Professor Feelgood (Page 47)

I think I’ve successfully suppressed an urge to mock the idea of Jake existing in such a Zen place, but I must make some kind of noise, because he snaps his eyelids open. “What?”

“Nothing. I just find it hard to … uh … so, you meditated?” I try to imagine him there, cross-legged and serene, but it’s not possible. “Is there some kind of brooding, angry meditation I’m not familiar with?”

“They used guided mediation to take us out of our anger.”

“I know. So, you would have been like Mr. Everest to the instructors, right? Did they give up trying to conquer your anger? Did you break them?”

He sits back and gives me a contemptuous look. “Do you want to hear the story or make fun of me?”

I hold up my hands. “As someone once said, I’m hurt you think I can’t do both.” His replying glare is vicious. “Okay, fine. I won’t mock. Please continue.”

With a noisy exhale, he looks over my shoulder. “I was coming back from lunch when I first saw Ingrid. She was standing on the steps of the bunkhouse, looking over at the flower garden. And …” He looks down. “I was gone. I don’t know what it was about her, but …” He stares at the flowering bush in front of us. The bees must have gotten the memo that winter was on the way, because they seem frantic as they buzz from flower to flower.

“So, it was love at first sight?”

“If you want to call it something totally corny, then, I guess.”

I get a flash of bitter envy that Jake, one of the most unromantic people I’ve ever met, has had that sort of experience and I haven’t. Life really isn’t fair.

“What did it feel like?” I ask.

He goes quiet for a second, lost in thought. “Have you ever listened to a song, and even though you know you haven’t heard it before, it still sounds familiar?”

I nod.

“That’s how it felt looking at her. I’ve always felt angry, for as long as I can remember. But that day, when I saw her …” He shakes his head in awe. “Something shifted; made all the red, angry parts inside me different. The black parts. The gray parts. It made them all …”

“Yellow?” He looks at me in surprise. I duck my head, ashamed I’m about to give away how often I read his stuff. “One of my favorite poems of yours talks about you being made of storm clouds while she’s sunshine. You called her yellow. You liked being yellow with her.”

His looks down at his hands. “Yeah. She was yellow. She glowed. At least, it seemed like she did, even if I was the only one who could see it.” He sits back a little and watches the bees. “The second I introduced myself … that was it. I knew she was my soul mate.”

“How?” I ask. Surely there was a lightning bolt or dizzying wave of revelation. Some sort of giant, revelatory event.

He shrugs. “It’s like asking how you know something’s intrinsically right or wrong. There’s a part of us that just knows.”

“And did she feel the same way?”

“I thought she did.”

He goes quiet as a young couple walks past us, holding hands. “Are you going to taunt me now about how pathetic I am?”

If only he knew how pathetic I was when it came to men. I hesitate to expose the full tragedy of my sexual dysfunction for fear he’ll literally bust a gut laughing, and then I’ll have to rush him to the hospital for emergency surgery.

“I’d never think someone was pathetic for falling in love. I actually have slightly more respect for you now. A few years ago, I wouldn’t have thought you capable of a real, loving relationship.”

“Yeah, of course you didn’t. You were too busy believing I was the anti-Christ.”

“That’s not true. At the most I considered you to be Satan’s assistant. You never had the ambition to be head Devil.”

The sun is now beating straight down on us, so I grab my coat and bag, and stand.

“Moving to the shade?” Jake asks, taking the hint.

“You know it.” He understands that, like any true redhead, I can only bear direct sunlight for a short amount of time before I explode into flames.

“One thing that strikes me as odd,” I say as we walk down the esplanade toward a row of benches shaded by trees, “is why you just let her go. You didn’t fight for her at all?”

“You shouldn’t have to fight for love, Asha. That’s the whole point of it. If two people love each other, there shouldn’t be anything that can keep them apart. But that only works if both of them feel the same way, at the same time. And no matter how much of a romantic you are, you have to admit the odds of that happening are woeful.”

I put my gear on our new bench and sit. “You only think that because you’ve been hurt.”

Jake sits beside me, tension creeping into his posture. “No, I know that because the one subject I was good at in high school was math.” He turns to me. “A lot of people say they don’t gamble, but of course they do. We all gamble every day. It might not be on blackjack, or the slots, but you bet on whether or not that work deal will pay off, or whether all that expensive gym membership will actually motivate you to be healthier. And if you fall in love, then you’re taking the ultimate gamble. You’re betting with your heart, and that shit’s deadly. Might as well play Russian roulette with live rounds, because let me tell you, most of the time, that heart is lost. Smashed to pieces.”

“That’s pretty pessimistic.”

“Maybe, but it’s the truth. People who fall in love time and again are the ultimate compulsive gamblers. They keep looking for that rush. The Big Win that makes them feel like they’re not meaningless meatbags sitting atop a giant rock that’s hurtling through space. And even though they might only get that special feeling for a little while before everything falls apart, they keep going back, because they believe the myth that one day, they’ll meet someone who’ll make that feeling last forever. They’re blind to the fact that they’re more likely to win the lottery than to find true love.”

My throat tightens as I listen to him. Is that what I do? Lose myself in the giddiness of new relationships and then bail when the high wears off? Is my sexual issue just an early warning system that I’m with the wrong person and I should move on?

“So,” I say, trying to clarify my thoughts as well as his. “You think people should give up on love and play the lottery instead?”

He leans back and lays his arm along the back of the bench. “Might as well. Lotteries are a tax on hope, and so is love. Before you even gamble on a ‘special someone’, you have to dig through the landfill of the dating world and try to find a diamond amid all the garbage; and let me tell you, not all of that stink comes off. Some of it is toxic. Long after you’ve crawled out of the cesspit of a bad relationship, the smell of all the shit you’ve been through still lingers.”

He stares out at the water, his voice becoming softer. “It sits in your brain, and chest, and reminds you over and over again that you’re a loser. And sometimes, the stench is so overpowering, that even when we win at love, we’re so damaged by our screaming, festering failures, that we’re deaf to the sound of a sweet-smelling soul telling us we’ve finally hit the jackpot.”