Kevin
Episode 1 – workplace romance
©2016 Den warren
Nothing in this story is based upon any real people. If you think it is, I don’t care because it isn’t.
This is the first installation of a series. It will not continue until there are a number of text comments left about it, either positive or negative, I don’t care. If there are no comments, then there will be no more free episodes. I want to know what you want to see me do with the characters. I want to know how badly you hate it and everything you hate about it. Don’t be a wimp. Leave a comment. That is all any writer of free stuff asks.
It was a dark and stormy night. Then it cleared up. But Kevin didn’t sleep well. Early in the morning there were sirens of emergency vehicles outside. This was probably the most dramatic and exciting thing to ever happen in Plain City, whatever it was. Voices and people talking on radios could be heard. It was probably like one of those disaster movies where they keep you involved in the action all the time. Kevin was too tired to look out the window and went back to sleep.
Plain City was plain. It was on the plains, at least mainly.
Kevin eventually had to get up to go to his boringly stupid job. There was nothing exciting about it. Kevin had no ambition to find another job. He couldn’t do that. After a bowl of Count Chocula while reading K-Tron, a superhero prose novel, he got into his old Honda and drove to Industrial Industries.
People did not talk much at Industrial Industries. They were mostly neurotic weirdoes. Kevin was no different. He spent two hours at his grinding station. Then he went to break. Then he spent two more hours at the grinding station. At lunch time, Kevin bought a mystery meat sandwich out of the vending machine known as the “Wheel of Death”, and was reading K-Tron.
“What you reading?” a woman’s voice spoke interruptingly.
Kevin felt panic through his body. He looked up over his glasses, blinking furiously, wondering why the hot and exotic Maya Kamerastar was talking to him. She was like color in a black and white world. She had healthy looking hair and all her features were healthy. “Huh?”
“Your book. What is it?” she quizzed quizzingly.
“K-Tron.” Kevin swallowed hard. Hoping his answer and tone and his hair and his expression were aesthetically acceptable and that he didn’t grievously commit any sexual harrassmentations.
“Never heard of it,” she said. “Did you hear about what happened this morning in town?”
“No.” Kevin wondered why she was talking. Was she weird, or rude or what?
“Me neither.” So then Maya looked at her smart phone until the end of the lunch period. Maya left without saying another word.
The next day Maya Kamerastar sat at the same table as Kevin at lunchtime. Kevin’s mind was a swirling miasma of thought about Maya. Did Maya have some sort of an interest in him? Was her sitting at his table about the same thing as a date? Did she choose his table randomly out of the eleven other tables in the room? She could have sit next to another guy at a table or those women at another table. She was looking at her phone. Did she sit next to him because he didn’t talk much and she liked to be alone, or because she hoped that he would talk to her.
If he talked to her what if she left? Would that matter because if she left that meant she wasn’t going to talk to him anyways, and that she had no interest in him anyways. But why would she talk to him? She was way too good looking to talk to him. Kevin started thinking about being naked with Maya in a variety of sexual situations. He started sweating a little and started feeling aroused. He thought it better if he focused on K-Tron.
“You still reading that?” she asked.
“What?!” Kevin was taken aback.
“Sorry. Didn’t you know I was here? You must have really been thinking hard about what was in that book.”
“Um . . . no, I mean, yes?”
Maya looked confused by Kevin’s reaction. “Am I bothering you?”
“No. You are not bothering me in a bad way. I’m not physically distracted by you that much.”
“Okaaaay. I didn’t mean to . . . physically distract you. You don’t really look good. Are you okay?”
What?! Kevin thought, I don’t look good?! But she did ask if he was okay. She showed some interest in him. But her interest was in someone who didn’t look good, like an old guy laying on the street. Maybe she was into guys who look below average. Did women like that even exist? He started breathing heavily. He had to say something, but what?! “I’m fine. Are you fine?”
Maya seriously said, “I’m fine. For a minute there, I thought we were going to have to take you over and admit you to Plain City General.”
“You would take me to the hospital?”
“I would call 9-1-1.” Maya shrugged her shoulders.
“You would do that for me?”
“I wouldn’t just let you die.” She said frowningly.
“Thank you.” Kevin did not know what else to say. That is twice that Maya sat next to him. Two days in a row. That has to be a thing. She said she would call 9-1-1 for him and not let him die. That had to count for something. “Yes,” he said.
“Yes what?” Maya shook her head not understanding.
“Yes, I am still reading this. That is what you asked me originally, remember?”
“Okaaaay.”
Then Kevin realized that Maya might be asking him about K-Tron because she did not approve of him reading it. So he put the book aside. He sat there looking around in all directions except Maya. Maya looked at her phone and didn’t say anything. Then they left without saying anything.
Kevin spent the next four hours at his station standing there wondering about Maya. That is two days in a row that she picked his table to sit at. That is an 8% chance each day, twice in a row, whatever that comes to. It had to be less than a 1% chance of that happening. But he had been at the job for so many years and it never happened before, so maybe it was just something that was going to happen sooner or later. It could have just randomly happened.
That night Kevin kept thinking about Maya. He kept thinking about what it would be like to have sex with her. Naturally, he had trouble going to sleep with such pornographic thoughts running through his mind. Finally, at the stroke of midnight he fell asleep.
The next day Kevin was reading Metahuman Wars at the same table he always sat at. If anyone saw him reading that, they would think it is less dorky than K-Tron.
His fantasy woman, Maya sat there again! This defied all odds. It was not a random occurrence. She was sitting at his table for a reason. If he asked her why she was sitting there, she might think that he did not what her to sit there. He didn’t want that. But he desperately wanted to know. In a fit of neuroticism, he sat there trying to figure out what to say. Or was there another option; of saying nothing about it?
“How’s it going?” she asked.
He was totally taken by surprise. He thought he would have to talk first but she talked already. He should talk, and talk a lot. “Um . . . fine. It’s the same for me every hour of every day. I grind the parts. Every part is the same. Every part needs grinding the same. I do it the same. There are no problems and never will be. But thanks for asking.”
Maya looked stunned. “Okaaaay.”
Then Kevin thought to himself, wait a minute; she asked me how it was going, now I can ask her the same thing, like in a conversation or something. It was a golden opportunity. He said quickly “Howzitgoin’?”
Maya said, “About the same as usual. That group leader we have over there, Lenny, he’s about wo
rthless. He’s a total ass.”
Kevin was nodding his head up and down like a bobble head trying to show he was listening very closely. “Total asses. They are the worst.” Then he started shaking his head for what seemed to be an overly extended period.
Maya looked at Kevin and shook her head a couple of times then blinked and stopped as if trying to reset her brain from and endless loop.
“New book?”
“Yeah.” Kevin saw another opportunity to say more about it, but he had nothing.
“Any good?”
“It depends on what you like. Do you like superhero prose fiction?”
“What’s that?”
“Its fiction . . . about superheroes . . . written in prose.”
“No, what’s prose?”
“Okay, I understand your question now. It is not graphic. He flipped the pages. “See? It is mostly all text. There are some illustrations here too.”
Maya said, “I don’t think I would like that. It’s a little geeky for me. No offense.”
Kevin felt like he was run through the chest by a verbal spear and he was bleeding out onto the floor. How could his fantasy woman betray him by calling him a “geek”?
“I do like some geeky things,” she said. “I like superhero movies.”
Kevin immediately felt like the spear was removed and not only was he magically healed, but he felt puffed up like she was accepting his geekhood for what it was.
They started talking about all of the recent superhero movies. What they liked and didn’t like about each of them. It felt really good to Kevin. It was one of the best days of his life.
Then suddenly the thought came to Kevin; Is Maya trying to get me to ask her out on a real date to go to the movies? Since I am the guy, do I have to be the one to ask? What if she says “no”. Maybe he was just getting too carried away and being unrealistic.
. . . to be continued. (If I get plenty of star ratings and feedback comments.)