It started with a lightbulb at the hardware store two doors down from my own twelve story apartment building. The bulb that had been above my bed died, and because I wasn't the biggest fan of like the dark, I decided that I needed to go.
A sign hung low up on the ceiling displaying the name Striders Hardware in different shades of green that didn't go together at all. From the moment I stepped in, I wanted to run back outside. My only thought was oh certainly I can last a few more days without a lightbulb. But I knew I couldn't, so I trudged into the dingy, and vaguely urine scented, hardware store. It seemed as if the place had been abandoned, but if this were true, why would the door have opened? Not a single person one came around over offering assistance, I began to suspect that no one actually worked in this place. There weren't any signs to label what items were in a certain aisle, leaving me to stand in a cracked cement doorway, staring down the small space between two neat rows of shelving without a single clue of where I was supposed to be going.
I glanced into the first one cautiously, as if I were expecting a dead body to be laying there instead of actual products. Luckily, there wasn't. I glanced up and down the badly painted (or maybe just chipped) shelves, eyes flickering over the labels for vibrantly colored aerosol sprays that didn't fit in with the general atmosphere of the store. I was just about to give up on my search when a blond (most likely bleached) head of hair peaked out from the head of the aisle.
"Welcome to Striders Hardware, and since I'm the only worker here right now, I'm at your service. The name's Dave, part uno of the Strider duo. How can I help you out?" He moved the rest of his body into the space between shelves as if to reassure me that yes, the rest of his body did indeed exist. His tanned skin looked almost sickly under the lights, though with the way he was standing I knew he wasn't. One hand adjusted the somewhat distracting dark red square glasses that sat halfway down his nose and covered his brown almond shaped eyes, while the other held him up on a shelf filled to the very edge with variously scented candles.
I found myself staring at said glasses before forcing myself to look down and stuffing my hands in the worn pockets of my once bright green but now much less bright and green jacket. "I was looking for light bulbs? Or at least something that would provide light but wouldn't run the risk of setting my entire building on fire type of thing." I gestured at the candles. " And, if we're introducing ourselves, I'm John Egbert."
"That was quite the mouthful," he remarked, as one of the strangest smiles I'd ever seen came upon his lips. "But I can show you where they are, since you've just insulted all of our candle supply." He spun on one heel and oh my god was he wearing Heelys. He rolled out of the aisle and into the next one. I followed him at a considerably slower pace because I just couldn't seem to get over the fact that he was wearing Heelys; also known as the shoes that were cool to have when you were twelve but then you would lose interest shortly after them being purchased because they only looked cool on television. I'm not saying that's what happened to me, I'm just stating the truth. He finally slowed down when he reached what I could only assume were the light bulbs.
"Yo, you took forever and what kind do you want?" The blonds voice carried far more than it needed to, as I was already standing next to him.
"Haha, sorry about that. Guess I get a little off track sometimes. Also, twenty three watt, fluorescent bulbs."
"So what I'm seeing is, you're a nature nerd, aren't you? Always wantin' to do what you can for the environment but never actually doing anything because you're too caught up in your own head."
"Well my cousin is exactly the person you're describing but if she found out I was using anything other than these I don't want to know what she'd do." I chuckled a bit before attempting to blow a particularly long strand of brown hair out of my eyes and utterly failing.
"Wouldn't want to upset the environmentalists, now would we?"
"Well no, I wouldn't want to, she'd most likely try to kill me."
"In an...ecofriendly way?"
"You could say that." I smiled before looking at the line of dusty looking lightbulbs sitting on the shelf below me. Soon I found myself kneeling beside him as if to get a better look at the labels, even though I could barely read them myself.
A moment of silence passed before Dave lifted a hand, reaching forward to grab at a small box hidden in the far back corner of the shelf. How can you even reach that far back? I wondered silently, taking it from him when his arm extended towards me. As he stood back up, I noticed that he had me beat height-wise by a few inches at the most.
I'd assumed he was walking towards the registers, so I began moving in that general direction. My fingers gently tapped on the lightweight in my hands, and I imagined it being a small handheld piano. As I walked slowly, as if I was trying to capture every moment, I felt my lips curl into a small grin. Whether it was one of genuine happiness, or a completely random one, I couldn't tell.
I made it to the register where Dave sat slumped on an old wood stool, wheeled feet tapping on the worn bar close to the floor.
"Took ya long enough, I was about ready to fall over and die in this very seat. How would you feel about having caused the death of one very important cashier?" His accent thickened, and the introduction of said accent made me wonder just where this Dave Strider was from. Maybe he was from Washington, like me; though not many people live in Washington compared to other states so the chance of that was fairly low. It sounded a bit strange, almost as if he was taught to speak by a static television instead of a person. New Jersey, perhaps?
"Oh! Oh uh right, here are the light bulbs, the bulbs of light, the circular objects that bring brightness into my dark world. The uh… light bulbs." I shuffled a bit before handing them over, allowing the bulbs to switch hands for the third time in the past five minutes. A small flash of green from the price scanner and the box was slid back over the table to me.
"That'll be twelve dollars and thirty nine cents," He said in a voice that was typical of most cashiers. With mechanical fingers, I pulled my wallet out of my back pocket and sorted through a small amount of bills until I gave up and handed him a twenty dollar bill. The sound of wood and worn bills mingled together as I slid it across to him, trying to put my wallet back and tragically failing as coins came tumbling out of the smaller pocket and onto the floor, covering a tile and a half. They clinked on the floor, rolling in circles as I found myself subjected to watching.
The reality of the situation hit me and I swore before getting down on my knees to collect them, not caring about how stupid I looked. I heard chuckles from the general area above my head before the faint sound of wheels clicking stopped, and soon there were callused hands joining my own.
"You should really get a change purse or something, otherwise this'll just keep happening to you." Dave's words were laced with small bursts of laughter. I rolled my eyes, lifting my head to look at the figure bent down in front of me. From what I could see, his eyes were crinkled at the corners in what seemed to be concentration and amusement as his hands moved deftly across the black and white tiled floor to pick up each individual coin. His method was so unlike my own (pushing them together and then picking them up as a pile) that I had to stop and stare.
"Really? That's how you're gonna play this, amateur." Dave moved his hand just enough to hit mine and send the coins flying back to the ground.
"Wow, real mature. Isn't the customer always right?" I grumbled, trying to gather as many coins as I could into my hands.
"That's what they tell you in suburban grocery stores. Does this look like a suburban grocery store to you?" He gestured with his empty hand at the semi-clean window that displayed the name of the store in peeling letters. Was that always there?
"I mean if you squint really, really hard I guess it could be. You've got a lot of green, and that thing sitting on that bench over there sort of looks like a tomato."
"You mean the pumpkin that we painted red because Christmas was coming up? I mean sure but that's a really big tomato then, I don't want to know what they're feeding you wherever you came from, but here in Houston, we have normal sized tomatoes."
"Excuse me for having an active imagination." I smiled at him, swiping out my free hand to push the coins out of his. What made me smile even wider was his reaction to said action. He slammed both his fists on the ground, disturbing the fallen coins even further. This caused a chain of swearing, air punching and my laughter.
This simple coin collection had evolved into: 'Who Can Collect the Most Coins Without Dropping Any.' This game involved a lot of shoving and joking, almost as if the two of us were close friends and not two people that had met under an hour ago.
"John, you absolute douchebag!" Dave swung out a leg, kicking the coins out of my hand and causing me fake a pout at him. It was broken apart by laughter from the both of us, ruining whatever mood that could have been there.
"Hey don't call me that, it's rude." I attempted to pout again, but once again it was disrupted by bursts of laughter.
We spent what seemed like hours playing this seemingly simple game when it was really only around twenty minutes, but it got more and more complicated as time went on. The number of coins dropped was the amount of points lost, we started out with one hundred points, pennies were worth more than quarters, that one dollar coin I had became the most important piece. The game was restarted when both our handfuls had fallen twice.
No one else came into the store, Dave seemed to expect that as he never once tried to stop playing, to just clean up the coins and get me checked out. In all honesty, I found it strange. Why wasn't anyone coming in? At one point I pointed this out, to which he only shrugged and continued looking down at the neatly stacked pile of coins in his hands.
The game ended in the most glorious way I could think of, I reached over and swiped the coins right from his hand when he wasn't looking. I grinned wide, satisfied with myself as he mumbled under his breath, hands grabbing for the coins as they spun on the ground.
"So John," He said after the few moments he took for himself. "Why're you still here? Because while I find it totally rad that you've decided to stay this long, but… Alright I'm gonna be honest here, it's really weird that you've chosen to stay in a hardware store with a dude you've barely known for less than an hour."
The smile that had formed earlier faded as he spoke. I found myself repeating the same actions that he had done when I had questioned him. "I don't know, I guess I was just lonely? Yes, I'm realizing how weird and desperate I sound and no I didn't come here specifically to end up like this. I actually do need those lightbulbs."
"Oh! Right, right. Let me get right on that." Dave shuffled up to his feet, sliding the coins into my open hand before moving back to the counter and sliding onto the stool as if he had never left it. "So, here's some change for that twenty. Seven dollars and sixty one cents."
His last word seemed a bit clipped, as if someone had folded and hid the other half of the word. I was still curious to find out where he came from, so as he pushed the dollars and lightbulbs towards me, I asked him. "So, where exactly are you from?"
"Well, young John, my dear old dad was from Tokyo, and my poor, sweet innocent mother was from somewhere in Texas. If only they'd stuck around, instead of jumping ship together. Literally, they jumped off a ship together. It wasn't a pretty thing. Actually it was quite disgusting. My brother and I moved back down to Texas after being in foster care for a few years, and eventually we began to realize that we needed jobs. He figured that we might as well make our own place, as opposed to working for some big box company. Frankly, that was a stupid decision but hey don't listen to Dave, right? Anyways, why don't we turn this conversation around and you can tell me the tale of your suburban life."
I only sighed, as if that would explain everything. A moment passed and I straightened up and focused on the frames in front of me. "How about we go somewhere else, a hardware store doesn't seem like the best place for someone to share where they came from and what they've done, right? But just for the record, I'm not from the suburbs."
Dave stood there for what seemed like ages before he nodded and peeled himself away from the cash register. "Yeah, yeah that makes sense. I mean, I did it but I hardly count as a person, considering the fact that I work here and spend most of my time here. Let me just close up, alright?"
Smiling, I stepped back out into the now dying natural light, carefully holding the medium sized box of bulbs.
He locked the door, but I stayed silent, content with watching as his fingers continued to twiddle with the key even as it sat in the lock, twisting it but not quite enough for the door to completely shut. With a huff of annoyance, he twisted it enough for the key to fully lock the door.
"So, where are we going?" The question was startling yet I must have been expecting it, I merely pointed at my apartment building as if that would justify it. "'M guessing that's your place. You gonna make me put in too?"
My answer was a combination of nod and shrug, and I began to lead us there. We walked the few dozen feet between Striders Hardware and my place of residence side by side, hands almost touching but not enough to justify it as hand holding.
Why would we be doing that? We'd just met. But then again, so did people who went on dates. Unless they'd been friends for years, of course. But we hadn't, we barely even knew each other. I thought about this as we pushed through the revolving doors, as we walked across the carpeted floor of the lobby, even as we stepped into the elevator. I looked at the faintly glowing numbers without making the move to push any of them. Takashi nudged at my arm gently, breaking my semi-trance.
I mumbled out apologies before leaning forward to press the worn out '4' button, and quickly falling back into my original spot beside him. His fingers brushed against mine for the briefest of moments, but instead of indulging in this, I pulled my hand away thus ending the warm contact. He seemed to slouch a little further down, bangs collecting in front of the glasses as if he were trying to hide his emotions from me and couldn't seem to figure out just how to do it.
Together, we walked out of the elevator and onto the purple and grey swirled carpet as the doors opened onto the fourth floor. As we moved down the hallway, our shoes gently rubbed against it, creating a soft scratching noise that bounced off the beige painted walls.
"You were right, you know," I whispered, not wanting to break the comfortable silence that had formed between us. He glanced over, tilting his head to the side as I stopped us in front of door 13, pulling out my keys as proof that they were mine. "I'm totally going to make you put in the bulb."
The blond laughed, sounding the most careful I'd ever heard him since our first meeting just an hour prior. "I knew you would."