Fluke by David Elliott, Bart Hopkins

laughed back.   She was always on, even when I woke her up.   “I said, beautiful lady, that I just wanted to hear your voice.”
    “Oh, well, thank you.   Where are you? Still off with Sean?”   I heard her lighter flick and caught the faint sound of her exhaling.
    “Yeah, we just stopped to get some grub at the Waffle House,” I said.   “You were sleeping, weren’t you?” I asked, still feeling slightly guilty.
    “I nodded off on the couch about fifteen minutes ago, I think.   I was watching Letterman.   That guy is hilarious, but I fell asleep when some country singer came on,” she said.   “Waffle House, huh? That sounds good…I’m hungry.”
    My eyes lit up.   “Why don’t you come down and meet me and Sean? We’ll have some coffee, a bite to eat, and you can give me a ride home instead of Sean.” I joked, “I’d much rather have a beautiful woman take me home, as opposed to Sean.”
    “From the way you talk about Sean, he’d probably much rather be taking a beautiful woman home than you,” she countered, and we laughed.   “Okay, I’ll come down.   I just need to put on some pants.”
    “Ah, pantsless , are we?” I said in a mock suave voice.
    “Well, I am.   We hopefully aren’t, however, since you’re out in public,” she laughed again.
    “But the night is young, Miss DuBeau ,” I responded.   “There are plenty of opportunities for me to get pantsless .”
    “Yeah, like when I give you a ride home,” she said coyly.   Wow.   “In about fifteen minutes, order me a cheese omelet and a big old cup of coffee.   See you soon.”
    I hung up and slid into the booth across from Sean, feeling invincible.   I rested my hands on the table, feeling tiny sticky spots.   The hard wood of the booth was uncomfortable immediately, and the shiny silver ashtray was nearly full already.   It was exactly as I expected it, and just how I wanted my Waffle House booth.   Sean stared at me as I lit a cigarette and picked up a giant plastic combination placemat/menu.
    “What’d you do? Take another famous Fluke dump in a public bathroom?” he joked, sipping a glass of iced tea.
    “I called Sara,” I told him.   “She’s going to meet up with us and have a bite to eat.”
    He raised an eyebrow and said, “Ah, so I can meet the lovely Sara, huh? Well, that’s good.   You’ve been talking about her so much, my curiosity meter is redlined.”
    The waitress came to the table and looked at me, as if annoyed.   She wore the trademark brown, orange, and yellow polyester of the Waffle House employee, and the trademark surliness of a tired, tired woman forced to serve food to drunken idiots in order to survive.   Her nametag read “Yvonne,” and I ordered in as nice a way as possible.
    “Well, Yvonne, I’ll take a cup of coffee and a glass of water to drink, and a double order of hash browns, scattered, covered, smothered, chunked, and topped.” I smiled sweetly at her.
    “Sure, just a minute,” she said after jotting our orders down on a yellow pad.   She walked away, and I heard her call the order out to the cook.
    The food and drinks came, and Sean and I ate hungrily.   I watched Sean and thought back to the multiple occasions he and I had ended up at Waffle House with some woman he had met, some stranger who wanted nothing more than to get into bed with Sean.   Tonight was my turn to have the woman on my side of the booth, and it wasn’t some nameless drunk floozy.   It was Sara.
    Yvonne wandered by, and I ordered the food that Sara had asked for to a puzzled look from Yvonne.   She glanced at Sean’s empty plate, then at mine, and asked, “Are you still hungry?”
    “No,” I laughed.   “A friend is joining us any time now, and I figured I’d have her food waiting for her.”
    Yvonne, the cynic, nodded her head slightly and said, “Sure thing.”
    I was tidying up my mess when I heard Sean say, “Shit, Fluke, is that Sara?”
    I looked out the big plate