DMV, page 16
“Your new license will be sent to you in the mail,” she informed him in a monotone. “If you do not receive your license within the next four weeks, you can contact the Department of Motor Vehicles by going onto our website or calling the toll-free number listed on your form. Have a nice day.”
And he was done.
Todd felt as though he should celebrate somehow, but everyone he knew was at work, including Rosita. He did call to tell her the good news, although afterward couldn’t really think of anything to do.
So he went home, got himself some iced tea out of the refrigerator and went back to work on his new book.
SEVENTEEN
With no parents or other relatives, Zal’s holidays were like those in indie movies and romantic comedies, attended by a cobbled together makeshift “family” composed of friends, acquaintances and assorted colleagues with no plans of their own. For the past three years, they had been alternating locations for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Mercifully, they had not gotten around to his house yet, but now, to his great embarrassment, he had been unanimously chosen to host a surprise fortieth birthday party for Bernard.
Zal knew he wasn’t the coolest guy in the world, but he definitely didn’t want everyone to see the way he lived. That would kill any chance he had of ever building a decent rep.
Especially with Violet.
So he’d spent every free moment of the past week doing what he could to redecorate, shifting the contents of entire rooms into the increasingly crowded garage. Books were better than knickknacks, and he’d cleared the shelves of his mother’s figurines, souvenirs and other odds and ends, replacing them with computer texts, and science fiction and fantasy novels from his bedroom, as well as his old comic book collection, which had been in a box in his closet. Taking down his parents’ Middle America wall art, he put up some movie posters that he’d bought but never displayed. They looked kind of temporary and haphazard, tacked onto the walls with no frames, but at least they made the place look like his rather than his parents’.
No matter what rules were laid down, no rooms were truly off limits at a party. Someone somehow, by accident or on purpose, was bound to open a closed door or wander into a restricted area, so he made sure to redo as much of the house as he could with the time and budget he had. And while there was no way he could replace all of the furniture, he did donate a couple of the worst offenders to a local thrift store, exchanging them for slightly more modern, if generic, items from Target.
After each step in his decorative evolution, Zal tried to see the house through Violet’s eyes. She was the main reason he had gone to all this trouble, although he did not want her to know that. He must have gone outside and walked back in more than twenty times in an effort to gauge what her first impression would be.
He found himself thinking about the last woman he’d invited over, and while he could see her perfectly in his mind, he was shocked to realize that he did not remember her name. Irene? Veronica? He knew her last name—Featherhill—but for some reason her first name eluded him. He was pretty sure it was either Irene or Veronica…or Laurie. But all of them seemed equally right, or equally wrong, and he couldn’t tell which one was correct.
What did that say about him?
His parents’ bedroom was the hardest to revamp, and after ditching their old bed and dresser, he decided to pretend that it was a work in progress, and he piled a lot of boxes in the center of the room, then found some tarps and drop cloths in the garage and threw them over everything.
The party was scheduled for Saturday at three. Everyone had been asked to come twenty minutes early, so they could surprise Bernard with a shouted “Happy Birthday!” when he walked through the door, but Bernard and his wife Maddie arrived ten minutes before that and were the very first guests to arrive. Judi and Hu arrived literally seconds after, and before Zal could decide what to say or how to react, Bernard turned to Judi and said, “You’re late for my birthday.”
“You knew?” Judi asked, disappointed.
He grinned. “Helpful hint: in the future, if you want to keep something private, don’t use company email.”
Maddie punched his shoulder.
“You read our emails?” Hu said.
Bernard shrugged. “Can I help it if our cybersecurity is so poor? The way I look at it, I’m doing you all a favor by pointing out weaknesses that bad actors could exploit.” He turned to Zal. “Hey, what’s with those traffic cones on the street? It’s my damn birthday, and I had to park out in the cheap seats and walk way the hell back here.”
“I don’t know what’s up with that,” Zal admitted. “It happens every day. At first, I thought they were doing some type of road construction, but now it seems like the guy next door just puts those out to make sure no one parks in his spot.”
“It’s a public street. He doesn’t have a spot. Anyone can park there.”
Zal shrugged.
“Who is this dude? Have you tried talking to him?”
“Never seen him. Or her. Or whoever lives there.”
The bell rang, and guests began to arrive in earnest, all of them ready to hide and jump out upon Bernard’s entrance, and Zal saw the disappointment on their faces when they learned the surprise had been blown. Bernard cackled.
He’d invited Gary and Boo as well, and the two freelancers arrived together, looking uncomfortable, as though they wished they hadn’t come.
Somewhere in the middle of the rush, Violet showed up. She wasn’t part of their department, but Zal had known that Bernard would appreciate her presence and, more importantly, would understand that Zal wanted her here. Unfortunately, he was otherwise occupied when she first arrived, ushering two programmers to the punch bowl on the patio, so he missed greeting her and seeing her first impression of the place. He showed her where the food and drinks were, introduced her to a few people, but it wasn’t until everyone who’d been invited to the party was finally there that he was able to get away and talk to her.
Bernard was in his glory, holding court and greeting well wishers, although, rather than remaining by his side, Maddie was in the back yard, talking to a couple of the women she knew. Most of the other guests had paired off into small groups consisting of the people they hung out with at work.
Violet, standing by herself in the living room, was tilting her head to look at the spines of the books on his shelves. As he approached, Zal wished he’d bought some newer, more sophisticated novels so she would think he was more intellectual.
“Hello,” he said.
Her face brightened when she saw him. “Hi!” She ran her finger along a series of books on the middle shelf. “That’s so cool that you have these hardbacks. I love Harry Potter.”
“I do, too,” he admitted. He pointed to a thick blue book in the middle of the collection. “Although Order of the Phoenix not so much.”
“It did tread water a bit. I think she was trying to figure out where she was going.”
“Which one’s your favorite?”
“Oh, Azkaban.”
He smiled. “Me, too.”
She glanced down shyly. “I wanted to thank you for inviting me.”
“Thank you for coming.”
This was starting off awkwardly. In the real world, outside of work, there was less structure and more pressure, and it made having a natural conversation more difficult. Zal remembered the first time he’d seen Bernard away from work. That, too had been awkward at first, although Bernard’s natural gregariousness had quickly overcome those early uncomfortable moments. He wasn’t sure either he or Violet was up for such a challenge.
“So how’s Research treating you?” he asked.
“Okay, I guess.”
“Are you sending out resumes? Trying to find something more appropriate, more English-y?”
“No,” Violet said.
“So what do you really want to do?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said. “Isn’t that awful?” She put a hand on his arm, and his entire body tingled. “I know I should have some great passion, something I’ve always desired, some secret ambition, but the truth is I don’t. I’m just kind of drifting.”
“So you’re going to stay in Research?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I tend not to make those kinds of plans.” Violet laughed. “Which is probably why I am where I am. It drives my dad crazy,” she confided.
She seemed different away from work, Zal thought. But in a good way. He liked the fact that her life wasn’t defined by her work—the way his was—and he was pretty sure, based on that touching of his arm, that she was as interested in him as he was in her. If he could only find a way not to screw things up.
“You have a nice house,” she said.
“It was my parents’. Well, mine, too; I grew up here. But I inherited it after they died.”
“They both died?” she asked.
He nodded. “Hit and run accident. Four years ago.”
“I’m sorry.” There was a pause. “Do you miss them?” She stopped herself. “Of course, you do. Stupid question.”
“That’s okay.”
“It’s just that I still live with my parents, and I can’t imagine what it would be like if something happened to one of them. Let alone both of them.”
“I miss them every day,” he admitted.
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
He shook his head. “Only child. You?”
“I have a sister. She’s younger than me but already married. I guess in the old days, I’d be an old maid and a disgrace to the family. But these days, or to my parents at least, she’s the disgrace because she got married so young.”
“I take it the two of you don’t get along?”
“No, we do.” She thought for a moment. “Or maybe we don’t.” She smiled, shrugged. “I don’t know. But I was just thinking that it would probably be easier for you if you did have a brother or sister, someone to share things with.”
“Maybe,” he admitted. He gestured around. “Although that would mean I’d have to share the house, too.”
“Oh,” she said, “you’re one of those.”
“No, I wasn’t being serious—”
“Joking!” She punched him.
He liked that punch. He liked having any sort of physical contact with her, and the fact that she felt comfortable enough to tease him made Zal feel good. He found himself smiling.
On the other side of the room, Len, the oldest programmer in the department was laughing about something with Taylor, the department’s newest and youngest hire.
“It’s Bernard’s birthday, but since it’s my house and I’m kind of the host, I should probably walk around and mingle,” Zal said, though at the moment that was the last thing in the world he wanted to do.
Violet put her arm in his. “I’ll come with you.”
He liked that arm, too. He hadn’t expected such a response, and he was not only surprised but grateful. Things were going far better than he could have hoped.
“Okay,” he said. The two of them moved from the living room through the kitchen and out to the back patio, where most of the people were. He checked in on everyone, making sure they were doing okay.
Judi sidled next to him. “When are we going to cut the cake?” she asked in a low voice. “That bastard cheated his way out of the big surprise moment, but we can still humiliate him with the song.”
Zal laughed. “He does deserve it.”
“I’ll get everyone together. You make sure he’s standing by the cake in five.”
Judi made her way toward the largest group of guests in the back yard, and Zal and Violet went back inside, where Bernard just happened to be looking at the cake on the kitchen table. It was easy to keep him occupied in conversation, and Judi cleverly arranged for all of the guests to enter the kitchen singing “Happy Birthday.”
Bernard was surprised, as they’d hoped he would be, and turned red as the singers surounded him, as they’d also hoped he would. Judi was grinning hugely, belting out the lyrics at the top of her lungs in order to make up for some slackers, and as everyone sang, Zal hastily lit the candles on the top of the cake. He’d wanted to actually light forty candles (and buy the joke kind that could not be blown out), but it had been easier to get one candle in the shape of a four and another in the shape of a zero, and put them together.
The song ended, everyone exhorted Bernard to make a wish, and as people took pictures with their phones, he blew out the candles.
“My new screensaver!” Judi announced.
Bernard’s wife saved Zal from having to cut the cake and hand out slices, so he made himself useful by passing out the slices on small paper plates, while Violet handed out forks.
The last two pieces went to Boo and Gary, who brought up the end of the line. Most of the guests had moved outside or to other rooms with their plates, but Bernard had remained in the kitchen, and Maddie handed him her piece of cake.
“Have you two had your initiation yet?” Gary asked.
Zal glanced at Bernard, and both of them looked over at the contractors. “Initiation?”
Gary laughed. “Oh, you’re in for a treat. When we moved from Phase One to Phase Two, a non-disclosure agreement apparently wasn’t good enough. We had to be initiated into the DMV ‘family.’”
“Which meant…?”
“Not for us to say,” Boo butted in. He shot Gary a look of disapproval.
“Why not?”
“It’s part of the initiation,” Gary confided. “And it’s in the NDA.”
“So you can’t—”
“No,” Boo answered for both of them.
“No,” Gary said, but he was still smiling.
Boo wandered away.
“A helpful hint?” Gary said, sotto voce. “I’d wear clean underwear.”
****
Violet stayed after to help him clean up, and while Zal assured her that she didn’t have to do that, he was glad she did. The two of them worked well together, and what would have taken him half the night—or, more accurately, what he would have put off until morning—they finished in less than an hour. They talked as they worked, and the conversation flowed easily and naturally. It was as though they did this all the time and it was part of their normal routine. He and Bernard had not been able to get into the subject of the “initiation” (Maddie had pulled him away and forced him to thank a couple of people who were preparing to leave), but Zal brought it up with Violet, and she was as curious and perturbed by the idea as he was.
“‘Wear clean underwear?’ He really said that?”
Zal nodded.
“It had to be a joke.”
“That’s the thing: I don’t think it was. His partner seemed deadly serious about the whole thing, and, to be honest, a little afraid that Gary was going to tell me more than the NDA allowed him to.”
“This is the Department of Motor Vehicles we’re talking about? It sounds like some sort of cult.”
“I know. And even though we’re just starting on the project, we’re already learning things…” Zal shook his head. “Do you know,” he said, lowering his voice as though afraid of being overheard, “that there’s a chip embedded in your driver’s license that can be used to track your whereabouts?”
Looking at her, Zal suddenly wondered, in an uncharacteristically paranoid moment, whether Violet had been sent here to test him, whether her job at Data Initiatives, her friendliness toward him, her staying after the party were all part of some secret effort to gauge if he could be trusted to work on the DMV project.
Then she asked, wide-eyed and shocked, if that was true, and he knew that his fleeting paranoia was nonsense. She wasn’t a spy. “It is true,” he said.
“I work in Research,” she told him. “Do you want me to research this DMV initiation thing?”
“Can you do that?”
“I can try.”
“Anything you can find out would be great. I mean, I hope it’s a joke…”
“But you don’t think it is.”
“But I don’t think it is.”
Finally, they were finished, alone, and the house was quiet.
They looked at each other. Should he ask her to spend the night? Zal wondered. No. It was too soon. Besides, she still lived with her parents. Should he kiss her goodbye? No, too soon for that, too.
He suddenly felt uncomfortable. He’d been about to ask where she lived, but realized that she might not trust him enough to reveal that yet. He stood there dumbly, unsure of what to say, and it was Violet who spoke first. Her hand was back on his arm. “I had a good time,” she said. “Thanks for inviting me.”
“Thanks for coming and, uh, staying after to help. It…helped.”
She smiled at his awkwardness. “See you Monday?”
He smiled back. “See you Monday.”
He accompanied her to the door, and then out to her car, which was parked across the street. “You know,” she said as she took out her key, “you could invite me back again some time, when there aren’t so many people around.”
He took a chance. “And maybe you could stay a little longer?”
“Maybe I could.” She got into the car, waved goodbye, and Zal walked back across the street and into the house, feeling better than he had in a long, long time.
****
He was awakened in the morning by pounding. For the first few seconds, it was incorporated into the dream he was having, but then he was awake, and realized that the sound was coming from someone beating on his front door. Slipping on a pair of jeans, he used both hands to smooth down his sleep-tangled hair as he walked out to the living room.
