Chapter 31
Thirty-One
In the beginning, spirits are high.
Participation is high, too. Lola and Naomi. Stanley. TJ. Jaime and Blake. Eden, Divya, and Miles from security. Everyone except
Efraín, whom I’ve failed to convince to join his own ULP strike.
Friday morning, everyone assembles in the NSX parking lot, and I keep staring at the driveway, hoping to see Efraín’s Rivian
barreling through the dirt.
Lola stands beside me, nudging her shoulder against mine. “Sorry, babe. I thought he’d change his mind.”
I tamp down my disappointment and offer Lola a shaky smile. “I’m glad you’re here.”
She laughs. “Wouldn’t have missed it for anything.”
“I know. I just . . .” Letting people know I appreciate them would be firmly in the needs improvement column of my workplace performance review. “I wanted you to know.”
Lola smiles like she telepathically intuited everything. “I’m glad you’re here, too, Eli.” She slings an arm around my shoulder, and we rejoin the group on the sidewalk that separates the parking lot from the museum grounds.
By now, it’s officially pre-shift; we’re officially late for our shifts.
Naomi does the honors of sending an email from a newly created union Gmail address to the editor of the Egan’s Creek Citizen-Courier, with Dagny and the NSX all-staff listserv CC’d.
Our revised letter formally announces our ULP strike, then enumerates our reasons, starting with the illegal firing of an
employee for protected concerted activity amidst a broader union-busting scheme and then detailing anti-LGBTQ policies, as
well as discrimination and retaliation against LGBTQ employees, emphasis on the T. We state our demands and express our eagerness to meet our bosses at the bargaining table.
We’re all in our street clothes—for half of us, that means NS graphic tees—wearing our union-made pronoun buttons. We have signs, too, ranging from my “Be Trans, Do Organized Crime” to
Lola’s “Pronouns Over Profits!” to Naomi’s “On Strike.”
Nothing happens.
I don’t know what I expected. We’d send the email, and explosions on the horizon would tell us when to duck and cover? Instead, I’m holding my breath—literally, apparently, because Lola asks Naomi where I keep my inhaler and leads me through anxiety breathing exercises.
I’m four counts into an eight-count exhale when the barn doors burst open.
Anya power walks with her hands on her hips. Ford follows hot on her heels. Dan and Gwen trail behind.
“What is the meaning of this?” Anya yells, wagging her phone. She got our email.
No one answers, and I survey our little group. On some foolish level, I’m expecting Efraín to answer because who other than
Efraín could play mouthpiece for the union?
No one outside of guest services is going to challenge Anya. Naomi, TJ, and Jaime are fundamentally soft-spoken. Blake wields
silence like a lethal weapon. Stanley fears stepping on anyone’s toes. Lola has frozen up like she did before she gave an
emotional presentation on Las Mariposas last year.
That leaves me.
Not that I’m not terrified, but I’m not going to leave this job half-done.
“We’re on strike,” I announce. “It was all in the letter. If you have—”
I’m cut off by the farmhouse door. Dagny rushes out, fast, furious, and ferocious. “What the f—” She stops abruptly as she
sees the museum’s first guests. I can see her running the calculations, duty and damage control outweighing her desire to
make a scene.
After all, the institution comes above all else. The place above its people, whether they’re working inside or picketing in the parking lot.
“Anya,” Dagny snaps. “Give our guests the VIP treatment. Dan, hold down the fort at ticketing. And you two”—she points at
Ford and Gwen—“cover the gift shop. I’ll lead our first tour group. It’s not often I get to personally share my father’s story
with our guests. It’ll be . . . fun.” Her forced smile says otherwise. But she stands there, acting, while she watches the
guests cross the picket line.
“You,” Dagny sneers, zeroing in on me. “Care to explain what the hell you’re doing?”
“You read the letter,” I say, calmer than I feel. “You know exactly what this is about, and you know precisely what you’d
need to say to end it, right now.”
“Do you think this is a game?”
“Absolutely not, but we’ll be here however long it takes you to realize we’re not playing around. Hopefully that’ll happen
before fans start showing up for the anniversary. If not, we’ll be right here.”
“You’re going to regret this,” she promises. “Forget about the button or the internship. You think you’re helping anyone?
You’re an ungrateful little child cosplaying Newsies.”
This probably isn’t a good time to tell her she’s doing a good impression of a Frank Capra villain.
But I don’t have to tell her anything. Because Stanley immediately beseeches her to please consider our demands. When Dagny tells Stanley that she expected better of him, Lola has a comeback wrapped in a burn. When Dagny yells at Lola, Blake shuts her down.
Everyone has each other’s backs.
A strike is, mostly, waiting.
I don’t notice Naomi taking pictures on her phone all morning, but just before lunch, Lola and TJ call me over. They’re sitting
on Hawkeye’s hood, huddled over Naomi’s phone while Naomi bites her nails.
“What’s up?”
“Can you generate some Insta-worthy captions?” Lola asks. “Don’t worry about hashtags. Just think eloquent pith.”
“Pith?”
“That dry wit you hide behind those bougie billion-dollar words. But keep it short, yeah? Can you do that?”
“I make no promises.”
They’ve selected five impressive, photojournalistic shots.
I don’t even know how Naomi captured my face-off with Dagny, both of us red-faced with anger.
She’s also photographed Stanley preaching to a throng of would-be museum guests, sharing bawdy behind-the-scenes stories that we’d never tell as docents.
There’s the quiet intimacy of Jaime and Blake sitting on a cooler while she adjusts his knee brace, and the sheer silliness of Divya spritzing TJ and Eden with a spray bottle.
The editing is minimal, professional. Just enhancing and clarifying the story that’s already there.
I study my sister and ask myself how I missed this. I knew she’d started taking photos while birding; I knew she’d borrowed
Mom’s old camera. I remember, now, that the only art pieces in Efraín’s bedroom were humanistic prints of vineyard workers.
I only recognize the style retroactively because apparently my sister has a style. “How did you—when?”
Then she says, “Remember when we used to watch Nuclear Seasons together?” and it clicks. I used to get annoyed because she never wanted to talk about the stories the way I did, but—I never
realized she cared about the medium. I missed an entire special interest.
“These are really good.” It’s a mealy-mouthed understatement and totally inadequate.
“I know.”
I nod. It isn’t enough, but I hope Naomi knows I’m listening now. Or, in the case of her photographs, I’m looking, and I’m
seeing.
“Not to interrupt this heartwarming Hallmark moment,” Lola interrupts, “but I need those captions? I want these up on the
union socials before the West Coast starts doomscrolling over lunch hour.”
“The union has socials?”
“Insta, Threads, Bluesky, and Tumblr; Facebook for the boomers,” TJ lists without looking up from his phone.
Lola snaps her fingers. “Captions?”
Just after three, I’m sipping from a thermos of rhubarb iced tea—part of the provisions Moms surprised us with for lunch—and
surveying the parking lot as new guests trickle in.
Lola, Jaime, and I spent hours trying to guess whether a guest would cross the picket line based on the brand of car they
were driving. Naomi criticized our “unscientific” approach before pulling out her graph paper. Stanley reminded us that tourists
often drive rental cars. Blake suggested we use state license plates instead, but Eden pointed out that no state is politically
homogeneous—and labor politics don’t break cleanly along party lines.
Still, I’m looking at the dirt-spackled red Rivian SUV with California plates, guessing that whoever’s inside won’t cross
the picket line when Lola lets out an unholy squeal. She squeezes my arm, and I almost choke on my tea because I recognize that license plate.
Efraín parks next to the employee parking spaces, then steps out of his car.
Even from a distance, I can tell he’s frazzled. His half bun is messier than usual, too many flyaways to qualify as intentionally disheveled. More damning still, he missed a button on his short-sleeved linen tunic. He stuffs his hands into his pockets and looks around until his aviators lock on me.
I’m frozen in place, torn between shock and an utterly foreign impulse to run over, hug him, and never let go.
I don’t have to decide because Lola half tackles Efraín with a fierce hug of her own. Then she punches his arm. Then she laughs
and drags him over to the group.
Everyone greets him with unrestrained enthusiasm and not a drop of admonition. Efraín accepts it all gamely enough, though
he doesn’t revel in it.
He doesn’t want to be the prodigal son.
Finally, he stops in front of me. He reaches out like he wants to hug me but must read something on my face because he deliberately
puts his hands back into his pockets. “Sorry I’m late. Traffic was terrible on 580, and there was a four-car pileup near Sears
Point, and—”
“Efraín,” I cut him off, more breath than word. Something about his uncharacteristic, anxious rambling grounds me in the moment.
I don’t like seeing him like this. I remember how afraid I was, when I dyed my hair a day late, that it was too late to matter anymore.
I need him to know that it matters. It still counts. I’m not going to hold his tardiness against him. He’s here, just like
I asked him to be. So, I throw my arms around his neck and hug him like I should’ve done five minutes ago, but better late
than never, right?
His arms wrap around my waist, pulling me tight. He’s just tall enough to rest his chin on my head, which is cute for five seconds before I need space. I don’t pull back completely, but enough to look up at him. I wrangle my heartbeat under control. “I didn’t think you were coming.”
He hesitates a beat too long before he says, “I forgot to give you something.”
I’m immediately suspicious, not only because there’s something hinky about the timeline but also because in his mind, I’m
pretty sure romance is an alternative definition of “commodity fetishism.”
He produces a little cardboard box, about the size of a Post-it pad, from his pocket and offers it to me. I don’t recognize
the brand, and I’m trying to make sense of the words on the box.
“Noise-filtering earplugs,” Efraín explains. “They filter out ambient noise, lop off some decibels, and help you focus on
conversations. They’re supposed to be great for people with noise sensitivity, especially autism and ADHD. You’ll probably
want to try the smallest ear tips . . .”
As he rambles, I inspect the contents of the box. The earplugs are unobtrusive little rings of metallic silver plastic attached
to a silicone tip, like an earbud without circuitry.
Efraín has to know that receiving gifts really isn’t my love language. “I don’t understand.”
“After everything you told me about noise sensitivity and why you don’t go to protests and rallies, I couldn’t let you organize
one without protection.”
“You remember that?” I ask, running my thumb over the cool plastic loops.
“Of course,” Efraín insists with a fervency that suggests I may have offended him by insinuating he’d forget. “Your comfort matters.”
Under other circumstances, I’d probably feel some kind of way about how he can afford to buy assistive technology to compensate
for neurodivergent deficits, but it’s been a long day, spent in a small, rowdy crowd. I’m tired, and I’m glad he’s here.
Still, there’s something that doesn’t fit, like if I tried to shove these earplugs into my ear canals with the default-size
ear tips attached. “So you ordered me a pair of earplugs and drove two hundred miles because you needed to deliver them to
me in person?”
He bites his chapped lip.
Everyone’s been giving us a wide berth, presumably caught up in the inherent romance of gifting assistive technology, but
this is no venue for an awkward private conversation. I take his arm and lead him away, toward the Sam Schatz Memorial Fountain.
I sit on the limestone rim. Efraín just paces.
“Why did you really come back?” I ask gently.
“I wasn’t going to,” he admits, “but the E-triple-C published the letter online. My dad saw the news alert, and I finally
told him everything, after however many days of him accepting at face value that I got fired ‘for a good cause.’ ”
Efraín huffs a laugh. “My dad told me to stop being un tonto—that if I was willing to get fired for you, then I should be willing to show up for you, too. And he was right. I couldn’t let you do this alone.”
Not long ago, before he ever kissed me, on a morning when I was utterly convinced the museum was going to fire me, Efraín
told me I wasn’t alone. In that moment, his words scared the shit out of me because I didn’t realize, then, that I’d built
my entire identity around being alone. “Loner” was a label I chose unconsciously, yes, but I did choose it. Letting Efraín
be there for me has been an adjustment, to say the least, but I’m not sure he realizes . . . “I’m not alone.”
Even without seeing his eyes, I can tell Efraín looks stricken, so I catch his wrist and pull him down next to me. I touch
his cheek, brushing a few flyaways back behind his ear. “I’ve had Lola, Naomi, Stanley, and everyone else here beside me.
You know I want you here, so I’m not saying this to diminish your presence or your gesture”—because what is speeding through
the Central Valley on a Friday afternoon if not a grand gesture?—“but what I realized this past week, this morning . . . I’ve
never been alone in this.”
I’m close enough to count his heartbeats filling the silence before he rasps, “Good. That’s what I want for you.”
It’s killing me not to know if he knows he’s not alone, either. You’d think he’d know, from the gaggle of us gathered here for a ULP strike about his firing, but I don’t know. My opa would’ve called him a Dummkopf.
If Efraín doesn’t already know, I don’t know how to make him understand. Words wouldn’t be enough, and I don’t have a gift
to offer. All I have is this strike, a communal act of service. If Efraín doesn’t understand, I’ll just have to show him.
I knit our hands together and rest my head on his shoulder. “Thank you.”
He tenses up. “For what? The Loops? You don’t have to—”
“For being here,” I murmur.
Whether he sees it or not, we’re in this together.