“How many interviews have you done?” Galen asked, to revert the discussion back to Darcy. Apparently he didn’t want to talk about his passionate hatred for interviewing. Parochial, philosophical questions about when you created something for mankind and world peace or about when you saved a helpless animal from danger, those types of questions were a waste of breath to Galen. “My head hurts. We should talk about something else,” Galen said. “I don’t think I’ll ever not hate interviews and suck at them. The end. That’s my story. I’ll never get a job if I have to get through a stupid interview.”
“What have you been doing for work since you graduated high school?”
“Contract work. From home. I have some college, but most of what I do I’ve learned from other people or on my own.”
“Oh, my,” Darcy said. “Nothing steady?”
“Not really. I get computers and they get me,” Galen said. “When did you say your sister is due?”
Darcy paused. “Uh. June 9th.” She had told him that already, hadn’t she? She was sure she had. Did he just not pay attention? “Why?”
“Well, you’re worried about getting back, but what’s wrong with pushing the shower to a later time?”
He said that as though it were a brilliant suggestion she just hadn’t thought of. Of course. You can tell all the RSVPs to show up hours later. Right. Piece of cake.
Darcy studied him a moment. She knew she probably looked pissed without trying too hard.
He promptly said, “Never mind. Toss that suggestion.”
“How ever did you know?” Darcy’s tone couldn’t hide sarcasm. She was terrible at those deceptive type games, like Balderdash and she was especially horrible at Mafia. She couldn’t hide how she felt. Her inflection, her expressions always gave her away.
“How you’re looking at me. I’ve seen that same look. I’m positive.”
Darcy clicked her tongue. “There will be no moving the arrangements I’ve poured and cemented. Weeks of work and nearly killing several people. Seriously. I thought I would never live down my mother. She acts like I’m planning Lila’s entire life. Oh. So. Speaking of mommy dearest, what if yours asks questions about who you met in San Fran? You don’t want your sister getting in trouble after sticking her neck out for you,” Darcy said. “You gotta protect her. She’s stuck living close to your mother.”
“My mother won’t ask questions as long as I don’t come home.”
Darcy rolled her eyes. “You’re not even a little worried about your mother?” Darcy asked.
“Does a dating app really work? I mean, how does anyone know who can be happy or compatible together? No software can figure that out.” He said.
Did he really care what she did for work? Probably not. Did she care what he thought of her job? Yes and no. It wasn’t glamorous, especially for someone with a degree. She knew she should be doing much better, but she just wasn’t. She felt like she was intelligent. Hard working. Inquisitive. Innovative. A problem solver. So what the hell was wrong with her job choice? Her career choice, if she could call what she had as a career even, what was her deal? Pretend career. That was it. She had a pretend career. And a non-existent love life even though she worked for a freaking dating app company. Shouldn’t she move on?
“I think Swain does a very good job at sorting out compatible people but we work hard to make it better. Process improvement.”
“Oh my,” Galen said.
“And you’re avoiding my question,” Darcy said.
“My mother isn’t here to worry me for once.”
Darcy said, “You must be at least a little concerned about your sister.”
“Quit your job and start with the CIA. Interrogation. You’ll fit right in.”
“Hey. I only want to help.” Darcy said. “Your comment was hurtful.”
“It was a compliment. You’re very good at interrogation. Waterboarding can be taught.”
“Stop. You’re not even a little worried? You’ve been off and on college and working from home. No wonder your mother is losing her cool. She will ask. Trust me. That kind of woman likes to control everything.”
“Okay, fine. I’m more worried about Kat.”
Darcy turned her head, letting her hair fall to one side. “This is your girlfriend, right? The best friend whose really your girlfriend but you don’t call her that.” He upgraded instantly if he had a girlfriend, because that meant he was wanted, but that meant he was off the market, which was bad, but it felt kinda pathetic if he had no one, like a cafe without a line. “I thought she knew about the wedding.”
“She does. Judgmental tone, thank you for visiting. And no, she’s not my girlfriend. We’ve been friends forever and I don’t think she’s into me.”
Darcy made a face and she didn’t care, even if her expression made her look a little stuck up. “I’ll bet she is all into you.” Then she considered his employment and living situation and rethought that answer.
Galen seemed resolved, absolute, “She wanted to come and it wouldn’t work and she was mad that I was going alone.”
“So she’s not buying the idea that you’re going to see your cousins and have fun without her, is she?”
“Not at all. She got miffed that I was leaving her out, even though I couldn’t readily afford her ticket and she didn’t have the money either.”
“You must really want to go to this wedding, if you’re risking your girlfriend and your sister’s life and your mother’s controlling nature,” Darcy said. “You want to see San Francisco that badly?”
“My cousin Kim kinda talked me into it. I’ve not seen that family in years and I wished things had been different. It’s complicated. My mom’s half sister is my aunt Simone and they’ve not gotten along in years.”
“I would have brought Kat with me, if it were me,” Darcy said.
Then Darcy’s mind wandered to that alternate reality, as if she could create it. If Galen had brought Kat with him, they would be talking, leaving Darcy alone. Who would have found her ticket, then?
She would be sitting in the airport alone, while everyone else talked with other people, connected with them, gossiped or maybe spoke on the phone with loved ones they were going to visit. She’d have no one? She concluded she would have found someone else, though she had no idea who that might be. Who else would have found her ticket and then found her in a crowded airport? What if Galen had found it and it created that awkward moment when you meet someone and think for a nanosecond––just maybe––then you realize he’s with his girlfriend and you are shit out of luck. Just another dagger in the back. And your life sucks.
Galen said, “I admit, I like that idea. Sort of. It wouldn’t be fun, but I would have gotten to…I don’t know.” Galen finished his coffee and watched the shop’s caffeine line, fifty people deep, stretch past the newsstand next door. Darcy could see how he was odd, being in a crowd and constantly distracted. “Kat is such a good, important friend to me. I guess. I want someone better than me for her. It’s strange. We’ve gone out before, just as friends. People ask and I never know what to say.”
“Still. She’s offended that you left without her.” Darcy said, watching snow crews work a beat, willing them to become magical and clear the snow faster than humanly possible.
“She understood but she was upset about it,” Galen said. “The trouble is, if she were my girlfriend, then I would be totally stuck taking her and it all goes to a new level. It’s game playing.”
“She’s hurt. You should bring her a gift. Maybe take pictures of it at different places you visit and send them to her so she knows you’re always thinking about her.”
Galen watched her a moment and then said, “You should be a relationship counselor. My parents went to one of those, once. They were nice to each other for all of a week. So you could say it sort of worked?”
Eight
Galen
Galen agreed to practice interviewing. Again. He agreed that he might learn a few pointers about how
to be more calm and collected. Structured.
Darcy was fresh with relationship counseling advice, now that he had confessed about Kat. Dating terrified him. Marriage wasn’t a solution in his mind, it was a new complication.
Galen said, “For the record, not everyone should get married, just because they can.”
He met her all of two hours earlier on a flight delay and here she was, throwing out major conclusions about his life. How could she presume to know what he really wanted?
At least he wasn’t getting more rhetoric from his mother. Maybe if he moved away and got married his mother would finally look at him like he wasn’t a huge disappointment.
He inquired with the lady at the airlines desk, once her deep line of weary travelers had dissipated to a point that it made passersby think she had nothing to offer aside from a smile.
Forty minutes. At least, that was her estimate. Like a teleprompter, she was only as good as the information she received. He returned to his seat across from Darcy wearing a satisfied smile and feeling victorious though he had won absolutely nothing.
Darcy said, “I will ask you structured, typical interview questions and you can practice giving form answers. I interview software engineers all the time and weed them out before my boss, Tamar, meets with them.”
“What fun,” he said. “All because you can tolerate engineers and know enough technology to keep up. How enlightening.”
Darcy snickered, “Practice builds confidence. Confidence will kill those nerves. So here goes.” Darcy dove in, firing off questions and Galen played along, Darcy told him each time he gave too long of an answer or too vague. She pointed out his red flags, which were better than he expected.
He asked how he did and Darcy told him he was getting better.
“I’m still so curious about Kat,” Darcy said. “You said she does clay with you. Bartender. Student. Thai boxing? Sounds like some chick.”
“We could talk about Tyler.”
Darcy chose to ignore him, “Okay, question number one.”
“Stop. Okay, fine. Why does Kat have to be my girlfriend? Why can’t we stay friends?”
“Because she’ll never be happy. If she wants you, then it must be destiny.”
Galen had to bite his tongue to keep from laughing at Darcy, but it only did so much.
Darcy gave him a look, Galen knew that expression too. She looked about ready to burst. Darcy told him, “Stop that.”
Galen didn’t see what her issue was. He and Kat were friends. Why did they need to change? It was a good thing. He had dated friends which turned a good thing sour, because the friendship was tainted by their dating history. Broken dishes don’t reassemble, no matter how much glue and patience you had stored up. “Why ruin a good thing?”
“Because she wants you,” Darcy said. “It hurts to keep waiting for a guy to step up, so I’m telling you what she wants you to do.”
“Maybe. But women must consider that men don’t want to be controlled and we don’t view commitment the same way. This might be part of your deal with Tyler. I might be wrong and maybe the trauma you went through together was an easy excuse to walk away, but you’ll never know unless you ask him.”
He held his breath a moment, knowing that he had offered advice she probably didn’t want.
“You’re a relationship expert?” Darcy asked.
“I know that men don’t like being controlled. We don’t like the games.”
Darcy sat there, staring at him. “You suck.” He could tell, she wanted to hold onto hope. A false hope was better than a nail in the coffin. He understood that she wanted to think Tyler was different.
“I’m not telling you what to do. But I will say you can’t make a person feel the same way you feel.”
To Darcy, it felt like they were constantly bumping into abrasive topics. She couldn’t walk away. She had to wait. He would get on his plane soon enough. They wouldn’t even tell her when her flight would board! What was that all about? Galen had his time. It might be an ambitious estimate, but still, at least he had hope. They told him something.
Her momentary silver lining was the semi-cleared runways. And the sleet coming down seemed slightly sparse, instead of the dense, nearly white out conditions they had been watching through glass, feeling like mental patients. No one was taking off yet, but landings had resumed. Did they have to compensate for those? Tell them to fly slower or something?
“I’ve got an idea. I think we are a science experiment. Trapped in a cage like hamsters.” Galen said. “I’m surprised they didn’t tell us a time for take off sooner, so they could test how we react when we’re disappointed. See if anyone turns violent. Maybe start a riot.”
“What a missed opportunity,” Darcy said.
“Seriously. Don’t you see it? Follow me here. They throw all of us into this place and leave us locked up and see how long it takes before one of us cracks. Spills ooze all over like a fried egg. It’s like Under The Dome all over again. I read that in one sitting, actually.”
Darcy watched him a second, “That’s over a thousand pages. In one sitting?”
“Yes. It was very good. These people were all trapped in the story. Totally.”
“Thank you for that visual, but I didn’t sign a waiver,” Darcy said.
“Who said you have to agree to be a test subject? Do mice sign up? Rats?”
“Okay. Here’s a hypothetical. What would you do if you got Kat pregnant and then she miscarried. What would you do?”
Galen thought for a second, considering. His immediate reaction was that Kat probably would struggle more than him, being she would have to change her workouts, her work, her life. Totally. He couldn’t see Kat as a mom. “I wouldn’t run. No way. I couldn’t get away with that. I couldn’t live with myself, doing that.” He paused a moment.
Darcy raised an eyebrow. “You don’t think a miscarriage would hurt your relationship?”
Galen shook his head and wished the line were not so long for coffee. He was slightly tempted to get up and stretch again. “I don’t know because I’ve never been there. That’s like saying I know what it’s like to be an orphan by imagining it. Or being born into some war torn country. I have no idea what that’s like.”
“My mother once told me that Tyler leaving was for the best. Except I never told her that I’d gotten pregnant. Or that I miscarried.”
Galen sat back slowly. “Not even your mother knows? I understand not telling your sister because she is pregnant, but not telling them means your family has no idea what you’ve gone through. It’s like they don’t know you.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know how and I can’t see a benefit to telling them.”
Galen agreed without saying anything.
Galen stared out the window. Yellow dashes under streaks of wet snow. Crews still hard at work, yellow vests moving about like bees near their hive. Kids were quiet and their parents were half asleep. Faint sunlight through heavy clouds, just enough to remind you it’s still there. Galen needed that. Seeing the sun gave him hope and brightened his mood, which was quickly turning somber.
The alert came. Galen’s flight was boarding.
He stood and Darcy dabbed at her eyes with her sleeve quickly and hugged him. Grabbing his bag he told her, “Think about the version of you your family knows.”
She nodded and said, “Stay a subborn motherfucker, would you?”
He nodded back and laughed, wheeling his bag toward his gate.
He made a point to look back and see her, by herself, at the table. Waiting. She waved again and he waved back.
Passengers entered and found their seats like the boarding process was a funeral procession. There was a murmur, like a rumor spoken only about in hush tones–not a pleasant surprise to discuss, but a potential problem.
Exhale. He was on the plane, in his seat, waiting again. Hurry up and wait, only to wait to arrive in San Francisco.
Headphones in his ears, Metallica moving within his ea
r canal as he tried to relax and clear his mind. He understood that he should stay alert. Probably. He did but he didn’t. He closed his eyes, the belt snug to his lap like the flight attendant said in the video. His fingers were turning white, clutching the arm rests. He didn’t need to look again. He felt tempted to glance, but he didn’t need to. He was afraid to. He could feel it. The plane wasn’t moving, but the engines coming to life, that familiar whir from under the wings. Arm hairs stood at attention. He tried reading from a magazine in the nifty seat pocket. Galen kept his knees in close as a gentleman took the seat beside him.
Music. Eyes closed, heart pounding. Enter Sandman.
Darcy stayed behind. When Galen bid her goodbye, her flight wouldn’t board for another twenty minutes or more, or so she said. Why the delay, she had asked and no one had an answer, at least not a reasonable one. How could flight crews predict the unpredictable? Planes had a schedule which had gotten jumbled. How could they adjust all those flights at once?
Darcy texted him several minutes after he boarded. She had started talking to an older gentleman, Ervin, her message said so she wasn’t waiting alone. Darcy sent Galen a Facebook friend request. They had each others cell numbers. They agreed to keep it real. Pen pals? Text pals. That would be a new term.
Time crawled, like slow motion. The song seemed to last forever or was on repeat. When motion started, he caught his breath and slowly let it seep.
Why did he have so much trouble flying? The man next to him got a little chuckle and told him its an easy trip. Nothing to it. Done it hundreds of times.
Sure. Galen thought technology was fairly obvious, at least the common tasks of file management and basic functions. But to most people, they were another language that couldn’t be learned or easily explained.
He wished he could just fall asleep, but he was strangely wide awake, though he felt tired.
He opened his eyes and realized the plane, proceeding to the runway, was about half full and much quieter than the packed cabin he rode in with from Florida.
All told, they waited over three hours for the flight.
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