Wendy was leaving for Horsefall the next day, so rswfire finished his caretaker rounds first and then came down to her RV, camera running, with something to show before lunch. He had taken one of his eyebrow piercings out. He turned his face to the light and then to a mirror, checking the empty site from a couple of angles, and said he thought he liked it better with just one — that he had never gotten used to the double, that he had overdone it with the second. The hole would probably scar and close, he noted, and he had not decided whether he wanted to keep it open. He wanted to put a hoop in the remaining one and wondered aloud whether any hoop would do or whether it had to be a special one. He said he would rather see his piercer, but the visit would cost her fee plus three hours of driving and the fuel to cover it, and he did not have the money. He had been holding off, he said, so he could get both done in one trip.
He gave the second piercing its provenance without softening it. He had gotten it at Honeyman, and he describes it as a way of resisting the ways they were trying to overwrite his reality and make him smaller — fortification, he called it, and then said he truly did not have words for it, that this was simply how he felt about it. The first one he had wanted since he was young. Then he was back to the surface of it, turning his face again: the mark on his skin, the aging, almost half a century old. His pretty little face. Then he was hungry, and the omelets were ready — spinach, peppers, broccoli, cauliflower, cheese, eggs — and the camera went down.
What came next he had not planned. Wendy's bike. He had not been on one since he was a kid, he said, out of breath halfway up a hill, and he used to race BMX when he was younger. The delight arrived immediately and did not let up. He took the campground roads and the trails past dozens of visitors out collecting berries — he had not known there were berries to collect and figured they had all been taken already — past a sign about no bikes that he noted and ignored. He said it over and over, between gasps: he had to get one of these. His legs were dying. He had been all over the place. He did not know how much he had missed this.
He crossed a bridge and pointed the camera at the water, then at the Ocean, narrating his own footage from a moving bike. Somewhere in there he mentioned, almost as an aside, that the bike had no brakes. Nothing. Don't die. He went down a top hill anyway. Coming back in, he kept up a running bit about stealing it — Wendy was inside somewhere, she wouldn't notice, he'd just take it to his house, he was leaving — and then let it go, because she might get a job this winter and would need it. He brought the bike in and said again that he had to get one.
Back at his own RV, the day changed register without losing its lift. Wendy would be over shortly for her laundry and then she would be gone, and she would probably try to get him out hiking or to the ocean, but he was in for the day. He took off his hat, sat down with the laptop, and pulled up the Cloud API balance. Fifty dollars to start; $39.25 spent; that had processed roughly half his transmissions, around 350 of them. He judged the rate acceptable. Ten dollars left, and he was going to spend it starting the photo pipeline — a whole thing, not yet begun, and the work for the afternoon.
The photos were in service of the map. He said it plainly: it would be a visually impressive feature, and it would go on the homepage, right at the top. He knows he will love it because he already loves the paper one on his fridge, the one he keeps looking at, the one that was a lot of work. He has always wanted an interactive digital version — his whole path charted from origin to Oregon, everything he has done since arriving, little pins for the photos, place names, place pages, so much of it. He gave himself the rest of the day and probably tomorrow, and then Sunday, and then he had to figure out how he was going to make money, because he did not want to be back where he was when he was two days from losing his Jeep. He states that what he is building is going to be very successful and that what he needs is time — runway — and that he has to figure that out.
Then back to the mirror one more time, still undecided, still curious. He had thought about taking both piercings out. This one was the first he ever got, and it has never fit perfectly, but he thinks it's okay. There will be a scar, he says, though not a big one. It does look different with only one. He noticed his hair was getting long and that the gray was showing on the sides, said he needed to shave it, and then said he was doing good — that he liked the direction his life was heading, that he needed time, and then corrected himself mid-sentence: he didn't even need time. He states his life is in perfect alignment right now. He had a lot of plans and they were only going to happen if — and there the sentence broke, because Wendy went past outside driving fast, the way she always does, wild for an RV. She would be inside in a moment. That was all for now.