Once Tod was done yelling at me and he and Beth had driven off, I went back up to my apartment and picked out something on a yellow hanger to change into. There was a grease stain right in the middle of the shirt, darker black on faded black, and I didn’t care. No one would see it but me. My phone rang while I was unbuttoning the third button from the top of the social shirt I was changing out of. It was Daniel.
“So,” I said, “I’ve decided against going to the expo.”
He waited for me to elaborate, and when I didn’t, he said, “All right. Should we do something different?”
“No.”
Another very long pause, in which I couldn’t find the words to explain that between Tod and Ryan and even ManMeat4U, I didn’t feel up to leaving the house. And then he said, “We could co-sherpa Mr. Executive instead. You and me in Adventuretech, hanging out in mnem. If you want.”
“No.” It was nice of him to offer, though.
He sighed a very drawn-out sigh. “Is this like you not wanting pizza or coffee or gelato, where it’s just a matter of me saying words until I hit on the right ones? Because I was really looking forward to seeing you.”
“No, it’s not like that. You were?”
“Yeah.”
I wasn’t sure anyone had “looked forward” to doing anything with me lately—and ManMeat and his cream holes didn’t count. Knowing that Daniel had been anticipating our time together made my mood shift, just a little at first, but then with more momentum as it lightened, and my hopeless resignation gave way to curious neutrality, and then, as I mentally reiterated that he was “looking forward” to our date, optimism. “Anyway, I’ll go.”
“To the expo. With me.”
“Yes.” I thought for a moment, until I remembered the cause of my recent slide into discouragement. “But the oil light on my dash is lit.”
“There’s a Quick Lube down the street. We can hit that on our way to the Alliant Center, unless you think it’s something more serious…or I could pick you up.”
Choices—and I liked both of them. If Daniel picked me up, it would feel more like a “real” date…by which, I suppose I meant a date between a man and a woman, which I should probably reassess, since dates shouldn’t need to be gender-specific to be objective. Then I thought of being able to tell Tod I’d handled the oil change myself, which was even more appealing. “I think I’d like to stop at the Quick Lube. Is it quick, really, or is that just the name? Do they service Hondas? Will they need to see my title and registration? Do I need an appointment? Can I pay with my debit card?”
“I think you just, uh…it’s really no big deal.”
Maybe not to Daniel, who understood how things worked by discerning seemingly invisible signals. To me, it was a very big deal.
I drove to his house to pick him up, parked in front, got out and knocked on the door. He looked strange when he answered. Really strange. Same army jacket, but… “You shaved.”
“Smooth as a baby’s bottom.” He leaned into me and rubbed his cheek against my jaw. My heart pounded. “What do you think?”
“You smell like shaving cream.” And that was almost as exciting as the stubble-rasp. Well.
“This is okay, right? Touching you?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” He pulled away before I could figure out if we were going to start kissing. “So, Big Dan’s not here—he didn’t want to miss anything, so he headed over there an hour ago. Or maybe he just wanted to give us some time alone, since I let him know my interest in you went way beyond mnemography.”
He locked up his house, climbed into my car, and pointed me in the direction of the Quick Lube. All the while, I marveled at how easy it all seemed to him. Shifting his plans around. Stopping by a Quick Lube. Telling his father we were more than just business acquaintances. I tried to imagine saying the words, “Beth, you know the mnemographer I mentioned the other day? I’m attracted to him. And he likes me.” But I couldn’t. They were probably the wrong words somehow, subtly wrong in a way I would never understand.
At the Quick Lube, a large, well-marked sign on the wall offered three levels of service. “Get the basic,” Daniel said, and then headed into the waiting area while I stammered out to the clerk what I wanted and gave him my car keys. Daniel was sitting with his leg crossed over his knee drinking coffee from a tiny disposable cup, wincing with each sip. There was a magazine open in his lap, though he thumbed through it too quickly to be reading it, or even scanning it for that matter. I considered the coffee pot—it was crusted with lime, so I decided against having a coffee—and then I looked at the seats, realized I didn’t know what the appropriate number of seats was to leave between myself and Daniel, and ended up standing there hoping I looked casual.
Daniel flipped to the end of the magazine, tossed it aside on an empty chair, looked up and me and said, “You gonna sit?”
My heart hammered as I realized I’d probably never get this dating thing right, but then he patted the seat next to him and relief flooded through me as I now understood where to position myself.
I sat, and his knees dropped open so our thighs touched. That casual, familiar touch was just as exciting as the shaving cream smell.
We waited for my car, and we chatted—which I have never been any good at. But Daniel was telling me about his side job at Recollections (it’s best if you let the other person choose the topic so as not to inadvertently bore them) and it was so interesting to hear how they had their shop set up, and how many staff members it took to run it, and the level of specialization each employee needed to possess, that I was surprised to see half an hour had passed when a mechanic stepped out of the garage with a rectangular automotive part in his hand and approached us. While I was talking to Daniel, I’d been in this conversational flow about an interesting topic where I could stop thinking about myself, what I should say next, how I should sit, where my hands should be. Seeing this mechanic jerked me back into my usual state of self-consciousness, though. Maybe it was him looming over us as we sat. Maybe it was the way his coveralls reminded me of Tod. I wasn’t sure. I just knew that the moment when my ease disappeared was very distinct.
He extended the part toward us and said, “So this is what your air filter looks like.”
The rectangle was filled with a fiber-based filtration material accordioned into the plastic frame. Around the edges, the material looked whiteish. But in the center it was sooty gray. So probably this was serious, since I’d been driving the better part of a week with that damn light on. But how much would it cost? Because sometimes car repairs were really expensive, and I would need to budget for anything over a hundred dollars. And how would I know it was the correct filter? And maybe I should consult with Tod after all, because although we disliked one another, I did actually trust him….
“It’s fine,” Daniel said. “Just the oil change.”
Not only did the mechanic not try to make Daniel feel guilty for not pursuing the dirty filter—he didn’t even seem to care. He handed Daniel a service slip and told him the car would be out front, and that was all.
Once the mechanic was gone, Daniel said, “I guess it’s their policy to try and spook you into replacing your filter before you need to. It’s probably where they make their real money.”
“Oh. Like when I record the mnemography classes at Memory Forge and sell the disc to the student.”
The conversation faltered while I paid at the register and the clerk tried to get me to fill out a lengthy form and join a preferred customer club, but Daniel told her, “Look, we’re in a hurry,” before I needed to figure out how to weigh the pros and cons of that decision.
We got into my car—they had even vacuumed the floor mats—and I turned to Daniel and said, “Thank you.”
And I hoped he didn’t want to know what I was thanking him for, other than to say he sometimes made me feel normal—and when I was feeling the opposite of normal, he didn’t freak out. Thankfully, though, he didn’t press me for details. He just said, “Okay.”
Which was a very good example of why Daniel Schroeder is awesome.
***
Streets were slick, construction on the Beltline slowed traffic to a single lane, and we’d missed the first three hours of the expo. Still, even that didn’t upset me. Not only had I just done my oil change without Tod’s help…I was walking up to the ticket taker with Daniel. Instead of giving my ticket to me, he handed over both of them, his and mine, together. I was just about to point out to the ticket girl that there were two there, not one, but then she tore them both in half and handed the stubs back to Daniel, and he passed one stub over to me as if they both understood that already. Evidently this was how things were done, when people went to ticketed events together.
As events go, the expo wasn’t as big or as crowded as it might be at a different time of year, or in a larger city. It filled one of the smaller halls, not the cavernous main area. The demographic that would be interested in such technical things was fairly limited, plus it was New Year’s Day, which I suppose meant that some mnemographers would choose to be sleeping off their hangovers or spending time with their families rather than looking at experimental hardware. The people who had decided to make the trip and show up, though, were very serious and focused.
I was pretty focused too. First, I filtered out the displays that weren’t of interest to me—for instance, the ones about improving customer experience with things like elaborate mnem beds and gel-filled neck pillows and custom-fitted sensor caps. Those accessories were all unimportant. I’ve always been of the opinion that if the hardware is functioning correctly, the other aspects of the mnem will take care of themselves.
Daniel did pause by some of those types of exhibits. As the owner of a memory palace, he needed to worry more about customer opinion than I did. Occasionally he took a business card, but not often. I didn’t blame him. Most of the stuff was crap. It might be re-designed to hide more of the wiring and injection-molded in some trendy color of plastic, but that was just cosmetic. If it didn’t do anything really new, really different, why bother upgrading?
I wasn’t sure exactly when we got separated. The far corner of the expo had a cluster of memorysmith stuff for the software guys, and Daniel was drawn into a conversation with a bit-coder. From my new position several stalls away, it was interesting to observe him talking while he was immersed in his element. Although I’ve studied body language extensively with Dr. Bergman, I’m really no expert. But everything from his posture to his eye contact to his easy gestures seemed to indicate a high level of confidence…one that I wouldn’t have guessed from him, based on our time together in mnem.
“Elijah.”
I turned and found Big Dan had approached me from the other side. We shook hands—which made me proud, knowing that I now knew other professionals at the expo socially, personally. And the professionals all around us had witnessed us greeting one another.
“So,” he said. “Anything here catch your eye?”
His son. But he probably didn’t mean that. Did he? No. I doubted it. The equipment, yes, that’s what he was talking about. “No.”
The young guy working the gel pack booth we were standing at frowned.
“Did you see the headgear? Binaural sounds built into the cap.”
“That won’t work for your customers. You can’t train someone to slide into alpha in a single session, even with binaural pulses. And the majority of the customers you have will be dabblers. And for the sherpa…a five-dollar pair of earbuds works just fine. Better, probably. Easier to replace when a wire shorts out.”
The woman at the binaural cap booth was frowning at me now, too. But Big Dan either didn’t notice, or didn’t care. He asked me what I thought of the insulated cables (unnecessary) and the smaller mnem machines (they’d overheat) and the advanced spectrum mnem room light bulbs (what did it matter when the customer’s eyes would be closed?) He laughed, then, and clapped me on the back—and that’s when I remembered that Daniel had told him about us. And I also realized he still seemed to like me anyway.
“Big Dan? When did Daniel tell you he was gay?”
His expression got serious, but as far as I could tell, he wasn’t offended by the question. “He didn’t. He told his mother. She found some gay newspaper from Chicago—picking up his room, according to her. Snooping, according to him. And the fight they had practically blew the roof off.” He paused by a display of colored, textured sound buffer foam, picked up a small sample and began squeezing it absently. “The louder she yelled, the more obnoxious he got, throwing things in her face, things he’d already…done. With men.” He sort-of laughed, if a laugh could be sad. “I like to think he was exaggerating.”
“Oh.”
“He was sixteen.”
Wow.
“He didn’t tell me…but I couldn’t help but hear it.”
I picked up the sound-barrier. That actually did interest me. Sometimes I could hear barking dogs, or children piling off the school bus at three-thirty on my days off. I wouldn’t mind a wall of acoustic foam, if it wouldn’t violate my lease to install it on my exterior walls.
Big Dan said, “Have you told your parents?”
“My mother’s dead. She had an embolism.” I never knew my father, and my grandmother, who was the closest thing I had to a parent, was dead now too. But Dr. Bergman says it’s overwhelming to tell a new acquaintance these three facts at the same time, so I left off my explanation at why my mother was dead.
“I’m sorry.”
Where my natural response would be What are you sorry for? It’s not as if you had anything to do with it, I responded as I’d rehearsed with, “Thank you.”
From several booths away, a man’s voice boomed, “Big Dan Schroeder? You old sonofabitch, I heard you retired. What’ve you been doing with yourself?” It was a ruddy-faced older man in a tall, stiff Mallards cap. And while I could have stuck with Big Dan and been introduced, the other man felt too big and loud for my comfort level, so I slipped off into the crowd while the two of them fell into a handshake. It was comfortable enough to let go of his companionship for the moment, like a normal ebb and flow. Typically, I might feel anxious about a person I was enjoying myself with slipping away from me. But right now I felt as if there were other things for me to do—checking out the solar-powered mnem machine, for one—and coupled with the probability that I’d get to talk to Big Dan some more, if not today, in the future, I didn’t feel awkward standing there alone. In fact, I felt fine.
And when Daniel eased up beside me and turned the solar pack around in his hands, that felt fine too. Good. Exciting, even. But not brimming with the anxiety that I was about to say or do something that would alienate him and ruin my chances of being with him. “Can this really work?” he asked.
“Yes. But a boat battery could do the same thing.”
“So…what’d you and my dad talk about?”
“Equipment.” I took a few sideways steps to the next booth, where a woman in a tight T-shirt with a Mega-mnem logo was giving away pens. I took a pen from her, backing up a step when she tried to get really close. The woman next to her was giving away lollipops. Daniel took one, pushed off the wrapper and stuck it in his mouth. You’d think it would look silly, but it didn’t. It looked tough, and reminded me of a cigarette. And then I realized these women in the Mega-mnem shirts were sticking their chests out at us on purpose…and I was busy looking at Daniel.
Daniel took the lollipop out of his mouth. It was bright red, and glistening wet. “You two seem to hit it off,” he said. Referring to me and Big Dan. Not the chesty women.
“Yes.” It was difficult for me to imagine coming home after work to someone who would understand what I was talking about if I tried to describe my day. Beth had been interested in mnemography in the beginning, right when it first came out. That was before anyone but the inventors knew what it actually did, and there was all sorts of speculation as to how mnemography was different from dreaming, whether subjective reality was valid, and the overall safety of the procedure. But once the basic questions were answered—and once things got more technical—Beth decided Photoshop was a better fit for her. She bought a digital camera. I took an online mnemography course. It was designed for dabblers; I see that now. It was a starting point, though.
I looked at the lollipop, imagined Daniel’s tongue trailing over the surface. “Big Dan is an interesting person.”
Daniel watched me for a long moment, in a way that might have made me uncomfortable, if he’d been someone else. Then his gaze shifted as he looked over my shoulder.
I turned to see what he was looking at. We’d worked our way around the expo to the far corner, where a pixel dealer with a very small table and a tattered display board had abandoned his post. Daniel was looking beyond the pegboard, at a pair of drinking fountains and an elevator. “C’mere a minute,” he said, and slipped off the walkway, past the cordon and into the dealer’s section.