chapter twelve
That year, for Thanksgiving, Nick and Laurie invited home a few friends each, mostly from work. Mal didn’t come, just sent them a note saying she’d be driving down to Montara to write.
“I guess I should be glad she didn’t pack you along as her muse,” Nick said, putting an arm around Laurie’s waist.
He’d grown more affectionate, but also less passionate. It had been weeks since they’d done anything beyond giving each other a kiss before turning in for the night.They’d only gone back once to the pleasure coach, who recommended they join the group stroking event to learn from others, and that was a step further than Nick’s pride or possessiveness would allow.
But Laurie wasn’t going to let her anxieties rule her again as they had with Cam. She was going to host Thanksgiving dinner and sleep through the carb-coma afterwards.
She let the conversation wash over her, the usual work anecdotes and complaints peppered with unsolicited life advice.
“Have you tried—
—Bikram yoga?”
—an ironman?”
—cryotherapy?”
—floatation tanks?”
One couple had just bought a house in Oakland so neglected that they’d had to rent goats to make sense of their yard. Those who weren’t improving their homes were improving themselves, with lessons in skydiving, machine learning, scuba diving.
Everyone seemed to be going somewhere, driving up and down the 101 for the smallest reason, flying to LA for Coachella, to Austin for South by SouthWest, to New York for lunch, devouring distance as if it were a glass of chardonnay.
Leaving her behind.
Talk went to the new VP hired in to oversee the organization.
“He seems nice enough, but I was explaining config deployments and you know what he asked me? What’s a server? What’s a server! ”
“What do you expect? I saw on LinkedIn he went to community college, back in the eighties . What’s next, DeVry?”
They started laughing loudly. Nick gave her a concerned glance.
“Come now,” she said, “the eighties had some redeeming qualities.”
“Top Gun!”
“Thriller!”
“Pac-Man!”
“What about you, Laurie? What do you wish you could bring back about the eighties?”
“Oh, so many things,” she sighed. “I mean, this generation will never know the feeling of unbearable anticipation that comes with the sound of a modem.”
Everyone started laughing.
“Other things too,” she said, glad to lead the crew out of choppy waters, “things I wish I could share with the next generation. Pointless but beautiful things, like mix-tapes, or cursive writing.”
“Nick, you never said your girlfriend was a comedian.”
“She’s a riot,” Nick said, but didn’t sound pleased.
Later, as they cleaned up the dishes and wine-glasses, he said, “You ought to consider going back to college, maybe get your degree part-time.”
It took everything she had not to hear that as an insult, but as a genuine desire for her well-being. Still, her voice wasn’t entirely steady as she said, “I’m not sure I could spare the time, or the expense.”
“It’s an investment,” Nick said. “I’m sure there are loans. You’re so smart… once you have a degree you wouldn’t have to stay an admin forever.”
“I like being an admin,” she said, knowing it was true as she heard it come out of her mouth. It was rather like being the conductor of an orchestra, soothing tempers and managing personalities so a team could function. Of knowing everyone’s secrets, often before they knew themselves.
“How did you end up working with Vic?” Nick asked. “The man drops names like seagulls drop shit. Did you have to interview with him?”
She clenched her teeth. Nope, not an insult. Not an insinuation that she might have lied to Vic or slept with him to get the job.
“He hired me out of a bar,” she said, passing Nick a scrubbed pot to dry. “He was trying to socialize with a group of guys to get them to invest, but they thought he was coming on to them. He just… didn’t know how to engage. I took him aside, asked him a few questions, and then went to the guys to introduce him properly.”
“And of course they listened to you because you were a pretty woman deigning to talk to them.”
“That was part of it,” she said, stilling the bloom of anger. “I just knew them better. They were regulars.”
“Of course,” Nick went on, obliviously. “You’ve always been good at getting your way. It’s subtle, but now that I think about it, you can pretty much influence anyone to do what you want. For most engineers, that comes across as magic.”
She braced against the sink.
“I prefer to think of it as empathy,” she said. “It’s not something you can get a degree in.”
“Still, not everyone’s going to give you a job based on your ability to manage a group of drunk guys. A degree is insurance.”
“Why does it matter to you?”
“Oh, not to me ,” he said hastily. “But it does matter to other people. I just don’t want anyone to turn their noses up at you.”
And therefore at me, if I’m standing beside you .
She wiped her hands on the towel and went into the bedroom. She couldn’t be angry with him, not when she would never consider taking him home to meet her mother or brothers. Her mind whirled, with If people don’t accept you as you are , and We spent so much energy trying to play a rigged game .
When Nick had moved in, she’d let him have the entirety of the second bedroom for his home office, and part of her bedroom for his things. Now she had no refuge. Her room no longer felt like her own.
Nick fell asleep first, and she went out into the living room, glad to see Mal’s chat status indicating she was still awake.
How’s the writing going?
Productive. Nothing like a drive to clear my head.
Do you think I should go back to college and get a degree?
Why?
Do you think it would open doors for me?
What doors do you want opened?
Oh, the aggravating woman! How was Laurie to know what doors she wanted opened when she didn’t know what doors were there in the first place?
I want
Her fingers stilled, unable to complete the sentence. Every time she tried, her thoughts drifted.
Mal had to be frustrated waiting for her, because she wrote back first.
Put differently, what do you wish you were doing with your time?
Well, that was easy enough. I want to be learning something new.
You always did need to be challenged.
For a long time there was no further response and Laurie thought the conversation was over, but then a bunch of links appeared, each leading to an art college admissions page or an evening program at the Academy of Art for adult education. She clamped down on her excitement, refusing to let herself fall in love with yet more things she couldn’t have.
If any of these strike your fancy, I’d be happy to foot the bill.
Why? Why would she offer that?
She couldn’t accept, but she couldn’t bring her fingers to type fast enough to refuse. Mal had already added, You can pay for the supplies .
Laurie put the laptop away on the couch and stared at the fireplace. A course she could handle. It wasn’t too much commitment, wasn’t too expensive, and if it didn’t work out she’d know early, instead of worrying about failing out of a university after a lengthy admissions process.
She messaged Mal back. You’re not just saying this because of what I said at brunch the other day?
What did you say at brunch?
Never mind. If Mal didn’t remember, she wasn’t going to remind her. Are you sure?
I wouldn’t offer if I wasn’t. I never do anything I don’t want to do.
Relief coursed through her. This, more than anything, Laurie knew to be true. Mal’s lack of social graces freed her from the burden of expectation, of second-guessing. She understood, now, what Mal had meant about Will.
Mal’s so-called selfishness was her salvation; it quieted her mind.
· · ·
“Do lesbians like tongue rings?” Valentina asked, sticking her own tongue out experimentally.
Mortified, Laurie put her head down on the desk. Even so, she could feel the eyes of everyone in the classroom on her.
“What?” Valentina asked. “It’s for a character I’m designing.”
When she’d started the course in digital animation, Laurie had known she’d be older than most others there. She had not expected Valentina Garza. The girl was a potent mix of classical beauty with forest green hair, of insatiable curiosity and celestial ambition, and she’d made it her mission to turn their group into either a found family or a drunken bacchanal, or both. She couldn’t tell.
Nobody had managed to hold themselves back from Valentina. Nobody . Within a day, they knew each other’s Twitter and Instagram handles. Within a week, Valentina had everyone sharing their favorite kinks in their AO3 fan fiction. After their evening classes they headed out for drinks and sketching sessions, trading tips on layer manipulations and cheap Korean spas. Pretty soon even the fifty-five year-old divorcee was playing “Never have I ever,” and confessing to kissing one of the Gallagher brothers from Oasis.
Many nights Laurie came home bursting with ideas and drew until one or two in the morning. A series of Matryoshka dolls, a matrilineal lineage that ended with her, who’d never have children. The California coast, a Gothic blur of watercolor greens and monstrous waves. Anything. Everything. Once she looked up from a sketch to discover it was three o’ clock and her heart was racing.
Huh . I like drawing more than sex.
Such a strange thought! She started laughing, but it felt like a deeper truth she really ought to have known. Not wanting to second-guess herself, she sent the sketches to Mal with a Sorry, still getting used to drawing on a tablet before she went to sleep.
She was glad of Mal’s These are incredible! but didn’t think anything more of it, until Mal phoned her a week later and said she’d shared them with a friend of a friend who just happened to be a producer of an animation studio that was doing work for Netflix.
Laurie started hyperventilating.
“Don’t worry, he loved your work. He wants you to do some character designs for him, and he’ll pay a commission. Laurie? Why are you crying?”
There was opening a door and there was shoving you through it, and of course Mal didn’t know the difference. Naturally, she’d never seen a door she didn’t blast her way through.
“What if he doesn’t like it?”
What if I fail and it reflects on you?
“You’ll still get paid, and you’ll learn from it for next time. Besides, if he likes it, who knows?”
Next time?!
Laurie was still a watery mess when Nick came home. He’d been working longer and longer hours in hopes of a promotion, and she was just a personal item on the shelf at this point. Got girlfriend? Check. He didn’t even notice when she didn’t come to bed but stayed up drawing furiously till dawn.
Never in her career had she worked so little and got so much done. As if her mind was now free to be creative in the off-hours, and could be clear and focused at work. She managed to save her Director’s marriage by getting him home by six every day and hooking him up with an entire network of service professionals—tax accountant, financial advisor, clothes stylist, hair stylist, therapist and door-to-door laundry—to counter his workaholism. Most tech executives had never learned how to adult, and were surprised to discover that their wives didn’t really want to mother them anymore. In his gratitude, her director surprised her with a promotion. She was finally making a living wage.
Naturally, she was terrified.There was nothing quite like success to cue all her instincts for self-sabotage.
Mal didn’t understand her fear, but reluctantly agreed to stop paying for her art classes.
“It’s something I need to do for myself,” Laurie said. “So it feels more real.”
“By the way, the producer liked your character designs. Everyone else is either too much in the Marvel style or too traditionally manga. You were able to surprise him.”
“I could tell in the descriptions that he wanted something pre-Raphaelite, although he didn’t know that was what he wanted.”
Mal laughed. “You always know other people so much better than they know themselves.”
Except you .
That evening, after art class, she noticed Valentina was quieter than usual. Laurie stayed by her side as they went out for drinks, and didn’t have to wait long until the younger girl started talking.
“My parents got sent back to Mexico in August,” she said. “And I would have gone with them, except in July…”
“The DREAM Act,” Laurie guessed. Since the verbal thrashing from Ayo, she’d done her research. The legislation had only just passed in July, allowing minor children of illegal immigrants to study in California. “You got a scholarship.”
Valentina didn’t smile. Instead, she clutched at her heart. “Don’t say it so loud .”
Yeah, Laurie knew that terror well. The knowledge of the precipice behind your heels even as your hands found purchase up ahead.
“I’ve been thinking, maybe I shouldn’t risk it. Even with the scholarship, I’ll still have to take out a loan, and if I don’t get a job…”
“You’ll get a job,” she said quietly. “It might not be the one you want, at least not at first, but you’ll push through. A chance at the life you actually want is worth the risk.”
Now, if only she could believe it herself.
“I always feel I’m going to screw it up somehow.” Valentina crossed herself. “I put the sugar in the fridge, and couldn’t find it for days. I don’t know how to file for CObrA. I need to get a scooter or something to get to school, but those things are manual and the only clutch I know is a handbag.”
“And maybe it would be easier if someone else made all the decisions? Do you really want that though?”
“How do you know you’re not going to screw everything up?”
“Oh you will.” Laurie laughed. “But at least you’ll be the one doing it. Or at least that’s what you’ll tell yourself, each time you screw up. And I can help you with CObrA. I’m something of an expert.”
Valentina leaned her head on Laurie’s shoulder and sighed. “You’re really awesome, Laurie, you know that? Like, you make me wish I were at least a little gay.”
Laurie stiffened instinctively, then relaxed and laughed.