“This thing can haul ass, right?” Rhys Morgan asked.
“Never underestimate power of das Deutsche Engineerische,” I said.
She cocked her head at me, “Alright, so do you have the address or no?”
“Follow me,” I said, heading into the store with her, “I’m one of the few people to keep a Rolodex in 2023.”
“I’ve never seen you have a Rolodex here.”
“It’s in Windows Cardfile,” I said, going through my floppy disks for the one labeled 名片夾, 『Here it is!』
The floppy drive clicked away as it scanned the contents of the diskette before finding only two files: CARDFILE.EXE and ROLODEX.CRD, both files taking up considerable space on the thing, though ROLODEX.CRD was by far the largest with a reported file size of over a hundred fifty kilobytes.
“Of course you’d do something like this,” Rhys Morgan muttered as I probed the thing for “Travis & Jolene Turner”.
“Limited desk space and 7-Zip is very useful,” I said, eventually finding their address and copying it into Google while Rhys Morgan did the same thing on her phone, “Here’s their address!” I said, showing the virtual card to her.
“Found one,” she said after a moment.
“Already?”
“I’m not on Dial-up.”
“Neither am I.”
“It’s called the Manhattan Grand Hotel,” she said, “Three stars, walking distance, and the price isn’t too bad.”
“Sounds good to me,” I said as a new mixture of emotion built up inside of me, “You need to use a computer to book it?”
“Can that thing even take a credit card number?”
“I have something else doing the heavy lifting entirely,” I said, getting up and motioning to the chair, “Have at it.”
“Ladno,” she said, taking the seat and booking the hotel.
I could tell it had been years since she’d sat down to a keyboard like this. Me, on the other hand, I enjoyed the hollow-sounding clack-clack-clack of the older boards (part of the reason I kept my docking setup in the cave). She was obviously having a time trying to get everything to show up properly on the old 800-by-600 screen, assuming the constant scrolling was anything to go by.
I wasn’t about to troubleshoot a driver to get the monitor to properly show an XGA-size picture.
“Got it,” she said after a few minutes.
“Got it?”
“We’re all set,” she said, “I may have to call and push the check-in day back, but I think we’ll be fine.”
“How long?”
“A week.”
“Oh that’s good.”
“I just need to print out the confirmation and we’ll be ready to hit the road!” she said, downloading a PDF and sending it to the printer which happily whirred E-flat at middle-C.
While we were walking back to the car, the feelings I had while Rhys Morgan was booking the hotel went away, though something was still amiss. Sure, the two of us weren’t trying to show up the other like usual, but there was something different that I just couldn’t put my finger on.
“A week should be enough time to figure out everything that we need to,” Rhys Morgan said as I went through my house and turned everything off, “What do you think Travis and Jolene are gonna try to do?”
“Probably lie their way out of this,” I said, “If Travis is your dad-”
“Expect to be treated like hot dog shit,” she finished, “Got it.”
“Everything’s off,” I said, tossing my key to her, “You drive then we swap every six hours.”
As soon as the car started up and Android Auto connected with my phone, Rhys Morgan put in the address of the hotel to Google Maps.
“You got their address?” she asked.
“It’s in my notes app.”
“Good,” she said with a smile and putting the gearshift to the right of drive.
“What’s that?”
“I drive a stick,” she said, “This is so I don’t put it in Neutral on the highway.”
“Just remember you gotta shift through eight of them instead of five.
“Got it.”
Traveling cross-country was as relaxing as it always was, though there were plenty of idiots on the interstate that didn’t know how to drive. Both me and Rhys Morgan tended to stay in the left lanes keeping the car going at well over a hundred.
Despite the high speeds we were pushing the car to do, it was still easy to keep control on the roads, though I took control of the wheel when we were coming into Manhattan. The streets were still how I remembered them, though when I made it to the hotel, I had to drop Rhys Morgan off and find a park.
That was the hard part.
Rhys Morgan had gotten us checked in and showed me the room. Two beds, comfortable, spacious, and almost nicer than my house. Not quite, though.
As soon as the door shut, we dropped our bags on the floor and took a moment to relax and see what New York Cable Television had to offer after nine years.
“What’s the plan?” I asked after we’d deduced that there was nothing good on.
“Mom sent me a text and says that Jayden’s gonna stay at her house until the trip in June, then she’ll make a decision,” Rhys Morgan answered, sinking into a chair with her laptop, “Maybe it’ll be long enough when we get back to smooth things over with her.”
I had to concede when Rhys Morgan was right about something, something I’m sure she picked up on when I fell back on my bed.
“I don’t know if what we’re about to do is something she should see or not.”
“Probably not,” Rhys Morgan said, raising up her arm and smelling underneath, “Ew, I need a bath.”
“I’ll bathe in the morning.”
“It’s 10:00,” she said, “Do you wanna get lunch or something?”
Rhys Morgan and Penelope are like the US and USSR… if both were in NATO, so we should all be glad that or this never happened. Rhys Morgan's Russian is about the same level that Penelope's Chinese was in Grade 7 (Not perfect, but good enough to be able to use as a second language) and Penelope's knowledge of German ends at "Volkswagen means People Car, and it can go like hell.". Penelope and Jayden had a fight, so Rhys Morgan has an equally-out-of-the-box solution to fix it: Don't bottle up your anger. Find some ass that needs kickin' and kick some ass! They won't know what hit 'em.
Rhys Morgan and Penelope also find out a long-kept not-a-secret about how they're related, and it comes as a shock to the VERY immature Travis, which would also explain the duo's relationship with each other, as well as the included showing-each-other-up-and-making-everyone-else-regret-it sessions.
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