Her Golden Coast

chapter one

A gorgeous, grapy dusk fell over the Bay Bridge, but the hills beyond were the color of ash and wildfires. Laurie stared at it over her computer screen, aching sometimes to paint the wine-splashed sky and sometimes at the thought of the burning vineyards.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Vic said, stalking over to the window to obstruct her view. Her boss stretched his arms above his head so his shirt rode up, exposing the crack of his ass. When Laurie said nothing, he turned to face her. “Got plans for the weekend?”

“Cam’s picking me up in a bit,” she said.

“Ah, still going strong then? It’s been a while, no?”

“A year.”

Vic nodded. The glint in his eyes was familiar. She’d seen it on circling turkey vultures. In California, a year was a lifetime. Long enough for startups to fly or die, and long enough to be the point in the relationship when every question was a final exam in disguise.

Cam arrived. The men tilted their heads up towards each other, a reverse-nod of acknowledgement at her seamless transfer from employer to boyfriend.

She grabbed her things and slipped her hand into Cam’s, tugging lightly to indicate her hurry. They said their goodbyes and headed towards the BART.

“My place?” she asked, when they got on the train headed to the Mission district. “I need to veg out. We can order in.”

A small frown appeared on Cam’s face. “But we’re meeting Will for dinner tonight, aren’t we?”

Oh. Was it that time of the month already? She bit her lip, thinking of how she could beg off or ask for a raincheck.

And still pass the final exam.

“It’s not about us,” Cam said, nuzzling her neck. “Will’s got no one else.”

Laurie’s shoulders sagged. She should have guessed. Will . Every time she thought Cam might take the next step and ask her to move in, Will dragged her boyfriend back to their raucous college life like some vestigial Sherlock for one last case.Cam was always apologetic afterwards, full of compliments about how she ‘brought out the best in him’ that her mother told her were the mark of a keeper, but Laurie always thought they made her out to be broccoli—fibrous but unappealing.

Particularly tonight, when Cam’s glowing skin and hair only served as a reminder of her own premenstrual frizz and bloat. Still, not about us meant that there was an us in play—the kind of us that shared views on healthcare policy and took care of lonely friends.

Just before they stepped out of the train, Cam adjusted his curls by the reflection in the BART window. He kept an eye open for taxis. She didn’t bother, but he was an idealist. Most techies were. They couldn’t load a dishwasher but somehow believed they could end war and world hunger. Of course he thought he could find a taxi on a Friday night. She and Cam were equidistant from twenty-five on either side, but sometimes she felt the gap widening. It wasn’t his fault. In California, there were no seasons. Years were counted in video game releases.

They walked past the Mission’s loud churches and louder mortuaries, past elegant pastel houses punctuated by alleys with swirling technicolor graffiti. Laurie shrank slightly at the enormous, brown-skinned naked women that glared at her from these walls. Women certain of their meaning: you don’t even dare paint us, never mind be us .

She looked away, catching sight of a skinny man with a light, scruffy beard. His salmon pink T-shirt said Men for breast cancer , the critical word ( awareness ) hidden beneath the zipper of a black hoodie. She smiled. She would’ve nudged Cam, but he was walking faster than usual.

Tonight’s taqueria had the technicolor tiles of a CW drama. Laurie’s stomach growled, and Cam asked for chips and salsa. His attentiveness buoyed her mood a little.

“I don’t understand why Will’s always so late,” Cam said. “Don’t you work together? He could have just joined us.”

Laurie’s shoulders tightened. She and Will might work at the same tech Unicorn, but he wasn’t her responsibility. He was a software engineer, strolling into work at ten-thirty with the swagger of someone who didn’t need this job too badly. She was an admin to his boss. Vic had hired her out of a bar for her ability to hold billionaires’ heads over the toilet and keep her mouth shut about it. She worked sixty-hour weeks, but her salary was a third of Will’s and she had no equity. She shared office space with techies, but little else.

Once, a visitor blurted out the question—what brought you to tech?—and Vic had guffawed as he said, “She peoples well.”

She’d said nothing. Vic had brought her into the Unicorn in the same way he picked up intriguing statues in Japan and Bhutan on his vacations. Statues didn’t speak, and part of peopling well was letting bosses think they were funny.

“There he is,” she said, seeing Will.

Cam looked over, and his face crumpled so suddenly that an incredulous laugh escaped Laurie’s lips before she could stop it. It was the betrayed look on Cam’s face that set it off. Will hadn’t been silent about it when Cam switched out game night for date night, and now he’d brought a date himself?

Will’s jeans were rolled up over his right ankle, the stretch of skin there marked with grease from the bicycle chain. His large hands slid low over a woman’s backside, fingers stretched out trying to encompass her. His eyes moved from her to the selection of burrito fillings, as if uncertain where to begin.

Laurie had heard a rumor there was a spreadsheet where Will’s coworkers tracked his girlfriends, with photographs, dates and timestamps (a few years later, they’d spend this same energy hunting Pokemon). She’d never cared before, but for some reason the thought of this woman going into that sheet twinged through her belly with an unpleasant cramp.

“Will!”

At Cam’s call, Will bit the woman’s ear and whispered something into it. A slow smile spread over her face and she kissed him. It was the kind of kiss no makeup could survive, one that made it as uncomfortable to watch as it was impossible to look away.

The woman wasn’t conventionally beautiful, but there was something striking about her that meant that when she and Will walked over, Laurie got up instinctively, then stood swaying in confusion. She hadn’t meant to offer up her own chair. Meanwhile the waiter, who had ignored them for five minutes when she wanted chips, quickly brought over another chair.

The woman—Mal—thanked him with a casual wave that suggested she was used to this, that people often fell over themselves trying to please her, and it was only right that they did. The waiter stood taller, smiling broadly, as if he’d only been waiting for her to pluck him out of obscurity and realize his potential. His simpering obedience made Laurie cringe—hopefully she hadn’t come across as desperate for Mal’s approval when she’d offered her chair.

Everywhere she went in San Francisco, she was haunted by the specter of the people she might have been if not for Vic, might yet become one day. A slightly stoned barista here. A frazzled waitress there. Just last night, a stern Walgreens clerk who sneered at her purchase of condoms.

She shifted closer to Cam to make room, and also to put some distance between them and the other couple. Especially Will. Cam had got her used to thinking all men smelled of L’Occitane aftershave, so Will was always a rude shock. He radiated heat, and the air around him was thick with exertion and bicycle grease.

Not just him, Laurie realized, wrinkling her nose.

Mal crossed one leg high over the other, like a man, as she sat down. Beyond the edge of the table, her foot swirled lazily in its boot. They’d biked here together. Somehow that stuck in Laurie’s craw more than anything else. Men had already stopped paying for dates. The least they could do was pick a girl up.

Mal fixed her with a look. “We’ve met before?”

It wasn’t really a question, not the way she said it. Cam looked at Laurie expectantly. As if her admin duties had extended beyond working hours and it was her fault this dinner wasn’t what Cam wanted it to be.

It was Will who finally said, “You must’ve seen Laurie at the office. She works for Vic.”

Mal’s face brightened. “I thought I’d be the only woman on the team. I’m transferring over to Vic on Monday.”

“Won’t that be awkward?” Cam said, brows furrowed as he looked between Mal and Will. “Being involved with someone on your team?”

“Not for long,” Will said, reaching for the chips. “I’m quitting.”

Cam’s hand stopped in mid-air, the chip in his fingers fluttering, fragile as a butterfly. “What do you—?”

But the waiter was here again. Will and Cam ordered flautas and a pitcher of margarita. Laurie got the chili con queso, and Cam turned to her surprised—he was severely allergic to dairy and capsaicin.

She hid the guilty flinch and the burn of resentment in the bite of a taco. If Cam and Will were going to get drunk on margaritas, what did it matter what she did? These nights only ever ended one way. She lived in the Mission, close to more taquerias and bars than they’d been able to hit in a year, so Let’s have dinner with Will meant she’d go home alone stewing, not having said I didn’t have any booze, so maybe let’s not split the bill , and Cam would stagger in at 2 AM, singing tunelessly and stinking of tequila and rum, nuzzling up to her until she forgave him.

“Got to cut the umbilical sometime,” Will said, making a slicing motion, “before the corporation suffocates your soul.”

“What will you do instead?” Laurie asked, surprised at the twinge of regret.

“I’ll be spending the winter in Tahoe. Skiing, maybe becoming a ski instructor. I’ll think about what I want to do after the snow melts. I’ve always wanted to hike the Appalachian Trail.”

Her nostrils flared with the effort not to smile. No more dinners!

Cam looked as if he’d eaten an entire jalape?o. “That doesn’t seem very strategic. What if the IPO happens while you’re gone?”

Strategic . It was a word that came up every day at the Unicorn. It was supposed to mean the ability to think ahead. The way techies used it, it meant I want to say you’re being childish, but then HR will yell at me, so I’m just going to say you’re not being strategic.

Will phoning in rich before his thirtieth birthday citing a case of the don’t-wannas probably wasn’t strategic. But at least it meant he and Cam wouldn’t go off for that planned camping trip to Death Valley next month either. Good. Adding existential dread and sunburn to a Thanksgiving vacation didn’t seem strategic either.

Mal was looking at her, dark eyes taking in her expression while yielding nothing of her own thoughts. Laurie struggled to look away when their eyes caught, as if an invisible web drew them together.

“Climbing the corporate ladder gives the illusion of progress,” Will said. “It’s time to let go of structure, leave Diaspar. Too many people hold on to what’s in front of them, even when it makes them miserable.”

He hadn’t directed any of this at Laurie, but she winced. Then she noticed Mal’s eyes on her again.

“And you—” Cam said, turning to Mal, “you aren’t going to convince him to stay?”

“Far from it,” Mal said, leaning back in her chair as if this was nothing to her. “There’s a crash coming, and valuations are going to fall. There’s no way we’ll IPO for the next two years. I’m just willing to wait it out.”

Laurie pretended to be engrossed in her food. Every time someone said IPO she remembered how she and Cam had their first real date at a bar serving IPO Pale Ale. For months afterwards, she’d believed an IPO was a kind of beer. Cam always looked at her fondly when someone talked stocks. Her ears warmed under his gaze now.

“IPOs are a value trap,” Will said.

“A value trap?” Cam asked.

“It’s when you’re unwilling to renegotiate your current situation because you’re committed to past values,” Laurie said, recognizing Will’s reference to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance . Another part of peopling well was learning what made her coworkers tick, and there wasn’t a week that went by that Will didn’t reference the Beats.

Strange that Cam hadn’t picked up on it first. When they’d first started going out, she hadn’t been able to pick up his references. It felt like a class marker, whether someone spoke in book quotes or movie quotes—although Cam didn’t believe in class. He didn’t know how voraciously she read, how she still felt she was running to catch up.

“Ah, sunk cost,” Mal said, with an admiring nod that made Laurie puff up almost as much as the waiter had. “Although, in San Francisco, everyone’s constantly renegotiating everything. New jobs, new relationships, new therapists. It’s a bit exhausting, to be so constantly on the cusp of change. Just find yourself already. Commit to something. Anything. So, sure, hike across America. Wear comfortable shoes.”

“Finding yourself is getting more and more expensive,” Will said. “The trail’s going to set me back at least six grand.”

Laurie nearly gagged. After rent, she had five hundred dollars in the bank. Why should it cost twelve times that to walk around a free country?

“Remember El Paso?” Cam said suddenly. “We managed that hike on ten bucks a day.” He laughed. “We were high all the time on mescaline and Carlos Castaneda, looking for conviction beyond the Lutheran church.”

To her surprise, Will didn’t add in his own story as he usually did, raving about some girl or drug. She hadn’t thought him capable of either self-awareness or restraint. Now, knowing he’d be gone soon, she was seeing his more attractive features. His unrepentant lust for life that kept Cam in his orbit. His curiosity, which led him as often to books as it did to pharmaceuticals.

Half the things Cam had introduced her to—biking the Golden Gate, hiking Mount Tam, eating sushi—he’d done with Will first. It used to make her jealous; tonight, it suddenly left her unsettled. Without Will, who would Cam be?

“How long have you two known each other?” Mal asked, gesturing between the two men as if the same question was on her mind.

“Since college,” Cam said. “He knocked on my door with a colander on his head, promising me a party where there would be three score queens, and four score concubines and virgins without number.”

“The Song of Solomon,” Laurie said, and then felt guilty when Will’s eyes turned to her in pleasant surprise.Annoyance followed so quickly she wondered if the chili con queso was to blame for the sudden mood-swings. She wasn’t betraying Cam; it wasn’t her fault Will could ignite a spark with Tupperware.

“Cam was a bit stodgy in college,” Will said, his powerful, muscled frame making Cam seem smaller even though he was six feet tall. “Wouldn’t drink because it was against the law. Hadn’t even popped his cherry yet.”

“Is that so?” Mal asked. But there was something sharp in her tone, a strange wariness.

“I’ll be back,” Laurie said, getting up to go to the bathroom. Instinct told her an explosion seemed imminent, and she didn’t want to be caught in the middle.

“I’ll come with,” Mal said. “Leave you two some time to catch up.” She stuck her hands into her pockets and followed Laurie into the small bathroom, sat on the sink while she went into the stall.

Why couldn’t she just wait outside?

“Can I ask you something?” Mal asked, making conversation as if completely unbothered by the sound of trickling from the stall. “Do you know if Cam and Will have ever slept together?”

Laurie rushed to flush so she could get out and see her face, decide if this woman was for real. She’d meant to come off outraged, but dropped her purse and came out of the stall stumbling, snatching at a lipstick and a mostly-gone roll of mints as they rolled in separate directions on the tiles.

“Well, they’re a little bit in love with each other, aren’t they?”

She was about to protest, and then suddenly she wasn’t.

Of course. They were in love with each other. The long nights out, the timing, the semitones of Cam’s ambivalences and jealousies, even tonight’s stupid perfect blazer and that last adjustment to his Disney curls and the speed of his walk.

But if it was true, why, in San Francisco, where men paraded naked and covered in glitter and nobody batted an eye, hadn’t they figured it out and done something about it?

“You didn’t know?” Mal asked, her head cocked to one side in curiosity that hadn’t even a trace of sympathy in it. “I thought that was the attraction.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It is for me. I know Will isn’t going to want more from me than I’m willing to give.”

“You don’t want a relationship?”

Mal scoffed. “Not a chance.” She went into the stall. From there, she said, while Laurie braced against the sink, “No more than you want one with Cam.”

“Cam and I have been dating for a year.”

“Sunk cost.”

The sound of Mal flushing the toilet jarred Laurie’s very bones. She wanted to storm out of the bathroom. Instead she stood transfixed while being casually stripped of certainties. And neither of the things she actually meant to say— I love Cam , or, You don’t know us —would come out of her mouth.

“But Will’s never expressed the slightest interest in men.”

Mal washed her hands and shook them dry with careless finality. Raised an eyebrow in the mirror.

Maybe Laurie should have been defending Cam’s heterosexuality instead? But she wasn’t a liar, or a fool. She’d chosen to ignore the way Cam slept with his head on her chest instead of holding her to his. Chosen to feel relieved at the opportunity to offer comfort and support when he tearfully confessed that antidepressants had messed up his sex drive.

Chosen to forget what real attraction felt like.

“No, you’re wrong,” she said weakly.

“Let’s find out,” Mal said, and burst open the bathroom door.

Laurie had no choice but to follow, heart pounding.

“You took your time in there,” Will said.

“Needed to get the lay of the land,” Mal said, sitting down. “Besides, we wanted to give your stifled imaginations something to do.” A flash of teeth; a smile like a whip. “What must we have been up to in there, just the two of us?”

“Not all men find the idea of two women titillating,” Cam said, “especially not in San Francisco.” He wasn’t quite drawing himself up, but pulling back, freezing her out. Until that moment, Laurie had never seen it, now she couldn’t stop wondering if he’d done it before, used Minnesota-nice feminism as a defensive weapon.

“Well, I find the idea of two men together to be an aphrodisiac,” Mal said, snagging the last chip in the bowl. “And if you two weren’t curious enough to try it, all your mescaline trips mustn’t have taken you very far beyond your repressed Lutheran upbringing after all.”

For a long beat, no one spoke. Laurie knew, of course. She knew from the way Cam refused to look at Will at all. From the small twitch at the end of Will’s lips. All she could do was pray they’d all stay silent or change the topic.

A wide grin broke out on Mal’s face. She turned to Will, open-mouthed. “ You popped his cherry .”

Will shrugged. “It was college.”

Laurie couldn’t move. She was frozen, a perfect plastic smile plastered over the tumult in her gut that threatened to knock her down. She wanted to scream, but the same creature that had kept her from refusing these dinners now held her back from saying anything at all.

Cam’s eyes turned to her—begging, terrified.

She held perfectly still, like a bug playing dead.

“Shall we get the bill?” Mal said.

“Yes,” Will said, pulling her into his lap. “We’ve got to find a way to silence that troublesome mouth of yours.”

“I can think of a few ways,” Mal said, her dark pupils blown wide. She signaled the waiter and said, “I’ve got this. I can’t stand the whole Did you get one drink or two, we all shared the appetizer crap. It’s a taqueria.”

“We usually split the bill,” Cam said. The tip of his nose was white with fury.

“That doesn’t seem fair,” Mal said, and inserted a hundred-dollar bill into the black wallet the waiter held out to her. “Besides, I need change for cab fare.”

Laurie’s chest seized, and she coughed to take in a breath. After that—she was going to just leave .

Before she could say a word, Mal and Will were gone, whirling out of the taqueria with their hands all over each other, leaving her to pick up the pieces.

She grabbed her coat and walked out on unsteady legs.

“You look really gorgeous tonight,” Cam said.

Of course she did. Choking on air that crackled with smoke from October’s wildfires did wonders for the complexion.

He leaned in.

Fuck it.

“If you kiss me, you’ll get hives,” she said, and walked away.