Teresa Milbrodt, Fictioneer

Only a month left before the release of THE PATRON SAINT OF UNATTRACTIVE PEOPLE.   To further whet your appetite, here’s another deleted scene:

In the afternoon Herbert brings me ice cream. He does that whenever he can, whether it’s eighty or twenty degrees outside. Today it’s warm so we sit in front of the shop with plastic spoons and pint boxes of butter pecan. Herbert tells me how well half his students are doing and how badly the other half of his students are doing and how the the basketball coach keeps harassing him.

“He likes hitting me on the back and calling me buddy,” says Herbert. “I don’t know if he’s trying to be nice or make fun of me.”

“What do you do?” I say.

“Stay in the chemistry room as much as possible and ignore him,” says Herbert. “I also daydream about putting sodium in his shoes. It would be great when it reacted with his sweat.”

“You’re too nice for something like that,” I say.

“I’m too much of a coward,” he says. “I can hold my own in front of a bunch of sixteen-year-olds, but not many other people.”

“Most people can’t hold their own in front of sixteen-year-olds,” I say.

“You have to know when to speak softly,” he says, “and when to scare the shit out of them with a chemical reaction.”

I lick a blob of ice cream off my spoon and smile. It always strikes me as funny when Herbert swears. He sees my smile and smiles back.

“Do you want to go to the zoo this weekend?” he says.

“I have to work,” I say.

“What about the art museum,” he says. “They have a great glass exhibit.”

“I have to work,” I say.

“You get breaks sometimes,” he says.

“I’ll see how I feel,” I say.

“Going to the zoo wouldn’t take very long,” he says. “It would be fun.”

“Maybe,” I say. The last time we went to the zoo together, we spent the whole time in the fish and reptile house. Herbert told me about a kind of cell in fish and squid that makes them change color to blend in with their surroundings.

At the art museum he tells me about the chemical processes involved in blowing glass or soldering metal and what happens to all those molecules when they get hot. I don’t care about fish cells or molecular structure, I just want to look at the animals and the art, but Herbert is compelled to turn everything into a lecture. I think he’s been teaching high school too long.