December 31st, 2014.
4:58PM.
« What are you doing tonight? », John asks on Tinder.
« Nothing », I type back.
Starfish on a queen size bed, I crashed with the two stars of my business hotel in the middle of a commercial zone. Out the window, there’s an infinity of cars dying of boredom in the Californian light.This bedroom could have had an air of an Edward Hopper, but it doesn’t.
« Come to Santa Cruz, John writes. We’re making a fire on the beach. »
John is a reggae singer, he sent me his Soundcloud and a picture of him in front of a sunny house, with bare feet and dreadlocks.
Santa Cruz, I see John’s band, they’re from Jamaica, and their laughs, the sparks will-o’-wisping above the black waves, the spirit of the Gladiators floating above the cold sand, and myself running, naked, toward the roaring ocean, to plunge those first seconds of 2015 deep in the Pacific.
5:39PM, I take my rental Toyota, play the Gladiators really loud, sing even louder, and I drive down the tricky curves of the 880.
The skies are turning red, purple and magenta when John writes:
- « I’ll be at Starbucks, I need Wifi to receive your messages. »
Of course, I think, the sun setting in the corner of my eye, John has no American data on his Jamaican reggae singer mobile phone.
So are John, his dreadlocks and his bare feet. Without a band, but with his half a bottle of rum drunkenness for companionship. John, from Miami, and all his life stuffed in 3 plastic bags.
- « So you’re staying in a business hotel in the middle of the Silicon Valley? he asks. I’ve always wanted to see the Silicon Valley. »