Liam is finishing the last bite of his Quarter Pounder when they hit traffic, just south of the 405. He pumps, then jabs the brakes, then comes to rest on them; sighs loudly. He looks over towards his despondent escortee–she’s rolled up, a pathetic little polyester pillbug. Got to be sweltering. He turns up the cold.
Tap. Tap tap. The river of glistening steel bugs is flowing into Seattle at school zone-speed. He’s arpeggioing his fingers over the wheel, drumming rhythmically with his left foot and clicking occasionally in time. Looks over to Apryl Lindon again. Sighs.
He pushes one side of his cheek out with the tip of his tongue, pauses as if in thought, hesitates; then in one smooth motion, hits the power window switch for about 700 milliseconds while pulling a cigarette pack out from inside his coat, grabs the wheel with his left hand, flicks the carton open, tosses a dart directly between his front teeth, swaps the pack to the left hand and pushes the lighter in. A long exhale, then quick glances between the car ahead and the depressed, glowing lighter, waiting for the pop.
Apryl has been bug-eyeing through the ground and some kilometers away, hunched, wrists still mostly wrapped up in that handbag–more or less in the Bad Place. She hasn’t touched that Coke, Liam notices.
Pop.
“Tshank fuch,” as he holds the orange steel coils up to mate with the tip of the Marlboro. Apryl suddenly shows signs of life. She swivels, sméagolesque, hungrily glaring at him–nope, at the cig—then looks back between her legs. Hesitates. Then in one rough motion throws her back against the passenger seat and rips open her handbag by its luxurious, wide zipper; uses chopsticks made of second and third fingers to withdraw an extra long white and gold pack. She sighs softly and bites out one of eighteen remaining Lights 100s. She hits the power window button for a second and a half.
“Hey, hey, maybe you wanna take that thing off? …I mean the dress-thing. Can’t have you lighting us on fire; this is the Department’s car.” He tries at a smile and ends up producing a furrowed brow and tight lips.
“Uh, sorry.” She begins unzipping, unrolling, shimmying out of the doctoral regalia. “Can you…?”
“Yeah,” he mutters, eyes on the road and puffing away, taking the unlit one in his right hand. “Didn’t know you ɕmoke.”
After fifteen seconds of struggle, she’s thrown the lump of cloth into the back seat, pulled the lighter back out from where it’s been trying its best to get warm again, and snatched her long, low tar cigarette of choice back from the cop. She melts a little, reholsters the lighter, and gazes out the window. Silence befalls them.
“Noo, I don’t smoke.” Apryl drapes over Stella’s shoulder like a warm cheese stick, squinting through tight black curls at the cigarette machine.
They’ve been seeing each other every weekend for months now, Apryl hauling herself west in the ‘76 Plymouth as soon as seminars and lectures have finished, back seat laden with documents. Steel City is approaching full swamp-mode; Eurythmics’ second album is finally leaking outside of lesbian circles and into American radio sets. The couple spend their time lounging in Stella’s brick flophouse off of Webster, Apryl, ten hours a day, starting to perform her own rough work fitting orbital period decay to Einstein’s theories, Stella mixing complicated salads, reading pulp novels, and distracting her girlfriend whenever and wherever possible. At night, they return, religiously, to the hidden gem all PGH wimmin know and love: Shawn’s 1209.
“Yea babe but, every time you get four drinks deep, you ask for mine anyway. I’ll buy them for you.”
“No no no, I have the money—”
“I know, I know, just let me get it for you, okay? Here, I’ll get you lights.”
“Oohkaythankfs…”, Apryl concedes. “Wait. Gimme the long ones. Long ‘n’ sexy…”
Stella twists her neck away in order to focus, face-to-face, with the drunk creature on her shoulder. “Just like you?” She puts in the last quarter and pulls. K-lunk.
“Oh, and you have got to see the mountains there, I mean, they are”–holds out her hands towards Stella with Broadway-calibre drama–“right there. It’s called Flatirons; they came from Fountain Formation; pushed up dozensamillionsa years ago and they’re just there, right next to the city. It’s like you could just, pat them (motions with one palm), you know?
“And the biking, it’s so much easier to get around there without a car; the air is better, I mean no offense but just clean, you know? And dry? And there’s this Tibetan place…”
“We have Tibetan food in Pittsburgh. Also don’tcha wanna to talk about what we’re doing tomorrow, like, here?” She swills the remaining Kronenbourg around in its green bottle, pacing slowly about their hotel room. It’s approaching 2200, and the golden, Occitanian summer sunset has passed its peak, deepening orange rays lighting up Stella’s face over the Grand Balconies they have here.
Apryl is undeterred. “But, but you will check it out, won’t you?” She’s got on some uncharacteristically heavy-heeled loafers, purchased at Bocage today, flopping them right and left, making a very rare sort of Apryl Lindon face. A face that only worked on her father, and only then when performed seated.
“I mean you haven’t chosen Boulder yet, right? You said postdoc was like, optional.”
“Well, they have to accept me first.”
(Darkly)–“Oh, they’ll accept you alright.”
Apryl’s face falls; she can no longer power over her partner’s negativity. She clomps up from the bed, towering over Stella by almost five inches, and grasps her gently by the biceps. “You’re not open to it at all?”
Stella looks down and aside, penitently. “I like Seattle. I’m not… against Colorado, but—I can’t leave my family here, you know that. I’m lucky they haven’t disowned me already. And getting a new job, and the whole scene here…”
“We can just fly back! It’s fine. You can fly back. I can get you a ticket any time, you know that.” Smiling hopefully. “You don’t have to worry about a job, my love,”–rubbing her arms vigorously, looking down out of great big Tyndall blue eyes–“We’ll figure it out as we go! Denver’s like, half an hour away; and I’ll be biking, I mean you can literally have the Plymouth at that point—”
“I don’t want to be your fucking charity case!” She rips away from Apryl’s arms and walks towards the window while swigging the last of the lager. Apryl looks at her hands.
“I’m, I’m sorry, that’s–I didn’t mean—”
“Just because you grew up rich and can’t—goddamn imagine how humiliating it is.”
Still staring into her palms, crying very softly. “But—we take care of each other, right? We can do anything together. I never would have made it through these last five years without you.”
Stella squints to search Apryl’s tearful eyes for something, something she isn’t quite finding. She turns back to darkening Toulouse and hangs her head, considering another beer.
Apryl sits down, slowly, cross-legged, and cries a little bit louder.
Cuprate: So, did you break up after that?
Lindon: No, honestly the rest of the trip was really nice after that. She did start making me split the tab, though. The next couple months… You know, nothing spectacular. We just kind of drifted apart. I was so busy that last year, I hardly made it back to Shawn’s. I don’t know [smiling and shaking her head slowly], maybe it was just my ah, obsession that kept me driving two hours each way in the first place. I had a career to start and she didn’t try to hold me back.
Cuprate: Sounds like the opposite, even. Maybe?
Lindon: Um, did she push me away? I think she had realized by that point that I just wasn’t the one. I was going to bring it up, on the way back, I don’t know—I thought Paris would be a nice place to buy engagement rings, even though it wouldn’t mean anything legally–back then, you know. But ah… It’s a good thing I didn’t mention that. I just assumed that the only thing that could possibly hold her back was money. [self-critically] Of course I assumed that.
Cuprate: I see. Dr. Lindon, originally—you were going to play a fairly different role in this story. And, as a result of that shift–right around when the title SOLA was dropped, I think–your partner, unnamed at the time, went from the second main character, helping Ms. Esparse in her search for you, to ah, someone we felt the need to avoid killing off. If that makes sense.
Lindon: Hah, well I guess I have to thank you for that. Otherwise I would have barely showed up. Of course, my love story is a bit tragic regardless.
Cuprate: I think it is for just about everyone. Um, what I wanted to ask, though, is whether you’d like more time spent during that backstory.
Lindon: Between me and Stella?
Cuprate: Yes. There isn’t any more plot reason to spend time flashing back to Pittsburgh in the 80s–it was a stepping stone for you. But I wanted to give the opportunity here to examine that one more time. Is that part of your story finished? And, if so, could you give the readers a bit of finality with which to say goodbye to Stella? She was always kind of caught between being a secondary and tertiary character. Oh–and, if not that part of your life, um, what else might we flash back to? [twirls hands in a newscastery kind of way]
Lindon: Well, okay, to answer your first question–no, I’m really over it all. I was younger then; I keep to myself these days anyway. Sure it’s a little bit of heartbreak I’ll always take with me, but it’s no longer a defining characteristic. What I do want to talk about, though, is Boulder. Gosh, I loved that place. Just one year of postdoc at JILA, but I could have stayed forever if they would have kept me. [laughs]
Cuprate: Oh I did–I did not have such a good time there, personally. It was different by the twenty-twenties, though. Hypernormalised technopolistic panopticon state, running on 14nm MOSFETs and some bastard TCP/IP child.
Lindon: Oh you mean the “WWW project”? That’s such a shame to hear it turned dystopic; I remember reading about that on alt.hypertext. Well, anyhow, if you could fit in a part of a Boulder chapter there, that would be really nice. I was ah, really living my best back then, and didn’t even realise it.
Cuprate: Naturally! The book’s gonna be like three hundred thousand words; we’ve got time.
Lindon: Great, well. I think Stella is just doing the same as ever, you know? Dockworking, buying drinks for femmes. I didn’t realize, back then, how you could be so tied to a job like that, in a good way. To have people really depending on you, the Longshoremen–those were the only men I ever saw her smile at. I was, [slaps desk] I was a fool to ever try to take her away from that.
“See, what did I tell you? Those guys are great—”
He leans forward with that adventuresome, boyish face many men take on while rounding a corner or highway offramp–in this case, exit 16 onto provincial highway 91.
“And,”–swerving as he turns to grab a long white and gold box from the back seat, grinning at Apryl–“I had ‘em grab a carton of yours too! Duty free, man; it’s the only way to go.” A genuine smile; this cop is actually trying to be nice to me.
Apryl emerges from her reverie, a sprinkle of serotonin dusting her heart. She smiles back and takes a sip of the now-watery Diet Coke, then another as she realises how dehydrated she is, then another–long, slow, and deep—and doesn’t bother telling him she smokes about three Lights a week, total, and only then when the world is crashing down on her. So in other words, maybe this carton will be a boon in the coming months. Secret genius fed.
“This is why it pays to befriend those guys. Did you see that line? Would have been another hour and a half. I mean, I can swing my weight around pretty much any precinct outside NOVA or D.C., but this is their territory, gotta uh, suce la bite–ya know? Metaphorically.”
“I never really learned French, to be honest.”
“They don’t teach it to you up here?”
(shrugs)
“Come to think of it, I didn’t learn jack shit for Spanish in high school.”
“Anyway, Lindon–Dr. Lindon, my job [making a knife hand in air, cutting through metaphorical bullshit] is to protect you. I dunno whether you’re mad at me for yanking you away from the graduation party, or you’re just sick of me by this point, umm, or whatever’s happening up at Garibaldi…”
“It’s the third option, Agent Macfield,”–suddenly the car hits a small bump, and they’re on the Fraser Bridge–“So as you know, that’s about all either of us can say on the matter.”
“Right, well, as I said. You’re absolutely safe in there. We’ve got Marines inside the perimeter, RCMP outside, so, you know, I’m sure it’s pretty stressful, whatever you guys are working on, but–well it’s not like you’re working against time to defeat Hitler, right?”
Apryl gazes out the window towards Surrey. “Thank you for everything you’ve done so far. I really mean it.”
“Come on, lady, you don’t think they’re actually gonna take you out back? Those are all good men I trained with; a few women in there too, you know. A job like this, maybe you don’t get to quit whenever you want, but just keep your nose clean, do your time; you’ll be out in no time and back to, uh, teaching about the planets and all.”
She gives him a genuine smile, hiding the sad edge just long enough for him to miss it, and then her gut makes an aggressive rumbling.
“See!”, pointing directly at her abdomen, “I told you to get a cheeseburger. I was just thinking of stopping at this Chinese place up on Boundary anyway.” He joyously lights another Red, and gives her a toothy grin.
Apryl almost laughs.