Code Junkie

CHAPTER TWELVE

"Hello, Kevin. Mitch told me to be expecting you," Sal said.

Salvatore was a thin older man. I held about a head of height on him. He opened the door, greeted me, and promptly floated back into his apartment. The man was wearing a navy blue peacoat with large, yellow felted buttons on the chest. A regular Captain Crunch. He wore these glasses that seemed a bit too small for his face. As he turned from the door, before walking away, I noticed that they were rimmed in a faux ivory and featured a leopard print design around the lenses.

"Uh, yes," I said. "He told me you needed help with your computer?"

"Ah, that's right," he nodded. "You're the computer guy."

Sal moved towards his kitchenette and sat at a small counter. He resumed drinking a cup of something and stared at me. He must have had multiple errand boys running around for him, fixing various pieces of bullshit that he had managed to break. He just looked at me, not really expecting I do anything, just like an old married man would look at his life: content, not particularly happy, but not expecting much action in any sense of the word. I could not help but feel that this awkward interaction was normal to him.

"So where do I...?" I motioned with my hands. He tilted his head to the side.

I followed his gaze across the room and muttered an audible, "oh" when something stuck out. I saw his computer set up near the wall in the corner, but also noticed something else. Among all of all the useless handfuls of memorabilia and Americana I saw in the lightly colored living room, even among the general mess that decorated the apartment, I had failed to notice an older woman (a peer to Sal) sitting on the giant sofa against the wall. She was half-smiling at me. No, she was half-smiling past me, at the wall, more accurately. Odin's beard: it was the woman from the post office.

"Oh, hello. I, I didn't see you," I said. I fumbled with my greeting and sort of waved to her. Like a jackass. She did not exactly react.

"Margaret, MARGARET -- this is Kevin. You've seen him before, yes?"

"Oh, yes, we have," I said. Wait. Did she talk to Sal about me?

"Yes, Margaret. Kevin's been here and helped you with your crafts, remember?"

"I. Wait," I said. "No I didn't. I, uh. How are you Margaret?"

I was in an apartment with two senile old people. What a way to spend the day. Margaret just upped the intensity of the half-smile as her way of saying, "Yes, I'm still breathing." I still was not exactly sure what I was doing here. Considering Ted and Jerry were at work and Sara was probably still passed out at home, these two constituted the upper portion of my five best friends -- you're a real winner, Kevin.

"You remember her don't you, Kevin?" Sal asked, sipping from his ceramic cup. "My sister in law?"

"Yes. I've seen her at the post office before,"

Sal held my look a few seconds beyond what was necessary. The stare broke as he blinked once and lowered his mug. Placing it on the counter, he swept away from the small kitchen area and across the living room towards me. He gestured once again towards the computer in the corner and beckoned me to follow him.

"You see," he said. "I was working on my scripts. Plays. Musicals. Dramas. Anything that holds my attention until completion."

"That's fun," I offered.

"No. It is art," he argued. "But something recently happened to my computer and deleted half of my projects."

His projects.

I wanted to like this man. He seemed reasonably friendly. I felt as if we were old friends, even though he was in his early fifties (or just incredibly healthy and in his sixties). But I could not place him. That was the norm in Deptford: if someone survived into their later years and was not a transplant from elsewhere, there was a solid chance that they held connections to your personal history. He was probably a friend of my grandparents who I met as a child. Maybe he was an old schoolteacher, or cafeteria assistant, maybe even someone involved with the church. Who knows? I wanted to like this man, but if that was to be the case, he'd have to stop calling the eleven-page text documents on his computer art.