Chapter 6
Six
I can’t emphasize enough how much I would like to be excluded from this narrative.
My carpool comrades have made the commute from the parking lot to the barn their personal slow-motion action movie shot. You
know the one: the ragtag band of heroes marching into battle side by side, accompanied by an epic Hans Zimmer ditty. This
is just like that, except instead of formfitting body armor, we’re drab in polos and khaki, and instead of phasers, swords,
or katanas, our weapons are sartorial.
Naomi’s hair towers high, styled in a topknot that emphasizes her refreshed green highlights and displays the green peekaboo
layer. Lola has dozens of rainbow extensions artfully clipped among her curls. Efraín’s tresses are deep cherry pink, his
waves pulled back from his face in a little half bun. They’re all so confident, straight out of central casting.
Then there’s me, with my same-old safe brown undercut. My curls may be perpetually unruly, but they’re dress code compliant.
The only reason I might belong in this lineup of rabble-rousers? The pronoun button I pinned to my polo. I got this particular
button at my preliminary consult with Dr. Mburu, whose waiting room had bowls of buttons at the front desk.
A good pronoun button is clean. Simple. Dr. Mburu gets it: 2.25-inch diameter with a bold black sans-serif font set against
a plain white background. Legible, accessible, and almost impossible to misinterpret. Foolproof, though not bigot-proof.
But I’ve been assured this is a trans-friendly work environment. None of my coworkers are going to misgender me today, and
unlike some people, I am definitely still going to have a job in twenty minutes.
The daily pre-shift meeting takes place in the barn lobby.
I don’t have time to take in the rest of my new coworkers before Anya claps her hands together. “Gather round, troops. Some
quick introductions for our new recruits.” As the seasoned veterans lazily assemble, Anya names them. “There’s Ford, who puts
on his supervisor hat on days Dan or I have off. Stanley, who’s been with us since the day the museum opened. Jaime, who started
last summer; some of you might’ve crossed paths at school. And that’s TJ.”
Anya rattles off our names, and she doesn’t say “Goldstein sisters.” We’re just “Naomi and Eli.” It’s the first time Anya has really looked in our direction while she’s been ticking items off her to-do list, and then she spies our hair.
I mean, their hair.
Anya’s eyes flick between Lola’s and Efraín’s polychromatic hair, and her lips smoosh together into a tight line. Her face
is almost as red as her own hair. She stares at Naomi’s updo, fuming that a trainee had the nerve to deny an ultimatum and
drag two others into noncompliance.
Everyone else has tracked the source of Anya’s distress. Blake’s barely holding back a smile, and the built, baby-faced guy
next to her is energetically waving at Lola with an arm sporting a half-finished sleeve tattoo.
Our new coworkers are watching us with naked interest, like some nature documentary. It doesn’t matter that my hair is unadorned;
I’m guilty by proximity.
Anya squares her shoulders. I’m expecting fast, brutal, bloody, but then she calls, “Ford?”
The low-level, substitute supervisor Anya pointed out earlier hurries over. She thrusts her clipboard at him. “Finish up.
I have to make some phone calls.” I can practically hear her stomping up the stairs in the silence that persists in the wake
of her dramatic exit.
Ford squares his shoulders like he’s overcompensating for something. “Where were we?” He scans Anya’s clipboard. “Ah, summer
hours.”
I don’t hear another word of the spiel. I’m too distracted by Anya saying “phone calls” instead of “fired.” By the ghost of too many vicious, dog-eat-dog words I exchanged with the boy who is obliviously chipping away at his black nail polish beside me.
I’m unsettled. Off-balance, as if I were walking a tight rope in Lola’s summery wedges instead of standing on solid ground
in my secondhand saddle shoes.
I’m the one who sought out solid ground. So why do I feel so damn unsteady?
“And that is how you sell a membership.” Stanley Pham, grizzled, battle-hardened guest services veteran, flashes a grin as a family
of five walks away from the ticketing counter, sticking special member stickers to their shirts.
I’m rerunning the steps in my head, logging every keystroke in my mental database.
“Did they really need a membership?” Efraín asks. “They’re never coming back.”
“You don’t know that,” I retort, all thoughts of procedure down the memory shredder. “One visit doesn’t do the museum justice.”
“A family from Gary, Indiana, is not coming back in the next year.” He whirls on Stanley. “How can you justify price gouging that family?”
For the thousandth time today, I silently curse the damn dress code.
Anya’s disappearing act this morning has irreparably screwed the schedule. To learn the retail ropes, we were split into two groups, “boys and girls,” like some schoolyard dodgeball game, each group spending half the day at ticketing, the other at the gift shop.
Anya never came back downstairs. The gossip indicates that she spent all morning holed up in her office, like it was her own
nuclear bunker. Divya from security said that Eden from curatorial said she saw Billy from HR go into Anya’s office.
After lunch, Ford took the girls to the gift shop and parked Efraín and me at ticketing, in Stanley’s “experienced hands.”
This is what it’s been like all day. Me, Efraín, and some poor schmuck trying to teach us the ropes. I’m trying to learn,
but Efraín has made it his mission to tank my work performance.
“It wasn’t price gouging,” Stanley replies, drawing my attention back to the membership sale. Stanley is unflappable—if anything,
he seems amused by Efraín’s antics. “I gave them the best deal. Do the math. Two adult tickets, two youth tickets for the
younger kids, but the nineteen-year-old? Too old for a youth ticket, which is why you always ask for student or military ID,
but that kid would’ve been another full-price ticket.”
“Highway robbery,” Efraín mutters.
“Pop quiz. How much would three adult and two youth tickets come to?”
Can I request accommodations for this pop quiz? It’s not like I’ll ever need to do this in my head in real time. When I’m
actually at the till, the computer will do the math for me.
Efraín doesn’t produce a sum, either.
“One hundred and twenty-one dollars,” Stanley says, not unkindly, as if we haven’t just failed to perform basic arithmetic.
“Meanwhile, a family membership, which includes two adults and five dependents, costs—”
“Oneohnine,” I blurt because I’ve repeatedly tried and failed to hand-sell that membership to my moms. “One hundred and nine
dollars.”
“Exactly right.” Stanley beams. “The membership is twelve dollars cheaper.”
“You could’ve just counted the nineteen-year-old as a youth,” Efraín says.
“Same price as the membership, but against the rules.” Stanley shrugs. “Listen, kid, I’ve worked at NSX since Christine Holloway
fought George Rhodes over the giant scissors to cut the ribbon on opening day. After twenty-five years, you learn to pick
your battles.”
Efraín’s about to argue—I can feel it in the air, the way dogs sense earthquakes before they hit. He’s working his jaw, ready
to defend every battle he’s ever picked.
Abruptly, Stanley straightens up. “Look alive, boys. That’s—”
“Dagny Kane,” I whisper.
Silhouetted in harsh sunlight, I’d recognize her anywhere: grieving daughter, former child actress, cult franchise heiress,
small-town museum mogul. But her most important title of all? Boss.
And she’s making a beeline for the ticketing counter.
“Stan!” she calls with a starlet smile. “It’s so good to see you.”
“I’m here five days a week,” Stanley quips.
“You know how it is across the lawn.”
“Well, only downstairs.”
Of course, Dagny Kane’s office is upstairs in the farmhouse.
“But you picked a good day to stop by our neck of the woods. Have you met our new GSAs? I’ve had the pleasure of training
the boys this afternoon. Meet Eli and Efraín.”
My eyes flash to Stanley, unsure if he realizes the magnitude of what he’s just said. Did he do it consciously, to clarify
my gender upfront? Or was it just instinct because that’s what he sees: two boys, at work?
Dagny turns her smile on us, and I can’t help gawking.
In person, in Technicolor, she looks less like Victor than in the grayscale photos in the family room gallery.
She has her father’s trademark strong brow line and sharp nose, but her eyes are lighter, her chin softer.
She wears her straight, dark brown hair in a blunt I’d-like-to-speak-to-the-manager bob, except she is the manager.
Meanwhile, I’m sweating buckets, a shape-shifter who’s tried to hold human form for too long and reverts to alien goo.
“Ms. Kane,” I say, my quivering voice nervous but entirely earnest. “It’s an honor to meet you.”
“Please, call me Dagny. We’re a family here at the Nuclear Seasons Experience.”
“Dagny,” I say, even though it feels more taboo than calling a teacher by their first name.
Are we supposed to shake hands? What’s normal workplace etiquette for the CEO of a small nonprofit business who also happened
to do a brief stint on Nickelodeon? Forbes didn’t have articles on how to—
Dagny reaches out to shake my hand. “Eli and Efraín, was it?”
I nod, and Efraín grunts an affirmative. She shakes Efraín’s reluctant hand with his too-firm grip, but she never meets his
eyes. Trust me, as someone who has perfected the art of avoiding eye contact, her sight line dances around his face before
settling on his pink hair.
Dagny doesn’t say anything. I wait for her expression to change—for her halogen smile to shatter—but she keeps smiling, resting
customer service face.