3

            Out in the the glare of the milling terminal with high-end shops lining the court reminding her of an upscale mall, she went to exchange dollars for euros. She couldn't help but wonder if he would jut materialize out of the crowds even though it was an hour early..

            When she had joined this movie site a year and a half ago, it had just started up.It was also her first PC, a small Dell laptop she could drop in her bag for anywhere. The computer was something she'd only used for a word processor till then. On Nantucket Island many of her friends were on line but it just did not interest her. She had so many friends  and bartending at The Brotherhood of Thieves kept her on her toes  while  in her spare time she liked to read Dostoyevsky and Chekov. But here in the mountains even with the barkeep job she had lined up at the local country inn, life was a cloister compared to the island, even in the dead of winter..The old inn had a cool manager, a woman she'd met before on island, who got the best bands on Saturday nights which drew crowds from all over the valley. And yet, though she'd met a lot of new people in the last two years, the Yankee mountains were nowhere as casual and inclusive as cosmopolitan, laid back Nantucket. So watching free movies on line at night, in lieu of getting a satellite dish, was a real God sent.
            You could say she was a rookie to the net. And what this new web site had done was incorporate the format of facebook and twitter with a chat box on the platform of an ever expanding film library. The guy who started it up was breaking away from another site she'd been watching movies on. Several other linkers though at the time she was clueless to what that meant, who were fed up with that site followed him and joined the new site and soon were made moderators. Being friends with the three top women moderators at he time who had evacuated the other site with him, Ex-fighter was one of those linkers soon made content moderators. For her, it became evident that there was a whole new world of honing your social skills and the kind of persona you wanted to project opening here..

            That and commenting on and reviewing movies was really fulfilling in a way she could never have imagined. Her first interactions with users on her wall, and she had to learn that you answer them on their wall, was about films. The last thing on her mind was hooking up in real life with anyone and it had first surprised her to learn that people did phone one another and stuff. Those who posted their real faces for their avatars, and photos of themselves, and these were predominantly women, turned her off at first. She took  notice of this guy by his complimenting her on her wall about a  review she had worked on long and hard. This was months before she had the gumption to join in any of the forum games, though she had been "lurking" around them well enough. Yet it was in the games when she was finally brave enough to take the leap that their wits clicked And when their private messaging took off. They shared links to youtube songs, movies, poetry and art, and besides the comedian, the romantic boy in the Celtic warrior showed it's face.After New Years he introduced his real name, Sean Malone, and gave her his email address saying that she seemed like a genuinely nice girl and he did not want to lose touch with her in case the site went down, as many were doing.

            She finally sat down in a lounge area in the middle of the hustle How would it be talking to someone when you don't have three hours to think up a witty come back. And how did you say "lol" in person? Would he be much he like his virtual reality persona? Most of the time they were teasing and playing battle of the wits, not in common every day banalities Though in planning this Camino.they tended to put aside the irony, a bit anyway.. Months before they knew they were going to meet, she had teasingly asked him if people in Ireland kissed one another on both cheeks like they do in Hungary, where she'd been teaching English for a few years in between Nantucket and the Berkshires. In Ireland, he had typed back, when a fella met a person of the opposite persuasion, he grabbed her around the waist  and dipped her way back while planting a big smooch on her mouth. "Pucker up! lol" typed he.. At first she had been naive enough to wonder if he would act out this threat, but he had also said he would be wearing "lol" on his head.