"You're Too Late Tamma"

By Darrin Atkins

Chuck McCroskey is my new name. I changed it because that's the first step

in my transformation. I was sick of my other life and how I lived and what I

didn't do every single day. It was time to move on and get out of the wasted

sense of existence that I had led.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 1, 2000
• ISBN: 9781469102351

Darrin Atkins

Darrin Atkins was raised in Stockton, California. He graduated from the University of the Pacific in 1993 and then studied in a Ph.D. Program in Social Psychology at the University of Nevada. He has worked at Premiere magazine, Nevada magazine, the Reno Gazette-Journal, Investor’s Business Daily and The Record. “You Always Lose” is his fourth book.

Book preview

"YOU’RE TOO

LATE TAMMA"

Darrin Atkins

Copyright © 2000 by Darrin Atkins.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any

form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,

or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing

from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

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Contents

PART ONE

1      

2      

3      

4      

5      

6      

7      

8      

9      

10      

11      

12      

13      

14      

15      

16      

17      

18      

PART TWO

19      

20      

21      

22      

23      

PART ONE

1      

I arrived in the big city around eleven-thirty in the morning after a very long drive. Even though I had stopped at a hotel each night and had taken many breaks, I was still pretty exhausted from the three thousand miles I had driven. I didn’t know anybody in the city so there was no one I could ask for help as to where there were decent apartments. I got off the freeway in the Santa Monica area and stopped at a pay phone to check out the listings in the phone book. I figured I would just stay at a hotel or motel for a while until I got settled.

Unfortunately, I could tell from the listings that most of the nearby hotels and motels were rather expensive and out of my range. Though I had a fair amount of money, I had no idea how long it would be before I got a job and I didn’t know how much an apartment would be and I how much I would have to pay for a deposit and the first and last month’s rent. Because the L.A. area was so incredibly large, the phone books only contained information for that part of the city I was in at the moment.

I found an apartment magazine and started to look for some decent places. Maybe there was half a chance I could get an apartment on my first day and not have to pay for a motel. I bought a map from inside the gas station and set out to look for the apartments. The first one was located next to the big university and I was pretty close to it right then. I found the complex easily enough but I could tell that they were repairing the front door and windows so I figured it wouldn’t be available when I needed it which was right then.

I drove to the next place and went to talk to the manager. I went up to the gate and pushed the phone button on the gate for the manager but nobody answered. I pushed it again and waited. Suddenly, a voice called out from the other side of the gate and down a few doors.

He’s not here. Come back at three, said the voice.

Three o’clock was two hours away and I really didn’t feel like driving all the way back there but I put it down as a maybe and headed back to my car. Already I was running out of leads and I had just started. There were some I didn’t want either because they were too expensive or too far away or in what I thought might be a bad neighborhood. I drove a few blocks more and then found a pay phone by a laundry stand. I got out and checked the listings for that part of the city.

The listings here were different because I was in the central part of Los Angeles. I found two listings for hotels that had weekly rates. This was what I wanted because I wouldn’t have to stay there very long if it wasn’t very nice and I would have time to look for a better place. It would be just a short term commitment. I went to the first hotel but didn’t even get out because it looked so bad. It also looked empty and I could see why they only wanted a hundred and fifty a week. I felt a little desperate at this point. It was almost four o’clock and I wasn’t any closer than I had been when I had first arrived.

I headed to the next hotel. I found the street but couldn’t find the number because the street ended suddenly. It wasn’t in a very good neighborhood or so I thought. Actually, everything looked strange. The cars were cheap and old and the gutters were cluttered with trash. I drove a few blocks down and then turned left to where I figured the street would have resumed and in fact it did. I found the place immediately and it was a tall gray five or six story apartment building. There was a big sign outside that indicated that there were vacancies and that weekly rates were available. I stopped the car and turned off the engine and decided then and there that this was the place where I was going to live. It was not a hard decision.

2      

After a while I got a job at a small newspaper. One night after I came home from work I sat down. We had received something in the mail that day promoting a poetry contest. The authors of the newsletter asked us to print the notice but we weren’t going to because our space was just too limited. This letter reminded me of something that I hadn’t thought about in a long while.

During October of my last year in college I had been thinking about Tamma a lot and decided to try and do something special. I wanted to meet her and just walk around the campus with her. So I got out a piece of paper and thought about what would be the best way to ask her out. I didn’t want her to know it was me because I didn’t know how she felt about me or if she remembered me from the year before.

I thought about it for a while and then figured out what I would write. On a blank piece of paper I wrote a short story about a big heavy hippopotamus who couldn’t get his teeth to shine as white as he wanted them to because all of the other hippos had white sparkling teeth and he wanted to fit in. Then I thought about what words and sentences I could use to make it interesting and apparent that I was inviting her to do something with me the next Saturday which was a week away.

After a while I figured it out and I had my story and I used her name, Tamma, as the name of the pretty cockatoo that had come to the hippo’s aid. Here I had invited her without letting on who it was. I made sure I put in an envelope with her name, room number, and dormitory on it. I slipped it in the campus mail before three o’clock which was the last delivery that day on campus.

I had no idea what she would think about it or if she would care. I just wanted to do it because that was how I felt about her. I didn’t want to put my name on it because it would be too forward and I wasn’t sure how she would respond. After I dropped it in the campus mailbox I thought about it for the next week but she didn’t mention anything and I soon forgot about it entirely.

But now, in L.A. many years later, I felt like writing another one. I had Tamma’s address and I could do it anonymously like before.

I wanted to include some hints about my identity. I didn’t want her to think that a complete stranger was trying to send her a message because maybe she would get scared. And I certainly didn’t want Michael, her old boyfriend in college, from hiring a private detective to track it down because he was real possessive like that. However unlikely it seemed, there was a possibility that he had started to write silly poetry to her after finding out that she liked things like that. Me, I didn’t have a knack for stanzas and verses and meters. I didn’t think this scenario about Michael was a strong possibility and I doubted that he had the originality in his soul to come up with something creative.

This letter had to be something special because I hadn’t sent one in such a long time. I wanted it to remind her of my affection for her, of the fact that I still cared. But I didn’t want it to be blunt. I had to keep it tame. So I looked around the city and tried to think of things that would give more hints as to where I was living.

I knew that she knew that I lived in Los Angeles so I knew I’d have to mail it within a city in the area so it wouldn’t have the L.A. return code up near the top. I managed to gather some scattered thoughts and then put a stamp on the postcard and headed out to Culver City where I dropped it in a mailbox. I hoped that the postcard would go to the post office in the city so it wouldn’t get the L.A. area code on it.

On the way home I was stunned by my own behavior. What