Waiting Conversation

       Atticus Joyner check the small watch he wore around his wrist. Seven fifteen o’clock, he’d already been here an hour. It didn’t seem like anyone was coming anytime soon so he sat back in his chair and fidgeted his hands impatiently. What was supposed to be a simple trip to the ATM before a lonely dinner had become a temporary imprisonment.

             The storm had come without warning. Arriving one minute then disappearing as quickly as it came. The strong winds and rain hadn’t been rough enough to cause damage to any buildings, however it had knocked over a wooden post. The downed post laid on the ground, blocking off the door that opened outward, locking Atticus in until help could arrive. So far, they hadn’t shown up.

The young man looked around the small waiting room for the hundredth time since arriving. The walls were bare and painted in a horrible yellow hue, long faded by years of bright sun infiltrating the through the windows. He glanced out of one of the said windows and sighed.  The view outside was nothing more than a busted parking lot covered in litter. Fast food bags and wrappers occupied the otherwise empty parking spaces next to empty water bottles and paper cups. Atticus cracked his knuckles then laid his head back to face the buzzing light on the ceiling.

The only other person in the room was a short girl of about twenty years old. Old enough to have tattoos, at least, as her exposed upper arm had a vine imprinted onto it. Atticus thought about making conversation when it became apparent that they would be here for the long run but couldn’t muster the courage to say anything.

She was short and pretty with light skin and dark hair. Black rounded glasses overtook a major portion of her endearing face like an old cartoon character- it worked on her, though. Pouty red lips stood out on her face like a strawberry on a napkin with deep green eyes that looked like tiny galaxies set into her face. The girl wore a red floral sundress with canvas sneakers, and she looked kind enough, but something about the way her hair hung to conceal her face seemed to push Atticus away. Like curtains drawn to allow the girl privacy as she looked through a magazine.

Atticus stood up to pace the room. His hunger was increasing as well as the hankering for a cigarette. He hoped the patter of his shoes on the dull tile wouldn’t disturb the girl. Though they were not loud, the sound seemed to echo like gunshots in his mind. He sat back down on one of the wooden chairs in the room but even that made a loud creak as he settled in.

“How much longer do you think it will be until we are out of here?” a small voice took Atticus out of his daze.

“Huh?” he replied.

“I said, how much longer do you think we’ll be in here?” the girl asked a bit louder. The magazine she had been going through was cast aside onto a little table, apparently there was nothing interesting in it.

Atticus tried speaking from his chest to sound a little deeper than usual, he was self-conscious of his voice, “I don’t know, hopefully not too much longer,” his voice still sounded stupid in his mind.

The girl gave a slight nod to reply. The two of them both cast their eyes in separate directions. Atticus felt his face redden a bit in the awkwardness of the situation. He dug inside his mind to think of something for conversation.

“Didyouhaveplanstonight?” he blurted out a little too quickly.

“I’m sorry, what?” she asked nicely enough. The heat increased around Atticus’s ears.

He took a slight breath before asking again, “Did you have any plans tonight?”

The girl gave a face of understanding this time around, “Oh. No, not really was probably going to grab dinner and a drink or two before watching a movie at home. How about you?”

“Your night sounds about exactly what I was gonna do,” he said truthfully, though, he probably would have read his book a little then go to sleep instead of watching a movie.

“Where did you plan on eating?” the girl asked, she had gotten out of her chair along the back wall and moved over to one closer to Atticus. He noticed now that her glasses allowed her cosmic eyes to stand out more.

“I don’t know, I just moved back here a few days ago and the place I wanted to eat at is closed now,” he figured that answer was better than saying that he would probably end up consuming a greasy hamburger at a fast food chain.

“Oh,” she said, “What place?”

“Emilio’s down on Sterling Avenue,” it had been one of Atticus’s favorites to go to for sandwiches and beer when he would visit home from the Air Force over the last four years. He’d only found out it closed on his walk to the ATM from his apartment building.

“Oh yeah, that place was good. It closed down about four months ago,” the stranger explained, “Apparently Emilio hadn’t payed his takes for the last two years.”

“No kidding,” Atticus replied, slightly amused. “By the way, may I ask your name?”

“Sure,” she piped out, “Paige. Paige Everly, what’s yours?”

“Atticus Joyner,” he informed her as they both stood up to shake hands. Her palm had been soft as water.

“That’s an interesting name these days,” Paige smiled at the name.

“My mom named me after her favorite literary character,” Atticus informed the girl named Paige, “She thought that giving me his name would mean that I would be as great as the character.”

“That’s really amazing!” Paige was incredibly cute when excited, Atticus determined, “my parents just got my name out of some book of names.” The excitement in her face turned to an adorable look of upsetedness. Atticus couldn’t help but smile.

“No, it’s a pretty name,” he tried to reassure her. Confidence was raising inside as the awkwardness waned. “I like it.”

“Well, thank you,” Paige said bashfully.

The two continued to talk, each gaining a newfound trust in themselves. The conversations got deeper as the pair found that they had a lot in common. Eventually, Paige had started to enquire about Atticus’s military tenure.

“Eh, it wasn’t too bad really,” Atticus tried to blow it off. “I was Security Forces. Basically, police for the Air Force.”

“Did you ever deploy to anywhere?” Paige tried to tread carefully, but it was apparent that she was interested.

“Yes, I spent six months over in Syria working security on base and for a few patrols,” Atticus had tried to not think about being over seas for the last two years. He had only been an E-2 at the time and had spent his twentieth birthday in the worst moment of his life.

“Oh, that’s amazing. What was it like over there?” she asked with a deep look of intrigue in her eye.

“Hot. Sand was everywhere and got in every little crevice it could find,” Atticus tried to laugh it off, remembering the creative swear words used by his buddies to describe the sand in uncomfortable areas. “Life was so different over there. Like going back in tie almost but they were so poor.” The Boys eyes now glossed over as his mind traveled to that time.

“If you don’t mind,” the girl took a moment to ponder how to word her question, “what was the worst thing that happened?” she asked almost out of breath. A second later she realized what she had just asked and quickly tried to correct her mistake, “I’m sorry! Y- You don’t have to answer.”

“No, it’s fine,” Atticus tried to sound convincing, but his voice cracked slightly, “I suppose I have to get it off my chest somehow.”

Paige sat quietly as her conversation partner gathered his thoughts. The clock on the wall read eight forty-six o’clock and the sun had gone down, leaving amber streetlights from outside to illuminate the town, casting a dark shadow of most of Atticus’s face. Still, no workers had shown up. He took a long, slow breath and began, “It was my twentieth birthday. I had only been in about two years at the time and it was getting close to the end of my deployment,” he steadied himself and continued, “I was only an Airman at the time but had been on a few other patrols, but nothing really happened apart from pot shots being exchanged.

“Well, we were in Aleppo, just aiding some Marines, trying to find out information on suspected terrorists. All of the sudden, this woman comes running up to the Humvees with a bomb strapped to her chest and doesn’t stop even with the warning shots,” Atticus wiped his surprisingly dry eyes while Paige sat beside, eyes wide in terror, but not taking them off the boy. “She pressed the charge and that sound… that sound still echoes through my head. It was confusion, children were screaming while running away, old people cried, and the Americans all shouted for us to take cover.

“I jumped behind one of the Humvees next to my Sergeant, Smythe. He was laying down suppressing fire since we didn’t know where the bullets were coming from. The Marines were attempting to make advances up the street, but amidst all the confusion of the townspeople, they were getting nowhere.

“Sergeant Smythe yelled at me to start firing while he reloaded, I was so scared, but I rose my head above vehicle and fired at the windows I thought the shots were coming from. One of the Marines had gotten shot and we were trying to give the Navy Corpsman cover the pull the guy behind a wall to take care of him. The Corpsman was able to drag the guy back, but he took a bullet himself in the leg, but it only grazed his calf.

“Smythe stood up when his rifle was loaded while I ducked to reload my weapon. I saw ten feet behind me, this one guy, Senior Airman Rodriguez on the ground. He’d been killed by the explosion. He was such a good person.

“The Marines had called in an air strike but there were too many civilians around for the A-10’s to come. Their Gunnery Sergeant was screaming into the radio to give us help, one of the other Marines, a Corporal, had just been killed from a bullet to the neck,” Atticus’s voice was uneven, but he held his composure, there was a certain relief that came with finally talking about the skirmish out loud. Like a bottle of shaken soda finally releasing the built-up carbonation. “The worst part was what came next.

“We had been firing back and forth in a stalemate for a while now, the town had almost emptied out so the air support was finally given the go ahead to help us, they were about ten minutes out. I was reloading as Sergeant Smythe shot. Just as I was looking up, I saw a bullet rip through Smythe’s face. The noise was like hitting your hand on a leather suitcase, it was awful. Louder than the explosion had been. And his body just sort of crumbled. It wasn’t in slow motion or prolonged like in the movies, it was just one minute he was standing and a second later, his body lay lifeless on the ground. Like a piece of rope being dropped.”

Paige sat with her hands over her mouth and her eyes almost as big as the round glasses she wore, sorrow beaming through.

Atticus finished his story, “Eventually the A-10s came and wiped out the people shooting at us and we had to load the bodies into bags and onto the back of the Humvees. I left Syria three weeks later and spent the rest of my time in the military at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. I just hate seeing that look of Symthe collapsing onto the ground whenever I’m not careful when I close my eyes.”

“I… I’m so sorry, Atticus. That’s horrible what you had to go through,” Paige was on the verge of tears.

“Not your fault, we all have our hard times to go through, I’m back home now and working at a bookstore and though the war sticks with me a bit, I’m learning to be happy again, because I was really messed up for a bit. I refused therapy and chose the bottle instead but being back helps.”

Paige suddenly kept across the chairs and wrapped her arms around Atticus, taking him by surprise. The boy couldn’t help but chuckle slightly as he pat the sobbing girl’s head, “Its alright, Paige. Really.”

“I just hate pain, I hate seeing people who hurt and I could tell the minute I looked over at you that there was a darkness in your eyes,” Paige had recessed back to her own chair, but a tear still streaked down her face. A worker van had finally arrived at almost ten at night and workers were busy trying to move the light pole away from the door. “I just didn’t expect your pain to come from somewhere so horrible.”

Atticus took slight offense to the girl’s words. He didn’t feel like he had a pain in his eyes or that he was broken somehow. He’d just been witness to a scary time.

The wooden pole was now pulled away from the door as workers gathered around to try to lift it back in place. The man who looked like the supervisor of the crew opened the door and smiled. “Sorry about the wait there, y’all,” he said in a thick southern accent, “We had a couple of other issues to attend to around town.”

“Hey, that’s alright, sir, thank you for helping us out,” Atticus replied graciously. The two walked out of the door into the cool night as the man held the entrance open.

“Well, it was fun talking to you, Atticus,” Paige said when they had reached the sidewalk.

“Yeah, same here,” Atticus replied, “Thank you for letting me tell my story, I really needed to get it off of my chest. No one else would have been able to sit through it.”

“Of course, I’m glad it’s helped, I hope your new job at the book shop goes well and you enjoy your time back here,” Paige spoke kindly. She started to walk off.

“Hey, do you maybe want to join me for dinner?” Atticus asked before she could get too far, “I don’t know what’s open right now, but you can tell me a bit about your life.”

“I would like that, there’s an all-night diner two blocks from here that’s pretty good, they have a bar right next to it,” Paige seemed happy to have been asked. Atticus was now realizing how beautiful the girl really was under the streetlights with the look of elation on her face.

Atticus held his hand out for Paige to take, “Let’s head over then!” he exclaimed as the pair walked off, hand in hand.