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There’s a deep satisfaction to lining up all the notecards, timing against the machine’s rollers so that later, his scissors will slice right through the lamination with minimal excess plastic.
It’s better than wrapping paper, getting a clean, yard-long shot. That is, if Damian doesn’t confiscate the scissors and insult his fine motor skills. Hopefully, he can convince the kid to do the close trimming while Wally takes care of the broad stroke cuts.
That’s a nice child—boyfriend-of-your-legal-guardian bonding activity, right?
He slots the next set of eight flashcards into the laminator, the stacked rollers sucking them in to be waterproofed. Equal spacing is a must if he’s going to get Damian to do anything other than scoff at him. Already, several yards of laminated cards pile up at his feet. It’s not enough for Dick to scour Quizlets for Steph’s intro chem class, the only one in which she has a B. No, his guy’s an overachiever. He’s got fifty plus questions put together—multiple choice, short answer, matching—for all five of Steph’s classes.
Wally thought he’d left mole conversions behind him. Not so.
As he releases the last card of this round, he can’t help but glance over his shoulder. Back home, he always feels eyes barbing the back of his neck. It’ll be his luck that his Sunday school teacher is picking up stickers and just happens to wander toward the small workspace adjacent to the bathrooms.
The Mardel in Blue Valley is the only place Wally can think of that has a laminator. Well, here or breaking into a teacher workroom at any suburban elementary school.
He’s got one earbud in, not the Cyberman-looking WEbud that his lab tech Rosa keeps trying to sell him on. He’s on a three year no augmentation chip-mind control streak and he’d like to keep it that way, please and thank you.
There’s a packet of trail mix, the breakfast kind with cereal and dried bananas, in his back pocket. Dick stuck it in there before he left for work this morning and he should eat it before his partner’s eyebrows draw together in concern at finding it unopened.
He scans the near-empty store. A third of the space is dedicated to Bibles, devotionals, and other Christian publications. On his way in, he spotted the old blue boy’s Bible he carried when he lived with his parents. A minor haunting.
The rest of the store is teacher supplies. Bulletin board borders, themed with outer space, llamas, Fourth of July, off-brand capes, world travel, detectives, and mathematical symbols. Winter holiday celebration streamers, candies for standardized testing, clearance first day of school pencils. There’s a display of wooden yard sticks and an end cap that’s just erasers.
He remembers being dragged through the aisles, his mom’s friend Deena restocking for her classroom. Her daughter Lily, two years younger than Wally, used to race ahead, trying to convince her mom to get new marbles for the reward jar. She got married last year, he wasn’t invited. Her wedding clogged his Facebook feed for a week. His parents attended. They’ve gotten old.
He unfollowed her, unable to risk seeing their graying hair and crow’s feet wrinkles. If he sees them, time sucking their cheeks hollow, he’ll call them and if he calls him, he’ll arrange a lunch and if he arranges a lunch, he’ll sit for two hours, listening to them pick apart every piece of his life that wasn’t in their plan for him.
And there’s a lot in his life that wasn’t in their plan for him.
He slots the next series of cards into place. He’s just started on Steph’s Java class. Each card has a symbol or letter or combination of the two and the backside has the function.
It seems unlikely that memorizing the tags will do much for the game levels she needs to build, but Dick was excited and not manic and Wally tries to encourage that kind of thing.
He wonders if Steph will be at dinner tonight. He thinks her mom was off the last two days, so probably she has work today and tomorrow.
It makes him smile, thinking about Steph foregoing whatever four course meal Alfred disguises as ‘a simple dinner’ by serving it all at once for a frozen Aldi’s off-brand bag of General Tso’s chicken.
He remembers his first few dinners after moving in with Barry and Iris. He remembers dishing up a speedster-size helping of lasagna for Bart the first time. (Briefly, the base of his neck tingles, a caress of Speed.)
In his family, food has always been a symbol of love. His dad’s Sunday morning pancakes, his mom’s forgotten cookies. Barry’s charred burnt ends, Iris’ seven layer dip.
He remembers, back when Dick was Rob, feeling a packet of sour Skittles thud against his chest during a mission briefing and losing all focus to the stuttering of his heart.
Last weekend, he braved Robinson Park to get Steph a footlong hot dog and all the toppings from a food cart that can only be located through Reddit posts.
He hopes she understood what he meant when he dropped it off. She crammed it down immediately, taking up the precious Pomodoro five to tell him about an MRI study she participated in for fifty bucks.
They were scanning her limbic system mostly, she told him. Trying to understand emotional decision making through about a hundred near identical two alternative forced choices.
Her psychology professor is the one running it, but it was a grad student she’s never met who took her information and made sure she didn’t get brained by a forgotten earring.
He looks like Wally, she said. Except with charcoal glasses. She informed him that he couldn’t pull off a Clark Kent disguise. Patted his arm sympathetically, fingers half wiped clean by a crumpled napkin.
An employee in a red vest comes by to check on Wally. Her hair is frizzy blonde curls and her pimples are scabbed from being picked at and that words that come out of her mouth are jarring for their lack of Narrows drawl. She says he’s been back here so long she was worried the machine broke. She spots his stack of notecards and her eyes flash in sympathy before wandering off.
He watches her go and wonders for whom she would stop at Trader Joe’s ten minutes before closing to pick up the dark chocolate powerberries. Who would wake up at five in the morning to get the best honey sticks at the farmer’s market for her.
He loads another set of flashcards into the machine, fiddling with the pile of already laminated paper so that it takes up less space. It flops back into its original position immediately. He doesn’t kick it in mock frustration.
The lights here are too bright and it doesn’t help that he can sense every fluctuation of particle to wave in every photon that bounces against the displays of bookmarks and number lines.
There are customers, but he feels the kind of alone usually reserved for airports and DMVs. Everyone’s got their own life to sort out. No one will be here for longer than they have to, lest their soul become trapped.
He pulls out the breakfast trail mix and wrinkles his noise at the plasticy crinkle as he opens it. No one looks over. The Christian pop covers the intrusive sound. And here he’d thought he’d never hear a Chris Tomlin song again after he left Blue Valley.
Of course, he’s the one who came back.
Picking around the cranberries, he grabs a handful of walnuts and almonds before brushing his hands on his jeans. At the checkout, a teacher with her Snoopy lanyard still around her neck laughs loudly. The teenage cashier gives half a smile, her eyes flicking to the clock.
There’s an older man sitting heavily on his walker, scanning mystery novels aimed for youth group attendees. He’s on the phone with his daughter and asks if Joey will like the first of a series he holds in his hand.
Wally loads another set of flashcards. He’ll ask Damian to help cut them up after dinner and he’ll mean to ask if his homework is done, but Dick will actually remember.
If Steph’s around, she’ll groan at the reminder of her upcoming exams and Damian will suggest he join patrol to help quiz her.
He munches on another handful of trail mix and makes a face when the white chocolate covered raisin turns out to be a yogurt covered cranberry. He thinks Steph would like this mix, but forget it in the bottom of her backpack for months. He thinks Damian would hate it, but eat it out of spite.
Eventually, he slots the last few flashcards through the laminator and shoves the empty wrapper in his pocket. As he’s pulling out his wallet to pay, his stomach rumbles. He’s looking forward to dinner.