Ughhhh =(
A few moments passed before the telltale ellipsis popped onto his screen. It pulsed repetitively in a three-beat rhythm as Wendy drafted her response. She was certainly taking her time, Nathan thought, but his message hadn’t exactly been a model of clarity. Finally, actual text replaced the blinking punctuation. Given how long she had taken, Nathan had assumed she was writing a short novel.
Didn’t go well?
Wendy was more of a Hemingway than a Hawthorne.
It was a literal disaster.
The dots started blinking again, but mercifully for only a couple of seconds.
Literally?
Actually literally. I bet it’ll be on the news, even.
=( Are you ok?
I mean, physically yeah. My date was a complete bust, tho.
The ellipsis drummed out time for a while before Wendy’s response came through.
Glad you’re not hurt. Want to talk about it?
This time, it was Nathan’s turn to dawdle. He worded it, and reworded it, and reworded it a little bit more. Then he deleted the whole thing and started again from scratch. He deleted that, too, and started over. Eventually, he gave up on crafting the perfect text to capture the stress of that night. Instead, he deleted every carefully constructed clause and dashed off a terse text.
Can I call?
Nathan had originally met Jackie in line at an aggressively boutique coffee shop. The baristas there insisted on patient perfection, but it came at the expense of keeping the line moving. The business model couldn’t last, but until the Above Average Joe went bankrupt, it was a great place to meet fellow twenty-somethings who were new to the city. After bonding over the implausibly long wait times for their flat whites, he’d asked if she wanted to get drinks sometime. Just as unbelievable as the wait times, she’d said yes.
Their date had started promisingly enough. It wasn’t hard for Nathan to spot her at the restaurant; she was already at the bar, and there were few other patrons this late at night. The restaurant itself had pretentions of having pretentions of being Michelin-starred. While it wasn’t exactly caviar and foie gras, it was a couple of steps above Nathan’s usual haunts, and it showed in the number of dollar signs on the online reviews. But what were dates for if not to splurge?
“… so, what did you move here for?” Nathan asked. Jackie took a second to finish a sip of her second glass of Chardonnay before answering.
“I just wanted to move to a real city, to be honest.”
The perfect gentleman, Nathan didn’t spray her with a mouthful of beer in surprise, but it took him an unusual amount of focus to swallow. After a noticeable pause, he registered his disbelief as politely as he could. “I’m not sure this counts as an actual city, though. We’re probably only two steps removed from ‘hearing banjos in the distance’.”
She took another sip. “I mean, that’s fair, I guess. I just grew up some place a lot more rural, though. I didn’t even know anyone much taller than six feet until I went to college.”
Nathan nodded. Maybe it was a redneck stereotype, but it did seem like people out in the country weren’t exposed to the sort of multiculturalism that even the smallest cities could boast. “Yeah, I’ve heard that before. Is it an infrastructure thing?”
She put her wine down on the table, her expression floating between buzzed and thoughtful. “I dunno, but… probably? I doubt you could really have more than one or two giants living too far away from development. They need a lot of resources, and I’m not sure how they’d get enough in the middle of nowhere.” She stopped, evidently considering a novel line of thought. “Unless they were hippie giants, I guess.”
Nathan laughed. “Imagine the amount of weed they’d need, though.”
It was Jackie’s turn to laugh. “Oh, you’re right. That wouldn’t work out either.” She moved to pick up her wine glass, but right as she did, a faint tremor moved through the restaurant. Nathan could barely feel it, but the surface of the Chardonnay rippled inward from the glass. Jackie looked at him, confused. “What was that?”
Nathan shrugged. “It might have been an earthquake, but it was probably just a giant walking home from work or something.” He might have been more performatively nonchalant than usual – he had a date to impress, after all – but it really wasn’t a big deal. Nathan had a neighbor who was only slightly under 80 feet tall. She was perfectly nice, and her proximity wasn’t even a factor in his insurance rates.
The wine rippled again. The vibrations this time were more substantial, and they were accompanied by not-very distant thuds. The epicenter was coming closer.
Nathan shrugged a second time. “Okay, probably definitely a giant, then.” If Jackie was reassured by his blasé attitude, she didn’t show it. “Don’t worry about it. The shaking’ll come and go pretty quickly.”
At that moment, a voice deeper than the ocean and louder than thunder reverberated through the building. Anyone within half a mile would have heard it.
“OH FUUUUUUU—”
In hindsight, Nathan hoped there hadn’t been any children nearby. Furthermore, in retrospect everything in the next five seconds had happened too quickly for him to process.
Suddenly, there was shattered glass everywhere, and water pouring out of busted pipes everywhere. Conspicuously absent in the chaotic aftermath was an entire wall. In its place were two large arms and a head roughly the size of a truck, all spread across shaky piles of broken brick and wood. It was hard to make out any details through the dust that had settled over the giant.
Nathan took more than a few moments to take stock of everything. He had been knocked out of his chair, but the chair and bar were still standing. Jackie was on the floor next to him. She looked shell-shocked, and she was coated in plaster. She looked like a ghost, but she was breathing steadily.
“Are… you… okay?” Nathan asked. Huh. He was shorter on breath than he would’ve thought. Jackie nodded, but her face was stiff with shock. Creakily, he pushed himself up from the ground and crawled over to her. “Can I help… you up?” She nodded in the exact same rhythm, her expression still frozen. Combined with the white of the plaster, the impression it gave Nathan was a little eerie. It took a few tries, as their bodies slowly unlocked themselves, but after a minute he got her into the chair.
He looked around. Scattered around the remnants of the dining room, people were slowly picking themselves up, but the giant was still motionless on the ground. He looked back at Jackie. “I’ll be right back,” he said, and then he started slowly climbing over the flotsam toward the giant.
Once he got there, Nathan could make out a few more details. The giant was a man, and he was probably around the same age as Nathan. But beyond that, the thick coating of dust – slowly turning muddy in the flood of broken plumbing – still obscured the giant’s appearance.
Nathan approached the giant’s face. Was he okay? It was hard to tell through all the grime. He reached out an arm and gently pushed against a forehead bigger than he was.
“Hey… buddy? Buddy, are you okay?”
A tremendous groan vibrated the ground under Nathan and it almost knocked him down. When he had regained his balance, a pair of massive eyes were blinking themselves open.
“Ughhhh…. I think… I’m okay.”
“That’s good. Um…” Nathan hesitated for a moment, not sure what to do. He wasn’t exactly a medical technician, but someone had to see if this guy was all right. “Can you tell me how many fingers I’m holding up?”
At that, the giant blinked rapidly a few times as he tried to focus on Nathan. He looked a little cross-eyed. “Um… you’re too close… to my face.”
D’oh. “Oh. Sorry.” Nathan moved ten feet before backing up against a flipped-over table. He decided to stop playing at first responder and to simply keep the possibly concussed giant awake until someone actually qualified showed up. It wouldn’t be too long; he could hear ambulance sirens wailing in the distance. “Um… what’s your name?”
“Dave… uh, David. Who… are you?”
“I’m Nathan. I’m… I was one of the customers here, I guess.”
David’s eyes widened a little, like he’d received a small shock. They darted around, taking in the scenery for the first time. “Oh… shit. I can’t believe… I was walking home, but I’m new in town and it was dark and it was late and I tripped and… oh, god. I’m sorry, I’m –“
Nathan stopped him before a full panic attack struck. “Shhh, shhh. I don’t think anyone was hurt too badly. The restaurant was kind of empty tonight. Don’t worry about that right now. Just wait for the EMTs to arrive.”
His timing had never been better. The first ambulance pulled up just seconds later, and when the paramedics came over, Nathan got out of their way.
But when he looked around for Jackie, she was gone.
Wendy let Nathan finish recounting the night’s events before saying anything.
“Holy shit.”
“Right?”
“Is Jackie okay?”
“I don’t know. I should probably text her to make sure, but I feel like she won’t want to talk about it.” He paused. “Or to me, probably. The rest of the shitstorm notwithstanding, I think I blew it with her. Probably should’ve focused more on taking care of her.”
Wendy’s silence was an uncomfortably clear agreement, but it dragged until she couldn’t help herself. “But hey! You helped that David guy when you thought he needed help. You know it’s always iffy when giants fall down. We’re just so much bigger that the risk of getting hurt from a tumble is worse, too.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“I’m just saying, you might have fucked up the date, but there were extenuating circumstances. You didn’t fuck up as a person, and that counts for something.”
“Yeah.” Nathan’s deadened tone wasn’t terribly convincing, but Wendy didn’t push.
“Just… I’m glad you’re okay. Talk to you tomorrow?”
“Okay. ‘Night.” Nathan ended the call.
He walked over to the kitchen. He’d decided that he’d get absolutely drunk tonight. Maybe it wasn’t the healthiest way of dealing with things, but he’d been denied enjoying drinks with Jackie, so fair was fair. But just before he opened the fridge, there was a shockwave of a knock on the front door. Despite a sudden urge to turn off all the lights and ignore the unknown, late-night guest, Nathan went to answer it. It might have been someone official following up about tonight.
A head the size of a truck greeted him. David had cleaned up, and cleaned up nicely, but there were still some garish-looking scrapes and bruises. They couldn’t have been too bad (or so Nathan figured) or else the paramedics wouldn’t have released him tonight.
“Oh… hi. How are you feeling?”
“I’m okay, I think. The docs said nothing was broken, and that I didn’t have to stay in the hospital.”
“That’s good.” Nathan did his best to keep his expression neutral and polite, but the awkwardness was palpable.
“Um, yeah. I, um… overheard your address when you were giving a statement, and…” David hesitated before suddenly rushing. “I wanted to say sorry. You know, for tonight. I ruined your night, and you were nicer than most people are after I… do something like this. So… thanks.” David hesitated a bit. “And, I know it’s weird, but I was wondering if… well, there’s a great coffee place I’ve been told about, and I’m new in town, and…”
The beginnings of a smile twitched on Nathan’s face.
“Would you like to get coffee some time with me?