The Nobodies

by Liza Palmer

  “I bet I have still have that flannel,” I say, eyeing it just a bit too greedily.

  “It’s a good flannel,” Thornton says, watching as Mom’s skillet dries on the stovetop. When he sees that it’s dry, he takes it off the flame with a macramé potholder.

  “Make yourself useful,” I say to Billy, handing him a pot that goes in one of the highest cabinets. He grudgingly leaves the yearbooks and takes the pot. Billy then joins Mom and Dad outside as Poppy makes a run for the roses and her beloved pile of dirt. I take this opportunity to close the yearbooks and stack them up on a faraway shelf.

  Thornton, Hani, and Elise continue to clear the dishes off the table, bringing them over to the sink stack by stack. I am positive everyone knows we slept together and I’ve been blushing all morning as waves of embarrassment hit me anew. I put the last of the dishes into the dish drainer and scan the kitchen for any fringe dwellers. When I spy none, I fold the towel and hang it over the rim of the sink.

  “So, we have news,” Elise says. She looks over to Hani and I see them share a comforting smile. Thornton unlaces the sage-green apron Mom gave him so he wouldn’t ruin his shirt and walks over.

  “We were in Big Bear and talking about how much fun we had at the stakeout,” Hani says, holding out her hand for Elise to take. Elise immediately threads her fingers through Hani’s and pulls her in close.

  “We’re good at it,” Elise says.

  “And since we’re all about to be out of a job…” Hani says.

  “And also since we found out that if those two yahoos can run a business, maybe we can, too.” Elise looks over at Hani and Hani blushes.

  “Cheese and rice, did those guys sure make a mess of things,” Hani says. Then I notice that both Hani and Elise have brand new Spice Girls enamel pins. Hani’s is on the jean jacket she’d believed not cool enough and Elise has pinned hers among her already impressive enamel pin constellation near her collar.

  “So, our first order of business was making sure our company actually does what we say it will,” Elise says. Hani digs into her jeans pocket and hands a business card to Thornton and me. The logo is a cartoon of a dog, Mrs. Pennybaker, I assume, and circling around the drawing are the words—

  “The Good Girl Computer Gang,” Thornton reads.

  “We were helping Hani’s mom with her computer and she was talking about how all these computer guys come around and make her feel stupid. And that’s when we got the idea: we should start a computer gang of women who help other women,” Elise says.

  “Everyone’s got a mom who needs help with her computer,” Hani says.

  “That’s actually our tag line,” Elise says, laughing.

  “I already bought all the domain names,” Hani interjects.

  “So, we help ladies with their computers during the day—” Elise says.

  “And we can still dabble in being hot lady spies at night when you need some extra help on a story,” Hani sings.

  “Or any new tech,” Elise adds.

  “I’m amazed,” I say, staring at their business cards.

  “You did all this in one night?” Thornton asks.

  “I got excited,” Hani says.

  “It’s—” Thornton stops. Shakes his head and smiles. “Wow.”

  “You guys … this is…” I lunge into them for a hug and it catches everyone off guard. “This is just great.” I let them go and take a step back, beaming at them.

  “We figured you’d keep breaking these stories, so…” Hani trails off.

  “What she’s saying is that we really liked fighting crimes with you and we’d like to continue to do so,” Elise says. I nod, not able to break it to them that who knows what’s going to happen with this story and whether or not there will even be an us if and when Tavia finds a place for it.

  “Speaking of, you’d better get to writing,” Hani says.

  “Oh, the byline. I wanted to check with you guys before I put your names on this thing,” I say. I sneak a quick glance over at Thornton and immediately look away. “First, I didn’t know if you wanted to be named and then I thought how would we do it, so—” I pull a newspaper from the stack yet to be taken to the recyclers and comb through the stories until I find what I’m looking for. “It’s here—” I show them the story that has one name as the byline with several other names under the “Additional Reporting By” label. “If this is okay with you, I was thinking I would list your names under the Additional Reporting By.” I tossed and turned about this conversation in the early morning hours. Along with everything the fuck else I’m tossing and turning about.

  “I wonder if—” Elise starts and then stops.

  “No, I know,” Hani finishes.

  “If we’re going to start a computer gang and maybe dabble in having a detective agency, do we want to be named at all?” Elise asks.

  “I think we do,” Hani says. Thornton is quiet.

  “First and last names?” Elise asks.

  “Customarily, yes.”

  “So everyone at Bloom will know we helped,” Thornton says.

  “Yeah.” I finally make eye contact with him. And instantaneously it’s just him and me. He tilts his head and I can’t … I can’t read him. “What are you thinking?”

  “It’s just sad,” Thornton says.

  “I know. I know. It’s—” Thornton puts his hand up.

  “The sooner these kids get disentangled from Bloom, the better their résumés will look without spending years at basically the tech version of Enron. A posting like that could really stain their work history. Especially so early on,” Elise says.

  “You’re right. It’s just sad that people are going to lose their jobs,” Thornton says.

  “Yeah,” Hani says. I look over at Elise. She nods in agreement.

  “I don’t have to put your names down at all. I can keep you guys as anonymous as you want to be,” I say.

  “No, I want Chris and Asher to know it was me,” Thornton says.

  “Me, too,” Elise says.

  “Yep,” Hani agrees.

  “Okay, then. I’ll put your full names down under Additional Reporting By,” I say.

  “Are we going into work Monday or…” Hani asks Thornton. He is technically our manager. He looks over at me.

  “I’ll have a draft of the story to you guys this afternoon, you can give notes, and hopefully we can get it to final by tonight,” I say.

  “We’re getting paid on Monday, and I doubt we’ll see another paycheck after that, right?” Elise asks no one in particular.

  “This is so surreal,” Thornton says.

  “I’ve got all that stuff on my desk,” Hani says.

  “You can go in and … we’ll get it out,” Elise says, soothing her.

  “This is that thing you were talking about. Why you don’t put stuff on your desk,” Hani says to me.

  “I don’t put stuff on my desk because I’m an asshole,” I say. Thornton laughs.

  “So we’ll go into work on Monday. One last time,” Hani says.

  “Hon, you can’t walk around and say goodbye to people like you’re dying. Do you think you’ll be able to act normal?” Elise asks.

  “No way. Not even a little bit,” Hani says.

  “Okay, well, we’ll brainstorm some strategies on the drive home,” Elise says, pulling Hani in close.

  Everyone says their goodbyes and thanks my family for the breakfast spread. There are hugs and good lucks and fingers crossed and recipes are swapped and advice is given about starting a company and yes, as a matter of fact, my mom would like to contract with the Good Girl Computer Gang as soon as they’re up and running. Thornton and I walk Elise and Hani to their car and watch as they drive away, green flag waving in the distance.

  Then it’s just Thornton and me. And just enough fairy dust from yesterday.

  “Come here,” he says, pulling me into him for a long, overdue kiss. “I wonder if there’s an Alpine Inn around here.”

  “I don’t think th
ere’s an Alpine Inn, but I do have a key to the outside door to my bedroom,” I say, presenting him with the now sweaty key that I’ve been fondling all morning and almost handed to him a thousand times. He takes it.

  “Shouldn’t you be writing?” he asks.

  “I can write all day, and then maybe later, you know, if you happen to be free…” I say, trailing off.

  “This is pushing some pretty big fantasy buttons in me right now,” he says. “Is that weird?”

  “No.”

  “No?” I lift up onto my tippy-toes and give him a kiss.

  “No.”

  “See you then, then,” Thornton says, looping his messenger bag over his head and walking toward that old orange Volvo.

  “See you then, then,” I say, watching him go.

  Once he disappears down the long driveway, I turn back toward the house and actually say to myself, with a little balled-up fist and everything, “Let’s do this.”

  I’m still haunted by the rattling chains of the Ghost of The Dry Cleaning Story, but instead of agonizing over what I’m missing or whether this story is boring, I sit down at the ancient desktop computer in the kitchen and start.

  As my family moves around me, I type and type and type. I get up to pee. I get up for coffee. I flip through my notes. I get up to pee. I get up for coffee. I flip through my notes.

  I. Am. So. Happy.

  I made the decision to keep the story short and not dip into long form. If I’ve learned anything from my brief time at Bloom—and the Jiffy team—it’s to make the most impact, to go the most viral—content should be relatable, tightly structured, and concise. As morning becomes afternoon and afternoon becomes night, I’m finding that keeping to those constraints has kept me incredibly honest with what I’m trying to say. All of my usual hedging language and meandering, polite words from my life before—there’s just no place for them here.

  These are the facts. This is what happened.

  I send out my first draft at dusk. I get notes back from everyone. I make the changes and send it back out. Elise comes back with some more tweaks and I find myself going back and forth with just her about a few of the notes she had. She is precise and spot on. Hugo asks about the ramifications of using certain words legally, so Elise asks if she can run it by her mom, just to make sure about the legal side of things. It’s a great idea, and Elise comes back with a few changes her mom suggested to go the extra protective mile. When the rewrite comes in with Elise’s mom’s sanctioned words, Hugo is relieved and finally signs off. By the time Thornton turns the key in the secret door to my bedroom, the story is all but finished.

  We don’t say much of anything that night. It’s an odd feeling to go from wanting to tell him everything, to simply not having to. With a look or a shrug I know what he’s thinking as we lie in bed in the early morning hours. But I can’t sleep.

  Whatever this has been over the last month, whatever train we’ve been on feels as though it’s finally coming into the station. Our whole world was this investigation, and now that we have the finished story I fear that we’ll all grab our bags from the overhead bin and go our separate ways.

  I sit up in bed as quietly as I can, pull the covers off, and put my feet on the floor. And in the blue hue of the morning, I try to breathe.

  “You okay?” Thornton asks, turning over.

  “When we were in Buellton, I asked Hani about her and Elise. She said she didn’t know you got to be this happy.” Thornton sits up, sweeps my hair off my neck and over my right shoulder. He traces my back with kisses. This is not helping. “At first her face looked so open and, I mean, you know Hani, it was joyous and lovely, but then she just started crying.” Thornton brushes his hand across my back. “I don’t think I could … I don’t know, let myself understand why, until now.” I turn around and face him. “It’s like I can hear the ticking clock and midnight is coming.”

  “I know. Me, too.”

  “Why don’t we get to have this?” Thornton is quiet. I can feel the answer in his chest as I know it too. His arms are tight around me. I look up at him and his arms loosen. I wait. I want him to say it. He knows I know.

  “Probably because we both think we’re shit,” he finally says. I nod and I breathe. I dive into him with every breath, and without saying a word we get lost in each other again and again.

  21

  Everywhere

  I load the last of Lynn’s moving dregs into Billy’s truck early the next morning. It’s always such a bizarre assemblage of household items that serves as the final load. I set a dusty tower fan on top of a clothes hamper and tuck in the rogue toilet plunger as securely as I can.

  I turn around and step aside as Hugo and Reuben shuffle over to the truck with Lynn’s massive design whiteboard. We argue and maneuver with the full to bursting truck bed, finally sliding it in between her couch and a coffee table. It’s not pretty.

  “So, is that it?” I ask as Lynn steps down from the curb holding a stack of framed art. Reuben takes it from her and we negotiate with the truck’s contents to allow just a few more items, we promise.

  “This is it,” Lynn says, stepping back from the truck.

  “Do you have to leave a key or something?” I ask.

  “I can’t believe Josh didn’t even offer to help. That’s—” Hugo starts.

  “Did you really want him to?” Reuben asks.

  “To help with that couch? Yeah,” Hugo says, rubbing his sore shoulder.

  “No, it’s perfect that he left. It’s fitting,” Lynn says with a sad sigh.

  “Oh, honey,” I say, wrapping my arm tightly around her.

  “It’s fine.” Lynn waves a meek hand. “It’s going to be fine.” As much as we want to comfort Lynn in this moment, we also know that she would hate it. So—

  “You guys want to lead the way over and we’ll follow you?” Reuben says, moving us along. Lynn looks relieved.

  “Are we all done? All locked up?” I ask, unwrapping my arm from around Lynn and motioning in the direction of her apartment building—now ex–apartment building.

  “I pulled it locked behind me. Left the key,” she says. Reuben, Hugo, and I share a quick look.

  “Okay, then we are off like a turd of hurdles,” I say. I wind my finger around as if to say “reverse that.” “Herd of turtles.”

  “I quite like turd of hurdles,” Hugo says as he and Reuben walk to their car. Lynn climbs up into Billy’s truck cab and I look back one last time to see if the load is secure. I pull the driver’s side door closed behind me and the truck rumbles on.

  Lynn and I are quiet on the drive to her new little house over in Studio City.

  “You keep thinking, how’d I miss it? How did I not see who he really was?” Lynn looks out the window; her voice is elsewhere and she’s started sounding like this conversation had been going on way longer than before she started speaking. I am quiet. “Was he like this from the beginning? It’d be so easy to say that this isn’t the Josh that I fell in love with, but … what if it was?” Lynn traces her finger along the dirty window. She turns and finally faces me. “How did I let this happen?”

  “Because it wasn’t that bad,” I say, repeating Lynn’s own words back to her. Lynn lets out a scoff of recognition.

  “And where have I heard that before?” Lynn says, looking back out the window. “Learning to be loved—”

  I shake my head and try to pull together all my thoughts like I’m desperately leaping up to catch a handful of loose balloons before they float away. “It’s a process.” I reach across and take her hand. Unable to look at me, she squeezes tight. “You know now that he wasn’t what you need.” I glance over at her, willing her to look at me. She finally does. “You should be proud of yourself.” Lynn allows a tight smile as she looks down at her lap.

  “Proud,” she whispers. She chokes back a sob and I tighten my hand around hers. “What’s that feel like?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” I say, smiling. Her choked sobs burst ou
t into laughter. She lets go of my hand and pulls a tissue from her purse. She dabs at her eyes, wiping the tears away. A long sigh and she rolls down the window, closing her eyes as the cool wind begins to restore her.

  We pull down the tree-lined street and back Billy’s truck down Lynn’s adorable cottage driveway. We move Lynn into her new home in grunting bursts and too-heavy loads. We bark out orders to one another and stack boxes marked KITCHEN and BEDROOM and OFFICE in the appropriate rooms. Lynn tells us to be careful and we make snide remarks behind her back that she can totally hear.

  “That’s the last of it,” Hugo says, bringing in Lynn’s rolling dress form—outfitted with half of what will most certainly be a best-selling dress. He pushes the dress form into a corner and joins the rest of us in Lynn’s small galley kitchen.

  Lynn drags over her desk chair and plops down into it, cradling a flat fast-food soda she bought hours ago. I move a box aside and hop up on her butcher-block counter, letting my legs blessedly dangle. Reuben drags over an ottoman, and Hugo sinks down onto the floor. We are exhausted. I can feel the moving-day grime all over my body. The mystery bruises on my legs are just starting to form.

  “My mom and sisters are on their way with Phyllis,” Lynn says, checking her texts.

  “The next wave of fresh recruits.” Reuben sighs, letting himself sink down into the ottoman.

  “You guys ordering pizza? You always order pizza on the first night in a new place,” I say.

  “Oh, definitely,” Lynn says, texting her family.

  “So where are you running off to again? A spin class?” Hugo asks, deciding to just lie down on the floor.

  “That can’t be right,” Reuben says.

  “I am sitting outside of an impossible-to-get-into exercise class where a world-class DJ”—I put giant air quotes around “world class”—“plays music for a group of women and men who are lucky enough to attend this particular spin class in Culver City. One of these lucky women and men happens to be the one and only Tavia Keppel.” I snap my sock away from my shin and a puff of dirt wafts away from my body.