Chapter 8 A Sampling of Balls #2
“And you like this?” he asks, as though it might be my preference to live chained to my email and in a constant grudge match with a guy who refers to his Rolex with she/her pronouns.
“Obviously, I hate it, Powell. Who would like this?”
I work exclusively for Bob, which means I work at the whim of Bob, and Bob loves the influence that comes with having a stable of clients with multimillion-dollar legal budgets.
My days are dominated by kissing ass and churning out patents, not to help inventors, but to secure the financial interests of companies designing insecticides and internal tax management software.
“Why are you doing it then?” he demands.
This makes me pause. The question is so obvious, it’s almost silly. Indulgent even.
I started down this path when my dad left. Again. We couldn’t pay rent and had no choice but to sell the camera equipment he’d left behind. All of it. Even the camera I thought was mine. I’ll get you one of those Samsung phones with a built-in camera , my mom promised.
Everything in my life had a way of moving without warning, even my camera.
For so long, it had been this tether between the lives we had to pack up and leave behind.
I had no control over where I lived or for how long or whether my dad would remember to call, but I could stop time.
I could make the seconds that passed me by tangible and take them with me.
But it turned out that even that stupid camera with its broken strap wasn’t mine to keep.
When I was finally in control, I made a life that was immovable and married a man I thought wanted to share it.
Computer science seemed like the most sensible major offered at Lewellen College, but law school sounded even safer.
Intellectual property sounded safer still.
It all seemed like the right next step at the time.
And what else are we supposed to do besides take the right next step?
But it isn’t all bad. In the distance, I can glimpse a version of my career I might love.
One where I’m a partner or, at the very least, in control of my own time.
I could choose clients with small software startups, people taking big risks and searching for a sliver of protection over their big ideas.
Ideas are ephemeral and startups fail, but patents?
Patents last. They’re tangible. Inventors can hold it in their hands and protect their mark on an ever-shifting technological landscape.
I’ve never been someone who can leap headfirst into the unknown and trust that a net will appear, but I know how to build a good net. Nets are my specialty.
“Because I’m good at it, Powell. Not all of us have the voice of an angel.
” I reach across the console to poke him in the side.
He squirms and bats me away, and, like a good friend, I retreat.
“Thank god some of us are good at the boring jobs so that other people can go around following their bliss.”
“That’s so noble of you. Remind me. Was it the general counsel of the rat-trap company who got you box seats at the Target Center or was that the guys at Cyberdyne Systems?”
I hold up a hand. “Okay, it was Payne, the rat-trap company—the other company you mentioned is from The Terminator —and the seats were for a WWE match called ‘Tables, Ladders, and Chairs,’ which is even less glamorous than it sounds.”
His smirk unfurls between his cheeks. “Okay, I have so many more questions.”
“ Your questions?” I toss up my hands. “What about my questions?”
“What questions could you possibly have for me ?” he asks, eyes fixed on the highway stretching in front of us.
“Let’s start with this van.” I gesture at the impossibly chic interior. Between the crisp white kitchen cabinets, the walnut floors, and the Faribault wool blanket on the bed, the whole space is very Ralph Lauren–for–Ford Motor Company.
“What about it?”
“Your van is, like, nice. Suspiciously nice.”
“Suspiciously nice,” he repeats.
“Seriously, how can you pay for this?” I ask, reopening my bag of Dove chocolates. My stomach is starting to settle, and I’m ready to get hurt again.
He shrugs. “It’s how I make money.”
“As a van-life influencer? Should I be filming content for you right now?”
“No,” he answers, rolling his eyes. “I renovate clunker campers and resell them to van-life influencers.”
“I thought you lived in your van.” That’s how it looked on social media at least. We weren’t exactly on speaking terms when his life went off-road.
“I do, for a little while. Then I sell the van and buy another one to fix up. But I’m hoping to hold on to this one for myself if I can swing it.”
My eyes trail around the van’s interior again. “That’s a really good idea.”
“I know it is. I’ve been doing it for…” He squints to perform simple mental math. “Over two years now? Should I be offended you’re surprised that I’m able to come up with a solid business?”
“I’m not surprised. I just only ever picture you playing music. How do you run a business when you don’t live anywhere?” I ask.
“I was working out of my buddy’s place in LA for a while, but I did the last two builds out of my parents’ place. They’re getting older, and it’s nice being around them more. Plus, it’s closer to my gigs on the Midwestern college circuit.”
“Never thought I’d see the day you went back to Lewellen,” I respond, choosing a chocolate with performative concentration, while trying my best to conceal the way the memories of the two of us coming and going from that place pick at an old wound.
“It’s not so bad,” he says. Then he holds out his hand for a chocolate. I read the wrapper before handing it over (“Hug the sunlight!”) and debate whether to say what’s on my mind.
But I might as well have a ticker tape on my forehead publicizing my every thought.
“Say it, Beekman,” Ethan demands, calling me out around a mouthful of candy.
I want to be irritated, but it’s too satisfying to be seen this clearly again. The sensation carves most of the annoyance out of my voice when I spout out, “But you said you’d never come back.”
My body waits for Ethan’s response, desperate for him to tell me everything’s different now.
That he’s staying. To skip over the part where the texts get further and further apart and his little just checking in, Beek messages get less frequent as he becomes impossible to pin down.
Now that he’s in front of me, I don’t want to go back to mailed bags of chocolates after he thoughtlessly double-books himself for Petey’s playoff game when Rich, who was still my doting new fiancé, pulled every string to get box seats for us.
When Ethan and I are together it’s as though no time has passed.
We’re us. But then he goes, and he’s still my best friend, but also, he’s not.
He gets distant and flaky. He becomes the kind of guy who feels comfortable sending a last-minute cancellation to my wedding via text, even though he’s the best man.
It already aches—the way I’ll miss him when he disappears on me again.
“I’m not, like, investing in property. I’m just visiting,” he says dismissively, and I don’t allow the rush of disappointment to settle into my lungs. The prospect of tying down Ethan Powell to a single zip code? Ridiculous.
“But the road life is hard,” he continues. “I’d like to expand the van business. Play fewer college gigs. Get a cat. Live in the van for fun, not because I have to, you know?”
“Only you would live in a van because you wanted to.”
The lowering sun reflects off his irises. “Say it, Beekman. You know you want to.”
I smile, shaking my head. “Could never be me.”
“There it is,” he says, finding amusement in my utter predictability, I’m sure.
Something flickers across his face, like a momentary glitch in the system, but then he smiles, his profile exposing that elusive dimple that few can resist. Oh, to have that dimple in my arsenal. I’d probably rule the world. He turns to look at me, then back at the road. His eyes are bottomless.
The thought drifts through my mind. A dandelion in the wind.
So beautiful.
But it’s gone just as fast and I chalk it up to the divorce, our proximity, the Eggland’s Best shower, and my Dove-candy-coated nostalgia. It’s not real. Our fifteen-year friendship depends on those feelings never amounting to more than a fleeting fantasy.
His eyes flash on me, intense. It’s as though he’s trying to read my thoughts—god, I hope he can’t—but when he opens his mouth to say something, he’s cut off by the loud gurgle thundering in his stomach.
I squawk. “Jesus! Is there a baby dinosaur in there?”
“It’s fine,” he says dismissively. “Just a little hunger pang. Can you hand me another chocolate?”
It rumbles again. My eyebrows raise. “I don’t think a Dove Promise is going to cut it, bro.”
“I have plenty of food in my kitchen, but we’d have to stop.”
“Then we’ll stop,” I say simply.
“You gave me a mission, Chuck. You wanted to get to your sister before sundown and there’s only a few hours of daylight left.” His voice is resolute.
“I love you for that, but I also have a mission, and it’s keeping the only person who knows how to drive this van alive and satiated.”
“Satiated?” His mouth tilts into a wicked grin. “Wow, that’s…so descriptive.”
“Shut up.” I roll my eyes, though I suspect my face is turning the color of a tomato.
But he’s already off to the races. “Such an evocative word choice.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
He pulls off onto an exit. “Yeah?” He’s relentless. “Then how do you mean to satiate me, Chuck? Because I have a few ideas and none of them involve food.”
A choked “Uh” falls out of my throat. An unintentional glottal stop out of nowhere, because Ethan just made a sexual innuendo.
About me. Us. The moment in the bathroom I convinced myself was all in my head replays in slow motion, and now I can only blink, manually processing my thoughts in single-syllable increments. Me? Us? There? Here? Van? Huh?
His eyes fall back onto the road. “I’m just messing with you. Chill.” He says it so breezily.
“I know.” I add an extra syllable onto the word “know” and say it entirely too loud.
“Me too. We both were. Messing around. With each other, I mean. You know what I mean.” I’m a computer that is spinning the wheel of death.
“Oh, look, a road! You should turn,” I shout with an incomprehensible urgency.
“I don’t think it’s public,” he argues.
I’m sweating. Why am I sweaty all of a sudden? “If it’s not public, why are there no signs?”
His forehead wrinkles. “What?”
“Turn!”
“Okay!”
He whips the wheel around and when we straighten out, it’s as though I’ve popped the anxiety balloon. I’m breathing normally. I’m still sweating, but just the normal summer kind and not the Oh my god, Ethan joked about having sex with me and now that’s all I can think about variety.
“Are we going to talk about what that was back there?” Ethan asks, a little too pleased with himself.
I give him a firm head shake. “I wouldn’t count on it.”
“Suit yourself.”
Ethan’s fingers grip the steering wheel tighter as the van rocks over the uneven dirt road that follows the Lake Superior shoreline. Tall grass on either side of us curves toward the center, narrowing the path. He rides the brake in an attempt to regain control.
“I don’t think this is a road,” I admit when the grass sweeps the passenger window.
“You think?” he deadpans.
His arms stiffen when something grabs his attention. He punches the brake, steering us off the path and onto a field. “Shhiii—” he starts through gritted teeth. The front tires lurch onto the grass. They roll and roll and sink until, suddenly, the van is no longer moving.
Ethan pauses. Taps the accelerator uselessly. Pauses again. “Huh,” he remarks.
“What was that?”
His brows draw together. “A family of turtles…” He trails off, yanking the gearshift, then tapping the accelerator again. I turn to Ethan. I can feel his brain whirring. Panic flickers in his eyes before his confident smile snuffs it out.
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” he tells me.
“You have insurance, right?”
Multiple emotions war on his face. He turns off the ignition and hops out of the driver’s seat, responding with a stiff, “I have insurance, Beekman.”
I stare into the middle distance of Lake Superior for thirty agonizing seconds—I count them. I’m not looking at his facial expression when he finally admits, “So the turtles are safe, but the van…”
I jump out before he can finish to find him squatting on the ground in front of a tire that’s lodged in at least three inches of mud.
He nods once with a delusional optimism I do not possess and strides back in the direction of the side door. “It looks like we’ve found where we’re going to eat!”