Two from the Heart(46)

“Sorry I’m late!” Sunny barges around the corner, out of breath. “I just finished my shift—”

Willow halts in midstep, eyebrows raised.

“No problem,” says Bron, “I just got this thing disconnected. If you can carry the CPU, I can get the monitor. Willow, you know Sunny, right?”

Willow smiles, kind of.

“Not sure,” she says. “Oh, wait… I remember… you’re Sunny… the waitress.” Bit of an edge there, but Sunny lets it go.

“Yep. That’s me. Sunny the waitress. Everything good?”

“Never better,” says Willow.

If Bron weren’t so preoccupied with detaching the cable between the CPU and the back of the monitor, he might pick up on the tension in the air. But he gets nothing. He lifts the base unit and hands it to Sunny. He grabs the monitor and balances the keyboard on top, cables dangling everywhere.

“Thanks, Willow,” says Bron.

“We really appreciate this,” says Sunny.

“Namaste,” she says. “Just don’t break it.”

“We’ll be careful, I promise,” says Bron.

On the way out of the back hall, Bron catches a glimpse of a metal periodical rack. There, on the bottom shelf, is an issue of Scientific American from 2001. Tyler recognizes the face on the cover. It’s his. Different time. Different guy.

Outside, Sunny pauses to get a better grip on the computer. “Be honest,” she says, “what’s the worst that could happen with this thing?”

“A computer this old?” says Bron. “It could blow up.”

Willow watches them leave, then hangs the WE’LL BE BACK AT… sign in the door. She swings the clock hands on the sign to an hour from now. It’s been a busy morning, and she’s all out of goddamn star books, anyway.

Walking toward the back hallway, she reaches into her purse and pulls out a joint.

A big, fat one.





Chapter 30


NICELY DONE,” says Daisy, and I have to agree.

Sometimes I surprise myself with the way the words on the page end up on the screen. Sunny’s timing was impeccable.

Daisy and I are sitting together on the sofa in the back of the control room. Because we’re both in such a positive mood, I decide to see if I can peel a few more layers from Ms. DeForest.

“So, you met Bron when?” I ask it as if she’s told me before. Which she hasn’t. She gives me a look.

“I interned for him,” she says, “when I was still in law school.”

“A Ph.D. intern?”

“Look. Everybody at the company was overqualified. We just wanted to be part of it. Bron was doing things that had never been done. It was exciting.”

“So what were your duties?” I ask. “Bringing him pizza?”

“I worked on clearing patents. I’m not sure he even knew who I was.” She shakes her head. “Thinking back, I’m not sure he knew who anybody was.”

“So how did you get from there to here?”

I consider myself a keen observer of body language. And I’ve noticed that whenever Daisy doesn’t want to answer a question, she does a quick nose-crinkle—like a kid refusing broccoli.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I moved into operations and logistics. I guess he thought I had the right skill set.”

“So you hatched this scheme together—the two of you?”

Daisy scoots herself off the sofa—nose-crinkling big-time.

“Okay, Shakespeare, that’s it. Back to your Smith Corona.”

“It’s a Selectric.”





Chapter 31


DID YOU bring the powdered sugar?” asks Bron. He holds out his palm like a surgeon waiting for a scalpel.

Sunny reaches into her bag and hands him a five-pound bag of confectioners’ superfine, packed so tight it feels like a brick.

“Perfect.” Bron adds it to the pile of ingredients and parts on the worktable.

Bron and Sunny are in Vern’s classroom, surrounded by a delegation of kids from every grade. A group of teachers looks on from behind. Principal Delgado’s face is pressed up against the small square window in the door.

A tiny third-grader pipes up. “Are we making cookies?”

“Absolutely not,” says Bron. “What we’re mixing would, well… it would make your tummies explode.”

The kids laugh. But he’s not joking.

Sunny sits down at one of the classroom desks, lowering the top across her lap and folding her hands politely, as if she were back in Catholic school. Or acting class.

Vern pulls up a desk next to her.

“I should have taken the day off,” he says in a stage whisper. “Nothing to do but watch the maestro at work.”

He’s right. Bron is terrific with the kids—totally in control. He’s laser focused on the task, and they’re right there with him. Over the past week, they’ve sorted and measured the parts and made a construction diagram on graph paper. Now, with the kids’ help, Bron clips, slides, and glues bits of metal and plastic together until a shape begins to form on the worktable. The buzz in the room picks up. Teachers nod. Kids point. The little ones start to bounce on their toes, angling for a better look.