Grace picked me up in her Range Rover. It’s pink. Deep pink. It looks obnoxious but fits Grace’s bubbly personality. I mean that in a nice way. I’ve always liked Grace a lot. Of Hisato, Corinne, Darcy, and Grace, she seems like the square peg as she’s always cheerful but never sarcastic.
It turned out the lecture was at UCLA. Traffic would be shit, and we were running late. But the traffic didn’t dampen Grace’s mood.
“I’m so happy you texted!” she told me. “And so happy you wanted to come! Nobody else did. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I didn’t think things like this interested you.”
“Dictionaries you mean? Or lexicography or whatever it’s called?”
“I guess academics in general,” she said and then tittered. “That didn’t come out right. What I mean…”
“No, you’re totally right. I’m not book smart. I’m very aware.”
“No, that’s not what I meant, Orly!”
“It’s okay. Seriously. I’m not even non-book smart either. Or however you’d say it.”
I turned to her. She was staring intently ahead at the wide river of brake lights in front of us, not saying anything further, but I stared at her so intently that she finally couldn’t resist and turned and looked at me uncomfortably, until I smiled big which made her grin, and we broke out laughing like crazy. Grace’s laugh is squeaky. LOL.
She was playing David Bowie and when Ziggy Stardust played we screamed the lyrics together like we were onstage. And I did this even though I’m not entirely sure I knew all the words.
Other than singing Ziggy Stardust three times, nothing eventful happened the rest of the way there. We parked at the campus and Grace didn’t even need a campus map to lead us to the lecture hall. I didn’t see a sign, but Grace said we were at Royce Hall. It was a pretty big brick building that looked old. Not vampire old, but old for California. Inside, there were rows and rows of seats and a stage up front. There was even a balcony above with more seats that wrapped around the orchestra section like a horseshoe. The place looked more suited for a performance than a lecture. Anyhow, enough of that.
“Let’s sit in the back,” I suggested.
“Any reason? There’s still plenty of seats.”
“No. I just prefer the back,” which I just made up on the spot. But Grace was fine with it and we sat in the back row. I imagine she didn’t really care as with our vampiric sight and hearing in back was just as good as in front. From where we were seated, I could see everybody else there without having to turn around.
I took my compact out of my clutch and looked at myself in the mirror. My lipstick was still on.
“Let’s take a selfie,” I said.
“Oh yes! Let’s!” Grace answered cheerily and held her phone out in front of us and we smiled. We looked like we were having a good time even though we were about to be lectured.
“Are you gonna post it?” I asked.
“To Instagram?”
“Yeah.”
“I should. Shouldn’t I?” she said and began making the post. She captioned it “Lexicography Lovelies” and showed me.
I nodded. “You should tag the location.”
She began typing U-C-L-A.
“Put Royce Hall,” I said.
She backspaced and typed Royce, which brought up Royce Hall in the suggested locations at UCLA. She posted it and then we sat there waiting for the lecture to begin. I felt anxious and excited at the same time, as if they were the same single feeling. But then I told myself I’d learn at least three things about lexicography tonight that I’d remember so it wouldn’t be like I had come here just to sit and wait for a mystery guy to show up.
I actually learned four before I stopped paying attention:
The word “lexicography” originated in the 17th century but the practice of compiling dictionaries goes back all the way to 2400 BCE. (Mirela was older than that.)
The Sumerians were the ones who first compiled these lists of words and they did it to help people learn some old way of writing called cuneiform that they did on stone tablets.
The first modern English dictionary was made in 1755 by a guy named Samuel Johnson whose picture they showed us and he was one of those guys who wore a powdered wig and kinda looked vaguely similar to the guy on the oatmeal box.
Today people who are lexicographers read all kinds of things to find and study words: newspapers, magazines, novels, even smutty ones.
It wasn’t too far into the lecture before I took my phone out and pulled up Grace’s IG to see if anyone liked our pic. There were a lot of likes and comments already because Grace has a ton of followers because she’s so beautiful with all that strawberry blonde hair of hers. But I didn’t see any like or comment that looked like it came from my guy.
I was scrolling through all her followers when Grace asked me telepathically, Are you bored?
Similarly, I answered her telepathically. My brain is overloaded. It’s like I learned too much for one night. Is your IG private?
No.
I thought to myself maybe he doesn’t actually follow either of us. Maybe he just lurks our accounts. Hers at least. Mine maybe, but maybe not because I hardly post. Where is he? It’s been forty minutes since she posted our pic. My IG is public too. Maybe if I made it private it would force him to follow me.
I scanned the room again. I considered he could be in the balcony above and behind our seats, and so maybe I can’t see him. But nah. The whole point of him showing up would be to let me know he’s here. He’s not coming. Maybe he didn’t see her post. Maybe he did. But either way, he’s not coming.
And I was right. By the time the lecture was over, which I only realized had ended because people started applauding, including Grace, there was still no sign of him. We left Royce Hall and walked back to the parking structure. She asked me if I wanted to do something else, but I told her I just wanted to go home. I would have wiped the lipstick off right then and there, but I didn’t want to be so dramatic.
When we were on the freeway, she put on Ziggy Stardust again, but stopped it when she noticed I wasn’t singing. “You’re being quiet,” she said.
“Hmmm.”
“It makes me think of Yelena. Hisato blaring music and chattering incessantly while we’re all in hysterics but Yelena would be riding shotgun like you are now, quiet, and only joining in here and there. It was always obvious she had other things going on inside her. She was tormented, but like a silent storm. But she was less so once she had you, Orly. She was noticeably different. We all saw it. I hope you know that. How much you brought peace to her heart. I know she’s gone and how that hurts you, but if you don’t mind me saying so, she was in a better place when she left because of you.”
It felt good to hear those words, to hear I had helped Yelena who had given me so much love, but I realized my reason for being quiet and clamming up now was silly and nothing compared to her’s. She had had actual love with Marcel that went on for years. Decades. A lifetime. Love that had grown deep and then was ripped away from her. I know I shouldn’t compare and minimize my feelings, but let’s be real, what I have is an infatuation with a short, pretty guy who glanced back at me one night and then disappeared never to be seen again. Just a memory. A single memory of a fleeting moment. What reason did I have to be so noticeably quiet? I was just being a bummer. I was better on the way there than on the way back, because the night was ending not in the way I wanted it to when it had begun. I decided to shake it off, or at least forget about it for the moment. I forced a smile and poked at the touchscreen and started Ziggy Stardust over. Grace smiled, rolled the windows down, and when the lyrics hit we started scream-singing out the windows. We got so wild that we caught the attention of people in the cars around us and many of them honked and flashed their brights, trying to join in our merriment.
We ended up not going home right away. We just drove around LA in a deep pink Ranger Rover, singing.
He was the Naz
With god given ass
Those are my favorite lines. So brilliant!
Those are the words, right?
It’s Naz, isn’t it? Has to be.
Forget that guy. He’s no Ziggy.
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