That night, we ended our conversation at midnight, meaning early, and I set the alarm on my phone for 6:15 A.M. Though I’d told Jerry he didn’t need to get up in the morning, he did; in his white-and-blue seersucker bathrobe, he carried my box of protein bars and masks outside and set it on the passenger side in the front seat, then he embraced me and said, “Some states let you drive eighty, but I think a bit slower is safer.” Sugar frolicked at our feet, and I crouched to pet her. I had explained to Jerry that I was going to visit a friend in L.A. for a week or two, and his sister, my aunt Donna, whom I’d been grocery shopping for when I shopped for Jerry and me, had offered her car; she’d said since she and my uncle Richard hardly went anywhere these days, they didn’t need two.
It was strange to leave Jerry’s house; it was strange not to know how long I’d be in California; it was strange, even after five years, to live in the world without my mother; it was strange to be a person during a global pandemic. I started the engine and backed out of the driveway, waved goodbye to Jerry and Sugar from the street, and turned up the volume on the folky women satellite radio station, and a Mary Chapin Carpenter song I knew all the words to filled the car. I was both excited and melancholy as I drove south on State Line Road, through the early morning summer light, and my melancholy lifted some as I reached the Shawnee Mission Parkway and by the time I passed through Olathe, Kansas, half an hour later, it was almost completely gone, or at least eclipsed by giddiness and nervousness and sheer horniness. The highway in front of me was long and mostly flat, and I realized that I had been this excited and terrified only one other time in my life; it had been when I interviewed at TNO.
* * *
—
The Albuquerque Hampton Inn was four stories flanked by a mostly empty parking lot of bleak concrete, with the Sandia Mountains visible in the east. Sitting on the bed in my room, I ate dinner at 8:15 mountain time: two protein bars, a banana, and an orange I’d purchased earlier in the day at a gas station in the northwest corner of the Texas Panhandle. The drive had gone well enough, the highway taking me across the increasingly barren state of Kansas, then a brief dip through Oklahoma, an only slightly longer jaunt in Texas, and the final hours in New Mexico: the road straight and endless; the open expanses of land on either side a mix of bleached grass, sand, and scrub; the sky big and reassuringly blue. Though I’d planned while driving to either have profound thoughts about nature and humanity or else determine the structure of “Supremely,” which was the working title of my barely existent screenplay about the Supreme Court justice, I’d mostly spaced out for long stretches. These stretches were abruptly punctuated with the impulse to grip the steering wheel when I found myself passing a truck or, far more pleasantly, by being intermittently startled at the knowledge that I might be having sex with Noah in about twenty-four hours. Mightn’t I? As promised, I texted him each time I stopped, and he always texted back immediately.
Because Jerry was not a texter, I emailed to tell him I’d made it to Albuquerque. Then I put on a mask, left my room, hurried through the lobby—I passed a lone family carrying camping gear—and stood beneath the porte cochere inserting my earbuds. The sun had set, but the western sky was still faintly orange. When I called Noah, he said, “How was your dinner?”
“Thanks to your care package, delicious, and now I’m walking around the parking lot to get some air. How are you?”
“I’m trying to look at my house through your eyes to see if there’s anything I should hide. Also, Margit is about to order groceries. You drink grapefruit seltzer water and put oat milk in your coffee, right?”
“As long as you don’t have a Confederate flag, we’re good. And yes.”
“Even though Jerry thinks oat milk is weird.”
“Yes. Even though Jerry thinks it’s weird.” Hearing Noah say Jerry’s name, Noah knowing who Jerry was, still was both odd and sweet.
“One other thing along these lines, the thing I mentioned that we should discuss—do you remember that I don’t keep alcohol in my house? Are you okay with that?”
“Of course,” I said.
“Please don’t say it’s okay just to be polite. I’m being honest that not having wine or whatever in the house is my preference, but I’m sure we can figure something out if that feels too extreme to you. When I have friends over, they bring stuff and take it when they go, so it’s not like I’ve banned it on the premises.”
I was quiet for a few seconds before saying, “I’m honestly okay with it. If it was all the same to you, then sure, I’d have a drink when I get there, just because—well—not to sound dorky, but I’m a little nervous. But not having a drink isn’t a big sacrifice.” I thought, not for the first time, that plainly expressing your feelings about fraught topics was significantly harder than writing banter between imaginary characters.
“Will you tell me if that changes?” Noah said.
“The amount I’d want a drink is less than the amount I want it to be a non-issue for you,” I said. “But yes, I will.”
“Thank you, Sally, seriously. And last housekeeping item: My house is a little hard to find, up a bunch of winding roads, and I wonder if I should meet you in the parking lot of this shopping center and lead you back.”
“Oh, I can find my way. Thanks, though.” I felt the most anxious about the first seconds and moments in each other’s presence. Though I’d told him in an email that I thought our interactions at TNO meant we already knew what it was like to be in the same room, I’d conveyed that sentiment when being in the same room again had still been hypothetical. Now that I was halfway to L.A., I was less sure. And wasn’t meeting in a parking lot likelier to only increase the awkwardness?
“Let me know if you reconsider. Once you’ve gotten onto the 101, it’ll be about twenty minutes to Topanga Canyon Boulevard, and things are more twisty-turny the farther south you get. When you really start to think you’re in the wrong place, it means you’re almost to my house.”
“That doesn’t sound ominous at all.”
He laughed. “There’s a stone wall along the property, then there’s a gate in front of the driveway. Just pull up to the intercom, and after the gate opens, you go up the hill and I’ll be waiting for you in front of the house.”
Was this the moment to mention that I’d googled his house and the terra-cotta tiles in the front hall were lovely? Perhaps not.
“One other thing, in the interest of full disclosure,” he said. “If you change your mind about meeting at that shopping center, there’s a chance of paparazzi in the parking lot. They like to lurk outside the fancy grocery store. I’m assuming you’re kind of used to that with your TNO friends, but I wouldn’t want you to be caught off guard.”
“Okay.” A jitteriness swelled in my stomach, distinct from the swoony anticipation of seeing him; this jitteriness was sour.
“It seems like they’re there less during the pandemic, but you never know.”
I was passing the back of the Hampton Inn at this point; the curtains were closed in most rooms. In front of me, the mountains had turned black. According to my phone, it was seventy-eight degrees—already cooler than when I’d checked in and dry in a way that contrasted favorably to my last full day in Kansas City, when the temperature had reached a moist ninety-six degrees. Before I could stop myself, I said, “Would it be easier if I stay at a hotel?”
Slowly, after a silence, Noah said, “Easier in what way?”
“Logistically? I don’t know.”