I Remember It Well

Inside the cavernous high school gymnasium, festively decorated with balloons and bows, a large crowd of middle-aged people mills about, drinks in hand.

An overweight man in an ill-fitting suit approaches a beautifully-dressed woman.  “Gillian?  It’s you, right?  Gillian?”

“Yes, of course,” the woman replies imperiously, turning from the group she is talking with, casting a quizzical eye at the newcomer.  “And you are?”

Chuckling dutifully, the man replies,  “Still a kidder, I see.  Man, it’s great to see you after all these years.  You look terrific, by the way.”  He looks her up and down, openly and appreciatively.

The woman preens despite herself.  She knows she looks good, she always does, and is accustomed to compliments from men she doesn’t know.  “Of course.  But really, you are…?”

“Chuck!” the man says.  “The ol’ Chuckeroo, at your service.”  He bows slightly in mock obeisance.

“Chuck?” the woman says, with a slight shrug and an eye-roll in the direction of her friends.  “Chuck who?”

“Yeah, like you don’t remember me!” the man says, winking knowingly.  “Hoover!  Chuck Hoover, the guy you almost married.”

“Oh.  My.  God!”  Aghast, the woman takes him by the arm abruptly, steers him away from her by-now-more-than-curious coterie.  “You’re Charles Hoover?  What the hell happened to you?  I mean…you look…older.  Different!”

“Well, I’m sober,” Chuck chuckles.  “Not like when you left me at the altar.  I was pretty wasted, gotta admit.”

“I never left you at the altar,” Gillian whispers, glancing around to be sure no one can hear.  “And I never said I’d marry you!”

“Yeah, you did,” Chuck says.  “That night at the prom, remember?”

“We never went to the prom, either!” Gillian insists more vehemently.  “Not with each other!”

“Yeah, but we danced a coupla times,” Chuck says, one hand splayed on his paunch, the other raised as if grasping her hand, swaying in what he hopes, mistakenly, is a seductive move.

“Only because you kept cutting in on…on that boy I was with. What was his name?” She still remembers the name quite well, but feigns ignorance.

“Jackson,” Chuck says immediately. “Donald friggin’ Jackson, all-American boy. I mean, he was my best friend, still is, but I never did figure out what you saw in him. You coulda had anybody, you bein’ Homecomin’ Queen an’ all. You coulda had me!”

“Right,” Gillian says softly, her green eyes far away, recalling that long-ago evening.  “I was the Queen, you’re right.  And the most beautiful Queen ever, everyone said so.  And Donnie was my handsome King.  Is he here tonight, I wonder?”

“Whatta you care?” Chuck replies, glancing furtively around. “You’re here, I’m here, what else matters? You still wear my frat pin?”

“What?” Gillian says, wrenched back to the present.  “Frat pin?  I never wore your frat pin, Charles!  It was Donnie who pinned me.  You weren’t even in the frat!”

“I was a pledge!” Chuck corrects her.  “Graduated before I could take the oath.”

“You didn’t graduate, either!” Gillian says. “Not when we did, anyway. Why are you even here tonight? This is the class of ’84 reunion!”

Chuck looks around for a moment.  “Hey, I graduated!  Just took me a bit longer to finish my credits.  An’ you might remember I was class Valedictorian, right?  Gave a speech at Commencement.”

“You weren’t Valedictorian, Charles!” Gillian scoffs   “And that wasn’t a speech you gave, it was a drunken rant!  You stood up in the audience and started raging about every grievance you ever had against the school!  The principal had to call security to escort you out.”

Chuck looks askance at her words.  “Yeah, well I mighta had too much to drink that time, too.  But anyways, I don’t drink anymore.  Not since you left me at…you know, at the church.  Haven’t had a drop ever since that day, Scout’s honour!  Prob’ly why I look so fit.”  He sucks in his stomach as he speaks, hitches his trousers.

“You were never a Scout!” Gillian hisses, smelling a telltale trace of alcohol on his breath.  “And you can claim all you want that you don’t drink anymore, but it’s obvious you don’t drink any less, either!”

Chuck shrugs haplessly.

“And I did not leave you at the church!” Gillian continues. “I mean, we did leave you there, passed out in one of the pews.  But you weren’t the groom!  You weren’t even invited to the wedding.”

“Is he here?” Chuck asks, scanning the crowded gym.

“Who?” Gillian says.

“Your husband,” Chuck says, “the guy who stole you right from under me.”  He pauses for a moment, then adds, “Well, not from under me, so to speak.  I mean, you an’ me, we never actually…you know, did the dirty.”

With an involuntary shudder, Gillian says, “Omigod, you got that right, at least! And no, my husband is not here. He died a few years ago.”

“Oh,” Chuck says, a smile belying the sincerity of his words.  “Sorry to hear that.  He musta hated checkin’ out on someone as gorgeous as you.  The years been good to you, Gilly.”

Gillian preens instinctively again, then catches herself.  “Do not call me Gilly!  In fact, don’t call me at all!  I have to go, my friends are waiting for me.”

Chuck waves at the group of women watching from afar.  No one waves back.  “How come you an’ Donnie split?” he asks.  “I thought he’d be the guy you’d marry if you couldn’t of got me.”

“Donnie never asked me,” Gillian says, a tint of melancholy colouring her voice. “But that was his mistake, right? And you were never in the picture.”

“So what about now?” Chuck says.  “Whattya think?”

“About what?” Gillian replies, mentally kicking herself for listening to this nonsense.

“About you an’ me,” Chuck says.  “You’re unattached now, though that’s hard to believe, lookin’ like you do.  An’ I’m single, too, never did find someone who could fill the hole you left in my heart.  Seems like fate, right?  Us hookin’ up again now.”

“I was never in your heart,” Gillian says, “and we are not hooking up!”

For the first time, Chuck seems unsure.  “Hey, sorry, I didn’t mean hookin’ up like…you know, hookin’ up.  I just meant gettin’ back together, like back in school.  You an’ me, Gilly an’ Chuck.”

With a weary shake of her head, Gillian spins on her heel and walks back to her friends. Chuck stares longingly as her still-shapely buttocks undulate temptingly beneath her silk dress, and it reminds him, depressingly, of how many times he watched her walk away in high school.

Another man approaches just then, hands him a drink.  “Sorry, buddy, big line-up at the bar.  Next round’s on you.”

Chuck takes a large sip from his glass, eyes still on Gillian.

“Hey, I saw you talkin’ to Gilly MacArthur,” his friend says. Tipping his glass in her direction in a mock salute, he adds, “She’s still as hot as ever! I was hopin’ she’d be here tonight. We got some catchin’ up to do.”

“Yeah, we were just reminiscin’,” Chuck says.  “You prob’ly remember me an’ her were pretty tight back in the day.  Lost touch over the years, but she was wonderin’ if we could pick it up again, y’know?”

“Really?” his friend says. “You sure she had a thing for you? I don’t remember it that way at all, but I do remember her an’ me were close. She wore my pin, I remember that. Everybody thought me and Gilly would get married after graduation. I probably should’ve asked her, but I just wasn’t ready.”

“Anyways, I told her no chance,” Chuck says wistfully. “Not interested.”

“Wha-a-at?” Donnie Jackson says, incredulous. “You turned Gilly down?”

Chuck taps his forehead with one finger. “I think she must be losin’ it,” he says. “Nobody home upstairs. Still looks like a million bucks, but doesn’t remember a thing ‘bout our time together, not the way I remember it. You want another drink?”

“Your turn,” Donnie says, pointing.  “Bar’s over that way.”

As Chuck heads off for refills, Donnie straightens his tie, buffs his shoes on the back of each pant-leg, and saunters nonchalantly towards Gillian and her friends. She turns when they point in his direction, and her face lights up.

“Gilly!” he says, smiling broadly. “There’s my beautiful Queen!”

_{© J. Bradley Burt 2022}