Almost V

열하나

"What's the matter?" Taehyung asks as we head down the boardwalk. Then it hits me: like the Ferris wheel, the ticket booth for the Bumblebee lifts is next to the stupid tours window. I didn't think this through.

"Aish. I really don't want him to see me again," I say.

Taehyung is confused for a second. "Mark? Why would he care?"

My answer is a long, sad sigh.

"All right, all right," he grumbles, but I don't think he's genuinely irritated. I'm more convinced he feels sorry for me, and that might be worse. "Go stand at the gate over there. I'll be right back."

I don't have the energy to argue. I drag my feet to the chairlift entrance and wait while a short, Filipino man - name tag: Roi - with a loud voice helps a few people off one of the lifts. Other than one other touchy-feely college-aged couple, it doesn't look like anyone else is waiting to get on. I don't blame them. Tendrils of fog clings to the swinging seats, which look much like ski lifts, painted yellow and black. The fat wires that carry the lifts over the boardwalk to the rocky cliffs rest on a series of T-shaped poles; one wire carries the ascending lifts, one wire holds the descenders. Big white lights sit atop each pole, but halfway up the line, the fog is so thick that the light just . . . disappear. I can't eve see the cliffs today.

"Good morning," the Bumblebee's operator says when I greet him.

"what do you do is something happens to one of the lifts?" I ask. "How can you see it?"

He follows my eyes, cranes his neck, and looks up into the fog. "I can't."

No reassuring.

After what seems like an extraordinary long time, Taehyung returns, breathless, with our tickets and a small bag. "Hey, what's up, Mr. Roi?" he says happily to the operator.

"No food allowed on the Bees, Taehyung," the elderly man says.

Taehyung stuff the beg inside his shirt and buttons it halfway up. "We won't touch it until we get to the cliffs."

"All right," Roi relents, smiling, and he extends an arm to escort us onto the next lift.

Before i can change my mind, we're boarding a swaying chair behind the groping college-aged couple. Each seat accommodates two people, snugly, and though we're covered by a plastic yellow-and-black bonnet above; it leaves our torsos exposed. This means (A) the coastal wind whips through the chairlift against  our backs, and (B) we have a perfect view of the lovely couple ahead of us and their roaming hands. Terrific.

The operator pulls a handlebar down that locks us in around the waist. I sneak a glance at Taehyung. I didn't expect to be sitting to so close to him. Our legs are almost touching, and I'm wearing a short dress. I make myself smaller.

"Fifteen minutes up," the operator says as he walks alongside our slow-moving chair, "fifteen minutes back down, whenever you're ready to return. Enjoy yourselves."

And we're off. My stomach lurches a little, which is stupid, because we're not even off the ground yet; these Bees need more zippity-do-dah.

"You okay, Bae?" Taehyung asks. "Not afraid of heights, are you?"

"Guess we'll find out," I say as my dragging toes leave the ground we begin to take flight, ever-so-slowly.

"You'll love it," Taehyung assures me. "It'll be great when we hit the fog in a few minutes."

Once the lift operator walks away to the gate, out of sight, Taehyung unbutton his shirt and sticks his hand inside. A second later, he's pulling something out. It's cream colored and about the size of a golf ball. I smell vanilla for one second before he shoves the whole thing in his mouth.