Page 6 of Error Handling

We hang up and I wait for her to ring my voicemail. She doesn’t. I’m not surprised.

A white SUV rolls into the parking lot.

I text Luna hastily.

What does my driver look like??

She sends me a picture of a young kid, barely twenty.

White Honda CRV?

Yup, she answers.

The SUV pulls to the curb. I peer through the passenger window to get a view of the driver. He matches the photo Luna sent me.

He’s here.

Have fun tonight.Luna ends her text with a smiley emoji.

Can I change my mind?

Nope.

Fine.

I toss my phone into my backpack and trudge to the SUV.

Chapter 2

Chris

Twenty minutes ago, I turned right off Johnson Street onto Meeting for what should have been a six-minute drive to the East Bay Parking Garage. Thanks to traffic, my truck is idling next to the Ferry Hotel, only halfway to my destination. According to my analog wristwatch, my blind date with Sarah started ten minutes ago.

Great first impression.

Not that I’ve pinned much hope on this date. I agreed to it mostly to appease my boss who insisted I’d hit it off with Sarah. I doubt I will. I’ve been on two blind dates in my life and they both bombed, both set up by my mother who thought she could lift my spirits after Allison broke up with me.

One of the dates picked her nose and ate it in the car on the way to Texas Roadhouse. I couldn’t look her in the eye for the rest of the date. Nose-picking requires at least a dozen good dates and even then, it ruins some of the magic.

Not that I’ve felt any magic for a while. What is “magic” anyway? Hormones and pheromones, biological adaptations toadvance the species. When you look at it that way, sexual intercourse isn’t much above eating snot. I don’t have much hope for tonight’s date.

I lean forward, flick my hair away from my left eye, and peer at the top floor of the hotel. The building is new construction, but it was designed to fit in with the historic district, the warehouse-style façade upscaled to accommodate well-to-do tourists. Like most of the buildings downtown, it has a unique, old-world appeal.

At this rate, I’ll be over half an hour late. In the modern age, a gentleman would text his date to let her know. With my eyes focused on the car in front of me, I reach down and feel for my phone. It should be resting on the console. It’s not.

I lift myself from my seat and feel the pockets of my worn, frayed jeans. Empty. No phone. No gentlemanly communication. I slap the steering wheel with my palm.

When I was a kid, I lost everything: my Gameboy, my iPod Nano, the earbuds for my iPod Nano, my toothbrush, my shoes. I often forgot things too, mostly the due dates for my homework assignments. I forgot my multiplication facts just before taking tests. I forgot the capital of Maryland and the name of the fifteenth president.

“You’re going to make us late again, find your shoes!” my father often yelled.

“I don’t know where your iPod is! Why do you always lose everything?”

“Another ‘F?’ , Chris! At this rate, you won’t graduate high school!”

Mom didn’t swear, but she yelled just as loud.

I didn’t know why I lost stuff. It was there and then it was gone like I lived in the Matrix but everyone else lived in the real world.