Chapter 21 #2
On my break, I look up information about how to take the learner’s permit test at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. I won’t be accepting rides from Hal anymore.
I block him and feel a tiny bit more relaxed.
When I get home and lie awake in bed in the dark, I wonder if Shawna has already sent the friend request to Nick.
If they’ve already had a nice conversation about their kids.
If Shawna asked him what he got up to last night and he replied, “Not much, how about you?” because he doesn’t consider a parking lot hookup “much.” I bet they are sociosexually compatible.
I’m straining to hear any sign of Nick through the wall. Maybe he’s in the other room watching Star Trek. Maybe he’s asleep. Maybe he’s at Shawna’s.
If you listen hard enough, you can convince yourself that you hear anything. I swear I detect a small mechanical click. A lamp? A light switch? A door latch? He must have entered his room.
I wonder if he has a bed frame. Clean sheets. Multiple pillows? His bedroom door was closed the night Romily and I came over, so I couldn’t check, and holy shit I’m losing my mind right now.
I really want to call Romily and ask about the statistical likelihood that Shawna just entered Nick’s bedroom. But there’s a pretty good chance Nick would be able to hear my half of the conversation and it hasn’t even been twelve hours since I last embarrassed myself in front of him.
I tap my fingers against the wall, make a fist, and gently knock: three rapid knocks, three slow, three rapid.
For twenty seconds of silence I feel like an idiot.
Then my phone rings. From a caller that isn’t marked “likely spam.” I’m baffled.
Who was the last man who called me? I barely remember how to answer a call. Hal and I have spoken on the phone maybe once in the last three years.
“Hello?” My voice is all suspicion and paranoia. I associate phone calls with flat tires. Mishaps. Panicked pleas for help.
“Hi,” he says. It feels wrong to have his voice this close to my ear.
“Is something wrong?” I picture him pacing outside swinging emergency room doors, raking his hand through his hair, maybe banging a fist on the window while an extremely attractive young resident calls for ten cc’s of something. “Did Kira get hurt?”
“Kira? No? She’s at her mom’s.” He pauses. “Wait, why would you think she got hurt?”
“Why else would you call me?”
He laughs. “Because you just knocked SOS on our shared wall.”
“It’s the only thing I know in Morse code.” Jesus, did I subconsciously send a cry for help? “Wait, do you also know Morse code?”
“Just a little bit.”
“Every time I talk to you, I feel so unprepared for a zombie apocalypse. You’d have built an insulated bunker with a nonleaking dishwasher and I would have perished immediately.”
“I’d let you stay in the bunker.”
“Oh no, I’d be a terrible choice with my skillset. I don’t think preserving the works of an obscure self-taught Italian artist will be top priority when we’re barricading ourselves against the onslaught of zombies.”
“We’ll probably need someone to rescue all the physical evidence of humanity when we don’t have access to Wi-Fi. And you can draw comics. You’re extremely vital.”
I’m confident those two words have never been said to me. In fact, I think I was specifically called nonessential when I was “exited” from a remote assistant job after a week.
“So you just want to…talk? On the phone?” Just bringing the device to my ear causes my heart rate to increase.
“Yes?” He pauses. “Is that okay? Should I hang up and knock on the wall instead?”
“It’s just…Usually I text? I’m better at conversations when I can overthink my responses before they reach the other person.”
“Oh,” he says, and he’s so accommodating I wonder if he’s about to offer to hang up and send a text instead.
“Well, I like to talk. There’s less miscommunication when you can hear someone’s voice.
Why decipher words on a screen when we could just have a conversation?
And if we text, you’ll notice all the typos from my fat thumbs. ”
He’s right to be concerned about the typos—that is the sort of thing that can give me the ick. On the other hand, now I’m thinking about his hands again.
“I stopped by your apartment today,” he says. “I lent your mom my ladder.”
“You didn’t knock on my door.”
“There was some very deep snoring coming from your side of the wall this morning,” he says—to my horror. “I figured you were still asleep.”
I fib. “That was Houdini snoring.”
“The truth is, I didn’t want to ambush you. See? Very casual.”
“Extremely.” I’m picturing that goddamn continuum again.
“I had a very interesting conversation with your mom,” he says. “She really seems to want me to meet a friend of hers.”
I pause before asking, “Are you going to? I mean, do you want to meet her? Because it’s okay if you do.” I’m aware of how fast I’m talking now. “You don’t need to feel weird about it. I’m sure Shawna’s a really nice person—”
“So you know Shawna?”
“Not personally,” I reply. I’m not even sure my mom has actually met her. “But I think you should at least have…like a conversation?” My voice rises at the end of that statement like I’m very much not sure I want them to have a conversation. “You probably have a lot in common.”
There’s a long silence. Maybe I’m listening too hard for sounds I want to hear, but I think he opens his mouth to respond and then hesitates.
“No one’s ever tried to set me up before,” he finally says. “Should I feel flattered? Or like your mom is worried about my ability to meet women on my own?”
“She thinks you’re a very nice man. And it’s a truth universally acknowledged that the very nice single dad living next door must be in want of a wife.”
“What?” he laughs.
“It’s a Jane Austen thing,” I mumble. “Did you ever read Pride and Prejudice?”
“I haven’t. But I listen to the score from the movie sometimes.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. It’s very relaxing,” he says. “I have the CD somewhere.”
“The CD?” I laugh. “Okay, Grandpa.”
“Hey, someday when the streaming model collapses and you lose instant access to every album you love, I’ll be in here listening to my physical media with uncompressed audio and high bit rate.”
“And I’ll be in here,” I reply, “pulling up my ‘old man yells at cloud’ meme.”
He laughs and I feel that little spark of delight again.
“By the way, I’m going to get my learner’s permit tomorrow,” I say. “Wish me luck on that multiple-choice test.”
“Want to practice after your shift?” he asks. “I’ll bring the orange traffic cones and we can work on more advanced maneuvers.”
“You, me, a dark, empty parking lot. What could go wrong?”
“Just thousands of dollars’ worth of damage to my car,” he replies.
We say good night and hang up. In the dark and quiet, with no other distractions, I let my mind go.
PANEL 1: In a modest bedroom, on a mattress on top of a real bed frame, retired Nite Owl II? [Author’s note: brainstorm bearded characters for reference] lies on his back, surrounded by CD jewel boxes, listening to the score from Pride and Prejudice (2005).