sleveo
Synopsis
Micky Daniels is a twenty-something computer programmer, biker chick with big questions about life and conspiracies, when she meets an old man who may just have the answers she's been looking for. Or he might just be crazy. What if some of the key events in human history were not quite what we thought they were? What if some other force was at work? How might that information change you?
Excerpt
Tobasco on Ice Cream
Gentle music rang throughout the small house, in contrast to the mad rush Micky Daniels found herself in this particular morning, and most mornings. She was always running late, at least when it was time to meet up with Garret. The music was supposed to calm her. At least that's what Garret had told her. It was the perfect blend of international feelings, mixed with a soft Reggae feel. She'd never much cared for Reggae music. Didn't seem to be working for her. She tossed some breakfast dishes into the sink. Maybe she should wash them. No, no, no! This was not the time to learn how to be all neat and tidy. Garret was waiting. Rushing to put on her leather jacket, she knocked some books off the kitchen table.
"Dammit!" She'd had the computer books open to just the pages she needed to figure out that nagging problem in her code. She rushed to pick up the books, tossing them on the table, forcing a few of the bookmarks to fall out. "Arggg! Where are my friggin keys? I always leave them ..." And then she saw them, sitting on the edge of the sink, right where she'd left them, to insure she'd not forget them. Rushing out the door, she grabbed her leather side bag. It contained her essentials: a iPad, a spare iPod, Notebooks and folders with papers. She draped it over her shoulder and swung around to the door, which knocked over some magazines off the end table. She shook her head and continued out the door. She'd have to get them later.
"Drat!" She had forgotten to turn off her desktop computer. Back in the kitchen, she looked at the PC screen. It had been a very productive day, with most things going right, except for that. In her browser was the error message of a crashed website. She paused, closed her eyes, put her head down and moaned. "Not again. This is the last time." She closed her browser and her PC and headed back towards the door.
Locking the door, she saw her loyal friend and companion, just sitting there, out front. A black outdoor cat, with white chin and paws. "Boots! What's happening? Did you get enough to eat this morning?"
Without even standing, Boots made that sick little meow of his. Sounded more like a reow than a meow. He was a strong cat, in good shape. But he was feral when Micky had found him hanging around. It was obvious that he'd never been an indoor cat. He just wanted food and had little tolerance for the whole petting thing. It took months before he'd even let her stroke his head. But eventually, he got to the point where he'd let her pick him up and swing him around, like on a trapeze. But even then, he remained more than a little skittish around strangers. And by stranger, that meant anyone other than Garret and her. Garret had only visited her house a few times, but for some reason, Boots warmed up to him quickly. When anyone else got near the house, Boots would hightail it out to the small patch of woods next door. When Garret was asked why he thought Boots warmed up so quickly, he shrugged and said, "I guess it's because I don't care about cats. It's not that I don't like them. I just don't think about them often. I don't look at him. He knows I am no threat to him."
Micky didn't have time to play with Boots today, but she couldn't stop herself. She reached down to pet him a few times. He was just such a cool cat. He didn't care what anyone thought of him, unless of course they got within fifty feet of him. Then he'd be off, sometimes gone for days at a time, occasionally sporting some new battle scars. She's only seen him fight a few times with local cats. He wasn't very good at it, but she had to give it to him for having heart. It was, after all, his food bowl perched on that front step. A guy's gotta protect his turf. Micky didn't actually care if the other cats ate the food. She just wanted to be sure Boots was well fed. He'd always be so hungry when he got home from one of his multi-day adventures. He never seemed to master the whole food thing out in the wild, and was very skinny when she'd first found him.
"I gotta run Boots. Hold down the fort." She stood to prepare to go and paused.
A single reow come from Boots. It was enough.
"Where's my damn keys?" Micky checked her pockets, swung her head wildly from side to side, as if she could take in the whole neighborhood surrounding her porch in one quick glance. Then looking back down at Boots, she saw them, sitting on the cement next to him. Reaching down to get them, she said, "Thanks for guarding them, kiddo." She rushed over to the carport on the side of the house and pulled out her motorcycle, a black and red Kawasaki Ninja 650R. She'd wanted the 1000, but it was little big for her 5'5" frame. She loved having a "bullet bike", with thoughts that in a race, no one could touch her. Not that she raced that often, never, in fact with others. But she liked to know that she could. She just went a little over the speed limit all the time, and more than a little when she was rushed. For reasons unknown, she'd yet to get a ticket. She was trying her best not to scratch her car, a 2007 Toyota Precis. A girl's got to be practical, especially when she has a wild side.
This was one of those wild times. She was running late. And she didn't want to miss that thing Garret did every Thursday. It was their ritual, this meeting up at the diner, one they'd had for several years now. It began as sort of a joke. A friend had gotten fed up with Micky talking about conspiracies all the time, and he told her to go talk to the crazy old man at the diner. Micky went on a dare, just to see what the guy was like. They became fast friends.
fillfill: Racing through the streets of ____town__ Micky approached a traffic light at 30 MPH. Seventy feet away, it turned yellow. "Noooo." She gunned it, making almost to it as it turned red. Gunning it some more, she zipped through. She could not be late. She'd missed the last three times he did his thing. This time, she would not. She refused.
Pulling into the diner parking lot, she parked, turned off the key and hopped off, as if in one fluid motion. Tearing off her helmet on the way in the door, she stopped once inside, scanning the place. A sweet looking couple by the window, a few kids at the wall. A grungy man hunched over a bowl of ice cream, about to pour something on it. His worn Army jacket hanging off his gaunt frame. Thinning hair, a painful reminder of what was once his best asset. His beard was always past a week's growth, but never long enough to quite call a beard. It just looked scruffy, and not in that sexy way they do on TV. Just like he was too lazy to shave.
"Stop! Don't you dare put that on until I get there," Micky yelled, as she approached the table in the back. He always liked to sit in the back, with his back to the wall, where no one could sneak up on him. You'd think she'd know to look there first, but no. She always scanned the whole room.
Garret looked up and smiled. "Finally made it on time, did you?" He didn't care when she came. He just liked seeing her. The "ritual" as she liked to call it was special, but not special enough to wait for her to arrive, when she so often showed up late. He smiled. "It's good to see you."
"You just say that because you like me, right?" she said, with a mischievous smile, as she sat down.
"Absolutely. Is there any other reason to say it?" He knew she wasn't really challenging him. They teased each other with questions like that all the time. It was their thing. And indeed he did like her, a little more than their current relationship would allow. But then, he liked a lot of women. Indeed, he found that the older he got, the more women he found attractive. Unfortunately, the shift was not quite quick enough to adjust for the fact that he was getting older, and less attractive himself. He always had this bad habit of liking women who were, ... well ... just out of his league. "Would it be okay if I continued, now that her highness has arrived?"
"Have at it," she said, with a bit of dread on her face.
Garret poured a healthy serving of Tabasco on his ice cream, from a bottle he pulled from his jacket pocket. He always had it with him. He put the cap back on the bottle, replaced it to its home in the top right pocket and began to eat. Taking the spoonful to his mouth, he looked up at her. His face serene, hers contorted. The hotness of the Tabasco, crashed against his tongue, as the cool smoothness of the ice cream began to soften the blow. It was certainly easier if he took a scoop of pure ice cream first. But that would ruin the effect. He wanted the full reminder of what this symbolized.
Micky looked around the room for any looks of horror, finding only the couple against the window, staring in disbelief. "It's okay. It's medicinal," she said to them.
"Why do you tell people things like that?" asked Garret, smiling.
"Because if they are going to lock you up, I want them to use any of the many valid reasons you offer on a regular basis. Besides that, they're eating. And if they think it's a medical thing, then they can at least get back to their meal with some compassion and perhaps even an appetite. Otherwise, they lose the whole meal, worrying about you."
"No one has to worry about me. I'm fine." Garret remembered a time when he could not have said that, a time when he was most certainly not fine. His face stiffened a bit, eyes glazed, far away.
"I know. I don't worry about you. In fact I like that about you, that I don't have to worry about you. You always take care of things. Me, on the other hand ..."
"You, well you are a different story. You have lots of things for a guy to worry about."
"Like what?" She knew the list was endless. She just wanted to know where his attention was that day.
"Like the way you drive that beast out there. What is it? A 350?"
"650 Ninja, by Kawasaki. It's a dream to ride."
"I could sort of see you on a Harley. No?"
"No way. A machine designed to express oneself in the sound of farts? Don't need that. It's a uniquely male fantasy. Look at me! I'm loud and you can't stop me!"
"So I get it. Don't like Harley's."
"The Ninja is a dream to ride. Built for comfort and performance. When I'm on that thing, I feel like I don't have a care in the world."
"Not a care in the world?" he asked, looking shocked. "Not unless you happen to be running late for some meeting, right?"
"Right."
"Which is pretty much all the time, right?"
"Right. Like I said, not a care in the world." Micky giggled, throwing her head back a bit.
They sat silently for some time, as Garret ate his strange mix. The place had all the promise of a good old fashioned diner, but none of the charm. Large windows, but mostly covered with dusty curtains and paper fliers. The booths were comfortable enough, a warm red velvet, worn smooth by years of use far beyond their intended lifespan. There were tables too, and even a counter, which had exactly 5 stools. Not the spinning kind, but the tall chairs you had to scootch up the counter, right up next the register. When you paid your tab, it was like the person sitting there could know all about your business. You paid before you even sat down. They used to have waitresses, but there just wasn't a lot of tips for meals that sold for $4.99. Pictures of what looked like movie stars hung on the wall, but no one could ever figure out who they were.
"Parker party!," said Mable, the counter woman. "Your burgers are up!" One of the two girls who had just ordered went back up to the counter to get their meals. Opening the bun, she asked politely, "Can I get cheese on this cheese burger?"
"Oh, I'm terrible sorry!" Mable said. "Would you like me to just add it on ... No wait. That's not right. Henry! Make me another cheese burger, this time with cheese?" She whined the word, "cheeeese". Turning back to the girl, Mable asked, "How would you like that cooked?"
"Wow. You mean I actually get a choice?" She was genuinely surprised, even pleased.
"You do when we mess up, honey. Medium? Medium rare?"
"Yes, medium rare. That would be great. And while you're at it, hold the seasoning. I don't much care for pepper."
"Sure thing, dear. Henry! Hold the seasoning on that burger. I mean, that cheese burger."
"Holding seasoning. Sure thing," Henry yelled, tossing that last burger he'd just put on the grill into the trash. Undaunted, he grabbed another patty and put it on the grill.
=====
"You know, Garret, if you cleaned up some, you wouldn't look a day over seventy. So how old did you say you were?"
"Seventy-two!" he growled. "And this is cleaned up."
"Oh, in that case never mind," she said, laughing.
=====
"Hey, you know that site you sent me to? It didn't load."
Mickys face turned gray and stiff, eyes distant, lower lip pulled in. "Yea, I know. Sorry about that."
Garret touched her hand. "You really look upset about this. What's going on?"
"Nothing. Don't worry about. It's not a big deal."
"It sure looks like a big deal on your face. You have created hundreds of programs and dozens of websites, many of which had to crash. Am I correct?"
Micky nodded.
"Then what is this about the crash of one small community theater site that hurts you so badly? It can't be that you don't know how to fix it."
"No, that's not it."
