Chapter Eleven Fran #4
By unspoken agreement Fran and Cal smoked weed and played Pokémon on the beach the next night and the night after.
In the mornings Fran would occasionally have a missed call from RJ or a text from London with a heart, she would plan to call back on her break, but as soon as she entered the conference center she was swept away by the swarm of activity, the talks, the breakout sessions, the brown-bag lunches, and the meet and greets.
Fran got to know some of the guys on her team, she had coffee with her supervisor, and she took hours of notes on her laptop.
There were tables of branded gifts, and Fran collected a portable phone charger, a fancy water bottle, an AirTag, and a waterproof laptop sleeve.
She bought treasures for the boys at the hotel gift shop, little wooden surfboards on key chains, tiny glass bottles filled with sand, no different from the sand in Greenhead, but thirteen dollars a pop.
On the fourth night of the conference Cal met Fran outside the center with a surprise. He handed her a gummy, and as Fran popped it into her mouth, Cal revealed that he’d booked them massages at the spa.
“I hope that’s not weird. They aren’t in the same room or anything. You’re with a female masseuse. I just remembered what you said. And I had money from the random conference stipend, so I just wanted to book us both something nice.”
“It’s not weird at all, but I’m paying for my own massage. You’re not treating,” Fran objected.
“Nope. It’s already paid for. It was this, or I was just going to buy another lightsaber next time I go to Disney.”
“Cal. You bought a lightsaber? What the fuck do you do with a lightsaber?” Fran giggled.
“Um, sometimes I swing it around while I’m on conference calls?”
Fran laughed. That sounded kind of fun, to be honest.
At the hotel, a woman in a crisp black uniform gave Fran a tour of the spa, showing her the lockers where she would leave her clothing, the robes and sandals she would wear, the steam room and sauna, and the relaxation room where she and Cal could rest for as long as they wished.
The whole place smelled amazing and was filled with the sound of water gently cascading down lava rock walls, making Fran sort of want to pee.
She changed into her robe, attaching the locker keys to her pocket with a safety pin and shuffling along the hall in the gray plastic shoes, feeling like a deeply glamorous geriatric patient.
Fran’s masseuse was a tiny woman, but insanely strong, and prone to announcing facts about Fran’s lifestyle based on where she held tension.
“Your neck is tight, you spend too much time at the computer,” or “You carried a baby on your right hip, you’re crooked.
” Somehow the whole thing was enormously validating for Fran, a stranger literally able to feel the way her work and family was breaking her down bit by bit.
Fran had never been high for a massage before, and it made the entire experience even better, her mind wandering happily as the masseuse thumbed a pressure point in Fran’s foot, making her left arm tingle like magic.
All week Fran had pushed away thoughts about her real life: her father’s debt, her brothers’ selfishness, the increasing sense that something was unfair in her relationship with RJ.
They both worked, they both took care of the kids, but it wasn’t a true fifty-fifty, not even close.
Even if he technically spent just as many hours feeding them, driving them, squirting shampoo on their heads, he wasn’t on call the way Fran was.
He didn’t check his phone to see if London’s teacher had emailed, he didn’t wake up in the night if he heard a cry, he didn’t spend his time with London going over the early-reading books, carefully sounding out the long and short a sounds.
It sometimes felt like he treated parenting like a job where he was paid by the hour—he’d happily clock in and out, but the moment his shift was over he was four beers deep and out of uniform.
Fran had been ignoring a little buzz in her chest, a growing resentment of him, and it was only in the quiet of this dark room, a stranger’s hands on her back, that she could acknowledge it for what it was.
After the massage Fran wandered into the sauna, following the instructions on the sign to drizzle water on the hot rocks and sitting on the wooden bench as the steam turned her face red.
After she was so hot that she felt vaguely dizzy, she found the relaxation room and poured herself a glass of water steeped in mint.
She had spent more time with her thoughts this week than she had in seven years, maybe longer.
Even though her days were filled with meetings, her evenings occupied with Cal, she still retired to her room every night, basking in the novelty of sleeping in her own bed, showering in silence, reading without anyone asking for a snack or putting their dirty socks on her pillow.
But even thinking about Hale’s stinky socks gave Fran a quick pang.
She missed her gamey little boys so much she thought she might cry.
On the last night of the conference, as all business travelers eventually must, Fran found herself at a karaoke bar.
Cal’s team had rented the space and paid for an open bar and all around them men in khaki sipped sugary, hangover-inducing cocktails, lava flows and pina coladas and mudslides.
Fran and Cal hid in the back, drinking vodka sodas and watching in horror as grown professional adults crooned “I Touch Myself” and “Sexual Healing” amid other professional adults, some of whom would decide their end-of-year bonuses.
There was nothing stranger than corporate bonding, Fran reflected.
It was like a version of fraternity hazing, where you were made to humiliate yourself, but not too much, made to drink in excess, but not show drunkenness, made to conjure the specter of sex but never, under any circumstances, engage in it.
In some ways she was lucky in her chosen field.
It was male dominated, but unlike investment banking or fintech she wasn’t subject to alpha dude activities like golf or strip clubs.
Fran was a remote worker, but even the guys who worked on-site were more likely to bond over foosball and Ping-Pong.
There was limited sexual tension in foosball.
Every time one of Cal’s colleagues ventured to the back of the bar, insisting they take a turn on the microphone, Cal would claim he just needed a little more liquid courage and would get them another round.
Fran didn’t want to sing, but even more than that, she wanted to be alone with Cal.
They drank vodka after vodka. Fran ate a few greasy chicken wings, but still felt pretty hammered by the time they called a taxi and snuck out into the night.
Back at the hotel they ordered room service to Cal’s room, grilled cheese and French fries, delivered with tiny glass bottles of ketchup and white linen napkins that seemed too nice for Fran to actually use wiping her greasy fingers.
After they ate, they vaped and watched Life on the Discovery Channel narrated by Oprah Winfrey, Fran fascinated by the pulsing of the sea stars, the circular whirls of spawning fish.
“Did you know that starfish are cannibalistic?” Fran asked.
“Dark.”
“So many fish are. The grossest ones are the sharks that eat their siblings in the womb.”
“Siblicide. How biblical.”
“I think my brothers would have eaten me,” Fran said sleepily. “I should go to bed.”
“No, this is the best part,” Cal protested. “Oprah’s going to talk about the strawberry poison dart frog.”
“Shit, I can’t miss that.” Fran laughed, propping her head up with a pillow and flicking her eyes sideways at Cal.
He had perfect skin, a chin with a slight dimple at the center, his lips dark as plums. She had wanted to be close to him the whole night and the air between them felt charged.
Cal felt Fran’s eyes on him and smiled. Fran waited to see what would happen next, her heart beating quickly, but Cal just grinned and ten minutes later they were asleep, Fran’s phone dead, her conference lanyard still around her neck.
In the morning Fran woke up on Cal’s bed thirstier than she had ever been in her life.
She had a nagging feeling that she had done something wrong, but maybe she hadn’t.
Cal was asleep on his side, and Fran got up quietly and padded down the hall to her room, carrying her shoes and laptop bag.
In her room she plugged in her dead phone and when it came to life it chimed with a dozen missed calls and texts. They were from RJ’s phone.
Hey London had a field trip today did u ever see a permission slip?
He can’t go if we didn’t sign it
Can Hale go to school if he vomited from eating too fast?
Your brother keeps calling me WTF.
Can we foster a dog? They said we could do six weeks. Wouldn’t that be fun?
Fran was hot with the beginning of a hangover. She packed her suitcase without bothering to fold anything, she bought a coffee in the lobby, and took a car to the airport, sending Cal’s call to voicemail and leaving without saying goodbye.