Teacher's Pet
Keywords: Pet, Teacher's,
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"Wait," he said.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Can we talk a while?"
I didn"t want to talk. I wanted to put my clothes on, go home, soak in a hot bubble bath, and forget I"d ever met Manuel. "Talk? About what?"
"Us."
My eyebrows rose. "Us?"
He nodded, his face somber. His hand seemed heavier.
I shrugged. "Okay." He removed his hand from my arm. "What do you want to know?"
Now, he shrugged. "Where do you work?"
I"m a very private person. Normally, I would never answer such a question, especially since it came from a virtual stranger. But I wanted to go home. I wanted to soak my aching body--and my sore ass--and I wanted to forget all about Manuel. What would it hurt, anyway, I asked myself. The bastard was retarded or close to it. In the morning, he probably wouldn"t even remember my name, much less where I worked. I smiled. "I teach English," I told him, "at the local community college. My next classes start tomorrow, in fact."
"A teacher," he repeated, stroking my hair with a sausage-size finger. I was reminded of Lenny, in John Steinbeck"s novel, "Of Mice and Men," and how the big, slow-witted sharecropper accidentally breaks the neck of Candy"s wife while he"s petting her hair in the barn.
"That"s right."
He continued to stroke my hair. "A English teacher, at the college."
"Yes." I refrained from correcting his grammar. I just wanted to leave. I just wanted to escape, to get home.
"You"re pretty," he declared, watching his finger circle inside my hair. "You the first chick with a dick I ever fucked."
"It"s late, Lenny," I said. "I have to go now. I have to get up early tomorrow, to teach--"
"What did you call me?"
I frowned. "What do you mean?"
"You called me a name."
"I did?"
""Lenny"! That"s what you called me. Why did you call me "Lenny"? My name"s Manuel. Manuel Sanchez."
"I guess you remind me of someone."
"Who?"
I looked at him, uneasily. "A man named Lenny."
"Who was he, this man name Lenny?"
"Just a man." I caught his twirling finger in my hand. "I have to go now, Manuel. Please."
His finger stopped.
"Okay," he said.
I climbed out of bed, and he watched me dress.
"You the first chick with a dick I ever fucked," he repeated.
I didn"t know what to say. "I hope you enjoyed it," I said.
He grinned. "I want to fuck you again," he declared. "I want to fuck you all the time, every day."
"Well, that"s sweet, Manuel. We"ll talk, but, right now, I have to go."
He nodded solemnly. "I know. You got to teach tomorrow."
"That"s right."
"Call me."
"I will."
"You got my number, right?"
"Yes."
"Call."
"I will."
"Promise?"
I nodded. "I promise, Manuel."
I didn"t call, of course. I had no intention of ever seeing Manuel again.
As it turned out, he didn"t leave me that option. On the third day of English composition, he showed up in my classroom, having just enrolled.
To say that I was shocked to see him would be a monumental understatement. I was horrified. "What are you doing here?" I demanded.
"I enrolled," he announced, looking pleased at himself for having said such a word. "Enrolled," he repeated, smiling.
"This is a college class," I reminded him.
He took a seat--the one right in front of my desk--and sat there, grinning at me, like a mindless simpleton, eyeing the cleavage of my breasts below the collar of my blouse. I wished I hadn"t left the top two buttons unbuttoned.
He looked huge. He seemed to fill the entire room. The other students, most of them just out of high school, gave him an odd look, part of wonder, part of fright. "That right," he acknowledged my statement. "I"m getting a education, as a English teacher, like you."
The imbecile probably thought he could win my heart--and maybe my hand--by entering the same profession as the one in which I was employed. Very well, I thought. I"d show him that he hadn"t a hope in hell of passing my class, let alone obtaining a degree. "Class," I instructed, "take out your notebooks and write a brief account of why you are here and what you hope to gain." I looked directly at Manuel as I spoke, a smug grin on my face.
As the class session ended, the students filed out, leaving their assignments on my desk. I was afraid that Manuel might lag behind, but he didn"t. He went out with the others, ogling my breasts, a stupid leer on his imbecilic face. Despite the assignment, it seemed he still believed that he could pass my class. A person can be so stupid that he isn"t aware of how truly ignorant he is, I thought. Consequently, he wouldn"t understand how hopeless his aspiration to earn a degree really is. Well, I thought, picking up his paper, Let"s see what he"s written. As I read the ragged scrawl, my eyes widened in shock, my pulse racing. Had I really read what I thought I"d read? As I scanned his jumbled scribble again, this is what I read:
"I xpeck a A in this curse, or evreebuddy will no yore liddle secret."
There was no doubt that Manuel was illiterate, I thought, but maybe he wasn"t as stupid as I"d supposed. Maybe, in some ways, he was a whole lot more intelligent than I was.
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Keywords: Pet, Teacher's,