He looks up, his lake-water eyes startlingly green. “Another world. Another universe.”
That’s when I notice it’s not just teenage girls gathered around our booth. It’s their moms, some annoyed at the delay in heading home from the Feed-Con expo, some just as riveted as their daughters. It’s also college boys, a middle-aged man in an expo uniform, the cashier from the shop next door, and a couple of elderly women from the salon across the plaza. Most are dutifully pointing e-frames at Michael and me, and glancing at the TV screen now and then to see if it’s their camera providing the current view of our restaurant.
And in the corner of the screen—three different logos for three different companies advertise on my feed.
My palms sweat. My tired calves quiver. It’s working. I must have made hundreds of dollars already, maybe even a thousand.
All because Michael is convinced there’s something wrong with him. All because he’s so crazy, this Dylan guy cut out and is never coming back.
He’s never coming back, is he? He knows Michael is crazy, and he might feel sorry for him, but he’s not driving out here just to get back a cheap notebook, or to hear Michael’s jumbled explanations.
People don’t come back just because you want them to.
Even if they owe you, even if you owe them.
People don’t come back.
Pain blossoms in my gut. Somewhere, Griffin’s standing on a pier, paint-speckled in the wind.
Missing me like crazy.
But he’s not coming back.
I look at Michael, at the crowd pressing in around him. He doesn’t get it, he can’t understand.
His angst isn’t buying Dylan’s forgiveness. It’s only giving people something to gape at, adding a feed to the Bin. Mr. One will probably make a mold of Hottie Convinced He’s An Alien and then he’ll loop footage of Michael’s misery for teens and tourists.
I know how that goes.
I search out Lola among the crowd. The Other One is trying to be discreet about wrestling the chili-tinted flavor gel gun away from her.
“She’s got a gun,” I tell the crowd, and point to Lola.
They shriek and scatter.
“Come on.” I pull Michael out of the booth and around the long way to the kitchen. “Through here.”
I open the back door, which leads out to an alley lined with Dumpsters.
“Michael.” I put my hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me any more. Leave the notebook here. I’ll give it to Dylan if he comes.” But he won’t, he’s gone, you’re pining for nothing. The words sink deep into some pit inside of me.
Already, some of the crowd has found us; a string of girls follows us into the alley, armed with outstretched e-frames. Mr. One appears, his expression entreating me to come back inside and use Flavor Foam as a backdrop for my conversation.
“Just go,” I plead with Michael.
“But your money,” Michael says. “You need the money.”
“I’ll be fine. This’ll be at the top of FeedBin for ages.” Or a day maybe, or an hour. Not enough time to make ten thousand dollars, but enough to delay a transfer a little longer, maybe, if MyFuture’s feeling generous.
He senses my hesitation. He looks at the girls with their e-frame cameras. “Let me show you,” Michael says to me. “So you can understand.”
I’d like to understand, I really would. I’d like to understand why a guy like Michael would bother waiting year after year for someone who left and probably never looked back. I’d like to know why people leave in the first place. Even when they love you, even when they owe it to you to stay. But all I really understand is that people have all kinds of debts between them that are never going to get paid.
“You don’t owe me anything,” I tell Michael.
Michael’s lined face is a maze of anxiety and disappointment. “Just let me show you.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” I say. “You look perfectly normal to me. You feel perfectly normal.” I move my hand down to grip his.
He grips back. “I’ll show you.”
And then I’m not holding his hand and I’m not looking into his face. I’m sensing him with something other than my eyes or my skin. His face is not a normal face but a screen of flickering images, a loose collection of colors, like dust motes caught in a shaft of light. His hand is warmth and light and energy, but nothing solid.
He’s a cloud.
And then he’s back to normal, back to real. His lake-water eyes search mine but how can he expect to find anything there other than shock and disbelief and confusion, and I hope not revulsion, I really hope not.
“I told you it wouldn’t end well,” he says. “Do you believe me now?”
Overhead, the tufted clouds are hands of loose molecules reaching for each other, stretching and stretching.
“Happy endings are for movies,” I say.