they had delivered. Some people were real addicts, buying stuff off the Internet and letting it pile up in the hallway. Some were just lazy. Ken, he’d rather go to the store to buy something, hold it in his hand and feel the weight of it, than click a button and sit on his ass waiting for someone like him to bring it to his doorstep.
He slid onto his stool at the bar, signaled the bartender to bring him a drink. It was some guy with bleached-blond hair, worn too long. His son wore his hair the same way, or at least he did the last time Ken saw him, which was . . . when? Last Christmas? Beth said it was his fault that Brian didn’t come visit more often, but what was he supposed to do? Pretend that the life Brian was leading was just hunky-dory?
Thank God he had his little daughter. Though she wasn’t so little anymore. Erin would be in college next year, which scared the daylights out of him. All grown up. No more Daddy’s little girl. Just the other day, she came home and he swore he could smell rum on her, not that she’d admit it. Beth told him to leave her alone when he’d asked her about it, but how could he leave the girl alone, knowing how her brother turned out?
He took a long pull from his draft, made a face. The long-haired guy didn’t pour them as nice as Cait. Didn’t offer him a shooter, either, like she would have. He looked around for her, hoping to see her come out of the stockroom. She usually worked on Thursdays.
Sweet girl, Cait, or at least he’d thought so until he’d seen her standing in that parking lot. Since then, he’d learned a lot about his favorite bartender. Cast things in a whole new light, as they say.
He pulled out his phone and started scrolling through his notifications. It was strange to think he’d lived half his life without the Internet, had only owned one of these smartphones for—what? Five, six years? Now it was like another limb or something. He knew it wasn’t good for him to spend so much time on it. Beth told him so all the time, though she didn’t have a right to talk considering how much time she spent on Facebook. That he didn’t get. Didn’t looking at someone else’s vacation photos used to be shorthand for “boring as hell”? He could still remember his parents setting up the projector so they could show off their photos of the Grand Canyon. He was sure nobody had fun looking at those, though maybe that was because his mother once threw the carousel wheel at his father’s head during the middle of a viewing.
It had its uses, though, Facebook. It was good for organizing and recruitment. And of course he had his Saturday gang.
But 4chan. Finding that was a revelation. All the thoughts that swelled in his head throughout the day, that he had no one to share with when he was driving the truck: now he could just pull over, put it out there on a forum, and by the time he looked at his phone again, he’d have half a dozen replies. These people—not all of them, but most—were smart, too. They understood his point of view. Some of them had even given him an education, which wasn’t something he’d been expecting.
All these years of talking, he’d never been sure if anyone was listening. Beth probably heard one out of every ten words that came out of his mouth. His kids sure as hell didn’t listen to him, even his Erin. Most of the time, he wasn’t sure Nick was listening to him, and even if he was, he didn’t have much to contribute. Ken wasn’t raggin’ on the guy, it was the truth. He loved him like a brother, but he wasn’t much of a conversationalist.
Online, though, people listened to him. Not only that, they wanted to listen to him. Even asked his opinions sometimes. He was respected there, like some kind of tribal elder. Finally, he felt like his words had meaning. They had weight.
He looked around the room at the young college kids pounding craft ale that tasted like mulch and cost the earth. They probably thought he was just some sad old guy sitting at the bar on his own like a loser. They didn’t have a clue what he was capable