This is all well and good for Xavier since it gets his job done faster since he doesn't have to sit through all the movies; a task which could be very tedious, especially during the times of the year when the movie qualities are at their lowest like January. However, Xavier loves movies and he thinks himself one of the luckiest people in the world that he has a job that he likes to do. The weekly routine he has set for himself is to pick one of the movies sent for release that Friday and watch it with the other theater employees after the theater has closed on the Thursday before. Xavier gets a kind of rush knowing that he has been able to see a movie before the mass public has been allowed to; kind of makes him feel special.

Xavier is watching "Bees, Ants, and Uncles," a new comedy that is out for the summer season. The movie itself is sort of a let down; Xavier liked the director's debut film "Season of the Locust" a lot and was hoping his sophomore attempt would be on par. Still, the other two movies that are opening later that Friday look even worse from the trailers Xavier saw. He scooped some popcorn from the bag in his lap and popped them in his mouth. The current scene was sucking the energy out of the film and Xavier started to look around the theater at his fellow employees.

To his right, in the right side section and one row ahead of Xavier sits Audrey. Fidgeting in her seat is more like it. She's completely bored watching the movie and would rather be napping right now. She's trying too, but can't get comfortable. Why doesn't she just go home? She obviously hates the movie and she knew that she wouldn't like it. If it's one person who has more discriminating tastes in movies than Xavier, or the �cinema� as Audrey likes to say it, it is her. Audrey is an eighteen-year old girl and recent graduate of New Chicago High School. She's planning on going to community college due to lack of funds. She likes to say that if she had the money she would go to a four-year institution but the truth is she has no idea what she wants to do as a career and why waste so much money in a big college when you are lost? Isn't it better to take some time off and figure out what you want to do and then enter college? This would be her preferred plan of action since she was already bored out of her mind in high school. Community college is just two more years of torture in her mind but her parents want her to go and she appeases them by enrolling.

Audrey is five-foot six and has short brown hair made into a very spiky do. She wears a black collar around her neck to show off her punk tendencies along with her violet and black painted fingernails. She wears more mascara than most girls do. She would love for people to think she's a heroin addict but her average weight and pear-shaped body is a contradiction to the preconceived notion that heroin addicts are all skinny and underweight. She wears the concessionist uniform that all the concessionists wear but since it is after hours her white buttoned-up shirt underneath the black vest has been untucked and pulled out. If she weren't such a punk at heart she would love to be Annie Hall, a great character and even better movie in her high opinion. "It would have been the best movie ever if it just didn't have Woody Allen in it," she has said before. Her shoes are red running shoes with spiky soles. She's not supposed to wear those kind of shoes, policy says nice black or brown shoes, but she's "behind the counter all day, who's gonna see the shoes?"

Audrey seems to have finally found a position to be comfortable in although if she were to stay like that for very long, her back and neck would pay the price. Xavier then looks over his right shoulder to the back right section. Beatrice and Calvin are sitting together and Calvin is hard at work in trying to get Beatrice to sleep with him. The progression of their romance is interesting to Xavier. Calvin started working at the theater only six weeks ago. He missed the first Thursday night early movie showing but came to it his second week but that week Beatrice wasn't there. He came for the movie the third week - Beatrice was there that week - and came back the fourth week just to see her. He had "an amazing conversation" with her according to Beatrice and last week, the fifth week, he put it into full gear and started to openly flirt with her. It looks like this week is going pretty good since Beatrice is reciprocating the make-excuses-to-touch-you game.

Calvin is an usher and Beatrice is one of the concessionists. Beatrice works the opening and afternoon shift and Calvin works the night and closing shift. There is only a one-hour overlap in the afternoon and night shifts - between 5pm and 6pm - so they don't get much time to spend around each other except for these early movie showings. Calvin takes college classes in the late morning and early afternoon, that's why he works the night shift, and Beatrice is an actress and has rehearsals and classes at night, that's why she works the opening shift. Calvin is twenty-one and about to become a senior in college and Beatrice is twenty-five and thinks its quite scandalous that she is attracted to a man four years her junior. Calvin is a really cool guy and wise beyond his years. He knows that he wants to on to graduate school for business and loves New Chicago so he hopes to get accepted into the graduate program at his current college so he doesn't have to move. He has wavy brown hair that is receding just a bit and wears black framed glasses as "his trademark." He has the build of a wrestler and occasionally works out on the equipment at his home. Beatrice has rather long strawberry blonde hair and freckles all over her trim body. Do the freckles go all the way to her-? don't go there Xavier. Beatrice is five-foot eleven and Calvin is at an even six-feet tall.

Directly in back of Xavier all the way in the last row is Mark, the closing manager of the theater. Mark is in his late thirties and is a heavy-set man of five-foot and four inches with very short black hair cut in a buzz cut manner although if let to grow would start to curl right away. Mark has his arms crossed across his chest and that is his normal body position, as if he was always closed off to the world and judging everything to see if it was okay. This night the light from the movie screen periodically shows that his eyes were closed and that he is asleep. Xavier will have to wake him up when it comes time to leave.

Just then Litza walks into the theater with some candy and pop in her hands. She walks down the left aisle and then heads into the row Xavier is in. She hands a Crunch bar to him and a drink as she sits down in the seat next to him on his left.

"Thanks."

"No problem," replies Litza on autopilot. She puts her own cup in the cup holder and a bag of Reese's Pieces in her lap as she pulls out the scrunchie holding her shoulder length brown hair and redoes her hair to go back into the pony tail she thought was losing its tightness. Litza is the other projectionist at the theater and she and Xavier started working at the theater within one week of each other. They've both been at the theater for eight long years. Xavier started out as one of the ushers and Litza as a concessionist. They've seen a lot of people start to work there, work a few years, and eventually leave. In addition to being a projectionist, Litza is also an assistant manager at the theater, so she gets to wear a red vest instead of the black vest all the underlings wear. Mark's vest is also red.

"What's wrong with the guy in the chair?" she asks while leaning over to Xavier. She is speaking in regards to what is on the screen in front of them.

"The guy in the mustache put itching powder in his pants and he's trying not to cry out at the funeral," Xavier explains while trying to inject as much emphasis he can into it to convey that he think this bit is overdone and rather stupid. "And the grandma thinks he's a sexual pervert due to mishearing a conversation he had with his wife about their kid's naughty Internet habits, so that's why they keep showing her looking at him with that face she is giving."

"Ah. That's sort of funny." Litza then decides to look around the theater and checks in with the co-workers. "Mark's asleep."

"Yeah, I know. Audrey may be too."

Litza looks over to Audrey who is still sitting in the neck-killing position. Litza takes a sip of her Coke and Sprite mix and looks back at Calvin and Beatrice. She notices how close they seem to be getting both physically and emotionally. The feeling of wonderment comes over her mind as she tries to wrap it around the question of how are they able to become intimate so fast. What do they know that she doesn't? What is the key? She turns her head and looks at Xavier - how will she ever get him to think of her romantically?

"What?" Xavier has caught Litza staring at him, lost in thought.

Snapped back to reality, Litza blinks wildly and spins the mental Rolodex for the right response. I love you? Naw, too bold and not entirely accurate. I've got a crush on you that I've had for three years? No, "crush" sounds so elementary school and she doesn't want to scare him away with the year figure. Do you believe there's any romantic spark between us? Do you like me? Do you think I'm sexy? Do you watch me when I'm not looking like I do? Does your heart skip a beat when our eyes meet? Would you be surprised if I kissed you right now?

"Oh, nothing." Good one Litza. Litza quickly looks back at the movie screen. Xavier looks at her for a moment, wondering what she was thinking of and why she was looking at him. The puzzlement face triggers his mind to notice his mouth, which is dry. He slurps some Sprite from the straw in the cup and the sounds of the movie bring him back to look at the movie. The man with the itchy pants has his hands down his pants to scratch his legs and the Grandma has just fainted. "Dead Grandma�hilarious," Litza deadpans, sarcasm knocking out walls. Xavier laughs so hard at the tone of her voice that his pop comes out of his nose.

Xavier is riding the train to work, his hair still a little wet. Some of the windows are cracked and the small breeze is nice on this particularly hot day. He's dressed in his black uniform and his back is touched by the rays of the sun, which makes his back toasty warm. He likes New Chicago in the summer and is enjoying looking at all the leaves on the trees that speed on by. One of his best memories is lying in a field in the Swiss Alps, feeling the flowers and plants with his hands as he watched the puffy clouds blow by. This, of course, was decades ago when he was a boy of seven, before the Earth became completely rotten. At least there's still at least some plant life in the city. The train slows down at the Cranberry station and Xavier gets up for this is his station. The theater is only a two-block walk away.

If Xavier were a patron, his journey would be like this. If he were a person who planned ahead he would have already purchased the tickets either through the Internet or by the phone; in this town a cell phone. If he were a person who didn't pay for things beforehand he would walk up to the computerized box office. From the list of movie playing and the times they start, he would select one at the push of a button and punch in how many tickets he wanted. Then he would swipe his ID card into the machine to deduct from an account of his choosing. In these modern times everything is on just one ID card: your photo ID, your finger print, you medical records, you credit cards, your bank accounts, everything. The civil rights discussions and outcries that came out during the start of the ID card system died out long ago, after security locks and passwords galore were put on the card. The box office machine spits out the tickets and then he can enter the actual theater when he passes the ticket under a detection device that checks to see if he's going to the right film. Between the two devices, the rest of the theater is still the old fashioned way in that actual people help you with your orders.

Xavier opens the lobby doors and enters the lobby and says "hello" to Travis behind the counter. Travis is one of the morning concessionists. He's a rather odd fellow who is a Goth at night. He has dyed black hair, which is kept sort of long and unkempt, pale white skin, and a very tall and skinny frame. Travis is also a singer in a Goth band, which is what he spends most of his time thinking about, on and off work. He asked Audrey out last December because he thought she was a Goth too, due to her leather band around her neck. "You're nine years older than me. I'm only seventeen, I can't even vote yet. I'm still in high school. So, no, I don't want to go out with you," was her response. He wrote a song about it. Last March Xavier, Litza, Audrey, Beatrice, and Mark all went to go see the band he was in play at a local bar. They went to his show just to get him to stop berating them about coming to see him perform; after all, they would go see plays Beatrice was in. Audrey was sneaked into the bar through the back door of the establishment since it only allowed those over eighteen to enter. After one song they really wanted to leave because the band was horrible. Audrey said it best when she described the sensation gotten when listening to the band as "wanting to put them out of their Gothic misery by shooting them and run away while stabbing your ears so as to never being able to hear them again."

Xavier enters the employee break room and punches in. Gladys the accounting manager says hi to him without looking up from the various papers of data she is looking at.

"How did you know it was me?"

"Your shoes," she volleys back. Gladys is a no-nonsense lady of forty-seven years with three children of her own. She looks at a lot of her fellow employees like she looks at the movies- loud, annoying, and thankfully temporary. She warmed up to Xavier when she found out that he likes to do the newspaper crossword puzzle. She loves to do them too, and since Xavier was able to get them completed most of the time, she knew he was a smart kid, and thus, worth her time to get to know. Just then Litza enters the room to get herself her bottle of water which she left in the room.

"Uh oh, it's a little after 3pm, you're getting lazy, not showing to work on time," she jokes with Xavier.

"Today I'm doing things differently, so it fits that I'm a little late since I'm always early," he explains.

"Always early, then that would mean no exceptions and today is an exception so you can't say you're always early honey," Gladys injects.

"Touch�."

"My routine, my daily routine. On a whim when I woke up, I just felt like doing it, and so I am," he says hoping that explanation was simple enough yet got the point across.

"Gonna start walking backwards?"

"No, its not like opposite-day or anything like that."

"Opposite day. I totally forgot about that kind of stuff we used to talk about in school." She takes a sip of her water.

"I just don't want to feel like I'm becoming a robot, like I'm doing the same thing over and over again. Doing things the same all the time just takes out all the fun in life, I think. Life is about doing new things and always learning and you can't learn if you do things the same all the time."

"Sure you can, you learn what happens when you do the same thing over and over," she counters with, just to be the devil's advocate.

"You learn that you're no more than a robot, that you're on auto-pilot, you can't go through life like that."

"I agree with you, I was just fucking with you. But you make it sound so vitally important, like the air we breathe. Doing things differently is fun, sure, but routine also has its place."

"I know, you need a balance of the two."

"Exactly. What are you going though, some sort of life-changing event?"

"No," he says defensively.

"Again, kidding." In the time they have been talking, the two of them have walked to the projection booth number 2 and Litza has threaded the film to get the next showing of "An Ugly Summer" ready. "I'm going home tomorrow."

"Yeah, I know. I'll miss ya."

"Only because you have to take more hours to help cover while I'm gone."

"That's part of it. No, we'll all miss you while you're gone, for a week is it?"

"Eight days of holiday for me. I actually get back into town earlier but I wanted more time off so I told them I would be out of town the whole time."

"Smart. When do you get back?"

"Thursday. My flight is supposed to come in around 5pm I think."

"When do you leave tomorrow?"

"Early morning, around 6am."

"Ouch, too early."

"Yeah, for you and me both. I still haven't packed yet; I'm such a lazy person. I'm going to start "Operation Playground" in ten minutes, then I'm going to take my lunch," changing the subject.

"No problem."

"Cool. Pee break."

"Too much information."

"Too late." She scampers down the steps of the booth and exits the door, shutting it behind her.

Xavier sits down on a stool in the booth and folds a printout of the movie start and stop times. Litza and him have got it down so that the sheet is business card size and folded over on it self and tucked in so that it stays that way. It�s the little things like these that really makes a job, the things you learn after experimentation in the first few days of the job. The way he likes to hold the film when threading it (with his left hand while his right lifts and pulls levers to fit it around wheels and lenses), the places best to sit to view a movie while acting like you are checking the theater, the fastest way to change the syrup mix of a pop when the concessonists are too overwhelmed to handle it and the customers, these things and many more make the difference in finding joy in the job.

The rest of the day goes by smoothly. The only problem is a customer who keeps talking on his cell phone during the movie. Xavier sticks around to help clean up and close the theater and decides to walk home instead of taking the train. After all, he hasn't gone to bed yet and so the day of doing things differently is not over for him. Normally he would have walked down Greenhill to his apartment but in keeping with doing things different, he decides to walk down Forest Avenue, which runs parallel to Greenhill. Forest Avenue is lined with Brookstone apartments with small gardens in front of them that seem to be spilling out with flowers and plant life. The only other life out this late at night are a stray cat, two couples walking drunkenly to their apartments, and another man walking down the street in the opposite direction. In such times, when he is alone and walking around at night, Xavier can't help but think of his life and where it is right now. He's twenty-eight and works at a movie theater. A job he loves but one he is still reluctant to tell people he does since it is a job done mostly by high school students. He's also had the chance, several times to advance in the movie theater world by becoming an assistant manager and maybe eventually a full-time manager. This is a subject that comes up every once in a while with his parents. They had so much more in mind for him when he was growing up. Where ever did he get this laziness from?

He's at the corner of Forest Avenue and Honeycut, waiting for the lights to change so he can cross the street. He could cross now, there aren't any cars coming, but Xavier is in no hurry so he waits. Just then, he hears his name being called.

Xavier turns to his right and sees an old college buddy of his. A college buddy he never really liked. This conversation is going to be painful for sure. Xavier recognizes the buddy�s face: roundish with small eyes and big fuzzy eyebrows to match his thinning fuzzy hair; he just couldn�t for the life of him recall his actual name. And the nickname X-man was only given to him and used by a small group of people he hung out with during his junior year. Okay, that narrowed the pool of names down to eight or nine people that used to call him that. Two of them were Wendy Heinz and Charlotte King and this person walking towards him is a male so they are out. That leaves six to seven people. It is not Charlie Woods or Tim "Money Train" Harrison since they were both giants and this man extending his hand for a high five is short. Xavier gives him the high five as he mentally crosses off two names of his list; four or five names left.

"Holy shit, man. Who'd have thunk it that I'd see you tonight? Damn, bitch, how you doing?" asks the man with a huge smile on his face.

God how Xavier wants to run away fast. "I'm doing good. I just got off work."

"Where you working at that doesn't let you off to party on a Friday night?"

Xavier paused as he got ready for the usual run of questions to come after he told him that he worked at a movie theater. Besides, couldn't he tell that he worked at a movie theater by the vest he was wearing, albeit worn inside out when he left the theater to fit his do-things-differently theme? Then the name popped into his mind: Joe Nettles. God, why hadn't the name popped into his mind sooner? He hated Joe Nettles. Joe Nettles still owed his friends Darren and Julie money that he borrowed from them way back in college. He was and apparently still is a loud and obnoxious guy who thinks nothing but himself and having a good time. The only good thing that came out of knowing Joe Nettles was that he introduced Xavier to Jane Finch at one of his parties. Xavier and Jane started dating soon after that and were together for three years before they broke up. But that was a different story and one too long to go into now because right now the bastard Joe Nettles was standing in front of him talking his ear off about his life right now in the record industry and much of a big shot he is and now many connections he is making. He never even waited for an answer from Xavier about what his job is.

"Yeah, so I'm fucking living in hog's heaven right now, practically rolling in money," he brags more about.

If you have so much money, then how about paying Darren and Julie back you asshole, Xavier thinks to himself. "That's good to hear Joe," he says to get in a word edgewise while stepping away to indicate that he is going home.

"God damn man, X-man. I run into X-man, damn the world is such a small place. I just ran into U-2 only ten minutes ago at a party I was just at." U-2, now there's a nickname Xavier hadn't heard in a long time. U-2 was actually named Ursula Miner and she got the nickname because she listened to U2 all the time and was just about their biggest fan. She was first turned on to the band when she was going through her parents old CDs when she was 16. Ursula also had a bit of a crush on Xavier and would get pissed drunk and corner him and ask him "why don't you like me?"

"No way, how's she doing?" Xavier asks, hoping that maybe Joe will talk about someone else beside himself.

"She's still hot man, I even think her tits got bigger. Damn she's a fine girl, too bad she's fuckin' crazy man or I would hit that ass." Shut up Joe, she thought you were a pig then and I bet she still does now, Xavier thinks to himself, wishing he could be an asshole and say it out loud. "Speaking of crazy bitches, I'm going to this party just now that I was invited to by this really hot chick. You wanna come? I'll hook you up X-man."

"That's okay, I'll pass."

"Come on X-man." Xavier is starting to really hate being called X-man now. "It's only four apartments down," he says while pointing further west down Honeycut. Xavier is about to decline again, when the theme of the day hit him again. But he so didn't want to be around Joe and yet it totally would be doing something different. Plus, he wasn't the party type and going to this party would be practically a 180 for him.

"Ah, okay," he gets out painfully.

"Really? All right, fuck yeah X-man!"

On the way to the apartment, which is only a short walk, Joe goes on more about the ins and outs of the record industry and how he's thinking of making some music of his own because that's his real passion in life. Xavier sees a hardware store on the other side of the street and the thought of using a hammer to smack Joe in the head comes to his mind.

The party is still going strong. The large apartment is packed with people all talking in little groups. Immediately Xavier wants to go since he doesn't know anyone there at all except Joe and he desperately wants to get away from him.

"I'm gonna get us some beer," Joe yells to be heard over the crowd of people to Xavier. Before he can decline the offer Joe disappears to the back of the apartment where the keg is. Xavier decides to get lost in the crowd and takes some stairs down to the basement of the apartment. Down there he sees a sight he has never seen before. People are wearing costumes and playing this game that until now, Xavier had only heard about. The game is Beer Pong and in it, two-person teams are pitted against each other in a game of skill and ability to not be affected by alcohol. Each person on a team, which are dressed in matching costumes, take turns in throwing a ping pong ball into half-filled with beer plastic cups that are placed in a neat formation. They are standing on opposite sides of a Ping-Pong table and the cups of beer are near the edges of the table. The thing is if the opposite team tosses a ball into one of your cups, you or your partner has to drink the beer in the cup. Thus, those that are getting beaten are getting drunker, which helps them to lose more and, thus, drink more and so on and so on. It is the most amazing sight Xavier has seen. He feels as if he has stumbled out of the forest and into the lost city of Atlantis or something along those lines of discovering a myth to be true.

After watching this spectacle for a few minutes, Xavier goes back upstairs to the first floor and sees Joe in the kitchen trying to pick up some attractive woman who is too drunk to notice how sleazy Joe is. Xavier makes his way through the sea of people in a hallway to the back of the apartment and steps out to the back porch and stairs of it. He sees the keg and thinks that the only thing that would make this an even more fabled night would be a keg stand, which Xavier has heard about but has never seen. He decides to get away from all the people on the deck by walking up the stairs to the back porch one story up. He sits down in a chair located on the deck and closes his eyes as he listens to the conversations of the people below him. He finds their lives funny and the problems they discuss to be very small indeed although the same could probably be said of his life. He is so sleepy and the cocktail noise of the party helps to lull him to sleep.

The room she enters is the back bathroom. She walks over to the litter box and notices that it has just been cleaned. How nice of her owner, she thinks to herself. Of course, she can't say it out loud either; after all, she is just a cat. Fromage exits the bathroom and minds the wet footprints on the wooden floors. Her owner never seems to dry off her feet before leaving the bathroom, a habit that annoys Fromage. Fromage makes her way to the kitchen and nibbles on some of her cat food. There are some chicken chunks in the bowl that her owner has put in there and Fromage is very thankful for this. "I guess I will forgive the wet floor for this delightful treat," she thinks to herself. Speaking of her owner, where is she?

Fromage walks to the other side of the apartment and climbs the stairs to the second floor loft and slides in between the door and door frame to enter the bedroom. Her owner is putting on a pair of jeans at the moment. "No sweat pants today? Fromage is surprised but happy that her owner is at least doing something different. She really wishes her owner would get out more. Sure, she loves the company from time to time but even she needs to get outside, just to smell the flowers in the backyard. Her owner never leaves the apartment it seems. People come over to visit her, especially this one lady every Tuesday, but her owner should get out too. Maybe visit the people that visit her. Her owner is now dressed, wearing a pink shirt underneath a long-sleeve white button-up shirt over it. She has the sleeves rolled up just past her elbows and the socks she has chosen are pink too. She is putting her long blond hair up while being held up with a hair clamp. She then walks out of the room and down the stairs and to the kitchen.

Fromage walks in the kitchen and find her owner making an omelet on the stove while also eating a cold piece of pizza she ordered the night before. What an odd mix of healthy and not, Fromage thinks as she rubs her body against the legs of her owner to thank her for the chicken chunks.

"Good morning Cheesy," her owner says to her. Her owner named her Fromage yet calls her Cheesy, just another odd quirk about her. The telephone rings and her owner answers it after one ring while folding over the omelet over on itself. "Hello?" There is a long pause and then a beep comes through the receiver. Fromage watches her owner get annoyed and hang up the phone. "Cheesy, aren't you annoyed by those calls? I sure am. And I've talked to the phone company dozens of times to get that number blocked but I guess they have more important things to do like sit on their asses, huh?" The phone rings again and she answers it right away but this time listens into the receiver without saying anything. A long pause goes by again and the owner then asks annoyingly, "hello?"

"Hello? I think I dialed the wrong number," answers a female voice the owner immediately recognizes.

"Hi Mom, no, you have the right number. It's me."

"Oh, are you upset? Are you taking the news badly?"

"No Mom, I'm fine considering. I thought you were a fax machine."

"Why did you think I was a fax machine?"

"Because a fax machine keeps calling my place and it called just before you did just now and I thought you were the fax machine again."

"Do you have a fax machine?"

"Yes, but it has it's own line."

"Maybe someone is confused and is calling the wrong number."

"Mom, I've been trying to get the phone company to do something about it for months- I don't want to talk about it, it just makes me angry," she is finished with the omelet and slides it onto a plate.

"Have you told Dr. Sheldon that you're angry?"

"Mom, I don't want to talk about my therapy right now."

"Should I call back then?"

"No." She goes over to the fidge and opens it to get some orange juice. "Why? Did you only call just to talk about my therapy?"

"No, but I was wondering about it."

"Well everything is fine, nothing to report on that front," she closes the fridge with the carton of orange juice in hand.

"If everything was fine then you would go outside."

"Mom," she slams the carton on the counter; now she is getting annoyed at her mom.

"Okay, well I just wanted to make sure you hadn't changed your mind in coming to the viewing."

"Of course not mother, I have to see him one last time, for closure's sake."

"Good. Are you sure you don't want us to come and pick you up?"

"Yes Mom, I'm sure." She opens a cabinet door above the counter and selects a tall glass. "You and Dad have to be there way earlier than I have to and I don't want to be there that long."

"It wouldn't be that long."

"Mom, please. I'll call a cab and everything will be fine. I'll have to take a couple of pills but I'll be fine."

There is a slight pause as the mother thinks over whether or not to insist and picking up her daughter. "Okay. Then we will see you at 10am."

"Yep, I will see you at 10am."

"Okay, we'll see you later Penny, I love you."

"I love you too Mom, good-bye."

"Good-bye."

Penny hangs up the phone and gets a fork out of the drawer and puts it on the plate. She goes back to the fridge and takes a bottle of ketchup out. She puts the bottle under her armpit to hold while pick up the plate with the same arm and holding the glass of orange juice with the other. She walks to the living room and puts the glass down on an upright piano near a back door and unlocks the back door. She opens it and grabs the glass again and opens the screen door to walk out onto the back deck. Penny then puts the plate, glass, and bottle of ketchup on a table while the fork slides off the plate and falls on the wood of the deck. The noise of the crashing fork wakes up her sleeping guest.

"Opps," she says as she notices that her guest has awoken. "Breakfast is ready, I just need to get you a clean fork," she says as she picks the fallen fork off the wood. She opens the screen door and walks back inside her apartment as her guest is wondering if he is still in dreamland.

"What is going on? Xavier asks.

"Breakfast," Penny answers matter of factly.

"I see that, but for me?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Why not?"

"Cause I'm some stranger on your deck."

"What's your name?"

"Xavier."

"Xavier what?"

"Xavier Peterssen."

"I'm Penny Frost. There, we're not strangers any more, now eat it before it gets cold."

"Just because we now know each other's names doesn't mean that we're still not strangers."

"Look, do you want me to tell you to get off my deck, cause I can do that. Can't I be nice to whom ever I want on my deck?"

"Yes you can."

"Good. Then stop letting yourself get in the way of my good mood and eat your damn breakfast."

"Fine, just know that you're letting me have the use of a fork, a potentially dangerous weapon."

"Not all strangers are dangerous just like not all friends are harmless."

"Wise words in the morning, do I get a fortune cookie too?"

"Are you always this antagonistic to people?"

"No, actually I'm quite nice."

"You could have fooled me."

"Apparently I have."

"I can tell you�re a good person though."

"How can you do that?"

"I just can."

"From appearances?"

"Sure."

"Don't judge a book by its cover."

"I don't, I judge a book by its jacket."

"Now you're the one being antagonistic."

"You brought it out in me."

"Don't pin your actions on my behavior."

"Your vest is on backwards."

"I know, I put it that way."

"Why would you do that?"

"Cause I felt like it, on a whim. I felt like doing things differently and so I did. The vest was just one of the many different things I did yesterday."

"Does that include sleeping on someone's deck?"

"Maybe. Haven't you ever done something on a whim?"

"Of course."

"Like what?"

"Like bringing a man I found sleeping on my deck breakfast."

"So you don't do this all the time?"

"I don't know, you�re the first person I've found sleeping on my deck. Perhaps if this happens more times I would do the same thing, but I don't think so."

"Especially if they're all like me."

"Especially if they're all like you. I feel as though we're in a Bogart-Bacall movie."

"Key Largo or The Big Sleep?"

"Neither, To Have or Not Have."

"You know your movies."

"As do you."

"I should, I work at a movie theater."

"That doesn't mean you should know movies."

"Sure it does, how could you work at a movie theater and not learn something about movies?"

"Many people do jobs where they refuse to learn anything new at."

"Are you speaking from personal experience?"

"No from personal observations."

"So does that mean you know your job very well?"

"You're assuming I have a job."

"You don't have a job?"

"Yes I have a job."

"Then why did you just imply you didn't?

"I didn't want to interrupt the nice game we're having of being antagonistic."

"Yeah, why would we want to do that?"

"Eat your breakfast, it's getting cold."

"Maybe I like it cold."

"Who on Earth likes a cold omelet? And yes I realize the irony with me holding a cold pizza."

"I didn't notice the cold pizza until just know."

"Well�then good for me." Penny takes a bite of her cold pizza and Xavier eats some of his medium warm omelet and then drinks some of his orange juice. There is a long pause while they look at each other and try to process the conversation they just had. Xavier takes a big sigh.

"And with that sigh goes my negative energy."

"Now your omelet is covered in negative energy," Penny jokes.

"Let me start over. I'm Xavier Peterssen," he says in a nice tone while extending his hand to her.

"Foul, you stopped being the person I know you as."

"The person you just saw doesn't exist."

"Of course he does, he came out of you, he must live in you."

"But that's not me."

"That's disappointing."

"I usually am."

"You done with your breakfast?"

"No."

"Well, when you are done bring the plate and glass inside," she orders while getting up and walking back inside her apartment. Xavier stares off at the screen door and it slowly closes on the spring system it is hooked up too. He then looks down at Fromage and pets her.

"That was odd," Xavier says to her. The image of the pot calling the kettle black comes to Fromage's mind.

He looks at the empty plate and glass on the table and considers just leaving. Letting Penny discover on her own that he is gone and will have to get the dishware herself. But he figures that he should be a little bit nice considering the odd conversation he had with her only ten minutes before. He picks up the plate with the fork on it and the glass and walks over to the screen door and opens it. He hesitates for a second before entering her apartment. She told him to bring them in, but he just met her. This certainly was on odd day. Glancing at his watch he notices the time, which is around 6:30am. The twenty-four hours of his day of different things was not over technically. He will just add walking into some strange woman's house to the list of things he has done differently.

Her living room is a nice one in Xavier's opinion. It has bookshelves all along the walls, filled with books, games, pictures, and knick nacks. There are three couches in it, two full-size ones back to back and a love seat perpendicular to one of them. The love seat and one of the couches border a large wooden coffee table with magazines and a jig saw puzzle in it that is only just started. The cover of the jig saw box shows that it's one of those really hard puzzles with all the pieces the same color of blue and when assembled all that is to show for it is a very large blue square. The other couch, with its back along the other's back, is facing a very large flat and wide screen TV. Xavier notices that the speaker system is hooked up in a classic 4.5 speaker layout for ample movie watching enjoyment. The opposite side of the room has a desk piled high with papers. The ceiling is slanted up to the second floor loft and a ceiling fan hangs down and circulates the air in that room. The furniture sits upon two large Persian rugs, which lie over a deep brown hard wood floor. He walks over to the coffee table and puts down the glass and picks up a puzzle piece and tries to put it along one of the border pieces which has already been put together into a square. On his six attempt the puzzle piece fits. What luck he has. He picks up the glass again and stands up and looks at the puzzle and the room one more time.

He walks down the hall and looks at the pictures on the wall. There are pictures of Fromage, pictures of her parents, pictures of her brother Tom, and pictures of various friends are in frames arranged in no pattern whatsoever. Xavier walks on past the stairs and short hallway to the bathroom to the front of the apartment. He walks into the kitchen and places the plate, fork, and glass into the sink and out of feeling like a slob, decides "Turn off the water. Do it."

"You got a problem with me being nice, after I started off being an asshole?"

"I've got something to show you."

"What?"

"Turn off the water and come here."

"Fine." He turns off the water and wipes his hands off on a rap sticking out of a drawer. He walks over to her and stands in front of her. He notices that they are exactly the same height. "What did you want to show me?"

"Follow me." Penny leads him up the stairs, which are also decorated with pictures in frames hung all over.

"You know most people arrange pictures in patterns of some sort."

"I'm not most people."

"I'm beginning to figure that out." She leads him into her room. "Wait a minute."

"What?"

"What are you doing?"

"I'm showing you something."

"In your bedroom?"

"No, it's in the bathroom."

"The bathroom is downstairs."

"There's a bathroom up here too."

"Oh." She leads him into the bathroom and pulls back the shower curtain to expose the tub.

"Look at the tub."

"I see it."

"Notice anything?"

He looks at the tub. It looks like a normal tub. There's two dials to control the water temperature, a tub faucet and a knob to make the water come out of the showerhead at the top of the wall in the shower. There's also a mat at the bottom of the tub to prevent a person from slipping in the tub. "The mat has a wrinkle in it."

"Yes it does but that's not it."

"Well it looks like a normal shower and tub."

"It is a normal shower and tub."

"Is that it, you wanted to show me a normal shower and tub?"

"No, that's not it."

"Are you gonna give me a hint?"

"What is the purpose of a shower?"

"To get a person clean."

"Using what?"

"Soap. Shampoo. Conditioner. Water."

"Water exactly. Now look at the shower again."

He looks at the shower again and then notices what she driving at. "It's dry."

"Bingo."

"So?"

"Don't you think it's odd?

"Maybe you didn't take a shower."

Penny grabs Xavier's hand and puts it to her semi-damp hair. "Feel that?"

"It's a little wet."

"And the shower's dry."

"It's a fast drying shower," he states in mock enthusiasm.

"Don't think so."

"Maybe you dried it off."

"Why would I do that?"

"I don�t know, to mess with my head, because you want me to think that you're not normal?"

"I don't have to try to demonstrate that I'm not normal, it just happens on it's own."

"So I've noticed."

"I didn't dry the shower."

"You used the sink."

"No."

Xavier goes over and touches the towels. One of them is partially wet. "The towel is wet."

"So it is."

"So you did dry off this shower."

"No, the only thing that towel dried off was me."

"So then you used a different shower."

"Exactly." She sounds so happy that he finally got to that fact.

"So you showed me this dry shower to tell me you used the downstairs one."

"I did."

"And you would do that because�?"

"Why would I use the downstairs shower when I have a shower up here?"

"Don't ask me, you're the one who did it."

"Don't you find that odd?"

"Yes I do. But we already established that."

"Isn't it clear?"

"Obviously not."

"Come on, think about it a little harder. You like puzzles, this is a puzzle."

"How do you know I like puzzles?"

"Because I saw you put in a piece of my jig saw puzzle."

"That's does necessarily mean I like puzzles. It could mean I like to mess with people's personal things."

"It could, but not in this case."

"You think you know me so well, don't you?"

"I have a gut feeling that I do. Mr. Watson, I've shown you a shower that is dry, yet the towel is wet. With the possibility of the towel being used to dry the shower crossed off, the other conclusion is that the downstairs bathroom was used."

"This has already been established Mr. Holmes."

"Indeed. Then the question is why would the downstairs shower be used when the upstairs one is in perfect working condition and the more convenient of the two?"

"Maybe the answer is that there is no logical answer. Maybe the lady just decided to use the downstairs one because she could."

"Exactly," she says with her eyes opening widely and dropping character. "I did it on a whim."

"Ahhhhh," Xavier drawls out, realization washing over his mind. "You shower downstairs on a whim, decide to do things differently today and you find a man on your deck who said he was doing the same thing."

"Bingo."

"Oh God, don't tell me you believe in fate, that somehow we are kindred spirits of some sort."

"I don't let the daily horoscope run my life if that's what you're thinking, but yes, something has to be at play here. What are the odds?

"It's all bullshit. Its just amazing coincidence."

"Why are you getting so defensive?"

"Why don't you tell me, since you said you know me so well. Go ahead, what am I thinking right now? Come one, what is your gut telling you right now?"

"You're right, I am disappointed in you."

"Why, cause I'm a little on guard? So I decided to do things differently one day? It's only for one day. Having this vest on inside out is bugging the crap out of me as we speak. This day of different things has been harder than I thought. And when I go back home I'll go back to being my boring self and get back into the routine of life. I was afraid that I would be made fun of but I find out that it's actually worse. Instead I get an attractive woman to show me a dry shower and then tell me that I'm completely boring her and a disappointment. Do you have any idea how much that hurts?"

"I'm sorry."

"Some host you are to treat a guest like this."

"I said I'm sorry, you don't have to try to hurt me because I wounded you. I have feelings too, the same as you."

"I'm going to go now."

"Okay."

"Should I go out the way I came in or can I go out the front door?"

"Exit the way you want."

"I'll go out the front door."

"Fine. Let me show you out then." She follows him down the stairs to the front door and opens it for him. "Out."

"Wait."

"For what? To be insulted again?"

"Look, I'm sorry I snapped at you."

"The tone of your voice doesn't say so."

"Well I- I tend to get defensive early. So that I can push people away before they can."

"Yeah, I'd say it's a character flaw." The words land, the blow is felt, and the echoes of it bounce back to inform Penny of the destruction it made. Regret pours forth and fills the craters. She bows her head and lets it rest on the door edge, closing her eyes, and breathing in. "Now I'm sorry. I just thought�" She tilts her head to look at Xavier and opens her eyes, meeting his. "�I thought it was a cute coincidence, that's all. I don't meet new people that often and when I do I tend to latch on too early. It's my character flaw."

"It's okay," he finally lets out after a pause. "Two character flawed people standing at an open doorway, each apologetic." He shifts his weight and leans against the wall next to the doorway and looks down at the floor. "You're right though. It is odd, the odds and all." He decides to look Penny in the eyes. "You can even- I can even feel it in my gut; this knowledge of you. A connection."

Penny understands that it was hard to Xavier to get that last sentence and incomplete phrase out. She smiles as he looks away. There are so many thoughts in head right now that's it hard to focus on one. Patience is the only one she focuses on. With that she manages to irk out a "Yeah."

A moment forms in this pause and even the walls, inanimate as they are and devoid of eyes and brains, can see and understand the attraction Penny and Xavier have for each other. "What else you going to do differently today?" he asks to let their minds focus on other things.

"I'm going outside."

"You're going outside?"

"Yes."

"That's something different?"

"Yes. For my brother's funeral."

"Oh, I'm sorry."

"Why? Did you kill him? Sorry, I've always wanted to say that. I'm sorry your day of doing things differently ended on such a bad note."

"Technically it's not over since it started after noon when I woke up."

"Do you want to come to a funeral? It would be something different."

There were a thousand reasons why he shouldn't. "Um, sure."

"Really?"

"Yeah, I feel guilty for snapping at you."

"Good." She smiles that smile she does that drives men crazy.

"When is it?"

"I have to be there at ten, about three hours from now."

"I'll be back here at nine fifteen, I need to go home and change."

"Yeah, you look like shit."

"Don't push it. I'll see you later."

"Okay."

Xavier walks down the stairs and hears Penny's door close behind him. He pushes open the two doors at the front entrance of the apartment and walks outside. The blue haze over the city is gone and replaced with the golden shine off the buildings. If Xavier wanted to truly be different, he would go home and stand up Penny and not show. But the sun shines on a new day and he decides that it�s the death knoll for his day of differences. And he signifies it, puts the stamp on it, sort of speak, by taking off his vest and putting it back on the normal way.