was weak and stupid and shameful. He saw it so clearly now. But at the time, it seemed nothing was as important as busting a nut inside her tight little body.

  Shewasn"t the first one, either. But tonight he"d taken a promising step toward making her the last.

  Over the years, he had rejected most of what his parents had passed down to him;but one of his mother"s speeches had replayed in his mind a lot, lately. The gist of it was that sex was a powerful, sacred act between a man and woman; but when you indulge yourself with partner after partner, it is profaned.

  He hated it when he saw truth in what his parents said.

  “You should know, Ma,” he said, out loud.

  He wasn"t the only man to make stupid decisions by thinking with the wrong head. But it was compounded in his case because of his tunnel vision.

  One girl he dated for a few months said his moody disposition was actually clinical depression. She wasn"t a shrink by profession, but may very well have been right. Frank thought the therapeutic community should come up with some fancy psychological term for tunnel vision and declare it a mental disorder too.

  Tunnel vision actually benefited him in an artistic sense. When he became engrossed in a project, every other concern in the world was pushed to the back of his mind. All his energy would be focused on perfecting his work. It served him well in college and in his early days at Avcom, before his enthusiasm for their marketing efforts wore off. It had certainly helped him craft the music video that got picked up by MTV.

  He had taken a vacation, and pulled a Howard Hughes—locking himself in his house, turning off his phones, eating only when weak or lightin-the-head, and then diving back into the edit.

  But that same single-mindedness caused him trouble in most aspects of life. His crazy sexcapades with Violet were just a fraction of all potential examples. Tunnel vision also caused him, throughout his life, to neglect important things, hurt people"s feelings, and miss opportunities.

  Of course, every time he reflected back on his life this way, sooner or later he would remember the girl from his freshman year.

  It was silly to keep dwelling on it so many years later. Even if he hadn"t been in the grip of his tunnel vision that day by the stairwell, what made him think a relationship with that girl would have been any more successful than any other relationship he"d had? Even if the bookworm, as he thought of her, had turned out to be as wonderful as he imagined, he probably would have botched it up somehow; her memory merely transformed into a different flavor of regret.

  An image of Celeste flashed in his mind. She sure did favor the bookworm. And from what he knew about each girl"s personality, there were similarities there, too.But then, he"d had these optimistic notions about all of those women before, and it had never turned into something wonderful.

  Why did he always assume it would be different with the next one?

  Despite all his teasing, he could see that Celeste truly did march to the beat of her own drummer. It was hard not to be attracted to that. Plus she was smart, and obviously a loyal friend to Shauna—beneath all that sass and attitude. Of course, she was not bad to look at, either.

  Too bad she was with somebody already.

  Hell, too bad he was with somebody already.But then, he wasn"t, anymore. He"d taken care of that, earlier.

  He"d been “with” too many girls already. It was best he be alone, at least for a while. He needed room to breathe.

  And yet he wanted to get to know Celeste anyway. He could count on one hand the number of people he knew that he could have an intelligent conversation with. Miles was on that short list…and Shauna, too, now that he was getting to know her. Despite needing solitude, Frank still yearned for that social-intellectual stimulation sometimes.

  Celeste had never responded to his email/mp3—which had been clever and witty, if he did say so himself. Well, no surprise there: She disliked him, for some reason.

  Some black women were very separatist in their attitude toward white men. Then again, maybe she was just stuck up.

  Frank glanced at the clock and groaned. Five-thirty-six. He rolled out of bed, found his sweats and pulled them on over his boxers, then st
umbled to the video room. Might as well make use of his insomnia. He would go over his footage again and ponder just where and how he could use some clips of a blonde Asian fly girl with a great rack.

  9 Celeste saw Karen"s father twice more in the next few days, and enjoyed their interactions. Now they were on a first name basis. She suspected Larry would probably ask her out soon.

  She might just go, too.

  Despite her realization that she didn"t need a man in her life, she still enjoyed the attention. And she had been feeling very lonely at night lately. Probably because her best friend was leaving her behind, diving forward into a new life.

  Celeste had her melancholy days, but she was in good spirits when Miles" thirtieth birthday rolled around. She and Shauna watched Oprah together at Shauna"s new home, then talked and joked while preparing the food and cake, having a good old time.

  Shauna had really transformed the house. The place looked clean, smelled nice, and had that home-like atmosphere just like her apartment had. The paint party storywasn"t completely a lie, because she had touched up the walls a bit, though they were still the same shade of dark green. Shauna"s furniture and potted plants were arranged with a feminine eye, and framed photographs on the walls completed the transformation.

  Shauna"s other recruits began trickling in as the day matured. One of the earliest arrivals was Frank, who brought a DJ, a videographer, a couple volunteers to help move and set up, and a whole lot of equipment.

  When Frank saw Celeste, he smiled warmly at her. She should have avoided those laughing hazel eyes of his, but they froze her like a deer in headlights before she could muster her defenses.

  His face had matured, and his body filled out, but he was still heartattack handsome. Perhaps even more so now. He wore a blue and white striped button-down shirt with blue jeans in a way that, if displayed for commercial purposes, could no doubt sell millions of pairs of jeans. Or striped shirts, for that matter.

  He and Shauna hugged each other with affection. He turned to Celeste and briefly touched her arm in a friendly, familiar manner. “Hi, Celeste. Good to see you again.”