Plotting a Quest

This is the second installment- it begins with Man Voice and the Water Heater .

Alright, thought Lia, I have some problems. I’m in love with Man Voice, but I don’t know his name. Or what he looks like. Oh, and I have a boyfriend.

Nevertheless, Lia decided that she should know her mysterious Knight in Shining Armor. Man Voice had saved her from the cold, that demon of all demons! She was the beautiful damsel in distress, her long brown hair flowing in the same sharp, freezing wind that brought tears to her dazzling green-blue-hazel eyes. And blew her pointy cone-shaped princess hat off her head. Horrid freezing wind.

“Janet, he saved us all from death!” Lia exclaimed at her roommate the next day while the girls were both home in the mid afternoon. They were sitting in the living room on the matching tan couches, feet and books propped on the coffee table in the middle. “Really, I almost died from just one shower.”

Janet absently mumbled something along the lines of, “It makes me cold just thinking about it,” as she shifted the heavy book on her lap. Spanish textbooks were both expensive and uncomfortable. 

“Or at the very least from being ostracized from society. It would have turned into a very bizarre game of chicken. It would have been me against the people sitting around me in class. How long could I have gone without taking another shower before they had moved seats, or switched partners?”

“Or Ally would have moved into my room?” Janet pushed her auburn hair behind her ear and glared at her book. Spanish books were also very confusing.

“That wonderful miracle worker probably just saved my grade in my Humanities class,” Lia went on.

“Which one?”

“I’m only taking one this semester. But my group might have refused to let me work with them anymore.”

“You don’t like group work anyway.” 

“But that group work is my final.”

“That does make a difference.”

There was silence for a few minutes as Janet puzzled over her Spanish, and Lia worked on her French. The cute purple clock on the wall ticked loudly as the weak sunshine came in the window, lighting up Janet’s stack of marketing and mathematics textbooks. Janet  was trying to get into the Marketing major on campus. With Ally studying physics, and Rachel in accounting, Lia was the odd one out in her English and Humanities classes. She had the most textbooks, however, so she felt that helped her to look the smartest of them all.

“But how to go about it?”

“I think that it has to do with the past participle being close to the direct object,” said Janet.

“No, not your Spanish grammar. Finding him. You didn’t see who he was last night?” Lia asked.

Janet sighed and closed her big brown eyes. “I already told you. I got picked up first, and I wasn’t by any kind of magical man at the pumpkin carving tables or at the donut stand or anything else.”

More silence.

“It’s like a reverse Cinderella,” Lia said as she puzzled. “The man is missing, and the lady wants to find him. But he didn’t leave his shoe or anything. And I didn’t see his face.”

“You could just go door to door and talk to all the guys. See if you recognize his voice.”

“What if I don’t recognize it, though?”

Janet paused and gave Lia a significant look. “If you were the prince in Cinderella, she wouldn’t have been found.”

“Well, it’s not like I can rip out the water heater and carry that from door to door, asking all the guys, ‘Do you recognize this water heater?’ I mean, really. What if one of them just said yes because it looks like the one in his apartment?”

“Maybe you should ask for a demonstration. Cinderella had to prove the shoe fit.”

“You’re right. I should ask them to fix it.”

“Especially since you’d ripped it out and left us with no hot water again.”

Lia winced. No more cold water. “Maybe I could take just the pilot light with me?”

“Do you even know what that is?”

“Nope. But HE does.”

The girls looked at each other. 

“We have really strange conversations,” said Janet. “Most of them are started by you.”

“I have been a rather good influence in your life, haven’t I?” Lia grinned at her.

“Why don’t you just ask Ally? She went to the party with him.” Rachel had finally looked up from her accounting homework and taken part of the conversation. The others hadn’t even noticed the petite (and very quiet) brunette there in the corner.

“Rachel, you are a genius. Really.”

Lia and Janet laughed.

Next Installment: Basses, Mafia, and Gray Eyes