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  “Humph,” Martin grunted. He was at a loss for words—a rarity. He was nearly sixty-two years old and had made his living as an English professor at the University of Texas. He taught words—was full of words, full of opinions—always eloquently vocal. There were only a handful of staggeringly beautiful, or dreadfully awful, moments when words abandoned him.

  It was hard for Martin to accept, a bitter pill to swallow, that he of all people could think of nothing to say. Words set you free, he might tell a class, words unite disconnected bodies.

  This is certainly one of the good times that have me tongue-tied, he mused inwardly.

  “Dr. Reynolds … my husband and I are so grateful,” Zoe said, coming to the rescue, holding up a hand when their doctor started to interrupt her. “We have been so blessed to have you as our doctor—as our friend.” She paused for a moment, smiling, then told him, “Okay, now you can talk.”

  They laughed again, an intimate union of souls, at one time torn into shreds emotionally from what they had been through, then patched together again, like the most comfortable quilt. They had fought long, hard battles together; they had shared every emotion. There existed a strange, communal connection between them that could never be broken, which words couldn’t do justice. Soldiers who had seen action together would understand.

  Martin shook his head and accepted his vocal impotence with a serene smile. His mind wandered to the past ... words, floating like musical notes across a campus library, once brought two people together.

  It was the start of the seventies, and thanks to the draft, Martin’s generation was forced to consider the possibility of going to Vietnam. They called the draft selection a lottery because of the process used to select people. Martin could attest, however, that most of his peers thought of it as the anti-lottery—a lottery to pick losers—where tickets were distributed by force.

  Back then, in his opinion, people wanted one of two things: a cause to champion, or to champion no causes. Martin Lange’s cause was personal fulfillment through books and literature. He could, and often did, spend entire days in the library. He loved the smell of books, wanted to share the air they breathed. He might spend an hour looking at one shelf on a single bookcase in the library.

  Tracing his finger down the worn spine of a volume, he’d gently remove it from the shelf, taking great care to inflict no damage to the cover or spine. Reverence. Maybe blow the dust off, open it, and study the title page. The year it was published. The small variances in the way different authors said, hey, none of this real—it’s fiction, pal! And even then, more than forty years ago, he had wondered at the need to tell people that everything was pulled from the author’s imagination—that’s what fiction is—imagination. Trifles of the mind. Readers don’t need that delineation, he would think, shaking his head.

  Those were magical days for him. Other kids were confused—they were finding themselves. Martin already knew himself; each day was exploration. His mother had always told him, “Martin, you’re an old soul.”

  She was so right. And, at the center of his life: words.

  He was in the library one evening, poking through pages, when he noticed the time. The minutes had slipped through his fingers like the proverbial grains of sand in the hourglass. Words fed his soul; however, he would miss dinner if he didn’t leave soon. His resources were meager and he relied on his scholarship-provided meal plan.

  Martin took slow, loping strides through the library, and frowned when he saw that the circulation desk was empty. Future students would identify Professor Lange easily from great distances because of that walk. Long legs mounted by a stiff upper torso, chin raised, fingers curled around a book, or two, or three. It was his signature: the academic Pink Panther.

  “Hello,” he had whispered loudly. No response.

  That’s when he heard her voice. Slow, upbeat, rhythmic; it was Mozart. Beethoven. Tchaikovsky.

  He followed it like the cartoon mouse that follows the scent of cheese in the air. He nearly floated. Eyes wide, time forgotten, he rounded the corner and saw Zoe for the first time.

  She was reading verse to maybe fifteen people—some sort of poetry gathering. He favored classical literature to poetry, Dickens to Yeats, but he certainly appreciated what poetry offered. If you could capture prose against a rhythm, and make it work, he found he could admire it, to a degree.

  Zoe sat atop a wooden stool and delivered her words carefully, following a meter of her own design. Each word was crisp, and clear, and he stopped to appreciate not only her outward beauty, which was unbounded, but her mastery of diction, too. She was an enunciating angel, heaven-sent.

  He didn’t know her name. Not yet. However, he thought he must know it soon—that very night. She finished her recitation, and he was spellbound. Subdued applause brought him out of his trance and he clapped along with the others, a little too loudly, perhaps, and continuing an extra second or so beyond when the others had finished.

  Zoe noticed the sharp sound of his loitering applause, crinkled her eyebrows at the disturbance, and looked across the room. They shared eyes for a few seconds. Her medium-length skirt, and the legs it partially concealed, didn’t go unnoticed, but that was purely secondary. Martin was an intellectual, and while he was no stranger to physical desires (he was a man, after all), he had always been attracted to girls with big words versus big…

  “Martin?” Dr. Reynolds asked, interrupting his thoughts. “You okay, friend?”

  “Doc—Jack—I was making a visit to the past, my friend. The past. Sidetracked. But I’m back,” he said. He extended his hand toward Dr. Reynolds, but when Jack took it, he pulled him in for a hug. It was uncharacteristic and a little awkward for Martin. It was also an indication of his immense pleasure. He had, after all, just gotten his life back.

  “Well, that sounds like a condition for another doctor. Visiting friends from the past inside your mind, and such, isn’t my forte,” he said with a chuckle. “How about I get Susan in here? You know her, and you know the drill. She’ll review everything with you and give you some paperwork.”

  “Of course,” Martin answered. “We mustn’t grow complacent.”

  “That’s right, buddy. You won’t have to see my ugly mug quite so often, but we’ll still need to see each other now and then to check up on things.” He walked over to the door, opened it, and called softly, “Susan … can you come here for a sec?” He then turned back to Martin and Zoe and said, “Well, I—”

  A pert, blonde nurse burst into the room, cutting him off with a cheery, “Hello, there! I’ve got it now, Doctor R.”

  “Thanks, Susan,” he replied. They were all smiling—smiles everywhere—a good joke shared at a clown convention.

  “Mr. & Mrs. Lange … just follow me over to my workstation and we’ll get you squared away.” Susan moved personably but efficiently, and they were soon seated, reviewing paperwork and scheduling future visits.

  Martin noticed a yellow ribbon on her uniform, the calling card of those with friends and family in the military. “Who is it that you have overseas?” he asked.

  The nurse looked at him, momentarily confused, then smiled when she realized he was referring to the ribbon pendant. She reached up and played with it for a moment. “My husband. He’s in the Marines … in Afghanistan.”

  “Well, our thanks and blessings to you both,” he told her, “Tell your mister thanks for doing what he does, so that eggheads like me can prattle on about books all day!”

  “We all do our part,” she said.

  Just as they were finishing up with Susan, Dr. Reynolds caught them again. He placed a hand on each one of their shoulders and said in a genial voice, caterpillars dancing: “A dang miracle, honestly. It might be one for the record books. And it couldn’t have happened to better people.”

  “Thanks, Jack.”

  “Absolutely,” he said, paused, smiled again. “Looks like it’s a ‘to be’, eh Professor?” Dr. Reynolds seemed pretty pleased with his English
humor, which tickled Doc Lange.

  “To be, no question about it!”

  Chapter 4

  Rose

  Rose Murray didn’t let on that she was intimidated.

  She was fifty years old and she had seen more than most people, had done things that would make many people cringe and whisper prayers of thanks. Her life had been a wild ride, a roller coaster of physical and mental experiences that had left her road-weary. The middle couple of decades, give or take, were a blur, like trying to see through a shower curtain. You could make out shapes and patterns, knew it was the sink across the room, but the details were gone.

  Or like moving your head from side to side, as fast as you can, and all you see are streaks of light stretching across your field of vision. She had done a lot, indeed.

  Not all of it was good.

  Regret had gone from being a quiet bystander in her life, to a more dominant role. She tried to push it away. I can’t change the past, she reminded herself.

  Whenever she started to get that tickling sensation at the base of her brain, started to feel that twinge of remorse at what she had missed, she reminded herself to be tough; she had a rule against having regrets: nothing good can come of it. Besides—there was so much that simply went unremembered.

  She was seated in a dining room chair. The table was one of only a few solid, beautiful pieces of furniture in her house. While she wasn’t destitute, she didn’t have much money. If a friend hadn’t passed on, leaving her the place, she’d be in a very bad spot. Fortunately, taxes were her only real estate worries.

  Brian was setting up a laptop computer in her living room. He and his wife Maggie were, perhaps, fifteen years younger than Rose. They had been neighbors for a decade on their quaint block in a quiet, older part of Austin. Their section of town had seen better days; however, there was an innate dignity among the lower-middle-class residents. They had survived and wouldn’t be shaken during economic bounces and natural aging of the area. They held their heads high and kept the crime low.

  Of course, she had warmed to Brian and Maggie right away. She frequently thought of them as her own kids…

  (Mary Beth)

  …but of course they weren’t her kids. They were just nice people. Neighbors.

  “Okay, Rockin’ Rose. Are you ready to jump on the Twenty-First-Century-Express, bound for the here and now? I hope you have your ticket handy, because you are ready to ride!”

  “Oh, Brian, I know what century we’re in.”

  “Come on … didn’t you say you had never been on the Internet?” he chided good-naturedly.

  “Brian!” Rose exclaimed. “Come on…”

  “Seriously, all joking aside, this can get crazy if you let it. I want you to repeat three words after me,” he told her.

  “Three words after me.”

  “Ha, that’s funny, Rose.”

  “Don’t sound so surprised, Brian. I can be funny.”

  He chuckled. “You’re right. Okay now, three words. World. Wide. Web.” He over-enunciated the words, nodding his head slightly, only half-jokingly acknowledging the power of the words he’d spoken. He let them sink in for a moment, watching her. “Those days of hiking to the library for a book—done. Gone. Need to know what’s on television? When Lincoln was assassinated? The capitol of Rhode Island? It’s all here. That and you can get forty-five different recipes for Orange Duck.”

  “Brian,” Rose said again, “don’t mess with an old—older—lady. It’s not nice.”

  “Rose—I’m not messing around—you can pretty much do anything, or find anything, with the Internet. If this doesn’t change how you view the whole world, I’d be surprised.” He stood up and motioned her over to the office chair he had just vacated. She sat down and he pulled the laptop toward her.

  “So…” she said.

  “So. This is your mouse over here. You can use it to move your cursor,” he pointed out the little arrow on the screen, “and highlight anything you want to click on. You click on something and it takes you to another spot on the Internet. If your mouse is acting funny, you can use the trackpad, like this.” Using his first two fingers, he swiped the pad, and the cursor bounced across with them.

  “Okay. I sort of know that already. I mean, I know what a computer is … I’m not that old and out of touch.”

  He laughed. “I know, but I’m showing you just like I’d show anybody—from the beginning.” He was so nice about it, even though he was probably lying just to make her feel better. She doubted many people needed an explanation of what a computer mouse was!

  Brian co-managed a local non-profit program that helped adults earn their high school diplomas and General Education Diplomas. The perfect neighbor for me, she thought. She could tell by his patient and easygoing demeanor that he was really good at what he did. He had a way of talking to adults that didn’t leave you defensive or make you feel like you weren’t smart enough. Those traits were undoubtedly valuable when teaching adults.

  Brian took her for a spin through the basics of computing. They talked about files and storage, music and movies, and powering it off properly.

  “I guess it’s not so bad,” she commented.

  “No, it just takes getting used to. Believe me—you’ll encounter problems—we all do. Just try not to curse, or hit the machine. But if you have to do one or the other—curse.” He laughed again, “It’s a lot cheaper than buying a new computer.”

  “What about email and that other stuff?” she asked.

  “Oh, that’s right! I almost forgot,” he said. “Just take the mouse and double-click on the Internet Explorer icon. That gets you on the Internet, of course.” He waited while she moved and clicked. She was getting better—slowly—more confident. “If you go to Yahoo we’ll create an email account, unless you want to use one of the other web-based emails like Google or Hotmail? Do you care?”

  “No—Yahoo is fine.”

  They tinkered with the computer for a few minutes and set up the account. Rose was starting to feel comfortable since Brian was letting her click through everything. Pretty soon, she had her first piece of web identification, a digital footprint—an email account!

  “Have you heard of Facebook?” he asked.

  “Um, well, yeah…” she trailed off. She hoped he didn’t notice the color creep into her face. She had heard of Facebook, all right.

  “Would you like me to create an account for you? We might as well. Almost everybody has a Facebook account these days, even though some people don’t like to admit it.”

  “Why is that?” she asked.

  “Oh, it’s hard to explain. It’s sort of like it’s too new. Like old money people looking down on new money people; it’s uncouth or classless. Something like that, anyway.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. It’s weird. Sure, it can be distracting. Sure, it can be annoying. It can also be addicting. But it’s what people do now. It’s part of the world of social media. It doesn’t make people classless; those people were already like that.”

  “Hmm.” It was really strange. The last thing she needed was another addiction. She had spent half her life addicted to things that weren’t good for her. Of course, it was hard to imagine an addiction that lay in wait behind the plastic keyboard, glass screen, and unseen circuitry of the laptop. At least not like the drugs and the alcohol had been. Then again, she’d been wrong before—frequently.

  “So, do you want a special name for your Facebook page? How about Rockin’ Rose?”

  “Brian…”

  “Rockin’ Rose it is.” He typed it in and hit enter. She shook her head but didn’t complain. Nobody likes a complainer, she mused. Besides—it was funny—and she found herself smiling despite the silliness of it. Rockin’ Rose. “Eh? What’s that?” he asked. “A smile? I knew that you’d like that. I could always tell you were fond of that nickname.” They both laughed at that.

  Rose watched Brian tapping away. He stopped now and then to ask her question
s, turned his head politely so she could enter a password, and soon he was finished with her account.

  Almost.

  “Rose, one thing left to do.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You need a picture,” he said and smiled when she immediately groaned.

  “Brian…”

  “Come on, Rose. I’ll take one real fast here with my phone and set you up.”

  “I don’t know…”

  “Don’t be a party pooper, Rose.”

  “Oh, okay,” she sighed, but immediately lifted a hand to her hair and pulled loose the clip holding it in place. She let it fall to her shoulders, posed for the phone, and gave a smile.

  “Cheese!” Brian exclaimed and snapped a couple of pictures. Moments later, he had one loaded into her Facebook page. She looked down at the screen and saw her own face smiling back at her. It was disconcerting in a variety of ways, but mostly because it was so immediate. They had literally taken the picture just seconds ago, and now there it was, smiling back at her from the screen. It was so lifelike.

  “It’s a little creepy. My picture looks like it might start talking,” she told him.

  “That’s good, it’s inviting—you’ll have a hundred friends in no time. But, if it really does start talking, then just run from the house and don’t look back.”

  “Ha, right,” she chuckled. Brian was friendly, funny, and always animated about everything. A bit of a joker, too. “You’re very good to me. You and Maggie.”

  “No sweat. You’re pretty much family,” he said. He glanced down at his watch and yelped: “Oh, man, I’m late! I’ve got a class soon.”

  “Go, go, go…” Rose told him, pushing him toward the door.

  “If you have any troubles, let me know. I’ll send you a friend request in a while—your first one!”

  “Okay,” Rose replied, not sure what he meant, but she figured it would connect the two of them on Facebook.

  She walked Brian out and watched from her porch as he trotted to his house. Closing her door, she stepped over to the window. Without moving the curtains, she hovered at the crack, the slender opening between curtain and wall, and waited, her eye on Brian’s car. Seconds later, he leapt into his vehicle and zipped away, off to help adults complete what they started as kids.