“I’m not inbred, thank you very much. What’s your name?” The boy appeared genuinely interested but Cara refused to let her guard down.
“What’s yours? Bubba, Billy Bob, Billy Ray, or Billy Joe?” She kept a stern, cold face.
“It’s on my name tag.” He pointed to the clipped on piece of plastic hanging on his shirt. “Bryant. My last name is Allens.” The newly introduced boy flashed his brightest smile. “Your turn.”
“Cara Creed.” She quickly responded, partly out of embarrass-ment.
“I like the alliteration.” Bryant flashed another huge smile.
“I’m shocked that you know what that is.” She casually threw the comment into the air.
“We’re not all stupid.” His smile faded. “Do you know how insulting you are?”
Cara snapped back. “Just take my parents order before I ask to speak to your manager.” Then she walked off, finding a booth in the corner out of sight.
Bryant watched her walk away and felt a sly grin creep across his face. Her parents blocked his view of her as Jean and David stepped up to the register. His thoughts remained on the new girl as her legal guardians ordered.
Cara felt the heat radiate off her face. How could an ignorant Alabamian make her feel such shame at her behavior. Her superiority complex had always prevented her from feeling embarrassment before. She sulked at her table even after being joined by David and Jean. Neither asked her what was wrong. As far as they were concerned, their offspring was just demonstrating her normal behavior.
***
That night, Cara sat on the carpet in front of her bare computer desk and pulled several large cardboard boxes open. Long strips of packing tape gave up their hold on the brown flaps shutting the top. One box contained a CPU tower which she lifted up and placed on the left side of the desk. The next box contained a monitor and stand that sat centered on the flat polished wood surface. The final box contained a large scanner and printer combination which took its place to the right of the monitor. In a plastic bag sealed tight with a twist tie, Cara found a plethora of small parts, wires, and cords that would connect her devices.
The process of hooking a mouse and keyboard to a tower required little attention; neither did plugging in a USB port. So her mind was free to explore other things. She thought about her room in New York with its tasteful bookshelves and elegant lack of decoration. No posters of the newest Hollywood heartthrob adorned her walls. She was above that. To her shame though, she was not above the teenage fantasies of romance and passion. She distinctly recalled standing among her labeled boxes lamenting her parent’s decision to move, but stopping to wonder if maybe her status as a Northerner would help her socially. Would she meet an educated transplant such as herself? They could discuss the theater, philosophy, cinema, literature. He would be sensitive, but strong and confident. He would be able to make her laugh, but could stop and become serious when she needed him to be.
Lost in thought, her hands worked all through the reminiscent daydream and when all the appropriate cords slid into the appropriate ports, she pushed the power button. The fan whirled to life, cooling the components inside while a small green light flickered on the front plastic casing. The operating system could take two minutes to boot up, so her mind drifted off again.
This mystery man would be the type that would not buy flowers. He would be too practical for that. What was she supposed to do with the flowers for the rest of the date? She could not carry them around all night. She didn’t have her own car to leave them in. So what would he do in order to win her heart? Despite her intelligence, Cara’s fantasies lacked life. The mindless imaginings of her dream man usually involved lots of talking. Cara never really expressed her emotions, with the exception of anger. So, the most romantic thing her dream man could do is listen to her and make her feel comfortable enough to open up.
The computer idled. All start up programs were up and running on a screen marked with fingerprints and smudges that never seemed to wipe away. She moved the mouse over to the internet connection icon and double-clicked. An error message filled the screen.
Page Could Not Be Found.
“Son of a bitch!” She croaked out and pushed herself back from the screen. She exited her room and stomped down the stairs toward the culprit.
Cara walked into the living room where her father was watching the news and her mother read through a Stephen King novel. She cleared her throat and made her announcement. “Why can’t I get an internet connection?”
Both her parents looked up from their respective entertainments and gave her a cursory glance. David finally spoke. “The town only has one service provider and I haven’t contacted them yet. We have only been here a day.”
Cara huffed. “I need to check my email. Can’t you call them now?”
Mr. Creed laughed. “Who are you expecting an email from? I thought you prided yourself on being a loner.”
Cara’s face reddened with rage. “You don’t pay me enough attention to know! I could have an Internet boyfriend who’s thirty-six, married, and lives in Wisconsin!”
“Well, you wouldn’t have to resort to that if you could meet people normally.” He father retorted with a sneer.
“All the social problems that I have came directly from you. I think being an asshole might be genetic.” She almost shouted at him.
“I’ve always been respectful to those who respect me. You’ve never been tried it though, so that is completely alien to you.” Then he picked up the remote and pushed volume up until nothing could compete with the thunderous voice of Dan Rather.
Cara stomped out of the room, intentionally slamming each foot down causing a dry ‘thwack’ Luckily for her, it would be the last Friday night that she spent in solitude.
Back in the safety of her seclusion, Cara reached into yet another unpacked box and plucked out a thin paperback novel. She began reading
The War of the Worlds
by H.G. Wells. There was nothing like the classics. She had read it only once before and found a sick pleasure in the fact that humanity was helpless against the onslaught of far superior beings; humans needed to be taken down a peg or two. The race still survived, but it was more due to random chance than anything the individuals did. That was more like real life to her. Random chance was almost a god unto itself in the world she knew. People died due to traffic accidents, shootings, disease, and millions of other variations on nature’s clean-up process. She saw no reasoning or divine plan in the everyday workings of the world. Her reflections on the idea of an interventionist God fell between atheistic on her bad days and simple agnosticism on her good days.
Cara may have been incorrect on H.G. Wells’ beliefs on God, having never read any biographical information on him, but she saw her point of view in that novel. Unfortunately, she felt little comfort in those beliefs this night. The protagonist wandered aimlessly until the invading force of aliens simply died by a lack of resistance to common Earth bacteria. Thinking about the hero, isolated and fighting for his pathetic survival in a world gone berserk, prompted the thought “He doesn’t even have any companionship. At least if he had a wife or even a friend, the end would not seem so . . . lonely.” The young girl glanced around her room, letting the packed boxes and barren walls speak for her. She realized her heart ached. The urge to go back downstairs crept through her. Through force of will, she stayed on the bed with the book clasped in her hands. “I don’t need them. I’m perfectly content up here with my intellectual pursuits. I just need some new reading material and I’ll be fine.” She made a mental note to check out the town’s public library in the next few days. Eventually, she felt her eyes tire and let the book fall closed on her chest. There was no need to save the page; she had read it before. Her eyelids slid closed and her breathing slowed. In a few moments, she descended into the little slice of death that people call “sleep”.
***
Bryant left McDonald’s for his meager lunch break Saturday night. After eating the previous twelve consecutive breaks in the lobby of his place of employment, he desperately wanted a change. Pizza was always appetizing. The very moment that he imagined a personal pan from Pizza Hut, he knew he should have phoned ahead and placed an order. Ten to fifteen minutes to cook the dish cut his break in half.
As he lamented not planning ahead, he thought about another lunch sitting alone in a restaurant. In his fantasies, love finds him. That means that he no longer eats by himself, he no longer has to put up with the false sympathy; he no longer has to pretend to be friends with people he doesn’t like (because when someone’s in love, none of that matters). Love would distract him from the pain of his past.
While driving the paltry quarter mile to Pizza Hut, his mind broached the taboo topic of his father. It was a natural progression from the innocuous thought “It feels good to drive. There’s nothing like the open road.” It was one of his Dad’s favorite sayings. He could not resist using it every time he got behind the wheel.
Mister Allens had been a loving man who was never wealthy but always smiled. Bryant (and everyone else who ever met his father) remembered his wide grin, oblivious to the knowledge that his life would be a short one. Dad had a romantic vision of how one should live his or her life that Bryant feared may have infected him as well. The man’s prize possession was a big chopper. On that raucous motorcycle, he had wandered up and down highways, interstates, and dirt roads trying to see America. He looked in every backwater town and every big city searching for something. What it was, not even he knew.
When Bryant would ask what Daddy had been looking for, the man flashed his smile and said the same thing every time. “I didn’t know, but I just knew something somewhere would end my roaming.” He would get a far-away look in his eyes imagining the end of his wanderlust. “Then I pulled into a tiny little town called Fayette.” Bryant slightly mouthed the words, having heard the story countless times. “I saw a girl in a sundress. She stood by the road with her white purse clutched in front of her and looked lost. She glanced up and down the road, expecting something any moment when I rode right up to her. She was shy, I could tell. I asked her who she was waiting for. She said that her friends had left her and she was looking for someone she knew to pick her up. I said ‘Well, you don’t know me but I’ll take you anywhere you need to go.’ She said that she’d never been on a motorbike before. I told her ‘I’ve never had a girl as pretty as you on my bike before.’ I didn’t have two helmets so I let her wear the one in my travel bag. I never used it anyway. I blinked and two years had gone by. Your mom told me that I could ride away if I felt the call of the road again, but every time I drove away, my hog pointed right back to Fayette.” Bryant’s dad would bounce him on his knee and finish the story with “We had you, and looking down into that crib, I understood that everything I was searching for was right here.”
Bryant remembered the ritual well. He also remembered his mother’s fear that one weekend Dad would take his bike out on a regular Saturday drive and never come back. She was right, but not in the way that she thought. One nondescript afternoon in the thirteenth year of Bryant’s life, a distracted motorist nudged Mr. Allens’ bike off the road. A few hours later in the Fayette emergency room, the loving father breathed his last, leaving a grieving mother and a confused boy. That unabashedly happy smile would never adorn that man’s face again except in still, lifeless photographs from a less sorrowful time.
Bryant wiped gathering moisture away from his eyes and parked his truck. Glancing at the trademarked red roof of his destination, he decided that he wasn’t hungry. A nauseous feeling turned his stomach bitter towards a normally delectable dish.
Without enthusiasm, he unbuckled and trotted up to the door. Peering through the glass, he discovered that the lobby was crowded with families sitting around steaming pans of pizza. Saturday night was not the best time to try for a family restaurant, but he decided to risk it. He had wasted too much time to go elsewhere. He stepped inside and caught the smell of mozzarella and tomato sauce. As his mouth watered due to the olfactory input, he decided that he might be hungry after all.
A portly woman adorned in a red and black uniform stepped up to the counter. “What’s the name?” She pleasantly asked.
“Actually, I need to place an order to go.” Bryant responded.
“Okay, shoot.” She pulled a notepad and pen from the pocket of her apron.
“Personal Pan, Italian sausage.” He quickly rattled off.
“Give us about fifteen minutes.” Then she disappeared into the back of the restaurant.
The jingle of a bell turned Bryant’s head. Looking at the entrance, he smiled. Cara stood in front of him with a look of surprise. “Not you.” She poked out her lower lip in a pout that Bryant found adorable.
The smitten young man couldn’t speak for a moment. Cara scowled at him during the silence. “What’s the matter? Is your mind as slow as your Southern drawl?”
Bryant’s smile faded and he shrugged. “You were cute up until you opened your mouth.” He turned and held his head high as he found an empty booth away from her. He had been attracted to her ever since the first moment he saw her, but she insisted on being a “my accent means I’m smarter than you” snob. Fine, if she was like that, it was her loss. Bryant did not believe in forcing his company on anyone and, when around people he did not care for, became extremely reserved. He had too much dignity to throw himself at people that didn’t care whether or not he was present. However, her slight did hurt, and he nursed his newest pain, wondering if he would be able to eat.
Cara watched him walk away and felt as if her legs had been kicked out from under her. He had greeted her with a smile and she had launched into an unprovoked attack. With a pang of regret, she turned from his retreating back and faced the counter. The look on his face bothered her. He had shown so much pleasure at the serendipity of their running into each other again so soon, and she had destroyed it. “Really,” she thought, “how often does someone act genuinely happy to see you?”