“I’m sorry to bother you, but I was just wondering, do you know the young lady that lives here?” He pointed to the ground floor while speaking.
“No, not really,” Bill said. Inside he was asking himself where he had seen this guy before, the face having triggered something within his memory.
“Oh, um, well, you have any idea when she’ll be back?”
“No, I don’t. Sorry.”
“Hmm, okay.” For a moment it looked like he was going to say something else, but then he quickly turned and started to walk away.
“Hey, do you want me to leave a message with her?”
The young man stopped and considered it. “No, that’s okay. I’ll just come by later.” With that he rounded the corner of the house and disappeared.
A few minutes later Bill was leaving the house as well, the thoughts about the flower-holding young man gone, his mind only able to focus on one thing: the book cover. Would it have the look he was going for, or would he have to ask for changes? If the latter, how long would the changes take? Would it be ready in time for his promised October release, or would he have to wait week after week for the cover to arrive, his readers constantly sending him emails asking why the new book wasn’t out yet?
The questions couldn’t be answered until he saw the book cover concept, a moment which arrived five minutes after he pulled into a parking spot outside of Panera, the process of connecting to their wireless needlessly slow.
Yes, I agree to all your silly little rules for connecting, he said to himself while hitting the log-in button and waiting for the screen to change over to his homepage. During this wait, he thought back to the first time he had ever connected to the Panera wireless from his car, his goal of downloading several hours worth of porn to his other laptop foiled by a page restriction. After that he had driven all over Sycamore and DeKalb looking for an unsecured wireless connection, his desperation for some new videos after having gone a week with all the old videos getting the better of him. Concern about not being able to log into his Adult Friend Finder profile had also been present because it would kill a necessary source of income -- all because someone in the house didn’t want to admit to buying the adult videos and ruined our wonderful internet agreement.
The resentment he still felt about this was short lived because his homepage appeared. The fact that his two Kindle novels had started selling really well that month, and his realization that his porn addiction had been slowly killing his ability to write also played a part. Losing the web connection last spring had been a blessing.
Connecting to his Gmail account from his homepage didn’t take long, and soon he was looking at the downloaded cover concept. As with the four previous covers this artist had created for him, this one was beautiful, yet right away his mind began thinking up some changes he would like to see.
Rather than sending those suggested changes from the car, however, he decided to sit on the cover overnight and see if he still thought they were necessary come morning. Last time they hadn’t been, this time . . . well, he would know in the morning when he looked at it again.
Satisfied he started to move the mouse cursor to the X at the top of the screen, but then decided to check the sales on his Amazon Kindle Publishers Dashboard even though he had just looked at it while at the library. Four books had been sold since his last check, a total that used to represent a good day of sales back when he had uploaded his first two novels, but now represented a typical evening hour. Fifty to seventy five book sales a day was his average daily total, which, when earning seventy cents a book, made for a decent check each month. Well, decent when living in the DeKalb area. His goal of moving back into the suburbs was still a long way off, the average rent for a single bedroom out there being around a thousand dollars a month before expenses. Actually, given the money he was now making, moving back to the suburbs was doable, but the fear of suddenly having a bad month or two kept him from making that move a reality. He also wanted to knock down all the credit card debt and build up at least six months worth of rent and living expenses into his savings account beforehand.
And who knows, maybe by then you will have enough to start considering buying a place rather than renting a place, especially if you raise the prices to two ninety-nine so you can make two bucks a download rather than seventy cents.
This thought stuck with him as he shut down the laptop. He then contemplated going into Panera and having dinner here rather than making some instant pasta dish at home. It wasn’t often that he treated himself to a meal that cost more than five dollars, and while the idea did cause a small bit of discomfort to settle within him due to the credit card debt that still needed to be paid, it wasn’t enough to overpower the angry rumbles from his stomach.
5
Mark got back in his car, his mind once again questioning whether or not coming out here had been a good idea. Something about it just didn’t seem right -- hadn’t seemed right from the beginning -- but he couldn’t put his finger on what. He also couldn’t just toss aside the opportunity to have sex, not when he was on his way to being a real life forty-year-old virgin. Nope. Just going into his freshman year at college without ever having officially touched a boob was embarrassing (he had bumped plenty, his elbow always savoring the moment of contact, but that wasn’t the same), and now he was heading into his junior year in the same condition. Even his friends couldn’t help him out, and some were female. Why they didn’t just lay back and let him fuck them was a mystery. It was, after all, the twenty-first century, and it wasn’t like any of them were still intact down there. Well, maybe sex was going a bit too far, but he would settle for a simple handjob, or, if they were feeling generous, a blowjob. Hell, they could even just rub him with his pants still on while watching a movie and he would probably burst with pleasure and think of the experience as the greatest moment of all time -- until he finally did have sex.
He shook his head, and then looked over at the flowers sitting on the seat, the words don’t call it quits just yet filling his head.
She probably just had to run out for something and will be back soon.
He looked at his phone and wondered if she had left a message on his profile or in his email about having to postpone their meeting time. Things like that happened and given the time it had taken him to drive out here from his parent’s house -- he wouldn’t be moving back into an apartment in DeKalb until September, his idiot friend and school year roommate having been evicted from their usual place in late July -- he could very well have missed such a message.
No internet connection.
Gah, best network my ass.
A debate on whether to leave his spot on the street and find an area where he could hop online with his phone or to simply stay and see if she showed up in the next few minutes began to unfold.
You don’t want her thinking you stood her up.
At the same time he didn’t want to sit here on the street like an idiot if she had canceled on him, especially if it resulted in him approaching her after she arrived home and finding out she wanted to fuck him another time.
You’d look like a fool; a flower carrying fool.
The fear of such a thing was too much so he quickly switched the car back on and started heading toward the NIU campus, past experiences guiding him toward an area where he knew his phone would work.
6
Kimberly didn’t notice the pink stain from the strawberry milkshake until she was in her bedroom getting ready for a shower, her eyes spotting it just as her fingers tossed her work pants toward the bed. Thankfully no shake residue landed upon the sheets.
What a night, she silently said.
A reprimand from her manager for the way she had snapped at the mother had followed the shake incident. After that the customers who had ordered the dropped shakes had refused to tip her due to poor service. Things had then calmed down and for a while it had looked as if the night would end without any further incident, which was when some summer youth spor
ts team had showed up, and, surprise surprise, had sat in her section due to need for movable tables that could be put together.
At least they tipped well, she noted. With that she grabbed her bathrobe from her bedroom door and started toward the shower.
A knock on the front door echoed.
Ah shit, her mind cried as she hurried back into the bedroom to grab a shirt and pants, her hand selecting items from her hamper rather than donning her work clothes.
Another knock, this one a little more forceful, appeared.
I’m coming, she mentally projected and headed to the door, a question of who could it be arriving as she wrapped her fingers around the doorknob.
Hesitation hit.
No peephole had ever been installed on the door. Instead she simply had three rectangular windows side by side, a brown curtain providing privacy. It was something she hadn’t thought much about when being shown the place two months earlier.
No chain either, she noted.
Hmmm.
She pulled a corner of the curtain from the window and saw a young man standing on the front steps with a bunch of red roses in his right hand.
He smiled as their eyes met.
Who in the world is this? she asked herself and then opened the door a few inches and said, “Hello?”
“Hi,” the young man said. A happy ring was present within his voice. “It’s Mark.”
“Mark?” she questioned.
“Yeah, Mark, um . . . shy-college-guy22.” The happy ring had been replaced with concern. “I’m here to see Nikki.”
“Oh -- ” Nikki again? “ -- I’m sorry, she doesn’t live here anymore.”
“What?”
“She doesn’t live here,” Kimberly repeated. “I’m sorry.”
The look that appeared on his face was hard to describe -- almost a mix of fear, sadness, and confusion. “Are you sure?” he asked, voice fading on the last word as if he already knew the answer.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, the flowers bringing on the statement. “I don’t know what to tell you?”
“I guess . . .” he started, the flowers slowly lowering.
Kimberly waited, embarrassment for the guy beginning to fill her head. He looked as if he was going to cry.
“Are you really not her, or are you just telling me this because you now have second thoughts?” he asked.
“I’m really not her,” Kimberly said. “I did get some mail for her a while back though, so . . .” she realized this wouldn’t help him because if he didn’t know what she looked like then that meant this was his first time trying to visit her, so a sudden change in address wouldn’t mean anything. Plus she was pretty sure the Roberts had lived at this address for quite some time before leaving in July, so she wasn’t sure how this mix up could have gotten started.
For a moment it looked like he was going to say something, but then he just shook his head.
“Sorry to bother you, then,” he muttered.
Kimberly didn’t really know how to reply to this and simply gave him an apologetic smile and shrug. A second later she closed the door, his body having turned and started back down the steps.
Poor guy, she thought. Then, You need to figure out who this Nikki girl is and get her to change her address somewhere because obviously it still lists this place.
Talk to the landlord.
It was the only thing she could think to do.
Or maybe Mark here will inform her of the mistake? After all it seemed like the two would have had to have communicated recently for him to pick her up for a date or from here (the flowers were making her think the two had planned on going out).
Or maybe it wasn’t even Nikki’s fault, she thought. What if someone had set the two up on a blind date and gave the wrong address?
At that very moment Nikki could be waiting for Mark to show up, her mind growing emotional as she started to consider the possibility that she was being stood up.
How awful.
7
I knew it! Mark mentally shouted while throwing the flowers into the backseat, his mind not caring if they were damaged, not when he would just be throwing them away once he got home. I fucking knew it!
8
Bill spent several hours that evening reading a used paperback horror novel that he had ordered through Amazon a few weeks earlier. It was a title he had first seen on the Too Much Horror Fiction website which was dedicated to horror fiction of the sixties, seventies and eighties (occasionally a book from the early nineties as well), one published by Zebra Horror in 1981. Once done with the book, he would review it for his own website. Like his novel writing, his website popularity had increased dramatically after he had been cut off from his constant porn stream. A part of this might have had something to do with the changes in html code that he had put in place last March because they had made it easier for Google to crawl his posts and recognize the titles. Most likely, however, it was the result of more posts being produced. The quality of those posts was probably better as well. After all, writing, like any art form, was something that improved with practice, and practice was all he did now thanks to the lack of stimulation his apartment provided. Of course this wasn’t to say his writing had been lacking before, one didn’t get a publishing deal with a major publishing house if they couldn’t write, just that the ability to produce anything had been getting worse and worse as the porn addition had gotten more and more intense.
His eyes paused in mid-sentence and looked over at his desk. Only one laptop sat atop it -- his main writing one -- and it had been off for hours. Back in his Internet days a second laptop would have been up there, both of them vibrating with life, his eyes and fingers constantly moving from whatever writing project he was trying to work on to the second laptop to click the download button on a dozen little thumbnail video boxes, his mind not even really considering what those boxes displayed. All day long he would have done this until he couldn’t take sitting at the desk any longer, his writing output having barely totaled three pages by the time he called it quits.
Disgust at himself had always been present, not because he liked looking at porn (every guy did), but because he could no longer segment it into his life. It was one thing to spend an hour or two every couple of nights watching various adult videos while slowing building up the pleasure within the penis, it was another to spend all day everyday downloading video after video onto a computer screen that couldn’t even show the latest video icons due to the lack of space. Most of the time he didn’t even get a chance to watch the majority of the videos because there were just so many. In fact, he could probably view one video a night for the rest of his life and still never see everything that had been downloaded. It was ridiculous.
The worst part of all, however, had been his lack of recognition of the problem when trying to understand why he couldn’t finish any writing projects. One day he had even gone so far as to rearrange his apartment because he had read online that pointing his desk in a westward direction would help his creativity. When that had failed he had then researched what foods and vitamins would help stimulate creativity, his thinking being that one reason he had been able to write while living with his parents and not when living on his own was due to his mother cooking nutritious meals.
He shook his head at the memories and then went back to his book. Ten minutes later he was moving Toby from his lap so he could go replenish his tea, and then, rather than going back to his book right away, decided to check and see what DVD Netflix had sent him.
House on Sorority Row.
Excellent, his mind echoed. For quite some time he had wanted to watch this one, but every time a copy arrived he discovered the stupid remake sitting in the sleeve rather than the original. Last year the same thing had happened to him with Black Christmas, which had been even more infuriating because he had wanted to watch the DVD during the holiday season, and had been relieved to see it arrive on the twenty-second (it had been in high demand). Once he realized the mis
take, and understood that Netflix would never get the original to him in time for Christmas, he had jumped onto I-90 and driven into the northwest suburbs to the Park Place Mall where he fought through the Christmas crowds to the small video store to buy it. From there he had decided to browse the mall a bit, but then got fed up with the mindless shoppers who were moving at a snail’s pace from window to window and called it quits, his mind thinking that an hour or two of website browsing would be more enjoyable than mall browsing.
And naturally the hour or two of website browsing had turned into a ‘downloading porn until two in the morning’ situation, which made it so you didn’t watch the new DVD until the following night. If his memory served him correctly the porn laptop had been hit by a particularly nasty virus that night too, one that was worse than the standard viruses he frequently experienced on that laptop, and had forced him to wipe the hard drive, and thus delete thousands of videos he had never even watched.
“What do you think,” he said to Toby. “Should we watch this tonight or wait until I finish today’s review tomorrow?”
Toby stared at him for a moment and then shifted his attention to the back window. On cue light illuminated it, the motion sensor on the garage having been tripped.
Knowing this meant something was moving down there; something that he probably would have hunted had he been an outdoor cat still, Toby hurried to the perch that stood before the window and looked down upon the rear part of the driveway and backyard.
Bill followed and made it to the window in time to see a figure running by the garage.
What the -- his mind started.
Downstairs a scream echoed.
9
Nikki's Secret Page 3
