I refuse to believe that everything is all ones and zeros like Jackson Porter seems to think with his ridiculous app. Maybe we’re all cursed, chasing after romantic dreams that don’t actually exist. But better to live with hope and mystery and butterflies in your stomach.
Meeting Jackson Porter in person has really knocked me off center. Ones and zeros cannot explain the way the booth spun out for me when that jerk kissed the back of my hand.
jackson
“I just get a feel for people. I’m an empath. I’m that weird chick who sees people’s auras and feels their souls. It’s really hard to fool me. If you know, you know.”
Isla Fairfax, Playing With Matches Confessionals
My Uber driveris pale and paunchy, middle-aged, and not real talky, which is fine with me. He’s dressed all in black and listening to 80s music. “Playing with Matches”comes on the radio. The driver taps the steering wheel and hums along. Nobody remembers the name of my dad’s band or specifically recalls my father, but absolutely everyone knows this stupid song he wrote and recorded.
In this game of love, we play with no rules,
We're lost in the passion, like two desperate fools,
But when the smoke clears, will we still remain,
Or will we be ashes, consumed by the flame?
“Hey man, can you turn that off?” I ask. Just hearing the opening chords puts me on edge. If it stays on till the chorus, it’s going to be an earworm. I won’t be able to shake it for the rest of the day.
“Not a fan?” the man says, glancing in the rearview mirror to look at me. His watery gray eyes are a little bloodshot, and for half a second my heart spasms. I feel a little squeeze, like a hiccup. But the sensation is gone, as fast as he changes the radio station to something more current.
I can’t even recall the exact color of my father’s eyes anymore. Blue? Green? Gray? Bloodshot. Always bloodshot. The red canceled everything else out. It’s been so many years since we’ve heard from him. We don’t even know for sure if he’s still alive. Though I’d like to think we’d know if he were dead. Wouldn’t we?
My dad was a pop star for all of ten seconds in the 80s. And then I was born. And then he became a drunk, and it fucked up our family.The end.
I gaze out the window at the endless strip mall scenery that characterizes this part of LA. Tan cement and relentlessly bright blue skies. The first time I came to LA, I could hardly take off my sunglasses. I felt like some sort of Pacific Northwest vampire, hissing in the overly-bright daylight, twitching at the neon-colored billboards. Isla colors.
Why am I still thinking about her?
I can’t seem to get her out of my head. Her colors have stained me. I’m picking them out of the landscape like I’m trying to subconsciously match paint chips. There’s the neon yellow of her sweater over there on a road work sign. A pink dress, the color of her glasses, hanging in front of a shop billows and catches the breeze like a flag, waving to capture my attention.
It’s around 11 am when I arrive at Goodfellow Productions. The parking lot is packed with cars wedged-in and double-stacked like a game of Tetris. A tired attendant in a plastic lawn chair looks up from whatever he’s watching on his phone to see if he’s going to need to collect the keys, but when he sees the Uber decal on the windshield, he gets right back to his program.
“Okay then. Thanks. Have a good one,” my driver says, barely waiting for my door to close before zooming off to his next pickup. I feel a small pang of guilt about not making small talk. Why hadn’t I bothered to ask him to tell me anything about himself? What if that had been my dad? And what if that was the last time I’d ever see him?
What a ridiculous thought.
The Uber driver couldn’t have been my dad. He’s just some guy who’s around my dad’s age. The thing that’s bugging me is realizing I wouldn’t even know my old man if I did happen to see him somewhere. That bugs me a little. A lot. Would he look like me?
Last time I saw him, he wasn’t too much older than I am now, but he wasn’t healthy. He’d looked like he was in his sixties.
Shake it off, Jackson, I tell myself, shaking out my limbs one at a time. Right arm. Left arm.
Dean’s dad used to always say that when we were Scouts. He was super sporty, more coach than Scoutmaster, but he’d always say in his gruff voice, “Shake it off, Gents!” We’d all get super silly and shake ourselves out.
Next, I do my legs. Then I finish with a neck roll, shoulder shimmy, and a few jumps. The parking lot attendant looks up to check me out, then goes back to watching his show, unfazed. It’s LA. I’m sure he’s seen stranger stuff.
I turn to face the building I’m about to enter, only just noticing it’s glass. All glass. Wall-to-wall windows. Which means everyone on the inside just had a front-row seat to the shake show.
Oh well. I shrug it off. I’m a rich tech guy. I’m supposed to be a weirdo. I’ve got nothing to hide or be ashamed of, physically or otherwise. I’m in the best shape of my life. I’ve been hitting the gym every single day in the months leading up to the app launch. Exercise has been the only thing keeping me sane since my two best friends moved back to Ephron and both immediately got engaged.
I just don’t get it. I don’t get them. Even though the gang’s back together, I’ve never felt more alone.
“I’m here to see Rob Goodfellow,” I say to the receptionist. She’s a white girl with dreadlocks and a thrift store chic vibe. She barely looks up from her game screen. “Rob’s in a meeting; he’ll be right with you.”
Animal Crossing, I see when she sets it down for a moment to type something into the computer.
