“Well, I don’t hook up to avoid other kinds of intimacy… not really,” he countered. “Not all the time. And it’s hard to separate that, too. I mean, it’s very different. But I admit that I do tend to seek out the possibilities, everywhere I go. And that it can be hurtful to the person I’m currently with.”
They were quiet for a few seconds, then Zach touched her arm. “Just, listen. What if we make a pact. For the rest of this trip, you don’t pick up the camera once. And I won’t flirt or hook up with anyone. We’ll just try to… hang out. Both of us. Focus on friendship without distractions. What do you think?”
“But I have to pick up the camera,” she argued immediately. “I have to go back to Llama Lady for more information! I have so many more pictures I need to get.”
“But what additional pictures could you possibly get?” he said, his voice urgent. “You already got it all! Harold in the store, Harold hugging her. Harold on his couch. Harold eating the other guest’s handbag. I mean, what on Earth could top what you have? Don’t you already have like a million pictures of Harold? Are you even going to use one of them in the article?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know what I’ll use. But I want to have every possibility covered. What if something amazing happens and I don’t have the camera to capture it?”
“But what if you didn’t bring it at all, and you just talked to her? And tried to write down her ideas and built a picture with words?”
“Do you realize how weird that sounds?” She crossed her arms. “You hired me specifically to take pictures for you. Lots and lots of pictures. And you’re paying me a huge amount of money for it. So now, to hear you say, while I’m still on the payroll, that I should stop doing my job? It’s confusing at best.”
He threw up his hands. “I know that. I know it! It’s—look, you’ve shown me all the shots. Or maybe not even all of them. Maybe ten percent. And fuck it, I’m happy. I’m delighted. I’m done. Harper, okay? As far as I am concerned, you have more than completed your entire contract. I have every single picture I needed, in multiple versions. I have more than enough! Way more. I’m satisfied.”
“So I’m done. I can put on my bikini and laze around in the pool allll day long and do nothing, and still get paid?” she challenged him, her eyes flashing. “For real?”
“Yeah, Harper. That’s exactly what I want you to do. Show me that you can exist without that camera for three days. Okay? Just three days, until Friday. You think you can do it?” His voice was full of arrogant challenge.
She bit her lip. “Fine. If you really want to pay me to do nothing, I’m down for that. But if I do that, and I’m not saying I will, then you can’t be all God’s gift to the vagina for every cute woman that comes in. No more of the, hey baby, I modeled in my youth and shit.” She frowned at him. “No implying that your penis is longer than Harold’s. No more of, let me touch your pretty ass because you got me a better table, and hey, let’s fuck tonight maybe if I don’t have other plans, but let me lock you in and have you wait for me and I’ll decide if I call you or not.”
“Uh, yeah.” He looked a little red. “That’s fair.”
“Were you going to get together with Luna?”
“Harper, come on,” he countered.
“Well, did you lay the groundwork?”
“Define groundwork.” He crossed his arms.
“Did you exchange numbers, talk about relationship status, and discuss what time she gets off. Pun intended.”
“Perhaps,” he acknowledged, “some of that might have occurred.”
“And you obviously told her that I wasn’t a date, because you didn’t want to come across as a total dick.”
“You weren’t my date,” he said quickly. “I mean, not in a romantic sense.”
“I know.” She sighed. “But see? Everywhere we go, you meet someone. A woman. It’s just… ugh. All the time.”
“But they don’t all turn into liaisons,” he argued. “In fact, tonight wasn’t going to happen with her because I… well, it just wasn’t. In fact, if you want to know, I haven’t—ah. But I guess I liked the option.” He spoke slowly. “If you must know, it feels good to know that someone is interested. That if I don’t want to be alone one night, I don’t have to be. It doesn’t mean that I sleep with everyone I talk to, though. Okay?”
She nodded. “Okay. I understand that.”
“I really want you to get what I’m saying, though.” He rubbed his face. “I like sex, okay, I do. But the flirting isn’t about that entirely. You were right. I like to lock people in as potentials, because that way I feel… not so lonely. Or to know that I’ve still got it, whatever it is, the thing that makes me appealing to people. I want to feel that I haven’t lost my ability to, I guess, connect. Because someday, when I meet that perfect person… not that I believe in a perfect person. But if I ever did, I’d want to be—The thing is, although I may not be looking for love, I sometimes just need someone. Jesus. That makes me sound like a fucking loser.”
“No, it doesn’t.” She felt a sudden sympathy. “I think it makes you sound human.”
“So I guess I wouldn’t mind trying not to stockpile for a while.” He laughed. “If you can keep your hands off your camera.”
“Okay. But I’m bringing the camera in the car,” she announced. “If I go places. I just won’t use it, but it’s only fair that it gets to be close to me. After all, you’re bringing your tool along for the ride, even if you won’t be whipping it out.”
He laughed out loud. “Harper. Seriously?”
“So, do we have a deal?”
He stuck out his hand.
“I can’t believe we’re actually doing this. This is insane.” But she took his hand. “Fine. No unnecessary pictures and no hookups. For the rest of the trip.”
“Okay. No pictures and no unnecessary hookups.”
“No! You’re already cheating!” She widened her eyes and punched his arm. “Zach, come on.”
“I never cheat,” he said immediately, his eyes darkening.
“Okay, fine. But if you cheat and hook up even once, I get to take pictures again, as many as I want. If you even act like you’re going to hook up! If you even get a number.”
“And if you cheat and take pictures, I get to hook up, with anyone I want,” he countered. “Or if you even pick up the camera and point it at somebody, I get at least a kiss. Although, like I pointed out before, and I’d like to clarify again for the record: I do not hook up nearly as often as you seem to think I do. I’m just saying that I get the option, if you cheat. Okay?”
“Fine, I suppose. Maybe we should set a penalty price.” She grinned at him.
“You can make the penalty a hundred thousand dollars if you want. I’m golden.” He grinned back.
“We’ll see.” She gave him a smug look. “Don’t get too cocky there.”
“That’s the point, right? I’m not supposed to get cocky. Pun intended.”
“Oh my God. You’re going to drive me insane.” She rolled her eyes.
“See? All this chitting and chatting. I feel myself getting deeper into the joys of pure friendship by the second.”
“As long as you don’t try to store your newfound depth in anyone else’s deep end,” she said. “Pun intended.”
He laughed. “Good night, Harper.”
“You, too.”
CHAPTER 16
“ Plans today?” Zach eyed her camera case. “To cheat, perhaps, already, only what—one hour into our bargain?”
“Don’t give me that look. I’m just keeping the camera clean, Zach. It doesn’t mean I’m taking a picture. Today, I’m going to see Elle again, to ask a few more questions about Harold. For the article.”
“Aha.”
“I need to find out more about what she does. I’m completely intrigued by her. And God, did you see how fast her cutesie stuff sold when the Japanese tourists came through? They love her!”
“You know that cuteness is a real thing in Japan
, right?”
“What?” Harper pulled the lens cap out of her bag and snapped it onto the lens. “Oh, yeah. Yes. The whole kawaii phenomenon. Yup.”
“It’s more than a phenomenon, though. It’s a part of the Japanese cultural identity right now. If you Google Kawaii Japan, you’ll see that it pervades every walk of life. You’ll see grown men and women bowing to their one-day Hello Kitty mascot manager at the start of a shift at the department store. You’ll see grown women—who have serious professional jobs—dressed in the cutest Lolita-meets-Disney-meets-Steampunk outfits you’ve ever seen, on the time off. You’ll find Hello Kitty toilets and adorable robots. It’s everywhere. Not like in the US, where cuteness is prized by teens and grown women nostalgic for their own teenage years.”
“It does seem very pervasive. I wonder why?”
“Well, I read an article recently; one scientist thinks there might be a benefit to productivity, did you know that?”
“How’s that?” Harper carefully stowed the camera into the case. “Bye, baby.” She gave the machine a mournful look as she attached the lid, and blew it a kiss. “I’ll miss you.”
Zach rolled his eyes and snorted, then said, “They found that students improved their performance of fine-motor-dexterity tasks and nonvisual searches after viewing images of cute puppies and kittens. They advocated putting cute things into workplaces to enhance general productivity. So maybe Japanese society is ahead of the game with their focus on kawaii.”
“So you need to buy a ton of little unicorns and squishy balls and put them all over your office.” She laughed, then frowned. “But they don’t just focus on kawaii, though. That’s new, right? Just the past few decades?”
He nodded, so she continued. “Japan’s known for finding beauty in simplicity and imperfection, too. The haiku—the perfectly spare poem. Calligraphy—the perfect lines, no more, no less. Wabi-sabi. Kintsukuroi, the way they fix broken pottery with veins of gold. That’s the diametric opposite of cute. Don’t you think it’s odd that a nation that is the world model for spare, austere beauty, for wasting nothing, for the delicacy of geishas and tea ceremonies, also produces a billion Pikachus and has them dance in throngs at professional events? It’s like they have these two diametric opposites, and they love them both.”
Zach nodded. “Maybe the deep cultural appreciation for art and beauty is what allows them to also cherish the surface silliness of cute things. I sometimes wonder if the post-war attitude has something to do with it, too.”
“You mean the need to lose yourself in something cute because your soul is dead and black after the horror of a bomb exploded in your city? Not an individual soul. I mean the soul of the entire country, so to speak. Maybe they need the levity as a population to stay sane.”
He grimaced. “Maybe. I don’t know. Germany certainly had cultural changes and anxieties after the war.”
“Well, isn’t it true that in Japan, conformity is prized as you get older, and it’s important to sometimes subvert your personal desires for the good of a company or a family or your boss?”
“It’s been said, yes.”
“Maybe people cling to cute things, cherish them, really, because they represent the freedom of youth. The ability to be yourself, do what you want. The need not to conform, to be forced into a pattern that’s prepared for you. Or that you prepared for yourself, based on what you think you need to do to be successful in your world.”
“That’s interesting. You should visit Japan someday. You’ve never been, right?”
She shook her head, no.
“I’d like to see it with you.” He started, as if surprised at his own words, and bit his lip. Then he continued, “I think you’d love seeing it. It would be fun to hear your ideas.”
“Well, maybe next time we take a trip to Hawaii, we’ll accidentally crash land in Tokyo. I look forward to that day.” She shuddered.
“That would be one confused pilot,” Zach laughed, putting a hand on her arm.
“Or fast.”
Later, she drove back to Not Your Mama’s Llama and found Elle behind the counter, Harold-less this time.
“Hi!” She came in with two cups of coffee and a bag of carrots. “I stopped at the grocery store for treats. I Googled it and they said llamas like these, so… I gambled.”
Elle examined the offerings. “Are they organic?”
“Ah, no.”
“I usually feed him organic snacks.”
“I see.” Harper blinked.
“But I’ll make an exception.” Elle smiled and pulled the plastic bag closer. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. You said I could come back, so here I am. I wanted to just… ask a few more questions about your shop.”
“Okay.”
“So, I can ask?”
Elle nodded.
“Okay! So what made you decide, hey, I need to open a store dedicated to llamas. What was it that made you pull the trigger?”
Elle thought. “Well, I used to work in a different industry entirely. I did eighty-hour weeks and still felt like I was treading water, not getting anywhere. It wasn’t what I loved to do, although it paid satisfactorily, even well. And as a woman in the computer science industry, I felt like I was doing a service. But it felt stale.”
“You were in comp sci?”
“Programming, yes.” Elle swallowed a sip of coffee. “Oh, this is good. Programming, because it was a good job, but all my life I’d been interested in things like theater and psychology. I could have gone back to school, I suppose, but I didn’t want to. So I started researching other ideas. And I met Maroki, who told me about how the businesses on his tour stops do really well. And it all came together. I had another llama back then, Esther. She was a gift from my ex. A parting gift.”
“That’s an unusual parting gift.”
“He was an unusual man.” Elle’s face softened. “At first, the store was just an Arizona-themed gift shop and it did well catching tourists on the way back from the casino. And as I learned what people like, I started refining my merch. One day, people started asking about Esther, and whether they could see her house—and that’s how the whole llama idea was born. It turns out I got to combine my love of acting and my interest in psychology to create a whole new persona. Eventually I developed my llama empire. And here I am today.” She waved her hand. “There you have it.”
Harper sighed. “I wish I could do that.”
“Why, are you not happy with your career?”
“No, I am! I love my career. I just wish—I don’t know. That I had the courage to do crazy and wild things just because I’m tired of my own status quo.”
“Why can’t you?” Elle’s voice was surprised. “Nothing stopping you.”
“I don’t know. I don’t even know what I want to do. Just that I want that ability.”
“Everyone has the ability. Not everyone takes advantage of it.”
“Maybe.” Harper sipped her coffee. “But that first moment. That time when you first decided, hell, I’m going to quit my job and sell llama stuff. How did that feel?”
Elle considered this. “It was terrifying. And freeing. You know, I’d have had a find life if I stayed. Trying the exciting path meant a big risk. It might be a rush and it might end in disaster. But I figured that I still had my old skills, those weren’t going away. I could find a job somewhere in the world in CS again, if I needed to. So I just jumped.”
“Just like that.”
“Sort of. The decision was a jump. Then the change itself, my life morphing from computer science engineer into this, was a long slow progression. And that part wasn’t scary at all, but fun. It was just that initial trigger pull that was the scary thing.”
“So you recommend that to others? Making a jump?”
“I’m not a life coach, Harper.” Elle sounded irritable. “I can’t divine the right choice for everyone. In fact, in many cases, I’d say don’t jump, if the risk is too big. Say, if you need your health coverage f
rom work. Or if you’re jumping from a nice six-figure income to living in a cardboard box in the ocean. You have to be sensible about it, too, you know.”
“No, of course. This part is off the record. Not for the article. Like say, I wanted to try something crazy. It would probably be a good idea?”
“Only you know that.”
“Yeah.” Harper fiddled with her coffee. “So… I was talking to my, to Zach, you know, that guy from the other day. The one who commented on Harold’s, you know. That guy.”
“Uh huh.” Elle examined Harper’s face. “I remember him.”
“We were talking about Japan and the kawaii phenomenon. Do you think you’d be in trouble financially if Maroki ever decided to take you off his tour stop?”
“Off the record?”
“Yes, okay.”
“I pay Maroki handsomely to keep me on his tour route.”
“Like a bribe?”
“Absolutely not.” Elle’s voice was disapproving. “Harper, that would be unethical. I’m talking more about two esteemed colleagues exchanging gifts. Maroki respects me and thinks I have something valuable to offer to his clients, because they rave about me, so he brings them here on the way back from the casino trip. I, in turn, value and respect Maroki’s kind gesture, and I offer him a gift of money in return.”
“Oh, yes, that’s quite different.” Harper smiled.
Elle laughed. “I cater to American tourists, too. When he’s not doing the Happy Lucky tours, Maroki does the See AZ Native Style tours, and his name is Rodrigo on those days. It turns out that Americans love to buy souvenirs and trinkets, especially if they’re marketed the right way with the right amount of quirk. That’s what I provide, in my persona and my ambience.” She waved a hand around. “They’re paying for the experience, for the stories they’ll tell when they show their five hundred cell phone snapshots to their friends about their weird bitchy lady and her llama best friend. It’s a goldmine, Harper. And it’s a hell of a lot of fun. I still haven’t tired of it, and I’m sixty-seven next month.”
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