Cindy was attending to a throng of admiring students. I waited in the back of the lecture hall and watched her. She spotted me and beamed me a full wattage smile that sent my heart racing.
When the last of the student groupies had dispersed, I made my way down to her desk and set a polished red apple on the corner of her desk. Cindy, who had been hastily shoving books and scraps of paper into her oversized handbag, paused and looked at the red delicious.
“Is that for me?”
“Call it a school boy crush.”
Tonight Cindy’s hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She knew I liked her in a ponytail. She crammed the last of her junk into her bag and walked around the desk, looked around her room, saw that we were alone, and kissed me full on the lips.
“Mrs. Franks never did that,” I said.
“Who’s Mrs. Franks?”
“My fifth grade teacher.”
“You had a crush on her, too.”
“Yes,” I said. “May I carry your oversized handbag?”
“Would be a shame to waste all those muscles.”
Outside, I draped my free arm over her small shoulders. Because I was a foot taller than she was, holding hands was difficult. She was, however, the perfect height for hugging, and so we worked with nature rather than against it.
“Have you ever noticed that you were naturally selected to be the perfect height for me to hug?” I asked.
She nodded. “I’m nearly certain that’s what nature intended when I grew to be five foot five, on the off chance of meeting you someday.”
“Nature works in mysterious ways.”
“The Lord works in mysterious ways.”
“A Darwin quoting the Bible.” I said. “What is the world coming to?”
We were walking through a verdant, tree-filled section of the campus the students called Middle Earth, although I had yet to see a hobbit. Beyond, the sun had set, although the sky was still alight with its passing. Our smog-enhanced sunsets, with their pinks and oranges and purples, are out of this world.
Along the way to my car, I described my encounter with the bushy-browed woman. Cindy, amazingly, knew of her, flunking her last semester.
“You think she could be one of the vandals?”
I shrugged. “No way to know. Tell me more about her.”
Cindy frowned. “Well, she was an older student, very opinionated. Outspoken Christian. Seemed to take it as a personal affront that my great grandfather was the evil Charles Darwin.”
“For some, akin to Hitler.”
“I’ll buy that, at least on the hate-o-meter.”
Now we were driving west along University Way, wending our way between stately trees, behind which were dormitories. The Mustang’s windows were down. The evening air was laced with a 50/50 mixture of nature and exhaust, which, out here, is a pretty healthy percentage. Cindy looked good in my car. Her brown eyes were watching me drive. She often watched me while driving. I think she might have thought I was cute. With her ponytail, and in the old Mustang, we could have been two teens back in the sixties out getting milkshakes.
“She ever threaten you?” I asked.
“Never.”
“Why did she flunk?”
“Failed every test.”
“On purpose?”
“Hard to say,” said Cindy.
“If so, maybe by failing the tests, she was refusing to allow a Darwin to influence her thinking. Thus keeping her spirit pure.”
“I think you might be right.”
There was something in her voice. I glanced at Cindy. There were tears in her eyes.
“You okay?” I asked.
“You don’t think I’m the devil do you?” she asked.
Cindy was a rational person. Intelligent, maybe even brilliant. Athletic and beautiful. And she was a Darwin. But she was a person with feelings, and she was hurting.
“Only in the bedroom,” I said.
She laughed and I pulled her over on the bench seat, stretching the seatbelt to the max. She put her head on my shoulder, and I took my little Darwin to dinner.