Chapter 19 #2
“Between the security in my building and the way Manny’s got me wired, feels like overkill,” I say, which is half the truth. The other half is that a body man would interfere with what’s happening with Cynnie and that seems like a worse alternative than being press-ganged into another blackhat job.
“He’s pretty adamant about sending De Leon to England with you.” Logan’s tone drops until it’s almost sheepish. “That is, if you’re going.”
“I’m absolutely going and if my choices are De Leon or Manny’s boy and his fucking body odor, I’ll take De Leon.”
Logan laughs hard enough that his abs bounce.
“De Leon has a private plane. That’s got to be better than traveling coach with someone who believes deodorant is optional.”
I chuckle as we swap over. Puffing through my reps, I say, “Manny said that De Leon wants in. You wouldn’t consider, you know, bringing him in-in, right?”
“In-in like part of the company?” Logan asks.
When I nod, he shakes his head firmly. “I like the guy better than you do but he’s not a team player.
Contract work’s his lane. I’m happy to bring him in for one-off jobs but I don’t want to see much more of him than I already do.
And no offense, but I don’t want him around Emmy. Or Cynnie.”
“You think he’d hurt them?”
“Not on purpose, but I think what he’s been through has made him callous. Littles are sensitive. I don’t think he’d understand why they might be scared of him.”
I snort. “Fuck, I’m scared of him.”
I expect Logan to chuckle but instead he nods gravely. “You’re not wrong to be. He’s a scary bastard. But I’ll feel a thousand percent better about you going anywhere you might be exposed to the bad guys with him at your side. I don’t suppose you have an empty unit in your building, do you?”
“No, fully rented. And don’t even think about having De Leon create a vacancy so he can move in, Lo. I’m okay about traveling with him, but I seriously don’t want his brand of psycho in my building. Fuck, there are kids in my building.”
Logan rubs his hand over his mouth. “Good point,” he admits.
“That guy’s gonna go off one day and you know it. Nuclear fucking meltdown, man.”
“I don’t disagree with you, Maxie, and I’d like to help him, but I really don’t want him near Emmy.”
“I really don’t want him near people.”
Finally, Logan chuckles. “I hear you.”
Lindy’s a good, engaging lecturer, but between the app for Cynnie that I’m now really excited about creating and that extra credit code that’s still teasing at the back of my mind, I’m not as focused as I should be.
Lindy nails me, asking me a series of questions that I fumble because I wasn’t listening. After he excuses the class, he glares at me and I slink down the steps to lean against the wall separating his podium from the rows of seats.
“Where the fuck was your head?” he asks.
“I’m really sorry, man. I should’ve been paying more attention.”
Lindy sniffs. “Slacker.”
“Sorry. Hey, listen, that code you put up for extra credit—”
Lindy nods. “I liked what you did with it. Your solutions were a hell of a lot more innovative than your answers in class.”
“Yeah, sorry about that. That code, it felt really familiar. I’m sure I’ve seen it before. Have you published it somewhere?”
Lindy frowns. “No.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“I wrote it. What’re you suggesting, Max?”
I hold up my hands. “Nothing. It just felt familiar. But, you know, when you’ve seen billions of lines of code, everything feels familiar.”
Lindy chuckles. “True, that. C’mon. Nachos and beer.”
“Sounds good.”
“You pay and I won’t even fail you for spacing out in my class.”
I shake my head at him. Cheapskate. But I don’t argue.
Once he has me fed and watered, I admit what had me distracted and show him the design for my app for Cynnie.
At first, Lindy’s condescending about a “reward-based app.” But after I show him how it’s really a positive-feedback loop, he gets into it.
He helps me work through the architecture of the reward levels and start the coding.
While Lindy’s at the bar getting another round of drinks, I check my email and find a link from Squid to a shared box full of graphics files.
I scroll through them, grinning. Squid has a thing for chibis, the Japanese-based caricatures with big heads, small bodies, and big eyes.
I figure Cynnie will like them, too, since they have a similar aesthetic to fairy kei.
In the hours I’ve been in class and working on the app with Lindy, Squid and his twelve-year-old nephew have created a dozen chibis of me and Cynnie. Fuck, they’re cute.
I close out of the files as Lindy returns. I’m okay with him knowing I’m creating an app to reward my girlfriend for eating three meals a day and drinking enough water. Showing him a caricature of me with a big head, tiny body, wearing a tiger suit, is an emasculating bridge too far.
I always lose time coding. But with a never-ending supply of Mexican food and beer, I lose more time than usual.
Outside the restaurant’s windows, the sunny day has faded to dusk.
I check my phones to make sure I haven’t missed anything important.
There are a few messages from Logan and Manny but nothing urgent.
I pop a text to Cynnie to see how she’s doing and grin when she immediately responds.
Bumble: Oppa! Oppa! Oppa! Wants to see you!
I want to see you, too, baby. Tonight?
Bumble: Yes! Yes! Yes!
Yours? Mine?
Bumble: Yours! Chase me!
Meet me at mine in an hour? I’ll chase you until you’re a dizzy bee.
She sends me back a string of bumblebee emojis.
“You fucking sucker,” Lindy says, watching me grin at my phone.
I scoff at him. “You wish you were as much of a sucker as me.”
Lindy’s eyes shift. He’s been jovial since our second pitcher of beer, my classroom transgressions forgotten. His eyes twinkled as we coded together. Now his eyes empty to something flat and cold.
“Yeah, Max, I do,” he says. He gathers up his laptop and man bag. “Tab’s yours.”
I watch him walk out, shame running up my face like a fever.
“Lindy—”
He doesn’t look back.
When I go to the bar, I discover he’s paid half the bill.
With Lindy’s loneliness so fresh in my mind, I make the most of my time with Cynnie.
She’s in a particularly good mood because she’s just turned in a big project.
We sit out on my fire escape, trying to spot stars through the late summer smog and city light pollution.
Since I’ve been drinking, we agree not to scene.
Cynnie says she’ll be big and we share a bottle of wine as we watch the sky.
The traffic noises dim as the sky darkens. In the relative quiet, there’s a soft buzz from the planter screening us from the street.
“Emily found a pink ladybug in those flowers,” I tell Cynnie.
She shifts out from under the arm I have around her and peers into the planter. “It’s a bumblebee. Do you mind if I get it some sugar water? It might be exhausted if it hasn’t returned to its hive for the night.”
“Of course.”
Hand-in-hand, we return to my kitchen. She tells me how to mix up a solution of sugar water while she puts some bottled water in the smallest dish I can scrounge up.
Then we take a spoon with a few drops of sugar water and the dish out to the planter and set them at the base of a clump of daisies for the bee to find.
I draw Cynnie back under my arm as we settle back onto the bench facing the planter. “Why bees, baby?”
She rests her cheek on my shoulder. “I like everything about them. I like how the worker bees are all girls. They all have a role to play in the health of the hive and they’re all important no matter what they do.
I like that they have complex systems of communication we barely understand.
Did you know that it took researchers years to decode the dances bees do to tell each other where to find food? ”
“I didn’t,” I admit.
“And the best thing about bees is that bumblebees are round and fat and furry and everyone still thinks they’re cute.”
Her voice catches on the last word. Does anyone think she’s not cute? They’d have to be blind. Does anyone think she’s fat?
“Baby.” I shift her so I can cup her soft cheek. “Does anyone call you fat?”
She shrugs and looks away. “I’m the biggest in my family.”
“You’re healthy, baby. I love your curves. Please don’t ever let anyone make you feel anything other than beautiful.”
She smiles at me and cuddles back under my arm. “This is why I hate being big.”
“Why, baby?”
“Because all these thoughts and worries come back. When I’m little, when I’m playing with you, I don’t think of how Baachan says my ass jiggles when I walk or how the bees are dying or how everything’s fucked up and unfair.”
I rock back in my seat. “Baby? Where is this coming from?”
She looks up at me with tears in her eyes. I brush them away.
“I told you, I hate being big.”
“Tell me about all of that.”
“You don’t want to hear it.”
“I absolutely do, Cynnie.”
She sniffs. “My ass jiggles when I walk.”
“It’s mesmerizing. I love watching your ass jiggle.
I love smacking your ass and watching it ripple.
I’m absolutely, completely, head-over-heels in love with your ass and if you lose an ounce, I will go to your house and force-feed your grandmother string cheese until she has to roll down the street like a Jigglypuff.
Please stop hiding your gorgeous ass, baby.
No, I take that back, I’m the only one who should be seeing that ass.
” She giggles. “Hide it from everyone but me.”
“You really like it that much?”
“So much I’m going to have it framed.”
She swats me.
“I mean it. I’m going to get one of those make-an-impression-of-your-dick casting things and we’re going to cast your ass and put it on my wall.”
A wild, sweet giggle. “At least you’d have something on your wall then.”
I cuddle her back into the seat, kissing her temple. “You think I’m joking, but I’m not.”