Herm I.T.

By David Connor

Robin Paley, a Vietnam vet, and Hendrix Higgins, a former teacher who witnessed a school shooting, become trapped together during a storm in March of 2001, when Hendrix, now a computer tech, arrives to fix Robin’s only source of contact with the outside world.

Discovering they have much in common, an afternoon of bonding leads to more. When Robin admits he’ll never contact Hendrix again, however, a heated argument ensues. Hendrix fights hard to move on, while Robin seems to want to stay stuck.

They angrily part ways, Hendrix telling Robin to call him if he ever wants to live again. When Robin finally reaches out, he fears it may be too late. Has Hendrix moved on?

• Language: English
• Publisher: JMS Books LLC
• Release date: Sep 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781646565702

Book preview

4

Chapter 1

Robin Paley liked being by himself. Well, he didn’t like it, exactly. A librarian at one time, now an editor, always a stickler for words, he decided he’d have to come up with a better one.

"I’ve assimilated, he said, rubbing a towel over salt-and-pepper hair, wet from the shower. Because that’s just how it has to be. Not that I’m in any way alone. Robin relaxed just a bit, peering into friendly brown eyes. And we’re actually having company today. Just as quickly, he stiffened again, filled with dread. Lucky us, huh, Magnus Renegade?" Apparently unaware of the sarcasm, Robin’s huge bullmastiff thumped his tail against the marred wooden floor.

An IT guy was on the way to take a look at Robin’s Internet setup, a freelancer from the Yellow Pages. Robin wanted someone who could diagnose the stuff his provider’s tech would be able to, in addition to checking out his PCs, just in case the problem was with one of them. One stranger in the house, one day of inconvenience and stress instead of two—that was Robin’s plan.

And I wish he’d hurry up.

Though the calendar was three months into the year 2001, Robin couldn’t help but wonder if some big Y2K issue was responsible for his interrupted service. He’d held his breath, filled with even more anxiety than usual at 11:59 P.M. on December 31, 1999, recalling an entire year’s worth of doomsday predictions, as Dick Clark counted down. Nothing had happened, of course, not then, but more recently Robin had heard some so-called expert say the real trouble would hit in 2001. The computer guy on the phone had snickered at the mentioned correlation, which had immediately made Robin feel a bit like a moron.

I hate people, he told the dog.

Mags barked in response.

The World Wide Web was Robin’s only real connection to the outside world. Another incorrect word choice, he mused, patting Mags on his warm, plush head. Sitting in solitude, reading about the universe as it exists, following conversations in AOL chatrooms, like the virtual talkers are fish in a bowl or performers in some coin-operated peep show and I’m just their audience, is that really connecting? he asked. Staring out the window as he would at the screen, into his real world, far less active, less enticing, also less explored, Robin knew the answer. He thought of the activity he’d been engaged in when the laptop first crashed, one similar to what he’d started in the shower but then abandoned due to time. Even chatting, myself, with typewritten words devoid of voice, voyeuristic, exhibitionist sexual play without emotion, pretending it’s satisfying even as it ceases to be halfway through…I feel that hardly counts either, my friend. Still, if someone wasn’t coming soon and the system wasn’t down, the idea of signing into the local M4M AOL chat where gay guys could talk dirty, exchange photos, beat off on webcam, or achieve the very rare but ultimate goal of getting together to play in person…Well, it’s rather new and always tempting, isn’t it?

Mags woofed once more, always glad to engage in conversation.

But not today. Robin rubbed both floppy ears, silky soft against his palms.

Dressed in shorts and a plain white undershirt—an outfit usually saved for summer, not mid-March—Robin gave the tidy cabin one more visual sweep to make sure he hadn’t left anything about he didn’t wish a stranger to see. He straightened a frame on the wall, one containing a pencil drawing of his home nestled far back in the woods. The picture took him back, as it so often did, to a time some thirty years before.

* * * *

"You own a cabin?"

My parents do.

They’d met on side-by-side army cots in a medical tent in Vietnam. One was nearly twenty, the other barely twenty-one.

Is it romantic? Frank’s Brooklyn accent was as thick as his jet-black eyebrows and the stubble on his cheeks.

More…rustic. Robin blushed and wondered why.

Where’s it at?

New York…where I’m from.

Upstate? Frank asked.

Not really, Robin said. I live nearly as far south on the New York map as one can get without being in the city.

If it ain’t one of the five boroughs, Bird Man, Frank said, it’s upstate. That bugged Robin a little, but when Frank reached over and touched the back of his hand, when he said, Maybe I can see it someday, Robin let it pass.

Maybe, Robin told him.

* * * *

There were no photographs of Frank left in the place, but Robin had no problem recalling his rugged handsomeness. Frank was the epitome of gruff. He often wore a scowl, but Robin also remembered the gentleness, only rarely revealed once home, that sometimes shone in his eyes. Frank had made the drawing for Robin right before heading back to combat, purely from imagination and Robin’s description. Robin, who had returned home to the States from the hospital, had stuck it in a box once back, prepared to forget about Frank and the war. They’d hung it together, in its original spot, just a few months later, once they’d reconnected and run away from one Paley family dwelling to another, in order to start a life together. The rendering’s current location, off-center on the pine-paneled wall, out of balance and symmetry with the room, was to hide a reminder—a mark in that paneling—of how that life had ended.

The sun