I promised a friend I would write a story. Its a true story. Actually, its a series of true stories. A difficult set of stories for me to tell. Difficult for me to tell as me, so I will tell it as someone else. In the third person.
It will be a long story, so I will write it in parts; in parts, also because, even now, I'm not sure of the order in which it will go. I'm not even sure of when these stories occurred. Who actually categorizes their memories? Who thinks, I'll have to remember this happened on this date? We always think we will be able to corroborate our memories shared with others.
Are they even really stories? No, they are more like little items in a shadow box carefully arranged. Like mementos arranged on shelves next to the bed. Occasionally taken out and fondled, shared with others.
Its been years since I've written any fiction so please be kind. Here is some of my story.
"The Things He Said To Me"
She met him for the first time sometime in 2004. Fall, she thinks. After August, perhaps September or October. Shortly after what she called "the Victor incident" When she saw him she thought he was Victor sitting at the end of the bar of the neighborhood pub. But no, Victor didn't wear glasses. That's not why she went up to him that first time; to say hello to an old friend. No, not that at all.
He looked solitary, alone. It was difficult for her to describe without resorting to cliches: "alone in a crowd", "like he lost his last friend", "like a beaten dog". He kept his elbows close to his sides, his hands in plain sight. He was sitting with two of the regulars of the pub, a couple. When they walked away he seemed to contract. It was as if he was trying to take up as little space as possible. To be small. To be unseen.
He reminded her of the old television show in which the producers paired an attractive, popular person with a geek. The geeks all got makeovers, they now looked like the beauties on the outside but inside they hadn't changed yet. Still socially awkward. He was like that, externally changed, internally the same.
She did go up to him, she could never understand why. Later he would ask her, "Why me?"
"I don't know," she answered. "I wish I knew. I don't pick my friends, they are selected for me."
She sat near him. They talked about cell phones. He said his was nothing special. "At least you have a color screen, mine is black and white." She asked to see his phone, thinking he probably doesn't have many numbers in it.
Why did I think that? She would add her number and perhaps a silly name like "Lance A Boyle" or "Ophelia Payne". He gave her the phone but she failed, terribly, to put any number in it. He wanted the phone back; he was leaving with the couple.
"Sorry, I think I messed something up,"she said handing him back the phone.
"What did you do to my phone, woman?"
It was the last thing he said to her for, how long? Two, three years? Later, she would ask him if he remembered that night. He didn't.
"Sorry I yelled at you," he said after she told him.
It was a phone call late one Saturday night that made them friends, not just people who knew each other from the pub. The phone call was from a number she didn't recognize, a local area code and prefix, but with no name attached. She ignored the call. "Probably just a wrong number." Then she thought better of it, called the number back. No answer. What if it was her sister calling from a pay phone because she lost her house keys? No, she would just come over.
She got a call from the same number the next day as she waited in the Starbucks for her coffee. She answered this time. 'How you doin'," a voice said. The "how" sounding more like "ow".
"Hello?" she repeated.
"Ow you doin?"
"Who is this?"
"Its me."
"Oh, sorry, I didn't recognize your voice," she said.
"Forgot about me so soon?"
"I could never forget about you," she said. "Hey, what are you doing? I'm across the street. Come on over and sit with me, its nice out. I'll buy you a fancy coffee drink."
"I don't like coffee," he said.
"Then I'll buy you an iced tea. Just come over."
She watched him as he walked across the street. He had lost weight. As they talked she found out life had been hard for him since the pub, they one they knew each other from, had closed. He had worked there. He had no electricity, no phone service. He had called from the mystery number by running a wire from the phone box in the building. "But I can only call certain numbers," he said. She pictured him alone in his apartment with his pirated phone line, running through every number in his phone list.
They talked about the break-ups with what she later refereed to as "his nut-job girlfriends". One who he had to get out of his apartment by putting her bottle of vodka outside the door then slamming it shut when she went out to retrieve it. The other simply disappearing in the middle of the night. "They were just pieces of meat," he said.
"Nice attitude, no wonder they left you."
"Only one. The only girlfriend I've never had a fight with."
This would become a pattern with him. He called her whenever there was trouble with one of the nuts. Why is he asking my advice? I haven't had a date since... Well since 2007. But that's another story. But I'm still counting it as a date.
They eventually got to the reason, she thought, for his call. He had some one's old cast-off computer but it didn't work. "Can you fix it?"
"I don't know, I can try," she said.
She did get the computer to start up. It was dusty from sitting in a garage for months. I had a CRT monitor - huge. He had it set up on a dresser. He opened one of the drawers and put a board across it creating a keyboard shelf. He pulled an executive office chair up to it and put his ashtray and drink on the shelf. "Now that's what I'm talkin' 'bout."
"Your man-cave," she said.
She set up shortcuts on the desktop for him. "What's a shortcut," he asked.
"A quick way to access your programs."
"Programs, I can't use any programs. I'm not as smart as you, I'm stupid."
"You're not stupid. You'll pick it up. Remember, there are no stupid users, only stupid systems."
"I like that," he said.
When she left that night she told him to play Solitaire. "It will help you to get use to using the mouse. That's why the program is there, to help people use the mouse." When she returned a few days later, he told her had played Solitaire until he won, three times. He had also changed the desktop picture, and carefully arranged the shortcuts she created around the edges of the screen. "Did you see what I did?"
"Yes, you are a good student."
Enough for now dear reader. I have succeeded in telling myself a bedtime story. Keep checking back for more parts.
Comments, suggestions, and prof-reading welcome. Anything to make the story as good as the truth was.
