Noelle August - Boomerang

Of course, I’m on edge already, not just because I’m responsible for finally putting my part of the display together—with help from Paolo, thank God—but because I have to spend the entire day working side-by-side with Ethan, acting like I’m perfectly fine with the fact that we haven’t spoken since I cornered him at the bar yesterday. Everything’s still wrong. But I’m here now, and I’m determined to do the job Adam entrusted me to do.

All around us, people hustle elaborate displays into place, erecting massive vinyl banners, latching together platforms, hauling up shelves. And at every other booth, it seems, someone is having a full-on nervous breakdown.

Nearby, a man with a helmet of straw-gold hair and a shiny steel-gray suit paces back and forth with his cell phone glued to his ear and a face red enough to make me look around for EMTs. “I ordered the ten-foot chrome pyramids, and you sent me these fucking dinky shelves.” He stands back and holds his phone out to capture a pair of triangular bookcases that stand about as tall as my shoulders. “Seriously,” he says. “Are you seeing this shit?”

Just then, a massive ripping sound splits the air, and I look over to see two girls about my age, only tall, wearing dresses that look recently sprayed onto their bodies. Each holds half of a heart-covered banner, now torn neatly in two.

“Jesus Christ, Amy,” one of the women, a redhead, shrieks and throws down her side of the banner. “What did you do?”

“What did I do? I told you to stop tugging at it!”

“This place is cray-cray,” Paolo mumbles and unfolds a schematic of the cavernous space.

“What number’s our booth again?” I ask for about the sixtieth time.

“We are”—he consults the diagram—“in the primo spot, right between the bar and the bathrooms. Number thirty-three.”

Someone almost clips us with a giant wheeled backdrop of men in fatigues and a sign that says, “Love Is a Battlefield,” which feels like an iffy approach to me but hey, I’m not their marketing intern.

Finally, I spot our display, and even from here I can see it’s perfect. Shaped like two boomerangs back to back, it has an almost yin-yang effect, with Ethan’s curved wall and floor a deep, glossy black and mine a gleaming white. LCD monitors line a narrow shelf running the length of his side, leading to a tall screen with a console in front of it that I know will run the boomerang game he commissioned. A message scrolls over and over again on every screen: In the dating game, play to win.

My side is softer, with café tables, comfy chairs, and a curved projection screen that runs almost the full length of my wall. I’ll run a loop of the video I edited together with all the footage I got of the staff at the Boomerang office, my friends and neighbors, Paolo and Beth acting out “dates” in front of the green screen, which Brian helped me convert to dinner at a Parisian café, a picnic in Central Park, and—just for the hell of it—a Moroccan feast, with gossamer tent flaps rippling in the background and a starry moonlit sky beyond.

On each silk-covered table rests a pair of iPads, where clients can access the Boomerang site, create profiles, even enter a drawing for a year’s free membership. Mostly, I want it to feel intimate and sexy here, with my film reminding them of what a big, lovely adventure dating can be.

As long as you’re not me.

“Ethan, you stud!” exclaims Paolo, and jogs the last few yards to the display to give Ethan a vigorous bro hug, which consists of half handshake, half chest bump.

My own footsteps slow, and Ethan looks up at me. I smile, and he smiles, but I don’t believe either of us.

Then he turns away and starts to confer with Rhett, who I now see is on his hands and knees on the floor, plugging cables into a chain of tidily arranged power strips.

Rhett sees me, gets to his feet, and dusts off his hands. “How’s it going, Mia? You ready to rock Adam’s world?”

My whole body goes cold, and I fire a look at Ethan. Did he tell Rhett about my text?

But Ethan gives me a subtle head shake, like he’s reading my mind, and I feel a weird bubble of hysteria rising in me. Is everything—every casual comment—going to remind me of him? If I never see him again after this weekend, do I still have to carry him with me everywhere I go? And for how long?

“Mia?”

“Sorry, yeah.” I say. “Just going to get the video connected and test run it a few times.” Then I just have to wait for a banner delivery with my slogan: Life is short. Make it an adventure. Catering will come Monday morning.

“Sounds good. Let me know if you need help.”

Apparently, Raylene agrees with Rhett. His face has fleshed out a bit in the last month or so. And he seems less coiled and intense. More teddy bear, less Skeletor.

It occurs to me how many couples have gotten together in the few months Ethan and I have been working together: Raylene and Rhett; Paolo and Mark, who used to work in accounting; Skyler and Brian. It’s like we’re some kind of a relationship version of Dorian Gray. Everyone around us hooks up, and we keep disintegrating.

Okay, Mia, focus.

I head around to the back of the display, where I’m going to connect my laptop to run the video.

“Hey, Paolo, do we have HDMI cables around here somewhere?”

Paolo comes around to my side of the booth, holding a set of cables in each hand.

“Is it the one with weird prongs that look like a smiley face?”

“Umm . . . No. I don’t know what that is.” I hold out my hand for both cables but don’t recognize either. “Crap. Not what I need.”

Music blares from Ethan’s side of the display, followed by a sharp whooshing sound.

“Oh, that’s sick, E,” says Rhett, and I can’t help myself. I have to see.

Over on Ethan’s turf, I find Rhett wearing a vinyl glove with glinting metal plates on the knuckles. A screen in front of him displays a grid with heart-shaped signposts measuring distance in ten-foot increments.

“I’m going for thirty this time,” Rhett says. He hefts an imaginary object in his gloved hand, then cocks his arm back and swings it at the screen. A red-and-blue boomerang, bearing the Boomerang logo, comes whipping in from the corner of the screen. It soars past the ten-foot marker, the twenty, and almost makes it to thirty before spinning in the air and coming back toward Rhett.

He bounces on his feet and lunges forward, hand closing on air. On the screen, an animated hand passes right through the boomerang, and it disappears from the screen. Red letters appear: “MISSED.”

“You grabbed for it too quickly,” says Ethan, and his tone carries the same amused patience it does when he coaches his kids. “Wait ’til it fills about a third of the screen and snap it up then.”

“Got it.” Rhett does it again, and after a couple of tries, he’s flinging the virtual boomerang at least forty feet and nabbing it back on each try.

“There you go,” says Ethan, and then he finally notices me standing there.

“It’s looking really good,” I tell him. “All of it.”

And it’s true. Everything looks polished and put together on this side. Appealing. Like him.

“Thanks.” He brushes his bangs off his forehead, and I feel a full-body longing to do it for him. Just for an excuse to touch him.

“Hey, do you guys have an extra HDMI cable?”

“About six of them,” Rhett says. “Help yourself.”

I look to Ethan for confirmation that it’s okay, but he’s already bending over a tangle of cords to find me what I need. “Here you go,” he says, and hands it over. “More here if you need anything.”

We stand there for another awkward moment before I think to say thanks and retreat back to my side of things.

There I connect my laptop, power it on, and wait. Paolo drifts back over to Ethan’s side, and I can hear the three of them taking turns on the game and talking about what time to bring in seating and food on Monday.

Once my desktop icons appear on the big projection screen, I go into the folder for my presentation. I click on it, and a box appears on the screen: “Error 2048—File type unsupported.”

But I’ve run the file a dozen times already. I know it’s supported. I try again. Same error.

A swell of panic laps at my brain, but I force it back. I stored an extra version of the file in the cloud, just in case.

But as I sign into the hotel’s wireless and sign into my account, I feel the stirrings of nausea in my belly. I download and click on the file.

“Error 2048—File type unsupported.”

Because of course I must have saved it after it became corrupted somehow. How else was this day going to go?

A taste of something metallic rises in my throat, and my body goes limp. I sink into a chair at one of the café tables.

I’m screwed. Ethan has the perfect, smart presentation going over there, and I’ve got nothing. A weird fake café with some iPads at the table. That’s going to absolutely dazzle the investors.

But I don’t really care about that. I just don’t want to humiliate Adam—or myself. And I have no idea how to spare either of us.

“Mia?”

I look up, and of course, it’s Adam, standing there in all of his elegant glory, in charcoal jeans and a tailored black oxford.

Then I notice that he’s left a button in the middle of the shirt undone, and for the first time since we’ve met, his expression is grim.

“What’s—”

“It’s your mother,” he says, holding his cell phone out to me. “She’s been trying to reach you.”

Ethan

Q: Crises: wake you up or shut you down?

Zeke designed the advanced mode on the boomerang game so it’s like skeet shooting: when you hit Start, a series of three targets—hearts, which I thought were going to be cheesy but actually look pretty badass—appear across the sky on screen. Only one of them is the “right” heart—distinguishable by the quick flash of red that illuminates it the instant before you have to throw. The goal is to hit that one while avoiding the others and still catch the boomerang when it comes back.

It’s genius—and addicting.

The only problem, for me, is that the red is right in my color-blindness blind spot, which makes it almost impossible for me to see the cue.

Almost impossible.

I hit Start, wiggle my fingers in the glove, ready to try again. Most of my booth is set-up, and I can feel the other vendors’ envy. Once Mia figures out her file problem, I’ll have a little more competition, but right now, my display is the one to beat.

“Ethan,” Rhett says, catching my arm just as I’m about to launch the boomerang. “You better get over here.”

His tone of voice sends a shot of adrenaline through me, and I wonder if someone else is hurt. This exhibit floor is a hazard. One of the GetLucky.com people already fell off a stepladder and twisted an ankle. I follow Rhett, hoping none of our team is hurt—that Mia isn’t—and that it’s just the file problem she needs help with. But as I come around to her side of the booth, all bright white and stylish, I stop in my tracks.

Mia stands by one of the café tables, a cell phone pressed to her ear. Her shoulders are bunched, and she’s still, like her entire body is bracing and distressed. Adam stands beside her. Adam, whose personal worth is about fifty million dollars over anyone else’s in this convention hall, and who isn’t supposed to show up until tomorrow, when the show starts.

As soon as he sees me, he waves me over. His hair is wet and uncombed like he had to rush from a shower, and he has a five o’clock shadow—which he’s never had before.

“Her grandmother,” he says quietly.

Jesus. My whole body goes numb. Nana.

Mia still hasn’t said a word. She stares vacantly into space, listening to someone on the other end.

“What happened?” I ask.

“She’s in the hospital,” Adam says. “I don’t know anything else. Mia’s mother called me. She had my number from a piece I commissioned. I guess this hall is a dead zone for Mia’s phone.”

We stand there, me and Rhett and Adam, a small protective circle around Mia. Cookie wanders over, quiet and rigid. I give her a look, letting her know if she dares say a word—about anything—I will physically silence her, and she avoids my gaze, wisely choosing to stand down.

Across the booth, Paolo, Sadie, Pippa, and Mark watch—and even beyond, people have taken notice. Our booth was generating lots of buzz before. Now it’s drawing the somber attention that only comes from tragedy.