The Cable Car Stop

The cable car jerked to a stop so hard I bit my tongue.

One second we were gliding over the Motobu coast, ocean all frosted and blue through the windows, and the next the whole car just stopped. Dead. My phone flew out of my hand and cracked against the wood floor, and the brass spittoon by the door went over like it had been waiting all day for an excuse.

Franklin caught the spittoon. Barely. One hand, against his chest, like he'd caught a baby.

"Nice reflexes," I said.

"Forty-four years of dropping things," he said. "You get good at catching them."

I'm Gemma, by the way. Forty-two. I analyze data from cardiac implant recorders, which means I sit in a dark room all day looking at heart rhythms, which is why my vacation was a cable car over the ocean in Okinawa with my best friend from college. Franklin. Forty-four. Realtor. Single, dating around, or so he keeps telling everyone at parties while checking his phone.

We'd been friends since we were twenty-one, which is a long time to know someone and a longer time to not talk about the one night we almost didn't stay just friends.

Franklin wedged the spittoon back by the door and pulled out his phone. No bars. He went to the little call box mounted by the door instead, the one with the cracked speaker, and pressed the button.

"Hey, yeah, we've stopped. Full stop. Middle of the line." He listened. "Uh huh. Uh huh." He turned to me with his hand over the speaker. "He says technical error. Something with a motor up top."

"An hour?" I said, because I could hear the tinny voice from where I stood.

"An hour," Franklin confirmed. Then into the box: "You're sure? An hour?" He listened some more. "Great. Yeah. We'll be here. Trapped. Suspended over the ocean. Thanks."

He let go of the button and looked at me.

"So we're alone," he said.

"So we're alone," I said.

The car creaked. That was the wind. The whole thing swayed a little and I grabbed the bench with both hands and Franklin laughed at me and I told him where he could put his laugh.

That's when I noticed the dent. The spittoon had this big dent in the side, right at the base, and it was shaped exactly like a footprint. A whole boot print, pressed into the brass.

"Franklin. Look at this. It looks like a footprint."

He came over and looked and then he cracked up. He actually doubled over, holding his knees.

"You don't remember," he said.

"Remember what?"

"The Hendersons' party. Senior year of college. You kicked this thing across the entire quad."

I did not remember. And then I did. It came back all at once, this huge warm flood of it.

"Oh my god. I kicked it so hard it flew."

"It cleared the picnic table. It was legendary. And then somebody put it in the alumni gift auction and apparently it ended up here, in a cable car, in Japan, with the dent in it."

"Twenty-two years old and full of rum punch," I said. "Best kick of my life."

"And now it's the most famous spittoon in Okinawa," he said, and set it down by the door, gentle, like it was an old friend.

I sat on the bench. He sat next to me. There's not a lot of room in these cars, one bench, wood paneling, an ore cart on a little track against the back wall that runs straight into this adit opening, this dark tunnel mouth cut right into the rear wall of the car. Dust coated the cart's rim. It was weird. It was very weird. Somebody had built a cable car around the entrance of a mine and nobody had ever explained why.

We sat there swaying.

"You know what I keep thinking about," I said.

"What."

"That night. After the party. My apartment."

Franklin went quiet in a very specific way. I know his quiets. That one was the careful one.

"That was a long time ago," he said.

"Twenty years. I was twenty-two, you were twenty-three, wait, no, twenty-four. You're two years older."

"Twenty-four," he agreed.

"Right. So listen, Franklin. I've done a lot of stuff in twenty years. I've gotten promoted twice. I moved across the ocean and back. I ran a half marathon with a blister the size of a plum. And I have thought about that night more times than I want to admit to a man holding a spittoon."

"Gemma."

"Because I chickened out. That's what happened. You asked me, very nicely, if I wanted to try, and I said yes, and then I got you naked and then I panicked and said no and you were so weird about it. All proud and fine, whatever, no big deal, and it WAS a big deal, and we never talked about it again."

He was staring at the floor.

"And I'm done chickening out," I said. "That's my announcement. Forty-two years old, stuck in a box in the sky, and I would like to finish what we started."

Silence. The car swayed. He still wasn't looking at me.

"You don't have to," he said. "I mean. We don't have to."

"Oh my god!"

"What?"

"You're doing it again. The pride thing. The thing where you would rather chew off your own leg than admit you wanted something in case somebody sees you wanting it."

"I don't do that."

"You have done it our entire friendship. You did it when you wouldn't ask Tammy to the office holiday party even though you talked about her for three months. You did it when you wouldn't take the listing in Dayton because your old boss was the seller's agent. You are doing it RIGHT NOW, sitting on a bench, clearly wanting to, going no no no."

"I'm not being proud," he said, proud-ly. "I'm being careful. There's a difference."

"Then be careful out loud. Tell me what's actually going on in there."

He rubbed his jaw. He looked at the frosted window. He looked at the ore cart, which was really not where a man should look during this conversation.

"Fine," he said. "Fine. I was scared too. That night. Twenty years ago. Okay? You said no and I pretended it was trivial because I didn't want you to know how nervous I was. I'd never done that before either. I'd never done most of it before. I had no idea what I was doing and my pride would not let me say so, so I just acted cool and let you think I was fine, and then I went home and felt like an idiot."

I blinked at him.

"Twenty years," I said.

"Twenty years," he said. "I was scared of messing it up with the one person I actually cared about, so I played it safe and lost the whole thing anyway. That's the math on that."

"Well. That's the dumbest trade I've ever heard."

"Yeah, the numbers weren't great."

I reached over and took his hand. He let me. His palm was sweating, which made me stupidly happy, because it meant this was real and not just cabin-fever talk.

"Here's my offer," I said. "One hour. Stuck in a box. Nobody can see in, the windows are frosted, and the adit is right there if we want privacy, which, wow, what a sentence. We're both adults, we both know what we want, and I am asking you plainly. Franklin. Do you want to finally do this with me?"

"Yes," he said. It came out fast and cracked in the middle. "God, yes. Yes!"