Chapter 17: Conversation with a Stranger

Dexter looked down at his watch. He had taken the kids to the hospital at five thirty. It was now nine thirty and the kids were still visiting their mother. He figured that hunger should have driven them down to the cafeteria by now. It had now closed and he was left drinking vending machine coffee. It was even worse than the cafeteria coffee.

A young man stood by the vending machine feeding money into it for a cup of coffee. He pressed a couple of buttons and stood back. The cup fell into place at an angle and half of the coffee was dispensed onto the floor. He fumbled with getting the cup straightened.

He looked around the empty room and spotted Dexter. He headed over to where Dexter was seated. He sat down at the table next to Dexter and said, “I hate hospitals.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who loves hospitals,” Dexter said.

Bored, he was more than willing to pass the time with idle conversation with a total stranger.

He asked, “Why are you visiting the hospital tonight?”

“My Dad was brought in earlier for his heart,” the man said.

“Sorry to hear that,” Dexter said.

“I blame the company he worked for,” the man said.

“Why?” Dexter asked.

“He’s been working twelve hour days and seven days a week for years,” the man said.

Dexter said, “I know how that is.”

“For a long time, I thought it was because he had more loyalty to his company than to his family. Boy was I wrong,” the young man said. He took a sip of the coffee and then said, “That’s awful coffee.”

“Why do you say that you were wrong?” Dexter asked.

The young man answered, “I got a job and they wanted me to work the same kind of hours. It was do it or not have a job.”

“I know how that is,” Dexter said.

The young man’s cell phone rang. He spent ten minutes talking on it. It was pretty obvious to Dexter that it was a work related call.

Dexter looked at his empty coffee cup. Another cup would keep him awake the whole night. As it was, he figured it would be two or three in the morning before he’d be able to fall asleep. He decided that he’d try to get a caffeine free soda later.

The young man closed his cell phone. He grumbled, “I’m not going in to work.”

“Are you expecting any calls from family or friends?” Dexter asked.

“No.”

“Turn off your cell phone,” Dexter said.

“Why?” the young man asked.

Dexter said, “They can’t call you if your phone is off. You’re in a hospital. If your boss gives you a rasher of shit about not answering your phone, explain that they don’t allow cell phones in a hospital.”

“That’s a good idea,” the young man said. He fiddled a moment with his cell phone, and then said, “It’s off.”

“Don’t you feel better?” Dexter asked.

“I do,” the young man said.

Dexter asked, “Are you married?”

“No,” the young man said. He shook his head and added, “I doubt that I’ll ever have a chance to get married. My job keeps me too busy to spend much time searching for Mrs. Right.”

“You’ll find someone,” Dexter said.

“I don’t know. My boss dropped in my office at five and said that I had to give a presentation to a customer Monday morning. It’s going to take me all weekend to put it together. It seems like every week it’s something like that,” the young man said.

Dexter pulled out his wallet and removed a business card from it. He handed it to the young man and said, “You might want to visit my website.”

The young man looked down at the card. His eyebrows rose. He said, “I’ve heard of this website. A lot of the old guys at the office talk about it over lunch.”

“It deals with a lot of situations like yours,” Dexter said.

He was going to talk to Eric and see if they couldn’t put together something about how young folks could get weekends free to search for a spouse. He remembered having to pay his dues, but it wasn’t anything like what they expected of young employees today. He didn’t think this young man was the only one who was having to put his career above dating.

“My name is Ken.”

“Nice to meet you Ken. I’m Dexter.”

“So why are you sitting around in the hospital?” Ken asked.

“My kids are visiting their mother. She had appendicitis,” Dexter answered.

“Their mother? You’re divorced?” Ken asked.

“Separated,” Dexter answered.

Ken asked, “Your fault or hers?”

“Hers. She texted me that she wanted a divorce,” Dexter said.

Ken said, “I’ve had a lot of women text me with similar kinds of news.”

“It’s cold,” Dexter said.

“Not really. Everyone is too busy to waste time breaking up face to face any more. A text message is short and sweet,” Ken said shrugging his shoulders.

“You don’t end a marriage with a text message,” Dexter said.

“That’s more of an e-mail kind of breakup,” Ken said.

Dexter stared at Ken. “You aren’t serious, are you?”

“Sure I am,” Ken said. “Who has time for drama any more? You cut loose and go on your way.”

“That’s wrong,” Dexter said.

“That’s life in the modern world,” Ken said.

“That’s wrong on so many levels that I don’t even know what to say,” Dexter said.

Ken said, “I’ve been out of college for four years. I’ve had three girlfriends in that whole time. One I got to see for about three hours every other week. We always seemed to have scheduling conflicts. By the time we were getting around to having sex, she got transferred to another town. She broke it to me in a text message.”

“That’s not much of a relationship,” Dexter said.

In a way, it reminded him of the last few years of his marriage. He saw his wife in passing more often than not. They even had to exchange text messages to arrange to meet for a meal on occasion. It hadn’t been much of a relationship. No wonder that she turned to some other guy. He just wondered when she had the time for it.

“It still hurt. She might have been the one, but we never really had the chance to find out,” Ken said.

“You need to press for a little more time away from work,” Dexter said.

“I need the job. I’ve got student loans out the ass,” Ken said. “I’m trapped.”

‘Just wait until you have a family. Then you’ll really be trapped,’ Dexter thought. Instead, he said, “You’re kind of young to be trapped in a job.”

“Tell me about it,” Ken said. “I had such dreams.”

“You’re only in your late twenties,” Dexter said. He figured that was awful young for Ken to be giving up on his dreams.

“Sometimes I feel like I was sold a bill of goods. I mean ... well, I don’t know what I mean ... it’s just that it wasn’t supposed to be this way,” Ken said tiredly.

Dexter asked, “How was it supposed to be?”

Ken snorted. “I was supposed to graduate college and get a good high paying job. Then I’d meet a girl, we’d live together for a bit, get married, buy a house, and then have kids.”

“Do you have a good high paying job?” Dexter asked.

“Yeah, but no one said anything about graduating with a shitload of debt. I’ll have to work for ten years to pay it off. I don’t have time to meet a girl, and I can’t afford to get married and have kids even if I do find one,” Ken said.

“That sucks,” Dexter said.

Ken took a sip of his coffee. The flavor hadn’t improve any and now it was starting to get tepid. He said, “My Dad tried to pay my way through college, but it was expensive. Student aid was a joke. They looked at his salary and said that he should be able to afford forty thousand a year. That was almost his entire take home pay. What kind of idiot thinks you can afford to give away almost your whole net income for four years? You can’t.”

Dexter shook his head.

Ken said, “So he got a second mortgage on the house and cleaned out his savings accounts. It still wasn’t enough. The more desperate the situation was, the more the company dumped on him. It was like they knew they had him by the balls. I think that is why he’s upstairs having his heart repaired.