"Hey, Kyle," Michael says without looking away from the TV. "Just get off the phone with your virtual girlfriend?"
"Uh-huh," I say as I walk into the linoleum-tiled kitchen and pull open the fridge door. The layout is such that it’s the different type of flooring that delineates the apartment's shared areas from one another. "She's hunkered down and waiting for Harvey to pass. He’s just now rolling in."
From the second shelf, I grab the sack lunch I put together the night before. As an afterthought, I snag an apple and a cup of yogurt from the top shelf too. Breakfast on the way to work. The life of a champion.
"Oh, right," Michael says. He takes a bite of his cereal without lifting the bowl from his chest, milk dribbling off his chin. "I forgot she lives down in Houston. You think she's gonna be okay?"
“I hope so. She lives on a high spot and has been through a few hurricanes before, so I think she should be—“
"Uh-huh. Listen, I know I say this basically every day, but do you ever think about, you know, dating someone real?"
"She is real."
"You know what I mean. Someone you don't just talk to on the computer. Someone you can actually touch and hold and kiss and fu—"
"I'm actually heading down there next week."
"Uh-huh. Haven't you said that before? What if she's not what you expect? What if you get down there and find out she’s actually a 400-pound dude catfishing you?"
"Well, I've seen her in video, but I guess we'll figure it out together if that happens. 400-pound dude or not, I’ll still love her. Anyways, I've got to get going. Have fun watching your movie."
I'm out the door before Michael can respond. Though I know his intentions are good, I just don't feel like hearing it right now. Not that I’m surprised he doesn't understand my relationship with Shannon. Hell, I’d be lying if I said I understood it completely myself. All I knew was that it felt absolutely vital to talk to her, and when I wasn't, she was all I could think about. It didn't matter that we had never met in person. Who cared about something as small as distance when hearts were involved? Love knew no such thing as time and space.
Love? Am I crazy?, I snort to myself as the apartment elevator arrives to whisk me down to the ground floor. Well, I might be, but even if I were I could safely say Michael would never understand a thing like love. All he knew was the life of the trust-fund playboy. The women he dated, the ones he brought over whenever he wasn't vegging out in front of the television, only cared about what he could do for them. Not that I felt bad for him however. I knew he viewed them the exact same way.
So what was it then that drew me so viscerally to Shannon, a woman I had met by complete chance one auspicious afternoon while browsing some random internet forum about cars? If I knew so much about love, why her?
For one, I had been able to tell from the very first few messages we had exchanged that she was kind, something one didn't encounter so very often these days. The type of kind that asked nothing in return, that was just kind because life was too short not to be.
And she was beautiful too, though I hadn't learned that for some months, not until she had sent me a picture after nearly ten weeks of daily email exchange. As beautiful a woman as I’d ever seen.
But there was something else too, some quality of soul she possessed that seemed to speak to the very essence of my being, to some part of me that had, until the moment we met, felt woefully incomplete.
Essence of your being? Man, you must be in love! You sound like a tree you’re so full of sap!
I'm seated in my truck now in the parking garage adjacent to my apartment building, the engine on and the radio softly crooning an old country song. Somehow time has dripped away from me, lost in my thoughts as I’ve been. I have just under twenty minutes left to get to work, which meant I was going to have to drive pretty damn fast if I wanted to make it anywhere near on time.
I pull out of the parking garage, waving at the sleepy attendant as I pass through the gate and into the blossoming sunshine. He's sipping a cup of coffee and staring absentmindedly at one of the walls of his stall turned prison. My wave catches his attention, and his eyes refocus and he smiles and waves back, hitting the button on the console in his booth as he does to raise the second gate and allow me through.
Out on the street, I turn the music up and find my sunglasses in the center console. Though it's early yet, the day is bright, the air near stifling, thought nothing seems to be out of the ordinary. With the sky cloudless, one would never guess a massive hurricane was about to slam into the coast a mere four hours south of here.
Navigating through this neighborhood I know so well, I pull out onto the feeder road of the highway that bounds its northern edge. A minute later, I've merged effortlessly into traffic, my truck one now with the cars of my fellow commuters. It was a ride to hell we could all enjoy together.
"Yep," I say to no one, my voice echoing through the empty cab as I take in the endless line of taillights stretching out in front of me, not in the least bit bothered. Let me be late; who cared? "Must be love."
Else why, I ask as I reach for the radio to turn it up, with how tired and as beat down as I was, would this morning still appear to be so absolutely perfect to me? It must be because this was a special kind of feeling what I was feeling, knowing that there was someone out there in the world thinking of you at the exact same time you were thinking of them. What else could matter when you’d found your person?
Yep, I whisper. My person. What a special feeling indeed.
3.
Shannon
By the time I wake up, the clock is nearing noon and the rain has really started to come down. The wind too is blowing something fierce, the branches of the big tree outside, the same tree whose branches knew my bedroom window, slapping against the sides of the trailer. Still, I know better than to let myself get too worried. I'd been through worse storms than this one and I'd gotten through those just fine. So what was any different about this one? Did I remember Katrina? Or Rita? Or Ike? Rita had been the storm we'd been forced to evacuate for, the storm that had prompted mom and me to swear to one another, however senselessly, that we’d never abandon our home again. This was a promise I intended to keep, no matter how much rain God poured on my head. If I could survive the others, I could survive this one too.
It takes several minutes to muster the energy to roll off the couch; for a while I just lie there and listen to the wind breaking against the trailer. Finally, my belly rumbling, I push myself up and make my way back into the kitchen. The TV is still on and tuned to the local news, though I have the sound muted. Who needed to hear about the details of the storm? One look out the window told you all you needed to know.
I make myself a sandwich of ham, cheese and mayo. It’s not much, but it's all I have the patience to do at the moment. I have enough supplies to last several weeks, not that I anticipated being stuck here nearly that long. In all likelihood, in two days the storm would dissolve inland into just a few bands of heavy rain, and I’d be able to venture out again. Even so, safe was always better than sorry, especially because when all of the evacuees finally did return, it would be the supermarkets they descended upon first. The last thing anyone in their right mind would want to do would be to fight crowds just to get some decent food.