He was standing there mesmerized by her charms when she grabbed his arm and shook him from his reverie. “Hey, look at the time! We should grab a coffee or something before class starts again,” she suddenly suggested, abruptly changing the course of her monologue yet again. But now she began to look around, as if searching for someone, and Flam’s heart dropped instantly when he heard her say, “Where’s Joe? We should ask him along too . . . he’s such a sweetie. Oh, there he is.”
Flam was unexpectedly stabbed by jealousy and glanced over to see who she was looking at. He naturally expected the worst, and immediately hated himself for naively believing again that an attractive female’s attentions were anything more than casual friendliness. His fears seemed to be confirmed when he saw a tall, good-looking, fair-haired man in his thirties presiding over a clique of their classmates, and looking over with obvious interest when Angel floated towards that group. To Flam’s delight, Angel did not so much as glance in the blond man’s direction. Joe proved instead to be the wizened, hunched-over old-timer Flam had noticed earlier. Angel quickly wrapped her arm around the little fellow’s shoulders, and guided him back to where Flam was standing.
As he loomed over the small old man, Flam noticed for the first time that Joe, in addition to his beard, wore a yarmulke nestled onto the back of his head, and found it commendable that a devout Jew of the old school had the curiosity to take a Comparative Religion class. But there was no time for Flam to comment on this as Angel neither offered nor allowed introductions, and instead, casually slipped in between the pair of oddly-matched males and, taking her newly acquired escorts arm in arm, proceeded to guide them without resistance towards the coffee kiosk. She babbled merrily the whole way about how she’d once been an Elizabethan midwife and nurse in a past life, and felt certain the three of them had known each other intimately in that period.
There was something alluring and stimulating, yet at the same time relaxing, about Angel’s presence. Flam was content to be passively carried along by the spirit and energy of her inexorable mile-a-minute personality. So it also seemed was Joe, because a wide, amused smile never left his extraordinarily wrinkled face. As he shuffled along at a surprisingly lively pace, he continued to beam up at the girl, for despite her short stature, no more than 5-foot-2, Flam reckoned, Angel was still an inch or so taller than the elfin Joe.
Flam tried on a couple of occasions to answer one of Angel’s constant rhetorical questions, or make a contribution to one of her trains of thought. So did Joe, but both soon found it was pointless and gave up trying. Instead, the two men found themselves making eye contact and smiling knowingly at one another over Angel’s amusing oral meanderings.
By the time they returned to the classroom, the pointedly punctual Professor Abbott had already resumed the lecture, and the trio quietly slunk back into their respective seats. By now, Flam had decided against dropping the course, and began taking some half-hearted notes. He had to force himself to focus on the course content, which was now dealing with the widespread influences of Zoroastrianism. Although Flam would have been loath to admit it to himself, this resurrected academic interest had little to do with the lecture’s content, and could be attributed directly to the influence of the exotic Angel.
Meanwhile, the newfound object of his desire had no sooner settled into her seat than she started again busily writing in her large white notebook with a fervour and concentration that bunched up her pretty brow. Something in the professor’s pedantry must have hit home for her, for when Joe and Flam instinctively gravitated back to her side after the class had ended, she seemed deep in thought, almost troubled. As she gathered up her belongings, she was now apparently in no mood for chit chat.
An awkward silence fell on the trio. Flam was about to seize the opportunity to impress his newfound acquaintances with an erudite comment on some of the more obvious omissions in the lecture about the evolution of Heaven and Hell, for the book-loving Flam had encountered Zarathustra often during his earlier, single-minded research into funerary rites. Angel suddenly broke the quiet with a soft, “Sorry, boys, I have to go,” and promptly dashed off. As she hurried away in her oddly agitated state, instantly causing Flam’s heart to sink in her wake, she turned and flashed a sparkling smile back at the bemused pair. “We should all go out for coffee together after class next week,” she offered. Then, like some ghostly white apparition, she disappeared out the classroom door.
Chapter 12
As the Saturday dinner with his future stepfather loomed, Flam grew more anxious about the pressure he would face to take the Strait name. Reasoning he should be prepared to counter with a name selection of his own, he spent the next few days poring over literary encyclopaedias, authors’ indexes, and Internet name sites, before finally plodding page by page through the telephone book in an attempt to invent a new alternative.
The exercise proved far more tedious and difficult than Flam had possibly imagined, not from a shortage of potential new names, but rather from an overabundance of them. The clever and studious Flam had quickly devised scores of possibilities, but then had formulated hundreds of additional permutations and combinations by mixing and matching first names with surnames, so that he could not now decide among the rather daunting list of candidates. Instead of forcing himself to reach a verdict, he ploughed forward in search of more possibilities. This only exacerbated his dilemma, as the catalogue of prospective names grew steadily longer.
Flam would sit for hours studying his burgeoning list, sometimes sounding the names out loud to try to feel their verbal weight and impact. He also went through reams of paper, signing possible name choices on the pages in an attempt to intuit their suitability by the looks of the signature alone. Sometimes he tried to imagine the reaction others might have upon hearing each of the names for the first time. He acted out imaginary introductions in front of his mirror, which sat propped up to head height on a stack of books leaning against one of the walls of his apartment. “Hi, I’m Dale Valley. Hi, I’m Aldous Yeats. Hi, I’m Pierce Hart. I’m Othello Lear. I’m Gawain Scrivener. I’m Plato Copperfield. I’m Emerson Moriarty.”
Despite these efforts, he only grew more confused and overwhelmed by the sheer volume of possibilities. Whenever he thought perhaps he’d made a final decision, or had at least narrowed the choices down to a short list, more prospective candidates would materialize, and quickly drive him back to the frustration of uncertainty.
Somehow, Flam had always assumed his glorious new identity would prove to be self-evident, appearing from out of the pack of possibilities like some shining fairytale champion to soundly defeat all other contestants, and finally rescue him from the oppression and ignominy of “Flam Grub” once and for all. Alas, no such clear salvation manifested itself. Although any one of the names on the list would, in Flam’s view, be a more suitable and desirable alternative, there were simply too many of them. Each passing hour, instead of bringing a revelation, simply brought yet more choices to further fuel the dilemma.
Saturday night arrived, and even as he stood combing his black hair, which had grown long under Page Turner and Prentice College’s combined bohemian influences, Flam continued to unsuccessfully audition candidate names. Nor did he know precisely what he would say to his mother and her fiancé when they again raised the issue of the name, as he was convinced they surely would.
Flam solemnly drove across town to the designated rendezvous at Eddie Spaghetti’s, a gaudy franchised Italian restaurant known more for its décor and carnival atmosphere than the quality of its food, feeling the whole way like he was driving to his own funeral.
His mother and Gerald Strait were late, and as he stood waiting for them in the restaurant’s foyer, hoping they might not show up at all, Flam’s thoughts ascended towards the mercurial Angel. Despite being probably a decade older than Flam, and having only recently flitted into his life, she had now supplanted the treacherous Lucy Giles as leading lady of Flam’s bedtime fantasies.
When Gerald and Mary did show up, Flam thought he detected some sort of strain between the couple. They were certainly not the same giddy, touchy-feely couple they’d been when they had happily told him about their engagement, but he quickly dismissed any further thoughts on the subject. He was still far more concerned with his own personal dilemma.
Gerald