Flowers For A Gardner

Chapter 7

Gardner had resumed turning up for class early. Aside from the opportunity to speak with Flower Girl, he really did prefer being on the right side of punctual. It gave him time to settle not just his belongings, but his mind. Once he had taken out his notebook, pen, and water bottle and arranged them just so on the desk, he turned to Flower Girl and served his opening conversational gambit, which he had been planning carefully.

He had spotted a bulletin board at the Student Union that had a calendar of events. He noticed that there was a movie playing on Thursday night, part of an Alfred Hitchcock film festival. The feature film this week was going to be the romantic thriller North By Northwest, starring Cary Grant and Eva Saint Marie.

When he had mentioned to Calvin that he wanted to take Flower Girl to a movie, Calvin's eyes got all twinkly.

Calvin asked "Are ya gonna pull a maneuver on her?"

Gardner stared at him nonplussed and gawped. "I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, Calvin, but it sounds dirty, so probably not."

Calvin barked out a hoarse laugh. "Nah, I'm just funnin' ya! That's just a reference to one of the greatest cartoons from the funny pages of all times. Remember when we were kids, we'd read the comics in the newspaper?"

"Yeah, vaguely," Gardner admitted.

"Well, there was this one cartoon, Mother Goose and Grimm, it was so funny! Really dry humor. I'll never forget this one cartoon from that comic strip. There's this guy. He's sitting in a darkened movie theater with his date and he's snaking his arm around her, real nervous, trying to look casual like he knows how to pull the moves, and the caption reads: 'Heimlich's first maneuver.' Isn't that a riot?"

He started rolling around on the floor, laughing and busting a gut.

Gardner's face remained impassive. He and Calvin did not share the same sense of humor. Moreover, he didn't like the idea of joking about something as serious and delicate a situation as his first proper date with Flower Girl. But he knew the best way to placate Calvin was to just roll with it, so he said in his deadpan voice "Yeah, that's hilarious. I'll be sure to keep that in mind."

Gardner tried to keep Calvin's uncouth joke out of his mind as he attempted to formulate a smooth way of asking Flower Girl to come to the movie with him. He decided that since she hadn't seemed to have picked up on his very strong hint that he wanted to date her, he ought to couch it as just a friendly outing. He stepped around to the front of her desk so has not to startle her.

"Hi, Leah. How are you doing?"

She shot a welcoming smile at him. "I'm good. Really good. How are you, Gardner?"

"Oh, I'm just great. I like Thursdays. They're the slide day to the weekend."

Flower Girl gave it some thought. "Yeah, I suppose so. I never thought of it that way."

Gardner nodded. "Yep. That's what we call 'em at the place where I work." The Good Time bar held "slide" days and nights on Thursdays where they would offer a special deal on their hamburger, chicken and fish slider sandwiches as a way of attracting more customers.

"Where you work? Where's that?"

Gardner blushed. He hadn't meant to divulge any information about his humble place of employment quite yet. He wanted an opportunity to put a bit of lipstick on the pig, so to speak. "Oh, uhm, well, let's talk about that when we've got some time on our hands. Speaking of which, how about you come to a movie with me tonight and I'll tell you all about it? There's an Alfred Hitchcock film festival on at the Student Union building and they're showing one of my favorite ones."