From the entrance of the cave, the storm
looked somewhat beautiful. Rain covered every single plant in the forest, as
well as every rock, leaf and animal, if they hadn’t found a proper place to
wait out the storm. Tony and Gabe had found the cave just in time and had been
there for at least three hours. In that time, the rain hadn’t stop falling and
it didn’t really seem like it would stop anytime soon. It was as if it was the
perpetual state of that corner of the world. Both men decided to take out their
sleeping bags and rest, instead of waiting for something that might not come.
The next morning, sure enough, the storm was
still going strong. According to what they had read before going into the
forest, it wasn’t that uncommon to have storms that lasted for several hours.
According to one book, the record was five straight nights of rainfall. It was
simply insane but that’s how nature worked in that place. So both guys decided
it was best for them to wait. They didn’t fear the rain or anything like that.
The problem was that they could get lost and that was a real problem that they
wouldn’t be able to solve easily.
They had brought food, and sleeping bags and
several other things but they had forgotten a simple compass. Besides, their
satellite map on their phones didn’t work there, as the forest had no Wi-Fi.
So, in a way, they were trapped by rain. The physical map they had borrowed
from the park ranger’s office was the only thing they could use to navigate the
forest but there was no real way of doing that because the map was not
precisely up to date. According to the bottom left corner of it, the design was
copied from another map dating from the 1980’s.
It was best to sit down on their sleeping bags
and have a couple of energy bars, which would help them stay alert. Tony and
Gabe rarely talked to one another. They were not really friends but they
weren’t enemies or anything like that. The reason they were together was that
they had originally plan to come with several other friends. The original group
had around fifteen people but then the park made them cut off some of them
because the limit was eight people. Then some of the ones remaining dropped out
and only Tony and Gabe remained.
They had decided to go together because they
didn’t want to miss the opportunity of entering the forest. The government had
announced recently that it was going to be closed indefinitely as the passage
of people through the park was apparently damaging it. Tony and Gabe were
practically the last two people to ever set foot there in, probably, many
years. But they were so mad at their friends for not going that they hadn’t
really thought about that amazing fact. It was practically a historical event
in which they had been caught up.
The second night in the cave, they decided to
play a card game. It was one of the simple ones, nothing too fancy. It was Tony
that had proposed to play, as he was getting crazy by just waiting to see if
the weather got a little bit better. Gabe was also very disappointed in that
trip. He had come because he really wanted to get away from people and things
after he had finished the process of divorcing the woman that was supposedly
the love of her life. He had found her having sex with another woman in their
brand new apartment.
Tony’s reasons were kind of similar. He wanted
to get away from his family. He was an adult that still lived with his parents
and had serious money problems. The trip to the forest had been his idea and he
had designed it to be a perfect getaway with his best friends. That hadn’t come
to pass and it made him rethink his relationship with them because he didn’t
really knew anymore if they were really his friends or if they were only close
to him because he was good with other people’s problems but no one helped him with
his problems.
The card game went on for several hours, until
they had to drop it because one of their flashlights turned itself off.
Apparently, the battery had run out. After all, it had been on for several
hours a day, being in a cave and everything. They decided to sleep instead but
they just couldn’t so they started talking. They first did so about the rain
and the forest and how cool the first few days had been, taking pictures of
animals and beautiful plants and discovering a whole world they had never even
imagined that it existed so close to their homes.
However, the conversation migrated soon to
their problems. First, Gabe got to tell Tony every single detail about his
divorce. He even told him exactly what he found his wife and now girlfriend
doing in his own bed. Gabe’s voice sounded bitter, so Tony tried to make him
fell better by reminding him that it was for the best that he had found out the
truth. Gabe didn’t know if that was correct because he had spent a large amount
of money in that marriage, from the ring to a holiday he had planned for their
first anniversary.
Tony insisted: at least he hadn’t lived
decades a decades in a lie. He had found out in the first year and that meant
he had saved himself years of suffering and lies. That was something most
people would want to have in a relationship. Most never get to know any of the
truths that lie beneath their relationships until it is too late. Gabe began to
realize Tony was right and really assimilated the fact that he hadn’t done anything
wrong and that he was still young, if he ever wanted to marry again.
Then, they moved on to Tony. Gabe asked him,
rather bluntly, why did he still live with his parents? It was a difficult
question to answer but it all came from the fact that Tony didn’t really have
any real skills. He had gone to school, he had gotten diplomas and so on, but
no company seemed to be interested in hiring him. As he explained to Gabe,
companies were not looking for people that had a vast amount of knowledge. They
were looking for people to exploit and someone that knew his worth wasn’t going
to accept anything like that.
Besides that, he found jobs that paid him a
little money at a time but never enough to actually save anything. In his
parents house, he had to pay the electricity bill and had to help with the
groceries too, so there was no way he could ever get his own place that why. He
lived with his parents not because it was the right thing to do but because it
was the safest thing to do. He thought going out into the world blindly was not
a solution to anything. Going out from home and then failing fantastically,
only to come back, wasn’t really something he looked forward to.
Gabe told him that, at some point, he was
going to have to risk it, in one way or the other. Maybe he did need to take a
risk like leaving home for working away from his parents. Or maybe he needed to
let a company exploit him, letting them know that what he wanted was experience
and that they could pay him whatever they paid others in order to be able to
work. Tony was not very convinced by Gabe’s advice but then he said that Tony
could also do his own thing; create his own business with all his knowledge at
the center of it.
That seemed to get to Tony because he was
silent for a moment and then confessed to Gabe that he had always imagined
having some sort of library, where he could help all sorts of people with all
sorts of books. It could be in an old house, with a small cafeteria and a
certain ambiance that would make it attractive to every single person around.
He would offer all kinds of titles, from novels to poetry, from cooking books
to big ones filled with artistic pictures and paintings. He knew it was hard
and that his dream required a lot of money.
Gabe told him he liked his idea. Furthermore,
out of nowhere, he told Tony he would love to help to get that dream become a
reality. After all, he had gotten some money out of the divorce and he had a
stable job that gave him more than enough to live comfortably. He could afford
investing those earning from his failed marriage. Tony was overwhelmed. They
both sat on their sleeping bags and, in silence and with only the rain as
witness, they hugged and agreed to become partners in a new adventure.
