The Scenic Route

by Devan Sipher

  Thanks to Splurge.com, she was able to splurge a lot these days. It had been less than six months since the official launch, and Amazon had already offered to buy them out. On the one hand, it seemed silly for Amazon to buy a company that in many ways did the same thing Amazon did but on a much smaller scale. On the other hand, Naomi felt that what Splurge really offered, more than the ease of its software interface, was the strength of its human interface. Human beings went to each of the locations and hand-selected local quality products. It was an online company that was very much about the offline experience, and Naomi was rather proud of that.

  Yes, proud—and happy to accept Amazon’s offer. Steffi, however, wanted to hold out for an even bigger payday, and it was her baby. But Naomi thought there was more than enough money on the table. How many times over does someone need to be a multimillionaire? Stupid question to ask while driving around Los Altos Hills, where you could easily spend a million dollars on a generic colonial house that would go for a few hundred thousand in Miami (and less in the Midwest).

  But Dov wasn’t going for a generic colonial. He wanted to stand out among the Silicon Valley arrivistes in a way that reflected what he had accomplished at a young age and, more important, what his plans were for the future. She didn’t technically remember agreeing to move in with Dov, let alone buy a house together in Northern California, but it had all happened very fast. And her life in New York had sort of collapsed in on itself.

  What should have been one of the best nights of her life had turned out to be one of the worst. She had spent the launch party searching for Austin, whom she’d never found. She’d come to the conclusion that the text she received from him was most likely intended for someone else. Because he never texted again. Or at least not before midnight, because that was the last time Naomi could remember seeing her phone. They tell you all the great things about backing up in the cloud. But what they leave out is that what can be put in the cloud can be taken out of the cloud. Whoever stole her phone deleted all the data from the cloud. So in a very interconnected world, Naomi was no longer connected to anyone. No e-mail addresses or snail mail addresses. No birthdays or business contacts. She didn’t even have her brother’s phone number memorized. She wondered if five-year-old children today still memorized their home phone numbers or if they all carried cell phones. Because Naomi was a lot more than five, and she had just taken for granted that she would always have all her contact information available at the push of a button. But now everything was lost. And she had no idea where to find it.

  And that was aside from the not so minor detail that the thief had also opened up several credit card accounts in her name, thanks to all that useful data on the phone. So, yes, when Dov said he wanted to move to Silicon Valley to be closer to some of his clients, it was tempting to use his invitation to join him as an excuse to run away from the mess of credit reports and police reports that her life had become. And winter in Northern California beat winter in New York by a long shot.

  On her fourth try, she found the turnoff for Sherlock Court. The address Dov had given her naturally had a private gate. She buzzed, and the gate opened, revealing a private road that seemed to wind around the hilly landscape for a mile before depositing her in front of a gargantuan three-story chateau on a promontory overlooking acres of forest. Dov was waiting for her by the six-car garage. Standing beside him was a busty twentysomething with spectacular legs and unnaturally blond hair. Her looks and attire seemed to scream out “real estate agent” or “porn star.” Naturally, she was drooling over Dov. That was what Naomi couldn’t figure out. Dov could have pretty much any woman he wanted, and he wanted her. With Carlos, she felt like she was always trying to prove that she was good enough. But Dov was the one constantly trying to prove he was good enough for her.

  “What do you think?” he said after kissing her. She chastised herself for taking pleasure in the real estate agent’s envious stare. “It’s like living in fucking Sherlock Forest, right?”

  “It’s Sherwood Forest, Dov, and the house is French.” She hated raining on his parade. But to her, it was just an admittedly pretty and very large McMansion, a rococo Disneyfied version that did sort of look like it belonged in a Robin Hood movie, despite the clearly Gallic-style turrets.

  “It has seventy-five hundred square feet, five bedrooms, and eight baths,” said Heidi, who introduced herself via business card before taking them on a tour.

  “Wow,” Dov said.

  “Dov, what do we need five bedrooms for?” Naomi asked as they climbed the sweeping staircase.

  “You never know,” he said with a wink.

  “There’s also a fitness room, twenty-seat screening room, wine cellar, and safe room,” Heidi said while showing them a colossal dressing room with a bay window. Naomi liked the sound of a safe room. Though she wasn’t sure if “safe” meant it was a secure location or a receptacle for storing cash between merger negotiations. In Silicon Valley, anything was possible.

  “How much are they asking?” Dov asked once they reached the terra-cotta brick deck and cerulean pool.

  “Seven million,” Heidi said, “and I think they’d accept seven point five.”

  Welcome to the upside-down rules of Silicon Valley real estate, where the asking price is the bottom of the bidding. “Dov, that’s a lot of money,” Naomi said.

  “Not for this kind of house on this kind of lot. It’s actually a bit of a steal.” Naomi wasn’t sure she wanted to live in a world where seven and a half million dollars for a house was a steal. But she supposed the bigger issue was that she wasn’t sure she wanted to live in a house with Dov.

  “You don’t like it,” he said, sensing her discomfort. For a self-confident Israeli, he was incredibly intuitive and sensitive.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said.

  “What are you really thinking?”

  “I’m thinking you’re incredibly intuitive.”

  “And sexy,” he said, kissing her again. This time slower and gentler. This was nice, standing in front of a glittering pool on a sunny hilltop with a man who was, indeed, sexy and devoted to making her happy.

  Her phone rang. Which was odd. Because almost no one had her new number. It was Noah.

  “Mom has gone off the deep end,” Noah said without saying hello.

  “What has she done?” Naomi said, walking back and forth to find a spot with better reception.

  “She served Dad with divorce papers.”

  “What? Why? I thought she was spending more time in California.”

  “She was. That’s how she found out he was sleeping with one of her friends.”

  “Well, wasn’t the point for them both to be ‘free’?”

  “Not that free,” Noah said. “Turns out Mom thinks what’s good for the goose is most definitely not good for the gander. Especially when the goose’s dating life is dead in the water.”

  “What do you expect me to do about it?”

  “I expect you to talk her out of it.”

  “When have I ever been able to talk her out of anything?”

  “Well, I have a wedding to plan,” Noah huffed. As if she could forget. Noah and Godwin had set their date as soon as New York legalized same-sex marriage. “I’m not sitting them separately and having an odd number of seats at two tables. I’m not doing it.”

  He also wasn’t inviting cousins (too many). Inviting children (tacky). Having a cake (who eats carbs?). There was actually quite a long list of things Noah wasn’t doing. And at the moment he wasn’t helping.

  “Did you ask Dad to talk to her?”

  “He said that he spent thirty-five years giving her what she wants, and if she wants a divorce she can have that too.”

  Naomi’s head was spinning. “When did you find out about this?”

  “Just now. Aunt Leah served Dad with the summons. I’ve always suspected she didn’t
like him.”

  “What did you say to her?”

  “To Aunt Leah?”

  “To Mom!”

  “I told her she was ruining my wedding. What do you think I said to her?”

  “Naomi, if we want the house, we’re going to have to put a bid down,” Dov said, walking over to her. Then, noticing the stressed look on her face, he asked, “Is something wrong?”

  She didn’t want to buy a house. She didn’t want to drive a car. She didn’t want to keep her business. But most of all, she didn’t want to turn into her parents.

  “I’m just thinking how lucky I am to have found you.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “You’re a hard man to find,” Tad said to Austin.

  Austin still wasn’t entirely sure why this hipster musician had wanted to find him. He had shown up at the clinic without an appointment. But the receptionist had snuck him in at the end of the day because she thought he was cute.

  When Austin entered the examination room, he found him rolling in circles on Austin’s stool. He had a musical instrument case strapped to his back over a vintage peacoat, and Austin noticed a couple of piercings in his ear and the hint of a tattoo over the collar of the coat. Austin tried not to judge. There were parts of the city where everyone seemed to be pierced or tattooed or both. Austin couldn’t understand why so many people would purposely disfigure their bodies. Maybe it was a doctor thing. Or maybe it was a Jewish thing. (The former Hebrew school student in him remembered his rabbi preaching that Jews with tattoos couldn’t be buried in a Jewish cemetery.)

  “Do I know you?” Austin asked. Tad looked to be in his early thirties, pale skin, receding hairline. Austin didn’t recognize Tad’s name, and he couldn’t think of where their paths could have crossed.

  “I knew your sister, Mandy,” Tad said.

  Austin felt his heart clench. He had gotten a lot better in the last eight months. He had to admit that therapy had helped, though he had been thinking he was ready to graduate. Still, one mention of Mandy’s name, and he needed to hold on to the door handle to steady himself.

  “We went out for a while,” Tad said.

  Austin crossed to the examining chair and sat down. “I don’t remember her mentioning you.” He vaguely remembered there was a guy that his mother said was supposed to come for Thanksgiving several years back. Or was it Passover?

  “We kind of had a rocky relationship,” Tad said, looking embarrassed. “Very on and off. Mostly off.”

  “I see,” Austin said. Though he wasn’t sure that he did.

  “But when it was on, it was very on.”

  Austin said a silent prayer that Tad wasn’t about to share intimate details about Mandy. Austin didn’t think he could take it.

  “Mandy’s an amazing person,” Tad said. “Was. She was an amazing person.” It was possible that Tad was tearing up, or there was something in his eye. He blinked a few times, and then he seemed fine. “I just found out about . . . about what happened to her. I’ve been traveling a lot.” He banged on the music case for emphasis. Austin noticed there was an Occupy Wall Street bumper sticker down one side. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry. I’m very, very sorry.”

  “Thank you,” Austin said, feeling his heart beating a little steadier. Tad didn’t seem to have anything more to say, so Austin stood up. “I really appreciate you making the effort to find me. It means a lot.” Part of Austin wanted to grill Tad on everything he knew about Mandy. To fill in holes in Austin’s knowledge. To make her seem present in his life again. But that was precisely what he shouldn’t be trying to do. And if Tad had been a significant person in Mandy’s life, she would have told Austin about him.

  “I have something of hers,” Tad said, placing his case on the floor and opening it. There was a trumpet inside and sheet music. And a large manila envelope. Tad handed the envelope to Austin. It contained some kind of manuscript.

  “It’s her dissertation,” Tad said. “The one she wasn’t allowed to do. She kind of did most of it anyway.”

  “She told me she threw out the dissertation. Destroyed the file.”

  “She did,” Tad said. “But we also kind of lived together for a while.”

  Austin tried not to look as surprised as he felt. “For how long?” he asked.

  “Well, that was also pretty messy,” Tad said. “But maybe a year or two. Like I said, it was on and off, and I was on the road a lot.”

  Austin sat down in the examining chair again. What he liked about an ophthalmic examining chair was that it felt a bit like a throne. You were a foot or so above the ground. And the high back and arms surrounded and supported you. Sometimes after a long day, Austin would sit in the examining chair and turn on the visual acuity chart. He would sit in the dark and stare at the letters, trying to make sense of them.

  “I know one or two years probably doesn’t seem like a huge amount of time,” Tad said, “but I haven’t actually been with anyone else that long. Which probably doesn’t say much for me. But the point is, Mandy was using my computer part of the time. So she did destroy her files, but she didn’t destroy the files on my computer. It means what I have wouldn’t have been her last draft. But it’s really amazing all the same.”

  Austin looked up at him.

  “She used her studies of the chimpanzees as a departure point to riff on the entire nature of human social and sexual interaction. It’s kind of brilliant. She gets into all kinds of sexual role play. Kinky stuff too.” Austin shifted uncomfortably on his throne. “Anyway, the point is she comes up with this whole theory of sexual aggression, and I think her problem was she was in the wrong department. Instead of doing this as an anthropology dissertation, it should have been a psychology dissertation.”

  Austin was impressed. He flipped through the hundreds of pages in his hands. He didn’t know what he was going to do with it, but he was glad to have it. “Thanks, Tad. I really appreciate you making the effort to get this to me.”

  “Well, she talked about you a lot, and I just kind of thought it was something you would want to have,” Tad said. Then he looked down at the ground. “And I also have a bit of an ulterior motive for bringing it to you.”

  Austin was curious what it was. Maybe Tad needed an eye exam. He looked like he could easily be lacking health insurance.

  “This music thing isn’t going quite where I thought it would,” he said.

  Austin had guessed right. The guy needed health care. Or a job. Austin was happy to offer him either. They could always use an extra pair of hands in the clinic. Pay wasn’t good, but it was exciting to be working at the forefront of what was being called a “revolution” in health care, with an emphasis on treating people rather than treating disease. And the truth was Austin wouldn’t mind getting to know Tad a little better.

  “I’ve been on the road a long time. I’ve been all kinds of places. Played in Europe. Played in Kazakhstan. That was pretty wild. But after so many years, I started to feel like I’m always moving, but I’m not getting anywhere. So I applied to grad school, and I’m going to be starting winter term at CUNY.” Austin was a little confused where this was heading. “I’ll be getting my PhD in psychology, and I’d like permission to use Mandy’s dissertation as a basis for my own.”

  The conversation kept getting odder and odder. Austin wasn’t sure what he thought about this new twist. He also wasn’t sure what Mandy would think. And he wasn’t nearly familiar enough with the academic world to know how to protect her interests.

  “I would give her full credit,” Tad said. “It would sort of be like we were coauthors. I’ve already talked to an adviser at CUNY. I explained what happened to Mandy, and I showed him some of her work. I hope you don’t mind.” Austin shook his head. “And he’s totally on board with me doing this. But I first wanted to get your blessing.”

  It was the word “blessing” that made Austi
n feel like he was going to lose it. It was like Tad was asking for Mandy’s hand in marriage, and Austin was once again thrust into playing his father’s role. Part of him resisted being pulled back in that direction. It was a role he had never wanted and never should have had. Yet he missed it. He missed taking care of her, and he was grateful to have one last opportunity.

  “You have my blessing,” he told Tad.

  “Awesome!” Tad pumped his fist.

  “On one condition,” Austin added.

  “I can’t afford to pay for rights.”

  “That’s not the condition,” Austin said with growing fondness. “The condition is that we meet for coffee once a month, and you tell me how the work is going.”

  “Oh, cool,” Tad said. “I was afraid you wanted sex or something.” Austin had a moment of seller’s remorse, but he chose to let it pass. “By the way,” Tad said, “I have a working title I’ve been playing with. I’m thinking of calling it ‘The Evolution of Love.’ Do you think Mandy would like that?”

  Austin tried to keep his voice from cracking. “I think she’d like it very much.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Steffi didn’t like what she was hearing.

  “It’s not as if it’s a surprise,” Naomi said. “We’ve been talking about this for months.”

  “No,” Steffi said. “We’ve never talked about you selling your shares of Splurge.”

  Naomi was throwing this at her out of the blue, and though she claimed she wanted a mutually beneficial solution, it felt more like she was asking Steffi to sign her own death warrant.