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Calvin awoke to a room in which nothing had happened. He was still crumpled on the floor (like most people, he normally wouldn’t be), but otherwise there was no residual evidence of the event that had or had not occurred. Weird.
As he sat up to stand up, Calvin felt a piece of paper crinkle in his pants pocket. He reached in, pulled a note out, and read: Meet at 18:00. Address (plus) on back. Calvin had no recollection of such a note, wondering for a second whether he had somehow put on somebody else’s pants. He then decided to do the expected and flip the note. On the back was written a strange address and a postscript labeled “plus”: Plus – These are your pants. Obviously.
Maybe he had received the note long ago, meaning there would no longer be any reason to follow its instructions. Maybe not. In any case, it was a pleasant autumn evening, and the intrigue of learning more about this address satisfied. Hey, maybe some hottie in a bar had slipped it to him once. She’d still live at this place, right? Calvin shook his head (“I can’t believe I thought the word hottie”), picked up his jacket, and left.
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A bike turned into a concrete slab that was once a parking lot. The bike parked in front of a concrete block that was once an indoor pool - faded lettering revealed as much: “Derwood County Community Pool.” Calvin dismounted, the bike being his and all. He looked at the address, looked at the building, and realized he should have checked this out online first. Usually he would have, but the whole “computer-seemingly-blowing-up” thing must have thrown him off. Whatever. He was here, at this vacant structure outside of town, and he was content enough with it all. What could easily have been a spooky setting, wasn’t. Yellowing leaves framed a scene which appeared more disappointing than scary. A beautiful forest scarred by an ugly slab of 70s architecture – blech. Calvin had had enough of this visual. He entered
The building featured no surprises. A path to the left led to the men’s changing room. A path to the right led to the women’s. A path straight led to the pool. There was a moment’s hesitation, as the inherent allure of the right path pulled at Calvin’s heart, but his rationale defeated his perversion and he headed straight. The pool was unsurprisingly rectangular and unsurprisingly empty. A large, dirtied glass window on the back wall provided Calvin with some hope – the architect, whose passion had probably been whittled away by years of government-ordered rectangular pools - hadn’t just designed a concrete box. He’d designed a concrete box with one glass side.
Calvin stared for a while, observing the forest behind the window. The sun continued to set. A few leaves here and there had begun to fall. Clouds moved between the cracks of the canopy. The same words came to Calvin that had doubtlessly come to the architect when he was applying for the job that led to this: “That out there is the world, and I’m stuck looking for a dynamic office environment.”
Apparently Calvin said this out loud. He got a response: “Well, you’re also looking for a girl.”

2 comments:
I'm more excited for the next chapter of Bad Guys Need Flowers than I am for just about anything else in the world.
love love loving it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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