by Liza Palmer
Hani and Elise hand off the donuts and settle in at the agreed-upon little cross street across from the server farm. Hani with her binoculars and Elise with her long-range zoom lens. For the next forty-seven minutes, Thornton and I eat our donuts and field questions, concerns, and knock-knock jokes from Red Otter.
Until, with a precision he exhibits in no other area in his life, Asher rolls quietly down the small San Bernardino street in his Tesla.
“Wolf One is among the sheep, over,” Hani crackles through the walkie-talkie.
18
Nights in White Satin
“We see him, over,” I say. I am right on the cusp of telling Hani that this is all fun and games until her exuberance blows our cover, but it’s just then that the walkie-talkie falls silent for the first time in weeks.
Asher pulls into the small, empty parking lot and idles his Tesla in front of a parking space with a large orange cone in it. One of the security guys runs over and moves the cone, and Asher pulls into the space closest to the door.
I begin to receive real-time photos from Elise’s camera on my phone. She and Hani rigged it so—and don’t ask me how—all of the “assets” we got today (photos, video, and audio) would be automatically uploaded to a secure location (i.e., not Bloom).
“How he finds new and ridiculous ways to be entitled, I’ll never know,” I say to Thornton, scanning Elise’s photos. They are perfect. Asher is in fine fettle this afternoon. In his wrinkled T-shirt, newly shaved head, and low-slung Dickies, he looks like he should be walking into a custody hearing for back child support.
“I fucking hate these guys,” Thornton says, shaking his head.
Asher ambles over to the entrance and regally waves his hand, and the front door is opened for him. Barely looking up from his phone, he points to a pile of cigarette butts in the empty lot and then proceeds to wait as the security guy scurries over, picks up the cigarette butts, and throws them in the proper container. As this transaction is happening, I am receiving a stream of photos Elise is getting of Asher with the inside of the server farm through the now wide-open door.
“These are perfect,” I say, showing Thornton. He takes my phone and zooms in on the photo, from Asher to beyond.
“You can see everything,” Thornton says, navigating around the photo to the servers in the background.
“So how do we head off the lie that this server farm isn’t connected to Bloom?” I ask, taking the phone back from Thornton.
“I’m hoping that’s where I finally become useful. Once I get in there, I am pretty sure I’ll be able to get proof that it’s Bloom stuff on those servers,” Thornton says.
“How?” I ask.
“This is where that fancy degree of mine comes in,” he says with a wink.
I recognize that ease and natural confidence of his in that moment. Apparently, I’m not the only one who’s getting reacquainted with my true self by pursuing this quest. But of course he’s feeling that, too. We’re all susceptible to the siren song of purpose and the opportunity to tap into that reservoir of potential that our high school teachers used to bang on about. In such a mundane world, it’s easy to forget sometimes that we have the capacity for greatness. Or maybe not so much forget as trap those soaring feelings so they don’t break our hearts.
The security guy finally finishes cleaning up the cigarette butts and is just about to return to the front door when Asher disappears inside without a word of thanks.
“Holy shit that was so cool, over,” Hani crackles through the walkie-talkie. “This is Red Otter, BTW. Over.”
“Pink Sunshine, your photos are incredible, over,” I say.
“That arrogant bastard stands there pointing to some poor security guard to pick up cigarette butts and the whole time I’m just clicking away,” Elise replies. I can hear Hani in the background. “Over.”
“Did you see the cone thing, over?” Hani asks.
“There are literally five empty spaces, but nooooo. He had to have the one right next to the door, over,” Elise says.
“It must be so hard for him not to put his name on that space, this being a whole secret server farm and all, over,” I say.
Asher only stays for fifteen minutes and Elise gets some shots of him exiting, too. He’s even acquired a cup of something inside.
“Is that a plastic straw?” I ask Thornton.
“It can’t be,” he says in faux-disbelief.
“They outlawed plastic straws at Bloom,” I say, watching Asher climb into his Tesla.
“For the turtles,” Thornton finishes.
“This server farm is lawless, I tell you. Lawless,” I say. Asher pulls out of the space, waiting for the security guard to replace the orange cone. Once that’s done, he speeds off down the quiet San Bernardino street, probably on his way to the Starbucks. Once he’s turned the corner, the security guy lights up a cigarette and leans back against the side of the building, right where the pile of incriminating butts were.
“Did you see the straw, over?” Hani says through the walkie-talkie.
“We saw it, over!”
“Man, they’re not even trying over here, over,” Hani says.
“This is Pink Sunshine, Red Otter and I are going up to Big Bear to meet her parents, no biggie. Rendezvous tomorrow at yours, over?”
“Sounds like a plan, Pink Sunshine. Good luck, over,” I say.
“This is Red Otter, she won’t need luck, they’re going to looooooove her, over,” Hani sings.
Hani waves the green flag to us as Elise drives past on the way down the small street and on to Big Bear Lake.
“And now we wait,” Thornton says, reaching into the back of the car. He grabs a water bottle and a bag of chips that were clearly taken from the Bloom canteen. “I mean, we are technically still at Bloom.” He jerks his head toward the server farm and pulls open the bag of chips, offering them to me. I look over at him, and dig into the bag for a chip. The crinkling is deafening and I can’t quite get my fingers around any one chip, so I decimate a whole bunch of them while trying. All of that effort and I’ve gotten just a crumb. Bit symbolic. I drop the chiplet in my mouth, crack open the water, and drink.
My chest is tight. But, because I don’t trust myself with any feeling, I can’t be sure if this is a good tight or a bad tight. Am I hungry or just having an existential crisis?
What’s begun to haunt me over the last three weeks is this feeling that I’m missing something. The specter of The (boring) Dry Cleaning Story looms large over everything I’ve done. Can I trust that I’ve learned some kind of paradigm-shifting lesson well enough so the Bloom story rises above a skill set that was severely lacking only a few months ago?
What don’t I know I don’t know?
“Thank you for the chip,” I say, as the silence expands beyond excruciating.
“You’re welcome,” he says. We sit in chip-eating silence.
“Five hours didn’t feel like a long time when we were planning this,” I say, shifting in my seat.
“Yeah, we sure pulled the short straw on this one,” he says.
“My mind is racing. My heart is racing,” I say, unable to calm myself down.
“Mine, too.” I look over at him. We lock eyes and he nods. I take a deep breath. His hand jerks up, but just as quickly, he balls his fist and lets it fall onto his leg. Watching him force himself not to reach out to me sends a flush across my face and down my neck. He’s about to say something, but—
“I don’t know if it’s a good racing or a bad racing, but—” I stop. Look down at my lap and shake my head. Thornton is quiet. Waiting. “I guess I don’t…” I take a deep breath. “I want this too much.”
“And you think you won’t get it?”
“I think I won’t get a lot of stuff,” I say, making an alarming level of eye contact with him. I immediately look away and roll my window down. I need fresh air. “It’s the getting-your-hopes-up thing, right?”
“Yeah,” he says. We fall silent, watc
hing the smoking security guard, the steady stream of tire store patrons, and the hustle and bustle of just another Friday afternoon in San Bernardino. I take another long drink out of the water bottle as Thornton tucks the now empty chip bag into the side pocket of the door. He brushes the chip crumbs off his hands, finally allowing them to come to rest on the bottom of the steering wheel.
I go back to watching the security guard as he drops his cigarette to the ground, stomps it out, and leaves the butt exactly where the pile once was. Another security guard comes out of the front door and together they walk the perimeter of the server farm.
“I thought you wanted to just be friends,” Thornton says. His voice is quiet and raspy. I look from the disappearing security guards to Thornton, who is staring right at me.
“What?”
“I know you saw me pull my hand back and it looked like it upset you, so I’m explaining why I did it,” he says. We both look down at his hand as if it has somehow gotten us into this mess.
“You don’t have to explain yourself, I…” Fuck fuck fuck. “I like being honest with you, but not when it’s about my feelings for you.” I laugh and so does he. “I can talk to you about my parents or my hopes and dreams or my failings, but—” I point to him and then to me. “Us? I’d rather just—” I pull up the gesture an umpire would use to call a man safe. “I don’t know if I can do it.”
“How do you think I feel?” he asks, joking.
“I bet you feel pretty wonderful, but…” And then my entire face flushes. Running my fingers through my hair, I look up just in time to see a garbage truck pull up to the strip mall, turn on its deafening alarm, reverse its direction, and then I hear the metal crunch of hoisting bin after bin of trash into the truck.
“Super romantic,” Thornton says, over the sound of the engine heaving and lifting.
“Yeah, all we need is a little ‘Nights in White Satin’ and we’re set,” I say, shifting my body over more toward the passenger’s side door. One more bin is hoisted and dumped.
“Nights in white satin?” The trash falls into the truck and the bin is lowered back onto the street. The garbage truck drives away. I look over at Thornton.
“It’s a song, you—” My stomach drops as I realize. “That you don’t know. You don’t know it, because not only do you and I not share pop-culture references, but your parents and my parents don’t even have the same pop-culture references.”
“My parents only listened to classical music growing up, so I would only get the music references of someone born in the 1700s.”
“So, just a little older than me. Fantastic,” I say. Thornton doesn’t take the bait.
“Let’s hear it then,” Thornton says.
“Absolutely not.”
“What? Why not?”
“Because it’s going to be like when you’re all—oh, you don’t know that movie from the ’90s, great let’s watch this trailer and oh my god the trailers back then were awful and this movie is incredibly problematic and what was I thinking and … you know, now I’m embarrassed that you’re trying to like something you know I’m nostalgic about but, ugh, just … no, I don’t even know if it’s aged well. I haven’t listened to it in years.” While I’ve been talking, Thornton’s pulled his phone from his pocket and is searching for the song online.
“Moody Blues?” he asks, his finger hovering over the Play button.
“Can I … is there anything I can do to—you know what? I would rather talk about my feelings. How’s that? I would—” He hits Play.
“Be quiet, I’m trying to listen to this song, please.” Thornton turns the volume of his phone all the way up as the opening drumbeats break through the tinny speaker. “Roll up your window.” I oblige him just as the vocals come on. The outside melts away as the song builds to its “’Cause I love you! Yes, I love you.… Oh, how I love you” chorus. As the song dips into its second verse, I fix my eyes on my shoes, tracing and retracing the stitching around the sole.
But then I find myself giving over as the song fills the car. I sit back in my seat, put my head back, close my eyes, and sink into the music. By the time the flute solo comes in—because of course there’s a flute solo—I realize my hands are curled tightly around my seat, as if I’m afraid I’ll float away. All of the anxiety and nerves, all the too-high hopes I can never control, all the times I felt rejected and lonely get mixed up and blended with these scary, soaring feelings that swell and unsettle me as I sit in this quiet car with Thornton. My heart tugs with every note and I let it expand inside my chest. And feel it. As terrifying as it is, I don’t pin these feelings or overthink them down into some place where they’re labeled and managed. I let the music move me, affect me. And when I open my eyes and see Thornton, I finally let him move me and affect me, too.
As the last chorus starts, I take a deep breath. I uncurl my fingers from my hold on the passenger’s seat and reach out toward Thornton. He leans in just as my fingers tighten around his T-shirt, pulling him into me. His hand laces around my waist. His mouth is warm and fast on mine. My fist tightens around his shirt, pulling and pulling him closer, so my other hand can finally thread through his long black hair. I hear myself gasp and I can feel him smiling just as the song comes to an end.
In those silent, empty milliseconds we break apart. Centimeters apart.
“That’s some fucking song,” he whispers. “Now I’m just throwing this out there—” Another kiss. “But we’ve got five hours and the Alpine Inn is right there.” Another kiss.
“Have I ever told you about the fantasy I have about those little Podunk motels along the freeway?”
Thornton leans back and smiles.
“No,” he says.
“That I always wanted to be so swept away in a frenzy, you know, maybe we were on a road trip or just driving back from Orange County, I don’t know. But, regardless, we just had to pull over to … you know—” I say. I look down as my face flushes. “Is that weird?”
“No.”
“No?”
Thornton shakes his head, and brushes my hair out of my face. I smile.
“I’ll get us a room, do you want to make a stop at the liquor store and I’ll meet you over there?”
“Yeah, oh … good idea.”
I efficiently turn to pick my purse up off the passenger’s side floor, relieved that I have an errand to run now. Wordlessly, Thornton and I climb out of the car, careful to avoid being seen by the security guards. He gives me one last smile and runs over to the Alpine Inn.
In a haze, I walk to the Come and Go liquor store, unsure of what I’m in here for. I wander the aisles, pick up a bag of plain M&M’s and a bottle of water, peruse the tea options for a quick second, before it dawns on me why Thornton wanted me to … oh my god, okay. I rush over to the aisle where the condoms are, clutching my bag of M&M’s and water and am immediately overwhelmed.
Bare Skin? Ultra Thin? Enz? Pleasure pack? Is there … is there one that Thornton prefers or—I tear open the bag of M&M’s and pour a handful out, popping them into my mouth as I pace.
A couple of construction workers walk toward me and I shift over to the next item in the aisle, hoping they’ll think I am now really into lubes and sanitary napkins and definitely not condoms. They pass me, en route to the beer case. I shuffle back over in front of the condoms. It’s just like being back at the Bloom coffee machine again. Just grab however many and look, I doubt there’s going to be one that just ruins the whole mood altogether. I grab three random kinds of condoms from the shelf and walk to the front of the liquor store and pay for said items with as much discretion as I can muster.
As I exit the liquor store, I can see Thornton standing just out front of the Alpine Inn, his hands lazing in his pockets, waiting for me. I twist the M&M bag closed, pull out the condom boxes from the bag, and replace them with the candy. I can see that Thornton’s trying to figure out what I’m carrying, furrowed brow, slightly leaning over to … what in the hell is that and a shake of t
he head as he finally figures out what’s in my hand.
“I know we’ve got five hours, but I think you’re being a bit ambitious,” he says, taking the three boxes of condoms from me.
“Oh?”
Thornton balances the boxes of condoms in his hand. He pulls me close. “We’ll see.” Still with my hand in his, Thornton leads me over to room 9 on the ground floor of the Alpine Inn. He lets go of my hand, reaches into his pocket, and fishes out the key. He opens the door and gestures for me to go in.
“Let’s see if you’re right,” he says, stepping inside and closing the door behind us.
“About what?” I ask, now utterly breathless.
“Whether or not I feel pretty wonderful,” he says, pulling his T-shirt over his head.
19
One Thing
As I walk from Thornton’s car to the front door, I turn around and wave to his bright headlights, in an attempt to hide the building panic that’s fully taking hold as I reach the door. I turn back around and notice he’s yet to pull down the long driveway.
Then I get that he’s waiting for me to go inside before he leaves. But if I walk inside and he pulls away, that means this afternoon, this moment, this … chance will have officially come to an end. Before I know what I’m doing, I rush toward his headlights. He turns the car off, pushes the door open, and steps out.
“You locked out?” he asks. His hand absently rests on my waist in an unbearably intimate way. I wrap my arms around him and pull him in tight. Without a word, he envelops me. In that moment, I know he feels it too. Both of us are trying to stave off the fear that we’ll go back to being the people we really are, in the world as it really is, when we wake up tomorrow morning.
I have no idea how long we stand there, but our disentanglement comes in aching waves, as if we’re unable to pull away from each other all at once.