Day Moon Howl - B.H. Newton

Day Moon Howl by B.H. Newton

Book excerpt

1

“He never did let me see his hand.”

She encountered him on one of the more recently launched online dating sites, during a hot summer on the tail end of the early 2000s that would encompass the first decade with no identity to call its own. The http:// address led one to a clunky list filled with the recently divorced looking to jump back on the bucking bronco, the rare recently widowed drowning in loneliness or the hopeful yet tragically unlovable. Small talk was insulated in primitive chat form. Attempting to be clever and yet appealing was a tightrope six inches off the ground. He seemed able to hang with her witty banter, gave as good as he got. His pictures didn’t paint an image of some Adonis but what low-res images scanned in could do one justice? Ideally, she didn’t see herself as caught up on appearances anyway. The liberated woman cared more about what was inside and she prescribed to that bitter pill. A mixture of curiosity and recklessness led her to at least meet him for dinner. It was a small blind bet. She was a modern woman with a good job and wasn’t looking for a white knight. Just to spend time with someone entertaining, break up the monotony of carbon copy days. He may have wound up a complete douche canoe with bad dandruff, or maybe a serial killer trolling the dusty corners of the World Wide Web for the next dismembered conquest, but a girl had to take some chances. It was called “putting yourself out there.”

He had offered her tidbits of his history and present circumstances, a dim flashlight in a dank, strange house. It was a glossed over tale of bad luck and woe with entire chapters torn out and thrown in a trash barrel fire. Still a part of her felt a thrill in seeing him face to face and connecting the dots, an amateur detective stringing yarn across the wall. She was to meet him at his present albeit “temporary” place of employment, one of those supersized truck stop slash convenience stores that pull truckers and minivan families off the interstate like a big cartoon magnet. She found the right exit but for whatever reason when she pulled into the lot there were no lights or vehicles as if the place had sent all its friends home and bedded down after a busy day in the fields of beef jerky and overheated hot dog wieners. Alarms sounded in that large part of her brain that handled self-preservation. She felt for the pepper spray in her purse. It was all quickly feeling like a horror movie when the smart girl realizes that she is IN a horror movie. A ratty sports car pulled up beside her in the opposite direction, so their driver sides faced each other. She made sure the doors were locked. The window was manually rolled down, it was him. Paler, sicklier than she had expected but maybe it was just a parlor trick of the blue moonlight? He smiled, giving off a friendly, harmless vibe. So did Ted Bundy, that hyperactive slice of her brain offered to the group. She rolled down her window but put her right hand on the gear shifter ready to lay rubber at the slightest hint of nopes.

“Hi,” he offered to break the ice with a toothpick. She sensed that he expected her to just drive away. She could almost smell a damaged soul in the fetal position under the steel-toed boots of life.

“So, you…work here?” She felt she deserved an explanation. Was this place even in business? She wished she could cup hands and look through the glass, see if there was milk in the fridge.

He opened the flue, talking fast, and sounding rehearsed, “Yeah, been a helluva day. Our card readers went down this afternoon, lordy what a mess. Nobody carries cash anymore. Try telling a giant truck driver that he can’t have his No Doze and can of chewing tobacco because we can’t take credit. Anyway, they was trying to fix all that and then Dottie, the manager, was back there where all the wires and breakers are, and she flipped or pulled something wrong and killed the power. Didn’t sound like it was gonna be an easy fix and electricians don’t grow on trees, so they just pulled the plug, literally, on the whole enchilada. Speaking of, I’m a starvin’ Marvin. You?”

“Sure, I could eat.” Internally she was looking to poke holes in the story. She would have slapped a toddler for a pair of night vision binoculars to check out the guts of that convenience store. Instead, she followed his smoker’s cough Mustang lurch back out to the interstate and some semblance of life in the distant streetlights. His name was Marvin. Was he just taking advantage of a trite rhyme, or did he speak in the third person? That was a sign you were dealing with a maniac she seemed to remember from one of the CSI shows. Her subconscious took over the wheel as she continued to drive on, half of her straining to read his crooked bumper sticker, the other half screaming “You dumb bitch!” pleading with the hands at ten and two to careen over the median and crack off double the speed limit back to the safety of the city.

She was finally able to make out the bumper sticker as they pulled into the parking lot of ‘El Corneo Coyote’, home of the foot long flauta. The sticker was from a high school, the very high school that her fifteen-year-old daughter attended. Another bank of alarm lights went off on the board. There was a connection to her, her family, which she previously had no idea about. Was he a parent? A former janitor fired for stealing the paper-thin toilet paper from the custodial closet? Maybe he just bought the car used and he was too lazy to scrape. She would broach the subject stealthily over dinner, pull a second color of yarn out of the conspiracy theory basket.

The place was moderately busy, not enough to have to wait but enough to where you could feel safe in a crowd if things were to go sideways. Although there were tall red leather booths available, the square-shaped young effeminate Latino host with a face like a sweet potato pie sat them at a table about damn square in the middle of the place. While not affording an ounce of privacy, she welcomed the exposure. Let other diners look up from their chorizo queso and bear witness if there happened to be a court proceeding in the future. An obese snack cake factory HR rep would testify, “He looked normal, frail, weak. I’m surprised he could even lift an ax, much less come down with enough force to crack a skull in half.” Marvin kept his company jacket on as he sat down but removed his nametag deftly with one hand. The other he kept in his pocket as if tightly squeezing a handgun while building up the nerve to rob the joint.

“They have good chips here. Always come out warm.” He grabbed one with that same free hand, scooped up some salsa and crunched away. Someone must have told little Marvin that chewing with an open mouth conveyed comfort, being at ease with your meal mate. A few crumbs landed on his jacket. Maybe the chips were warm, but the room was hot. Too many fajita orders coming out she assumed. How he could sit in that jacket befuddled her. He had to be sitting in a pool of sweat under that thick canvas.

“No chips for me. I’m watching the carbs. Pretty much eating plates of meat at this point.” She studied the menu while stealing glances. He gave the chip basket the cold shoulder and flopped his menu down on the table, went down the lists with an index finger like a mentally challenged inbred aristocrat. A waitress appeared with a fake smile one reserves for orphans. She ordered carne asada, no rice, no beans. He did the same. A beta move she did not find appealing. The waitress took the menus and got the hell out of there. Online dates were so tragic.

“You didn’t have to order that for my sake. I actually get a thrill out of watching people eat what I try to stay away from. It’s a vicarious experience.”

“No. It’s fine. Carbs are bad, right?”

“Do you know what carbs are?”

“I don’t think I could actually explain to you what a carb is, no. But I know that people say they are bad.”

“Have you had to watch your weight in the past? Men can get away with a lot more.”