by Jade Bitters
Juliet patted the seat next to her. “Now, Amy...why do you look sad? Even if you have bad news, please, do try not to frown, you told me that causes wrinkles. If it’s good news, you shouldn’t be frowning at all, it’s confusing.”
“I’m so hungover...maybe I just need a nap,” said Amy, sipping at the coffee and wincing. It was a terribly hot and humid day, so she needed the cold drink, spiked with Irish cream so it could act as hair of the dog, but she also needed to stay cool in the heat. “I’m so tired. It’s not even noon and I got a workout at the Pyrymyn building.”
“I’d trade bodies with you, if only to get your memories,” said Juliet. “Please, did Romeo have anything to say? Tell me, please.”
“Holy shit, you’re in a hurry!” said Amy with a perfectly manicured frown. “Wait. A. Minute. I’m catching my breath.” She sat down and picked up on of the fashion magazines stocked on the wooden coffee table, using it to fan her face.
“How can you be out of breath...if you are able to talk and tell me that you’re out of breath? The answer should be shorter than your excuse,” said Juliet, growing even more impatient, which was entirely out of character for her. Was this what love had turned her into? Someone who couldn’t wait, even for a few seconds, for news of her beloved? If only the information wasn’t so sensitive that it had to be kept off-line! “Good news? Bad news? That’s all I need to know, and once I know, I’ll shut the fuck up, but please, I need to know Amy: good or bad news?”
“Well...you are a dumbass, Juliet, and you’re never a dumbass, but, you’ve done goofed,” said Amy with a sigh. “You really know how to pick’m, don’t you? Romeo? Really? He’s got a cute face and hoboi, that body, and what a set of gams! Nothing special but uh, nothing I wouldn’t mind in my bed. He’s not the most suave man I’ve ever met, but he’s an actual nice guy, like, truly nice, not tipping fedoras nice. So...do what you want, but stay safe. We’ve had that talk, right? Have you gone for lunch yet?”
“No, not yet,” said Juliet, frowning and growing even more cross. “I knew all that, but what about our...plans? Running away? Did he mention that?”
A sharp pain shot through Amy’s head, a pain as sharp as the dull pain in her feet from all the walking she’d had to do that day. “Ugh, this headache is the worst! I can’t get the brain freeze from the iced coffee to go away. Twenty ounces of coffee, twenty ounces of pain,” said Amy. “My back is killing me too.” Juliet rolled her eyes and pressed on Amy’s back for her, through her soft cardigan. “Higher,” said Amy. “Damn my old falconing injury, and damn you for sending me on all these errands! I might collapse from exhaustion, or worse, the heat stroke! At least I have health insurance.” It was seventy degrees in San Francisco and Amy had willingly chosen to wear cashmere to work.
“Listen, I’m sorry about your headache,” said Juliet, kneading Amy’s back firmly. “But Amy, please, what did Romeo say?”
“Romeo says, as he should given how amazing you are, and how sweet and hardworking and handsome he is, and I believe a genuinely nice guy – wait, where is Miranda?” asked Amy, suddenly remember that she had someone else to account to, other than Juliet...and Miranda had her own tasks for Amy to complete.
“Where is Miranda? In her office, where else? What a weird answer,” said Juliet with a groan. “ ‘Romeo’s such a nice guy, where’s your mom’? Really, Amy?”
“Oh, Jesus, Marry, and Joseph, really, Juliet? Are you really that thirsty?” asked Amy. “Calm your tits. Is this your idea of a hangover cure? From now on, handle your love life yourself.”
“Oh, come off it,” said Juliet. “What did he say?”
“Do you have time for a coffee run today?” asked Amy.
“Of course,” said Juliet, raising an eyebrow. She always had time for coffee.
“Then clean yourself up and head to Wattage, because there’s a boy there looking to run away with you. I see you blushing, aww, how cute, you’re in love,” said Amy. “Or at least excited. You’re always blushing, you know. You’re basically programmed to. Go to the coffee shop, and go the long way. I have to go a long way to get some documents for you two, which you can use to leave Thisbia out of your contract. I’m risking a lot for you, Juliet, but you’ll soon be risking a lot with this boy of yours. Go. I’ll get lunch, and you...go to Wattage.”
“Thank you so much, Amy,” said Juliet, hugging her best friend. “Thank you for everything...and wish me luck, okay?” As Juliet headed out with her backpack, Amy smiled, but she couldn’t find the words to say what she wanted to Juliet.
Chapter Eleven: Act Two, Scene Six
“I really hope you’re making the right decision,” said Lawrence. “I don’t want you to have any regrets.”
“Definitely, definitely,” said Romeo. “But no matter what happens, I’ll be happy with her. Nothing can change that. All she and I have to do is leave this stupid city, together, and then, whatever happens can happen...it’ll be fine as long as I’m with her.”
“Sudden loves have sudden breakups,” warned Lawrence, remembering his own past. “These loves burn up like the fireworks at one of Escalus’s events, and just like those fireworks, when they touch, they make beautiful colors, but it all turns to a muddy ash as it hits the waters of the Bay. It’s...like alcohol. Too much alcohol can taste great but it’ll leave you hungover, like your coworkers this morning. Love each other, but take it slow and it’ll last. Going too fast is as bad as taking things too slowly.”
Juliet walked into Wattage: she’d only come here for quick coffee runs before and she hadn’t remembered seeing Romeo here before. She’d chatted with Lawrence before but never about much, other than giving him news from Thisbia, mostly messages from Amy. Amy and Lawrence were both townies and they had a shared friend group.
“And here’s the lady of the hour,” said Lawrence. “Are you sure someone like her can handle the real world? She’s beautiful, but looks breakable, like a doll, but I guess men always loved pretty dolls.”
“Well hello, barista,” said Juliet, taking a seat. Romeo smiled, not just at her but because of her, because finally, it seemed like things were going to work out for them.
“Romeo will thank you, for the both of us,” said Lawrence.
Juliet laughed. “I’ll thank him doubly too, and then you and I will be even.”
“Juliet...if you’re as excited as I am, and have a way with words, please, just...tell me about the life you imagine us having,” asked Romeo.
“Then it’s too bad that I suck with words,” said Juliet. “I can’t stop thinking about you and I, together, and I don’t have time to think about words, or anything else. My love for you...makes nothing else matter.”
“Come on, you two,” said Lawrence with a small sigh. They really were perfect together: they were really meant to be. He’d miss Romeo but he had to let the little bird fly away. “This shouldn’t take long, but I don’t trust you too alone just yet. I just washed those counters.”
Chapter Twelve: Act Three, Scene One
“Come on, Mark, let’s just go,” said Ben, rolling up his sleeves to the elbow. He’d come to the park between the Pyrymyn pyramid and the Thisbia campus because the interns had decided they wanted to work outside. This wasn’t college: that was the point of working at Pyrymyn, and this “have class outside” attitude belonged back at touchy feely companies, not at a San Francisco institution that stood for something, something serious. “It’s so hot out here, and there’s Thisbia interns everywhere.” He was right: there was a weekly team-building trust exercise going on in the park, something with Sphero robots and rainbow parachutes and laughter, disgusting laughter and glee and happiness from people he was sure didn’t even have a diversified portfolio of stock options. “If we run into them, it’s going to be trouble. You know how I am in the heat: hot-blooded.”
“You’ve got a chip on your shoulder, as usual,” said Mark, looking over and making sure they hadn’t lost their gaggle of interns. “You’re like those g
uys that go to hackathons with premade code and say you won’t use it, but by the time it’s midnight, you use it for no reason at all.”
“Really, bro?” asked Ben, frowning beneath his black framed Wayfarer glasses with jade green lenses.
“Come on, bro, you’re one of the scariest guys in the Bay, in the Valley, in the state,” said Mark. “At least, when you get that way. It doesn’t take a lot to tick you off, and when you get ticked off, you get ticked. Off. And when you want to get pissed, you find something to get pissed over.”
“So?” asked Ben.
“You’re lucky there’s only one of you,” said Mark. “It’s like they say in Highlander: ‘there can only be one’. You don’t need a claymore or a katana to take someone down, though, and you’d fight someone for wearing the same cufflinks as you, or for wearing the wrong ones. You’d fight someone drawing triangles, worried they were stealing Pyrymyn’s blueprints. You’re the only guy I know that’s like that...and you’re so full of it sometimes, but I get it, it’s a survival instinct. Remember last summer, the fight you had in the Haight, because of that Thisbia guy who was trying to help one of your interns into a cab? Remember the argument you had with our suit guy, the guy whose suits you still swear by? Oh, and with that clerk at Ferragamo in Union? And yet you’re the one who tells me to keep it cool!”
“If I fought like you did, I wouldn’t have a life insurance policy,” said Ben, shaking his head and giving Mark his biggest shit-eating grin. He knew how much happiness pissed off his coworker, happiness at his own expense doubly so, and from Ben, triply. “Nobody would cover me.”
“Life insurance?” asked Mark with a laugh. Who did Ben have to leave a life insurance policy to? He was Ben’s closest companion, and if Ben was gone...well, it’d probably be because he’d died with Mark in a fiery plane crash like something out of an action movie, and they’d been idiots and turned to look at the cool explosion. “That’s stupid.”
“Speak of the devil...here’s some of your friends now,” said Ben, turning his head and jerking it towards the direction of the people on the other side of the park. Some execs wearing startup formal (flannels and jeans slightly nicer than the ones the interns wore, but the difference was only noticed by the sartorially minded like Ben) were walking over to them: Ty, Amy’s intern Peter, and some Thisbia interns.
“Whatever, like I care,” said Mark, feeling his blood boiling beneath his skin, and it wasn’t because of the weather.
Ty turned to his group as they walked off the grass and onto the pavement dividing the park down the middle as they headed towards what was informally known as the Pyrymyn side. “Follow my lead, I’ll handle this.” This wasn’t his first rodeo, and he knew how to take out the trash. They approached the bench that the execs were sitting at. “Hello, boys. A word, if you will,” asked Ty.
“A word? Here’s a word. Fuck. Oh, and another, you,” said Mark, pointing at Ty with fingers shaped like guns, as if the words were two heat seeking missiles that would somehow find their way to Ty’s ice cold heart.
“I’ll do that...to you, if I have to,” said Ty, nodding his head and keeping his cool. He knew guys like Mark, guys who would try to start something if they could, and he also knew that with problems like Mark, you had to nip them in the bud, like a flawed rose, because there was no room for failures in this industry. It was too small, and this was his city.
“If you have to? Grow a pair, Ty,” said Mark with a laugh. He never saw Ty at any of the happening parties on the weekends. No, Ty was probably too busy ‘working overtime’ or ‘investing in his job’ or ‘improving himself’ to have fun...or to get into trouble.
“Mark, you associate with Romeo, yes?” asked Ty.
Mark’s eyes narrowed and he felt Ben’s hand on his shoulder. It was the only thing that kept him from launching off of the bench and ripping Ty to pieces. Who was he, referring to Romeo by his first name, or Hell, talking about his intern at all? “Associate? What do we look like, a fucking startup incubator? If we look like freelancers or something to you, you can expect to hear nothing but the sound of your head hitting the pavement,” said Mark, pulling out his phone and waggling it in front of Ty. “You wanna dance? Let’s dance. Associates, bro, really?”
“We’re here, you don’t own this park, get used to it,” said Ben. “Either go back to your little college campus clone, or act like an adult, or go away. You don’t own the park.”
“He’s all talk...so let him talk,” said Mark. “I’m not moving. Not because I’m told to move.”
Romeo walked over to see what the commotion was about. He’d been sitting under a tree, alone, just thinking about the love of his life, that sweet girl he’d soon be far away from San Francisco with, sweet Juliet, when he’d been woken from his daydream by the sounds of the argument.
“Well, well, well, snooping as usual, I see,” said Ty with a smirk. “Here’s the boy of the hour. Romeo, my intern.”
“He’s not your intern,” said Mark. “Unless you need to be taken out like a virus. Then yes, he’s your intern, the one that will ruin you.”
“Romeo, there’s only one word for a guy like you,” said Ty. “And that’s...douchebag.”
“Ty, Ty, Ty, I have a reason to be nice to you that lets me tolerate your jackassery,” said Romeo. “I don’t care what you have to say about me, because I know I’m not a douche. So, laters, I’m outtie. It’s obvious you don’t know me.”
“Oh, you silly, silly intern...your sweet words can’t fix the damage you’ve done, to me or to Thisbia,” said Ty. “Come on. Let’s go. Right here, right now.”
“With all do respect, you have no beef with me,” said Romeo. “At least, you shouldn’t. I don’t hate your company, and you don’t understand why I like it, not yet, not now, but for now, really, just believe me. I mean you no harm.”
Mark pulled Romeo back to the bench. He wasn’t about to let Romeo leave right now, when he had to give him a piece of his mind later for having the audacity to act like that in front of him. Romeo thought he was being polite, but what he was being was a goddamn pussy, and he didn’t mentor any goddamn pussies. “Watching you grovel is disgusting,” said Mark. “And altogether not Pyrymyn worthy behavior. Didn’t Ben and I teach you better than that? I’m gonna end this fool. Now.” He slipped off his blazer. “Ty, you rat bastard, are you all talk or are you going to let your fists speak for you?”
“What do you want?” asked Ty.
“You’re Thisbia’s resident prince, and I want to take you down, take you down hard,” said Mark. “I want to run your sweet, pretty ass into the ground, so are you man enough to take off that stupid hoodie of yours? Hurry up, or I’ll get in the first punch before you can say, ‘cloud-based SaaS products pivoted to serve a modern customer base via location-based gamification ramifications, hosting ARG events streamed in real-time across various multimedia platforms utilizing responsive social-media database APIs with a flat design, with GNU Open License resources forked via a custom Ubuntu distro on a Raspberry Pi’.”
Ty didn’t know whether Mark seriously though that gibberish made sense or not. What was this guy’s damage? “You wanna fucking go, marketing boy?” asked Ty. “Let’s fucking go.” Ty threw down his jacket.
“Mark, stop, it’s not worth it!” said Romeo, trying to pull back his mentor.
Mark shrugged off the intern. This wasn’t just about him anymore. “Come on, Ty. Let’s see what you’ve got.”
Before Mark could hit Ty, Ty hit Mark. He threw a punch at Mark’s face and Mark was pushed back by the force, as if he was stuck in a wind tunnel, but what Ty wasn’t counting on was the Large Hadron Collider, a.k.a. Mark’s strong core, which was so powerful that Ben joked he could crush atoms with it. That core kept him upright so that he could strike Ty right in the shoulders with both his hands, pressing back on his shoulders.
“You wanna go, bro, then let’s go!” said Mark. “But don’t be a little bitch about this shit.”
“Says the guy who said he’d punch me before I got my jacket off, of course. Classic,” said Ty, pushed back into the fight by his own gaggle of interns. All the interns had formed a circle, and they were too busy watching the fight going on to start fights of their own. “I’m about to end you, loser. Do you even code? This is between me and your stupid intern, between my company and yours, but nobody else. Get off my fucking case, and end this or I’ll end you.”
“I’d like to see you try,” said Mark, grabbing Ty by the wrist and pulling him hard. Ty’s enameled pyramid shaped cufflinks shattered as Ty hit the pavement hard.
Ty looked at his bleeding wrist. Mark could harm his body, but his clothing? That was a whole nother can of worms. He looked down at his shirt: there was a grass stain near the gold sheep logo on his left breast. That was it: that’s when Ty snapped, because nobody got away with mussing up his Brooks Brothers.
“Ben, you have to help me stop this, we have to get them apart,” said Romeo. “Guys, really? Please, stop, this isn’t worth it. Ty, Mark, Escalus told our companies that if we fought again, anywhere in the streets of San Francisco, we’d all be blacklisted. Ty, stop! Stop, Mark!”
Romeo pulled Mark away from the fight...but not before Ty was able to get in one last strike. He reached underneath Romeo’s arm and pulled on Mark, hard enough to make Mark trip. Before Mark had time to react, he was falling onto the ground, entirely the wrong way...the way that made a sharp pain run through his legs starting from the center of his ankles and running up his leg, into his calves, a pain that dulled but persisted, like the memories of summer past.
“We need to get out of here, Ty,” said Peter, taking Ty by the arm and following a bunch of the other interns back to the building, leaving Mark with Ben, Romeo, and the Pyrymyn interns.