'F' is for ... Fundamentals on the Fourth
Part 8
Nearing their blanket, he caught sight of her, … and it was a beautiful view. Even from Harm’s vantage point from off to the left, behind her, Mac looked positively wonderful as she tenderly stroked the blonde hair of the sleeping boy cuddled against her with his head on her lap.
Remembering something he had told her once, long ago, Harm thought, ‘She does have great maternal instincts,’ … and the sight warmed his heart.
The feeling of those soft embers glowing in his chest were so much more welcome than the oppressive, emotional pain that had resided there when he had walked away from her about forty minutes earlier.
When Harm had left, he had been suffering from feelings of rejection. His dreams for a future with Mac had ostensibly been crushed because … she didn’t seem to want to marry him; she didn’t seem to be as in love with him as he was with her.
But the world was not nearly as hopeless as he had thought when he had parted from her company.
And it took a man named Fred, … and Fred’s fiancée, to help Harm put things in perspective.
Flashback
After using the restroom, Harm headed out to walk around the shopping area. As he passed a restaurant, he noted through the window a row of high seats lined up by a counter, behind which were stacks of glasses and shelves of partly-empty bottles. This bar area was desolate at the moment. Yet, one stool in particular beckoned him, and Harm soon found himself seated and ready to order an alcoholic beverage.
Maybe a drink was just what he needed to help take the edge off and to numb his aching heart.
With that decision made, he flagged the bartender.
“What’ll you have?” the man asked in what Harm figured was a Jersey or maybe New York accent. The guy was physically on the burly side, but his bearing was pleasant enough.
Harm responded caustically, “What’ve you got that can erase the past twenty minutes or so?”
“Female problems, huh?” the bartender concluded.
“How’d you know?”
“Are there any other kinds?” the man joked. “… Seriously, … I’ve been working here long enough to recognize the look on your face.”
Harm was trying to figure out a response when the bartender decided to lay out his analysis.
“Let’s see, … you’ve either gotten in one helluva fight with your longtime girl, … an argument that you don’t think you two will recover from …”
The man cocked his head as if that would give him a different view of his new patron’s problems.
“… Or,” the man decided, “… she’s not your girl at all, but you want to be romantically involved with her. Problem is … when you expressed your desire to move the relationship forward … she gave you the infamous ‘I really like you, but I just want to be friends’ speech.”
Harm wondered if he should have picked a different place … with a less social bartender.
“That last one, man,” the restaurant employee emphasized, “… that one, … I think, is the worst. I mean, the words, ‘I just wanna be your friend,’ coming from a woman that you’ve got the hots for are about as good as a dagger to a man’s heart.” With a snort, he added, “… I’ve known plenty of guys who would gladly take death over hearing that phrase from any girl who’s gotten under his skin.”
The bartender looked at his new patron for some response to his assessment, but Harm wasn’t ready to give him one.
Instead, Harm guardedly put the man off, “… I’m not really one to discuss this kind of thing with strangers …” Heck, he wasn’t one to discuss his personal problems with friends.
The man extended his hand over the counter. “The name’s Fred. … I do this …” He gestured to his surroundings, indicating his tending of the bar. “… for the cash, but when I’m not serving up drinks to those enjoying their free time … or drowning their sorrows … I’m a firefighter. That’s who I really am, you know? Third generation fireman,” he stated proudly.
Fred’s hand remained outstretched to his latest customer, clearly communicating that he wanted to shake and have the introduction reciprocated.
Although Harm was reluctant, he put his palm to Fred’s for a firm handshake. “I’m Harm. … When I’m not enjoying my free time … or drowning my sorrows … I work as an officer in the Navy. … Third generation sailor.”
He figured there was no need to identify himself as a lawyer. People never had any sympathy for lawyers. The question then struck Harm: was he looking for sympathy right now? Is that what he was doing here?
“There,” Fred brought Harm’s focus back as he released his hand. “We’re not strangers anymore.”
Harm gave the man a small smile in acknowledgment, but he certainly wasn’t about to lay out his troubles.
The bartender sensed his trepidation, “So, you came in for a drink. How strong do ya need it?”
Harm hesitated. “… I better just have a beer. Whatever’s on tap.”
“Sure thing.” Fred took a moment to turn around and fetch a glass.
“So, which one is it?”
“Sorry?” asked Harm for clarification.
“Your female troubles. … Which kind are they? Was it the ‘let’s just be friends’ speech?”
“… Not exactly,” Harm admitted.
Mac had said they were ‘just friends,’ but … she had not said that she wanted them to stay ‘just friends.’ Actually, … she had even suggested dating, hadn’t she?
… But the mere possibility of dating wasn’t enough for Harm. “I want to marry her.”
Whoa!! … He had not meant to blurt that out just now.
Harm’s shock at his own utterance was ignored by the other man.
“And she said no,” Fred surmised.
Harm’s eyebrows furrowed. Come to think of it, she had not said no. But it was kind of implied. Wasn’t it?
“She didn’t say yes,” Harm bitterly insisted.
Fred eventually nodded at that, giving Harm an understanding look. After a moment, he offered, “Maybe she did you a huge favor.”
Harm looked at the bartender incredulously, to which Fred replied, “If it isn’t love, … you need to cut your losses and move on. Hey, I know that from personal experience.”
Fred wasted no time launching into a story. “Look, … when I was kid, fresh outta high school, right, -- I met this girl. Fiona. The most fascinating woman I’d ever come across at the time. We dated for awhile, and it wasn’t long before I decided … that this was it. You know? I was ready to be grown up and start a family of my own. So, I ask her to marry me, … and what do you think she said?”
“No?” Harm guessed. It was either that or she had said yes and this guy lived through a bad marriage.
“She didn’t just say no. She tells me that being with me had been fun and all, … but I wasn’t the kind of guy she wanted to settle down with. I was training to be a firefighter, you know, and firefighters … they just don’t have the financial support that she wanted from a future husband.”
Harm grimaced at the harsh and shallow response of the woman.
Fred agreed with the reaction. “Yeah, …ouch, right?”
“She sounds pretty superficial,” Harm observed. “You’re better off without her.”
“Yeah, I am. But it makes me angry to this day. … Even though, I should thank her … because I didn’t know what love was back then. I was infatuated with her, yeah, but I didn’t know what it was really like to love a woman until much later. … Although, even then, … I can tell you, proposing marriage was no walk in the park.”
“You’re married?”
“Engaged. Although, if she’d just said yes the first time I proposed, we could have had our wedding and a kid on the way by now.”
“You had to propose more than once?” asked Harm. “… What went wrong the first time?”
Fred cleared his throat and answered, “Let’s see, the first time, … I guess you could call it … lack of finesse. Apparently, tossin’ out an impromptu proposal while on a fly fishing trip is frowned upon by females.”
Harm raised an eyebrow. “She turned you down because she didn’t think the proposal was romantic enough?”
“No.” This was the voice of woman. “She turned him down because neither one of them had really thought the idea through.”
“What was to think about?” Fred shot back at her. “It was like -- I was struck that moment when I saw you … fording through the river, … and even though you were frustrated with the fishing, you just … fit so damned well into that picture.”
The bartender put his arm around the lady, pulling her close to him. Fred never took his eyes off of the object of his affection even as he spoke to Harm, “I just knew that this woman, who looked so right … no matter what she was doing, … was the one for me. … I wanted her in my life forever.”
“It might have helped if you had said something like that at the time,” the woman pointed out, earning her a wry grin.
“You must be the fiancée,” Harm noted.
“Against my better judgment, yes,” she joked with a wink at the bartender.
Fred beamed back at her. “Hey, you did eventually agree.”
She conceded with a shrug, “Eh, you got better with practice.”
“… This is Faith, the love of my life,” the bartender made the introduction as he finally released the woman.
“Nice to meet you,” Harm offered.
“Faith, this is my new buddy, Harm. … He’s … in a bit of a funk right now.”
“A ‘funk?’” Faith repeated. “… Who talks like that?”
“I do,” Fred answered with a look that challenged, ‘You gotta problem with that?’
Moving on, he explained, “… Harm’s feeling down because the woman he wants to marry didn’t say yes when he proposed.”
Faith looked to Harm sympathetically. “Did she break up with you?”
“… Well, no.” Harm squirmed. “We aren’t … I mean … We’re not in a …” He took in a deep breath and started over, “She can’t break up with me, … because we … we’re not exactly together now.”
Seeking clarification, Faith checked, “You had already broke up?” Before Harm answered, the woman followed up, “Is this one of those ‘she broke it off because you wouldn’t commit’ scenarios? … And then you try to prove you’ve changed by suddenly doing an about face and proposing?”
“No! I don’t have a problem committing.” Okay, so some women might disagree with that. Like just about all of his past girlfriends. But that was because they weren’t ‘the one.’ “… At least not with her,” he amended. “… It’s just … we were never … technically together, … as in dating. But we’ve been friends for years.”
“You’re not dating?” Faith was incredulous. “And you wonder why she turned you down?”
“It’s not like it sounds,” Harm tried to defend himself. “… We’re close. And there’s always been … this ‘thing’ between us.”
“Hey, buddy,” Fred interjected, “I might ‘ave screwed up the proposal a few times, but even I know that you’ve got to date before asking a girl to marry ya.”
Part 9
Eager to shift the conversation back onto Fred’s follies, Harm asked, “How many times did you have to propose for her to say yes?”
“Five,” Faith answered quickly for the bartender.
“You said ‘no’ four times?” Harm asked her with wide eyes.
Faith had taken a glass and she finished filling it with something from the tap. Harm didn’t know what it was, but the froth was foaming over.
Fred chastised her, “You know you’re not supposed to be drinkin’ during business hours. You’re not even supposed to be back here. You tryin’ to get me fired?”
“The day Flynn fires someone,” Faith laughed, “is the day his favorite mascot drops his little fighting fists.”
“Shhh!” Fred admonished her. “Don’t let him hear you say nothin’ about his favorite football team!”
“‘Anything,’” she corrected.
“What?”
“Don’t let him hear you say ‘anything’ about his favorite football team,” she recited.
Her fiancé rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”
Faith sighed deeply. “Sometimes I wonder if you’ll ever learn.”
Harm was keenly observing the couple’s interplay, when the woman finally turned towards him and answered, “Yes, he asked four times that I did not accept his proposal. … But he deserved what he got each time.”
“Aw, come on, … you could have gone easier on me,” Fred complained. Then he turned to Harm and explained, “Yeah, see, after the fishing trip, I really start thinking and planning. She wants romance, right? So I pull out all the stops. … I plan this fancy dinner, - fettuccini, ‘cause it’s one of her favorites. … I set the mood at my apartment … flower petals, fragrant candles leading into the bedroom, and in the middle of a floral arrangement on the bed … a stuffed cat with a note pinned to it.” As an aside he murmured to Harm, “She’s got this feline fetish, see.”
“It’s not a fetish,” Faith objected, having had no trouble hearing her fiancé’s stage whisper.
“You’ve got like fifty cat figurines all around your apartment. Sometimes I think you like your furry friends better than me,” Fred said to her before explaining to Harm, “So, I figure – use one of them furry creatures she thinks are so cute to help me propose.”
“All that wasn’t romantic enough for you?” Harm asked the woman.
Faith breathed with exasperation. “There is this common fallacy believed among men, … and a lot of women for that matter, about romance.”
Harm cocked an eyebrow with curiosity.
“The scenario that ‘Mr. Romance’ here described,” said Faith, “-- that didn’t say, ‘I want to spend the rest of my life with you.’ … It said, ‘I want to get you into bed with me.’ It was a seduction, not a proposal.”
Fred crossed his arms and shook his head. “You tell me, Harm, to be shot down after all that … It hurts a guy’s ego.”
“I didn’t shoot you down. I told you that I didn’t think we were ready. Come on, you hadn’t shown me that you were really ready to start a life together with me at that point.”
“Yeah, … well, … I don’t know what was worse from my buddies at the firehouse the next day - them razzing me about striking out … or threatening to tell the chief that I should be fired for being stupid enough to leave candles burning unattended for hours in the process of my big attempt to win her heart.”
“Don’t even talk to me about your firehouse buddies. They’re the ones who helped you with your next proposal plan.”
“Hey, after demoralizing a guy like that, you’re lucky there was another proposal plan.”
After taking a big swig of her drink, Faith leaned against the bar and told Harm, “Don Juan here decided that he needed to make a big show of his love for me.”
Fred snorted. “Hey, you seemed to think I had ulterior motives in the private dinner/bedroom scenario, so I figured maybe you’d believe that I was serious if I declared it all in public.”
“And some other woman might have appreciated that gesture, … but you should have known that I think proposals with an audience of strangers are horrible! I would have been upset with that plan even without the following fiasco at the firehouse.”
“How was I supposed to know we’d have a four alarm fire when I invited you down there?” Fred’s voice rose defensively. “And … you gettin’ run over like that was a total fluke.”
“You ran her over?” Harm asked incredulously.
“No! I mean … I didn’t … directly,” Fred’s voice quieted with shame. “… It’s just the guys were in a hurry, and it was an accident …” he trailed off.
“You’re kidding,” Harm looked to Faith for confirmation. She shook her head, indicating that they were serious. “Run over with what exactly?” asked Harm.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” she stated simply. “Let’s just say, I ended up with a fractured fibula and was in a cast for far longer than I care to remember.”
Fred’s head was hanging, and he fiddled with a bar rag. “I feel real guilty about what happened. … I didn’t sleep for like … a week after that.”
Feeling some compassion for her fiancé, Faith rubbed him on the shoulder. “It was an accident. And, yes, at the time, I didn’t ever want to see you again much less marry you, … but I don’t really blame you for what happened with my leg.”
“I love you, you know that?” checked Fred appreciatively.
“Yeah.” The couple’s eyes were connected by an invisible string pulling them closer.
“Ahem,” Harm cleared his throat, reminding the couple that they were not alone.
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