Dweller - Jeff Strand [68]
“Hi,” he said.
Sarah looked wary. “Hi.”
“I just wanted to say I’m sorry. You know, about what happened to your husband.”
“Oh. Thank you. I appreciate that.”
“I’m not trying to hit on you,” he clarified. “This would be the most inappropriate place ever for that kind of thing.”
“I appreciate that, too.” She smiled, just a bit. “The funeral would probably be worse, though.”
“Yeah.”
Say something better than “Yeah,” moron! Be witty! Be charming! Be clever!
Toby said nothing else.
“So you’re an artist?”
“Yeah. I apologize for being a dumb-ass and disrupting your meeting. I’m a dumb-ass a lot, but not usually at quite this level.”
Don’t talk about being a dumb-ass!
“It’s okay.”
“Good.”
“I need to get going. Best of luck with your art.”
“Thanks.”
There was no possible way to justify continuing the conversation further, and so Toby let her go.
“Philosophical question,” said Toby, reclining in the beanbag he’d dragged out to Owen’s shack. Owen had made a big slit down the side, but it was still usable for now. “What do you think is a worse way to die? Cancer, or being devoured by somebody like you?”
He broke his Slim Jim in half and tossed a piece to Owen, who caught it in his mouth.
“I’m going to go with cancer. In fact, I would say any kind of cancer. No offense, I’m sure your jaws hurt like hell, but it can’t possibly compare to a slow, lingering death.”
Owen did not seem to have taken offense.
“It’s hard for me to even conceive of what she went through. I mean, I haven’t seen pictures of the guy, I never got to meet him, I don’t even know what color his hair is, but it just seems like an unimaginably awful way to go. How do you deal with somebody you love dying that way? With you, it’s just gobble, gobble, gobble and it’s over.”
He nibbled the Slim Jim and then tossed the rest of it to Owen.
“And it’s not the whole ‘her husband died of cancer’ thing that fascinates me about her. The whole room was filled with people whose husbands and wives died like that. I dunno, I just looked at her and…it’s hard to explain, but you know what I mean, right? Are you getting tired of hearing me talk about her?”
The next Saturday at 1:00 P.M., Toby sat at home in his living room, extremely aware that the meeting had just started. The support meeting was weekly. The artists’ meeting was monthly. He had no legitimate reason to be in that building.
Showing up there made him the creepy stalker guy.
He didn’t want to be the creepy stalker guy.
There was no rule saying that he couldn’t be at that meeting just to offer moral support for their personal tragedies, but he didn’t want to come off like a—actually, maybe there was a rule about that. It would make sense. You wouldn’t want a bunch of people like him causing disruptions. So if he showed up, the leader would most likely look a bit uncomfortable for a moment, clear his throat, and politely but firmly inform Toby that this was really meant to be a support group for people who’d lost loved ones to cancer, and that while he appreciated Toby’s presence, he was going to have to ask him to leave.
And as he wandered out of the room, Sarah would think: creepy stalker guy and ask somebody to walk her to her car after the meeting ended.
So he stayed home.
He worked on a new cartoon, sort of, while checking his watch every few minutes. At least he tried to pretend that it was only every few minutes. He hadn’t even finished drawing the rabbit he was working on when he noted that the meeting was down to its last five minutes.
They’d be wrapping things up at this point, and then Sarah might be gathering her purse. Would she have even showed up? She didn’t much look like she wanted to be there the first time. Maybe last week was the only time she’d ever attend this particular support group, or any support group. Maybe it had helped.