Sociable

by Rebecca Harrington

Snapchat: Elinor takes a video of herself using a new filter that makes her eyes even larger and her mouth even smaller.

  · · ·

  “Hey,” said Elinor. “This is cool. I’ve never done something like this before.”

  “Yeah,” said Will. “I went here for a picnic once.” He was holding a coffee. Elinor was in love with him, she thought, maybe. In some lights, he was sort of handsome. In others, he looked like all the features of his face were slowly sliding off his skin.

  “Yes!” said Elinor. It was 11:00 a.m. and they were walking along some abandoned train tracks that ran trippingly down a muddy embankment. Occasionally, Elinor would see a luminescent milk jug in a puddle of water. Later they were going to go to a coffee shop to do a crossword puzzle. Elinor was cold and she had gotten mud on the top of her sneaker and it was seeping into her foot. She should have worn boots.

  Elinor had met Will on a dating site she was on called HowAboutWe. HowAboutWe had dates that were actually activities. Will had suggested “How About We Walk Around Abandoned Train Tracks and Then Get a Coffee and Do the Crossword,” and Elinor had taken Will up on that offer because she had done the crossword with Mike occasionally and it was pretty fun.

  “So, you work at a start-up you were saying?” said Elinor.

  “Yeah, it’s an advertising start-up.”

  “I work for a start-up too, that’s so interesting—”

  “I’m working with these two guys, Darren and Jonah. I do more of the front-end stuff. Darren and Jonah are more of the back-end people. Essentially they are programming the site. And I’m kind of the one getting our partnerships, making our calls, things like that.”

  “That’s so interesting,” said Elinor. “I definitely don’t work at the back end of my job either.”

  “Yeah, don’t get me wrong, we need programmers. But programmers can be more on the narrow-minded end of the spectrum. Steve Jobs never programmed, you know? I feel like I’m the one making more of the big strategic decisions, which is where I like to be anyway, so it’s a perfect fit.”

  “I actually come up with viral content for my job. Is that what you guys do?”

  “Sort of,” said Will. “There’s a bit more to it than that.”

  “I work at Journalism.ly. I do the viral content there. Have you heard of it?”

  “No,” said Will. “But I have a lot of friends that work in journalism. My ex-girlfriend, well, maybe not ‘ex-girlfriend’ but the girl I was seeing at one point last year, worked in journalism and I used to hang out with her friends all the time. I didn’t really like her friends. I mean, she was great but her friends sucked. They seemed really full of themselves.”

  “I don’t think journalists are full of themselves,” said Elinor. “At all. I think we all just take our jobs really seriously.”

  “Yeah, these people were full of themselves though. I don’t know. I got a bad impression.”

  There was a pause, as Elinor tried to get over how suddenly offended she got on behalf of all journalists, writ large. She took several seconds to compose herself.

  “How much longer is the walk?” she asked. Elinor realized she was very cold, or at least, the tips of her fingers were. She wasn’t wearing gloves. Also her wet feet.

  “Not much longer,” said Will. “We’re almost at this coffee shop. It’s like, right near my apartment.”

  “That’s convenient,” said Elinor. Were they going to have sex at 11:30 a.m.? That was novel.

  About five minutes later, Elinor and Will got to the coffee shop. It looked a bit like a 1950s diner. The menu was displayed on a large black board that had grooves in it, and white plastic letters hung off the grooves. Some of the letters were crooked, but it looked like that was on purpose. Will and Elinor both got coffees and paid for them separately, and even though Elinor was hungry and wanted a muffin, she didn’t get one because she didn’t know Will wasn’t going to pay for her until after she ordered her coffee. Not that it wasn’t fine for Will to not pay for her—it was totally fine. It was better because she actually liked paying for herself, but she wished she had known that.

  After some listless standing, they finally sat at a small, round marble table in the corner of the coffee shop. This was lucky because the entire coffee shop was teeming with people. Two people elbowed Elinor in line.

  “That guy just elbowed me in line,” said Elinor. “Can you believe that?”

  “It’s really crowded in here,” said Will.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” said Elinor. “But still, you know?”

  Will didn’t answer her. He took out his Times from where he was holding it in the pocket of his jacket and tossed it on the table. Elinor sat down and put her coat on the back of her chair. Will took a ballpoint pen out of his pocket and wrote down two answers quickly, as Elinor sipped her coffee.

  “Okay,” said Elinor. She decided to insert herself. “Five letters. ‘Place to be in the hot seat’? Uh, I don’t know, the tub?”

  “That’s not five letters.”

  “Tubs?”

  “That’s four letters.”

  Will thought.

  “It’s ‘sauna,’ ” he said.

  “ ‘Sauna’? Oh my god. You are totally right. ‘Sauna.’ Why didn’t I think of that? That’s so brilliant.”

  “ ‘Amtrak guests for short,’ ” said Will. “Three letters.”

  “ ‘Train,’ ” said Elinor. “Ha-ha, no, that’s not three letters. Um, hmm, let me see? Hmm. ‘Tren’?”

  “I think it’s ‘ETA.’ ”

  “Oh my god. Estimated time of arrival. That’s exactly it. God, I used to be so good at these. I haven’t done this in a while. I’m rusty! And I am actually a writer for a living, okay? Like, I majored in this shit, I should know this.”

  They did the crossword together like this for a while. Elinor went to the bathroom in the middle. Will didn’t really speak much during the crossword, he really wanted to do the crossword. And he mostly wanted to do it by himself. When she and Mike did the crossword it wasn’t so horribly businesslike. Mike would often indulge himself in spirited digressions about various clues.

  After another thirty minutes or so, Will had finished about half of the crossword puzzle. He sighed audibly.

  “That was a hard one today. I usually get more than half. Jesus.”

  “Well, at least it kept you busy,” snapped Elinor. “We didn’t really talk.” She laughed in a forced way. Then realized what she had done. Fuck! She’d probably just snapped at him because she was mad at herself for not doing well at crossword puzzles. What was the matter with her?

  “Well, hmm, it was really nice to meet you,” said Will, seemingly slightly put off by her outburst and rising out of his seat. “Not everyone would just walk along some railroad tracks in the middle of Brooklyn.”

  “Ha-ha,” said Elinor. “Well, if they don’t, they are crazy. That was an amazing idea for a date.”

  “Yeah,” said Will. He already had his coat on.

  “I had a great time,” said Elinor, overcompensating for snapping. “I actually love stuff like this. This is my ideal date.”

  “Cool, well, see you around?”

  “Yeah!” said Elinor. This was, in many ways, the best date she had ever been on, aside from the fact that she’d snapped at Will. Maybe Will was just kind of hard to get to know. That didn’t bother Elinor. In fact, she liked guys who were hard to get to know. She liked to put effort in.

  “We’ll see,” said Will. “Bye.”

  They both walked out of the coffee shop and Will stood on the corner as she crossed the street. She realized that Will was going into the building where the coffee shop was through a separate glass door that led to a series of apartments. So his apartment was actually in the coffee shop? Elinor was momentarily piqued at Will’s transportation convenience. She had to take two subways to get back to Queens. This feeling immediately subsided into guilt. Elinor was always surprised by how socially inappropriate she could be at
times.

  * * *

  · · ·

  “I hope he calls me,” said Elinor. “I just don’t know if snapping at him was a big deal or not.” She was walking with Sheila up Thirty-second Street. They had just had brunch at a diner near Sheila’s apartment. So far, Sheila had not been out to Queens and visited Elinor at her apartment, which was so typical, but Elinor wasn’t going to say anything about it.

  “Well, how long has it been?” said Sheila.

  “Like, a week. But we actually had a pretty good date, I’m surprised he hasn’t texted. Do you think it’s because I snapped at him?”

  “I bet he’s just busy at work or something.” Sheila’s tone betrayed a slight boredom. They had talked about this for most of the brunch, but not in a particularly satisfying way, in Elinor’s opinion. Sheila, when distracted, always sort of acted like it was your fault when something bad happened to you.

  “But what about you?” said Elinor, magnanimously. “I feel like we haven’t really discussed Ralph at all.”

  “I’m seeing him tonight. We’re going to go to the movies.”

  “What are you wearing?”

  “That cream sweater I have and my jeans and those boots I have that have the buckles on them.”

  “Cute,” said Elinor. “I love that sweater.”

  “I don’t think it’s the sweater you are thinking of. I got a new cream sweater that I think you haven’t seen. I got it for Christmas. It has this high neck, and kind of like cutouts. I can’t tell if it’s too much.”

  “I bet it’s not,” said Elinor. “I bet it’s really cute.”

  “I hope so,” said Sheila, doubtfully. “Anyway, Ralph’s been really nice lately. Ever since my birthday, I told you, he’s been texting me a lot more and stuff and kind of like, being way nicer. We have more of a friend vibe right now. Like, we’re actually friends now. It’s really nice.”

  “That’s good,” said Elinor.

  “Yeah, I think he’s really changed. And like, our relationship is so much more normal. He was actually talking about like, moving in?”

  “What? To your apartment?”

  “Um, yeah!” said Sheila. “Because like, Caroline is going to move out. She just told us like, two days ago. She just got a job in Seattle. And I was texting Ralph about it, and Ralph was like, Well, I need a new place. Is that room free? And I was like, Yes? But like, then I was like, Why do you want to know! And he was like, Well what if I moved in? Kind of like a joke? But then we actually talked about it more and he was like, Well I am actually looking for a place, and then I told him about the room, and then—”

  “Wait, what?” said Elinor. “Ralph is moving in with you and all of your friends? That seems like a really bad idea.”

  “I don’t actually think it is,” said Sheila. “I mean, I get why you are saying it’s a bad idea, but like, you don’t really get how we’re actually friends now. I know you are like, rolling your eyes, but you really have to believe me. There is nothing between us. It’s weird, I know. But it’s been really great. It’s been really relaxing—”

  “Are the other girls okay with it?”

  “I think so. I mean, they said they’d be okay with a guy roommate. I don’t think they’d be okay with it if we were like, dating because I see how that could be a little bit weird? But since we’re not. I mean, it’s not like I’m moving in with my boyfriend, and they all know that.”

  “Um, okay?” said Elinor. She walked along in silence. This was the stupidest idea, ever. Ralph and Sheila were never just friends, and this was surely going to end in tears. And another thing—how come Sheila, who was supposed to be her best friend, invited Ralph into her apartment—but not Elinor? Elinor could have taken Caroline’s space. Elinor had just had to move to Queens! And it did suck there. Her landlady-roommate was in the bathroom constantly.

  Sheila seemed to sense this sentiment, even though Elinor didn’t say anything. She glanced at her, head tilted to the side.

  “You know I would have invited you, right? But Caroline like, just told us, and then I was talking to Ralph and Ralph and I became so platonic—”

  “In the space of a week?”

  “Like, way longer than that. Like a month!”

  That was a lie, but Elinor, at this point, was far too tired to refute it. She could have brought out text evidence, however, that directly rebutted this time line.

  “Anyway, you know I would rather live with you, right?” said Sheila. “You know that, right?”

  “All right, all right,” said Elinor. “But, Sheila, honestly, separate from me, we aren’t actually talking about me here. You have to really think about whether this is what you want and whether you can handle it.”

  “I can handle it,” said Sheila, tremulously.

  “I really wonder if you can,” said Elinor. “It just seems so dumb. How do you know whether—”

  “Listen, I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” said Sheila. “Can we just talk about something else?”

  They continued down the street wordlessly, two friends of long standing on a promenade of Park Avenue.

  * * *

  · · ·

  The next day, Elinor was at work. She happened to be in a terrible mood. Will had not called her or texted, even though she had texted Will and said, “I know this isn’t what I’m supposed to do, but I don’t really care what I’m supposed to do. Had a really great time the other morning.” At first she thought that such a text showed the kind of person she was—a woman who flouted conventions—but now she really hated that she had done it.

  In order to distract herself, she had spent the day scrolling through her various social media accounts. She wondered what kind of person other people thought she was. If she died, for example, and only her social media accounts survived for Mike to read at her funeral, what would everyone think? She wanted people to see her as beautiful and moral, warmhearted and historically correct, extremely tolerant but able to call out wrongdoing when she saw it, aware of all possible holes in her thinking, not defensive except when provoked, mildly irreverent but then unexpectedly sincere about the possibility of the American experiment. In short, she wanted to be perceived how everyone else wanted to be perceived in her small circle of digital friends. Luckily, this is one of the easier personalities in the world to pretend that you have.

  Yet Elinor also wanted something else, slightly more complicated—she wanted people to know she was suffering. She wanted them to see that beneath her wide-eyed self-portraits and urban panoramas, she had been abandoned by an adventurer. Were they fully comprehending the quiet bravery in her position? It was hard to know.

  It was in this meditative state of mind that she saw Mike had tweeted something he wrote for Memo Points Daily. It was a long think piece called “Why the World Needs to Think Seriously About Iran and Why It Hasn’t and Why, Maybe, It Can’t.”

  Elinor saw that the piece had seventy-seven favorites on Twitter. Seventy-seven! And it wasn’t just from randoms, like Elinor’s pieces often were favorited by. In fact, she saw all these people of note complimenting Mike, as if he were winning an award. “Great piece from my friend Mike_Moriarty_Journo,” the actual Richard Cooley had tweeted, cartoon and all!

  How were he and Mike friends? Did they meet at work? Would he be attending the Memorial Day party? She closed Twitter, and to make herself feel better, she chatted Nicole on Slack.

  “Ugh,” typed Elinor. “Did you see Mike wrote a piece?” She copied and pasted the link to Nicole.

  “Yeah,” typed Nicole. “I’m just over men and their think pieces. I mean, that’s literally what male privilege is.”

  “You are so right,” said Elinor. “I don’t know, it’s just so hard to be a feminist right now. You should see what my friend Sheila is doing? She’s moving in with this guy who has been treating her like shit for six years. But like, supposedly they are just ‘friends.’ ”

  “Well we all have been there,” typed Nicole. “But that is
so fucked up and pathetic.”

  “I know,” typed Elinor. “I’m really sad about it for her. Honestly, I’m going to try and not look at Mike’s stuff for a while. I think that’s better for me.”

  “Totally. That’s self-care.”

  Elinor became aware of Peter standing over her. He was talking to her. She took her headphones off.

  “Peter, what?”

  “Did you see that Mike wrote that piece?” Peter was wearing a plaid shirt today. It was red and black checkered.

  “Yes. I did.”

  “Good piece,” said Peter, ruminatively.

  “Peter, did you literally just come here to tell me my ex-boyfriend wrote a good piece? What is the matter with you!”

  “Seriously, Peter? You are such a troll,” said Nicole. Elinor didn’t know she was listening, but she was, she had her headphones off.

  “I’m not a troll,” said Peter.

  “You are a troll,” said Elinor.

  “You are always trolling Elinor and you need to stop,” said Nicole.

  “I’m not a troll,” said Peter, stubbornly. “I’m actually coming here to check in on the breast cancer awareness piece.”

  “I put up the piece already. It didn’t do that well.” To be honest, Elinor had been a little bit disappointed by the performance of her last couple of pieces. Every single one she did on the request of her mentors did terribly. She was getting to understand what made a piece viral or not. At the very least, the subject matter had to be sort of fun or interesting.

  “I think it’s just because you didn’t push it enough. You should have been tweeting it every hour. Also, I don’t appreciate you guys calling me a troll, that’s not appropriate. And if you clear something with J.W., you should clear it with me!”

  “Well, technically, I don’t have to clear it with anyone?” said Elinor. But Peter didn’t hear her. He had wandered away.

  * * *

  · · ·

  “That’s really shitty,” said Nicole. They were both holding coffees and walking slowly up the stairs.

  “I know,” said Elinor. She sighed loudly. “I just don’t know what to do! I keep going on these dates and they all blow. No one even wants to make out. My ex is writing all this awesome shit about Iran.”