by Choire Sicha
Then later they were playing football down on the beach, and his brothers got rambunctious and then they got mad, and John called one of them a dick, and they didn’t speak for the rest of the trip. Everyone else got into the grudging spirit. Shawn made noise about how cheap John’s other brother was. John took the train home and for a good while pretty much nobody in the family talked to each other. In any event John won the tennis tournament for the fifth straight year.
TYLER WROTE JOHN an email. Then he left a voicemail. And on it he was being all cute, yawning, saying, oh, hey, good morning . . . it’s Tyler, call me. John thought it was annoying, but Tyler surely thought the opposite. They were going to get together on Monday. So that day John called at like four p.m.
Are we on for later? John asked.
Oh, actually I can’t do it, Tyler said. Do you know today’s my birthday? He was turning twenty-eight.
No, happy birthday! John said.
Yeah. It’s my birthday. So anyway friends are taking me out for dinner. We could do something later this week.
Honestly, this week is really bad for me—
Well then, the week after, whatever!
Or I could do Friday potentially.
Oh okay, Friday.
So what’s going on?
Tyler sounded really grumpy.
You’re either really hungover or you’re really grumpy or maybe it’s both.
What?
So then they talked and he started laughing a little. But John was really laboring to make it an actual conversation.
Okay, John, I really have to go, Tyler said.
And John just hung up.
John told this to Chad. It’s bullshit, right? Yeah. It’s bullshit, Chad said.
John told this to Fred too, overseas. Fred had nothing to do over there, no friends yet, so he was more available than ever. Plus he was “ahead” by five hours. One strategy for dealing with the shape of the earth and the local time of day was stratifying most of the world into “time zones,” so it was unified around the world that “morning” would mean sunup, even though this made it just impossible to talk to people when they were in their offices or awake even, sometimes. The time difference in this case was actually helpful—Fred was always up. Fred, I need your advice on this, John said. What’s the deal with this?
John, Tyler’s really moody, Fred said. I don’t think it’s worth your time, to be honest. He’s really moody and he’s entitled in his moodiness.
Friday rolled around. They hadn’t talked since Monday, so he texted Tyler: We still on for tonight?
With Chad, John had made a list of five expected excuses, in order of likeliness: sick, it’s raining, have dinner with friends, too tired and then: out of town. Then he revised the list: No response at all was a late contender, as the third-most likely.
Twenty minutes later, John got a text: Hey John I have a haircut to get at 9 p.m. tonight. And I have an early start tomorrow. Let’s do something quiet, like, next week.
A haircut! Chad lost his mind. That is evil! That is malicious! He was screaming at top volume: “That is fucking bullshit!” But John thought it was pretty funny.
That night, John went out. He went to Metropolitan; he went to Sugarland, where he kissed a few people on the dance floor. He got pretty drunk, and his body felt all gross. He got a text a little after one a.m., from Tyler Flowers. He wrote: “Your girl Alexandra made my night, I owe you one, xo.” He’d run into John’s coworker Alexandra at a fashion party.
The next day John called Alexandra. I wanted to hear about your night with Tyler Flowers. Tell me the story, he said. Oh, she said. I was leaving the Charlotte Ronson party at like twelve thirty or one with my friend, and as I walked out this guy was shouting my name, Alexandra, Alexandra! And she looked at him and thought, who are you? And he was like, oh, I’m Tyler, and I’m also John’s friend. They talked for a few minutes. Tyler was with some guy.
Did it look like a date? John asked. It didn’t strike me as a date because the other guy was pretty ugly, Alexandra said. Short, glasses, swarthy. Plus, no vibe. Oh my God, I haven’t seen John in forever, in like a month, Tyler said. Well, you should just IM him, he’s on IM all day, she said. Then he said something about how he couldn’t get into the party so Alexandra and her friend gave the two of them their wristbands.
John figured he got the text for cover. Like, Tyler’s “early morning”? Not so early apparently. So Tyler was front-dooring the fact that Alexandra would probably tell John about Tyler being out.
But then, in talking it over with Fred, they decided that maybe Tyler was just completely oblivious.
“That asshole,” Chad said when he heard about this.
So John hadn’t responded to the last two texts. Then on Monday he got an email from Tyler. It went like: How about we get together this week? I still haven’t seen “Julie and Julia.” We work close together, I’m at 24th and 6th. See you soon, Tyler.
So John wrote back, like a day later: Sure. How about Thursday.
Tyler wrote something back, like, Thursday sounds great, and supposedly there’s something fun at Galapagos?
And John wrote back: Out there? You? I’ll believe it when I see it! And he mentioned there was some HBO party that night too, and there’d be free drinks and stuff and they could start there.
And Tyler wrote back: Can you bring a date?
And John wrote back: Yes, but it looks a little crappy, but it could be fun.
Tyler wrote back: “Or you can ask Alexandra if there are any cool fashion shows. J’adore models.”
John didn’t respond. J’adore models! Really. Then an hour later, Tyler wrote: “Whatever we do will be fun! Can’t wait to catch up.”
John thought this last email was pretty nice.
THE THING ABOUT not thinking about a bad thing was that when you tried not to think about it, then all you could do was think about it, until, finally, the brain slipped, and then you succeeded, you actually didn’t think about it anymore, except that didn’t last forever. Then a moment would come when you’d sit up in bed in a horror in the dark, and you couldn’t help but think about it. But then you’d try to comfort yourself back to sleep, and then you’d forget again.
EDWARD WAS SUPPOSED to live with Amy for October. But that had fallen through. So was this never going to happen? They hadn’t seen each other in two weeks. What would he do for money? Edward was making like 250 dollars a week, maybe a little less. Was he going to save up for an apartment with that? He needs to move to the City, John thought. He kept going back and forth to his parents’ house.
The thing about getting to know someone was that it took so long to understand what they were really like from the inside, from their side.
John and Chad were going to throw a birthday party, and Edward was going to just happen to be in town. Diego kept saying he was a “maybe” because of John. John hoped everyone would show up, and by “everyone,” he meant everyone to whom he had a lingering romantic attachment. They’d all take Adderall, a popular drug that helped you pay attention.
Jason had discovered Adderall in college. He was prescribed it because he had so much trouble concentrating. Well, but who doesn’t? is what Jason thought. He didn’t know what these things were that doctors gave you pills for: Restless leg syndrome? Seasonal disorder? You can’t sleep? Of course people were depressed, they lived in a terrible place where it isn’t sunny. That
was the same thing with attention deficit disorder, Jason thought, which is what the Adderall was to treat. The kids are unfocused? Sure, they’re kids. But all that said, he didn’t really object to these sorts of pharmacological interventions. Jason’s doctor was particularly committed to pharmacology and tended to solve every problem with a prescription. Jason didn’t necessarily subscribe to that philosophy but he also didn’t want to go to a doctor who didn’t subscribe to that. He didn’t want to be lectured to by a nanny when he was in pain and needed some OxyContin or whatever. Maybe you need two doctors, Jason thought. A real doctor and then a friendly doctor. Somewhere in the middle was the Adderall. The pills were a stand-in; they were a crutch, a goad, a spark plug, a fix, an idea.
“IS EVERYONE WATCHING the Yankees game?” Edward asked. This was at a party.
“Who cares. It’s so stupid,” Jason said.
“John has forced me to watch football two or three times,” Edward said.
“He forced me to watch baseball once,” Jason said. “I didn’t know what was— I mean, baseball I can understand at least. Football, it’s so incomprehensible. It just starts and stops?”
“I felt like I was retarded because he kept trying to explain it to me,” Edward said. “All those things about ‘downs’? I was okay watching them run around, but any time there was any kind of numerical—”
“No, the point system is nonsense!” Jason said.
“Oh, that’s okay,” Edward said.
“Well, like you throw it through the ‘U’ thing and that’s like seven points? I think?” Jason said.
“No, I think it’s like one,” Edward said. “Or three?”
“Oh. I don’t even care obviously. At this point I’ve gone so far over the top,” Jason said.
“I think it’s like six if you get a touchdown, then it’s a chance if you go through the thingie and then you get an extra one,” Edward said.
“That just seems so worthless,” Jason said. “I think you should get a lot of points if you go through that ‘U’ thing, not just one. Who wants one fucking point? I don’t. I want seven.”
SO EDWARD FINALLY had come to town, and he and Amy hosted a small gathering, in the afternoon.
Outside, after, no one could figure out where to go.
“It’s so hard to make friends now,” Rebecca said. Rebecca worked as a tutor, just like Chad. She’d been working at a job but had gotten fired. Now she was in a bit of a holding pattern, just like Chad, just like a lot of people. The difference was she was handily rich, regarding which she was super conscious. She knew that, unlike a lot of people, she was insulated from disaster.
Amy looked at her. “You’re twenty-six!” Amy said.
“You’re twenty-seven!” Rebecca said.
“I’m twenty-eight now,” Amy said.
Rebecca pulled out her phone. Then she just looked at it.
“I don’t even know who to text,” she said.
Edward had told John: I’m going to be in the City tonight, so can we please see each other? But John didn’t get off work till very late, and he sent Edward a text: Hey, it’s really late, I’m going to bed. And Edward sent a text: Lemme buy you one drink, I’m in your neighborhood, I can get there fast. So, fine, how fast? John asked. And Edward said, gimme three minutes. It took him a good bit longer than that, but they had a drink, then went to the deli to buy cigarettes. So let’s just go have a drink at my house, John said. Where were you tonight? John said, on the way. Well, I was at Jason’s house, Edward said. Sneaky: He hadn’t been in the neighborhood at all.
So was this active pursuit? It was definitely active interest. John thought they could reach a good place if they talked about taking it really slow. Not that “slow” didn’t mean that every time they saw each other, they didn’t end up in bed! But they could work their way through it. They both needed to figure out if they both wanted it. He didn’t even have a home, John thought.
CHAD’S BIRTHDAY WOULD be at midnight. It was windy and dark. They were at a very loud bar. It had a smoking section with bars all around it—actual bars, like in a prison—and concrete walls, but an open shaft in the ceiling with the moon up there. It was chilly, and everyone was shell-shocked.
But there were two birthdays to celebrate. “And John’s is next week?” Jason asked. Jason had gotten drunk last night and, oddly enough, gone back to Amy’s to crash, and then he got up really late and almost didn’t go to work.
“Shall we go say hello to the birthday boys?” Edward said. The birthday boys were glued to the bar.
The reason most everyone was shell-shocked was that John’s new boss, Timothy, had quit, and the boss’s best friend, Jacob, who was now the new number two, had quit too. This rather shattered the system of belief that the office had chosen to accept from Timothy. The layoffs, the penny-pinching: Well, now what? The sacrifice for the good of the team? What people were feeling was betrayal, though they didn’t know who to be mad at. Timothy had taken the job, been an executioner, and now he couldn’t stomach it? That probably wasn’t fair to Timothy though. For all anyone knew he’d been thrown out too. For all anyone knew, he’d saved them from worse. So then who would come in—someone from the outside, with no desire of protecting the staff? Lots of people from the company’s office were there at the party, and they looked ashen. Amelia, in particular, looked like she’d been hit in the stomach. And it was all supposed to be a secret, except it wasn’t really a secret, and why should it be a secret anyway?
“You know what Gilda Radner said, what her book was?” John said. “It’s Always Something. I’m not telling anyone on staff,” John said.
“It doesn’t matter, everyone’s going to fucking know in like five minutes,” one of his coworkers said. “It’s so stupid.”
“But I’m not going to tell anyone on staff,” John said.
“Can I have a cigarette, somebody?” his coworker said.
“Hey!” John said. “What’s up, Timmy?”
Timothy had stumbled by.
They were all out in this smoking area, there was a hard breeze through the bars all around, and rock music was blaring.
“Are you under the impression this is all over in like a week?” his coworker asked.
“No, the way it was described to me was the end of the year.”
“Yeah right,” his coworker said.
“Do you think it’s bullshit on that one?” John asked.
“No, no, I mean, I think it’s end of the year or whatever, but don’t you feel like this trigger has been pulled before? I think it’s real, but do you know what I mean?”
“Here’s what I was saying a second ago,” John said. “Here’s what I said. Talking to Timothy, I said, bullshit, you’ve told me you quit like eighty times before.”
“But then you talked to Jacob?”
“And then Jacob—”
“Jacob kicked me in the face today.” That was a metaphor.
“And I was like, fuck you,” John said.
“I went in to see Jacob and I said, ‘Do I need a new career?’ And Jacob was like, ‘Yeah, actually, you do.’ What should I do with myself?”
The drama! An acquaintance came in.
“Hi, guy,” John said. “Very good.” He was surrounding himself with everyone.
Then Trixie came in. “I’m underdressed, but I came out anyway,” she said.
Sally had been out of t
own all week, so, Trixie said, she was making other people come into her office to hang out with her and entertain her. “I make Kyle come in and take off his glasses for a little while,” she said. “I’m always lecturing Kyle about his twenties, and how he shouldn’t waste them.” She meant that, at this time, being young was still for making mistakes.
Then Timothy and Jacob came again to the smoking area.
“Oh no. God. I came out here to get away from them. I can’t do it. I mean I saw it coming this afternoon,” said one of their coworkers. “Then I just went home. Because I was like, I need to run away from this right now. Because I knew I would see them here tonight. And I ate an entire fried chicken to fortify myself.”
Timothy lurched back inside.
“Wow,” someone muttered.
“Hi, I’m Trixie,” Trixie said.
“I’m Edward.”
“It’s really nice to meet you.”
“So you, you’re John’s boss, right?”
“I would not say ‘boss,’ ” she said.
They talked about work things for a while.
“I want to work so bad,” Edward said.
Then why don’t you have a job? someone asked.
“Well, because I’ve never had one,” Edward said. “I was actually so pissed, because there was a big New Yorker story this week about the company I wanted to get in at, and now everyone’s going to want to work at it. Whatever. I still feel more eminently qualified than everyone else but now it’s like a big thing. So. John emailed me and was like, did you read this article? And I was like, I can’t even read it! You need to be on the lookout for a job for me.”
