“When I emailed you about whether I should do the psychotic murderer quiz, you said you were too busy to be emailed about my story ideas because Sean needed you to focus on ‘Big Ideas About Music.ly,’ which I took to mean that you were okay with me writing that?”
Peter’s Adam’s apple looked especially sharp and ridged. He said nothing.
“The quiz to see whether you are a psychotic murderer is doing really well!” Elinor continued, hotly. “It’s doing even better than the coffee one, actually. Everyone wants to know if they are a psychotic murderer and I ask tons of psychological questions like ‘Have you ever killed your pet?’ So it’s not just this crap thing.”
“Okay, that’s not the point of this discussion. The point is to come up with an automated system to make things go viral so we don’t have to think about it as hard. Sean wants us to be faster and more agile.”
“Okay,” said Elinor. “I’ll try and repeat my success pattern.”
“Good.”
“Can I ask you a question?” asked Elinor. “Why do you only look over my stuff?”
“I look over everyone’s stuff. That’s my job as managing editor. If I give you slightly more attention, it’s only because I’m trying to mentor you because you are just starting out here, but I can stop if you want to.”
“No, it’s okay, I guess,” said Elinor. She left the kitchen then, and headed back to her table.
* * *
· · ·
Two weeks later, Elinor was sitting in her apartment alone, eating Top Ramen and looking at her bank account online. She had a worrisomely small amount of money. She needed to stop taking cabs all the time. Her rent was also now an exorbitant portion of her net worth. She really couldn’t afford this apartment alone. If only Mike would come back and save her from moving.
Elinor decided to look at the room shares on Craigslist, just to see. She clicked on the first ad she saw. It was a little bit high for her price range but not horribly so. She read as follows:
Our apartment is super great and we all really love it. It has a great location (Williamsburg right off the Marcy Sto)p. We have a huge kitchen, a gigantic living room, and lots of light. We love people that are chill but very neat, and we all work a ton of the time and are never in the apartment, so if you do want to hang out in the apartment this place is not for you. Your room does not have a closet or a window, but the former tenant put a bar up with clothes hangers on it and that worked really well.
Elinor clicked through the pictures. There were many images of the living room, which was very large and did have windows, and the windowless and jagged triangle that was going to be her room. It didn’t look that bad, but the problem was, what if she wanted to be in the apartment? She clicked on the next one.
Hey, we’re a bunch of cool, very laid-back dudes that have an awesome apartment in Prospect Heights. We love to hang out in the apartment, chill, play video games, smoke, and play guitar late at night. Basically whatever. We’re looking for any other roommate, girl or guy, who wants to chill with us in our apartment. Your room doesn’t have a window or a closet, but a guy brought in this huge box thing/California Closet and he’s willing to leave it if you pay him $150 bucks. Honestly, it works pretty well. Write us an email that’s in the form of an epic poem.
Elinor quickly x-ed out of her browser. This whole evening was very stressful.
* * *
· · ·
“And then he was like, ‘We’re on a break,’ and so honestly, I don’t really know what’s happening,” said Elinor. Her voice wavered at the end of this sentence.
“Dick,” said Michelle. Michelle was their other friend, who was visiting from Chicago. She was staying on Sheila’s couch. She was very tall and had a forehead like a plate. Her hair was curled into giant barrels that hovered in permanent suspended animation above her shoulders.
“He’s not a dick,” said Elinor. “I just think he wants to figure some stuff out.”
“No one’s saying he’s a dick,” said Sheila. She swirled a tiny red straw around in her Diet Coke and rum. “But he’s not being the greatest right now.”
They were at Botanica. Secretly, Elinor had been arranging all of her drinks dates at Botanica (or at least the ones with Sheila) since she and Mike broke up. She wasn’t hoping to run into him, she said to herself. But if she did run into him, she would be functionally having drinks with Sheila and Michelle. It wouldn’t look like she had spent days inside, hair matted to the side of her face, trying to understand from Mike’s Instagram what he had been doing with his time.
“Have you heard from him?” said Sheila.
“Yes,” said Elinor. “I mean, not since he moved out, but when he moved out, he like, told me and stuff.”
“Mike’s always been a dick,” said Michelle.
“No he’s not,” said Elinor.
“Yes he is. Remember what an ass he was about living together?”
“Well, he just didn’t know if he wanted to do that.”
“He really left you out to dry.” Michelle sipped her drink. “You couldn’t live with Sheila because he was still ‘deciding.’ You had all those screaming fights. Then you were going to live alone, and he moved in with you because he didn’t want to live with his parents anymore.” Michelle never really had a boyfriend but she acted like she knew everything. She had been like this in college. She was always telling everyone to dump their boyfriends. “Plus he’s so controlling.”
“Controlling?” said Elinor. “How?”
“Well, he’s always telling you how you have to react to stuff. The way he gets mad at you and cries? It’s just because he’s trying to control what you say to him all the time, so that you never say anything he doesn’t like.”
“I really don’t get that,” said Elinor. “I feel like that’s really not him at all.”
“Maybe you should go online?” said Sheila.
“Online, as in online date?” said Elinor.
“Yes,” said Sheila. “A lot of people do it. I would do it if I didn’t have this thing with Ralph.”
“I mean, sure, I guess. Isn’t it so weird though? Everyone I know hates it.”
“No way! Everyone is online. I even think it’s like, an empowering thing to do.”
“Mike and I haven’t really talked about dating anybody else. So I don’t really know if like—”
“You still like Mike, right?” said Sheila, suddenly animated by her new idea. “Well, nothing is going to make him want you back more than you actually dating other people, okay? It will drive him nuts. Remember when I did that to Ralph in college? He flipped the fuck out.”
“I don’t know,” said Elinor. “Mike isn’t like Ralph at all. We have a completely different relationship than you guys do.”
Sheila looked hurt.
“All men are the same,” said Michelle, adjusting a barrel curl with her finger. It was at that point that Elinor, who was sitting on the chair that faced the door, saw Andrea come into the bar with Mike right behind her. She involuntarily ducked.
“Oh god, oh god,” said Elinor. “Mike is here.”
“What?” said Sheila, whipping her head around.
“Don’t do that. Don’t do that, okay? He’ll see you. Just stare at me. Do you think he heard what we were saying?”
“I can’t stare at you,” said Sheila. “You’re under the table.”
“Elinor, the bar is super crowded. There’s no way he heard anything. Who’s that woman he’s with?” said Michelle.
“That’s Andrea,” said Elinor. “They’re friends.”
“Ew,” said Michelle.
“What are they doing?” said Elinor. “What’s happening?”
“You can look, you know,” said Michelle. “You’re going to draw more attention to yourself like, ducking under the table.”
“Okay,” said Elinor. She slowly peeked over the table. Mike was at the bar, ordering beers, wearing a gray T-shirt that clung to his small yet protrudent chest.
She could see his physical flaws—his too-small shoulders, his oblong head, the nostrils that weren’t actually symmetrical at all—but somehow, he looked more attractive than ever. His hair was even more closely cropped on the sides. Andrea stood right behind him. Mike turned around and gave one of the beers to Andrea. Elinor turned toward Sheila, so that no one at the bar who happened to glance over would see her face.
“Okay, what are they doing now?” she said.
“Nothing that much,” said Sheila. “She said something and Mike just laughed.”
“Does he seem into her?” said Elinor.
“I think it just looks friendly,” said Sheila.
“She’s really not hot,” said Michelle. Elinor somehow felt like she was going to cry when Michelle said that, even though it was a very comforting thought.
“Do you want to go?” said Sheila. She was already gathering her coat, so it was clear the answer should be yes, although weirdly Elinor wanted to keep watching them, or not watching them, but that was probably inappropriate.
“Okay,” said Elinor slowly. She got up, gathered her coat, and put her canvas bag over her shoulder. The bag was heavy. It had her laptop in it.
“I just have to go to the bathroom,” said Michelle. “I’ll meet you guys outside.”
“Okay,” said Elinor, who was already standing up. She wished she was wearing a better outfit. This might have been the worst time in history to be wearing a turtleneck dress made out of Fair Isle sweater.
Even though she had been arranging her drinks here, hoping to run into Mike, she was not prepared for this brittle triumphalist meeting. In her ideal world, Mike would have been alone at Botanica, looking consumptive, drinking miserably, and their mutual, theatrical sadness would have formed an instant bond. Her lack of concealer and Fair Isle sweater would be appropriate for something like that. However, now that she saw Mike out with Andrea, she realized the error of her ways. She didn’t want Mike to see her looking like this. Could she just slip out without anyone noticing? Mike and Andrea were positioned right near the door. Still, the bar was crowded enough that it might not even be an issue. If Mike saw her on the way out, she could avert her eyes and pretend she didn’t see him.
Elinor started walking out the door with Sheila. She held her coat near her face in a way that she hoped looked normal but also blocked her from view.
She was walking right in front of Mike when Sheila blew up this (to be fair, completely uncommunicated) plan.
“Hey, Mike!” said Sheila.
Sheila waved to Mike and walked over and gave him a hug. Elinor paused midstep.
“Hey, Sheila,” Mike said. He waved at Elinor, anemically. Elinor, unable to speak at all, waved back.
“We were just leaving,” said Elinor, after a strangled pause.
“Okay,” said Mike.
“Anyway, nice to see the both of you,” said Sheila. Elinor walked quickly out the door and Sheila followed her.
“Sheila,” whispered Elinor the minute they got outside. “Why did you say hi to Mike?”
“Well, how could I not say hi to him? It’s weird if I didn’t. I’ve known him for years. It’s better than ignoring him. That actually makes you look way more weird if you ignore him.”
“But,” said Elinor, still whispering even though they were well clear of the bar, “I just wanted to get out of there.”
“I think it was good,” said Sheila. “It made you seem much chiller, as opposed to like, freaking out. I actually think I really helped.”
“What just happened?” said Michelle, who had come out and joined them on the street.
“Nothing,” said Sheila. “It was fine.”
* * *
· · ·
After they left the bar, Sheila, Michelle, and Elinor walked in the general direction of Sheila’s apartment. No one really talked about seeing Mike or anything, even though it was the only significant event of the entire evening. Sheila prattled about this girl at work who was being a bitch about shifts, and Michelle talked about draining an abscess in an emergency room that had a lot of pus in it, even though everyone thought it was just a pimple at first. At one point, Elinor said, “Do you think Mike thought I looked insane?” and Sheila said, “We only saw him for like, a second,” like she clearly did not want to talk about it. It was infuriating.
Eventually, Elinor made her excuses and started walking toward this French fries place she liked. It sold Belgian fries the width of a thimble. She got a large French fry and a milk shake. After that, she got a cab back to her apartment. Whatever! She couldn’t eat fries on the subway. On the cab ride home she just stared out the window, thinking about nothing.
Once inside her room, however, Elinor got madder and madder. Maybe Mike really was a dick, like everyone was saying. People can fall asleep at any time! It’s not that big of a deal. She took a beer out of the fridge and slammed the tiny fridge’s door. Mike was such a piece of shit. Her friends were such pieces of shit. What the fuck was Mike doing with Andrea? He didn’t even say hi to her or anything, and they were trying to be friends. He had never so much as written a text saying “How are you?” since they ended their relationship. What the fuck was the matter with him? It was so rude! It was so impolite! What kind of person would do that? Elinor wasn’t totally conscious of it, but she was still extremely drunk, even though she had had French fries and a milk shake.
She decided that she couldn’t take this whole thing lying down. She was a strong woman. She was going to write Mike an email—telling him he could go fuck himself.
Hi
So, I guess you don’t want to be friends anymore or something. I saw you tonight and you were so rude to me. You didn’t even say hi and like what? We were together for YEARS mike. The least you could do is be friendly and say hi. What the fuck is the matter with you. You are such a coward and your inability to say hi was really ridiculous. Don’t be such a coward to not write me back either, that would just be the crowning fucking achievement of this whole fucking thing.
Elinor pressed send. Then she immediately started watching an old episode of Law & Order. After that, she went to sleep.
* * *
· · ·
The next morning, a sunny but frigid Saturday, Elinor lay numbly on the foam pad, sometimes feeling a pulse of anxiety so violent she would roll onto her stomach and kick her feet. Her computer lay beside her, open. Mike had not responded to her email. Thinking about how Mike didn’t say hi still filled her with anger, but in the light of day, she didn’t know if her email had been wise. Occasionally, while flipping on her stomach, she thought it was. Other times, while lying on her back looking at Craigslist listings, she wasn’t so sure. Maybe she had expressed herself too violently.
Apparently, last night she had also started a Tinder account. She didn’t totally remember that. It was open on her phone when she woke up. Her bio line just said, “Trying to stay positive and get ahead in this crazy world :).” Was that wise either? She hadn’t uploaded any pictures yet. Luckily she had decided to save that for a more sober time.
She chose two pictures. One of her and Sheila in which Sheila was laughing and Elinor was smirking with her mouth closed and therefore looked good comparatively, and one that Mike took of her when she was getting ready to go to a party. It happened to be Mike’s favorite picture of her. She hoped he saw it and felt bad about it.
* * *
· · ·
Two hours later, and racked with guilt, Elinor, wet from her shower, decided to text Mike an apology. Water plopped on her screen as she typed.
I’m so sorry, I was so drunk last night when I emailed you. I didn’t know what I was saying. I wasn’t even mad lol. Can we meet up today please??
Mike never responded.
Chapter 7
Facebook: 1 post: “Ugh, sorry to rant here, but don’t you hate it when you are literally cut in line again and again? Today, at a Starbucks, I was cut in line 3 times. Listen everybody, I get it. We’re all in a hur
ry. But that doesn’t mean that manners completely go out the window. Let’s all have a little bit more kindness and compassion for each other, ok? Ok, Facebook rant over. Sorry. But jeez!”
Twitter: 22 tweets, mostly consisting of one surprisingly bitter Twitter fight between Elinor and a random Twitter critic of “10 Reasons Why Moving Sucks.” A sample: “@dylan_84: If you think moving doesn’t suck then I actually feel bad for you! You are probably privileged enough to have movers. #stopmoveshaming.”
Instagram: 2 pictures. The first is of Michelle, Sheila, and Elinor, sometime during the week Michelle stayed with Sheila. They are out at a bar. Elinor especially has glassy eyes and a countenance of mournful forced merriment. Her mouth is in a pursed line. Caption: “Love my girls. #girlsnightout #lovethesegirls #sisters.”
The second picture is mostly of Elinor’s hand. She is in a light-filled café and there is a book and a coffee on a table in front of her. Her hand is on top of the book. It has been recently manicured. Caption: “Great Sunday! Reading at my fave coffee shop. #Whoneedsbrunch.”
Snapchat: A selfie of Elinor drinking a smoothie. She is wearing a headband. Although she’s slightly flushed, it is a very good picture, and one that she sends around indiscriminately. Mike doesn’t open it.
· · ·
J.W. was sitting in his conference room, looking at his computer, blankly, when Sean knocked on his glass wall, making a hollow little sound. J.W. slammed the computer shut and made an ostensibly welcoming motion to Sean, even though Sean had already walked into the conference room and was positioning himself heavily on a spare chair that J.W. had arranged artfully kitty-corner. He put one foot over the other knee and wobbled the gigantic multicolored tongue of his sneaker back and forth.
“Hey, man,” said Sean.
“Hey, yourself,” said J.W., immediately regretting it.
Sociable Page 11
