Beauty and the Thief

The day I met my wife

“I don't care what you are to everyone else, you've never been that way towards me”

-my wife, many times over the years

I met my wife when I was 14 years old at a movie theater in one of the suburbs in my city, however she hadn't been there to meet me. She had agreed to go on a date with one of my friends on the condition that he bring someone for her friend.

“No.”

“Come on man, she's fine,” Dave pleaded with me. “I know her friend is too”.

“Then definitely no. I don't want nothing to do with whatever country bumpkin girls you done dug up” and on that note I returned to the conversation I had been in with the group next to me.

“My Orlando Magic jacket”, he blurted

“What?” My head snapped back around. He had my full attention, “your Starter one?”

“Yeah, if you go it's yours.” He was not happy saying that. He must've really been desperate to go out with this girl because that deal was like bartering with your first born. Far be it from me to pass up an opportunity to take advantage of a friend.

“Alright, bet.”

The next day we're crossing a parking lot towards a gaudy dollar theater. Strobing neon tube lights, glass-block walls, it was exactly what every 90’s theater looked like. The Glengarry Cinema. The theater that got the movies for a week or two after it had run through all of the big AMC style theaters but right before Blockbuster took over. Hence why they were all $1.50. Leave it to Dave to be desperate to impress and somehow still pick the dollar theater.

Once inside, the Lobby spread out in a giant circle with the concessions stand in the dead center and arcade games lining the walls all around. I stepped inside and side stepped to get out from in front of the entrance as I scanned the area. My eyes worked from left to right as quickly glanced at everyone I could, almost like Terminator vision, to make sure I didn't recognize any faces. Not because I was looking for people I knew but to be sure none of them knew me.

That's when I spotted her.

You can believe I'm embellishing this for the sake of the story but you'd be wrong. I saw her through the throngs of other movie goers. I can tell you which arcade game she was standing next to while talking to someone else. Rampage. I own that arcade game now like it's a religious totem.

I'm not overselling it when I tell you I was struck. She was a year younger than me with thick, long brown hair, jumper short overalls with only one strap buckled over her shoulder, a backpack that looked like a Whiney the Pooh stuffed animal and a Denise Richards smile that makes my knees weak to this day. I wasn't attracted to my someday wife because she reminded me of that actress but rather I developed a crush on the actress because her smile reminded me of my someday wife.

She has a similar story regarding Christian Slater but that's a whole other thing.

Now it's important to understand that I had no idea who we were there to meet up with. All I knew was a couple of names. At that moment, she was simply a stranger in the crowd that made the crowd disappear. Imagine my surprise when Dave yelled her name and she turned to look in our direction.

That smile, Jesus Christ, I don't know how it didn't set off the smoke alarms.

She kind of half jogged across the lobby towards us. Her hair bouncing, her arms bent with her elbows in, she moved through space like a dancer. As if she were some kind of fey ballerina crossing the surface of a pond, her steps leaving little ringed ripples in her path.

Had I been given a 1980’s “Weird Science” computer, whoever I created would've fallen short of the girl approaching me then. Even at that age, I was well versed in my heart beating at a high octane pace, I had simply never felt that quickening for a positive reason before.

And then she hugged Dave.

I can remember the day I was sentenced to prison and it didn't sting the way that moment did.

“Anne, this is Done.” He said introducing us to each other, “Done, Anne”. Her mouth opened as if to mimic saying “hi” though no actual sound accompanied it as she finger waved at the same time.

“And this is her friend Tina,” he continued. My eyes wandered reluctantly to the teenage girl standing next to Anne. I swear I hadn't even noticed her there or even that she had approached us at the same time. I'm not proud of what followed though my wife tells this part of the story in a humorous light.

I looked Tina up and down in a very obvious way. In hindsight I suppose she had been cute however, in that moment, Dave might as well have introduced me to a swamp hag.

“Here's you date, Babayaga, have fun brah”

I sucked on my teeth with an involuntary sneer, turned on my heel, and walked out of the theater without a word. I was so angry and disappointed and jealous and who knows what else that I simply turned and left.

I had made it about 30 yards across the parking lot when I stopped to light a Lucky Strike cigarette. A hand grabbed my shoulder and I immediately opened up on a tirade, “Yo, fuck that jacket. I don't care. You can…”

I was raving as I turned to unload in Dave, however it wasn't him that had grabbed me. It was Anne. My words caught mid-sentence in my throat.

“I know, I know, I know, I know,” she repeated quickly while putting a hand on each of my shoulders facing me. I understood immediately that she wasn't there to rip into me for disrespecting her friend but rather opened by pointing out she understood. “But if you don't come back inside, I'm going to have to deal with that for the rest of the night”. I was stunned, I didn't even know what to say. Hell, I think I had forgotten English all together in that moment.

“Will you please come back inside?” She asked, her large brown eyes hopeful yet not begging.

“Yeah, alright”. Those were my big opening first-words to her. Even then, I couldn't tell her no. She could've asked me to butt scoot through glass in a Speedo before jumping into a lemon juice pool and I probably would've done it.

Back inside I put my game face on and apologized for running out but I had been dealing with a loss and going on a date was almost too much for me. It was total bullshit but the sympathy card made my date block out that I had just dehumanized her as her memory rewrote that exchange to involve a sad looking teenage boy rather than a disgusted one. It's amazing how easily you can make people remember things that never happened with nothing more than a convincing performance.

I thought that had been purely my superpower until I looked back years later and realized that Anne had trick-pimped me into following through on that date with her friend with nothing more than batting eyelashes.

I never stood a chance.

We bought some popcorn and pop, per movie tradition, and made our way down the long strobing tunnel hallway to our theater. I had never even heard of this movie before but my total disinterest in my date, I was hoping it would be good.

“The Birdcage” with Robin Williams.

As an adult, I'm able to appreciate the humor of this film. That said, as a teenage boy from the hood who was hyper focused on being a tough-guy, this was the definition of awful. When I blurted out, “holy shit, is this about fags?”, it goes without saying the other movie goers did not appreciate me. Looking back, neither do I.

Dave and Anne sat in the two seats directly in front of us. I spent the entire film attempting to keep Tina from turning this into a teenager date movie. The rules were we were supposed to make out. Instead, I'm constantly shrugging her off of me while saying things like, “what other movies was that guy in?”, and even pretending to laugh at jokes I legitimately didn't understand but other people laughed so I'd join in.

The thing that gave me strength was watching Anne apparently deal with the same problem. I watched her more than the screen. She was less subtle about not liking to be manhandled. She was a hand slapper and several times pointed a finger in his face. I couldn't hear what she said, but I was glad for it. I'd never been so pleased to see a friend fail.

Following the movie, we made our way outside. It was dark out now and we just talked about the movie and other nonsense until her dad arrived to pick the girls up. Hell of a guy if you ask me given they lived in a very small town far outside the city. He commuted. We said our “see ya laters” and the two of them got into the car. As they pulled away Anne and I shared the briefest eye contact as the car passed me.

Oh, it's going down. If there was anything I was better at than anyone else in my generation, it was being bold.

Dave complained about her being stuck up but I not only didn't care but also knew he was wrong. She wasn't uppity, he was unworthy. It's a perspective I hold to this day. Later the next day I stole her phone number from the pad of paper he had it written on in his mom's kitchen.

It's only fair given I never got that Starter jacket.

But just calling a girl like this wasn't enough.

After doing more than a little snooping, amongst other things, I found myself standing at a payphone several days later. Feeling very cocky as I dropped the quarter in and dialed her number.

I still have that phone number memorized today almost 30 years later.

Her mom answered and I asked to speak to Anne in my best good-kid voice. She yelled for her daughter and I waited. It felt like an eternity. I was over the Moon when she picked up the receiver and became excited when I told her who I was. I could literally hear her smile through the phone.

“So what's your name, seriously?” She asked after the warm greeting.

“Everyone just calls me Done”

“I'm not calling you that.” She was so matter of fact in the way she stated it, “What's your actual name?”

“Justin I guess.” It's funny how I was actually uncomfortable giving that name to someone.

“I like that”. She liked it? She told me she liked my name.

We made small talk and then took turns complaining about how bad our respective dates had been. Turns out her friend Tina wasn't so much a ‘friend’ as much as she was someone her parents had saddled her with. Good to know. She apologized for not liking my friend and I pretended to be casual about it. I wanted to bad mouth him but decided against it.

I eventually worked my way to asking her if she wanted to hang out sometime soon in a very smooth and subtle way.

“Ya wanna hang out sometime soon?”

“Yeah, but it's really hard for me to get out there. It's not like you live down the street.” She answered. Keep in mind, we were 14 and 13 years old at the time.

“What if I came out there?” I responded.

“You have someone that'll give you a ride?”

“No. But that won't be a problem.”

“Okay, sure.” She chuckled

“So if I show up, you'll come hang with me right?” I was a little unsure now that she had laughed at the idea.

“Yes,” she reassured me. “But when?”

“How about now? Go look out your window”

You see, after looking into her for a couple of days, I figured out that her parents owned a massive 5 bedroom, almost mansion sized house on the main drag of her village's Uptown square. A house that was conveniently directly next to a tiny gas station on the corner. Far more creepily, I'd also figured out since my arrival which window was likely her bedroom.

She pulled the curtains to see me standing over there at the payphone, next to a stolen car, waving to her.

As Anne explained to me years later, she was completely unprepared. I believe the screaming thought she had was, “OH MY GOD, HE'S HERE AND I'M IN CARE BEAR PAJAMAS!!!!”

Yet, true to her word, after changing into something completely different, she came out to see me. She was naturally curious about the car and I just dodged the question each time. I was very good at making people believe I had answered their questions when in reality I neither lied nor gave you a single shred of useful information.

Nothing profound was said, we didn't share any deeply earthshaking secrets or dropped any romcom quotes. We simply talked. I stood there for hours talking to a small town, straight A’s, getting ready to start highschool, cheerleading, bonafide good person. Someone who's world was as foreign to me as it would've been had she been French. A girl who knew absolutely nothing about the one I lived in and yet never asked me a single question that wasn't about me personally.

We spoke until she had to go because she was babysitting that evening. Could she have been more small town cliche? As I watched her go, she even walked different than anyone else I knew. There was a lightness to it that almost seemed impossible. She'd skip every so many steps for absolutely no reason I could wrap my head around beyond she simply felt like it.

I returned home however she became something I'd sneak away to when the opportunities presented themselves. Given the nature of my life and the distance between us, dating the way regular people would simply wasn't ever an option. She was this precious thing that I hid from my day to day activities. Keeping the way I lived as far from her as possible as if even the slightest overlap might poison her.

The rest of her childhood was filled with me simply appearing. No rhyme or reason. Oftentimes she'd even ask how I could've possibly known where she was. However, this was the nature of our courtship.

She would find me as well over the years. When my mother maliciously had me committed to a psych ward at 15 because she was sick of me just wandering off, Anne found out and snuck onto the property to slip me a letter through my window where she joked “So, how's the padding on your walls”. Verbatim, that was the opening line.

Even when I went to prison, she made sure to keep track of where I was housed. Sending letters when she could. Then, one day, she came to visit and told me simply, “you're not getting rid of me.”

The certainty in her voice left no room for debate.

And I never did. She married me while I was still inside those walls, that's how strong her faith in me was. We've had our ups and downs as anyone does, but that doesn't change for a moment that she's my person. She's the one person in this world I don't have to explain anything to because she was literally there when I happened.

She's upstairs right now in her office humming to herself. She's the only person on this Earth who calls me by my first name. She's the one human being who saw me as something other than the life I led. She's the reason I got to be a human being myself.

She's the only person I've ever loved.

She's the only one I ever will love.

She's my wife, my moral compass, my reason to be something more than I was and will continue to be the reason I become more than I am.

My Mrs. Coleman