Rhys
Morgan was loading her bags in the trunk of my Jetta as I came out
with my own and loaded them as well.
“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?”
