Random acts of Love

Chapter One first Draft







The greatest minds have studied the American people and have come to the same conclusion every time: Americans are never, ever, happy. It is not this conclusion that the scientists are mystified by, but rather the question of the cause. The simple question “Why are Americans unhappy?” has caused great debate and made the scientists themselves unhappy, especially the American ones.



Some said that it had to do with money, but could find nothing wrong with the money. It certainly was real. Others said it had to do with how much money the Americans had. It was found that Americans had just as much money as they were supposed to have. Then it was postulated that perhaps Americans were unhappy because they bought the wrong thing with their money. As it turns out Americans had received the correct items they bought, well most of the time and these issues were often resolved.



Perplexed, many scientists have tried in controlled laboratory conditions to make Americans happy and failed miserably. The first experiments conducted put an American in a plain white room and the scientists simply asked the specimen why he was unhappy. Invariably, the specimen would say that he needed some thing or other and this fit very well with the scientists understanding of needs. However, when the subject was given the item he needed, he was invariably unhappy soon after.



Further experiments consisted of providing the specimen with every item requested. The results of such experiments perpetually made the specimen unhappy. The scientists were then increasingly unhappy as well since these experiments bankrupted the projects and left the scientists unemployed. They then found new jobs happily employed as coffee shop baristas. Those who study the social sciences will invariably find themselves employed as a barista at some time. Well, most of the baristas were happy. It is the American baristas who are not.



It is for this reason that the International Union of Social Scientists and Coffee Shop Baristas have published their study titled “Americans are unhappy simply because they are Americans.” Of course, the Americans were not happy with this, but this was not at all an unexpected result. This left the Baristas free to examine the connection between coffee and social science. Research continues in this area.



The Americans continued to go about their miserable lives continually unhappy with everything. The Movement for Accepting Unhappiness had suggested that it may be a good idea to embrace their unhappiness and be comfortably unhappy about it. The movement was not long lived however, as the leaders of the movement soon committed mass suicide in a gesture of solidarity with the Clinically Depressed Liberation Front.



It is at the heart of this generally unhappy and depressed country that we find the city of Chicago. Chicago is a city populated by all kinds of unhappy people. The unattractive people are unhappy because they want to be beautiful. The beautiful people are unhappy because they don’t like the attention from unattractive people. The poor feel they don’t have enough money and the rich unhappily exhaust themselves by trying to keep their money from the poor. The fat people are angry because they want to be thin and the thin are hungry. Chicago has become the model of the perfectly unhappy American city.



It is in this mire of civil unhappiness and ill contented residents we find O’Hare International Airport; a sprawling complex of industrial and modern design to please, or displease as it may be, the modern traveler. In this place people pay astonishing amounts of money to have their privacy invaded by x-ray machines and overzealous security guards so that they may have their belongings broken and lost while they make their way to a far off destination on a large cramped machine that may or may not spontaneously explode, crash, or be hijacked en route. It is in this manner that you are welcomed to the city of Chicago, because if you were happy before you arrived at O’Hare Airport your experience there will certainly change your mood to match that of the local populace and you will therefore fit in quite well.



Arriving in this mess of modern transit we find a man who is generally unhappy, Harris P. Carpenter. He is unhappy because he has a lot of problems, about one hundred million of them. This may seem not at all odd considering the setting, but you must consider that this man is not an American by birth. It is this that many would consider disturbing. This man was imported from the British Isles as a young child at the tender age of ten.



Even after living in the United States for a few years, he was happy as a child. But, just as a fine wine stored improperly will turn to vinegar, a young Londoner displaced and kept in America will soon become unhappy. Many had thought it was the loss of his parents at age ten and the resulting move to live with relatives in America that made him unhappy. He did miss his parents after all, but he had coped with the loss well and accepted that airplanes do spontaneously explode. He was a well adjusted young bloke by that point. Harris became unhappy, coincidentally, around the same time his dual citizenship to the U.S. had been approved when he moved in with his Aunt Milly.



He was a good young chap who had tended to his studies well and eventually made his way into the Harvard school of English. Harris’ real problems began when he went to find employment after Harvard. He had found that London’s “The Guardian” newspaper, where he had dreamed of working, only accepted people with degrees in English-English, not American-English. The Guardian human resources department suggested to him that he apply again in eight years after he had received a diploma from a good and proper English primary school.



Completely broke and low on ambition, he decided to talk to his barista about it. “I suggest a venti triple shot mocha cocoa cappuccino with whipped cream on top and a complete re-evaluation of your goals as they relate to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Of course a scone would help too,” suggested his Barista..



Finding only the coffee and scone helpful he had a dollar left after his session with his barista. With the last of his money Harris decided to buy a lotto ticket and move back in with his Aunt Milly. He thought moving back in with Aunt Milly might be testing his luck more than the lotto ticket. Her barista thought she had Tourrettes syndrome, while Harris believed she simply lacked proper social skills.



By Friday he had moved back in with his Aunt Milly and they were having a nice afternoon tea and perfectly civil conversation, well as nice and civil as a conversation as one might have had with a rabid badger in heat. It would be incredibly difficult to get a word in edgewise and one would soon find themselves wondering what that odd crazed look in her eyes meant.



Harris was reading a newspaper. He wasn’t sure which one, but any newspaper except “The Guardian” would do. He was distracted because he was also thinking about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. He thought he could check off three of them, but didn’t quite know about this self-actualization thing. He didn’t want to admit to his barista that he was right, but he might be.







Aunt Milly was on one of her rants. “Fuck, I can’t believe that god damned Guardian newspaper, those rat bastards. You are such a good young boy when you aren’t being such a fucker. They wouldn’t know quality if it kicked them in balls. The …”



“Auntie!” He blurted interrupting her while squeezing the newspaper ever more tightly.



“Oh, don’t be so shy. I only said…” Aunt Milly started defending her uncivil tongue.



“No, no, I think I may have won the Lotto.”



“What?”



“Look, right here. This is my ticket and the numbers match!”



“I can’t believe it! You must be reading it wrong. You never were any good at math. Let me see.” She grabbed at the paper.



Harris was shocked “Three hundred and ninety four million dollars…” he began muttering to himself.



“Oh my…” Aunt Milly’s face flushed.



“Minus taxes of course, and then about half that for a full cash payout,” calmly stated Harris as he began to contemplate the business end in his head. Suddenly he found himself much closer to this self-actualization thingy.



Aunt Milly had already contemplated her business end in her head. She suddenly looked cross. “Well, after all of the crap I went through raising you, your money would certainly be more helpful around here than you ever were. I let you live here after your parents burned in that plane crash, and then you took off to fancy old Harvard with the money from your parents’ settlement. You had better split that fifty-fifty with me, buster.”



Shocked at sweet Aunt Milly’s sudden financial needs, Harris agreed to give her some if it would make her happy, or at least stop her from looking at him with that crazed rabid look. Soon, word spread among the rest of those whom he called family and friend. It was not long before those people who called him family and friend came knocking with stories of how happy they would be if his money could solve their problems. So many people showed up, he was unsure if even a few of them were family or friends. Not long after that, people he had never met said that Harris needed to give them money to make them happy. Even the Anglican Church called and said that God needed his money to be happy. Harris thought that if even God was unhappy, there might be no hope for him.



Now, as rich as Harris became, he had never been so unhappy. He suddenly felt the burden of everyone else’s needs and his needs became their needs. He began to wonder to himself that if he just got rid of the money, he would stop inheriting other peoples’ problems. He had set himself up for the rest of his life by investing in some long-term stability funds. But he really just wanted to write. He decided to travel instead. He decided that on these travels, he would give his money away, write about it, and thus all of his problems should be over. Then, he might find self-actualization. He just didn’t count on it being so hard.



He packed himself just one big backpack of everything he should need and his ATM card. “Let me just see if I can make Americans happy again,” he thought while waiting for his luggage to come around the carousel at O’Hare International. He hooped his trip to Chicago, the heart of American unhappiness, would spread to the rest of the country like a vaccine for polio. His baggage never showed up. He watched the same luggage go round and round the carousel, but his never seemed to show. Soon he was ushered over to the baggage claim counter.



A very slender pale white man was at the counter. Although he was dressed in the airline uniform, he had somehow found a way to evoke the look of a gangster rapper who might break out spontaneously into a mono-rhythmic nightmare at any moment. It seems that his shirt was three sizes too big and the waist of his slacks were closer to his knees than his waist making it look as if he had recently lost much weight. The faux gold chains around his neck glistened in the light but even a skilled thief wouldn’t waste his time with them. Also, his hat was not on correctly, it was cocked to the left and up a bit as if he had some developmental disorder that prevented him from properly dressing himself.



After wrestling with the man’s native suburban Chicago tongue for about fifteen minutes he found that his bags were indeed on the plane that brought him here. In fact, they had done such a good job of getting the bags on the plane they had decided to leave them there as an example of a job well done. Now the plane with his luggage was now on its way to London, then Frankfurt, then Moscow, and finally Krasnoyarsk, Siberia where his belongings could properly be molested by cold Siberian hands. The man at the counter thought that this was generally a good idea, since this policy allowed him to have a job. Harris could see the man’s need for a job, but he thought that it should not be a matter of policy to lose his bags. The rapper receptionist went on to explain while beat-boxing that baggage must not be discriminated against, that if some bags were lost, then all bags must at some point be lost so that all patrons receive equal ethical treatment with regards to their luggage. However, for compensation the man did offer him someone else’s luggage as a replacement. Harris decided to respectfully decline the offer.



Harris was now able to quickly make an inventory of all of his worldly possessions: the clothes on his back, keys to Aunt Milly’s house, a wallet with seven hundred dollars, one ATM card, an American Express credit card, a New York State driver’s license, an unexpected picture of his ex-girlfriend that he quickly threw in the trash, and a string of floss wrapped around a small piece of cardboard. A thoughtful and prudent person should always have a string of floss at the ready, he thought.



Harris looked around the myriad of shops and storefronts available in the airport for the necessities while quietly flossing his teeth. All of the items he needed were available in travel size only, for his inconvenience. He was able to pick up a travel size hygiene kit, travel size soap and shampoo, a travel size towel that seemed more like an oversized washcloth, some typical tourist clothes depicting the City of Chicago which begged would be villains to mug the unwary traveler, and a travel size bag in which the entire kit would not fit.



Finally, Harris decided it was about time to leave this self-imposed purgatory and find a place to stay, but first he needed a way out of the airport. After an hour of wandering around the sprawling complex he finally came to a car rental lot. Upon his arrival he found a line of dozens of patrons ahead of him. Hesitantly, he joined the queue.



After waiting for what seemed a fortnight, he was due to be next in line. The young girl in line seemed to be having problems.



“Look, I know that I am not the person named on the card, it’s my Daddy’s card. I need to rent a car to get on to veterinary school. I have spent my life savings getting here for this,” the young attractive redhead complained as she seemed on the verge of tears.



“I am sorry, but the card was declined anyway, there is nothing I can do,” stated the clerk.



Harris thought this would be a great chance to give away some of his wealth. He couldn’t let a future animal doctor be late for her first day of college. He stepped forward attempting to interrupt “Umm, excuse me Miss, but...”



“Sir, step back behind the line and wait your turn,” yelled the frustrated clerk angrily. The clerk’s head shook with fury and frustration, but his gelled hair refused to move in direct opposition to it’s owner’s mood invoking the look of an action figure, if a clerk’s life were considered exciting enough to be enticing to children



“But I think…” Harris started.



“Sir! Get behind the line” shouted the clerk, his hair still completely immobile. Frustrated, Harris turned to the distressed young lady and addressed her directly.



“Excuse me Miss, but I will rent a car and we can share it, how does that sound to you?”



“You, you would do that for me?” stuttered the distressed would-be future veterinarian.



“Certainly,” promised Harris. Waving his American Express card at the clerk he smirked. “How much is her car? We will share. I only need to get downtown, then she can have the car as long as she needs it.” Begrudgingly the clerk accepted the offer and the pair were handed the keys to a new Honda.



Once this pair of strangers had been uncomfortably seated in the passenger vehicle Harris placed his travel sized luggage on the backseat while the ginger-haired future-veterinarian’s surprisingly small amount luggage sat squeezed in the trunk. An uncomfortable silence spread like flatulence in the low ceilinged compact vehicle.



Finally gathering the courage to say something Harris began “Well, I am going to any hotel downtown with an open room and after that I won’t really need a car, where are you going?”



“I am heading to the College of Lake County, it’s just north of here.” She lied but Harris couldn’t have known this. She wasn’t even sure that the College of Lake County even had a veterinary school. It didn’t seem to matter though, since Harris obviously had no idea either. He seemed to be from far away, he even talked funny, but he looked unhappy like most American’s. “He must be from the east coast,” she thought to herself. “I am going to make such a sucker out of this guy.”



Harris was too busy finding himself strangely attracted to this young woman to notice she might be lying. She looked to be six years his junior, but it didn’t feel like she was that young. Something in her screamed of maturity, although it certainly wasn’t her appearance. She wore beat up designer jeans, a threadbare tee-shirt that proclaimed her love for the Trans-AM which was almost certainly from a thrift shop, a novelty hat befitting of a truck driver, with large designer sunglasses. Harris knew this ironic combination of designer clothing and thrift shop couture invoked the uniform of the so-called hipster youth. He thought perhaps she wished to invoke the irony of life in her choice of fashion, or perhaps she was just trying to fit in. Whatever the reason for her odd clothing, he was glad to help her. He suddenly felt like his mission was going according to plan.



“Well, what if we drive to my hotel,” Harris began. “You can drop me off, and then you can have use of the car until you return it tomorrow evening.”



“Sure, that sounds like a good idea. But, I don’t even know your name. I am Roxy. What’s your name?” Roxy’s brazen show of friendliness cut through the awkwardness like an improperly used industrial machine through the limb of a day laborer.



“Oh of course my name is Harris, Harris Carpenter.”



Giggling and extending her hand Roxy replied “Well, Harris Harris Carpenter, let’s get going.”



“Quite right, but first do you fancy a meal? I am famished, how about you?”



“Well, Mister Carpenter I find myself obliged.” She giggled mocking his accent and vocabulary. Harris smiled at her understanding the sly meaning of her statement and tone. Truly, she didn’t know why she accepted this invitation, even though it didn’t correspond with her plans. However, for some reason Roxy found herself unable to hurt this man in such way. She might even return the car tomorrow instead of selling it to a chop shop. She knew, as always, that the insurance company would be the real victim in the situation and she did make sure he bought the extra insurance. But, Roxie’s instincts felt that her kindness may have some unknown benefit in the long run.



She suddenly felt herself feeling an emotion completely alien to her. She felt somehow lighter and the edges of her lips began to stretch seemingly on their own. Her mouth stretched so much that her teeth began to show. She remembered this from a long time ago. It was happiness. She could even see the signs of joy beginning to spread on the face of this strange man Harris.



She pulled out her cellular phone and sent a text message to her friend. She told Harris that she was letting her father know that she had made to Chicago all right. Really, the message she sent read “I couldn’t get the car. We will have to get the money some other way.”