Dexter looked down at his watch. He had taken the kids to the hospital at five thirty. It was now nine thirty and the kids were still visiting their mother. He figured that hunger should have driven them down to the cafeteria by now. It had now closed and he was left drinking vending machine coffee it was even worse than the cafeteria coffee.
A young man stood by the vending machine feeding money into it for a cup of coffee. He pressed a couple of buttons and stood back. The cup fell into place at an angle and half of the coffee was dispensed onto the floor. He fumbled with getting the cup straightened.
He looked around the empty room and spotted Dexter. He headed over to where Dexter was seated. He sat down at the table next to Dexter and said, "I hate hospitals."
"I don't think I've ever met someone who loves hospitals," Dexter said.
Bored, he was more than willing to pass the time with idle conversation with a total stranger.
He asked, "Why you visiting the hospital tonight?"
"My Dad was brought in earlier for his heart," the man said.
"Sorry to hear that," Dexter said.
"I blame the company he worked for," the man said.
"Why?" Dexter asked.
"He's been working twelve hour days and seven days a week for years," the man said.
Dexter said, "I know how that is."
"For a long time, I thought it was because he had more loyalty to his company than to his family. Boy was I wrong," the young man said. He took a sip of the coffee and then said, "That's awful."
"Why do you say that you were wrong?" Dexter asked.
The young man answered, "I got a job and they wanted me to work the same kind of hours. It was do it or not have a job."
"I know how that is," Dexter said.
The young man's cell phone rang. He spent ten minutes talking on it. It was pretty obvious to Dexter that it was a work related call.
Dexter looked at his empty coffee cup. Another cup would keep him awake the whole night. As it was, he figured it would be two or three in the morning before he'd be able to fall asleep. He decided that he'd try to get a caffeine free soda later.
The young man closed his cell phone. He grumbled, "I'm not going in to work."
"Are you expecting any calls from family or friends?" Dexter asked.
"No."
"Turn off your cell phone," Dexter said.
"Why?" the young man asked.
Dexter said, "They can't call you if your phone is off. You're in a hospital. If your boss gives you a rasher of shit about not answering your phone, then explain that they don't allow cell phones in a hospital."
"That's a good idea," the young man said. He fiddled a moment with his cell phone, and then said, "It's off."
"Don't you feel better?" Dexter asked.
"I do," the young man said.
Dexter asked, "Are you married?"
"No," the young man said. He shook his head and added, "I doubt that I'll ever have a chance to get married. My job keeps me too busy to spend much time searching for Mrs. Right."
"You'll find someone," Dexter said.
"I don't know. My boss dropped in my office at five and said that I had to give a presentation to a customer Monday morning. It's going to take me all weekend to put it together. It seems like every week it's something like that," the young man said.
Dexter pulled out his wallet and removed a business card from it. He handed it to the young man and said, "You might want to visit my website."
The young man looked down at the card. His eyebrows rose. He said, "I've heard of this website. A lot of the old guys at the office talk about it over lunch."
"It deals with a lot of situations like yours," Dexter said.
He was going to talk to Eric and see if they couldn't put together something about how young folks could get weekends free to search for a spouse. He remembered having to pay his dues, but it wasn't anything like what they expected of young employees today. He didn't think this young man was the only one who was having to put his career above dating.
"My name is Ken."
"Nice to meet you Ken. I'm Dexter."
"So why are you sitting around in the hospital?" Ken asked.
"My kids are visiting their mother. She had appendicitis," Dexter answered.
"Their mother? You're divorced?" Ken asked.
"Separated," Dexter answered.
Ken asked, "Your fault or hers?"
"Hers. She texted me that she wanted a divorce," Dexter said.
Ken said, "I've had a lot of women text me with similar kinds of news."
"It's cold," Dexter said.
"Not really. Everyone is too busy to waste time breaking up face to face any more. A text message is short and sweet," Ken said shrugging his shoulders.
"You don't end a marriage with a text message," Dexter said.
"That's more of an e-mail kind of breakup," Ken said.
Dexter stared at Ken. "You aren't serious, are you?"
"Sure I am," Ken said. "Who has time for drama any more? You cut loose and go on your way."
"That's wrong," Dexter said.
"That's life in the modern world," Ken said.
"That's wrong on so many levels that I don't even know what to say," Dexter said.
Ken said, "I've been out of college for four years. I've had three girlfriends in that whole time. One I got to see for about three hours every other week. We always seemed to have scheduling conflicts. By the time we were getting around to having sex, she got transferred to another town. She broke it to me in a text message."
"That's not much of a relationship," Dexter said.
In a way, it reminded him of the last few years of his marriage. He saw his wife in passing more often than not. They even had to exchange text messages to arrange to meet for a meal on occasion. It hadn't been much of a relationship. No wonder that she turned to some other guy. He just wondered when she had the time for it.
"It still hurt. She might have been the one, but we never really had the chance to find out," Ken said.
"You need to press for a little more time away from work," Dexter said.
"I need the job. I've got student loans out the ass," Ken said. "I'm trapped."
'Just wait until you have a family. Then you'll really be trapped, ' Dexter thought. Instead, he said, "You're kind of young to be trapped in a job."
"Tell me about it," Ken said. "I had such dreams."
"You're only in your late twenties," Dexter said. He figured that was awful young for Ken to be giving up on his dreams.
"Sometimes I feel like I was sold a bill of goods. I mean ... well I don't know what I mean ... it's just that it wasn't supposed to be this way," Ken said tiredly.
Dexter asked, "How was it supposed to be?"
Ken snorted. "I was supposed to graduate college and get a good high paying job. Then I'd meet a girl, we'd live together for a bit, get married, buy a house, and then have kids."
"Do you have a good high paying job?" Dexter asked.
"Yeah, but no one said anything about graduating with a shitload of debt. I'll have to work for ten years to pay it off. I don't have the time to meet a girl and I can't afford to get married and have kids even if I do find one," Ken said.
"That sucks," Dexter said.
Ken took a sip of his coffee. The flavor hadn't improve any and now it was starting to get tepid. He said, "My Dad tried to pay my way through college, but it was expensive. Student aid was a joke. They looked at his salary and said that he should be able to afford forty thousand a year. That was almost his entire take home pay. What kind of idiot thinks you can afford to give away almost your whole net income for four years? You can't."
Dexter shook his head.
Ken said, "So he got a second mortgage on the house and cleaned out his savings accounts. It still wasn't enough. The more desperate the situation was, the more the company dumped on him. It was like they knew they had him by the balls. I think that is why he's upstairs having his heart repaired.
"I took loans to cover the difference. You can't do anything with only half a college degree. You either finish it or you've wasted a bunch of money. Of course you do it thinking that there's going to be a great payday when you've graduated.
"So now I'm stuck in a good paying job and giving a huge percentage of my income to pay for my loans. I'm paying nearly as much to live in an apartment as a mortgage would cost. My rent money is just going down the toilet. I can't buy house because I don't have any money for a down payment. I haven't been able to save a dime in the entire time I've been working."
Dexter said, "College was a lot cheaper in my day."
Ken said, "Here's the best part. My high school friend is an electrician. As an apprentice, he got paid to learn and got his ticket about the same time that I graduated. He makes almost as much as I do and he doesn't have any student loans to pay off. He gets his weekends off; I don't. He's got a house; I don't and I won't have one for at least another six years. In fact, I may never get one. He's married to a nice young woman and has two kids. I can't show up to two dates in a row."
"Your lifetime earnings will be greater than his," Dexter said.
"Really? I don't believe that. He gets cost of living raises. I get cost of living raises. Everything that I buy is going to cost more than what he paid for the same thing because by the time I can afford to buy it the price has gone up. So maybe I'll make more, but I'll have to spend more to be equal to him," Ken said.
Dexter shook his head and said, "I guess things are different today."
Ken said, "I really didn't like my Dad when I was growing up. I was jealous of all the hours he spent at work rather than with me. After all ... aren't I more important than his dumb job? It got even worse when I went college. I thought he should have been able to pay for my entire college education and I was pissed that he couldn't. I figured that he had frittered away all of that great money he made while ignoring me.
"Now ... I know better. I've got to thank him for how much he really struggled to do what he did. I'm not going to be able to do as much for my kids as my Dad did for me," Ken said.
"I've got my kid's education covered now," Dexter said.
That hadn't been the case until he had gotten fired and won the lawsuit. Until then, he might have been able to cover half the cost of college. Ten years from now, his son could have been telling exactly the same story as Ken.
"How did you manage that?" Ken asked.
"I sued the company I worked for when they fired me," Dexter answered.
"What did you do to get fired?" Ken asked.
"I told the truth," Dexter answered.
"Even I know you're not supposed to do that," Ken said.
Dexter said, "Now I run a website. It is covering my living expenses and sending money to my ex-wife to support the kids. I still have the money left from the lawsuit to cover the kid's tuition."
"Your kids are lucky," Ken said.
Dexter said, "My kids don't give a damn about me. They don't know who I am. For ten years I was just a face at the breakfast table. Hell, I don't know who they are. My daughter is texting all of the time and my son plays video games. I'm nobody."
Ken laughed bitterly. "I can understand them. I didn't know or like my Dad when I was a teenager. Now it is too late to get to know him. I'm too busy to talk to the man. I respect him a lot more now than I did then. I didn't respect him at all back when I was a teenager."
"I'm sure that your father wasn't all that pleased with you, either," Dexter said.
"He told me that on more than one occasion," Ken said. He looked a little embarrassed about that admission.
Dexter said, "I liked my Dad. He came home from work every night at five thirty. We would all eat at the dinner table and talk about current events as a family. I'd work with him out in the garage or around the house. He would tell me stories about things that had happened to him throughout his life. Some of his stories were funny and others were serious. He would give me these little gems of wisdom that I still remember to this day.
"When I finally got my work schedule under control, I walked around the house and took stock of life. I realized that I hadn't done any of that stuff with my son. He's gotten nothing from me and he isn't interested in hearing what I have to say," Dexter said.
"What would you tell him?" Ken asked.
Dexter thought about it for a couple of seconds and then answered, "I don't know. I could tell him stories about working, but he'd be bored out of his mind."
"I remember they used to have this commercial on television about wanting to grow up to be a middle manager. God, it made it sound like a fate worse than death. Now ... I'd be surprised if I get that far," Ken said. "I could have probably used a few stories from my father about navigating the politics of corporate America."
Dexter snorted. "Everything I know about being an asshole was learned sitting in meetings at work. That's the last thing I'd want my kid to learn from me."
"Aah," Ken said.
Dexter said, "My Dad used to talk about the importance of having pride in your work. He had a lot of pride in his work. Towards the end of my career, I didn't. The company was shipping out stuff before it was fully engineered and I was never in a position to stop it. Everything I worked on ended up being shoddy. I couldn't take pride in that.
"My Dad had friends. I don't. Getting and keeping friends takes time. I never ended up with the time required to develop lasting friendships. All I had were coworkers and acquaintances. That's not the same as friends."
"You never had friends?" Ken asked.
Dexter answered, "I did have friends in high school, but we all drifted apart. I had a few in college ... like my roommate ... but I haven't talked to him in years. I don't even know the names of my neighbors. Now, that is a sad commentary on a man's life."
"You can say that again," Ken said.
Dexter asked, "Have you made any friends since you started working?"
"No," Ken answered.
"Have you kept up with your friends from college?"
"No."
Dexter said, "I guess if I had to give some advice to my son, I'd tell him to put his friends and family above everything else. Maybe he'll never reach middle management. Maybe he'll end up being a plumber. There are lots of plumbers who are happy with their lot in life. Sometimes I think there are more happy plumbers than happy engineers."
"You could be right," Ken said. "My high school buddy is a lot happier than I am."
"You see him much?" Dexter asked.
"A couple times every year," Ken answered.
Dexter said, "You should be seeing him every week."
"I'll try to make the time," Ken said.
"Who knows ... he just might introduce you to your future wife," Dexter said with a grin.
"You might be right," Ken said. He stared at his empty coffee cup for a moment and then said, "I guess I better go upstairs and see how my Dad is doing."
"I hope everything turns out okay for him," Dexter said.
"Thanks," Ken said. He left the cafeteria.
Will and Sarah had entered the cafeteria through a secondary entrance located behind Dexter. They had overheard almost the entire conversation between Ken and their father. It was strange listening to their father talk about them to a perfect stranger.
More than that, it was the first time that they had ever heard him talk about himself. The impression he gave others was far different than the one they had of him.
Edited By TeNderLoin