“Well,” I said, “they’re not dissimilar.”
Then we discussed the book he was slowly reading about AI, and about how old we’d been when we’d acquired our first cellphones, and within fifteen minutes, I was much calmer. The next night it took only a few minutes to get over the shock of Noah’s attractiveness, and the night after that I wondered if we were in the vicinity of phone sex—I’d already reversed the camera to show him my bedroom, he’d asked several rather silly questions about what kind of sheets I had and the positioning of my pillows—but I couldn’t have facetime phone sex with Noah Brewster, or at least I couldn’t sober, and I’d never drunk anything other than water while talking to him because it seemed unnecessary and maybe even inconsiderate. So instead, after we’d mutually pondered whether thread count made any real difference, I said, “What if I drive out to visit you instead of flying?”
“Seriously? Isn’t that a million miles?”
“It’s sixteen hundred.”
“I don’t want to do anything to discourage you, but wouldn’t that be unnecessarily hellish?”
“I think it might be good for me. I could commune with my thoughts while the landscape poetically whips past.”
“Is driving alone safe? Sorry if that’s sexist, but—”
“Now you can send me a formal apology and sign it Best.” Then I added, “It’s not sexist. I think it would be safe enough.”
“You’d have to text me a lot about where you are. I’m worried that my Sally radar might get spotty in some of those western states.”
I could feel—and, in miniature, see—myself smiling goofily. Maybe I was a sucker, or maybe he had a little too much practice, but he was so disarmingly sweet. “How about if I attach a transmitting antenna to the top of my car?” I said. “Or to the top of my head?”
“That’s a great plan, and then I can even track when you pop into a convenience store in, like, rural Utah.”
“Don’t judge me when I buy Doritos.”
“Doritos are the best. So when can you leave?”
I had thought in our first phone conversation that some clarification would occur, some explicit acknowledgment that our contact was romantic, or presumed to be until proven otherwise. It hadn’t. The dynamic between us was flirty and not explicit in any sense. And couldn’t I have raised the subject as easily as he could? Except that didn’t I have more to lose? Instead, we both kept chatting warmly. Why wouldn’t this be the romance of romance? and I’m really attracted to you, and I have been since that pitch meeting in Nigel’s office—if I was looking for confirmation, those lines from his emails were my strongest evidence. And those were lines I liked very much, lines I had reread many times even after memorizing them. But also: I would say I was definitely trying to impress you and I was not trying to seduce you.
“So that I know how to pack,” I said, “how long do you envision me staying?”
“As long as you want,” he said.
And then, instead of actually resolving the question, I said, “Are you the kind of Airbnb host who leaves out their framed family photos and their half-empty yogurt in the refrigerator or do you make it immaculate before your guests arrive?”
He laughed. “For you, I’ll make it immaculate because I want you to give me five stars.”
The next morning, I texted, What if I leave KC morning of Aug 1 and get to you evening of Aug 2?
You leaving KC morning of Aug 1 and getting to me evening of Aug 2 is a fantastic idea, he texted back.
On July 31, a FedEx package arrived at Jerry’s house: the twelve-count case of protein bars, an eleven-by-sixteen-inch spiral-bound road atlas, and a gray T-shirt that said California in a yellow 1980s font. In the accompanying note, he’d written, Sally, I can’t wait to see you! Your pen pal, Noah. I had never seen his handwriting, and even that seemed touching, and filled me with yearning: the way the S in Sally connected from its base to the a, the unadorned capital I, the straight unlooped line jutting down from the y in you. But was pen pal intended to be read as an inside joke or a reference to our platonic status?
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?”