Driving to the City
As Ben and Amy fastened their seatbelts, Santiago asked Ben, “I’m assuming you are Ben?”
“Yes, you must be Santiago?”
Santiago, with cheerfulness in his voice, responded, “That I am! I see you are heading into the city, going to The Marbled Fin. Would you like any conversation along the way, or would you prefer I keep things to a minimum?”
Ben felt this giant sense of relief, simply commenting, “Let’s play it by ear.”
“That sounds wonderful,” quipped Santiago.
Santiago backed the car out of the driveway and started down the street. Before he could get to the end of the block, Ben jokingly asked, in his favorite bad dad-joke voice, “Your profile mentioned you were from Chile. Was it cold in the town you grew up in?”
Ben chuckled as if he were being exceptionally funny, and Amy groaned wondering if the hour in the car was going to be filled with Ben and bad jokes.
Santiago chuckled, as if to humor Ben, then replied, “I originally come from a small village name Puerto Natales. It can get quite cool there, though not as cold as some of the winters I have been through here in Chicago.”
Ben took a pause, wondering what to say next.
“How did you end up in Chicago from all the way in Chile?” Ben asked.
“I came here for university. I have an uncle who is a doctor in Chicago. He grew up in Chile but studied in Chicago. As I was graduating school he came to visit, and told me that I should come here. There would be many more opportunities for me here than in Puerto Natales,” explained Santiago.
In Ben’s head came the thought, “What have I done? I’m horrible at a conversation. Why did I ask him that? Now he’s going to think I want to talk the entire trip. It would be rude to ask him not to talk anymore. Dang it.”
“When did you come here?” was all Ben could come up with at the time.
“I got here seven years ago,” Santiago replied, with an apprehension in his voice not knowing if he should try to continue the conversation or let it die.
“Do you like it in Chicago?” Ben asked, awkwardly trying to carry on the conversation.
“Yes,” answered Santiago, “It is so much different than my village. So many things to do. So exciting.”
“How long have you been driving for the company?” was all Ben could come up with next.
“I’ve been driving for two years now, after I graduated,” Santiago replied, still unsure how much to add.
Ben, at a complete loss of what to ask next, started to look out the window, but Amy, hearing the initial conversation, became curious about Santiago. She wondered how someone would find their way from a small town in Chile up to Chicago.
“That’s fascinating. I know you mentioned your uncle was a doctor. What kind of doctor is he?” Amy inquired.
Santiago felt that there was an ease in the way Amy asked him the question, as if she was really curious and not just trying to have small talk.
“He is an ear, nose, and throat surgeon. I think they call them E.N.T.’s here in the United States? He came to the United States twenty years ago for medical school and never left. It took him a long time to become a citizen here, but felt it was worth every struggle. He really loves it here.”
“That does seem like a long way, from Chile to Chicago. What did you study?” Amy asked, leaning a little closer to the front seat so she could hear Santiago better.
Santiago explained, “I came to go to medical school, like my uncle, but really didn’t like it after a couple of years. There was a lot more studying which I wasn’t used to, coming from my school, and I really didn’t like having to cut into people. I really came here hoping to eventually be able to afford to bring my parents and brother up here, but so far that hasn’t worked out.”
“Now I’m dreaming of being a writer,” finished Santiago.
Amy leaned forward a little more, with total interest in everything Santiago was saying. Meanwhile, Ben was looking out the window as the car sped down the highway, half-listening to the conversation, hoping that he could somehow find a great question to ask.
Ben chimed in, “I find looking at that stuff, you know, up noses and stuff, kind of cool. I saw some videos on the internet, and it was like looking into another world up there.”
“I don’t know, being a doctor always sounded cool to me,” Ben mentioned quietly, acknowledging the awkwardness, and finished up his thought with, “Being a writer, though, gosh, I think I could do that, too.”
Both Santiago and Amy nicely, at the same time, made a sound acknowledging what Ben had said, but both wondered how it fit into the conversation.
What Ben didn’t know was that Santiago had been writing his entire life.