Jealous Redemption

(1975)

"I'm going home this weekend," I told Mike.

The guilty hero. I hadn't done anything, I told myself. I had been a good guy. But I hadn't quit thinking about it, either. I needed to get the photos developed. I wanted to see the pictures.

There was a gas shortage and prices were high, but it didn't matter. I wanted to go home. I wanted to see Sherri.

And it was sweet. She had a new job now working at the Pizza Hut. Her girlfriend's boyfriend was the manager, a fellow with a business degree from "the other" state university. Bob. He was short and stocky and wasn't at all like my friends. He was a businessman at heart. He had goals. And so he managed the Pizza Hut a hundred hours a week to make sure his was the best Pizza Hut in the state. He was a nice guy but bland, I thought. He smiled and talked and worked and doted on his girlfriend who was gaga over him. As I have said before, she always seemed a little simple to me, her dopey brown eyes always a little too liquid for real intelligence. But she was sweet and pleasant and pretty. They made what in some circles passed for a perfect couple.

So I spent part of Saturday night sitting in the Pizza Hut waiting for Sherri to get off work. It was odd watching her go about her duties, though, being responsible to somebody else, taking orders and carrying trays and following the Pizza Hut directives. But fascinating, too, watching her go from table to table bringing drinks and carrying the giant pizzas. She had given me my own pizza on the house and came over from time to time to see if I was doing OK. Bob was there and he came over as well, chatting for awhile before being called away by some pizza crisis. And it was fine sitting at the Pizza Hut on a busy night, warm on a cold, dark evening sniffing the aromas of the oven.

I watched Sherri as she went from table to table noticing that her Pizza Hut uniform fit nicely. They were not made to be sexy, of course, but the way she wore it, there was a sort of homey sensuality about it. I watched her as she waited on a table of four men. She said something and they said something and everybody laughed, and it seemed to me that Sherri enjoyed the attention she was getting, smiling back and taking their flirtations along with their order. When she walked away, I watched the men watch her, turning to one another to comment out of the sides of their crooked mouths. Oh, hell, I thought, this goes on night after night. This is how she makes her tips. But I could feel a jealousy growing in some dark corner of my imagination, vague shapes of shadowy men stripping her of her innocence with their ugly, leering eyes.

That night after work, I was like a mad animal filled with lust and jealousy and guilt, the images of the night and the images of the my classmate pulling her dress above her head mixing with the odors of stale beer and cooked cheese and oregano that clung to Sherri's clothing. Air, air, where is all the air I wondered before I went into convulsions. Guilt! Bam! Fear! Bam! Longing!

When I came to, Sherri was drawing her fingers across my back gently. "Boy," she said, "what was that?"

I didn't say anything. I couldn't tell her. I didn't know.