The Only Sure Thing

When Helen told everyone at work that she had spotted a dolphin wearing a sun hat not far from the Waikiki Natatorium War Memorial in Hawai‘i, naturally no one believed her. But she knew what she had seen — a full-grown spinner dolphin bobbing up waist-high in the shallow ocean water with a floppy white summer hat resting smack dab on top of its perfectly sloped head.

“How do you know it was a spinner dolphin?” Darryl asked. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs. “I mean, how do you know it wasn’t a bottlenose or even a porpoise?”

“You know a lot about dolphins, Darryl?” Helen asked in return.

“I know their heads aren’t suited for sun hats.”

Helen typed in the Anthropology Department’s request for an upgraded conference room projector and then coded it accordingly.

“I don’t know a thing about dolphins.” Helen’s newest co-worker Carrie leaned around her computer monitor to make eye contact with Helen. “So I’m totally curious how you knew what kind of dolphin it was.”

“It had teeth.” Helen hit Send on the request and then closed the acquisition window on her computer screen.

“You could see its teeth?” Darryl asked.

“Yes I could, Darryl. I counted 45 on top and 65 on the bottom.” Helen scooted her office chair over to her file cabinet. “It obviously had an underbite.”

“Seriously?” Darryl asked.

“Seriously.” Helen’s voice had its usual busy monotone. “I think somewhere around molar 41, it had a crown. Probably had a root canal or something from last year. The tooth looked like it was definitely made from last year’s porcelain.”

Darryl and Carrie shared a few puzzled glances, none of which escaped Helen’s notice.

“A dolphin root canal?” Carrie finally said. Her voice was soft and tentative, like she didn’t want to hurt Helen’s feelings by suggesting the older woman might be confused.

“I’m kidding, Carrie.” Helen jotted down the phone number for Pristine Tech, the overpriced tech vendor owned by the provost’s brother-in-law. “I just assumed it was a spinner because spinners are notorious for playing with things that they find in the ocean.”

Carrie chortled, hand to her chest. “Oh my god, I thought you were serious for a minute. I was like, how does she know so much about dolphin dentistry?”

Darryl swiveled his chair back to face his computer screen. “So, seeing a dolphin in a hat was the strangest thing you saw on your vacation?”

Helen shook her head. “No, not the strangest thing. You asked what the best thing was.”

“You can’t do that, Helen,” Carrie said. “You can’t hint that there was something even stranger than a dolphin in a hat and then not tell us what it is.”

“I can’t?” Helen said. She picked up the desk phone’s receiver and dialed. She waited for Pristine Tech’s operator to answer the phone with their standard greeting before she identified herself and what she needed.

The voice on the other end of the phone was perky: “One quote for an overhead conference room projector headed your way, ma’am. Would you like us to send you a hard copy in addition to the emailed copy?”

“No need,” Helen replied. “I can turn an email attachment into a hardcopy fairly easily. It’s one of my superpowers, actually.”

“You can always just print it out, too,” the perky voice said.

“Right,” Helen said. “But if I don’t use my superpowers once a week, they’re revoked, so …”

When Helen hung up the phone, both Darryl and Carrie were staring at her.

“What now?” Helen asked.

“Think that person knew you were only kidding?” Carrie asked. Her furrowed brow appeared almost poorly drawn on.

Helen shrugged. If there was one thing Helen hated in this world, it was adding “I’m only kidding” to an obviously kidding statement. She’d already done it once today; she wasn’t about to do it a second time. People should be able to tell the difference between a joke and real life without being explicitly told. If they can’t, that’s on them.

Helen’s cellphone chimed, signaling she had a voicemail. She hadn’t even known that someone had called. She checked her phone’s caller ID and saw it was her soon-to-be ex-husband, George. She rubbed at the sudden ache in her lower stomach that always struck whenever conflict was near. She’d listen to his message later. When her eyes were better rested for rolling.

“So, then, what was the strangest thing you did see in Hawai‘i?” Darryl asked.

“I swear, Darryl, you’re like an investigative reporter this morning,” Helen said. “You writing a book or something?”

“Maybe I am,” Darryl said.

“Well leave this chapter out.” Helen signed onto her email and found the quote from Pristine Tech.

Darryl turned back to his computer screen once again. “You know, Helen, sarcasm is actually a form of bullying.”

Helen hit Print on the emailed quote. “So is endlessly accusing people of bullying.”

“I’m not going to lie, my curiosity is so piqued right now,” Carrie said. “For real.” She paused a couple of beats and then blurted out, “Okay, I can’t take it, Helen. Please just tell us about the strangest thing you saw. If it wasn’t a dolphin wearing a hat, what was it?”

As Helen walked over to the printer, she said, “It was a man coming out of the ocean in a full tuxedo. That was the strangest thing I saw.”

“Some guy went swimming in a tuxedo?” Darryl asked.

Helen shrugged. “Well, Darryl, my first thought was that he could have rented it at some underwater rental shop, but those underwater shops usually put the tux in a shopping bag rather than let you just swim right out of the underwater store in it.” For a brief moment, she considered telling them how profound the image actually was — a man surviving a good ass-kicking from the world’s most beautiful ocean only to bow in seeming gratitude for the whole experience afterward — but she quickly decided her office mates didn’t need to know her that well.

“Why do I even bother engaging in conversations with you?” Darryl said, shaking his full head of rebellious curls.

“Maybe he was at a wedding on a boat and he fell off,” Carrie said, “and then he had to swim to shore.”

Helen nodded. “As good an explanation as any, I suppose.”

“What other rational explanation could there be?” Carrie asked.

Helen shrugged again. “Beats me. As soon as he was completely out of the water, he turned back to face the ocean, and he bowed to it. Then he trotted across the sand and into the hotel parking lot. I lost sight of him after that.”

“Bizarre,” Darryl said.

“Yep.” Helen took her newly printed quote from the printer tray and returned to her desk. “Equally bizarre is that you have no problem believing that story, Darryl, but a dolphin in a hat is simply too much for you to accept.”

“Because people are strange,” Darryl said. “Dolphins are not.”

Back at her desk, Helen picked up her cellphone and pressed play on her voicemail. The thought of her cheating husband’s message just sitting in her voicemail inbox like it had a right to take up space in her life was distracting her. Might as well get it over with now so she could delete it from her life for good.

“Helen, it’s George. Listen … I know we agreed that I’d pay for your Hawai‘i trip, but Tanya thinks you went a little overboard and took advantage of the situation. She feels that by punishing me for my cheating, you’re also punishing her, and she says it’s not a good look on you. So, basically, we’re willing to pay half of the costs now. Split it 50/50. I think that’s still pretty reasonable, considering I didn’t actually go on the trip myself. Call me back so we can discuss.”

Helen deleted the message. She knew George would try to weasel his way out of paying for the trip that was supposed to be their anniversary gift to each other until he went and fouled everything up. She had also had a feeling that he’d let that new gal of his convince him not to hold up his end of the deal — he always was the soggiest of soggy milquetoasts — which is exactly why Helen went out of her way to collect a couple dozen extra receipts from strangers while she was in Hawai‘i. She had successfully jacked up the appearance of the entire trip’s cost to double what she had actually paid out-of-pocket. That way if George and his way-past-mid-life-crisis-affair eventually only paid half of the entire bill, Helen would still be making out just fine. Of course, she couldn’t let herself care too much one way or the other. Because caring too much only meant the emotional terrorists win.

“I can’t wait to go to Hawai‘i someday,” Carrie said. “It seems so magical.”

“Go to the big island if you want magical,” Helen said. “Oahu if you want odd.”

“I want it all,” Carrie said. “The sun, the water, the volcanoes, the men swimming in tuxedos, and the dolphins in summer hats. All of it.”

“Then you’ll want to marry a cheater with a nice 401(k) that he can borrow against when he ‘accidentally’ falls into the pants of a woman half your age,” Helen said.

Once again, Carrie’s confusion furrowed her brow.

“I’m kidding,” Helen said. “Never marry for money. Marry for the last name. That sticks around so much longer.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you have a weird outlook on life, Helen?” Darryl said.

Helen stamped the projector quote SUBMITTED. “You know, telling someone they’re weird is only slightly less irritating than asking your emotionally devastated wife to pay half of your infidelity mea-culpa trip just to keep your young mistress from packing on any new frown lines. Those frown lines are coming, Darryl. They’re the only sure thing in this world.” She turned away from her co-workers and dabbed the corner of her eye with a ring-tanned ring finger. “Time is a dick, Darryl. A thoughtless misogynistic dick.”

Darryl gave Carrie an uneasy glance before returning to his work.

After several moments of unbearable silence, Carrie finally said, “So how was your hotel, Helen?”