WE ATE ON OPPOSITEsides of the room—me cross-legged on the bed, him on the floor with his back against the wall, white containers open between us. Lo mein, something with broccoli that was doing its best, a fortune cookie each.
I ate without the usual production around it. That kept happening on this trip: just hunger and whatever was in front of me, no documentation, no angles. I wasn’t sure yet if this was personal growth or a trauma response.
I cracked open my fortune cookie. The slip said:The best things in life cannot be planned.
I turned it over in my fingers for a moment. Then I put it down and picked up my lo mein.
“Tell me something true about Montana,” I said.
He thought about it, which I’d noticed he did—actually considered rather than producing the first available answer. “Storms come in differently up there. You can see one forty minutes before it arrives.”
“How?”
“Light changes first. Then the temperature drops. Animals move before you hear anything—elk, deer, anything with good instincts.” He paused. “Then it’s there.”
“What do you do?”
“Nothing to do about it. You get wet. Or worse.” No drama in it, just fact. “You learn to read the signs instead.”
I turned the fortune slip over again. Then: “I applied to Wharton. After USC. MBA program.”
He sat with it and waited.
“I didn’t tell anyone. Not even Bree. Six weeks on the application, three drafts of the personal essay, two letters of recommendation from professors my father had never met.” I kept my eyes on the white container. “He found out. I still don’t know how. Called me and said the investment would be wasted because Wells would be taking over Grant Hotels. That was the whole conversation.”
“Did you go anyway?” Rafe said.
“No.”
A beat. “That’s a real answer.”
“You said you wanted real.”
“No.” His eyes stayed on me across the room, steady and direct. “You did.”
There was no commentary in it—no sympathy, no outrage on my behalf. Just the accurate observation handed back to me, and the fact that I’d known it before I heard him say it.
I put the fortune slip and the container down.
“Warren was wrong about that,” Rafe said.
I didn’t pick them back up.
The AC unit ran. At some point The Love Boat had become too cheerful for the room and he’d turned it off without being asked.
He was on the floor. I was in the bed.
In the dark behind my eyes I was already writing.
Forced exposure therapy for the over-connected,I thought.Day two. No phone, no modifications, no artisanal anything. Current status: Medium Brunette. Cried in a motel bathroom.Got held. The caption writes itself. Too bad there’s nowhere to send it.
This had been happening since the gas station—my brain composing constantly, building content out of everything, running into the wall of no phone every time. Two million people had signed up to receive my observations about my life, and my life was currently producing some of its best material and I had absolutely nowhere to put any of it. The observations just lived inside you instead, it turned out. I was adding this to the growing list of things about myself I hadn’t known until I lost my phone.
The room held still for a long time. Neither of us was asleep.
The thing in the bathroom was still in the room with us, sitting in the dark between the bed and the floor. Neither of us was going to be the one to name it first.
But it was coming north with us.
