North of Sunset, page 12
Gloria reached over to pick a rose.
“You don’t wanna do that!”
“Why not?” Her tone grew bitter.
“Well, you don’t want your pretty hands getting all cut up from the thorns,” I sternly said.
“These pretty hands?” She showed me her dirt-covered palms.
I grabbed the handkerchief out of my coat pocket. “Let’s fix this. You’re a disaster.” I wiped the dirt off her hands as her face lost its resentful demeanor. “Trust me. My job at the factory is cutting those bad boys off.”
“Hands?”
“No, you fool. Thorns. Almost lost a finger last month.” I roughly finished wiping her hands and sighed. “You should take better care of things. They’ll last you much longer.”
“I don’t care about stuff lasting long.”
“It shows.” I walked away.
Gloria timidly followed me back up the hill, holding her dress up so it didn’t drag in the dirt. As we trudged across the uneven ground, my footing slipped.
“Dammit!”
I immediately folded my body forward, placing both hands on the ground to catch myself. Once I felt steady, I slowly came to a standing position once again. I lifted my hands and turned them inward to see my palms. They were covered in dirt.
“Ha! Hahaha!” Gloria crossed her arms over her stomach.
“Not a word!”
Her cracking up halted, and she continued to walk up the hill. I was behind her, wiping my hands and grumbling to myself. The sun began to set as we reached the front steps of the house. The dry air brushed my throat, making me realize I hadn’t drunk any water that day.
“I’m curious. Do you really think it’s hard to fathom love lasting?” Gloria’s direct question was uncalled for.
“Ya know, my head is really pounding. I think I better head home.” I looked at Franklin, who was standing by the car on the other side of the driveway. I waved him over. Gloria gave me a farewell, sprinkled with a look of concern, as she headed into the house. Her head was down and she fidgeted with her hands, concentrating as if she were knitting with invisible yarn. Once I met up with Franklin, he greeted me in a less-enthused but still-kind manner.
We spent the ride back to South of Sunset talking about the recent auditions Franklin had gone to. Over the past month that I’d spent playing cat and mouse with Gloria, Franklin had ignited his desire to get back into voice acting. The rides home got progressively more interesting each day as his characters started to take form. From the trials and tribulations of old French ladies to Italian nighttime mechanics, Franklin kept me entertained. Sometimes he would even get close to crashing the car because he’d gotten so into using both his hands as acting tools. But Franklin almost driving us off a cliff was the least of my worries.
Chapter Nineteen
I remember the next day turning into a miraculous one, but it started out bland like any other. That’s how some of the most memorable days start. Gloria and I spent the morning eliminating a few more flower species from the list. We weren’t at the final three yet, but we were getting awfully darn close. My clothes were already sticking to me that morning as the humidity rose to 70 percent. The job was fairly easy, but what made it difficult was all the distractions. Hell, life was one big distraction. When I would try to reel Gloria in to complete a task, her focus would last thirty minutes tops. When I would try to finish the work at home, police sirens would go off outside or my neighbors would be having a party. If I tried to go somewhere public, like a library or café, to get work done, strangers would either disrupt my train of thought or the walk there alone would tire me out. Maybe I was incompetent and unable to focus due to others’ irresponsibility or maybe others were the incompetent ones, running around life as if they were circus acts, performing for attention.
“Gloria! Oleander! Shake the dust off your bones. Let’s go to the laboratory!”
Today’s performance was by the boss himself. Mr. Fleur came marching into the greenhouse with no hello or explanation as Gloria and I sat on a ledge, sifting through the photographs of each flower coated in gold.
“What’s happening?” Gloria asked. Even she was caught off guard.
“What isn’t?” Mr. Fleur waved his hand quickly. “Come on, come on!”
We both got up quickly and stiffly and followed him outside. He wore a Payne’s gray suit with a peony in his pocket. Those flowers mean a whole lot of different things, all positive, though, like wealth and romance. Gloria was lovely that morning, so it made sense. I sometimes wished Mr. Fleur would give her a flower; he was much harder to read—all smoke and mirrors, but I wanted to believe every word he spoke was rooted in truth.
“I’m taking you kids around the back, behind the garage. Franklin is going to meet us at the back gate.”
“Why?” Gloria asked.
Mr. Fleur’s eyes narrowed at Gloria for a millisecond, then he continued walking. We reached the front of a twelve-car garage covered in ivy with walnut-stained garage doors. We didn’t stop there, though. We traced along the perimeter of that building until we reached the back, where Franklin was waiting with the town car.
“I tried, Mr. F. I really did try to get him to—”
“Franklin, is the back gate open?”
“Oh, yes, sir.” Franklin nodded cowardly as he got in the vehicle.
Mr. Fleur was acting mysteriously vague, sitting shotgun while Gloria and I stepped through the back door, taking our expected seats. We exited out the back gate and looped around to the street. As we drove past the main entrance of the Fleur Estate, I saw a man standing by the front gate—waiting. That strange figure lifted his chin, trying to peer through the closed gate. His head quickly snapped in our direction, too late, as we passed by. He stared for a moment, then he turned back to face the gate; his silhouette grew smaller and smaller in the rearview.
Franklin drove us further north, up a large green hill. When I looked down on the Fleur Estate from afar, the aerial view revealed a sea of green sprinkled with pink, and fields of scarlet running behind it.
“That is one of the many rose farms we have,” Mr. Fleur stated, pointing to the red.
“Wow.”
“Dad owns probably no less than three hundred thousand acres of rose farms across the country,” Gloria boasted.
“It is true, but a lot of my wealth isn’t from roses,” Mr. Fleur admitted.
How did he get rich? Who was that guy at the gate? Where are we going?
The brakes creaked as we reached an art deco tollbooth.
“Seventy-five dollars, sir,” said the polished man inside the booth.
I watched Mr. Fleur hand Franklin a wad of $10,000 as he said, “Here you go. Tell him to keep the change.”
The toll worker’s copper eyes almost popped right out of his head like two pennies when Franklin’s bony hand slapped the cash in his palm.
“Thank you, sir! Thank you, sir! Thank you! Thank you!”
We left the man rambling in his little green booth as we drove onto the Sunset Bridge. Mr. Fleur looked out his window, toward the 405 River below. “This city is building back up too fast.”
After reaching the other side, we took a windy path carved through the mountain range as if it were a scurrying mouse, frantically turning and running back and forth. That was the nicest I had ever seen Franklin drive, no burnouts, no drifting in the town car—just proceeding slowly with both hands on the steering wheel.
We stopped in front of a large brass gate that read Fleur Industries. This was the place—Mr. Fleur’s extravagant laboratory. A smile crept up on Mr. Fleur’s face, as if his inner child peeked through, proud of all that he had accomplished. As Mr. Fleur sat in the passenger seat, silently gloating to himself, Franklin rolled down the driver’s window. The car was about one foot too far from the buzzer. Franklin reached out his lanky arm toward the buzzer, his wrist bent in the most uncomfortable-looking way. He finally pressed it.
Beeep.
“Welcome, Mr. Fleur. Franklin, you’re good to come in.” The voice over the intercom was opposite to old Scott back at the Fleur Estate. The voice was calm, polite, young in tone, and lastly, likable.
The gate opened in a less elegant way than the gate at the Fleurs’ home, but it was still an exciting experience. The front of the building was white with sky-blue glass windows and balconies covered in tiles that curved around it. That enormous structure’s architecture was very New Formalism, popular hundreds of years ago. It looked extremely familiar to me.
I remember! It was one of the first things I saw when I entered Southern California. I took the ferry down the old 405 River one day and saw it to the right of me, high up on the hill.
It stood out because it looked awfully different than the buildings I had seen on the East Coast; it was very outdated to say the least. Interestingly enough, the inside was as up to date as a new puppy. As we walked through the doors of Fleur’s buzzing laboratory, flashes of lab coats passed by us every minute. This operation was far larger than I’d anticipated. I should’ve expected it, knowing how the Fleur family operated. Mr. Fleur had bought that large building twenty years ago, when it was about to be torn down. He said it was a decrepit mess that was destroyed during World War Four; he’d bought it directly from the city. Mr. Fleur had this knack for fixing things that were broken, whether places or people, that’s where his real purpose lay. He explained to me how over a hundred years ago that laboratory had been a beautiful art museum for folks to stroll around in.
“It was founded in 1953 by an oil tycoon that turned part of his ranch home into a museum where people could admire his art just as much as he did,” Mr. Fleur said as we walked down the wide lobby. “Years later, in the twenty-first century, people started going just so they could go on screen sedative binges. My grandmother told me they would show up in the late afternoon, take photographs and film themselves at the museum, then leave. Very odd. Soon, the museum had to do something about it, as it was getting out of control. There was no way to manage crowds of people blocking the exhibits just to take photos of themselves. The museum tried to ban smartphones in the building, but once that rule was passed in museums across America, not enough people showed up to cover costs. Without their devices, they couldn’t boast about their extremely cultured day on the Internet, and there was no point in them paying money to view items they could see online for free.”
“That is so sad,” whispered Gloria.
“Only people that truly wanted to learn about art and history went, but the government shut that down real quick. They turned all the museums and historic buildings in California into shelters for the homeless.”
“I thought museums were a new thing in the US?” I didn’t know they were around a hundred years ago. In college we were taught that America had just started building museums twenty years ago, finally following in Europe’s footsteps of curiosity closets. I wondered what had happened to the housing shelters. I’d only seen a homeless man once in my life, as a child somewhere in the Midwest. Where did they all go?
Anyways, I learned years later that the shabby, run-down apartment building I lived in at the time used to house homeless people in the 2040s. Decades before that, it had been a beautiful luxury Sears department store filled with 1,360 roller-skating employees. Time changes so much, but that didn’t concern Mr. Fleur. He worked in the business of stopping time.
We walked up spiraling stairs, the glass ceiling towering above us. I told Mr. Fleur that Gloria and I had narrowed down the choices of flower species for the collection to five. He congratulated me on our progress and reiterated the deadline of September 1.
“We will definitely make the deadline, sir.”
“Deadline. Ugh, I hate that word! It’s so gruesome,” interjected Gloria.
Mr. Fleur and I looked over at her, wondering where all that bottled up rage had come from.
“Ya know that term came from prisons, right?” Gloria asked us.
“No.”
“It was a line they’d draw, and if a prisoner crossed it”—Gloria held up her hand to make a finger gun—“Boom! He’d get shot by a guard!”
“Thank you for that lovely fact, Gloria,” replied Mr. Fleur.
“It’s true.”
We laughed at Gloria’s strange ways, and headed through a pair of large golden doors. We slowly walked down a carpeted hallway that had windows running along the left side of it. The windows looked onto rooms filled with scientists performing tests and serums and bottles all over the place. From flowers sprawled on tables to research groups taking notes while interviewing people, that place was dysfunctional.
“Right now, we are in the testing stages to perfect the formula that dissolves the Fleur Atom Immunizing Technological Health from the system,” Mr. Fleur said, as if he were trying to make an excuse for the chaos.
“The process must be just as extensive as the name,” I joked with him.
He laughed. “Well, typically, yes.”
“They started working on it only five months ago and are almost finished. Isn’t that incredible?” Gloria smiled.
“It’s very impressive,” I replied, making sure Mr. Fleur heard me.
“We’ve fast-tracked the process due to the pressure of circumstances,” he said.
The medical field was a very competitive industry, and still is, so I understood why Mr. Fleur was rushing to complete that experiment. The last thing he would want is someone getting hold of his technology and winning all the fame.
“I won’t tell a soul,” I said to him.
“Thank you. We are trying to keep this under wraps for now. Ya know, liability reasons. I’m sure you understand. That’s what that man was doing at the front gate, trying to snoop. We don’t want anything leaking before we are prepared.”
“Oh boy, if word gets out about this, the demand will be through the roof,” shouted Gloria.
“Or there will be an uproar,” I murmured under my breath.
“Well, that’s expected with anything you do, Oleander. High risk, high reward,” Mr. Fleur said.
“Oh, the reward will be priceless,” Gloria said as scientists waved to her through the glass.
“Oh, I bet.” I added, “There are a lot of loonies out there that would pay to see flying houses or a time when smartphones make a comeback. Pshhh, like the Prohibition of Screen Sedatives will last.”
“Well, recreational purposes are not the primary reason for this,” Mr. Fleur responded.
“Maybe eventually,” said Gloria.
I turned to face both of them, letting my mouth run wild. “I’m sure if you guys can do this, you can create the technology to make humans live forever. The line would be around the corner for that.”
“Yeah!” Gloria egged me on.
“If you invented that, you’d probably make double, even triple what you’re making from this. Being preserved for a later time . . . great. But living forever? Untouchable,” I enthusiastically stated as Gloria giggled.
She was amused by my idea, but Mr. Fleur was not.
“No, no, no! I am not doing this to make money. Living forever would upset the world dynamic far beyond our comprehension. Even if I had the technology to make it happen, I would never go through with it.”
“Well, I would,” I replied, pushing back a little.
Mr. Fleur shook his head at me in disagreement and looked me in the eyes. “Oleander, listen carefully to what I’m about to say. Okay?”
I nodded, letting him have the stage. I remember word for word the exact speech he gave me that day.
“You wouldn’t be on the search for eternity if you felt you’d lived your life to its fullest and done all you wanted to do in your ninety years. That’d be enough, right? You’d be satisfied.”
“Well—”
Mr. Fleur raised his finger, motioning for me to let him continue. “You wouldn’t want to live forever if you hated your life either. If every day was a living hell, why would you want to endure more of it? So why are humans constantly on the search to live forever?”
Silence.
He continued, “It’s because they’re creatures of habit. They fear the unknown. They don’t like change.”
“Well, they like a certain type of change.” Gloria rubbed her fingers together, symbolizing money.
Mr. Fleur laughed back. “Yes, they are also greedy. People think one more dollar, one more minute, one more day, one more year, maybe even one more life! Just one more go around, that’s all I need to get it right. Ya know, to win!”
“Don’t I know it,” I whispered.
“But what is winning?” Mr. Fleur continued. “It’s an internal battle. You know that! If we can’t find peace within, peace we will be without. People blame the world for their misfortune, forgetting they make up the world. They are their surroundings. Everything they say and do causes a chain reaction. Even their thoughts alone affect their external circumstances. The mind is a translator between you and what’s around you, remember that.”
The mind is a translator, pshhh. I think there is only one way to translate certain things. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again . . . life is pretty black and white.
Chapter Twenty
That night, after touring Fleur’s chaotic laboratories, I had plans to meet James, my neglected coworker and even more neglected friend, at a café right down the street from where I lived. Although there was an enormous amount of light pollution in South of Sunset, due to all the glowing white storefront signs, the sky looked darker there. It was as if that side of town was in a black hole. There was never a star in sight, only a pitch-black sky arced over a gray city. When I first moved to SOS, I’d thought the town was so large, so vast, but after traveling in a Peellé, I soon realized how close together everything was. South of Sunset was a vacuum and all the crumbs and scraps living there had no way of escaping.
