fic: city of blinding lights, 1/2
title: city of blinding lights
rating: r
word count: ~10600
summary: Reclusive Facebook Founder Goes Into the Wild. Or at least, that's what Mark pictures the headlines to say. A story about a reunion, the Fourth of July, the Le Pan Quotidien on 19th and Broadway, and driving all night across the state of Kansas. Written for smallfandombang, fabulous, gorgeous art is here
part two: here
zero. --- (palo alto, california, united states, july fourth)
According to Mark's eleventh-grade Advanced Placement United States history textbook, the Declaration of Independence was approved on July 4th, 1776. It was a day where the meaning would stretch across centuries.
This is... mostly correct. Mark's eleventh-grade history teacher was a bit of a renegade, but he was a renegade with a Ph.D and once spent an entire class period on a rainy October day giving them all the background information they would ever need about the founding of their country. The colonies legally voted to separate themselves from Great Britain on July 2nd, not July 4th, and a majority of the signers of the Declaration actually waited to put pen to paper until August. John Adams, second president and father to the sixth, wrote to his wife Abigail on the 3rd that the 2nd would be the day celebrated and remembered.
Mark has no idea why he remembers this from high school, but a Harvard art history class failed to teach him the difference between Michelangelo and Botticelli.
It doesn't matter anyways. It's July 4th and the neighbors next door are grilling hot dogs and laughing. They have a sprinkler and he can hear their four-year-old girl screaming. Based on past experience, if he looks over the fence he’ll be able to see their six-year-old hitting her with a swimming noodle.
Mark's Independence Day celebration involves a six-pack of beer , store-bought guacamole, and talking to Chris on Skype. Dustin took advantage of the long weekend to fly out to D.C., leaving Mark alone in Palo Alto.
His neighbors invited him over to their barbecue but even he could sense that it was half-hearted, that they wanted to be with their family and not the morose twentysomething they occasionally invited over for drinks out of pity. He'd declined, said he wouldn't be around to babysit next weekend either, and went out to buy himself more beer.
On his laptop screen Dustin waves, clearly happily tipsy. Chris is looking at him like you're an idiot but it's a fond look, it's always a fond look with Dustin no matter his level of idiocy, and Mark suddenly misses them. A lot.
(He misses someone else too, but he's not permitting himself that anymore.)
He doesn’t have an explanation for what he does next. It’s longing mixed with wanderlust mixed with alcohol, and there are absolutely no excuses.
“Dustin,” Mark says, “you know, would you mind if I took a vacation? You could take over for a while, right?”
Thousands of miles away, Dustin blinks and his mouth goes slack, like this is some absurd thing coming out of Mark’s mouth and he’s in total shock. The lag on his internet connection makes it look stranger than it actually is, but that’s Dustin’s face for you.
“Sure, Mark,” he says. “If you actually decide to take a vacation, if that actually happens, I will take over for a week or two.”
“Good,” Mark says, waves, and signs off.
He packs a bag. He won’t need much. His laptop, cell phone, assorted chargers. Clean underwear, a few t-shirts and jeans. A pair of sneakers. Something to read along the way. A notebook. His wallet. A toothbrush and deodorant. It all fits into a small duffel bag, one he still has stashed in his closet from college.
He gets in his car, turns on some music, and he begins to drive.
Happy Fourth of July.
one. --- (fortuna, california, united states, july fourth)
Fortuna, California is about six hours away from Palo Alto, accounting for traffic. It isn’t huge-- about ten thousand people-- and it’s low-lying and scrubby, a gateway to the giant redwoods in the northern part of the state.
What was it that Horace Greeley had allegedly said during that heady time of expansion? “Go West, young man”. Mark followed Greeley’s advice already, years ago, and what had it gotten him? (He wishes the question was rhetorical-- money, yes, but he was left with mostly lawsuits and loneliness. ) He can’t go further west. He’ll hit the Pacific and then it’s miles and miles of ocean until Asia. It would be a monumental boat ride, and he doesn’t know how to sail.
He wonders what it must have been like for those 1800-era travellers attempting manifest destiny, born in Ohio or Pennsylvania or Virginia, never seeing any sort of ocean-- and then when they arrived, confronted head-on with the majestic Pacific.
It must have been some sight to see.
Fortuna is north. Maybe Mark will go north until he hits the border, maybe he’ll go southeast and then north again, and it doesn’t matter where he ends up except he won’t be west, he won’t be where everything fucking fell apart.
Luckily, Fortuna also has a Super 8 motel, and it doesn’t matter that he could technically afford to buy a house here. They have Wi-Fi and hot water and really, that’s all he needs right now.
He checks in and brings up his email. There’s one from Dustin: oh shit mark you’re really serious about this vacation thing. ill fly back tomorrow.
good, Mark emails back. He sends a blast email to other Facebook officers, and then he goes to sleep. In the morning he has a subpar bagel in the lobby of the motel, and asks the person behind the desk what there is to do in town.
She’s twenty-something with curly black hair, and she’s checking Facebook on her iPhone. Mark feels a thrill when he sees it the way that he always does, the thrill of creation. Her name tag says Daisy.
“There’s the Heather Garden,” she says. “It’s not that far away, and it’s usually pretty this time of year.”
“Thanks, Daisy” Mark says, picking up his bag. “You’ve been very helpful.”
She smiles, showing white teeth. “No problem, Mr.--”
“Zuckerberg,” he says, “Mark. No Mr., really, it makes me feel weird. Have a nice day.”
By the time she realizes who he is, looking down at the open window on her phone amazedly, Mark’s out the door.
The heather garden is pretty, but it also makes him sneeze.
two. --- (alturas, california, united states, july fifth)
There’s a huge amount of traffic and Mark doesn’t know why. He supposes it’s some sort of post-holiday exodus, that everyone’s gotten sick of their family and has gone home, stuffed full of hot dogs, apple pie, ice cream, and beer.
He’s driving northeast on CA-36 and listening to nothing in particular, just the sounds of car horns and the hum of the engine. His windows are rolled down and there’s sunlight on his face.
Mark lives in California and he still doesn’t get enough sun.
He stops driving when he gets hungry, around six, at a casino restaurant outside of Alturas. He’s in the upper east corner of the state, the corner that ends at a right angle. The town says that they’re “where the West still lives”, but Mark’s not too sure about that.
“I need a place to stay,” he tells his server at the Desert Rose Cafe, a woman who looks like the stereotype of every sort of truck stop waitress ever, except she smiles at him and doesn’t call him ‘hon’, and she brings him extra french fries, so maybe she’s something different and he’s not sure.
“There’s a couple of motels when you go inside city limits,” she says. She’s not wearing a name tag, and Mark hasn’t asked. “Nothing fancy, but they’ll have a vacancy. We don’t get too many tourists ‘round here.”
“I’m not a tourist,” Mark says quickly.
“Then what’re you doing?” she asks.
He bites his lip and says what’s closest to the truth: “not being at work.”
She smiles, says, “must be nice, I’d love a vacation right about now” and brings him the check and a pen for him to sign with.
“I guess,” Mark mutters, but there’s no one listening.
When he wakes up late in the morning, he drives and drives and doesn’t stop for gas until he’s out of the state.
three. --- (corvallis, oregon, united states, july fifth)
There’s a prevalent theme on this excursion so far, and it’s mostly that Californian traffic sucks no matter what part of the state he’s in.
Of course, now Mark is in Oregon, has spent six out of the last nine hours in Oregon, but it’s clearly influenced by California and he’s becoming more fond of Boston’s T train than he was even when he used it somewhat regularly. He’ll have to donate money to some sort of green public transportation and infrastructure work; there need to be more of it out on the West Coast. Besides, he’s always enjoyed coding on trains, wired in with the landscape speeding by and the soothing whir of the wheels against the tracks.
When he’d entered the city of Corvallis, he’d noticed a sign saying Welcome to a Green Power Community, right on top of one saying Bicycle-Friendly Community, which is kind of making him want to keep on driving straight through the night.
But Chris had texted, had made Mark promise he would not drive for hours and hours and skip sleeping to try to find whatever (in Chris’s words) stupid idiotic thing he was looking for. He’d also made Mark promise that he would keep in contact with Dustin, wo might not have been as mentally prepared to be CEO-substitute as Mark had thought, and Mark needs Wi-Fi for that.There’s some coffee shop in the city that very proudly proclaims itself to be Not Starbucks, but they have free internet so Mark bites the bullet and buys a cup of tea, spoons in at least two tablespoons of sugar, and sits down with his laptop.
Dustin pops up on Skype after about thirty seconds.
“Hey,” his friend says. Dustin looks tired, and messy, and Mark’s pretty sure he has pizza sauce all over his shirt. “What’s up?”
“I’m in Oregon,” Mark responds. “Not in Starbucks.”
“That must be nice,” Dustin says. “So, uh, Mark.”
“What?”
“Have you figured out why you’re doing this yet?” Dustin rubs at his face, smearing marinara in a bright red streak across his cheek.
Mark shrugs.
“We told the media-- those who care, so like, mostly obsessive tech blogs-- that you’re taking a vacation. Didn’t say where.”
“Thanks,” Mark says. “Hey, Dustin?”
“Yeah?”
“You can take some time off and take a shower, you know. There are lots of employees who can do... well. Who can do stuff.”
“Do as I say, not as I do?” Dustin quips, smiling softly.
“Something like that,” Mark agrees. “I’m gonna go find a hotel.”
“Keep in touch,” Dustin says. Mark closes the computer. He’ll check into a hotel that’s exactly like the first three, with a fuzzy TV and slippery sheets, and it will all be perfectly adequate, except for the bagels.
But now he’s in Oregon, and if it isn’t that much different from California, it certainly feels-- cleaner, perhaps. Clearer air. Unmarked.
His phone buzzes with a text from Sean: r u tryin to make some sort of grand gesture?
No, Mark thinks, except.
It isn’t as if he doesn’t talk to Eduardo. He has his email address, though not his cell. They communicate, usually short messages like “you need to come to the next shareholders, important discussion about expansion overseas” or “my parents received your Hanukkah card, thank you for sending it”; always impersonal no matter the topic.
So, yeah. He could talk to Eduardo if it was necessary. He could email him even if it wasn’t. He could email him and say I never realized it, but I don’t like California that much. I like the ideas, but it is not my platonic ideal. It makes me tired, and all the history is new. I used to love it, I loved the energy, but now I’m surprisingly discontent. Oregon is better. Not much of an improvement-- go West, young man, as if I could go further without drowning-- and I’ve never been poetic, I almost failed my poetry class sophomore year of high school, but this isn’t what I’m looking for and I don’t even know what that is.
He’s not going to send that. He’s not-- he’s not a idiot, and he’s not drunk enough for it to be an excuse, and maybe he shouldn’t be in Oregon after all.
He’s not too tired; the sun is still up. He can keep going.
four. --- (bellingham, washington, united states, 12:08 am, july sixth)
The only reason Mark has stopped in the city of Bellingham, Washington State, population 80,885, is because it’s the last place he’ll be able to check into a hotel after midnight unless he drives into Canada.
He’s not going to drive into Canada. His passport is still safe at home on his bedroom dresser.
Go West, go North, go anywhere. Go to sleep.
He sleeps for eight hours, and when he wakes up he buys coffee and Red Bull and gets in his car, and drives for fifteen hours straight until he finds himself in Montana.
five. --- (billings, montana, united states, july sixth)
Montana is sky and scrubby grass and a city of just over one hundred thousand people. Montana is big sky country, and when Mark looks up all he can see is navy blue darkness and stars.
Big sky country. He likes the sound of that. He snaps a picture with his phone of the stars, the devastating, shocking breadth of the sky, and sends it to Dustin.
where are you, Dustin texts back almost immediately, and Mark says, Montana.
that’s pretty far away from home, Dustin responds, and even though Mark knows his friend can’t see it, he shrugs.
it’s a start, he says to Dustin, and hopes that he’ll understand.
He spends the rest of the night wandering around Billings. It’s cool outside, sixty degrees, and it’s the perfect weather for when you can’t sleep and you have nothing immediate to do. Mark parks his car and slings his laptop bag over his shoulder, hoping he won’t get arrested for vagrancy (and do they even do that anymore? Chris would know, but Chris is in D.C. and asleep). He slips on headphones, plays something quiet and classical, and hopes that he’ll be able to see the sunrise.
The neighborhood he’s in is quiet. He turns onto Cascade Drive, notes the low houses and bluffs, dark in the moonlight.
At 5 AM, when the sky is becoming the color of faded ink, his phone buzzes against his hip.
It’s Eduardo.
Mark picks it up and weighs it in his hand. The phone fits there well, buzzing against his palm, each vibration giving him-- something. A chance, perhaps. A suggestion. Eduardo hasn’t changed his phone number. But more than that, Eduardo kept Mark’s number.
He hits a button and says, “hello.”
“Mark,” says Eduardo’s voice. “Hi, Mark.”
“Hey,” Mark responds, sinking down onto a bench. “Eduardo. Hi.” He pauses. “Are you-- where are you, isn’t it, like, dinner time in Singapore right now?”
Eduardo laughs a little bit. It sounds embarrassed. “No, it’s morning, it’s eight AM, I’m in New York. Manhattan, actually. At a Starbucks on Fifth Avenue.”
“There are a lot of Starbucks on Fifth Avenue,” Mark feels obliged to point out.
“Yeah,” Eduardo says. “So, look, this is just-- I haven’t spoken to you in forever, I know, especially not in person.”
“Justifiably,” Mark says, and winces. Eduardo exhales.
“Well-- let’s not-- okay, look, Mark, just. It’s-- Where are you?”
“Montana,” says Mark, rolling the word around in his mouth. “I’m in Montana.”
“Montana,” Eduardo says, like that is the very last thing he’d expect Mark to say, and then, “big sky country?”
“Yeah, Wardo, it’s amazing.” Mark shifts a little, left foot to right. “The sky in Boston, or even in California, it was nothing compared to this. There are stars. It’s so cool, you know, that there are all these stars.”
“Okay,” says Eduardo, and Mark can hear him take a deep breath, and then there’s a soft click as he hangs up the phone. But it’s not angry like the last time they tried to talk, and it’s not stilted and overly polite. He doesn’t know what it is, but it’s not bad. Mark wonders if Dustin or Chris asked Eduardo to call, if the shock of it would make him spill something about this journey of his, or even if Eduardo would just make him realize something, the way that Eduardo always used to (or always tried to, because sometimes Mark was Mark and it didn’t work).
It won’t solve anything, but maybe it’s time for him to have breakfast. It’s fast becoming dawn, with a grey-pink sky and that haziness special to the hour between five and six. Mark sits for a while and watches the sky lighten and turn blue until he’s reasonably sure he can find a restaurant.
He ends up with pancakes drenched in butter and syrup. They’re sticky-sweet in his mouth, and they’re pretty good.
-
He does actually need to work, even if it’s just to send Dustin instructions and plot out ideas for the next update. There’s a script he doesn’t like on the homepage, too, so he’ll need to deal with that even though it’s hardly important; it’s just something that would otherwise nag at him.
Then again, he has the time right now, which is awesome in and of itself. Mark dumps maple syrup over everything, even his eggs, says a quick prayer to the god of laptops, keyboards, and sticky fingers, and digs in.
He finishes working around nine, and then he has the whole day ahead of him.
He could find another project, he’s sure, fix another line of code and another until he’s changed the entire site incrementally, but in essence this is supposed to be a vacation and Chris might yell at him even more if he doesn’t use it effectively.
Mark’s pretty sure wandering around Billings at dawn counts as a nature walk. Everyone, including his mother, is always encouraging him to get more fresh air.
-
Dustin calls around one. He wants to know how Montana is.
“Fine,” Mark says, and maybe he sounds a little bit cross. “It’s fine.”
“Where’s your sense of wonder,” Dustin asks, a touch rhetorical. “Where’s the Montana-loving Mark I met for the first time yesterday?”
“I’m tired of walking,” Mark informs him. “It’s boring. My feet hurt. My laptop is heavy.”
“Leave your laptop in the car,” Dustin suggests.
“If it gets stolen, I’ll have to hire a hitman,” Mark says.
There’s a pause.
“I would laugh,” says Dustin slowly, “but I’m not entirely sure that you’re kidding.”
“You’ll never know,” Mark says, using the fakest, most faux-mysterious voice he can muster up. Given how he’s more than a bit sleep-deprived, he ends up more croaky than villainous.
Granted, this is how a lot of his and Dustin’s conversations go, one of them so high on sleep deprivation and the other hopped up on caffeine and pure hyperactivity-- the roles stay pretty constant, never quite switching-- so Mark isn’t sure why he’s even questioning anything right now. Except, apparently, that Dustin thinks he is capable of hiring a hitman.
“I am not hiring a hitman,” Mark says after a moment, rather monotonously. “This is reassurance for your peace of mind.”
“I’m very reassured,” Dustin says calmly. “So you’re definitely not still in a Montana-inspired state of shock and awe?”
Mark frowns. “I’m not sure,” he says. “I might have to sleep on it. I’ve been awake for-- a while.”
“Scared to give me a real number?” Dustin’s grin can be heard through the phone; his tone of voice is light, teasing, almost motherly, and that is something Mark will never share with anyone else ever.
“Well you’d just tell Chris, and we both who know is more terrifying, between the two of you.”
“Uh-huh.” There’s a crunch as Dustin bites into something, presumably a pretzel. “You should go to sleep soon. And don’t drive all night, either.”
“I fear I’m becoming predictable,” Mark says, and thinks about hanging up. He doesn’t need to say goodbye, Dustin knows him well enough to know that it’s not always necessary.
“Wait a sec,” Dustin says, as Mark is pulling the phone away from his ear. “Which way are you driving?”
“Probably not west?” Mark says, wincing as it comes out as so much more of a question than it is ought to. “I don’t know. Maybe south, a little. Colorado, New Mexico, I’m not sure.”
“Not over to the East Coast?” Dustin’s voice is gentle, too gentle, and Mark gnaws on his lip.
“The continental United States is a very big place, Dustin,” he says instead, “and even I haven’t seen most of it.”
“We’re not gonna do this now, that’s fine, there’s time,” Dustin says. “Take care of yourself, Marky, don’t do anything stupid, okay?”
“Fine,” Mark grumbles, and he is halfway through mumbling about how it is ridiculous to make a fully grown and legal adult promise that when Dustin laughs softly and hangs up.
-
Mark spends another day in Montana, and he spends most of that day asleep. Dustin’s advice has proven to be decent, and it seems like Dustin had communicated with Chris, who actually has his mother on speed-dial, and he got a text-- several-- telling him in no uncertain terms that he needed to sleep at least nine hours, soon.
(He’s fairly sure that it was Eduardo, one Thanksgiving he spent at Mark’s house instead of his own, who taught Mrs. Zuckerberg how to text. Of all the things he’s still mad at Eduardo for, this is probably the most unforgivable.)
Anyways. It’s nothing against Montana, really. He still feels that same odd bit of shock and amazement when he looks up at the sky and just sees sky, blue and endless and overpowering. It’s not like the sky in Boston, gray and cramped, and it’s different even from the sky in Palo Alto. And Billings is fine. He rented a room in a non-chain hotel, and apart from having a slightly better television it’s exactly the same as the chain motels, which was more disappointing than he’d care to admit.
Mark just feels itchy.
It’s an itch he can’t scratch, really. It’s something driving him away from Facebook and out into the open, yes, but it’s driving him out into isolation.
It’s not-- he doesn’t spend a lot of time with other people, that’s the thing. His social circle is mostly Dustin and Chris, with the occasional call from Billy Olsen when he’s drunk and nostalgic. The occasional Facebook poke from Erica Albright, because while they’re not friends they’re not not friends, they just have moved past stupid college shit as best they can. And if they express that by poking, then that’s just fine. They got coffee once when she was in San Francisco for work, and he had a very nice, very platonic time. His mom calls. His mom calls kind of a lot, actually, but also in a way that Mark doesn’t mind it happening.
And then there’s Eduardo, hovering around the edges of his consciousness. Mark would liken him to a ghost, but he is most definitely alive, and Mark wouldn’t allow himself to be haunted, anyway.
So it’s not a loneliness thing, or an isolation thing. It’s curious, how he likes this sort of traveling that’s just him. The sort of travelling that doesn’t involve conferences and speeches and wearing neckties, then schmoozing with people who use too much hair product and speak too loudly and never seem to fit into their obviously designer-brand suits. Mark hates those people.
(Eduardo is not one of them, not yet. Mark knows to be grateful for the little things. He’s meet Saverin Sr., who was the most literal example of a dick Mark can think of.)
And in the end, right now, half awake in a strange room in a strange city in a strange state, Mark is fairly content.
But he’s not happy.
And isn’t that important? He’s got an itch.
-
He checks out of the hotel. If he’s going to try to find something, he’s got to keep moving. He can’t exist in a state of a inertia.
Move fast and break things.
“Where should I go next?” Mark asks the girl behind the hotel desk. She’s youngish, probably late twenties, probably with a heritage that is dominantly Italian. Her lipstick is neat and red and looks like it is never allowed to smudge, and she has on what appears to be industrial-strength mascara. Her name tag says Toni.
“I’ve always wanted to go to California,” she says after a moment’s consideration.
Go West, young man.
“I’m from there,” Mark says, offering up a crooked smile. Crooked because that is the barest of half-truths; he is so much more from Dobbs Ferry and Boston then Palo Alto; history hasn’t left enough of a mark yet to tell.
Also, he remains stubbornly pasty in a year where even Dustin has a slight tan.
“Well then,” Toni says, stretching out her vowels. “Go south.”
“South? Like the Deep South, like New Orleans?”
“Not unless you like gumbo,” she replies. Her voice is sharp and has a rough edge to it. “I’m talking southwest. Boulder is so unlike anything I’d ever seen before. You look like you travel more than me-- it’s only the serious travellers who carry just a duffel-- but I’d bet good money you would enjoy the southwest.”
Mark would ask her for driving directions, but honestly, he’ll just use his phone and his GPS.
He likes being thought of as a traveller; a distant wanderer. It’s far from the truth, ludicrously so, but he clings to the label.
“Thank you very much,” he says instead. She’s small and neat in her black jacket and pencil skirt, and he wonders how much time she spends in the morning, taking pride in her appearance. “You’ve been very helpful.”
“You’re welcome,” Toni says, and her answering smile is a bright slash of red across her skin.
-
Without really thinking about it, he taps out a text to Eduardo.
I think I might go to Colorado next.
Eduardo doesn’t respond for a few hours, but then again, Mark doesn’t expect him to. When the phone buzzes, he looks up from his laptop. He’s sitting on a bench, clicking idly through Google Maps, a tab open with driving directions to Boulder.
I’ve heard it’s a nice state, Eduardo writes. Mark takes it as implicit approval.
Boulder’s supposed to be pretty cool, he writes. There isn’t a second response, even though he waits an additional twenty minutes. It’s fine. Mark closes his laptop and slips it into his shoulder bag. Now all he has to do is remember where he parked his car.
Which, of course, takes much longer than expected. He ends up going in three separate circles, walking by low-slung houses and cafes and bookstores and at least one sex shop, which he definitely would not have expected to find in Billings. When he finally stumbles across the car-- entirely by accident, and Mark will admit it-- he’s probably never been so glad to see an automobile in his life.
Mark doesn’t have a fancy car. He could afford one, sure. He could afford a fleet of limos and still have enough for, like, a diamond-encrusted Rolls Royce. But he has a Saturn. It’s blue, and the only conceit he’s allowed it is a Facebook sticker in the back window. It’s a few years old, too-- the floor mats are kind of beat up, and there’s crumbs in the seams on almost all the seats because Dustin flouts every single ‘food is only allowed in the car if you eat neatly’ rule ever made. Mark can’t get rid of the ketchup stain at all, and he’s scrubbed at it with ridiculously potent cleaning supplies. Now there’s a ketchup stain and a bleach spot.
But yeah, he’s fond of this car. He’s driven a lot in this car recently. And he’s set up a decent charging station as well, which, geek-pride is still a thing, everybody.
He also, in his head, calls his English-accented GPS Giles, which Dustin, supreme Buffy fan (as in, has dragged Mark to more than one fan convention before Chris forbade them going in anything other than disguise) will never, ever be allowed to know.
According to his GPS, it’ll take him about 9 hours to drive to Colorado, and said driving will be mostly through Wyoming. All that Mark knows about Wyoming is that Dick Cheney is from there, and so he’s sort of developed a natural suspicion about the state.
If he starts now, he might make it by morning.
six. --- (boulder, colorado, united states, july eighth)
There’s a part of Mark, eyes and head fuzzy from almost ten hours of driving on flat, brown interstate highways, that can’t believe it’s only been four days. 96 hours. He’s been away from Facebook for 96 hours. It seems so insignificant, in the scheme of things.
It’s certainly a way to see a country, out the window of a car.
He’d watched as the landscape went from scrubby desert to a richer green, as he’d gone down through Wyoming and into Colorado. He’s been to Colorado before, when he was fourteen and his parents, as a Hanukkah treat, took them all skiing. He mostly remembers twisting his ankle and sitting in the ski lounge, trying to get onto the internet and drinking endless cups of hot chocolate with whipped cream, while his sisters would come in at intervals, cheeks flushed and happy, and would sit and steal french fries from him.
Mark tries to think of what’s in Colorado. He remembers Dustin saying it was a beautiful state-- Dustin, being from Florida and no stranger to humidity, had appreciated the cleaner air. As for Mark himself, well, he hadn’t minded the ski lounge, despite the overarching use of logs and snowshoes as interior design.
The sun has been up for a while. He’d watched the sunrise around the time he’d crossed the border. The thing about sunrises, Mark decided in college, is that once you’ve seen a lot of them (and he’s seen a lot, that’s what happens when you’re a CS student and you stay up all night coding, taking a ten minute break to drink Red Bull and watch the sun rise over Cambridge because holy shit, there’s class in like three hours.) He hadn’t been at his desk then, that’s right, he’d been sitting next to Wardo. Eduardo had closed his textbook, made Mark save his work, and they’d watched the sun come up over the buildings spread in front of them.
“We could go and watch this from the roof,” Eduardo had suggested, but Mark had disagreed-- that would involve climbing, and fire exits, and also it was March and so cold and he didn’t want to put on real shoes.
“Okay,” Eduardo had said then, simply, “we’ll stay right here”. They had watched in from Mark’s bed, Eduardo’s arm around him and his head on his shoulder. The spine of the textbook had been digging into Mark’s back, but he hadn’t said anything.
He’s pretty sure nothing could have topped that sunrise.
Eyes tight (which is so stupid, he doesn’t know why that’s happening, that shouldn’t be happening), he drives on in search of a hotel. Somewhere, he knows that Chris is probably living in gut-wrenching fear of a headline saying something like ‘Sleep-deprived Facebook billionaire crashes into campus Apple store’.
Mark gets a room at the first place he sees, and sleeps through most of the day. His last thought is that he seems to be turning nocturnal. Not the best thing, certainly.
Dustin sends him a text about then: good night marky! hope you’ve arrived safely. are you a bat now?
He manages to text back that he does not eat bugs, thank you very much, nor does he have echolocation, and then he falls asleep on top of the covers, shoes and all.
When he wakes up, it’s time for dinner.
-
The thing is, objectively Mark likes Colorado, or at least he doesn’t mind it. But there isn’t something he needs here. Boulder is fine. He walked around the UC-Boulder campus after dinner, watched students carrying laptops and textbooks and messenger bags, counted all the silly hats and patterned socks he could see. It’s nice. It’s collegey. It’s soothingly familiar.
On the other hand.
There’s a pull behind his navel, a voice whispering in his ear, and it’s saying go East.
So maybe it’s time for Mark to succumb.
He reasons around it. He’ll go southeast first, maybe. He’ll start by driving down to Louisiana, or Kentucky. Maybe he’ll go to Nashville, even though he has absolutely no interest either way in country music.
Because he knows, even if he doesn’t want to admit it, that he’ll probably end up back in Massachusetts. He’ll probably go by the Harvard campus. He might even go by Kirkland, and Widener, and the CS labs, and he find the statue of not-John Harvard and rub its toe for luck and nostalgia. (He never believed in that shit, but Eduardo did, and made them both do it every time. Except now apparently people are peeing on it, he’d heard, so maybe he’ll skip that step because wow would that be awfully unhygenic). Just to see if anything has changed. Just to see if it makes him feel anything. Just to see.
rating: r
word count: ~10600
summary: Reclusive Facebook Founder Goes Into the Wild. Or at least, that's what Mark pictures the headlines to say. A story about a reunion, the Fourth of July, the Le Pan Quotidien on 19th and Broadway, and driving all night across the state of Kansas. Written for smallfandombang, fabulous, gorgeous art is here
part two: here
zero. --- (palo alto, california, united states, july fourth)
According to Mark's eleventh-grade Advanced Placement United States history textbook, the Declaration of Independence was approved on July 4th, 1776. It was a day where the meaning would stretch across centuries.
This is... mostly correct. Mark's eleventh-grade history teacher was a bit of a renegade, but he was a renegade with a Ph.D and once spent an entire class period on a rainy October day giving them all the background information they would ever need about the founding of their country. The colonies legally voted to separate themselves from Great Britain on July 2nd, not July 4th, and a majority of the signers of the Declaration actually waited to put pen to paper until August. John Adams, second president and father to the sixth, wrote to his wife Abigail on the 3rd that the 2nd would be the day celebrated and remembered.
Mark has no idea why he remembers this from high school, but a Harvard art history class failed to teach him the difference between Michelangelo and Botticelli.
It doesn't matter anyways. It's July 4th and the neighbors next door are grilling hot dogs and laughing. They have a sprinkler and he can hear their four-year-old girl screaming. Based on past experience, if he looks over the fence he’ll be able to see their six-year-old hitting her with a swimming noodle.
Mark's Independence Day celebration involves a six-pack of beer , store-bought guacamole, and talking to Chris on Skype. Dustin took advantage of the long weekend to fly out to D.C., leaving Mark alone in Palo Alto.
His neighbors invited him over to their barbecue but even he could sense that it was half-hearted, that they wanted to be with their family and not the morose twentysomething they occasionally invited over for drinks out of pity. He'd declined, said he wouldn't be around to babysit next weekend either, and went out to buy himself more beer.
On his laptop screen Dustin waves, clearly happily tipsy. Chris is looking at him like you're an idiot but it's a fond look, it's always a fond look with Dustin no matter his level of idiocy, and Mark suddenly misses them. A lot.
(He misses someone else too, but he's not permitting himself that anymore.)
He doesn’t have an explanation for what he does next. It’s longing mixed with wanderlust mixed with alcohol, and there are absolutely no excuses.
“Dustin,” Mark says, “you know, would you mind if I took a vacation? You could take over for a while, right?”
Thousands of miles away, Dustin blinks and his mouth goes slack, like this is some absurd thing coming out of Mark’s mouth and he’s in total shock. The lag on his internet connection makes it look stranger than it actually is, but that’s Dustin’s face for you.
“Sure, Mark,” he says. “If you actually decide to take a vacation, if that actually happens, I will take over for a week or two.”
“Good,” Mark says, waves, and signs off.
He packs a bag. He won’t need much. His laptop, cell phone, assorted chargers. Clean underwear, a few t-shirts and jeans. A pair of sneakers. Something to read along the way. A notebook. His wallet. A toothbrush and deodorant. It all fits into a small duffel bag, one he still has stashed in his closet from college.
He gets in his car, turns on some music, and he begins to drive.
Happy Fourth of July.
one. --- (fortuna, california, united states, july fourth)
Fortuna, California is about six hours away from Palo Alto, accounting for traffic. It isn’t huge-- about ten thousand people-- and it’s low-lying and scrubby, a gateway to the giant redwoods in the northern part of the state.
What was it that Horace Greeley had allegedly said during that heady time of expansion? “Go West, young man”. Mark followed Greeley’s advice already, years ago, and what had it gotten him? (He wishes the question was rhetorical-- money, yes, but he was left with mostly lawsuits and loneliness. ) He can’t go further west. He’ll hit the Pacific and then it’s miles and miles of ocean until Asia. It would be a monumental boat ride, and he doesn’t know how to sail.
He wonders what it must have been like for those 1800-era travellers attempting manifest destiny, born in Ohio or Pennsylvania or Virginia, never seeing any sort of ocean-- and then when they arrived, confronted head-on with the majestic Pacific.
It must have been some sight to see.
Fortuna is north. Maybe Mark will go north until he hits the border, maybe he’ll go southeast and then north again, and it doesn’t matter where he ends up except he won’t be west, he won’t be where everything fucking fell apart.
Luckily, Fortuna also has a Super 8 motel, and it doesn’t matter that he could technically afford to buy a house here. They have Wi-Fi and hot water and really, that’s all he needs right now.
He checks in and brings up his email. There’s one from Dustin: oh shit mark you’re really serious about this vacation thing. ill fly back tomorrow.
good, Mark emails back. He sends a blast email to other Facebook officers, and then he goes to sleep. In the morning he has a subpar bagel in the lobby of the motel, and asks the person behind the desk what there is to do in town.
She’s twenty-something with curly black hair, and she’s checking Facebook on her iPhone. Mark feels a thrill when he sees it the way that he always does, the thrill of creation. Her name tag says Daisy.
“There’s the Heather Garden,” she says. “It’s not that far away, and it’s usually pretty this time of year.”
“Thanks, Daisy” Mark says, picking up his bag. “You’ve been very helpful.”
She smiles, showing white teeth. “No problem, Mr.--”
“Zuckerberg,” he says, “Mark. No Mr., really, it makes me feel weird. Have a nice day.”
By the time she realizes who he is, looking down at the open window on her phone amazedly, Mark’s out the door.
The heather garden is pretty, but it also makes him sneeze.
two. --- (alturas, california, united states, july fifth)
There’s a huge amount of traffic and Mark doesn’t know why. He supposes it’s some sort of post-holiday exodus, that everyone’s gotten sick of their family and has gone home, stuffed full of hot dogs, apple pie, ice cream, and beer.
He’s driving northeast on CA-36 and listening to nothing in particular, just the sounds of car horns and the hum of the engine. His windows are rolled down and there’s sunlight on his face.
Mark lives in California and he still doesn’t get enough sun.
He stops driving when he gets hungry, around six, at a casino restaurant outside of Alturas. He’s in the upper east corner of the state, the corner that ends at a right angle. The town says that they’re “where the West still lives”, but Mark’s not too sure about that.
“I need a place to stay,” he tells his server at the Desert Rose Cafe, a woman who looks like the stereotype of every sort of truck stop waitress ever, except she smiles at him and doesn’t call him ‘hon’, and she brings him extra french fries, so maybe she’s something different and he’s not sure.
“There’s a couple of motels when you go inside city limits,” she says. She’s not wearing a name tag, and Mark hasn’t asked. “Nothing fancy, but they’ll have a vacancy. We don’t get too many tourists ‘round here.”
“I’m not a tourist,” Mark says quickly.
“Then what’re you doing?” she asks.
He bites his lip and says what’s closest to the truth: “not being at work.”
She smiles, says, “must be nice, I’d love a vacation right about now” and brings him the check and a pen for him to sign with.
“I guess,” Mark mutters, but there’s no one listening.
When he wakes up late in the morning, he drives and drives and doesn’t stop for gas until he’s out of the state.
three. --- (corvallis, oregon, united states, july fifth)
There’s a prevalent theme on this excursion so far, and it’s mostly that Californian traffic sucks no matter what part of the state he’s in.
Of course, now Mark is in Oregon, has spent six out of the last nine hours in Oregon, but it’s clearly influenced by California and he’s becoming more fond of Boston’s T train than he was even when he used it somewhat regularly. He’ll have to donate money to some sort of green public transportation and infrastructure work; there need to be more of it out on the West Coast. Besides, he’s always enjoyed coding on trains, wired in with the landscape speeding by and the soothing whir of the wheels against the tracks.
When he’d entered the city of Corvallis, he’d noticed a sign saying Welcome to a Green Power Community, right on top of one saying Bicycle-Friendly Community, which is kind of making him want to keep on driving straight through the night.
But Chris had texted, had made Mark promise he would not drive for hours and hours and skip sleeping to try to find whatever (in Chris’s words) stupid idiotic thing he was looking for. He’d also made Mark promise that he would keep in contact with Dustin, wo might not have been as mentally prepared to be CEO-substitute as Mark had thought, and Mark needs Wi-Fi for that.There’s some coffee shop in the city that very proudly proclaims itself to be Not Starbucks, but they have free internet so Mark bites the bullet and buys a cup of tea, spoons in at least two tablespoons of sugar, and sits down with his laptop.
Dustin pops up on Skype after about thirty seconds.
“Hey,” his friend says. Dustin looks tired, and messy, and Mark’s pretty sure he has pizza sauce all over his shirt. “What’s up?”
“I’m in Oregon,” Mark responds. “Not in Starbucks.”
“That must be nice,” Dustin says. “So, uh, Mark.”
“What?”
“Have you figured out why you’re doing this yet?” Dustin rubs at his face, smearing marinara in a bright red streak across his cheek.
Mark shrugs.
“We told the media-- those who care, so like, mostly obsessive tech blogs-- that you’re taking a vacation. Didn’t say where.”
“Thanks,” Mark says. “Hey, Dustin?”
“Yeah?”
“You can take some time off and take a shower, you know. There are lots of employees who can do... well. Who can do stuff.”
“Do as I say, not as I do?” Dustin quips, smiling softly.
“Something like that,” Mark agrees. “I’m gonna go find a hotel.”
“Keep in touch,” Dustin says. Mark closes the computer. He’ll check into a hotel that’s exactly like the first three, with a fuzzy TV and slippery sheets, and it will all be perfectly adequate, except for the bagels.
But now he’s in Oregon, and if it isn’t that much different from California, it certainly feels-- cleaner, perhaps. Clearer air. Unmarked.
His phone buzzes with a text from Sean: r u tryin to make some sort of grand gesture?
No, Mark thinks, except.
It isn’t as if he doesn’t talk to Eduardo. He has his email address, though not his cell. They communicate, usually short messages like “you need to come to the next shareholders, important discussion about expansion overseas” or “my parents received your Hanukkah card, thank you for sending it”; always impersonal no matter the topic.
So, yeah. He could talk to Eduardo if it was necessary. He could email him even if it wasn’t. He could email him and say I never realized it, but I don’t like California that much. I like the ideas, but it is not my platonic ideal. It makes me tired, and all the history is new. I used to love it, I loved the energy, but now I’m surprisingly discontent. Oregon is better. Not much of an improvement-- go West, young man, as if I could go further without drowning-- and I’ve never been poetic, I almost failed my poetry class sophomore year of high school, but this isn’t what I’m looking for and I don’t even know what that is.
He’s not going to send that. He’s not-- he’s not a idiot, and he’s not drunk enough for it to be an excuse, and maybe he shouldn’t be in Oregon after all.
He’s not too tired; the sun is still up. He can keep going.
four. --- (bellingham, washington, united states, 12:08 am, july sixth)
The only reason Mark has stopped in the city of Bellingham, Washington State, population 80,885, is because it’s the last place he’ll be able to check into a hotel after midnight unless he drives into Canada.
He’s not going to drive into Canada. His passport is still safe at home on his bedroom dresser.
Go West, go North, go anywhere. Go to sleep.
He sleeps for eight hours, and when he wakes up he buys coffee and Red Bull and gets in his car, and drives for fifteen hours straight until he finds himself in Montana.
five. --- (billings, montana, united states, july sixth)
Montana is sky and scrubby grass and a city of just over one hundred thousand people. Montana is big sky country, and when Mark looks up all he can see is navy blue darkness and stars.
Big sky country. He likes the sound of that. He snaps a picture with his phone of the stars, the devastating, shocking breadth of the sky, and sends it to Dustin.
where are you, Dustin texts back almost immediately, and Mark says, Montana.
that’s pretty far away from home, Dustin responds, and even though Mark knows his friend can’t see it, he shrugs.
it’s a start, he says to Dustin, and hopes that he’ll understand.
He spends the rest of the night wandering around Billings. It’s cool outside, sixty degrees, and it’s the perfect weather for when you can’t sleep and you have nothing immediate to do. Mark parks his car and slings his laptop bag over his shoulder, hoping he won’t get arrested for vagrancy (and do they even do that anymore? Chris would know, but Chris is in D.C. and asleep). He slips on headphones, plays something quiet and classical, and hopes that he’ll be able to see the sunrise.
The neighborhood he’s in is quiet. He turns onto Cascade Drive, notes the low houses and bluffs, dark in the moonlight.
At 5 AM, when the sky is becoming the color of faded ink, his phone buzzes against his hip.
It’s Eduardo.
Mark picks it up and weighs it in his hand. The phone fits there well, buzzing against his palm, each vibration giving him-- something. A chance, perhaps. A suggestion. Eduardo hasn’t changed his phone number. But more than that, Eduardo kept Mark’s number.
He hits a button and says, “hello.”
“Mark,” says Eduardo’s voice. “Hi, Mark.”
“Hey,” Mark responds, sinking down onto a bench. “Eduardo. Hi.” He pauses. “Are you-- where are you, isn’t it, like, dinner time in Singapore right now?”
Eduardo laughs a little bit. It sounds embarrassed. “No, it’s morning, it’s eight AM, I’m in New York. Manhattan, actually. At a Starbucks on Fifth Avenue.”
“There are a lot of Starbucks on Fifth Avenue,” Mark feels obliged to point out.
“Yeah,” Eduardo says. “So, look, this is just-- I haven’t spoken to you in forever, I know, especially not in person.”
“Justifiably,” Mark says, and winces. Eduardo exhales.
“Well-- let’s not-- okay, look, Mark, just. It’s-- Where are you?”
“Montana,” says Mark, rolling the word around in his mouth. “I’m in Montana.”
“Montana,” Eduardo says, like that is the very last thing he’d expect Mark to say, and then, “big sky country?”
“Yeah, Wardo, it’s amazing.” Mark shifts a little, left foot to right. “The sky in Boston, or even in California, it was nothing compared to this. There are stars. It’s so cool, you know, that there are all these stars.”
“Okay,” says Eduardo, and Mark can hear him take a deep breath, and then there’s a soft click as he hangs up the phone. But it’s not angry like the last time they tried to talk, and it’s not stilted and overly polite. He doesn’t know what it is, but it’s not bad. Mark wonders if Dustin or Chris asked Eduardo to call, if the shock of it would make him spill something about this journey of his, or even if Eduardo would just make him realize something, the way that Eduardo always used to (or always tried to, because sometimes Mark was Mark and it didn’t work).
It won’t solve anything, but maybe it’s time for him to have breakfast. It’s fast becoming dawn, with a grey-pink sky and that haziness special to the hour between five and six. Mark sits for a while and watches the sky lighten and turn blue until he’s reasonably sure he can find a restaurant.
He ends up with pancakes drenched in butter and syrup. They’re sticky-sweet in his mouth, and they’re pretty good.
-
He does actually need to work, even if it’s just to send Dustin instructions and plot out ideas for the next update. There’s a script he doesn’t like on the homepage, too, so he’ll need to deal with that even though it’s hardly important; it’s just something that would otherwise nag at him.
Then again, he has the time right now, which is awesome in and of itself. Mark dumps maple syrup over everything, even his eggs, says a quick prayer to the god of laptops, keyboards, and sticky fingers, and digs in.
He finishes working around nine, and then he has the whole day ahead of him.
He could find another project, he’s sure, fix another line of code and another until he’s changed the entire site incrementally, but in essence this is supposed to be a vacation and Chris might yell at him even more if he doesn’t use it effectively.
Mark’s pretty sure wandering around Billings at dawn counts as a nature walk. Everyone, including his mother, is always encouraging him to get more fresh air.
-
Dustin calls around one. He wants to know how Montana is.
“Fine,” Mark says, and maybe he sounds a little bit cross. “It’s fine.”
“Where’s your sense of wonder,” Dustin asks, a touch rhetorical. “Where’s the Montana-loving Mark I met for the first time yesterday?”
“I’m tired of walking,” Mark informs him. “It’s boring. My feet hurt. My laptop is heavy.”
“Leave your laptop in the car,” Dustin suggests.
“If it gets stolen, I’ll have to hire a hitman,” Mark says.
There’s a pause.
“I would laugh,” says Dustin slowly, “but I’m not entirely sure that you’re kidding.”
“You’ll never know,” Mark says, using the fakest, most faux-mysterious voice he can muster up. Given how he’s more than a bit sleep-deprived, he ends up more croaky than villainous.
Granted, this is how a lot of his and Dustin’s conversations go, one of them so high on sleep deprivation and the other hopped up on caffeine and pure hyperactivity-- the roles stay pretty constant, never quite switching-- so Mark isn’t sure why he’s even questioning anything right now. Except, apparently, that Dustin thinks he is capable of hiring a hitman.
“I am not hiring a hitman,” Mark says after a moment, rather monotonously. “This is reassurance for your peace of mind.”
“I’m very reassured,” Dustin says calmly. “So you’re definitely not still in a Montana-inspired state of shock and awe?”
Mark frowns. “I’m not sure,” he says. “I might have to sleep on it. I’ve been awake for-- a while.”
“Scared to give me a real number?” Dustin’s grin can be heard through the phone; his tone of voice is light, teasing, almost motherly, and that is something Mark will never share with anyone else ever.
“Well you’d just tell Chris, and we both who know is more terrifying, between the two of you.”
“Uh-huh.” There’s a crunch as Dustin bites into something, presumably a pretzel. “You should go to sleep soon. And don’t drive all night, either.”
“I fear I’m becoming predictable,” Mark says, and thinks about hanging up. He doesn’t need to say goodbye, Dustin knows him well enough to know that it’s not always necessary.
“Wait a sec,” Dustin says, as Mark is pulling the phone away from his ear. “Which way are you driving?”
“Probably not west?” Mark says, wincing as it comes out as so much more of a question than it is ought to. “I don’t know. Maybe south, a little. Colorado, New Mexico, I’m not sure.”
“Not over to the East Coast?” Dustin’s voice is gentle, too gentle, and Mark gnaws on his lip.
“The continental United States is a very big place, Dustin,” he says instead, “and even I haven’t seen most of it.”
“We’re not gonna do this now, that’s fine, there’s time,” Dustin says. “Take care of yourself, Marky, don’t do anything stupid, okay?”
“Fine,” Mark grumbles, and he is halfway through mumbling about how it is ridiculous to make a fully grown and legal adult promise that when Dustin laughs softly and hangs up.
-
Mark spends another day in Montana, and he spends most of that day asleep. Dustin’s advice has proven to be decent, and it seems like Dustin had communicated with Chris, who actually has his mother on speed-dial, and he got a text-- several-- telling him in no uncertain terms that he needed to sleep at least nine hours, soon.
(He’s fairly sure that it was Eduardo, one Thanksgiving he spent at Mark’s house instead of his own, who taught Mrs. Zuckerberg how to text. Of all the things he’s still mad at Eduardo for, this is probably the most unforgivable.)
Anyways. It’s nothing against Montana, really. He still feels that same odd bit of shock and amazement when he looks up at the sky and just sees sky, blue and endless and overpowering. It’s not like the sky in Boston, gray and cramped, and it’s different even from the sky in Palo Alto. And Billings is fine. He rented a room in a non-chain hotel, and apart from having a slightly better television it’s exactly the same as the chain motels, which was more disappointing than he’d care to admit.
Mark just feels itchy.
It’s an itch he can’t scratch, really. It’s something driving him away from Facebook and out into the open, yes, but it’s driving him out into isolation.
It’s not-- he doesn’t spend a lot of time with other people, that’s the thing. His social circle is mostly Dustin and Chris, with the occasional call from Billy Olsen when he’s drunk and nostalgic. The occasional Facebook poke from Erica Albright, because while they’re not friends they’re not not friends, they just have moved past stupid college shit as best they can. And if they express that by poking, then that’s just fine. They got coffee once when she was in San Francisco for work, and he had a very nice, very platonic time. His mom calls. His mom calls kind of a lot, actually, but also in a way that Mark doesn’t mind it happening.
And then there’s Eduardo, hovering around the edges of his consciousness. Mark would liken him to a ghost, but he is most definitely alive, and Mark wouldn’t allow himself to be haunted, anyway.
So it’s not a loneliness thing, or an isolation thing. It’s curious, how he likes this sort of traveling that’s just him. The sort of travelling that doesn’t involve conferences and speeches and wearing neckties, then schmoozing with people who use too much hair product and speak too loudly and never seem to fit into their obviously designer-brand suits. Mark hates those people.
(Eduardo is not one of them, not yet. Mark knows to be grateful for the little things. He’s meet Saverin Sr., who was the most literal example of a dick Mark can think of.)
And in the end, right now, half awake in a strange room in a strange city in a strange state, Mark is fairly content.
But he’s not happy.
And isn’t that important? He’s got an itch.
-
He checks out of the hotel. If he’s going to try to find something, he’s got to keep moving. He can’t exist in a state of a inertia.
Move fast and break things.
“Where should I go next?” Mark asks the girl behind the hotel desk. She’s youngish, probably late twenties, probably with a heritage that is dominantly Italian. Her lipstick is neat and red and looks like it is never allowed to smudge, and she has on what appears to be industrial-strength mascara. Her name tag says Toni.
“I’ve always wanted to go to California,” she says after a moment’s consideration.
Go West, young man.
“I’m from there,” Mark says, offering up a crooked smile. Crooked because that is the barest of half-truths; he is so much more from Dobbs Ferry and Boston then Palo Alto; history hasn’t left enough of a mark yet to tell.
Also, he remains stubbornly pasty in a year where even Dustin has a slight tan.
“Well then,” Toni says, stretching out her vowels. “Go south.”
“South? Like the Deep South, like New Orleans?”
“Not unless you like gumbo,” she replies. Her voice is sharp and has a rough edge to it. “I’m talking southwest. Boulder is so unlike anything I’d ever seen before. You look like you travel more than me-- it’s only the serious travellers who carry just a duffel-- but I’d bet good money you would enjoy the southwest.”
Mark would ask her for driving directions, but honestly, he’ll just use his phone and his GPS.
He likes being thought of as a traveller; a distant wanderer. It’s far from the truth, ludicrously so, but he clings to the label.
“Thank you very much,” he says instead. She’s small and neat in her black jacket and pencil skirt, and he wonders how much time she spends in the morning, taking pride in her appearance. “You’ve been very helpful.”
“You’re welcome,” Toni says, and her answering smile is a bright slash of red across her skin.
-
Without really thinking about it, he taps out a text to Eduardo.
I think I might go to Colorado next.
Eduardo doesn’t respond for a few hours, but then again, Mark doesn’t expect him to. When the phone buzzes, he looks up from his laptop. He’s sitting on a bench, clicking idly through Google Maps, a tab open with driving directions to Boulder.
I’ve heard it’s a nice state, Eduardo writes. Mark takes it as implicit approval.
Boulder’s supposed to be pretty cool, he writes. There isn’t a second response, even though he waits an additional twenty minutes. It’s fine. Mark closes his laptop and slips it into his shoulder bag. Now all he has to do is remember where he parked his car.
Which, of course, takes much longer than expected. He ends up going in three separate circles, walking by low-slung houses and cafes and bookstores and at least one sex shop, which he definitely would not have expected to find in Billings. When he finally stumbles across the car-- entirely by accident, and Mark will admit it-- he’s probably never been so glad to see an automobile in his life.
Mark doesn’t have a fancy car. He could afford one, sure. He could afford a fleet of limos and still have enough for, like, a diamond-encrusted Rolls Royce. But he has a Saturn. It’s blue, and the only conceit he’s allowed it is a Facebook sticker in the back window. It’s a few years old, too-- the floor mats are kind of beat up, and there’s crumbs in the seams on almost all the seats because Dustin flouts every single ‘food is only allowed in the car if you eat neatly’ rule ever made. Mark can’t get rid of the ketchup stain at all, and he’s scrubbed at it with ridiculously potent cleaning supplies. Now there’s a ketchup stain and a bleach spot.
But yeah, he’s fond of this car. He’s driven a lot in this car recently. And he’s set up a decent charging station as well, which, geek-pride is still a thing, everybody.
He also, in his head, calls his English-accented GPS Giles, which Dustin, supreme Buffy fan (as in, has dragged Mark to more than one fan convention before Chris forbade them going in anything other than disguise) will never, ever be allowed to know.
According to his GPS, it’ll take him about 9 hours to drive to Colorado, and said driving will be mostly through Wyoming. All that Mark knows about Wyoming is that Dick Cheney is from there, and so he’s sort of developed a natural suspicion about the state.
If he starts now, he might make it by morning.
six. --- (boulder, colorado, united states, july eighth)
There’s a part of Mark, eyes and head fuzzy from almost ten hours of driving on flat, brown interstate highways, that can’t believe it’s only been four days. 96 hours. He’s been away from Facebook for 96 hours. It seems so insignificant, in the scheme of things.
It’s certainly a way to see a country, out the window of a car.
He’d watched as the landscape went from scrubby desert to a richer green, as he’d gone down through Wyoming and into Colorado. He’s been to Colorado before, when he was fourteen and his parents, as a Hanukkah treat, took them all skiing. He mostly remembers twisting his ankle and sitting in the ski lounge, trying to get onto the internet and drinking endless cups of hot chocolate with whipped cream, while his sisters would come in at intervals, cheeks flushed and happy, and would sit and steal french fries from him.
Mark tries to think of what’s in Colorado. He remembers Dustin saying it was a beautiful state-- Dustin, being from Florida and no stranger to humidity, had appreciated the cleaner air. As for Mark himself, well, he hadn’t minded the ski lounge, despite the overarching use of logs and snowshoes as interior design.
The sun has been up for a while. He’d watched the sunrise around the time he’d crossed the border. The thing about sunrises, Mark decided in college, is that once you’ve seen a lot of them (and he’s seen a lot, that’s what happens when you’re a CS student and you stay up all night coding, taking a ten minute break to drink Red Bull and watch the sun rise over Cambridge because holy shit, there’s class in like three hours.) He hadn’t been at his desk then, that’s right, he’d been sitting next to Wardo. Eduardo had closed his textbook, made Mark save his work, and they’d watched the sun come up over the buildings spread in front of them.
“We could go and watch this from the roof,” Eduardo had suggested, but Mark had disagreed-- that would involve climbing, and fire exits, and also it was March and so cold and he didn’t want to put on real shoes.
“Okay,” Eduardo had said then, simply, “we’ll stay right here”. They had watched in from Mark’s bed, Eduardo’s arm around him and his head on his shoulder. The spine of the textbook had been digging into Mark’s back, but he hadn’t said anything.
He’s pretty sure nothing could have topped that sunrise.
Eyes tight (which is so stupid, he doesn’t know why that’s happening, that shouldn’t be happening), he drives on in search of a hotel. Somewhere, he knows that Chris is probably living in gut-wrenching fear of a headline saying something like ‘Sleep-deprived Facebook billionaire crashes into campus Apple store’.
Mark gets a room at the first place he sees, and sleeps through most of the day. His last thought is that he seems to be turning nocturnal. Not the best thing, certainly.
Dustin sends him a text about then: good night marky! hope you’ve arrived safely. are you a bat now?
He manages to text back that he does not eat bugs, thank you very much, nor does he have echolocation, and then he falls asleep on top of the covers, shoes and all.
When he wakes up, it’s time for dinner.
-
The thing is, objectively Mark likes Colorado, or at least he doesn’t mind it. But there isn’t something he needs here. Boulder is fine. He walked around the UC-Boulder campus after dinner, watched students carrying laptops and textbooks and messenger bags, counted all the silly hats and patterned socks he could see. It’s nice. It’s collegey. It’s soothingly familiar.
On the other hand.
There’s a pull behind his navel, a voice whispering in his ear, and it’s saying go East.
So maybe it’s time for Mark to succumb.
He reasons around it. He’ll go southeast first, maybe. He’ll start by driving down to Louisiana, or Kentucky. Maybe he’ll go to Nashville, even though he has absolutely no interest either way in country music.
Because he knows, even if he doesn’t want to admit it, that he’ll probably end up back in Massachusetts. He’ll probably go by the Harvard campus. He might even go by Kirkland, and Widener, and the CS labs, and he find the statue of not-John Harvard and rub its toe for luck and nostalgia. (He never believed in that shit, but Eduardo did, and made them both do it every time. Except now apparently people are peeing on it, he’d heard, so maybe he’ll skip that step because wow would that be awfully unhygenic). Just to see if anything has changed. Just to see if it makes him feel anything. Just to see.