Stefanie

A few months ago I discovered a crack splicing across the windshield of my car. Doing anything grownup like fixing a broken window sends me into a panic and procrastination set in, it wasn’t until a heavy snowstorm, pushing the crack further along its journey, that I finally called a garage.   Walking into the small neon-lit offices a loud bell announced my arrival. It was warm in there with windows beginning to fog. From out of the back came a tall attractive woman, dark hair piled on top of her head and thick black Amy Winehouse eyeliner swiped across her eyes. Her name was Stephanie she was the owner.  Pointing to the four black pleather chairs that fit snuggly into the corner she told me in a thick raspy voice that I could wait there but warned it could take up to two hours. Located in a desolate industrial park and with at least five inches of snow already clogging up the streets I had little choice but to wait. Across the linoleum floor an old TV was on, a muted Gordon Ramsay silently destroying lives. Two seats over a man sat waiting for his car. I smiled as I sat down, excited that I had the excuse for two hours of reading, two quiet hours for me.

“Are you from England?” he asked as I sat down.

This question is never really about me, for the most part, peoples interests lie in being able to talk about their connection to the country, what family members used to live there, or where they had been on their vacations.  In this case, the man had three friends from different parts of England who he had met online. They were gaming buddies. Middle-aged men talking about playing video games frightens me.  They make me think of mother's basements and kidnappings, a life stunted with no proper connection to reality or women. I asked the usual questions about where his friends were from hoping the conversation would end there and I could get my book out. On the chair next to him lay a magazine about guns. He spied it, he saw me spy it, and before I could grab a lifeline we free fell into conspiracy theories and preparations for invasion. I zipped my bag up. 

Mocking the friends of his who he said were ready for “it” with guns and food etc he went on to tell me about the pantry he built in his basement that he filled up with food every time there was a sale on at a store, he even had a meat freezer down there.  I thought of the ten cans of food I had in my cupboard and smiled. Moving rapidly on he advised me that rather than buying guns for this invasion I should buy body armor, 

“If there was ever an invasion,” he said, “authorities would be handing out guns on the street to anyone that wanted to fight and would be impressed by the body armor." 

“Good to know.” I nodded.

Changing thought again he said that it was unlikely we would ever be attacked by land. Pausing mid-sentence to think about this he left an empty space between us.

“Perhaps the invasion will more likely be in the form of a cyber attack.” I offered.

This was ignored. He had other ideas.

When he was younger he had helped a friend pick up a car from his estranged dad in New Mexico.  While his friend played sick and refused to leave his childhood bedroom he had sat talking with the dad, a retired Admiral, in their living room. Taking advantage of being with such an esteemed veteran he had asked where the greatest threat to America came from. 

“Shipping!” he said. “Only 10% of cargo are checked, it was going to be easy to hide a dirty bomb in them.” 

 As he carried on talking at me I watched him.   He was handsome. His thick salt n pepper hair was cut close to his finely shaped skull, a dark heavy brow giving way to a perfect straight nose. It was a strong almost aristocratic face let down by clothing so shabby I had wondered at first if he was homeless. In another life he might have been a rich man who never quite settled down, a different beautiful woman attached to a Saville Row suited arm every week.  As he droned on my mind wandered and I let myself imagine what it would be like to be back in the dating world. Weird vibes aside how would I feel if this man showed up on our date? Sure something felt off but gosh that was a nice profile! I hugged my married life.

Talk (and by talk I mean he talked) moved onto the rich, the one percent, and how the three wealthiest families who started America had bought the first president.  He said America would have been a lot better off staying with the British, old money was better than new money, the right kind of foundation could have been set up. Instead, America was built by rich boys who couldn’t get into the old boy clubs in England so they moved to America, resentful and with chips on their shoulders.  If only they had waited a few hundred years then they too could have gotten their independence from the UK like all the other countries in the 1980’s and reaped the benefits of good parenting.  

“Did you know Osama Bin Laden was trained by the CIA?!”

By the time we got onto WWII, I was a nodding soundboard, a bobblehead stuck to the dashboard of a car I wasn’t driving. He was a smart man who liked to throw information at walls. This could have been an interesting couple of hours if it were not for his monologue approach to conversation. With no end in sight, we plunged into the beginnings of the SAS, fascism and Africa.  Germany was never going to win that war, it was all about money.  Panic began to rise in my chest. With a snowstorm rolling along outside and no car, I was for all intents and purposes a prisoner. Salvation finally arrived in the form of Stephanie appearing from the back room telling my waiting room companion that his car was ready. She and I locked eyes, passing back and forth a thousand messages, an unspoken understanding that she saw my pain, I was not alone after all. Talking all the way out of the door we waited a couple of silent seconds before letting out a long grateful sigh. She had heard it all, the changes in my voice, my sentences turning to one-word answers and finally to uh huhs. Racing out to her husband in the back, who was mending my car, she had told him to hurry up, the lady who owned it was trapped in the waiting room with someone mansplaining the 20th century. Laughing with relief we wondered aloud what happened to reading the room. As a woman-owned business, in a predominantly male industry, she said this kind of thing happened to her all the time.  Men referred to her as little lady (she is 5ft 9), sitting down at her desk and talking at her until being asked to leave, couldn’t they see she was working? One summer a man sang Frank Sinatra songs at her, the entire time he waited, even after she had sat down at her desk to work, just because of the Sinatra tattoo on her leg. While we swapped stories another man walked in. He was old, a little shaky, rude and without any charm. We looked at each other, a universal fatigue toiling across the room.

After he left I was once again asked about England, but this time it was part of a conversation, a back and forth where we learned a little about each other. It was Stephanie's English granny who had brought the art of tea drinking home when she boarded the boat in the UK with her new American army husband. He had been stationed in England and together they came back to America. She remembers growing up learning how to knit and drink tea with her grandmother, her favorite being English Breakfast. 

I didn't stay for too long, my waiting room companion was set to come back with another car. In the five minutes since he had left he had already rung back to ask a question. 

Bonded by a shared experience we said our goodbyes. As I skidded my car into slow-moving traffic I checked my rear view mirror for anyone that might me following me.  Pulling up to the traffic lights stockpiles of canned food formed pyramids in my mind. With thoughts of impending invasions I turned right and headed towards the nearest supermarket.