Aberration
Published on November 2, 2009
As in:
The worst part of Wayne’s adolescence, to date, had been his break-up with Robin who, most would agree, was attractive, bright, and social. In all the honesty that Wayne could muster to himself, he lived with the uncomfortable truth that his first moment of serious attraction to Robin had as much to do with her skin-tight, paisley jumpsuit as anything else. In this case, it was an uncomfortable truth that would wear off pretty easily in the hard rain of the uncoupling process.
The break-up was Robin’s idea and that meant two things. The first, to her credit, is she would be very direct with him. The second, and this was peculiar to Robin, is that she insisted on a formal exit interview. She had not yet decided between a career in bookkeeping or science. But the way her mind worked, she wanted to see all the math and satisfy herself that everything had been properly audited.
Wayne mistakenly agreed to the meeting because he thought it was a way to use his charm and persuade her to reconsider. Yet, almost instantly, he was looking across the table, at Randy’s Revolutionary Chicken, into the eyes of a woman who was only interested in the data. Why had he done this? Why had he not done that? Why had he been late that night two weeks ago? Is this really what he told Stacey about her navel? And why did he think her navel was any of Stacey’s business anyway?
It was devastating, like what he later understood a deposition could be like. The worst part was her younger brother, Clarence, was sitting alone in a booth across the aisle, making audible scowls and exasperated laughs when Wayne began to grope for answers. To add insult to mockery, Clarence even broke into rhyme at one point
“Dislocation, hibernation, indignation, aberration, procrastination. What up chump!?”
At that point he looked over at him and stared balefully.
“Don’t mind Clarence,” Robin snapped, “just answer the question.”