Chapter 8
The sun came into Candice’s apartment at six thirty in the morning. The rays had found their way through the buildings to hit Candice’s sleepy eyes. Tiffany and Candice had had a late lunch the day before and then Candice had returned home. She’d done her laundry, cleaned her apartment, and begun watching another movie on Netflix.
Keeping with her 80s nostalgia streak, Candice had turned on Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. She had realized that it was by John Hughes, who she took a disliking to after re-watching Sixteen Candles. She’d liked the Ferrari in the film though. The blood-red car was owned by Ferris’ friend, Cameron’s father. Ferris and Cameron go joyriding in the car, end up in a parade, and Ferris has to frantically return home after ditching school for the day.
Candice liked the lead actor, Matthew Broderick’s charm and young good looks. He seemed to nail the role of being young, fun, and carefree. “Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it,” Broderick’s character said towards the end of the movie.
The movie had made Candice smile and made her forget about the pregnancy, Mitch, and Alex.
Candice had morning breath when she woke up and brushed her teeth right away. Afterwards she had a glass of orange juice. The juice and toothpaste tasted disgusting together and she spat out the concoction into the sink. She drank some water to rinse out her mouth and dressed for work.
The BART was packed when she got to it. She was early but not that early, and a throng of people packed the train cars. The system had been built in the 70s, and not much had been done to renovate it. It still had ugly seats, and the carpeted floors were stained with God knows what.
Candice had to wait for three separate trains to pass before she was able to squeeze on one. She could smell two different men around her and wondered why she even bothered going to work. When she arrived at the Embarcadero station everyone burst out of the car like a dam had broken. A burst of fresh air came in, and Candice gulped in the air. When she got street-side, there was a gray mist over the landscape. The San Francisco fog hadn’t rolled off, and everything was more subdued.
The walk to the office took just a few moments and Candice was pleasantly surprised that someone had brought bagels in. She still had the sour taste of orange and toothpaste in her mouth and eating a bagel got rid of the awful flavor.
Once she’d toasted her bagel and covered it in cream cheese, Candice sat down at her desk. She began to look over her work from Friday. She’d forgotten what she’d done. The weekend, especially her meeting with Alex, had made her forget what she had going on at work. She didn’t like to bring her work home with her, but she would often think about things that were due even during her off hours.
She brought up the copy for the alarm clock company’s website. “Sleep fast, sleep better, sleep all-nighter,” she’d written.
“That is fucking terrible,” Candice said aloud. She looked around the office and noticed that no one had come in yet, except whoever had mysteriously brought the bagels. It was nine o’clock. She shrugged off her profanity and tried to think of more clever titles for alarm clocks.
An hour passed and she had nothing. She’d looked at the thesaurus for all the different words for sleeping, alarm, clocks, and waking up. She’d then spent two hours reading a variety of sleep studies. The articles made her sleepy, and so at eleven o’clock she left the office to get some air.
She walked towards the Ferry Building. The morning mist had burned off, and as usual a horde of tourists, joggers, and business people were walking up and down the Embarcadero. She looked at the building. It’d been built in the late 1800s by an American architect who’d also designed the clock that faced outward. The front of the building was an arched arcade, which made it seem like an old Spanish building. The building had been restored and renovated in the early 2000s when the marketplace where Candice and Tiffany had gotten sandwiches had been constructed. Candice had never been on the second and third floors but knew that they were used for the Port Commission.
Candice walked a ways up the Embarcadero and ended up outside of Pier 39. The pier’s K dock became a haven for sea lions in the late 1980s. The area was an ideal spot for the water dogs, as they were protected from outside predators. The amount of sea lions varied from season to season but there were usually at least a few whenever Candice walked by the pier.
The sea lions barked at her and the other people passing by. Some of them sunbathed on the small dock that floated in the water while others dove into the bay. Candice watched them for a while wondering what life underwater would be like. It would be a life free of trouble that was for sure.
Candice felt her phone ring. She picked it up and looked at it. It was Tiffany.
“Hey, what’s up,” Candice said.
“You’re not at the office?”
“No, I stepped out. I needed some air and some space. A bit stuck on the alarm clock project. I thought a walk might be good.”
“Things are not good at the office anyways,” Tiffany said. “Especially for you.”
“Why? What’s up,” Candice replied. She furrowed her eyebrows.
“There’s been complaints about you. Someone is basically spamming the company email address with complaints. They are addressing your writing. A handful came in this morning. Then as the day has moved on, more and more have come in and they’ve gotten more violent and crazed.”
“Mitch.”
“That’s what I was thinking too,” Tiffany said.
“Well is Tim doing anything?” Candice said.
“You know how bosses are. They aren’t sure how they want to handle this. At first the person, it is like 100% sure in my book that it is Mitch, said they were from a few companies. He wrote in that he was from Apple, then Yelp, then Spotify, etc.”
“I haven’t worked on those campaigns. We didn’t even work with them.”
“I know, but Tim is wringing his hands with worry about if it’s true.”
“What the fuck? Why isn’t he protecting me? Should I contact Human Resources?”
“I already did that for you,” Tiffany said.
“Thanks. Did they say anything?”
“Well, they said that Tim needs to cover you. That this obviously looks like employee harassment. Tim said it probably isn’t a big deal and that he wants to reach out to his friends at Yelp, Apple, etc. to confirm things.”
“Should I look at the emails?”
“The first ones are pretty benign, but a lot of them get pretty fucking bad, to be honest, Candice,” Tiffany said. “Where are you now? Can I come meet you somewhere?”
“Sure. I’m over by Pier 39. You can hear the sea lions in the background.”
“Okay. I’m gonna talk to Shaudi over in Human Resources and then head over. I should be about twenty minutes.”
“Okay, I’ll wait here.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll get this taken care of.”
Tiffany hung up the phone and went and sat on a bench. She couldn’t see the sea lions from where she sat, but she could hear their barks. Life must be much easier for a sea lion, she thought. No worries except where to sunbathe.
Candice didn’t even notice when Tiffany sat down next to her. It was only when her friend touched her back that Candice looked up. Her eyes were glazed over and small tears were running down her eyes.
“Why?” Candice said. “Why is he doing this? What did I do wrong?”
Tiffany brought her friend close to her and hugged her tightly. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You did nothing. Everything will be okay.”
“Why is he doing this?”
“I don’t know.”
“It’s not fair,” Candice whined, justifiably.
“I know. I know,” Tiffany replied stroking her friend’s hair. The two sat in silence for a few moments on the bench. Candice’s sobs slowly subsided and her stomach began to rumble.
“I’m hungry.”
“Let’s go get some food. My treat,” Tiffany said. She pulled up Candice by the hand and the two went into the Ferry Building.
The building had changed for Candice. Before it had seemed teeming with life and excitement. Now it was a dull throb. The lively noises of the vendors selling their wares became a low echo that beat against her head. Where she had once seen vivacity, she now met with apathy. Even the colors seemed more muted. The two passed the strawberry stand and the red of the fruit seemed green-grey. Candice closed her eyes and opened them. She shook her head. She knew that what was going on wasn’t real, that the world was fine, but she didn’t feel like it was fine.
The two sat down at a small Thai food counter. Tiffany ordered for them and got pad kee mao, som tum, and sticky rice. The pad kee mao was spicy and hot. The noodles were oily. The salad dish had only one pepper, and its heat was cut by the side of green beans and lettuce that was served with it. Candice didn’t eat though. She picked up a cucumber that was served with the som tum and absently gnawed at it. She left it half eaten on her plate.
“I know it’s only been a little while but you have to eat,” Tiffany said.
“I’m just worried. I don’t know what to do.”
“Well, Shaudi over at HR said that you should take a few days off. Shaudi is far more competent than Tim. She’ll probably get the company to sue Mitch or something,” Tiffany said.
“Sue? He has no money. He has nothing to lose. He’s just some angry white guy. He’s fucking projecting his issues onto me. I didn’t do anything wrong, and it’s been ages since we last met,” Candice retorted.
“I don’t know what to say,” Tiffany said. “Something will be done though. I’m sure of it.”
“I hope so,” Candice said. “I really hope so.”
“In the meantime, why don’t you get out of town for a few days. Go down and see your parents. Maybe you can go visit Alex. He lives down in Los Angeles, right? Maybe he can get your mind off things.”
“Yeah, I guess I could do that.”
“Please,” Tiffany said. “Just leave. You need some fresh air. I’ll go home with you now and help you pack. Shaudi said it was better anyways that I be here to help you out.”
“Okay.”
“Come on, let’s go. No use sitting around here all day feeling sorry for ourselves,” Tiffany said.
The two got up, leaving their half-finished food at the table and walked to the subway. The train wasn’t packed and they were able to sit down for the ride under the bay. The two walked the few blocks to Candice’s house.
“I’ll book you on the next flight to Los Angeles,” Tiffany said. “Where is your computer?”
“It’s in my bedroom.”
“Okay, and you pack your bag.”
“How long do you think I should go for?”
“I don’t know. Four or five days. What I’ll do is I’ll book a one-way ticket. You can come back when you feel like it. Also, we should have things sorted out up here in a couple of days, I think,” Tiffany said.
Candice nodded and pulled out her suitcase. She began to fill it with clothing. She counted out underwear, shirts, socks, and outfits for five days of travel. If need be, she could wash her clothes at her parents, and she had old clothes there still that she could wear if worst came to worst.
“Looks like there is a flight leaving in two hours. It isn’t much. I’ll pay for it,” Tiffany said.
“That’s good of you.”
“No problem. You would do the same for me,” Tiffany replied. “I’ll get an Uber now and we can ride over to the airport together. I’ll take the train back to the city once I see you off.”
“Thanks, Tiffany.”
After fifteen minutes at home, Candice was all packed and the flight had been booked. The two sat on the stoop and waited for their Uber to arrive. The drive to the airport took thirty minutes and the driver played No Doubt songs the entire way.
When the driver pulled away Candice shook her head. “I am not sure I like Gwen Stefani that much,” she said.
“What about that ‘It’s My Life’ song?” Tiffany said. “That one is good.”
“The original is better,” Candice replied. “It’s by Talk Talk.”
“Oh, I never heard it before.”
“Gwen Stefani, ruining everything,” Candice said.
“Yeah. It’s all Gwen Stefani’s fault,” Tiffany said. “Okay, you ready?”
The two stood in front of the airport. They walked inside the San Francisco International Airport. The thirteen-mile long airport is the largest airport in northern California and one of the largest in the United States. The large hub serves as a trans-Pacific gateway and contained a museum and an aviation library.
Occasionally the airport experienced delays during overcast weather as the airport only has four runways. There were proposals to extend the runways by two miles, which would push the airport into the Bay Area. Like the rest of the Bay Area, the airport was also a home for start-ups, and multiple small airlines had been based out of the airport. Most of them were low cost with not many amenities for the customers.
Candice checked in and waited for her flight. She didn’t want to look at social media or check her email in fear that Mitch might have sent her something. She passed the time by reading. She looked through the airport bookstore and found nothing, and so she looked at her Kindle. She picked out an action book about a gunslinger that runs through a desolate wasteland. It was part of a series. She liked the fast pace of it and enjoyed the catharsis of the gunslinger getting revenge.
She continued to read the book on the short trip to Los Angeles. It wasn’t a long book, and by the time she’d arrived in Los Angeles she was done with the novel.
Candice took a cab to her East L.A. home. She knew that she could borrow a car from her parents when she got home and so didn’t mind the expense of the initial car trip.
Her house looked the same as always when she arrived. The green grass of the front lawn was well watered. Her father took tremendous pride in keeping it green no matter how bad the droughts of the year might be. He’d bought gallons of water from the grocery store one summer to water the lawn.
“What does the American Dream mean if we can’t have a green grass lawn?” he’d told his family over dinner that night. “We didn’t come here just to have a barren lawn. It’s an insult. This place, this house, this is our dream.”
Candice had rolled her eyes when her father had talked, but now she appreciated the bright green of the grass. It was a little bit of home. It reminded her of resilience. Her father was home when she arrived. He was washing the dishes and he looked up when she opened the door.
“Hey, what are you doing here?”
“I used to live here,” Candice said. “You don’t want to see your daughter?”
“Of course, I do. Come here,” her father said. He gave Candice a big hug and then looked at her. “Is everything okay? It’s a Monday. Shouldn’t you be at work? Did you get fired? Laid off? I hope you got a package. I told you to write a package into your contract, right? Those start-ups are never very reliable.”
“No, Dad, I’m not in trouble. It’s just that guy.”
“The Facebook guy?” her dad asked. He went to the bridge and opened it. “You like dark beer or light beer?”
“I like cocktails.”
He reached into the fridge and pulled out a can of beer. He opened it with a hiss and put it in front of his daughter. “If you wait too long it starts tasting like piss.”
He reached back into the fridge and pulled out another beer for himself. There was another hiss in the otherwise silent house.
“Your mom won’t be back for a while. Let’s go sit out on the lawn.”
“The front or the back?” Candice said.
“The grass is just as green in the front as in the back,” her father replied.
“The front it is,” Candice said. She walked out to the front lawn. The sun was still high in the sky and she sat on the grass. The road they lived on didn’t have much traffic. It was in that finicky area between suburban and urban.
Some people had backyards, others had the view of another apartment building behind them. A long time ago someone had built a swimming pool behind one of the houses. Candice and her friends used to sneak into the pool at night and dive in until the lights of the house came on. Now the pool was drained except for some brown leaves and a thin layer of watery scum. The front yard of the house had brown grass and a For Sale sign.
Her dad brought a little stereo outside. He turned it onto the oldies station. The two drank their beers in silence as “Little Darlin’” by The Diamonds came on.
“Little darlin’, oh little darlin’, oh well…” sang the quartet. The number had been a doo-wop that reached number two on the billboards back when Tiffany’s father had been young.
“This shit, it’s really nostalgic,” her father said. He crushed the can of beer down and went inside and came back out with two more. “You done with that one yet?”
“Not yet,” Candice said.
Her father took the beer from her hand and gave it a shake. It was still more than half full.
“Looks like it’s almost empty to me,” he said. “Bottoms up, girl.”
Candice nodded and took the beer back. She quickly drank the rest of the beer. It had gone warm. It tasted like piss.
“You need to drink it fast,” her father said. “You’re not doing yourself any favors letting it sit.”
Candice nodded.
“These songs they remind me of the old days.”
“Things were better then right?”
“Nah. Fuck, no,” her father said. He took another swig of his beer. “Our problems were just different.”
Again, Candice nodded.
“I never told you about Julia, did I?”
“No. Who was that?” Candice furrowed her brow, then kicked off her shoes. She dug her feet into the green grass. It tickled her feet, and she dug her toes in deeper.
“When I was younger. Younger than you. I was sixteen or seventeen. I was going steady with Julia. She was a nice girl. Her parents liked me well enough. Good enough for a boy that would end up being a mechanic. Her parents had immigrated over. They didn’t have high hopes for Julia, but she was a smart girl. We held hands for a summer. We made out during the winter. When it came spring… well, things were in bloom. I’ll spare you the details,” her father said.
Candice didn’t know where her father was going with this. She opened her second beer. The cold metal tab of the beer bit into her finger. It was quickly warmed though by the heat of the Los Angeles afternoon.
“Her belly started to show in the summer. One month to the year. Her parents, my parents, they sat us down. They didn’t judge us. Your grandma and grandpa they’d just been teenagers when they’d gotten together, the same with Julia’s parents. It was the way of the world.
“Julia’s eyes were filled with tears when they sat us down. She wasn’t worried about their judgement though. She was worried about her future. She’d been accepted to a college. She’d have to get financial aid, and getting tied down with me would have cost her about the same. She knew that college wouldn’t change the world, but she wanted an out.
“She told me I was a sweet boy in front of everyone. Then she said that she didn’t want to have the baby. Her father was enraged. He didn’t smack her though. He sure did smack me though. Your grandpa, he just sat and watched. When your grandmother yelled at Julia’s father, my father just sat there and watched the scene unfold. I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t sure what to say. Julia said that she knew a doctor. That someone had told her about him. It only cost $200.
“‘Those doctors are shit,’ my father said. ‘You just as likely to die as you are to give birth.’
“Julia nodded. She really didn’t want that child. She said it wasn’t my fault. She said she didn’t think it would happen.
“Her mother said, ‘Let’s not rush into things. We’ll give it another week. We’ll get the money together. Then we’ll let fate decide things.’
“Surprisingly everyone agreed and fate decided. Julia miscarried. She stayed in her room for the entire week. I only found out about the miscarriage after the week was up. She didn’t want to talk to me. Her parents didn’t care about me.
“Julia and I didn’t talk that much after that. She went off to college. Then she moved out of the country. She sent me a postcard a few years later. Your mother and I had gotten together by then. I started working at the shop. Fresh grease was under my nails and I still didn’t know what a fuel jet was, what a venture pipe was, or what the throttle valve was. It was all a carburetor to me.”
“What did the postcard say?” Candice asked. She took another sip of her beer.
“It was from France. It had a Paris stamp in the corner. It said, ‘I never wanted the child. It was the best thing that could have happened to us. Sometimes I think about what would have happened if I’d had it. I would have made you miserable. We both deserved better. Paris has great cheese. You should see it sometime.’” Her father picked up his can of beer and drained its contents.
“Wow,” Candice said. She looked out at the green grass of the lawn. A wind blew and she could differentiate each blade of grass. It was no longer a uniform mass, instead she could see each individual plant. Every blade of grass had a different color of green. She blinked for a moment, and the grass turned into a uniform mass once again. Her father got up from his seat and went inside. He came out with two more beers.
The Ronettes came on the radio. The trio came from Harlem and had sung together since they were teenagers. When “Be My Baby” came out, it rose the ranks and hit number two in the Billboard Hot 100. The song was backed up by Cher.
So won’t you, please
Be my, be my baby, Be my little baby
My one and only baby, Say you’ll be my darlin’
Be my, be my baby, Be my baby now
Wha-oh-oh-oh
The trio of women sang. Their vocals were harmonized, and you could tell from the recording why they were able to tour with the Beatles. It was beautiful and sad. For a moment, Candice felt a pain for a period that she didn’t live in. She imagined her mother and father meeting. She thought of Julia sitting in café shops in Paris. She thought of classic cars driven to milkshake stands and old Coca Cola ads.
The sun began to sink on the horizon and gave the green grass of the lawn an orange hue. Candice’s mother pulled up to the house around seven o’clock. Candice and her father were still sitting on the grass.
Her mother hugged Candice, who was slow to get up because of the beers.
“How long are you staying?” her mother said.
“A couple days. Maybe ‘til the end of the week,” Candice replied.
Her mother nodded and caught sight of her father’s eyes. Her father looked away for a moment. “Well, luckily I was planning on cooking. How do you feel about tacos?”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Well, any child that says no to tacos is no child of mine,” her mother said with a laugh.
Her mother went inside the house and Candice could hear her move about the kitchen. Her father drained his beer and went inside. Candice continued to sip her beer. It started to taste warm as the sun began to sink below the horizon.