Arnesto Modesto: The World's Most Ineffectual Time Traveler

Roach Trap

Arnesto's Apartment

Silicon Valley, California

Friday, April 11, 2008

Evening

Arnesto was anxious. He felt like a little kid waiting for Christmas. Except in this case, he didn't know when Christmas would finally show up and come into his life. The best he could do was narrow it down to within a few weeks.

Any day now, he would meet his second wife.

He logged on to his dating profile for the umpteenth time in a row. There were no new messages. Not surprising as he had stopped communicating with other women a while back in anticipation of Her.

And one day, there she was.

RoachMotel66 wasn't online, but she had completed her profile. She only had two pictures. One was a few years old when she had longer hair, ignoring the site's recommendation of only posting recent pics. The other was recent, however, it was only a profile shot of her face. Neither pic revealed anything about her body. It didn't matter. Arnesto knew she was tiny. He knew she was five-feet-three and thin with a blonde pixie cut.

And frigging adorable.

He sighed with relief at finally seeing her again. He took the time to read her profile, knowing he shouldn't take too long. Soon she would be inundated with messages, like, "Hey," or "Sup" from guys who posted pics of themselves shirtless or in front of their cars. Arnesto always wondered if that ever worked.

She might even receive a dick pic or two. Arnesto hated this tactic. Sure it made his lack of vulgarity look much better in comparison, but it was a classless move that hurt everyone.

The waiting period was over. It was time to strike.

He wrote her the following message, responding directly to several points mentioned in her profile: "Hi! I didn't read your profile, but I'm opposed to the environment. Want to come over and watch me play Halo for the next 6-8 hours?" He checked it over, then giggled as he hit, "Send."

He played video games to keep himself busy while he waited. He had a feeling she would be back soon.

He refreshed the window to update his favorites list. She appeared at the top — with a little green circle in the corner. She was online.

He clicked on her picture to bring up her profile again. He only did this so the site would send her a notification that he was checking her out.

At last, she responded, "Okay, you made me laugh. Its good to see there's at least one guy on here with some intelligence." Another response came right after, "Typo, ugh! It's, not its. Not my fault, I was eating a burrito while I typed. ;-)"

That's my girl!

Arnesto wrote back, "It's okay, I made a typo once." He got the notification that she viewed his profile and added, "Are you checking me out? My eyes are up here!"

He eased off the jokes and let the conversation flow more naturally. They talked about her job in I.T. She was the only female in a small group of technicians that worked for a sales company. They had fun there, but sometimes things got a little too slow. They played online games together during their downtime, except for Barry, who wasn't into it.

She and Arnesto talked about other things, too, sticking to the usual topics. Where they were from, how many siblings they had, what colleges they went to, how glad they were college was over, and so on. When it looked like things were slowing down, Arnesto decided to kick it up a notch. "RoachMotel66. Is that Roach as in Rachel or Rochelle?"