CAROL'S SUNNY OPTIMISM

Vertigo if it was a boy, and Vendetta if it was a girl. Dennis hadn't ever said whether he'd marry Carol, but those were the names he mentioned, if they had babies.

Carol's last name was Pilbasian, and Dennis's had been McDermott...would they have hyphenated it? But Dennis only talked about marriage and love when they were about to do IT..., which he liked, a lot but wasn't really good at.

Carol had been dating Bronwyn, a transgender homeless person (Carol had been holding a hotdog she'd bought from a vendor, and had offered Bron half in lieu of a quarter) but Bron had gone to White Hill Neuropsychiatric abruptly...and then Carol had met Dennis...and she hadn't been sure about him...Grandma always said guys who borrow money are trouble...Dennis had his issues!

But when you meet a guy at Balticon, the big Science Fiction Convention on the East Coast, and then he also takes off his chain mail for you in the hotel room at Chilicon, down in Texas, it's love, isn't it?

And Dennis loved the glitter sweatshirt Carol had made him, to honor his "My Little Pony" passion. He was way into Dungeons and Dragons and Sci-Fi, but Carol had just been drawing Dennis out (over e-mail, they'd only met in person five times that year) when he' d passed on from the Plague.

Carol hadn't really even liked Science Fiction, but she'd been living in Baltimore, and had kinda gone to the convention, and Dennis had been so nice. (He'd had heartbreak, Dennis had. When Dennis graduated from high school, his dad took his keys, and gave him the address to a Sunoco station where he'd start work, and a month's rent in a dirtbag motel)

So why not follow Dennis to the other conventions? But was that really dating? Carol liked Dennis though...they'd talked about marriage, right?

But now Dennis was gone. He'd died. And Carol knew it was true-Dennis had tried weird dodges for breaking up with her before, the restraining order and all, but the e-mail from his mom seemed really genuine, and besides, everyone here was dead, too.

Carol lived in Delaware now, and it was a small, and pretty bare state. No animals, either. Carol's roommates had died while she was at her candle maker's group in Wilmington...and what now?

Jeez, it was so quiet now. Carol had not known what to do with the bodies, but she'd finally stored them in the basement of the apartment building. Taking them to be buried might be tough...Glenn, her male roomie, had been really, really overweight.

Carol was standing outside a Subaru dealership, reading her Iphone...the message from Dennis's mother was three days old. The Iphone had gone dead for a while, and now was just kind of flickering. Maybe Carol should drive to Nevada, where Dennis lived, just for the heck of it.

Carol walked onto the Subaru lot, and looked at a pretty egg-shell white car. No one was there to stop her...and she didn't need keys.

Carol had, at one time been corresponding with another prospective boyfriend at Love A Convict Dot Org , and he'd told her all sorts of awesome stuff, that she'd never thought would be useful, but in moments she was pulling the car out of the lot and she was on her way.

It was a little lonely, but Carol had always been a gal who could depend on her own company-she'd been raised and homeschooled by her Grandma Hastings, and they'd spent a lot of time knitting and watching "The Food Channel" in silence.

When Carol had finally gotten to the University of Maryland-Salisbury, she'd found people were too preoccupied with sex and drugs and grade grubbing to talk much, about anything cheerful.

She had gotten a brief boyfriend at the Campus Crusade for Christ, but when he made her go to Owings Mills for the abortion, Carol had wondered at Farley's real commitment to the Man Upstairs.

So-Carol didn't really need anybody to talk to...she could just talk to herself, and listen to Amy Grant CD's and zoom around in the Subaru...it's a big place, America!

It was kind of interesting, driving around, across the country, (The Subaru had an awesome GPS) and dropping into restaurants and stuff. Carol had to ignore some icky dead people at tables, but she knew how to go into the kitchens, and cut off some frozen steak...and she'd gone to a couple of fabric stores, too...you gotta jazz up your blouses, right?

It was outside Reno that Carol changed her route. Spray painted across a billboard advertising organic condoms was the message "ALIVE IN TUCSON" and it looked as if it had been written in a strong, manly hand.