Truly, Madly, Like Me - Jo Watson Page 0,28
got to be something, right?”
He pointed behind me and I swiveled round.
“You can try hiking up that mountain, if you like. You might get signal there. Might not.”
I squinted off into the distance. The mountains were so far away that they looked like smudges on the horizon.
I turned back to him. “But say I didn’t want to hike across the Karoo and then up a mountain.” My tone was very conspiratorial now and I narrowed my eyes for added mystery. “Say I just wanted to check my Instagram quickly, what would I do?”
“I wouldn’t know, I don’t have Instagram.”
“You don’t?”
He shook his head.
“But you have Facebook, right? Everyone has Facebook. Even my mother has Facebook. God, she even has a Tinder account—that’s how she met Dan the dentist.”
But the man in front of me shook his head. “No Facebook.”
“Impossible,” I said. “Let me see your phone.”
He looked at me incredulously and then walked over to the counter. He picked up a landline and held it out to me.
I rolled my eyes at him. “Your cell phone.”
“Don’t have one.”
“You don’t?”
“Can’t use it here, so why would I have one?”
“For the games, maybe. For reading on. Counting your steps. Tracking your mood. Your heart rate. Taking photos. Listening to music. Counting your calories . . . I mean . . . everything!”
He smiled slowly at me. This time he looked amused and I wasn’t sure how to take it. “I usually read this thing called a book. Listen to music on a CD player. I’ve got a camera for taking photos and I don’t count calories. Don’t need to. Fast metabolism.”
“But what if there was an emergency?” I asked, feeling flustered now, thinking about all the things I couldn’t do.
“Like what?” he asked.
“Well, I could have hurt my leg when I slipped here—you should really have a sign up saying that the floor is wet, by the way.”
At that, the man pointed behind me to the doorway. I turned and that’s when I noticed the sign I’d jumped over.
Slippery When Wet.
“Oh,” I said, nodding and feeling very sheepish now.
“Carry on, though,” he said, a clear smile in his voice. “You slipped and hurt your leg?”
“Yes! And then what would I do? I can’t go online and Google what to do.”
“Why would I do that when I could just phone the doctor? He lives a road away.”
“But . . .” I stopped talking and thought about it. “Okay, but maybe I didn’t hurt my leg. Maybe I choked on something.”
He looked around the place, his smile growing. “What would you choke on?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Something! I could choke on something and maybe the doctor is not available and you have to do an emergency tracheotomy and you would need to consult the internet for that!”
I heard a small chuckle escape his lips now. His glasses slipped down his nose as he did and I didn’t know whether I hated him for chuckling, or whether I liked him.
“Everyone who lives in this town manages just fine without the internet.”
“Well, I am not managing.” I heard myself spit the words out—they were louder than I had intended. His smile fell. “I am not managing, okay? So, please, if there is some kind of secret underground internet here, will you please just tell me?” I could hear the high-pitched desperation in my voice.
He shook his head now, a strange look on his face that told me nothing of what he might be thinking. “I’m sorry, there is no internet here. No cell-phone reception. Nothing.”
I sighed and looked away from him. I felt a tightening in my chest again, and I didn’t want him to see.
“So, if someone like me were stuck here for twenty-four hours or so, what would I do to pass the time?”
The guy looked confused for a moment but then pointed around the shop. “Well, you could hire some movies, for starters.”
“I thought you couldn’t watch TV here?” I said.
“You can’t tune it in and get any channels, but you can use it to watch movies on.”
I nodded at this. “What else?” I asked.
“You could buy some CDs, listen to music.” He pointed to the other side of the store, and I could see it was dedicated to music.
“What would I watch the movies on? It’s not like I can slip a DVD into my phone or iPad.”
“You could try a television set—you know those, don’t you? They are sort of like books in that you look at them too.”
“Ha, ha.