AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Yeah, so’s developing. My dad complained about all the costs so I didn’t get really serious until I was about thirteen. Then I started saving up for my Leica.” I stroked the camera beside me. “She’s the one I love best. But don’t tell the other cameras.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it. They might arrange to have her taken out.”
I laughed. “Camera-on-camera violence. It wouldn’t be pretty.”
We talked about photography until the waitress delivered our food, sitting it down in front of us with a half-smile and a perfunctory, “Everything look okay?”
As Daniel and I dug in, I wanted to ask what to anticipate from our day, but another part of me just wanted to go with the flow. Daniel had said on the phone that I wouldn’t be expected to do anything but be nice to Bobby and just watch. After all, I wasn’t a volunteer or anything.
“Are you looking forward to school starting?” Daniel asked. “Feeling pretty excited?”
I nodded, my mouth full of food, and then frowned as thoughts of Adam, Leslie, Oglethorpe, Atlanta, and everything else mashed together in my mind like a twenty-car pile-up. I didn’t want to talk about that. I changed the subject. “What about you? You’re going to be, what? A senior?”
“I should be. But I’ve had to miss a few semesters due to family trouble. I took some advanced courses and a few upper-level seminars over the last few summers to make up for it. Technically, I’m still a sophomore, but I’m a junior in some ways.”
I was dying to ask what had happened with his family, but didn’t want to be nosy. “That’s cool—we’ll be in school at the same time longer than I thought.” Daniel was still a few years older, but now I didn’t feel like such a baby. “To do all that extra stuff, you must really love your classes.”
“Not really.” Daniel said. He looked unhappy, and I remembered the brief flash of bitterness on his face in front of the Disney World picture when we’d talked about coming out.
“Do you not want to be an architect?” I asked.
“It’s not something I’m really into, no.”
“Then why are you studying it?”
Daniel’s smile went tight. “I ask myself that a lot these days. At this point, there’s so much money sunk into this degree that it just makes sense. And I’m good at it. Switching majors and career goals would really set me back.”
I took another bite of my gyro, wondering what it was going to set him back from, exactly? A life he didn’t really want?
“But it’s a lot more than that. Have you ever heard of McPeak & Company?”
“I’ve seen signs around. Is that your family?”
“Yeah, it’s my dad’s construction business. It’s kind of a big deal around town.”
“I’d say. Nearly every construction site I see is by McPeak & Company.”
“It sure seems that way sometimes. They built a lot of stuff for the World’s Fair. That’s how my dad got his start.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “The Sunsphere?”
“No, that was the Butcher Brothers.”
“Oh, good.”
“Why’s that?”
I cleared my throat. “I don’t know. I just think the Sunsphere’s overrated. It’s not the end all and be all of architecture in the city.” The symbolism of the building for Adam and me gave it a bitter quality. I resented that, and my resentment made my feelings about the Sunsphere all the more bitter.
“Well, it’s something different at least.”
“It’s a massive erection,” I argued, echoing Adam’s letter. I thought of the big golden ball reaching up into the sky, so useless now that the fair was over. “That’s all it is. Something unsustainable. Something with more promise than payoff. Something that brings a big jolt of pleasure but ends in a mess.”
Daniel stared at me, obviously sensing that I wasn’t talking about our giant gold ball in the sky anymore. Eventually, he said, “That sums up the eighties, doesn’t it?”
I shrugged. It summed up the eighties and maybe it summed up Adam too. I didn’t want to believe that, but here I was eating lunch with Daniel while Adam was probably looking for someone to get off with in Rome. And even if he wasn’t, there was Leslie and Oglethorpe, and all that meant something, didn’t it?
It meant a hell of a lot more than the Sunsphere.
