Page 51 of Nothing Less than Magic
He drops two pieces of his breaded meat into a pan of sizzling oil. “I thought I would, but the sad thing is I don’t.”
“Why is it sad?”
“You spend nearly a decade with a person, shouldn’t you miss them when they’re gone? And what does it say about me that I don’t?”
“I guess it says that it was over even before she left.”
“She says I was only staying with her out of loyalty. I never could figure out if she said that to ease her conscience or mine.”
“Perhaps it was to ease both of yours. She’s very beautiful, Sienna is.”
He nods. “She’s very beautiful. But so are you.”
It’s not until I get home that I realize why Ronnie hasn’t responded to any of my emails. She never got them. I find them in my outbox, sitting there like they’re waiting to be called into the doctor’s office, but no one has come for them.
There must be something wrong with either my laptop or my Gmail. Unfortunately, my computer savvy is limited to hitting the control-alt-delete buttons when something goes wrong, or rebooting. It’s always Ronnie who deals with these malfunctions.
There’s a big box computer store in the neighboring town, so I pack up and hit the road. On my way, I call Ronnie, but as usual, get no answer. This is becoming a habit with her. I leave what is now my fifth message and pull off the highway to join the line at the drive-through coffee place right before town.
Austin and I used to come here on the way to the cabin. The coffee is not great. It’s one of those places where they put the cream and sugar in the drink for you and the coffee is inevitably too sweet. But it was our thing, a routine I’d come to associate with the start of a weekend in the mountains. Happiness.
I suppose the only reason I’m here, waiting in the long queue, is out of habit, sort of a Pavlov’s dog. I see the coffee drive-through; therefore, I want coffee, even though I had three cups this morning at Knox’s. The man makes a really good cup. Now, his chicken-fried steak is another story. I wasn’t too crazy about it.
But it seems that I might be crazy about him.
Isn’t it weird how life works? That saying—when one door closes, another one opens—always seemed like a throwaway line to me, like something designed to make you feel better when life goes to shit, even if it’s not true. I’ve been guilty of using the cliché a time or two myself with despondent patients, knowing full well it’s a phony platitude. Most of the time, the door just closes. Parents die, and you leave your happy home to live in a soulless apartment in the sky where you can’t jump on the couch or touch the knickknacks. Or your husband leaves you with no warning and a year later is engaged to a woman named Mary.
But this time, another door has opened. Knox.
I get my overly sweet coffee and start again for the computer store. It’s in a large strip mall that’s anchored on one side by a Target store and the other side by the aforementioned electronics Mecca. This is the town where Ghost residents go to do their real shopping. While it’s not as charming as our small town, it has every big box store known to mankind, including two do-it-yourself emporiums.
Parking is plentiful, and I slide into a space right in front of the store, grab my laptop, and go inside. Surprisingly, it’s crowded. I traverse the computer aisles, looking for someone to help me, but everyone seems to be in either the appliance or electronics departments. There are a few kids playing with the video game testers, and I wonder why they’re not in school.
“Excuse me,” I say, trying to hail an employee, but he gives me the five-minute sign and breezes past me.
I wander around for another ten minutes before finding someone else with a name tag, wearing what appears to be the store employee’s uniform of khakis and a white polo shirt. He directs me to an empty counter, where I wait for another ten minutes for someone to actually notice me and come out from whatever back room she was hiding in.
“How can I help you?” she asks.
I wait for her to look up from her phone, but she doesn’t.
“I’m having problems sending email. I was hoping someone could look at the issue.” I push my laptop towards her on the counter, which finally gets her attention.
“Maybe it’s your Wi-Fi. Did you try sending the email from here? Our signal is strong. Let me give you the password.” She hands me a laminated sheet on a chain that says “Serendipity” and goes back to her phone.
I find their network, plug in the password, go to my outbox, and try to send Ronnie’s emails again. Nothing happens. “Nope. It’s not working.”
She slides me a glance and lets out a put-upon sigh. “What email service do you use?”
“Gmail.”
“It’s probably a problem with it, not your computer.” She crosses her arms over her white-polo chest and stares down her pug nose at me.
“I don’t think so,” I say, because even if it is, I don’t have the first clue how to solve it. And it’s not like Gmail has a customer service line. Like I said, Ronnie always takes care of my technical problems.
“I guess we could look at it for you, but you’ll have to leave it. We’re slammed today and it’s first come, first serve.”
I want to say it’sserved, notserve, but I doubt that would ingratiate me to her, and I’d really like to get this resolved, though I’m not thrilled about separating myself from my laptop.
