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Inter-Date
They say that you pass your true love three times before you ever once notice them. You may meet by accident ; a devastating Hanaford basket crash, where your roasted ham for your picky Aunt Tilda flips over and crushes the eggs. You look up in disgust at the shopper adjacent to you, preparing to ring their neck, for they ruined the only chance you had for reconciling with your Aunt. Suddenly their eyes and unlimited apologies seem to drown out those predictions of Aunt Tilda’s anchovy breath spewing at you as she screams about not having a proper Sunday dinner.
But now, how many times may we pass our true love with cyber-space offering an unlimited supply of those hopeless romantics? Hundreds, maybe even thousands of times? To the forty year old game programmer with the pocket filled with a medley of pens and glasses jammed into the bridge of his nose, those odds sound much better than the previous. With the Internet, you can find love, keep love, or dispose of love with a click of the mouse. You can pour your soul out using only your hands, or you can create a new soul with a few clicks of the keys to impress that girl with the profile picture of her bronze skin and long lashes.
For Carwyn Heilyn, those odds and perks far outweighed the pressure of confrontation. Carwyn melted into the polyester seat of his chair, it whining with old age and worn use. Carwyn’s heart beat faster perpetually as the computer spluttered and shrieked, the shimmering bar inching towards the word “loading”. His breathing fell short, as though having run a marathon after having a sparring session with Jackie Chan. Then he heard it ; a blissful, dainty little bell toll, making all color drain from his near-to-expressionless face, his obsidian hair disheveled upon his head. If not for the mesh of raven black hair having a mosh pit on the crown of his head, none would be able to tell he had woken at three in the morning to find the tiny postcard icon flickering on his profile. Carwyn controlled his breathing, and with every ounce of strength he could muster with the help of his coffee and nicotine patches, clicked on the “Got Mail” icon.
His heart soared. Carwyn read hastily, lips upturning with every successive minute. You see, you know when you are in love without any doubt. There are tell-tale signs. If you understand and start humming those sappy romance songs you once laughed at, you are in love. (Or on the verge of getting the senior discount at your local cinema.) Another example is if anything and everything, no matter how abstract, reminds you of the person you love. It could be clothing, a banana peel, a downed airplane, a half-eaten blueberry muffin, or even the freckle on the back of your hand, that reminds you of your love.
For Carwyn, he could check off each of these signs. (Except for a half-eaten blueberry muffin ; he’s allergic.) Without wasting time, he typed back, eyes wide awake and body showing no sign that it was only running on four hours of a fitful sleep. When he received a reply back, he was ecstatic, and felt like singing opera though he hated the vibrato of the stylized singing.
Carwyn ran his hand through his obsidian hair, wiping any sleep from his hazel eyes as he awaited a response from his love: Morgana Raddick. (A.k.a. LittleLilyRaven10-0) They had been sending messages over the Internet where they met three months previous in a chat room about kung fu movies. They had yet to exchange photos ; but tonight, as they spoke and sent their virtual chuckles and hugs across the screen, they would.
“Car, I took a pic of myself at my family reunion a ways back. It’s not that good, though...”
“I’m sure it’s great, Morgan! I doubt you could look any less than perfection to me.”
“You are such a flatterer! ...is that a word? Oh, it doesn’t matter. I’ll load it.”
“Huh...well, spell check doesn’t say anything about flatterer. I guess it might as well be a word, if ‘bling’ can be too.”
“Okay, here it is. Don’t laugh too much.”
Carwyn allowed his wrist to deftly move the cursor over the link, and with practiced precision, clicked on the link. As the image loaded, he grinned, finding Morgana’s smile as intoxicating as her cheery poems, and her hair much like the river she lived near that she described to him often. For some reason, it made him ponder. He felt as though he had seen the image somewhere before. It was rough color, like a newspaper image, and it seemed to have a coarse texture to it.
“It’s that bad, huh?” Carwyn snapped out of his apparent deja vu, and replied back to Morgana to reassure she looked wonderful.
“I was just thinking...have you ever been in the newspaper before?”
“Me? Well, once when my gymnastics team ended up breaking a four-thousand dollar equipment set, but even then, it wouldn’t make it to your local newspapers in Georgia all the way from Baltimore.”
“You’re right...it just seems like I’ve seen it before.”
“Maybe in your dreams...I know I’ve dreamt about you.”
Carwyn acquired a brilliant idea, and he paused his constant typing to scan and send an image of himself to Morgana. He chose the nearest picture he had, one that showed his scrawny, six foot body leaning against the welcome sign at Disney World, dressed in khaki shorts that only stayed on his thin waist because of the tight belt, and a large Georgia University jersey.
“It’s just like I dreamt!” Morgana replied, and Carwyn imagined how silk-sweet her voice might sound. And so that night was hatched the idea to meet. Needing to rest, Carwyn grudgingly stepped away from his computer six hours later, needing some sleep before he went to his job as a box-boy at the local vegetarian market. His excitement was bursting, but that was not what kept him awake. That picture...I know I’ve seen it before... He thought, drifting into slumber.
Carwyn gripped the steering wheel as though holding onto his single rope that separated him from a pool of mutant piranha. The address was now tucked into the visor, appearing like a limp guardian angel, bending over to constantly watch Carwyn. Once gaining his composure (and after a quick regurgitating stop) he made his way with uncertainty down the streets of Baltimore. His car dragged along the streets, and slowly the city center released them from its clutches. Suburbia surrounded Carwyn now, and he had to pull over again when his stomach could not hold in his McNuggets. Evening fell now, and Carwyn cursed at having to be so overly nauseous.
And finally he arrived to the address: Baltimore Cemetery. Carwyn checked the addresses on the paper and iron wrought gates so many times, he beat Santa’s record of checking it twice to the twenty-first power. Still, Carwyn recalled he never had asked Morgana where she worked, and presumed that she worked as a Groundskeeper. The rental car rolled along, following the small streets precisely.
Carwyn got out at the intersection he was supposed to, but found no small outpost or building for a Groundskeeper. He glanced around in the dimly lit cemetery, confused and feeling uneasy in this cemetery that seemed so foreign to him. As he paced to think and keep down the remnants of his Diet Coke, he tripped on a headstone. Sitting up, he looked to the headstone...and Diet Coke lurched from his stomach. He remembered where he recognized the picture of Morgana. Carwyn remembered he had seen it in the obituaries. In his quickened pace back to the car, a blissful, dainty little bell toll could be heard, muffled by yards of earth.
