a departure from Electra

 

Chapter 1 /depature

It was clear she had no idea what she was doing. And it was also clear she had no idea where she was going. Pretty much, everything she owned was in these two suitcases and the stack of Amazon boxes that reached her hip.

You know those mornings you wake up from fifteen minutes of sleep? Your eyes feel like glass cutting into your eye balls. At once wired and exhausted. 

It was all so sudden. The lawyer showed up and said it was time to vacate and there was no time to organize a plan. It was a week of arranging guests for the funeral and the service and then packing up belongings to send to Goodwill. How sad to handle the objects that once meant something to this old man she only got to know the last six months of his life. He had not really mentioned where he would have wanted these material things of his to go, and some of the priceless objects were from all over the world but his more personal belongings of clothing, pots and pans, the worn out furniture … 

So like a zombie living off the charge of caffeine she had attacked the overwhelming task of organizing things to be ready for pick up for whomever might be taking it. Needless to say it was a surprise to hear the lawyer tell her to stick around once the private reading of the will to the family was over. She sat outside the old mansion on top of the Amazon boxes and stared stupefied at the dusty ground outside by the cue of cars parked out front. 

Chapter 2/leaving a town called Electra

By appearances, it was hard to guess her age, and even if you tried, you’d be wrong. Not even once you started talking to her could you guess because of her laugh and her choices in conversation. In this moment she was dressed in casual cut off denim shorts which she wore with a salmon colored tshirt with short sleeves. She wore black Keen hiker sandals. Her hair was an unusual iridescent shade somewhere between brick and saffron that glowed in the artificial lighting of the two story Barnes and Noble bookstore. She had a copy of the Dharma Bums under her arm while she stood in the travel section squinting through her somewhat nerdy framed glasses trying to read the map she had slightly open so as not to have to refold it again. 

She had no idea what she was looking at. Not even sure if the part she was looking at was anywhere near where she was. Upset, clearly, as she was unconscious that the hair she had pulled behind her ear to better see was twisted around the bar of her glasses and sticking up in a rather comical manner. Not that she seemed to care.

And so unconscious she was being watched until for whatever reason, a movement in her peripheral vision caught her eye and caused her to look up. 

That was when she first noticed him. 

He was standing adjacent in another part of the travel section with a book open. And was not hiding the fact he was looking at her. 

For just a moment she forgot about being lost. And forgot about the fact that she had to trust the mechanic she was towed to and left at early that morning. That was just across the street from a bookstore, conveniently as —she’d been there now six hours. The book store staff kept giving her suspicious looks every time they walked by her, which did not help her feeling of unease about her whole situation. 

Who was this guy staring at her? And why was he? 

He was actually not creepy which was what had her a bit curious. Did he think he knew her and was trying to place her face? 

He was kind of oddly dressed. Too neat. He wore a crisp grayish blue tshirt and khakis with somewhat odd looking running shoes she had never seen on anyone. Yet he was actually cute, maybe too young for her, though, thirties? A kind of scruffy but not quite-a-beard outlined his face and the same brownish shade as his well groomed hair beneath a kind of fedora and —was that a brief case?

She had not meant to appear interested in him but he had made her curious to have kept her gaze on him long enough to, perhaps, give that impression. Which, to her horror, being rather painfully shy, she soon realized when he started to walk over, picking up his brief case.

“You dropped this,” he said bending down and handed her the folded printout from the mechanic which must have fallen out of her back pocket 

“Oh….” she said staring at him, realizing he was English; the accent. Which explained his odd appearance. And, again, for another slightly too long moment, she stared at him because of his eyes. There was something unusual about them which caught her and kept her awkwardly staring at them.

He indicated the map she was looking at with a kind of head gesture,

“road traveling?”

“Uh….” she looked down at the map, “do you happen know the name of this town?”

“It’s Electra,” he said and smiled  and looked more curiously at with a kind of chuckle asked her, “are you lost?”

“Yes. Actually.”

He reached for her map,

“no, you’re on the wrong part—where are you intending to go?”

Shaking her head she looked up at him.

Only now did he realize her eyes looked tired and bloodshot.

“Baltimore?” he suggested

Adamantly, she shook her head,

“definitely not!”

“Then, DC?”

Again, she shook her head. But at that moment her phone rang.

Realizing it was the mechanic she looked at him holding up one finger,

“it’s the mechanic,” so as not to seem rude as she answered.

As he watched her, she listened to the voice of the mechanic,

“you fixed the what? …..” and listened again, “what is that? ….ok….so…. Uh huh…. um…. so then—I can drive it?” And uncomfortable now, she looked back up at him as he stood there watching her, her face turning the same shade as her hair, “….I’m not sure what that means,” she was saying.

“Here,” the man standing there with the English accent now said, cutting in, “let me take this—“

“Huh?” but she let him

For a moment she watches and listens as he talks to the mechanic discussing motor parts she never heard of. He now says,

“and how much? No— I don’t think so….” covering the speaking part he looked at her, “is this the place across the street?”

“Yeah,” she says

“Let’s go,” he says