title: Trade Show Trauma
author: Bowden, Ralph
description: In this relationship story, set in 1994, the background is a typical business trade show. Alison, product manager for a Knoxville company that produces training materials, and John, the brilliant but abrasive older man who creates the company's products, head off to Tulsa, where they will set up and staff their company's display booth. On the two-day drive, Alison learns a little of John's background and is deeply disturbed. She also calls home and accidentally discovers that her banker husband is cheating on her. This trauma wipes her out, destroying her uptight professional control. To her surprise, John drops his crusty and unpredictable attitude to counsel her, sensitively. At the trade show, John continues to be helpful, but then has a one-night stand with a lady friend, Allison's second trauma. He encourages her to find somebody and do the same. After protesting, she does happen upon an ideal prospect, but the one-night stand with him is another trauma. She is a good Methodist girl who never considered doing anything of the sort. Meanwhile, the obnoxious company owner shows up to work the show and insists on driving back with Alison and John. He has a paranoid delusional attack on the interstate through Arkansas, and becomes violent. John heroically subdues him, and in the aftermath, Alison and John totally merge for 24 hours before facing the unavoidably painful future.