Dru’s Diner Chapter Two

Chapter Two – Doc’d and Dumped

The slender blonde girl sitting across the Taco Bell table from Stan Poplin, took her eyes off his eyes and looked instead at his mouth. Stan realized that she was watching him bite his lower lip, a nervous tic with which he had been afflicted since he was about 10 years old. Now at seventeen he usually managed to suppress the habit but this was a fairly stressful occasion.

“So you’re kicking me to the curb, just like that?”, he said in a controlled tone that did not convey the numbness he felt, although his lip biting probably more than gave it away.

“Shit Stan, I’m not kicking you to the curb, I’m just explaining why we are wasting our time trying to be anything more than good friends” Renee Morton replied, her eyes darting around the unusually crowded fast food joint before continuing.

“Sweetie, we tried a relationship. It wasn’t there.. but hey,…” she smiled, playfully kicked him under the table and winked, “we had some pretty hot fun, if you get what I mean…that was cool huh?”

Stan wasn’t feeling playful. “What the hell brought this on? Two days ago everything was fine. I mean two days ago you seemed pretty damned happy with what we were doing.”

“Dude that was just sex, yeah it was ok but sex isn’t the problem.”

Renee was a tall, shapely young woman of seventeen with a slender Nordic face, shamrock green eyes, a wavy short cropped blonde perm and a devilish smile filled with unnaturally white teeth. She had dated Stan since the first week, almost 11 months ago, that he arrived at Catawba Prep . His lanky, slightly muscular frame, deep black hair that reflected his dual Dutch and Cajun ancestry, extreme shy manner and general oddness caught her eye. The first time she asked someone, Melaine Hargett, about the new guy, Melaine told her that everyone thought he might be autistic. “you know, one of those asparagus kids”, hopefully referring to aspergers syndrome. Melaine Hargett wasn’t exactly a Merit Scholar Finalist. When Renee approached him outside the ROTC drill area on the second day of class she got uncomfortably close before speaking to see if he had personal space issues.

She stood on her toes and whispered into his ear, “They tell me that you might be autistic. Are you?”

He didn’t back up, or even look down at her and replied in his muted deep voice, “Oh God you smell really good. It’s a pity that you’re a rude, clueless asshole.”

It was a strange start to what seemed to be a very intense relationship. For 11 months they escalated from coffee, to dinners, to movies, to hiking the nearby Uwharrie Mountain trails, to concerts in Charlotte, to two weekends trips to the beach, to hanging out with each other’s families and then to sex. The sex part was remarkably late in the relationship. There were occasional minor tiffs which never lasted more than a day. For Stan this was only his second and by far the most intense relationship of his young life. It seemed destined to at least last until graduation and maybe beyond. 10 minutes ago that all changed.

“It took you a year to decide that ‘it wasn’t there’?” Stan replied making air quotes as he said stressed ‘wasn’t there’.

“Oh God” she rolled her eyes, “Don’t be a total douche, it took as long as it took”

“Ok but when did you decide it wasn’t there, and what constitutes being ‘there’?”

Renee looked theatrically annoyed, not like a normal uneasiness and said, “I guess from the start”, she sighed. “why does it matter?”

Stan was a very observant kid. When he appeared to be shy and introverted he was really quietly reaching out, gathering and processing his environment. His dad worried that something sinister lay underneath his sometimes distant and overly pensive behavior. He was a very healthy, average looking young man but had an oddness about him. When confronted or challenged he would pause and glance around as if lost and then cock his head sideways as if listening for something. The normal adolescent impulse to push back or retaliate or even defend himself was delayed. Instead he seemed to withdraw and contemplate. His grandpa Levi laughed it off and said he was just a typical Poplin and that all Poplins were a bit ‘queer’ pronounced KWAIR. Back in the day apparently ‘queer’ meant eccentric or harmlessly odd, not homosexual. Regardless of whether there was a gene for oddness or whether his upbringing with his late fiery tempered mother and his grumpy Poplin father swayed him to become more observant and analytical than his peers, Stan had developed unusual talents for noticing if something deviated from the norm. In the midst of this emotional crisis he noticed that indeed something was off other than just the fact that his love life had abruptly entered a microburst and nose dived.

Stan was puzzled why Renee sat up straight as she spoke instead of her customary conspiratorial slouch. She had a thing about leaning in close, Stan figured it was an intimidation tactic that became a habit. Today she sat ramrod straight in her chair.

When she spoke he noticed that she spoke slightly louder than her normal already confident level. Some of that volume could be attributed to the increased distance between them but she was loud enough that much of the Taco Bell could no doubt hear her and that was not something Renee would normally want. Her eyes focused a little beyond his right ear, not on his eyes or even alternatively on his chest where she usually focused. Her cadence, inflection and tempo were different as well, not her relaxed, playful lilting speech or her rushed nasal angry speech but instead a well enunciated, defiant speech that reminded Stan of a movie that they had downloaded but that he could not quite recall. Her choice to mention, in an not at all subdued volume, not once but twice, the fact that they had sex was considerably out of character. …and most oddly of all, she never said dude. On more than one occasion she had commented how unoriginal was calling someone ‘dude’.

That familiar clarity that sometimes descended upon Stan when he needed it, that condition that allowed him to note and catalog events that most people ignored switched on like an internal situation room.

He noticed that her new iphone peaked out of a side pouch on the tiny purse slung over her shoulder. Four months ago she left an expensive purse in a restaurant in Asheville where she was dining with her family. The restaurant found her ID and called her dad’s office at the only number they had associated with the reservation. Her dad fetched the purse for her and brought it to her but not before he opened it and saw a spiff and a packet of condoms inside. She never carried her purse into a restaurant again, always locking it in the dash of Stan’s truck or her car. Why did she bring it in today?

Her cell phone was always on the table facing downward on a napkin, awaiting the constant haptic buzzing that marked her as a popular girl. Oddly today there had been no buzz, no notification tone, nothing from her phone. Yup, she had turned it all off, perhaps out of respect for the bad news she was delivering but putting it all together Stan knew otherwise. The rear facing camera lens that peaked over the lip of her purse pouch was obviously recording. Her odd body angle and suddenly new found posture were to frame Stan for cinematic reasons.

He looked beyond her for a second, at a table across the restaurant, where he noticed three of Renee’s best friends sitting, trying to listen and not be conspicuous. ‘I guess that’s her backup in case I get pissed.”, he first thought. That Renee would feel the need to have a backup, would feel threatened enough to tell her friends before she told him struck Stan to the core. He had never even raised his voice to her, never failed to treat her with extreme respect, well except for that first encounter when he called her an asshole . Then he noticed the glance from Renee’s friends’ table to another table. He turned quickly, just in time to see, seated at a booth with the rapidly darkening afternoon sky behind them, 3 other CP students. All three awkwardly tried to palm their phones and hide the fact that they were videoing he and Renee.

“Hey “, she snapped her fingers in front of his face, “Are you going to say something? Why does it matter that it didn’t work? We’re in high school, not engaged”

Stan’s eyes darted towards her and then away into space, quick like a snakes tongue darts out of his mouth to sample the air. Just a scant moment before he put it all together, he felt a sickening tremor through his 6’3” frame. It was an almost identical feeling to the one he had felt when he was visiting his Uncle in Ville Platte and had grabbed a heavily electrified horse paddock fence. It shook, it hurt and it did not want to let go.

He was being D&D’d

The first time he heard of being dumped and documented was a few months back when some guy in California had D&D’d a girl at an Outback and posted it to Reddit. The object was to record as much footage as possible of the dump, with the dumper creating as much frustration and agony as possible in the dumpee and artfully maintaining the appearance that the dumpee was an overreacting wuss. It no doubt required lots of secretive coordination, usually via text and IM. It required collecting friends to witness, laying out a sympathetic reason for the dump, creating grounds, usually for safety from claims of assault or harassment, for the presence of so many friends sympathetic to the dumper. These messages were incorporated into the documentary that told the tale. Utterly staged but about as real as reality TV. He remembered he and Renee watching the California d&d on a Sunday afternoon. He also remembered her watching it again while he went into his dad’s kitchen to get her a Cherwine and the deli salad they had picked up at Harris and Teeter Grocery store. She had seemed fascinated by the process, appreciative of the grainy video, the added narration and the choking sobs of the dumpee and the cruel phony comfort coming from the dumper. Renee was an aspiring film maker with a love of drama, real life or fictional. Since that Sunday afternoon Renee brought to his attention four more copycat D&D’s including one in which the dumpee, a distraught mousy girl, begged for an explanation until she broke and hurled a hurricane lamp from the seafood restaurant table at the head of the dumper, a smirking guy with black rimmed glasses wearing a knit hat. The reality TV style commentary from friends and bystanders who just happened to be videoing was a gut churning touch.

Stan started to speak…and then paused. The tender moments with Renee since he arrived in North Carolina, the way in which she had helped him adapt to the Carolina clannishness, tempered his response. He didn’t care to give her particularly useful footage but he could not bring himself to try to strike back,

“Yeah I get that it doesn’t matter. I have a lot of questions but they are probably not important now so…. Ok……, thanks for leveling with me and thanks for the good times….Take care” With that he calmly collected his soda cup and rose from the table, smiling at Renee’s friends and giving them a thumbs up as he headed for the door and the trash bins.

“Come on, wait a minute Stan” she called uncertainly as he continued walking, dumping the refuse in the bin.

“Don’t go like that!, let’s be mature!”, she yelled as she partially rose from her chair, her viral video in jeopardy.

Just before he exited into the now overcast parking lot he turned and walked back to the table.

Renee looked happy he had come back to give her viral sensation some much needed drama. He squatted by her chair, smiled and said

“Was the D&D the reason for the dump or was it just an afterthought?”

Her lip trembled and she tripped over her words, “Wha what are you talking about Stan? You …” Stan stopped her by kissing her forehead and said, “Don’t answer, I’m not pissed. Send me a link when you post it, ok?”
Renee slipped up and looked at the two tables of her co-conspirators, possibly for cues. They, to a person, looked away, avoiding her plea. Her confidence and control disappeared. She whispered, “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I did it.”

Stan stood and quickly exited the Taco Bell.

As he unlocked his raggedy Silverado he was grateful that they had come to this ambush in separate vehicles but of course, she had seen to that. Originally they were to have dinner with his dad, his grandpa and grandpa’s girlfriend at Basalt Springs but she had texted him that she had to cancel but could she meet him at Taco Bell. He never saw it coming. Resisting the urge to look back into the Bell as he backed out, Stan was spared seeing Renee join her friends at their table, probably to see if they could edit the footage and save the video. Thus ended the first real romance of Stan Poplin’s young life. Unexpected and sudden like the huge bolt of lightening that immediately preceded the downpour that had Stan scrambling to turn on his worn out wipers. He hesitated at the light, trying to decide where to go; home, to his best friend Jake’s house or on to Basalt Springs to have fish with his grumpy father, his elderly grandpa and grandpa’s girl. It would be a little awkward to explain why Renee wasn’t with him but what the fuck, better to go ahead and get it over with. He turned right, punched his mp3 player and pointed the Chevy towards Basalt Springs

Chapter Three – The Applicant

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