A Knight to Remember
©2010 The Angst Guy (theangstguy@yahoo.com)
Daria and associated characters
are ©2010 MTV Networks
Feedback (good, bad, indifferent, just want to bother me,
whatever) is appreciated. Please write to: theangstguy@yahoo.com
Synopsis: An offbeat Daria
shipper about a girl, a guy, and a Batmobile. The tale continues from where “Sappy
Anniversary” leaves off, about half a year later.
Author’s Notes: I wanted to write a shipper, thanks to a lot of people
writing shippers (thanks, hey!). There were many good ones on PPMB when I
started this, but the story I wanted to do had to have
a quirk in it. The Batmobile supplied the necessary quirk, combined with the
dot-com crash in spring 2000. This story appeared on PPMB and SFMB in late
April 2006, but it was not a response to an Iron Chef. It popped into my head,
and that was that. More notes are at the end.
This story
makes use of a free type font for the title and other bits, for aesthetic value.
The font is Cornerstone Regular, which has an excellent dramatic look. The font is available for downloading (again,
for free, and without viruses) at either SearchFreeFonts.com
or WebPagePublicity.com.
Enjoy it.
Acknowledgements: Many thanks go out to the error-catching powers of MMan
the Great.
*
She finished
her hour-long set at nine that evening, put away her acoustic guitar, and got
one of the bouncers at the Zon to hide the battered case under the bar where it
would be safe. She then ordered a strawberry wine cooler and took a drink as
she surveyed the noisy, ill-lit tavern, one elbow resting on the wooden, knife-engraved
bar. Thursday night’s usual just-short-of-a-crowd was in, mostly
Almost everyone. Someone new was sitting at the little round
table in the far left corner, well away from everyone else. Too old to be an
undergraduate, too dressed up to be a grad student, more like someone with an
actual office job. Sitting alone might mean he was an upper manager, not well
liked or sociable. He seemed very quiet. She raised
her bottle, took another sip, mulled over the possibilities—It’s a new millennium, February already, so why
not?—and left the bar to give him a look.
Details appeared
as she got closer. He looked Asian, as in Chinese, mid-twenties, tall and broad
shouldered and rather handsome for a random guy. A spiky-topped
haircut with a little down-curl over his forehead—not too dreadful an
affectation. He wore a cool yellow button-down shirt with the top
buttons open, dark pants, and black leather shoes. She pegged him as an office manager,
a bit compulsive, a guy who took care of himself but didn’t get out much. She
liked the quiet ones. He was lost in thought, looking at the half-lit stage
where she had been performing only a few minutes before, a long overcoat
hanging over the back of his chair. Three, two, one—
“Hey!” she said
over the background music as she came within range. “Got room at your table for
one more?”
He looked up, startled,
and his eyes widened. “Oh!” he said in a pleasant baritone. He stood up and
fumbled with a chair to pull it out for her. “Uh, sure, there’s room,” he said.
“C’mon and have a—” She put down her wine cooler and took the seat “—yeah.” He sat
down after she did, his face still reflecting shock at
his good fortune.
The stick-thin
young woman looked fragile though she moved with the assurance of a survivor. An
unruly waterfall of raven black hair crowned a delicate-featured face with bright
dark eyes, smiling red lips, and a black silk choker around her neck. She wore
a tight black sweater and long black pants and high black boots and two rings
on each hand. She was pleased at her good fortune, too. Naïve but cute, she thought, looking him over. Has that nerd vibe going, but he looks good. Kinda sexy in a nerd way.
She almost
shouted to be heard over the music. “I saw you and I thought I’d come over and
say ‘hey,’ so . . . hey! How’re you doing?”
“Um, okay.” He
sat forward in his seat, hands wrapped around a glass full of clear soda as if
he feared he would knock it over. He cleared his throat and pointed to the
stage, trying not to shout. “I liked your music. You, uh, I mean, it sounded
alternative, the music. It was great. I liked it.”
He sounds like Mr. Sulu from Star Trek. Very sexy. “Hey, thanks!” she said, grinning. “I write
my own stuff. My name’s Monique. What’s yours?”
“Xiangdong,”
he said, pronouncing it sheeang-dong. He said it so quickly it almost
became a single syllable. He wiped a hand on his pants and reached over to
shake. “Glad to meet you!”
“You, too!” Gentle, firm touch. I
like him. Gotta be a computer geek. She pulled her
chair closer to the table. “Xiangdong?” she repeated, getting it almost right. “Are
you a grad student?”
“Oh, uh, no, I
work in the park. Halcyon Hills, I mean, the corporate park, at an Internet
company.”
Knew it. “What do
you do there?”
Like any guy
asked about his job, he immediately became more animated and less nervous. “I’m
an interactive strategist with Buzzdome dot com,” he
said, clutching his drink as if afraid of having nothing else to do with his
hands. “I started there three years ago last fall, one of the first ones hired.”
“You’re an inter . . . what?”
“Oh, interactive strategist. I evaluate server systems, applications,
and platforms for portability and independence, then interface them with our e-clients
to maximize market potential, boost SEO, link pop, and so on. Mostly I work
with ad metrics.” He shrugged. “It’s not really marketing, like other
interactive strategists do. It’s working with systems. It’s sorta
complicated.” He coughed into his fist, then said, “What
do you do?”
“I play guitar,”
said Monique, smirking because she hadn’t understood anything he had said about
his job. “That’s about it. Except teaching music part-time and working a cash register at Payday. Kills my feet but pays the bills.”
“Yeah, I can
see that,” he said, nodding rapidly. “You’re, um—” He appeared to be searching
for the right line “—really good with, with, with your music. I really liked
that song you did, the one about the highway, you driving at night on the
highway.”
He was so
flustered and sweet, she had to smile. “Yeah, I like that one, too. It means a
lot to me. One of my better ones, I think. You play an
instrument?”
“No, no!” He
shook his head and laughed. “No, I suck at music. I couldn’t do what you did.
That was great.”
She was on the
verge of asking more about his work to keep his side of the conversation going
when he gestured at her and said, “Have you been playing guitar long?”
“Have I been
playing long?” She wasn’t sure how to answer that at first. It had been a long
time since a guy had asked questions about her.
Someone must have coached him on talking to girls. Guys usually weren’t this
considerate. “Well, yeah, since I was a kid. I practiced on my dad’s guitar
when I was little, then I played bass guitar and drums in a high-school band.
It was a lot of fun. The band still plays in this area. It’s called Mystik
Spiral. I think tonight they’re in Swedesville. I used to date the lead singer
but we broke up a while ago. He was . . . he was what he was, not going
anywhere. It’s all over. Not seeing anyone right now.” In case you needed the hint.
“Oh.” He
stared at his drink, suddenly nervous, struggling to think of something to say.
“Uh . . . Magic Spiral. I think I’ve heard of them. I
don’t remember anything by them, though.” He shook his head, out of topics.
At least he’s trying. “So, tell me more
about what you do,” Monique prompted.
“Oh. Um, as I
said before, I’m an interactive strategist.” He frowned. “A lot of people think
it’s kind of boring, but it isn’t. It’s really challenging. I mean it’s—” He stopped
and laughed. “I’m not like this when I’m at work. I know what I’m doing, there.
Anyway, it’s kind of like . . . um, second nature, you know. Kind
of fun. To me, anyway.” His face fell. “It used
to be more fun, but it’s not so much anymore.”
At least you’re not boring. I haven’t been
on a good date in a while, and I’m not doing anything special tonight. This
could turn out well, if you’ve been paying attention to other kinds of instruction.
“You still like what you do, right?”
He had trouble
coming up with an answer. “It’s not the same,” he said. He swallowed and pushed
his glass away, letting his hands fall together before him.
I hit something there. Something’s wrong. Go
roundabout. “This your first time at the Zon?”
He looked
around the room and nodded. “Yeah. Kind
of hard to hear with all that music. I liked your stuff better.” Big sigh. “I don’t get out much. I work a lot. It’s been
like I live at work all the time, eighty or ninety hours a week. I have an
apartment, but I don’t stay there long. Things keep happening at work and I
have to stay on top of it.”
A look of
disbelief crossed Monique’s face. Eighty or ninety hours a WEEK? “Oh, man! What kinds of
things happen there?”
“Uh . . .” He hesitated,
then came to an internal decision and went on. “Well, we’re having trouble with
our clients, the people who get services from our company. Or maybe it’s that they’re
having trouble with us, with our interfacing. They’re either not using our
products right, which I know some of them aren’t, or . . . or we’re not making the
. . . I don’t know. I probably shouldn’t talk about it, and it’s probably
boring.”
A little bit, but I love secrets. Monique
rested her chin on her hand, elbow on the table. “I won’t tell,” she promised. “I
probably won’t even understand it, and no one else can hear you. Go ahead!”
Xiangdong
looked relieved and leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Okay. It’s just that
we’re having a lot of problems lately. It hasn’t gotten out, but . . . things
aren’t going as well as they used to. We bundled a pack of apps, I mean
applications, for this one client, this company that sells pet grooming
supplies by Internet. We tailored the apps for their platform right on the
money, but they couldn’t do anything with what we sent them. I don’t know what
the problem is. I don’t usually worry about it, but it’s happening a lot lately.
I don’t know if it’s the clients or us or what, but everything’s going wrong.”
He paused,
looking at the table and chewing his lower lip. Monique waited patiently.
“There’s more going
than that,” he said, not looking up. “It’s a lot of little stuff, but it adds
up. Things aren’t going well. We’re rushing stuff, moving too fast, not taking
care of the details. It’s a big problem. Noah—Noah Barkman,
I mean, he’s the CEO of Buzzdome—he thinks it’s
nothing. He doesn’t see anything wrong. I showed him some of what I thought was
going on, but he blew it off. He said I didn’t have any e-vision.” Xiangdong
made a face, clearly stung. “It really got to me that he said that, like I didn’t
know my own job. I can’t believe he said that.”
“So, you’re
seeing something big happening, but your boss—”
“He calls all
the trouble speed bumps, you know, just little bumps in the road. You have to run
over the bumps, he says, but it’s not all bumps, not to me.” He became animated
and spoke faster. “It’s big. I really think it’s bigger than people realize,
but no one seems to get it. It’s like . . . I don’t know how to say this . . . you
know, you can’t put too many tigers in one place, okay, because there wouldn’t
be enough food for them to eat, right? Too many tigers in one place, some of
the tigers will starve to death or eat each other.”
Monique
nodded. He made sense so far, but—
“Well, you can’t
have too many e-businesses like ours, facilitating clients into the ‘net. That’s
more-or-less our niche, our specialty, but it’s overrun. In
He played with
his drink. “We’re a little tiger that’s gonna get eaten or starve, real soon. I
can feel it coming. We’re running out of venture capital, we’re not making a profit
yet, and our debts are stupendous. Too many sharks and not enough food—clients,
I mean. Not enough clients.” He looked ashamed as he continued. “Plus, we’re
making mistakes from rushing things through. There’s this lady who works for
us, Jackleene, who interfaces with clients. She’s
like the complaints department, but she’s doing most of the complaining. She’s
always yelling at customers who call us with their problems, telling them they’re
stupid. She shouldn’t do that because it drives people away, but more people
are calling her with more problems, especially lately, and she’s losing her
temper all the time now. Plus, our stuff’s not working as well as it should. I
don’t think it’s me causing the problems, but I can’t tell anymore. I’m too
close to the problems to see it, maybe. We can’t afford to make mistakes like
that. People go somewhere else when you screw up on them, and I think more
clients are leaving us than are coming in. It’s not good. And it’s happening
all over to a lot of other places, not just us. I keep hearing things about it
through the grapevine.”
This is weird, she thought. I don’t understand some of what he’s talking
about, but he sounds like he’s on to something big the way he talks about it. It
is a little boring, but who knows? Won’t affect me, probably.
“What do you think you can do about it?”
Xiangdong looked
at her, then down at the table. “Nothing,” he said. He looked up again. “That’s
why I liked listening to you sing tonight. It took my mind off things.” He
looked embarrassed. “This is the most relaxed I’ve felt in months.”
Funny. He looks as tight as a steel cable. “You’re
welcome, but that’s really sad that you don’t think you can do anything about
it.”
Xiangdong gave
her a painful smile. “Actually,” he began, then hesitated a moment before going
on. “Actually, I thought about getting out. Quitting, retiring, cashing in my
stock options and everything else and moving on with my life. The time’s about right.”
He looked up, anxious. “I don’t want anyone to know about me doing this. I want
to wrap things up and get out, not get fired and lose everything.”
“I won’t tell,”
she said solemnly, and she held up a hand as if swearing an oath. “Promise.”
He smiled back
in relief. “That’s okay. I’m sorry I’m talking about me and my work so much. I
don’t mean to. My sister says I talk about my work all the time and no one
wants to hear about it. I think about work all day long, about things like,
what’s the best server platform for this client or that, tweaking apps, et cetera. It’s really got me down
lately. Um, maybe you could tell me more about you.”
He did it again. What a nice guy. Wonder what
his downside is, and how soon I’ll see it. Monique blew out her breath and
straightened in her seat. “About me. Well, I’m
twenty-three, I like music, and I want to get out of here. I mean, really get out
of here. I want to go away somewhere for a while and grow, grow musically, but
maybe grow in other ways, too. I went to college for a while, here in town, but
. . . well, the money ran out, and I had to work. My parents can’t afford to
help. Now I don’t know if I can go back to school, I’m so used to being out of
it.”
“What were you
majoring in?”
“Oh, music, of course. The music school at
The remark
caused Xiangdong to snort and hide a smile.
“What?” she
asked. “Are you laughing? C’mon, what was so funny?”
“Oh, just . .
. you saying you weren’t interesting, and I thought
that was funny.”
“What, you
think I’m interesting?”
Xiangdong nodded,
looking embarrassed.
“Well, that’s a
new one. You must be drinking something other than a soda. Anyway, I’d like to
travel. Did I say that already? Yeah, I’d like to get out and see the world.
Did you ever go anyplace?”
“Um . . .” He
looked at the ceiling in thought. “
“
He laughed. “Big.
Crowded. About a million times more crowded than
“
“Yeah, really,
I was. I had everything set up to go once. I’d made travel arrangements and
everything, was going to fly to
You must make a lot of money to do all this
stuff, Monique suddenly thought—but she did not say that aloud, knowing it
would be the wrong thing to bring up to this particular guy. She waited for
more.
“You know, it’s funny,” he said,
still looking at the tabletop, “there was this old guy, Jake someone or other that
Noah hired a while back to be part of our work node. I don’t remember what he
was supposed to do, but he was sort of, um, he was like in his fifties and
trying to be cool and everything, trying to make it in a dot com, but he couldn’t
keep up. We move very fast—” Xiangdong snapped his fingers rapidly, pop-pop-pop “—so Noah had to let him go,
but then he took Jake on as a consultant to show us how old people interacted
with our products, giving us a look into that old-folks mindset. Anyway, the
point was, for the day or two Jake was around, I got to watching him because he
was so weird, you know, just this goofy old guy who didn’t get it, but then it
hit me that maybe in a way he did get it, and I didn’t.”
He hesitated,
thinking of how to explain it. “He had a wife and kids, and he talked about his
kids all the time. He had these two girls, one was really smart and the other
was really cute or something, and he was so proud of his kids, you could really
tell it in his voice, how he talked about them. He had all these pictures of his
family, which was really funny, but when he talked about them he got all
schmaltzy and sentimental, and after a while I began to get the idea that maybe
he knew something that I didn’t, and that really bothered me. Here was this old
guy who wasn’t any good at his job or anything, but he
had something I didn’t, something that really mattered, and I didn’t know if I
would ever have it.” Xiangdong frowned, too much revealed, and he shook his
head. “It wasn’t important. Sorry. It just bothered me, that’s
all.”
“You want to
go out somewhere that’s not as loud as this?” said Monique suddenly. “Maybe get
something at that Seattle Coffee place? My treat.”
“Uh . . .” He
looked around the dark, riotous Zon. “Sure. My treat, though.”
“No, your treat some other time. My treat
now.”
Thankfully, he
gave in without further argument. “Okay. My treat later.”
“You mind
walking? My Metro’s in for repairs again, and it’s only three blocks to the
shop.”
“I don’t mind.”
They left
after they got their coats and she got her guitar case. He carried the case for
her. It was cold outside but neither noticed it. They made small talk about
It was closed.
“Looks like
the floor’s all wet,” said Monique, peering through the windows. “A pipe must’ve
broken. They’ve got a water vac or something running.”
“We could get
my car and I’ll show you where I work,” said Xiangdong. “We could go out
afterward.”
She shrugged. “Sure.
My treat still?”
“Okay. What
kind of food do you like?”
“What kind of
food do you like?” I wonder if he’ll say Chinese.
A quirky smile
curved his lips. “Well,” he said, “I’m kind of sick of Chinese, because
everyone at work gets carryout, but anything else you want to try is great with
me.”
Monique
laughed and leaned toward him. He put an arm about her and gave her a friendly
hug, but the hug lasted longer than friendship would have demanded.
“Where’s your
car?” she said, hugging him back. Their arms then dropped and their hands came
together naturally. They were at exactly the right height to hold hands in
perfect comfort. Monique felt giddy. About
time a date got off to a good start. Hope he waits until after dinner before he
asks me to sleep with him. I hate rushing it.
“It’s at a
garage two blocks over that way. Uh, I might have to move some stuff around in
it so we’ll both fit in. I brought some work with me. I’ll get it out of the
passenger seat.”
“Sure, whatever.” They trudged on through the February
evening. Monique wondered what kind of car he had: Mercedes, Porsche, Corvette, all of the above? “So, how do you like Y2K?” she
asked.
“It’s a lot
like Y2K minus one, so far.”
“Did you
stockpile stuff in case everything blew up?”
“No,” he said
with a touch of disdain. “I knew it wouldn’t. That was a lot of crap.”
She hoped the
disdain wasn’t aimed at her. “So, what did you do at midnight on New Year’s
Eve?” After she asked it, she realized it was a dangerous question. He could
have been kissing a girlfriend.
“Nothing.”
She hesitated a beat. “Nothing?”
“Yeah. I was working.”
She looked at
him, startled. “You were at work on New
Year’s? Are you kidding me?” She said it even though she knew he wasn’t.
He shrugged. “I
had a lot to do.”
“Wow,” she
said. “If you didn’t work, what would you do with yourself?”
The silence
stretched just a little too long. Well, I
guess that’s the end of his dream, she thought. He’ll keep working and working because he doesn’t know what else to do
with himself. This might be the end of our date, too. I hope I didn’t irritate
him when I asked—
“I’d like to
keep busy doing something,” Xiangdong said at last. “I love computers, it’s
really exciting, but I’d like to do something a little different than what I’m
doing. Not sure what exactly, not yet. I’d like to work for myself for a
change, but . . .” He sighed heavily as they walked. Monique glanced at him and
saw he was looking at the ground with a dispirited air. “I have all these
ideas, but none of them sound like they’d be any good. I don’t have the kind of
vision it takes to create my own company the way that Noah did, even if he
doesn’t see what I do. I feel like I do better when I’m working for someone
else, but—”
“Can you work
freelance?”
“Freelance?
You mean contract work?”
“I guess. You
wouldn’t have to work for anyone directly, but you could be a consultant.” She
grinned mischievously at Xiangdong. “You could show other people how young
people think, the opposite of what that guy Jake was doing.”
Xiangdong
turned to her with a pained but tolerant expression.
She giggled. “Hey,
I’m just sayin’! Okay, let me ask you this: What’s
the most important thing you think people should be thinking about right now?”
He became instantly
solemn. “What’s most important?” There was no delay before his response. “Survival of the species. Ensuring that the human race
continues, no matter what happens.”
“Okay,” she
said, taken aback because this was not what she thought he was going to say. “And
what’s the best way to do that?”
“Uh,” he said,
and thought about it for one second. “Expand the options available for space
travel. Get us out into the universe big time, as soon as possible, everywhere.”
She blinked. Whoa, that came out of left field. “Then
get a job with NASA,” she finished, shooting from the hip. “Be a consultant for
them on space stuff, computer stuff.”
There was
another long silence. She looked at him again, but he didn’t appear upset at
what she’d said. He looked surprised, wide eyed and open mouthed. Oh, now, that couldn’t have been THAT big a
brainstorm. Unless he really does have trouble coming up with ideas for things
to do on his own. Hmmm. She looked around. “We’re
at the garage,” she said. “Or did you mean another one?”
“What?” He
shook himself and looked around, giving her hand a squeeze. “Oh, yeah, it’s
this one.” He led her into the three-story parking structure to the attendant’s
booth at the exit.
“Is that your
car?” she asked, nodding toward a dark-green Jaguar XKE parked nearby.
“No, that’s
Joe’s,” said Xiangdong. He let go of her hand and waved at the attendant. “Joe!”
“Dude!” called
the overweight, bushy-bearded attendant wearing a gray sweat suit. He bent down,
then got up again with a set of keys. “Here you go, Mister
Wayne! Have a good one!”
“Your last
name is
“No,” said
Xiangdong. “It’s Li.”
“L-e-e?”
“L-i,” he corrected. Xiangdong took the keys as he walked up,
then waved and set off for a ramp going down to a subterranean parking level.
DO NOT ENTER, read a sign on the massive wire-mesh gates at the ramp entrance.
“Then why did
he call you Mister Wayne?” Monique asked, walking faster to catch up. Xiangdong
had a longer stride than she did.
A clank sounded
from the gates, which began to slide apart with loud rumbling and rattling noises.
“I don’t come here often,” said Xiangdong, ignoring her question, “but I rent
parking by the month anyway. The security’s worth it.” He looked back and slowed
down, reaching for her hand as they walked through the gate. “Oh,
sorry. Didn’t mean to get ahead like that.”
“So, why’d he
call you Mister Wayne?”
He smiled but didn’t
answer. They rounded a corner at the bottom of the ramp and she looked around
the almost empty garage level. There was only one vehicle present under the
fluorescent lights.
Monique gasped,
came to a halt, and let go of Xiangdong’s hand. Xiangdong
stopped beside her and gave the vehicle an admiring look. “Nice, huh?” he said.
The vehicle
wasn’t exactly a car. It was blacker than night, a gleaming fighter-jet on
wheels, low slung and wide and streamlined and over twenty feet long, sitting across several parking spaces at once. What appeared
to be a turbojet intake dominated the front of the vehicle. Winglike
fins rose at the rear.
“Holy sh—” Monique gasped, almost forgetting herself “—shoot! Ohmigod!”
“I like it,
too,” Xiangdong said, his smile growing. He pointed. “It’s the Batmobile used
in the first Batman movie from eighty-nine, the one with Jack Nicholson as the
Joker and Michael Keaton as Batman. It wasn’t really the first Batman movie, just the first of the new ones, you know. It
was used in the second Batman movie, too. I’m not supposed to call it a Batmobile
for copyright reasons, so it’s a Gotham Cruiser, but what the heck. They’re
supposed to be coming out with another movie with a different Batmobile in—”
“You are like
totally kidding me! This is the real
Batmobile?”
“Well, yeah,
with modifications,” he said, and he put on his lecture face. “There are several
different kinds of Batmobiles, like the one from the
old TV show or that big tanklike one from The Dark Knight Returns, but I think
this one is the most aesthetically attractive. What do you—” He turned to her
and noticed she was pointing at his face “—uh, think?”
“I read about
you in the papers!” she exclaimed. “I can’t believe it! You’re the—the—” The computer geek with over ten million
dollars “—the Batmobile guy! This is great! Oh, wow!”
He shrugged
self-consciously, trying not to smile too broadly and look too smug. “Now you
know all my secrets,” he said. “So, you want to be Robin for the night?”
“Are we going for
a ride in that thing?”
He pulled a
keychain from his coat pocket and pressed a button on a small black case shaped
like the Batman logo. The Batmobile chirped and its lights flashed. Then the
entire roof over the small interior compartment lifted away like the canopy
over the cockpit of a military jet, revealing two bucket seats with not a lot
of room around them.
“The roof
doesn’t move forward like it does in the movies,” Xiangdong said. “It worked
better to get in this way, so I had it rebuilt.” He scratched his nose. “I had
a lot of this car rebuilt. There’s still one big problem, though.”
“Where’re the
doors?” Monique asked, looking the car over.
“Uh, yeah,
that’s the problem. In the movie, Batman just climbed in and out of the driver’s
seat. It doesn’t work too well like that in real life. I’ve scratched up the
paint with my shoes and gotten dirt and mud all over and everything, and
getting inside while it’s raining really sucks, but I can’t really put in a
door to the front seats without messing up the car’s design even more than
redoing the roof did. It runs great, but it’s hard to get in it and hard to get
out of it. Anyway, you wanna go for a ride?”
“Yeah!” said
Monique. Her face filled with delight. “Let’s do it!”
The top of the
Batmobile’s low body came up to Monique’s hips, and
there was a two-foot space across the top to get to the interior. Without a
door, entry was going to be clumsy at best. Am
I ever glad I’m wearing pants tonight, Monique thought as she considered
how she was going to get into the passenger side. On the other hand, with this guy . . . nah,
I’d better slow down. I don’t want to mess this up. This guy’s no
Part of the entry
problem solved itself when Xiangdong opened a panel door and pulled out a small
attached ladder that let her climb up, swing a leg over into the cockpit to an
interior footrest, and then climb down inside. She handed out a stack of
paperwork and a laptop computer that were taking up the bucket passenger seat,
then sat down as Xiangdong pushed the ladder back inside, then walked around to
the back of the car. She heard what sounded like a trunk door open and shut, then he reappeared on her left to pull out the ladder on the
driver’s side and climb in as well, pulling the ladder in after him.
“I put your
guitar and my stuff in back,” he said. “Despite how big this thing is, there
isn’t a lot of storage space.”
“Wow,” she
said. She was marveling at how comfortable the seat was, how far she sank into
it. “Does this have like a massage thing built into it, too?”
“A massager?” Xiangdong looked thoughtful, almost frowning. “I
hadn’t thought of that. I bet I could have one put in the next time it goes
into the shop. I think it could fit in. Maybe a foot
massager, too.”
God, you’re killing me, stop
it. She turned to her left, pushed herself up, and leaned toward him over
the gear shifts. He looked up as her red mouth came down and met his. Her black
hair fell over his face. He tasted like the wintergreen breath mint he had
sneaked in while they were leaving the Zon. They kissed a long time.
“Thank you,”
she whispered when she came up for air. “This is the best time I’ve ever had.”
“Uh . . .
good!” he gasped.
She kissed him
again, a quick one, then settled back in her seat. “Whenever you’re ready,
Batman,” she said, buckling in.
He appeared to
have trouble remembering how to start the car. After fumbling around, he hit a
switch. “The top’s coming down, keep your hands inside,” he said. With a quiet
hum, the canopy began to descend. Dozens of dashboard lights and dials in front
of the driver’s seat lit up brightly and flashed twice, then began blinking or
changing color. Tiny monitor screens came to life. One twelve-inch monitor was
directly in front of Monique; in moments it showed a colorful Internet webpage
for a Buzzdome dot com employee named Xiangdong Li.
He had two hundred and sixty-seven e-mails.
“Jeez, you’ve
got mail!” said Monique, pointing to the monitor.
“I’ve always
got mail,” he sighed. “Most of it’s junk. The spam filter needs tweaking.”
The tinted-window
canopy snapped down into place. Only the control panel lights and the
fluorescent light coming through the polarized windows illuminated the cockpit.
The air smelled like new-car leather. “Don’t you ever get anything important in
your mail?” she asked, still taking it all in.
“Sometimes. I’m waiting for a one right now, but—” He peeked
at the monitor and shook his head “—maybe later. Oh, well.” He buckled in and turned
the ignition key. A rumble gently shook the car as it increased in power. In
moments the engine was drumming like a diesel locomotive.
“I don’t
believe this,” said Monique, stretching out her legs. “The
for-real Batmobile.” She looked out the window. Her view of the parking
garage wall was superb. It would doubtless get better once they were outside.
“It is cool,”
he admitted. “I had a lot of stuff added to it. The car didn’t have that much
when I got it. It wasn’t really outfitted like the movies made it out to be.”
“What’d you
put in?”
He pointed to
controls, lights, and objects as he named them. “GPS tracker-navigator,
satellite radio, satellite phone, quadraphonic sound, radar scanner, exterior
lights, self-contained air system and purifier, engine computer, remote engine
start, damage monitors, fireproofing, run-flat tires, body armor, bulletproof
glass. I forget what else. It was such a pain to keep it street legal, adding
the lights and all.”
“Why’d you put
in bulletproof glass? Are you worried about something?”
“Nah. I just wanted it. It was cool.”
Monique shook
her head. He was sweet, but deep inside he was just a kid with the biggest, best
toy ever. He was such a guy.
He put the car
in gear and they went forward smoothly, the engine just between a purr and a
roar. They turned up the ramp, left the garage, and went out into the night.
Traffic was very light. Monique was not surprised that both cars and
pedestrians stopped to watch in astonishment as the Batmobile went past.
“I can
understand why you don’t drive this thing around very often,” she said. “You’d
attract a heck of a crowd all the time.”
“Yeah. You wouldn’t believe the insurance. Are you warm
enough?”
“Oh, yeah,
thanks. So, hey, did you ever think about being a crimefighter?”
“No. This’d be
a lousy car to do it in. It works great only in the movies. It’s kind of a pain
in real life.”
“Heck of a
date car, though.”
“Yeah, it is
at that.”
Me and my big mouth. So, I’m not the first. Oh, well. He’s not
my first, either, by a long shot. At least I was careful. Most
of the time. She began to think about her name as Monique Li instead
of Monique Martin. Li, Li, who else was it that—
“Hey,” she
said, “are you related to that Ms. Li who’s the principal at
“Uh, no. I get asked that sometimes. There are a lot of Lis around, millions of them. We’re not family that I know
of.”
“Thank God.”
“Funny, everyone
else says that, too.”
Monique
laughed. “You’d have to know her to understand it. I went to school when she
was there. She’s still there, I think.”
The car turned
onto a broad boulevard and headed northeast. “We’re going around Seven Corners,”
he said. “I’d never make it through there in this car.”
“You’re taking
the eastern bypass?”
“I can’t afford
not to. This suburb’s layout sucks ass.”
“You’re
telling me. I’ve lived here all my life, and I still
can’t get around that fast. How fast does this thing go?”
He looked
regretful. “I don’t know. It’s got a ten-cylinder engine, custom made. I’ve
never tried to get it above seventy. I’m too afraid I’ll get arrested and lose
the car.”
“Yeah, that
makes sense.” She paused. “You ought to try it sometime, anyway.”
They drove in
silence for half a minute.
“What do you
want out of life?” he asked out of nowhere.
“What? What do
I want out of life?” She looked out of the side window at passing houses, their
windows glowing in the night. “Peace,” she finally said.
“World peace?”
“No, that’s
never going to happen. I just want personal peace, peace inside me.” She
shifted in her seat. “I have a lot of things I want down the road, but mostly I
just want to stop worrying about little stuff, day-to-day stuff, and deal with more
important things.”
“What kinds of
important things?”
Damn, he would ask that. A
regular permanent guy. Marriage. Kids. A dog. Some
nice clothes and jewelry. Another couple of guitars and a drum set and a
nice big house to put them in and a shot at recording something, my very own
music. I think I could do it. I could wait on everything else if I could only
get my music out there and see it fly. How many demos have I mailed out in the
last few months? Fifty? Sixty?
I lost count. They must be lying in garbage cans from
She looked
over at Xiangdong. He was at ease behind the wheel of his big toy. He was
handsome and rich and interesting and very nice—a jackpot.
This is never going to work. She turned away, suddenly sad. This’ll never work out. He wants the same things I want, but we’re just
not in each other’s league. Maybe I’ll go to bed with him anyway, because he’s
okay and it’s been a while since I’ve done it and maybe for a little while that’ll
keep me from thinking about the rest of my life stuck in this town going
nowhere, one day marrying another nobody and having some nobody kids, then disappearing
into the background. At least I’ll always remember this night, riding in the
Batmobile.
“Monique?”
She glanced at
him, startled. “Oh. Uh, I forgot what you asked me.”
“What kind of
stuff is really important to you?”
She brushed back
her thick hair with her fingers and did not meet his gaze. “Lemme
think about that.”
“Okay.”
Monique Li. She hated herself for even
thinking about it now. We would have had
great looking kids, too. Awesome, beautiful, brilliant kids.
I took my pill this morning so it won’t happen tonight. Maybe I should have
skipped a day. We’d have made one hell of a great kid together. We could’ve
done it. I can feel it.
She covered
her mouth and tried not to cry.
“There it is,”
he said a minute later. “The company’s on the hill over to the right, over by .
. . oh! Are you okay? Is something wrong?”
“What?” She wiped
her eyes and reached in a pocket for a tissue. “No, I’m fine. Got something in my eye and it hurt for a moment. That’s
all.”
He reached in
an inside pocket of his coat and pulled out a handkerchief. “Here,” he said,
handing it over. “It’s clean. I didn’t use it.”
“Thanks.” She dabbed
at her eyes and blew her nose. “Sorry.”
“You can keep
it. Don’t worry.” He turned into a driveway that climbed to the top of a low
hill, then entered a large lot that was still a third
full of cars. Monique noticed that he had his own parking space, custom-fitted
to the size of his Batmobile. The building before them was a vast one-story
structure that resembled an ultramodern warehouse with glass bricks along the
side facing the road. The parklike grounds around
were filled with trees and flowerbeds. A clear plastic tower by the front door,
illuminated by floodlights, had the title “buzzdome.com” written up and down
its length.
“Here we are,”
said Xiangdong, turning off the engine and flipping the switch to raise the
roof. “Sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah.” She shoved her problems aside and forced a smile as
the cold air swept in. I’m going to have
major fun tonight, no matter what. Let’s go out with a bang.
“Great.” He
got out, swung his legs over the side, and jumped down to the asphalt. Moments
later he was at her side, the ladder down, and helping her out. He lifted her
down the last two steps.
“Thanks,” she
said when she was on the ground. “Do you work out or something?”
“A little. Noah’s been on a health kick, makes everyone work
out for half an hour a day. I do the machines, not much else.”
“Good for you.”
He’s going to make a great husband for
someone. Wonder why he’s not been snapped up already. He doesn’t get out much,
I know.
He walked her
to the building entrance, then pulled out his wallet and pressed it to a black
rectangle by the door. The door clicked and he opened it for her. They entered
a vast open space with a twenty-foot ceiling along which ran girders, tracked
lighting, electrical lines, water pipes, and ventilation ducts. The rest of the
room was a gigantic cube farm with a maze of low gray walls blocking off
workspaces. Many of the cube lights were still on, though it was almost ten at
night. She heard fingers click keyboards and distant conversations against a
background of electronic chirps, beeps, and hums.
“Wow,” she
said in awe. “Doesn’t anybody ever go home?”
“Sometimes. My work node’s over this way.” He led her off
into the maze with the confidence of an old hand, soon arriving at a low-walled
enclosure with two desks turned away from each other. One of them, next to the
entrance, was occupied by a petite red-haired woman with a pixie cut. She wore
a black dress-suit, high black boots, and black stockings—and a black wrist
brace on each hand that ran back to the elbow.
The petite
woman looked up at Monique in surprise. Her surprised deepened when she glanced
at Xiangdong, who was blushing furiously. “Visiting?” she asked, looking at
Monique again.
“Yeah, just
for a minute,” said Monique.
Xiangdong
rushed in. “Nora Cohen,” he said, “this is Monique. I’m just showing her
around.”
“Monique
Martin,” said Monique, eyeing Nora’s wrist braces. “I’d like to shake hands,
but—”
“Carpal
tunnel, can’t risk it.” Nora gave Xiangdong a concerned look. “She doesn’t work
for a competitor, does she?”
“I play
guitar,” Monique interjected quickly. “All my competitors are other guitar
players.”
“Cool.” Nora
turned to Xiangdong again. “Noah’s looking for ya.”
“It’s not
about the CT report, is it?” said Xiangdong, looking around the open room. “I finished
that before I left.”
“I think it’s a little drive-by management,” said Nora, her eyes on
her monitor again as she stiffly began to type with the wrist braces on. “Attitude
adjustment about a memo you sent him or something.”
“Oh, that. Great.”
Xiangdong looked irritated. “Uh, Monique, can you wait for me here for a few? I’ll
be right back.”
“Sure. You
want to leave your coat here?”
“No, I’ll just
be a minute.”
Xiangdong left
at a rapid pace and was soon lost from view. Monique studied the cubicle. Other
than several low filing cabinets, only the other desk was present. It sat
against a wall covered with vivid computer-game posters showing armed spacemen
shooting at disgusting monsters. The computer on the desk was surrounded by
plastic dinosaurs and large toy robots, and festooned with Dilbert cartoons.
“Have a seat,”
said Nora, still typing away. “He’ll be longer than a minute.”
“Thanks.” She
sat in the roller chair at the spare desk, peering at the smaller toys and
mementoes scattered around. No pictures
of any girlfriends, at least. Unless Nora’s his work-time
squeeze. “Is this Xiangdong’s desk?”
“Yeah. Say, you know anything about decorating?” Nora
stopped typing and spun in her seat to face Monique. “I’ve been buying Danish
modern furniture in teak, and now I want to redo my condo in, like, fifties retro,
while keeping as much of the furniture as I can. I like that Deco-ish biomorphic look, you know, active and flowing at the
same time it’s just sitting there. Is that possible, mixing styles like that?”
Monique raised
an eyebrow and smiled. “Sorry, I go to resale shops. I don’t think I’ll be any
help here!”
Nora laughed. “Friend of the X-Man?”
“X-Man?”
“Xiangdong, ‘cause
his name starts with an X.”
“Oh.” Monique
felt a little silly. She had thought his name started with an S because of the
way it was pronounced. “We just met tonight. I play at some of the local
taverns and coffeehouses; tonight I was at the Zon downtown, and he was in. We
got to talking, and now we’re sort of driving around. He wanted to show me
where he works, so . . . hey, here we are!”
“Yeah, he’s something
else. You like the Batmobile?”
“Yeah, that
was—” Monique exhaled and feinted a look of surprise “—kind of unexpected. It’s
pretty cool. Kind of a big toy, but hey, he’s happy with it.”
“He does love
his toys. He’s a great guy, maybe a little too inhibited. I think he worries
too much about stuff—he’d drive me nuts if we were going together—but he’s
still all right. You know about his family?”
“Uh, no,
except he said his folks were from
“Well, his
parents ride him about dating. I should let him tell you the rest of that.”
The light
dawned. Monique nodded slowly. “They want him to go out with someone like him
and not like me.”
“Yeah, that’s
it. He’s talked about it before, and it makes him pretty mad. He says they’re
trying to arrange a marriage for him, and he won’t have it. He’s really
independent at heart, but he’s kind of slow about going out because of the
grief he gets.” Nora looked around, then lowered her
voice. “I gotta tell you, though, bringing you here is a really a big thing for
him. He must really like you. He’s never brought anyone else here before except
his parents, right after he joined.”
“Oh.” What do I do about that, then? Am I gonna get
mixed up in his family issues now? Or will I be around that long? She
turned to look at his desk again. “Do they say anything about his job, too?”
“Probably. The good news is, they
live in
“Yeah. Parents. Well, he won’t—”
The sounds of
arguing came through the huge room. Monique thought one of the voices sounded
like Xiangdong’s. Nora looked in the direction it
came from. “Oh, boy,” she muttered under her breath.
Moments later,
a tight-lipped Xiangdong appeared. He strode quickly over to his cube as
Monique got to her feet. “Excuse me,” he said, then took his seat and swung to
the computer. “This will just take a moment,” he added in clipped tones.
“Something wrong?” Monique asked. She noticed too late Nora
making hand motions to warn her away from saying anything.
Xiangdong did
not reply. He called up an Internet connection on his computer and accessed his
company e-mail. Focusing on one e-mail in particular, he opened it and read the
contents. Monique watched him, unsure of what to do. Let’s see how he handles anger, she thought. Always the date killer, right there.
Glowering,
Xiangdong tapped his monitor screen. “Sales are off again,” he said. “I just
got this from my financial analyst. People aren’t buying high-tech like they
used to. It’s industry wide and it’s accelerating.”
“It’s a
correction,” said a new voice. Startled, Monique turned. A glasses-wearing
young man with bleached-white hair and a black goatee stood at the cube
entrance with his arms folded across his chest. He wore casual clothes over
which was a necklace supporting a large carnivore’s tooth at the end. “The
market will take a correction in the next few weeks, and then it’ll take off
again. It’s a bump in the road, nothing more.”
“That’s not
what’s happening, Noah,” said Xiangdong sharply, jabbing a finger at his
monitor. “This is not a bump in the road. This is the space shuttle blowing up!
This is the Titanic going down! This
is not a bump!”
“I’ve spent
years looking at crap like that,” the white-haired man responded with more
heat. “I built this company from the ground up, and I had a hundred
stock-market analysts tell me I was going to lose my shirt and everything else
I had, but I didn’t! The need is there! They’re not going to abandon us! People
need to get into the ‘net, and we’re the ones getting them there! Filling needs
is what drives our success!”
“We’re not filling their needs, Noah! They’re—”
Xiangdong suddenly broke off and rubbed his face with both hands.
“We’re staying
the course,” said Noah in a calmer tone. “We’ll go through the correction and
we’ll take a hit, for sure, but by October we’ll be steaming into record territory.”
Xiangdong
lowered his hands and looked at his monitor. His expression was one of pure,
bottled-up frustration.
“The future
belongs to those with e-vision,” Noah went on. He uncrossed his arms and stuck
his hands in the back pockets of his faded blue jeans. “You can’t sweat the
little stuff. You shouldn’t worry about it. Let me do the worrying about it.”
“Because you
have the e-vision and I don’t,” said Xiangdong, his face tense.
There was a
moment of silence. Noah began to chew a wad of gum he had tucked into a cheek
earlier. “Yes,” he said. “That’s exactly why.”
Another moment
of silence followed.
“I quit,” said
Xiangdong, looking Noah in the eye. “I want out, right now.”
Noah stopped
chewing his gum.
Oh no, oh no, oh no, ran the refrain
through Monique’s head as she stared at him in horror. She could see Nora at
the edge of her field of vision, her braced hands clasped over her mouth below
wide green eyes.
Noah broke the
third moment of silence. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll call the CFO to cash out your options
tomorrow, if that’s what you want. You’re gonna take a hell of a hit with taxes
and capital gains. You’ll be down by half, at least.”
“I’ll have
nothing left period if I stay here,” Xiangdong said in a low voice. “Nothing at all.”
Noah snorted
and shook his head as he walked away, chewing his gum again. “Whatever. Leave
your door card on the desk. I’ll get security to escort you out.”
“I won’t need
it.” Xiangdong stood and looked over his desk. He reached in his coat pocket
and produced his wallet, pulling a red plastic card from it and tossing it
beside his computer. He then started to pick up some of the toys around his
workstation, but then he stopped for a long moment, and then he put everything
down again. He wiped his hands on his pants, then
glanced at Monique before lowering his gaze to the floor. “We should go,” he
said in a whisper.
“Xiangdong,”
said Nora, getting to her feet. “Wait a minute. Think this over before—”
“No.”
Xiangdong let Monique out first, then walked with her
through the cube maze to the front door. A confused, drowsy-looking security
guard was already there with a squawking walkie-talkie; he raised a hand and
waved at Xiangdong, said “Good night,” and held the door open for him.
And they were
out in the cold night air again. Xiangdong looked back at the building for a
long time, then lowered his head and walked to the Batmobile. Monique followed
at a discrete distance. At the car, Xiangdong clicked open the top and started
to walk around to the driver’s side—then looked back at Monique and grimaced
before coming around to let her into the car first. She got in silently and
took her seat, buckling in. Xiangdong got in a few moments later after one more
look at the building. The roof closed, he started the car, and with the engine
grumbling in their bones they drove away.
“I should take
you back home,” he said once they were on the highway. “I apologize for the
evening.”
“It’s okay,”
she mumbled.
A fragile
silence reigned for perhaps a minute.
“He should not
have said that,” Xiangdong said at last. “That was too much. He can’t say
things like that to me.”
“I agree,”
said Monique, who found that she really did agree. She hated people who pushed
others around and made them feel bad. One thing she had liked around
“It was worth
it,” he went on. “I have enough money. I could retire now if I wanted to. I can
get another job. What you said, about NASA—I could do that. I know some guys
online who work there. I can talk to them about it. One of them works in the
personnel office there somewhere. I could do it.”
She swallowed.
“You did the right thing.”
“What?”
“What you did.
You said the company was in trouble, they didn’t believe you, and then they
insulted you. That was very brave, what you did.”
Xiangdong
looked less sure of that now. “My family,” he finally said, “will tell me I was
stupid.”
“Yeah, well, that’s
what families do sometimes. My dad said I’d never make it playing guitar. He
wants me to go back to college and get a degree and do something he thinks is
real work, like work in an office, be a secretary or whatever. My mom says I
should just get married and forget about it.” She paused, then
added, “It’s hard, but you have to do what you want to do, not always what
everyone else tells you to do.”
He didn’t
reply.
“I live over
on
He didn’t
answer, so she went on. “Xiangdong is a Chinese name, right?”
“Yeah,” he
said, watching the road ahead.
“What does it
mean? I mean, does it have a meaning or anything, translated?”
“How do you
mean?”
Monique half
laughed. “My name means something like, someone who gives advice. It was Latin
at one time, I think, then it was French. So I’m like
an advisor or whatever.”
“Oh.” He
thought. “My name means, ‘to face the east,’ I guess like the Far East,
“To face the east.” She considered this. “It could also mean
something like, ‘to face the sunrise.’ The sun rises in the east, so you would
be the person who sees the sun come up, the new things start. Maybe that will
happen with NASA. You never know.”
“The sunrise,”
he repeated.
“Just a thought.”
“Hmmm.”
They took the
eastern bypass. Monique gave directions as they went.
“I should use
my navigating computer,” he said, “but I should’ve programmed it before we
left. I didn’t think about it.”
“It’s okay.”
“Do you still
want to go out to eat?”
The question
took her aback. Go out to eat? After you
just fought with your boss and quit your job? “I’m not hungry,” she said,
listless.
“I should call
my parents about tonight,” he said as an afterthought.
“You don’t
have to call them right away. Give it a day to settle. Sometimes that helps. It
helps me.”
“Okay.”
He actually sounds like he’s taking my
advice. We should have gone back to my place instead of going to his office.
What an awful night.
He pulled up
on the deserted street outside her apartment complex, got out, and helped her
out, too. “I can make it from here,” she said.
“Are you sure?
I can see you up.”
She started to
answer, then she stepped forward, put her arms around
him, and kissed him again. She did it because she knew she would never see him
after this. To her surprise, he kissed her back this time. Things heated up.
When the kiss broke apart they were breathing heavily with their need, their
skins on fire. It was a long moment before either of them could speak.
“Goodbye,” she
said, and she pulled away and turned and walked to her building alone. She went
through the front doors, up the stairs to the second floor, down the long
hallway to her room, then went inside, shut the door, and cried all the way to
her bed.
She slept
until ten the next day. It was hard to get going, but there was no rush. She
had a gig in Oakwood that night at a student coffeehouse—
“My guitar.” She looked around. Nothing.
“Damn it! God damn it!”
It was still
in the trunk of the Batmobile.
She still had
her electric guitar. She made a phone call and discovered that the club had
amps aplenty, plus several local musicians would loan her an acoustic guitar if
she needed one. She was covered.
The shower was
running to get the hot water started when the doorbell rang. She was still
wearing yesterday’s clothes and felt grubby and dirty, but she decided it didn’t
matter and she walked over and opened the door.
“Hi.”
Xiangdong stood there, holding her guitar. “May I come in?”
She nodded and
let him in, brushing her tangled hair from her face.
He put down
her guitar. “I found it this morning when I went to get my work out of the
trunk. Noah Barkman called and asked for my work
back, so I drove it over to him. I drove my regular car. They paid out my stock
options and employee bonuses. I’m on my own now.”
He made it
seem like good news, so she tried to smile for him. It was hard. “You’ll find
something,” she said. “I know you will.”
“Are you doing
anything this weekend?” he asked.
“Uh . . . I
have to play in Oakwood tonight, and I have a couple people to tutor Saturday.
Why?”
“I’d like for
you to fly to
Her face
wrinkled in confusion. “Why?”
“To meet my parents.”
Her confusion
deepened. “Why?”
He reached in
his pocket and pulled out a small black box and offered it to her. She took it,
looked it over, and opened it.
She stared at
the contents of the box. Her eyes almost fell out of her head. She tried to
speak but nothing came out. When she was able to break her gaze away from it,
she stared at him without comprehension.
“You listened
to me when no one else would,” he said. “You believed in what I said. You told
me what to do when I didn’t know what to do, and it was right. No one else ever
did that for me.”
They stared at
each other.
“My sister
said I was supposed to kneel,” Xiangdong added.
She nodded,
hardly aware if she was breathing.
“Oh.” He started
to kneel, but she caught him by the arm and made him get up again. “What?” he
said.
“What will
your parents say?”
“Oh, they’ll
get over it. I’m buying them a vacation to
“Ah.” She
nodded. “You’re a good son.”
“Maybe you can
tell my parents that. They need to hear it from someone other than me.”
“I can’t
believe you’re asking me to marry you. Are you serious?”
“Marry you?”
He put on a perplexed expression. “I was just asking you for another date.”
“Another date? You were asking me for another date with this?” She held the open black box up to
his face, showing him its contents.
“Just kidding,”
he said. “Of course I’m asking you to
marry me.”
She stared
hard at him. “You’re for real. You’re for real asking me to marry you.”
“Yes.”
She bit her
lip, then spoke. “I won’t give up my music. If you
want me, you’ll have to take my music, too. I’m serious.”
“Your music
was what attracted me to you in the first place.”
“Okay, then.
Just so you understand.”
“I got it.”
“All right.” She then walked over to make sure the apartment
door was locked. After that, she gave him her answer. It took a long time to
give, but it was worth it.
She missed her
gig in Oakwood that night, and both of her guitar tutoring appointments the
following day. By then, she was in
Two weeks
later, the dot-com bubble burst and washed everyone and everything away.
Except them.
*
Author’s Notes II: I’m toying with doing several
stories based on Buzzdome.com’s erasure in the
dot-com bubble-bursting of spring 2000. Next, I think, will be Nora (not right
away, but down the road), then Sameer and Jackleene, and then Noah at last. I was going to call the
series “Noah’s Arc” (get it?). As I see it, Xiangdong was the only one who got
his money out in time to avoid the market collapse.
Using Xiangdong was bizarre but perfect, given his
interest in the “original Batmobile.” He didn’t say which original Batmobile he
wanted, so I picked for him. His name wasn’t spelled on the show, so I also
picked the most likely Anglicized form it would take. Monique was kind of a
natural to write about, too, given her appearances with Daria. Oddly, Xiangdong
and Monique each know one member of the Morgendorffer family, but not the same
one, and they don’t know those two people are related. Monique appeared in “Pierce
Me” and “Lane Miserables,” and Xiangdong in “Sappy Anniversary.”
In order to get personalities and backgrounds for both
characters, I had to take what little I had about them and extrapolate a lot. In
terms used by the Myers-Briggs personality test, I pegged Monique as an ESFP
musician and Xiangdong as an INTJ computer nerd—exact opposites and perfect for
each other. The translations of their names also helped. Li and Martin are
common Chinese and French names, respectively.
The streets in Lawndale are named after real-world people
who worked on the Daria show. I
picked the names out of the two cartoon books, something I also did with “Forgotten
but Not Gone,” “Darius,” and elsewhere. “The Omega Jane” has street names based
on real-world people who wrote end-of-the-world stories (Stephen King, etc.).
Useful online information used for this story’s background
can be found at
the links below.
Wikipedia’s “dot-com bubble”
entry
Original: 04/30/06, modified 06/03/06, 09/18/06, 10/02/06,
11/12/06, 11/05/09, 05/05/10
FINIS