She-Ra
July 11, 1996
Two weeks after I started working at CommPlanet again, Cal left me a message, asking me to go to San Diego Comix-Fest to take notes on a friend’s presentation. “Sorry to ask because, I won’t lie, it’ll be a snooze.” It sounded like he was outside.
I told Stephen and he said, “Whatever.” Distracted, half-hidden behind the pink tent of the Financial Times. “Record your mileage.”
The convention center was overflowing with people dressed as She-Ra and Batman and a bunch of characters I didn’t recognize, and some boring people—the money people, I guess—who were dressed in suits or trim dresses like I was.
The presentation was called “Advertising Opportunities in Massive Multiplayer Game Platforms.”
Cal’s friend hadn’t exactly packed them in. And we didn’t have any of the costume wearers. I took a seat four rows back and diligently took notes.
Half an hour into the presentation, someone picked my jacket up from the seat next to me. I whispered a protest and then saw who it was. Not a stranger in a costume or a suit.
Him, in a white button-down with the sleeves rolled up and elegantly wrinkled navy linen shorts. Smiling at me.
I tried to concentrate on the presentation. And my breathing.
Ten minutes later, he passed me a note on the back of a Comix-Fest map.
Guess I dragged you to the worst presentation in the building.
I smiled, looked back at the podium. There was no earthly reason for him to be there.
I scribbled illegible notes on lightweight plugins and player portability.
When I wanted to write, What are you doing here? What are you doing here? What are you doing here?
Five minutes later, he handed me the paper again. He’d made a grid of dots in blue pen.
It was the beginning of a game. Dots and Boxes. You were supposed to take turns connecting two dots, and every time you completed a square, you put your name inside. The goal was to get the most squares.
I connected two dots and passed him the paper. He drew his line and passed it back to me. We looked at his friend droning on, and tried not to draw attention, like we were in school and we’d get in trouble.
I won the first game, and dutifully recorded my miniscule Rebecca inside the box, even though my hand was sweating so much my handwriting was wobbly, and even though my mind was on repeat (what is he doing here what is this what is this well you know exactly what he’s doing here. He’s called your bluff now, Becc).
He won the next game and recorded his Cal in tiny printing. We’d won four squares each when he gently pulled my elbow. “Come on,” he whispered.
As people started lining up behind the mics, full of burning questions about lightweight plugins, we slipped out the back.
“So I guess...you were able to come down after all,” I said in the hallway.
“Yeah. Change of plans.”
“Should you wait to say hi to your friend?”
“I should.” He looked at me evenly. “What I shouldn’t do is ask you to eat lunch on the beach with me. Play hooky for an hour.”
We spread a windbreaker from his car on the sand near the amusement park in Mission Beach. Far enough from Belmont Park that the boardwalk and roller coaster noises didn’t drown out the surf, but close enough that we could hear the people screaming on the PenduLator, a ride that swung back and forth like a giant metronome, and see the cars on the Giant Dipper coaster as they creaked up to the peak. I loved that pause right at the top, before the plummet.
The windbreaker we sat on said Ironman SuperFrog 1990 on the pocket.
“What’s a SuperFrog?” I asked.
“A race I had no business entering. I did it on a dare, but I was completely unprepared. Nearly drowned and blew out my ACL on the run.” He bent his right leg to show me his knee.
I toyed with the plastic wrap on my sandwich from the conference center, staring down at the four pale pink dots around his kneecap. Chopstick surgery, they called it.
I wondered if the scarred parts felt the same as the surrounding skin.
He unwrapped his sandwich and took a big bite, swallowing politely before speaking. “So CommPlanet... It’s either turned you on to an internet career or soured you on it for good.”
“Yes.”
He laughed. “A wonderfully clever dodge. So, still stuck on the dead trees?”
“I wish I could’ve bought the Courier. Is that nuts?”
“I wouldn’t have advised it from an investment standpoint.”
“Not that I’m not grateful for the money. And it feels good to have people expecting me, someplace to go every day besides the movies or the beach.”
“She says from the sand.”
“It wasn’t my idea.”
He grinned, stared out at the water. “I am a degenerate. But here’s a secret. Your tidy orange cubicle makes this...” he waved his sandwich at the supine bodies, the wet heads bobbing in the waves “...possible. One can’t exist without the other.”
“Are you saying work is only ever...a place we escape? It only exists so we can enjoy our free time?”
“Precisely. What? You don’t agree.”
“I hope it’s not true. It can’t be true. Not if you find work you love.”
“Remarkably uncynical of you.”
The Giant Dipper was near the top, under the flags, on its final clicking ascent, and we craned our necks to watch it. Riders would be holding their breath, closing their eyes. They screamed as it whooshed down the white track, pivoting, swooping out of view.
“That’s one of the original wooden coasters,” I said.
“How reassuring.”
“They’re solid. Better than those rusty carnival rides. Have you ever seen the crews fit one of those together? I think they leave parts behind in each town. And at the Orange County Fair the operators are always methed out.”
“Stop.” He pretended to shudder. “I have a slight coaster phobia.”
“I thought you did those crazy triathlons for people who’re bored with regular triathlons?”
“Ah, but then I’m in control,” he said. “It’s funny. You never struck me as the roller-coaster type. More...”
“The watching-them-from-a-distance type?”
“Hmm.”
“I guess I am. I have been.”
I set my sandwich aside, untouched, and ran my hands in the sand, sifting it through my fingers, forming a little hill. He reached down, too, his fingers occasionally brushing against mine as we dug and scooped, playing in the silky pile.
“People resist all our attempts to make them predictable,” he said.
I looked up, but he was staring off at the roller coaster, smiling.
When he smiled, there was a little sadness in his eyes, a flicker I could only see up close. Without that I might have fled. But it felt like honesty and drew me closer.
As I headed home on PCH, I wrote a mental list:
He’s too old.
He smiles too much.
He’d lose interest the second you slept with him.
And another reason, of course. The one that was so big, stretching in every direction, it was like the infinite surface on which all of the others were only scribbles:
You can’t do this to Eric.
I studied my reflection in the rearview mirror. My eyes were lit from the side, strangely shadowed from the sunset. Today we hadn’t done any more than touch hands under hot sand. We hadn’t even kissed. But the thrill of the brief, hidden contact and what it promised had produced a look on my face that I’d never seen before. Equal parts excitement and disbelief.
You should look surprised.
You shouldn’t believe it.
Because it’s wrong.
But at the first stoplight I examined the girl in the rearview mirror again. And burst out laughing at our shared secret.