Many of the characters within this story, and the universe they inhabit, are the intellectual property of Jason Katims Productions.

Roswell: Reimagined

Written by

Horatio Zedekiah Jaxx

Chapter 4: Lunch for Two

Earl Wade had just deposited his trailer at the docking entrance of the Wal-Mart Supercenter in Roswell, New Mexico. Tired from his seven hour nonstop drive to get there on time, he detached the truck and parked it in a tractor trailer stop not far from the store. It was half past eleven in the morning and Earl was eager to catch up on the sleep that he lost from his early morning start. He was just about to insert his slender six-foot two-inch frame into the bunk-bed at the back of the cab when he noted something familiar about one of the other three trucks parked nearby. He settled back into his seat and took a minute to study it. The types of cross country tractor trailers in service around the country were surprisingly few. Over the past year Earl had seen more than one-hundred trucks of the same make, model and year as the one he was looking at. But the detailing and ornamentation of this truck was unique to only one person he knew.

Adrian Lupo awoke to the sound of someone banging on the door to his cab. A burly man with a rotund figure, Adrian pulled his six-foot frame out of the bunk-bed at the back of the cab and climbed into the driver's seat of his truck. When he looked out the window he did not at first recognize the slender, six-feet two-inch tall, man standing just outside. It took his eyes several seconds to adjust to the light and focus in on the face on the other side of the door. After a few blinks and a sudden start of recognition, Adrian opened the door and pushed it out wide.

"Earl, how's it going?"

"I'm okay. And how are things with you?" Earl responded as he stepped back so that Adrian could climb out of his truck.

"Well hell man, I'm doing great," Adrian answered in a boisterous tone a second after hitting the ground with a thud. "…Glad as hell to see you."

Adrian extended his hand. Earl promptly clasped it and shook hands with his old friend. The two men had not seen one-another for more than nine months. Before this, nearly seven months had passed between meetings. Their acquaintance with each other went back eleven years. But it was only in the past two years that their association had become sporadic.

The two men met when Earl began his six month trial period as a truck driver in Dallas, Texas. Adrian was the veteran driver that Earl was assigned to. During their time together they became good friends. This friendship extended beyond their time in the truck. The similarities in their likes, pastimes and lives made their association a comfortable fit. Both men had children, divorced and happily single again. Both men were, when they first met, in their later thirties. Their proximity to one-another made all of this a comfortable fit. It was not until Adrian followed his ex-wife's and children's move to Houston, Texas, four years earlier, that this close friendship became untenable. Fishing, football, baseball and bowling were the usual recreations on the agenda for their meetings, usually with other friends. The nature of their jobs and the distance between them limited these joint activities to once or twice a month. But it was not until Adrian borrowed five-hundred dollars from Earl that their association became almost nonexistent.

It was not until after the first three months had pasted that Earl became suspicious of Adrian's disappearance. The fact that they rarely saw each other was not particularly surprising under the circumstances. But Adrian's failure to answer or return any of his calls was unnatural to say the least. Earl's thinking immediately went to the five-hundred dollars. He was at first reluctant to believe that Adrian was ducking his calls. But this reluctance fell away after the first year.

Earl gave no great significance to the amount of money. When it came to small denominations, he was a very generous person. Five-hundred dollars was not an amount he considered to be a small denomination. But it was a quantity that he could spare to a friend as a loan. It was for this reason, coupled with his desire not to offend a friend that Earl strained his patience waiting for Adrian to pay him back. What he did not know and what Adrian was not telling him was that he was heavily in debt to half a dozen credit card companies. He had spent much of the past year borrowing from one credit card to pay to another. Confessing his financial mismanagement to others was something that Adrian was too proud to do. What he did not know was that Earl was too proud to endure a slight for long.

The two men began their accidental meeting with the pretense that all was well between them. After their friendly greeting and explanations for their presence in Roswell, Adrian invited his old friend to come with him for lunch. Earl accepted without hesitation. He was reluctant to take his leave of Adrian without first raising the subject of the debt. He had hopes that Adrian would do this himself. Earl was not by nature a confrontational man. But he was determined not to allow this fact to be the means of his humiliation.

Adrian drove them both to a restaurant on the other side of town. His familiarity with the community was due to his regular transit through the area. There were several businesses within New Mexico State that he favored making deliveries to. Over the course of many years he came to be familiar with the selection of restaurants to be found here. This particular restaurant that he was taking Earl to had the advantage of being inexpensive without being a fast-food franchise. Five minutes down the road, Adrian parked his rig in the parking lot of a shopping plaza. The two men climbed out of the cab without delay and made their way, half a block down the street, to a small café adorned with an ostentatious display of a flying saucer.

"Trust me, the food is good her," Adrian promised.

The two men pushed open the glass doors of the eatery and were immediately engulfed by the smells of food being cooked and served. The interior of the restaurant was not large. It looked as if it seated thirty people, more or less. Nearly all of the tables were taken, but there was several spots open at the counter. Adrian suggested that they take seats there, but Earl vetoed that in favor of a vacant table against the wall. The two men took seats there opposite each other. One minute after sitting down, a waitress, who looked to be no more than a teenager, came over and took their order. She quickly jotted down their requests and went off to deliver their selections to the cook. While they waited on their food, the two men chatted about mutual friends and changes that had occurred in their lives. Earl was hesitant to bring up the subject of the debt. He still had hopes that Adrian would do that on his own. Adrian was hoping that his friend's mild manner demeanor would continue to avoid any subject that was potentially confrontational. A dozen minutes into their small talk about nothing, their food was being served before them. The two men quickly set themselves to the task of eating their lunch with little being said between them as they did.

Twenty minutes later, the men had finished their meals with the exception of their drinks. The waitress had been given their payment and had just returned with the change. Earl's thinking quickly came to the conclusion that now was the time to broach the subject of the money that Adrian owed him. He knew from Adrian's earlier statement that he was leaving Roswell immediately after lunch.

"Hey man, I'm sorry for bring this up, but you still owe me the five-hundred you borrowed two years ago."

Earl was legitimately regretful for pressing Adrian on this subject. If he took the time to think about it, he could not rationalize why he felt so. Earl calculated that he had every right to put this question to his old friend.

"I know, I know, I haven't forgotten," Adrian responded with a toss of his hand.

It was Adrian's hope, and partially an expectation, that this would be enough of a response for now. He knew Earl to be a passive person and he was counting on this, along with the public setting that they were in, to persuade him to let this subject pass for now. To his surprise it had the opposite effect.

"So, when can I expect you to pay it back?" Earl softly challenged.

Earl saw the toss of Adrian's hand as a dismissal of his inquiry. He had fortified himself for months for this meeting and it took only the smallest indignation to ratchet up his assertiveness to the next level.

"Well I don't have it on me now," Adrian forcefully countered with a look of dismay.

The contention in his usually demure friend caught Adrian off guard. The agitation in his response stripped away Earl's last layer of civility.

"If I don't ask you now, then …when am I going to see you again? …two years from now?"

Adrian was instantly brought to anger by this remark. His absence of a credible reply and the feeling of being backed against a wall were doing the bulk of the work of fueling his temper.

"So you want a date? I thought we were friends?" Adrian loudly roared back.

Nearly everyone in the restaurant took note of their arguing with glances and stares.

"I thought we were too," Earl argued back. "But you haven't been returning my calls. I don't see you anymore. What am I supposed to think?"

"You're supposed to know that I'm good for it," Adrian retaliated with equal surliness.

Earl interpreted this as just another deflection. He had prepared himself over half a dozen months to get a straight answer from his old friend. This attempt at making his inquiry about his money the offending act was the affront to him that canceled out any thought that Adrian Lupo was his friend.

"Adrian, I want my money. I need you to cough it up. Borrow it off your rig, sell something, max out a credit card, I don't give a fuck. I want my money and I want it now."

Adrian leaned forward before responding to this remark. "Don't threaten me, Earl" he whispered in a sinister tone. "I don't like being pushed."

"I'm not threating. I'm just telling you, I want my money," Earl answered back in a hushed voice.

"You'll get your money when you get it," Adrian continued to argue under his breath. "Until then I don't want to hear from you and I don't want to see you."

Adrian stood up from his chair and started to turn for the front exit. Earl stood up an instant behind and caught Adrian by the left arm with his left hand. At this same moment, Earl inserted his right hand into his jacket pocket.

"You've made that pretty damn clear."

"Get your hands off of me," Adrian growled back with a scowl.

"Don't play the tough guy with, Adrian," Earl grumbled as he partially exposed a thirty-eight revolver from out of his pocket.

Adrian drew no fear from this. He saw the weapon as simply an escalation from heated words to an all-out fight.

"Why you son-of-a-bitch," Adrian roared as he grabbed Earl's right arm and pushed him backwards with his forearms.

Earl fell backwards onto the back of the patron sitting behind him. The whole restaurant was shocked into silence as they stared at the two men scuffling. Their shock quickly turned into alarm when all caught sight of the handgun that the two men were wrestling over.

"Gun…!"

No sooner had someone yelled this out loud did all of the patrons in the restaurant begin to move away from the two men. A few fled out the front entrance to the restaurant. Adrian and Earl had been wrestling for control of the weapon for barely more than a second when a shot rang out of its barrel. The sudden loud explosion shocked both patrons and staff to duck beneath the nearest table or counter. Adrian and Earl were also shocked by the sound of the weapon firing. They instantly halted their fighting as their minds suddenly fathomed what they both had done. A second after this, both men fled the restaurant. The dispute between them was no longer of importance. Their minds were in too much of a panic. Escape was the only thought that their brains could process. Both men scrambled out of the restaurant at their best speeds, oblivious to the fact that a waitress on the far side of the room had been struck by the projectile that they had launched.