Random Acts

by Franklin Horton

  He sensed her discomfort and changed the subject. She’d managed to say enough for him to sense they were headed into delicate territory. Fortunately, they reached the Jeep. He studied the vehicle.

  "You don't have a bike rack," he said. "I'm not sure we can fit this in the back of your Wrangler."

  The Wrangler was a two-door with a soft top. She wondered if they could unsnap the top and put the bike in the back seat but she’d never taken the top off before. She wasn't sure exactly what was involved. Then again, she probably needed a rack if she was going to transport the bike anywhere on a regular basis.

  "I have a little money left. You don't have any used bike racks laying around here, do you?"

  She meant it as a joke and was surprised when he replied they did indeed. He leaned the bike against the vehicle and walked back toward the store. She stared after him, unsure if she was supposed to follow or not.

  "Will somebody steal my bike if we leave it here?"

  Ben laughed. "Not here. I'm not sure where you're from but the people around here don't act like that."

  She reluctantly left the bike behind and returned to the store. It was going to suck if someone stole the bike she’d just spent a big chunk of her personal money on.

  Ben led her to a pile of tangled metal in the back corner of the shop area. "Some people upgrade their bike racks the same way they do their bikes. We’ll take a trade-in if the old rack is a decent one. I’ve got a couple of single bike racks that aren’t too expensive. I could sell you one for twenty-five dollars."

  "I can do that," she said, doing a mental accounting of her remaining funds.

  They went back to the cash register and rang up the transaction. After she paid him, they carried the rack out to the parking lot and he installed the rack on the Jeep, explaining the process to her. After, he showed her how to put the bike on the rack and securely fasten it.

  "I appreciate the help. I guess you can see I don't have a lot of experience with adult bikes."

  "That's okay. We sell to beginners every day. Everyone starts somewhere. The important thing is just starting. I think you’re going to love it."

  “Can we get a selfie?” she asked. “I want to post a pic of my new bike.”

  Ben grinned. “Of course.” He was the same age, lived in the same world where if it wasn’t posted to social media, it didn’t happen.

  They spent a minute or so finding a pose that allowed both of them to be in the picture while including the bike on the rack. Amanda made a goofy face and Ben mugged for the camera. She took a couple and found one she liked.

  “That one cool?” she asked, showing him the screen.

  He gave her a thumbs-up. “Perfect.”

  She hammered out a quick description: New bike. Ben the Bike Dude hooked me up. #mynewlife #westernNC #newbike #santacruzbikes

  “Alright, cool, glad you’re happy with the bike. I need to be getting back inside. The shuttles are done for the day but I’ll have rentals being returned right up until closing.”

  Amanda didn't want the conversation to be over. Talking with Ben made her feel normal again. She didn't feel so displaced and so injured inside. Until she met this guy, she hadn’t realized just how much she missed both being a teenager and being around other teenagers. After weeks as “the poor kid whose mother died” she was ready to get through that and move on. She was ready to be someone else. Even the thought caused her a sharp pang of guilt, like she was trying to push her mother out of her mind, like she was ungrateful.

  Like she didn’t love her.

  Amanda didn’t want to leave with those thoughts spiraling in her head. "Listen, I don’t have to be anywhere. Do you suppose if I came back in you could tell me some places to ride?"

  "I can definitely do that," Ben said. "There’s a big map on the wall and I even have some brochures I can give you."

  They reentered the shop and found two customers waiting to return rentals. Amanda wandered around looking at bikes and the other items in the shop while Ben checked the rentals back in.

  After those customers, there was a small wave of people returning rental bikes. In between, Ben talked about the different types of trails available in their area. She told him she wanted to start on something easy, a beginner route without much climbing.

  “There are several parks with extensive trail systems that would be perfect for that.” He explained the rating system that distinguished the level of difficulty of the various trails, just like on ski slopes.

  “There are some trails where you can grab a quick ride after work or school and others where you’re in the woods all day,” he said. “Sometimes I’ll go on a short one after school with a couple of friends as long as the light holds out. That is, if I don’t have to work. Once winter hits you can still ride but it needs to be a weekend or holiday so you get enough daylight. I’ve ridden a few trails by headlights but you have to be careful. It’s easy to misjudge the trail when you’re using a headlight.”

  Amanda took it all in, overwhelmed by the options. "Well, if I don’t have to work with my dad this weekend, I might try to get out and hit one of these trails."

  "Where do you work?" he asked.

  "My dad is a contractor and I’m working with him right now on one of his houses."

  "I always thought that was a cool job. You get to be outside all the time. You're not trapped at a desk."

  She shrugged. "I guess it's not too bad. It's hard work. Right now I’m just their gopher and I wouldn’t want to spend my entire life doing that. It's definitely the bottom rung of the ladder."

  "Thinking of following in his footsteps and becoming a contractor one day?"

  She laughed. “I only have a couple of days on the job. I think it's a little soon for me to be planning on it as a career."

  “Sometimes a group of us goes riding on the weekends,” Ben said. “I don’t know if anyone has anything planned right now but you’re welcome to come if we do.”

  “That would be great.”

  Ben pulled his phone out of his back pocket. “If you give me your number I’ll message you if we plan something."

  She gave him her number and he immediately sent a text so that she would have his. She added his name to the contact. That was when she noticed the time displayed on the screen. "I guess I better be getting out of here. I didn't realize I’d been here this long."

  “Well, if we go for a ride, I hope you can come.”

  Amanda smiled. “I hope so too.”

  She left the store with a smile on her face. She had a new bike and a new friend.

  13

  When Victor arrived for work at Konkoly Games he had a lot of stuff he was supposed to do but he didn't want to do any of it. He focused only on the things he absolutely had to do to open the store for the day and nothing else. There would be another clerk coming in after a few hours and he could cover anything Victor hadn’t done. That was how it usually went. The employees who had to cover for his incomplete work often grumbled about it but not one had ever complained to the owner.

  He took a seat at the counter and pulled up his social media video account. Besides being obsessed with gaming and watching social media videos, Victor was determined he would one day strike his fortune by posting a video that would go viral. From there, he would develop a loyal following of folks who couldn’t get enough of his videos and the money would start rolling in. There was just one problem with his plan. He wasn’t very good at thinking of original content for his videos.

  Informational videos did well but there was nothing he was adept at to demonstrate or explain well enough that people would be interested in watching it. Even though he spent a lot of time gaming, he wasn’t good enough that people would be interested in watching videos of his gameplay. There were better gamers already doing that. There were other folks who just compiled other people’s videos into compilations. Those got a lot of views but he had no idea where to start with editing something like that.

  He thought
his best chance might be with a prank video. Those were always funny and you didn’t have to be original. You could pull a prank someone else had already pulled, and as long as you got a good reaction from your victim, people would still watch the video. He’d experimented with this concept recently by trying to scare his mother with a clown mask. His mother had been at the kitchen table drinking a gin and tonic and smoking one of her long cigarettes before bed. He wandered in with the creepy clown mask on and tried to scare her. She hadn’t been impressed.

  “Jesus Christ, what are you supposed to be?” she asked. “Get that fucking thing off your head and act like you are somebody.”

  It hadn’t been the kind of reaction he’d wanted but he decided to post it anyway because it was all he had. It couldn’t be any worse than the handful of other prank videos he’d posted. At this point, the video had been up for a few days and he wanted to see if it had received any views. The feedback was not good.

  "Your videos are funky and lame, dude. They suck ass. You should just kill yourself," one reviewer said.

  Not the reaction he’d been hoping for.

  "Nobody wants to watch your shady videos. Quit making them. Go back to working the drive-through at Burger King."

  Victor sighed.

  "The only way this video would've been funny is if you died making it."

  Then there was one more.

  "I would like this video better if you beat the old woman's ass. She seems like a bitch."

  That comment got a chuckle from Victor. It would've made the video a lot better for him too if he’d knocked the shit out of his mom. He could have come in like a clown and jumped on her. He couldn’t do it. It wasn’t from love or respect, but from the fact that she terrified him. He was a good eighteen inches taller than her and probably twice her weight but that made no difference.

  Unfortunately for him, she was the only person he had to play pranks on and she didn’t have the right personality for it. She just got mad and cussed at him. She never went along with the joke. It was yet one more way she was sucking the life out of him.

  Victor acknowledged that every idea he’d ever come up with had sucked. That was also part of the problem. Where was the magic idea? How were all these other people coming up with cool ideas and all he could think of was shit? Every video he’d ever posted was so ridiculous he found himself embarrassed to even watch them. He’d asked his gaming friends for ideas. They were supportive but no one had come up with anything he could pull off. He assumed if those guys had any good ideas they’d be making videos of them already.

  He watched the top trending videos on several sites looking for ideas. All he found were music videos or fail videos, which were compilations of people screwing things up. Most days Victor felt like his entire life was a fail video. Unlike his life, those videos didn't require any creativity. It was simply someone taking existing videos and compiling them together into a longer video to garner views.

  He desperately wanted to come up with something good. He wanted to do the kind of videos people would go to work and talk about the next day. Flipping through his social media accounts he saw he had a private message. He hadn’t noticed it before because he rarely got private messages, and checking them was not part of his routine. He clicked on the message tab and saw he had a message from someone named SouthernRock4Ever.

  "Man, you don’t know me but I think your videos are fucking awesome. Some guys you game with turned me onto them. Screw all those guys who don't think they're funny. They don't know what they're talking about. I think you need to make videos every day. I would watch them. I would tell other people to watch them. Keep up the good work."

  Victor was taken aback by the message. Even he didn't think his videos were any good. He started to delete the message then decided to respond to it because it was the first positive feedback he’d received in his entire social media video career, limited as it was.

  "Thanks for the feedback, dude. I'd love to post vids every day. Tell me what you liked about mine. Got any good ideas?"

  Victor sent the message. The chime over the door rang and a customer came in. He was forced to slide his phone beneath the counter and deal with her. It was a grandmother wanting to buy a video game, a birthday present for her grandson. Victor knew how this was going to play out. He went through this exact same scenario at least once a week.

  She knew which kind of games her grandson liked but she wanted a game with no profanity. It struck Victor as funny that most of the grandparents he dealt with asked about the language in the games while the parents never gave a shit. The only way to make her happy and get the sale was to encourage her to buy one of the few clean games they had.

  “He can bring it back in and trade it if he doesn’t like it,” Victor assured her, knowing the kid would be back in a couple of days to trade his lame-ass grandma game for a kick-ass shooter with naked chicks and cursing. Even if the game held a rating that meant the kid was too young to play it, his parents would give in. They always did.

  After he rang up the sale, he practically shoved the stale old biddy out the door so he could get back to his phone. He wanted to examine the trending videos again and see if it spurred any ideas. He was unused to encouragement and feeling energized from the positive message he’d received from SouthernRock4Ever. It really was an amazing world where you could you shoot a video with your phone, post it to the internet, and become an overnight sensation. The fact that some people were doing it made him feel as if he could do it too.

  When he opened up his phone, the first thing he noticed was there had been a reply to his private message. That was fast, he thought.

  The private message was indeed a response from SouthernRock4Ever. "Cool, man. Thanks for taking the time to get back to me. I know you must be busy and shit but it's great you take time to talk to your fans."

  Victor chuckled. He didn't think he had any fans. If he did, they were a very silent minority.

  "I might have some ideas for you. I watch a lot of videos and I know what kind I like best. Let me think about it and I'll get back to you in the next day or so."

  Victor replied with a very enthusiastic thumbs-up emoji. A fresh set of eyes on his situation was exactly what he needed. Perhaps he did have a streak of talent within him and SouthernRock4Ever was the first to take enough time to notice it. His humor could be an acquired taste.

  Victor's phone rang in his hands and it startled him. He sometimes forgot it could be used for other things than watching videos. The caller ID told him it was his mother. That was never good. He touched the button to answer the call.

  "Hello?"

  His tone was tentative and exploratory, uncertain as to whether he had the angry mother on the phone or the neutral mother.

  “I just wanted to remind you it's rent day. You need to stop at the bank and get my rent money before you come home. Stanley and I are thinking of taking a trip to Cherokee to gamble at the casinos."

  He frowned at the phone. His mother drove him nuts about the rent.

  "I'll get it."

  "You're damn right you’ll get it or you’ll find your stuff in the yard. And I expect you to clean that shithole up when you get home too. I had to go down there earlier because I was out of cups. Some asshole won’t bring them back upstairs after he uses one. It smelled like a dead body down there. It would knock a buzzard off a shitwagon. I ain’t your damn maid. You clean it up or I’ll raise the rent again."

  “Okay, Mom. Customer walked in. Gotta go."

  Victor dropped the phone on the counter and stared at it. Part of him wanted to pick it up and hurl it through the store window. On one hand, he had enough to eat and he had a roof over his head. He had a job and he had a phone. He had a computer and two gaming systems. Why was everything else in his life so frustrating?

  His mother was about to push him over the edge. His career in social media was floundering. He just couldn't get a leg up in the world. What he needed was more ideas from people like South
ernRock4Ever. He should do a video asking everyone what they’d like to see. He was sure he’d get some smartass comments but he might get something useful too.

  Showing an unusual level of spontaneity, Victor picked up his phone and set it to video mode. He flipped the camera to selfie mode and started recording.

  "Hey guys. I appreciate the feedback you’ve been sending my way. It's been helpful. Reviewing it has made me wonder what kind of videos you might like to see from me. So if anyone's interested, you can drop me a private message or leave a comment on this video. I want to make videos you want to watch so send me your ideas. I’ll take the most creative ideas and see if I can carry them out. Thanks!"

  Victor watched the video twice. It was simple but it had a personal touch he hoped people would find appealing. Before he could overthink it, he posted it to his social media channel and turned his phone off. He looked back over his shoulder and saw the video cameras on the wall. The owner of the store checked in several times a day to see what was going on in the stores. Victor had received warnings before about spending too much time on his phone and he didn't want another one. He would have to get up and move around the store. He at least needed to look like he was doing something.

  14

  In Frankfurt, Mohammed watched Victor's video with great interest. The fact he had sent out a plea for ideas was almost too good to be true. He’d stalked all of Victor’s social media accounts and regularly commented on his posts using his various fake accounts.

  One thing Mohammed liked about Victor was he was such a clueless loser. Based on his own posts he was admittedly a mediocre gamer, a bad son, a lousy employee, and the producer of shitty social media videos. While he clearly had aspirations of being a viral video celebrity and turning it into a career, he just wasn't smart or funny enough. He also didn't have the originality that made people want to watch his videos. They were all embarrassing flops.