Sociable

by Rebecca Harrington

  Sean set his foot on the floor.

  “Anyway. Looks like traffic has been a little better.”

  “Oh yeah?” said J.W. He was still thinking about “Hey, yourself.”

  “We got a lot of views from that psychotic murderer quiz even though we couldn’t sell ads on it. We might really be okay if we actually produce an engaged community.” Sean said this with an air of hopeful wonderment. He lifted his heel out of the back of his sneaker. “Peter has been helping to mentor the girl who wrote that piece, he told me.”

  “That’s great,” said J.W., looking at the back of Peter’s head through the glass wall. Peter was mentoring someone? Why? Wasn’t he the same age as the girl he was mentoring? If anyone should be mentoring, it should be J.W.

  “How are partnerships going?”

  “Very well. Extremely well,” said J.W. They were not going very well, but J.W. had recently completed his one corporate email for the day, so he did have a talking point. “I just emailed Vans sneakers.”

  “Sick,” said Sean. “Maybe Elinor could do ‘The Fifteen Things Only People Obsessed with Vans Sneakers Know.’ I fucking love Vans sneakers.”

  “Great idea,” said J.W.

  “I love making things systematic,” said Sean. “That’s why I’m such a good investor. Because once you have a process you can just repeat it again and again and again and again. And that’s what I want to install at Journalism.ly. A process that runs itself! When I was invested in that Tinder plug-in I was talking about? That’s a classic example.” And Sean proceeded to talk on and on and on about how he automated workflow at this plug-in for Tinder that allowed you to list your favorite lunch places in your Tinder profile. This was a story Sean liked to tell frequently.

  * * *

  · · ·

  After Mike didn’t answer her email, a heavy weariness would often befall Elinor at work. She would drink a lot of coffee to combat it. As she carried her cup back to her seat, she would become preoccupied with the idea that she was going to drop it—the cup was always slightly too hot. She would picture the cup exploding into pieces, the coffee seeping into the floor and splashing onto open computers. She would even start to smell the peculiar, saccharine scent of coffee that had bled into wood and dried there. Then she would put the cup down.

  At night she would try to sleep, but every time she would close her eyes, it would feel like someone had electrified her, and she would be filled with a morbid ether of nerves. How had she become so unattractive to Mike, so banal, so obliquely and consistently hideous? At some point during fucking her, had Mike looked at the immutable second roll on her stomach and felt disgust? He had never seemed as into sex as she had imagined men being. Was that because of her? Would he like it more with someone else? Did she pick at her skin in front of him, or only in the bathroom? She couldn’t remember anymore. Maybe she remembered one time when she did pick at her skin in front of him. Did she smell bad? What did she smell like? Did she use too much tongue when she kissed? Was she boring?

  It was the day after a particularly unspeakable night. Elinor was in her apartment, painting her nails a garish shade of electric blue that would occasionally drip into the protrusion of skin next to her nail. She was rubbing the side of her left index finger with a paper towel soaked in acetone when she realized she had a push notification from Facebook. Someone had invited her to an event.

  To Elinor’s shock, the Facebook invite was from Mike’s mother. She had invited Elinor to an event called “The Memorial Day Party.” Her Memorial Day party! Elinor was still invited. So Mike wasn’t actually mad at her for her mean email. That was obviously what that meant—right?

  She told Nicole about it the next day.

  “So this is weird.”

  “What?”

  “So I got a Facebook invite from Mike’s mom to this party she’s having on Memorial Day. Which is like, supernice of her. I was invited before, but like, now I’m still invited. But I’m just not sure I want to go now, even though I sort of feel like I have to go, because I’m really grateful to his family for everything they’ve done for me.”

  “I don’t think you need to go,” said Nicole. “Also that is a crazy early invite.”

  “It’s two months early. That’s not crazy. I don’t know,” said Elinor. “I said I would go. And like, what if I decide not to go, isn’t that rude? Like, isn’t that rude to his mom?”

  “But I feel like,” said Nicole. “And I could be wrong because I do not know this woman at all, okay? But I feel like that’s kind of this thing that she’d understand, because you and her son broke up, what? Like, a couple of weeks ago.”

  “Fifteen weeks ago,” said Elinor. “Yeah.”

  “I feel like she would just get that you weren’t going to her party because of that.”

  “I don’t know,” said Elinor, skeptically. Because despite entreaties to the public for their counsel, almost immediately after getting the invitation to the Memorial Day party, Elinor had decided to attend it. She wanted to go to this party for a variety of reasons—the most conscious being that propriety seemed to demand it. Therefore it was dispiriting that so many of her friends were so unsupportive of the endeavor. She had thought they would have echoed her resolve and added something flattering to it (“Maybe his mother is inviting you because Mike has told her he misses you and he’s afraid to email you back,” for example). However, when she texted Sheila and Michelle, they both seemed to imply it was a bad idea for her to go to the party. Michelle actually said, straight out, she thought it was a bad idea, which was really kind of offensive. It was like they didn’t even get that you could be friends with an ex, which was super-unevolved and closed-minded of them—but Michelle had always been like that.

  At that very moment, J.W. approached her table. Elinor hadn’t spoken to him since her first day. He looked older now.

  “Hey, Elinor,” said J.W. “Can I talk to you in the hall?”

  “Good, um, sure,” said Elinor. She had no idea why J.W. wanted to talk to her. Something bad was probably going to happen. The moving slide show had done slightly worse than the quiz about being a psychotic murderer. Could you be fired over something like that?

  When they got out to the hall, J.W. smiled at her. He had a terrible yellow smile, like a shark beached on a sandbar.

  “Elinor! I just wanted to tell you, you are really writing some interesting pieces. Which is good.”

  “Oh wow,” said Elinor. “Thanks so much!”

  “But, you know, you don’t want to forget the rules of great journalism. Facts first. Tell the story. These are the types of things I know because I have been in the business for so long, and that is why I say—look at me as your mentor. You can ask me any question you want, and you should come to me if you have any questions. Don’t go to Peter.”

  “Uh, okay. That’s great. I mean, did I do the facts wrong? I know there are not that many people that are psychotic murderers. I would actually love more guidance. Should I write more about like, the election? I don’t really want to go to Peter anyway so—”

  “Peter’s a good kid,” said J.W., hurriedly, as if Elinor was on the precipice of saying something very offensive. “But please come to me if you have any questions. Do you know what you are going to write this week?”

  “Um, I don’t know yet. I’ve been brainstorming.”

  “Okay,” said J.W. “Because I was thinking maybe ‘The Fifteen Things Only People Obsessed with Vans Sneakers Know.’ It’s basically a takeoff on what you did before, but engaging more with branded content, but, of course, not actually being branded content.”

  “I’m not sure how well that will do.”

  “Well, I’m your mentor, so just do it,” said J.W. He patted Elinor on the back and went inside. Elinor went back to her desk and started Googling Vans sneakers.

  * * *

  · · ·

  “And so that’s really the tour of the place,” said a girl with drooping eyes and a chin that blended s
eamlessly into her neck. She was going to be one of Elinor’s future roommates if Elinor decided to take this apartment. She was holding a large chocolate Lab between her legs. The Lab had barked continually during Elinor’s visit. It jumped up and down. It rolled on the floor. It begged for food. It scratched on some furniture like a cat.

  “She’s only three,” said the owner apologetically. “And I got her from the shelter. I think she’s been traumatized by strangers, actually.”

  “So is this technically a room by New York City law?” said Elinor.

  “I don’t know,” said the girl. “What does that mean?”

  “Well, it doesn’t have a window,” said Elinor. “And for it to be a room under New York City law, it needs a window.”

  “You can put a fan in there,” said the girl, not unpleasantly. “So.”

  “How much is it?” said Elinor.

  “Eleven hundred,” said the girl. “Which is honestly a very good rate for the neighborhood. And you get to hang out with this cute little doggie!”

  Elinor nodded her head. It was a good rate! It was just so much money there was no way she could possibly swing it.

  As Elinor was walking back to the subway, she checked her phone and realized someone had contacted her on Tinder. So far Elinor had gotten no legitimate messages asking her out on a date. She got the occasional communiqué—one message that seemed rather threatening (“Hey girl, lol”) and another one from a guy named Sam that was just a winking face but nothing else and she didn’t know what to say back.

  The guy who’d messaged Elinor was named Jeff. Elinor looked at Jeff’s profile. He wasn’t holding a dog. In Jeff’s profile picture, he was wearing a Barbour jacket and looking out a window so you could only see one side of his face. In another picture, there were five flushed men and Elinor couldn’t tell which one was Jeff.

  Elinor looked at the message.

  “I’m Jeff. Want to get a drink sometime?”

  Elinor didn’t know if she wanted to get a drink, after going so far on the subway. Was she too tired? To compose her mind, she scanned social media when the train briefly got reception near Wall Street. Out of habit, she immediately checked Mike’s Instagram feed, expecting nothing, because Mike was an occasion-based and spasmodic poster. And yet! A mere seventeen minutes before, while Elinor had been stymied underground, Mike had posted a super-blurry filtered photo of Andrea at some kind of party. The picture was just of her long, hopeless face, laughing, crouched over some beer with the label torn off. The caption on the picture just said “#ballers.”

  Honestly, Elinor was glad that she was going to Mike’s mother’s Memorial Day party because it was the right thing to do and she had manners, et cetera, et cetera, but she literally couldn’t believe that she was the type of person who would happily attend a Memorial Day party out of sheer politesse, and Mike was the type of person who would just callously post a picture of a random girl on his Instagram. It was actually sad that Mike was such an asshole and she was such a polite, kind person who tried and tried to make things civil and normal in an uncivil and nonnormal world.

  Perhaps it was good they weren’t together if they were such wildly different people. Maybe Mike was always an asshole. Was he? Maybe that was unfair. She wasn’t the type of person to spend several years with an asshole. In fact, if she really thought about it and took responsibility, she was the one who had mentioned Andrea in a way that really bothered Mike. Maybe he was posting this picture to hurt her. Maybe that was it. Wow. That was probably it. Maybe he had seen her on Tinder and this was his way to get back at her. How sick and sad, thought Elinor, in a slightly more cheerful frame of mind.

  She exited Instagram and went right back to Tinder. So Jeff wanted to meet up? Fine! She wanted to meet up too! Tonight if he was game for it, even though it was 9:15 p.m.

  * * *

  · · ·

  Elinor found the bar with some trouble. There was no sign out front and no street number. She walked up and down the block three times in increasing confusion. Eventually, she opened the only unmarked door that wasn’t a place selling magazines. (Why were there so many places selling magazines? Journalism was in trouble!) It was a nice bar, with very high tin tables and dark lighting and an antique pool table no one was using. It was even peppered with what looked like artsy professionals, tepidly drinking wine. She spotted someone about her age—a kid who vaguely looked like Jeff except a bit shorter and pudgier. A Barbour jacket draped the back of his chair.

  “Jeff?” said Elinor to the Jeff-like person. He turned around in his seat, but didn’t get up. It was definitely Jeff, if Jeff wore an olive sweater that zipped up halfway.

  “Elinor,” said Jeff. “Are you Elinor?”

  “Yeah,” said Elinor. “Hi! Good to meet you.”

  “Did you have trouble finding the place?”

  “A little. But I found it.” Jeff looked at her without interest or disinterest. He was drinking a draft beer in a large glass, but was twisting a cocktail straw around one of his fingers like a ring.

  “So, how was your day today?” Elinor said.

  “Fine,” said Jeff. “I’m in town for a conference.”

  “In town?”

  “I usually live in DC, so I’m just like, here for the day. Well, the night and the day.”

  “Oh,” said Elinor. “Do you get up here often?”

  “Not that often,” said Jeff. “Like, maybe two times a year. I just figured I didn’t want to be alone, while I was here. I didn’t have anything to do tonight.”

  “Oh,” said Elinor. The nihilism of this sort of depressed her. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

  “Okay.”

  Elinor went to the bathroom and just washed her hands.

  * * *

  · · ·

  “Okay, you can’t really see here, but that’s Jared, my friend from home.”

  “Okay,” said Elinor. Jeff was showing her a blurry video of some kids at a party. Someone was screaming in a high-pitched voice in the background. Maybe it was Jeff.

  “He’s just—oh god!” Jeff started laughing. He was having trouble holding the phone steady. “Isn’t that super funny?”

  “Hahaha,” said Elinor. She couldn’t really see.

  “Let me show you this other thing.”

  “Okay,” said Elinor. Jeff had really bifurcated the evening. First he had talked about his job for a long time. He worked in social networking for some political nonprofit/business organization, but Elinor couldn’t really make heads or tails of it. Then he had talked about his friends from home. And then he’d started showing her videos of them. He had shown her these videos for like, twenty minutes.

  “So, you said that you like Politico?” said Elinor, desperately. He had said something about Politico twenty minutes ago.

  “I said I had a friend that worked there.”

  “Cool. I actually work for Journalism.ly.”

  “What’s that?” Jeff was looking intently at a video of himself dancing with his friends to a rap song, very badly.

  “It’s a website,” said Elinor. “It’s a really fun place to work, I like it a lot.”

  “Cool,” said Jeff. “I haven’t heard of it.”

  “You can look it up!”

  “Okay,” said Jeff, slightly miffed that Elinor wasn’t showing more interest in his videos, perhaps. Jeff dutifully started looking up Journalism.ly on his phone. Elinor saw he clicked on the food fail slide show—which had been the lead story for days.

  “What stories did you write? Did you write this one about macadamia nuts?” He gestured to a picture of macadamia nuts and a headline that said “I Had a Reaction to Macadamia Nuts: Here’s What You Need to Know.”

  “No,” said Elinor. “Actually, my friend wrote that.” That had been performing really well for Nicole, actually.

  “Oh cool, my friend works for something like that. Actually she’s one of the heads of product design at Yik Yak. She’s great. She’s like, twenty-three.
She does a lot of activisty stuff for them that’s kind of changing the way people think about social media from a social perspective? It’s cool.”

  “That’s awesome. I’m involved in a really interesting project actually. I try to come up with viral content for the site.”

  “Like, for the election?”

  “No,” said Elinor. “Not really. We have this political guy, Josh.”

  “Sick,” said Jeff. There was another pause. Jeff started sword fighting with two cocktail straws.

  “Yeah,” said Elinor miserably. “Do you want to play pool?”

  “Okay,” said Jeff.

  Jeff abruptly walked over to the pool table, and Elinor followed. Elinor liked pool. She was pretty good at it too. She had had a pool table growing up and had played with her brothers almost daily after school. One time, she and Mike had played pool together and Mike had proceeded to instruct her on various aspects of the game, the spin of the ball, the way that the cue interacted with topspin. Then she beat him, and he actually never played pool with her again after that.

  “I’m pretty sick at pool,” said Jeff.

  “Good,” said Elinor. “Me too!”

  They started playing. Elinor went first and immediately sank two balls into the left pocket of the table.

  While Elinor played, Jeff took out his phone and started texting on it.

  “Ha-ha,” he laughed.

  “What’s going on with your phone?”

  “I’ll show you after. My friend sent me this super funny thing.”

  “Oh, ha-ha,” said Elinor.

  Jeff was terrible at pool. He couldn’t even get one ball in. Elinor took another turn and sank three more balls in great concentration.

  “Your turn,” said Elinor.

  “Uh, hold on.” Jeff was texting, hunched over his phone, which was casting a dull blue light on his face.

  “We can just sit down,” said Elinor. “If you’d rather.”

  “Yeah,” said Jeff. “Sorry, pool’s boring, I think.”

  “I thought you said you were good at it.”