"Hey, Gar," she said cheerfully. "Getting in kinda late. Out all night chasing skirts?"
Then she laughed at her own humor. She laughed the hearty laugh of one who always sees the fun side of life. It was the unencumbered of laugh of someone who could not possibly believe that such an outrageous accusation could be true.
Garner always found comfort in her naiveté. For him the world was so complex, so burdensome, so difficult. For her it was simple. Life came easy to Rose and she found joy in life's simplicity. She was completely without guile and thus largely invulnerable to Garner's darker side. The con normally uses your own duplicity against you. But if you are completely without deception, it is difficult for the con to get a grip. Garner often wondered how she managed to get through life without guile and finally concluded that she must have some sort of guardian angel looking out for her. He saw her as the Teflon spirit. No matter how messy or dangerous a situation she walked into she would always walk out unscathed. While Garner had contempt for most people's naiveté, he had learned to respect Rose's, although he wasn't quite sure why.
He considered her for a moment as though sizing her up once again. She was wearing a John Deere baseball hat with the visor pointing in a strange angle backwards and to the left. Her light brown hair was tucked behind her ears and hung straight to drape loosely over her shoulders. She had cut the sleeves off of her T-shirt making it sleeveless although the jagged edges showed clearly that it had been done without precision. He marveled at how good she looked in her tattered outfit, while he required an expensive suit with a pressed shirt and shined shoes to pull off his image. She smiled up at him awaiting his answer.
"Naw," he said, playing along. "I've just had a lot on my mind lately and needed to walk around a bit and sort things out. Why are you up so late? Waiting for your other boyfriend to call?"
She laughed again, enjoying the repartee. The sound of her laugh made him feel good. He even chuckled a bit himself. Suddenly, the world didn't seem so dark. Her laugh felt good on his tired emotions like the cool air felt good on his hot skin. He tingled and felt a little better.
"No," she said smiling, still enjoying his response. "I've got a project due for Professor Wentworth's class. It isn't actually due for two weeks but when you are doing software development you can't leave things till the last moment or you might hit a snag that you can't get past."
Garner smiled. He knew she would go on to explain some technical thing that was completely incomprehensible to him. And she did.
"For example," she said casually, as though she was going to tell him what the weather had been like that day. "Last week I was trying to get an active server page to access a database on Wentworth's server. But he hadn't set up the ODBC name. I worked on it for two days and finally gave up. Then I went to his office for help but he was away for a few days. I finally got in touch with him yesterday and he fixed the problem, but almost a whole week had gone by. If had waited till the last minute to do this project, I would have been in deep trouble."
Garner nodded. He considered himself one of the most technologically illiterate people on the planet and had no idea what she was talking about. Sometimes he wanted to ask her to explain what she was working on so that he could understand it, but he knew that he would just get confused and feel silly. He knew how to work people but machines of any kind were a complete mystery to him. The thought of how technology was dominating the world made him feel even more alienated. His good mood was evaporating and he was beginning to feel glum again.
"I was just getting ready to take a break and have some lemonade," said Rose. "Would you like some."
Again the cool breeze of her smile soothed his ragged emotions. "Yeah, Rose," he replied. "That sounds great."