by Simon Rich
“He’s coming.”
Thousands rose as the leader marched through a pair of large brass doors. His expression was unsettlingly grim.
“Where,” he asked, “is Kayla?”
The blood drained from Kayla’s face as she stood. The leader walked toward her, his silver cane clacking against the gleaming marble floor.
“You were given a simple task,” he said. “To distract Gabe from our mission to destroy him.”
“I’m trying my best,” Kayla said.
The leader slapped her hard across the face. She fell to her knees and wept.
“You don’t seem to realize what’s at stake,” he said. “Gabe’s fiction could upend the entire literary establishment. His stories are so original—so unlike anything from Iowa—it could turn the world of letters on its head. And once he conquers that arena, his power will only grow. It starts with a few online stories. Then he finishes his novel. The next thing you know, he’s become a figure so globally dominant, all mankind is crushed beneath his yoke. We must stop his rise!”
The conspirators murmured their assent. Since the moment Gabe first put pen to page, they’d done what they could to thwart his dreams.
They hired construction workers to drill outside his window every time he tried to write.
They created a phony law firm to hire him as a paralegal and fill up his weekdays with busywork.
They commissioned pornographers to create hard-core sex videos that catered to his specific tastes, and then sent him these videos, in the form of pop-up ads, whenever he was “on a roll,” so that the urge to masturbate would force him to abandon his fiction.
They paid actors to pose as friends and invite him to parties every Saturday, so that he’d be too hungover to write on his one day off. And they sent him a series of girlfriends to distract him from his art with a mixture of affection and love.
Still, despite their efforts, Gabe hadn’t abandoned his writing. He still threatened to collapse the status quo and tear apart the fabric of society.
The leader folded his arms across his chest.
“Where,” he asked, “is the online fiction editor of the Synecdoche Review?”
A goateed man sheepishly raised his hand.
“Why did you publish his story?” the leader demanded.
The editor looked away. Tears were already streaming down his face.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It was just too good. If I’d rejected it, he would have known something was up. I thought that if I made the story worse by changing the ending, and watering down the first paragraph—”
The leader wrapped his fingers around the editor’s neck.
“Please,” gurgled the underling as he tried to pry the gloved hands from his throat. “Please.”
The crowd watched in silence as the leader strangled the life out of his body. The editor kept struggling, but eventually his wriggling limbs went limp.
Kayla swallowed as some henchmen appeared and dragged away the corpse.
“Stop him,” the leader told her. “Or else.”
Kayla was lying awake in bed when she heard a soft knock on her door.
“Are you still up?” Gabe mumbled.
She let him into her apartment. He was holding a foil-wrapped platter.
“What’s this?”
“I did the lasagna.”
She looked up at her boyfriend; his eyes were as wide and fearful as a child’s.
“I’m so sorry about before,” he said. “I was being such an idiot.”
He put down the lasagna and gave her a tentative hug. She put out some plates and forks and they began to eat in silence.
“It’s still hot,” Kayla said.
“I took a cab,” he said. “I didn’t want it to get cold.”
She reached across the table and took his hand. He smiled with relief.
“What’s that?” Kayla asked, pointing to a paperback in his coat pocket.
He took it out and showed it to her.
“Practice tests,” he said. “For the LSATs.”
“Seriously?”
Gabe blushed.
“I just signed up for it. I’m taking it on the twenty-fifth. I’m going to spend this month studying. Just… going all out every weekend.”
She raised an eyebrow. “What about your novel?”
Gabe flicked his wrist.
“I think I’m done with that stuff for a while,” he said. “It was distracting me from what’s really important.” He looked up at Kayla and saw that she was grinning.
“Why are you smiling?” he asked.
“No reason.”
“Come on, tell me.”
“I’m just happy,” she said. “That’s all.”
PLAYED OUT
“Nice kicks,” Dan said with a smirk.
I looked down and winced. I’d tried my best to wear cool clothes to Brooklyn, but Dan had zeroed in on my one lapse.
“The firm makes me wear loafers,” I said. “Sucks, right?”
Dan ignored me. He’d taken out a bag of loose tobacco and was rolling himself a cigarette. I thought about asking to bum one but was terrified I might cough in front of him. There was only so much embarrassment I could take. I’d been with Dan for fifteen minutes, and my lameness had already earned me two eye rolls, one for mispronouncing “Nostrand Avenue” and the other for quoting Modern Family. Add my Ferragamos to the mix, and it was a miracle Dan was still willing to be seen with me.
“So why’d you move out of Astoria?” I asked.
Dan rolled his eyes harder than he had all night, his lashes fluttering almost audibly.
“It’s so played out. It used to be chill. Now all anyone cares about is who’s got the newest iPad. It’s turning into another Park Slope. Just totally fucking bougie.”
I smiled. Only Dan would consider Astoria bourgeois. But that was the kind of guy he’d always been. At Dalton, when I was cramming for my SATs, he was sneaking out to unannounced Strokes concerts. He dropped out of Skidmore after less than a month and moved straight to Williamsburg, a full decade before it became cool. Now he lived in a neighborhood that was so hip I’d never even heard of it. He was always miles ahead of everyone and light-years ahead of me.
“So, how’s the band going?” I asked.
“We’re working on an EP,” he said. “But it’s hard to rehearse, now that Dave’s all Mr. Corporate.”
I nodded. Dave worked for the teachers’ union, but Dan’s definition of corporate was wide enough to include anything with steady hours. He’d had only one job in his life—running the guest list at a rock venue in Bushwick. He’d quit when they banned smoking.
“Hey, do you remember that time in ninth grade?” I asked, eager to reminisce. “When Mr. Hurwitz caught us with those beers?”
“Fucking Hurwitz,” Dan said, his rage untouched by the years.
I closed my eyes and luxuriated in the memory. Dan and I hiding behind a water tower, Pabsts in hand, trying not to laugh while our balding teacher shouted in the distance. It was the last time I’d felt cool enough to be his friend.
“I wonder what that fucker’s up to now,” Dan said.
I swallowed. “You didn’t hear?”
“Hear what?”
“Jeez,” I said. “Well, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you, but Mr. Hurwitz actually passed away.”
Dan laughed. “How’d that happen?”
“I think it was just his time. At the memorial service they said he was eighty-seven.”
Dan squinted at me.
“You went to his memorial service?”
“Yeah, me and Dave stopped by after work. It was nice. His daughters spoke. There’s pictures on Facebook if you want to check it out.”
Dan shrugged. “I’m not on Facebook.”
He knelt over a manhole and yanked off the heavy metal lid.
“Come on,” he said. “I’ll show you my new place.”
“I’ve never been in a sewer before,” I admitted.
>
Dan snorted. “Why am I not surprised?”
I followed him down the ladder, the rusted rungs scraping against my palms.
“So what’s it like living down here?” I asked.
“You mean, like, without a Whole Foods?”
I bit my lip. Sometimes, with Dan, it was safest not to speak at all.
He hopped off the ladder and landed with a sloshy thud. “You coming or what?”
I felt something bristly brush against my ankles. “Are there rats down here?”
“For now,” Dan said. “Once this place gets gentrified, who knows?”
“And you’re the only human?”
“Yes,” he said in a sarcastic schoolboy monotone. “I am the only human.”
“Cool!” I said. “Cool.”
I said goodbye mentally to my Ferragamos and leaped into the darkness. The water was icy, with the troubling consistency of stew. The smell was unimaginable, so pungent I could taste it. It was completely dark except for a small reddish flame; at some point, Dan had lit another cigarette.
“So this is the practice space,” Dan said as we waded through the muck. “And the bedroom’s over there, between those pipes.” He picked up a metal spike. “You hungry?”
I shook my head and watched as he jabbed the murky water with his weapon. Dan had never been an athlete and his thrusts were pretty clumsy. Eventually, though, after ten or fifteen minutes, I heard a squashing noise. He pulled his spike out of the water and smirked at his catch: a wriggling, screeching eel. The creature lunged for his face and he bashed its head against a pipe.
“Fucking eel,” he said. “Relax.”
He lifted the dangling creature to his mouth and bit a chunk out of its middle. Black blood spurted onto his skinny jeans.
“Want some?” he asked.
“That’s okay.”
“I could, like, put processed sugar on it or whatever, to make it taste like McDonald’s.”
“What?”
“Never mind,” Dan said. He was about to take another bite when the eel regained consciousness and lunged at his face again.
“Aaaaah!” Dan screamed as it bit into his flesh. “Aaaaaaaaaah!”
He flailed his arms as the eel thrashed around, its jagged teeth pressed into his cheek.
“Kill it!” he screamed. “Kill it!”
I grabbed Dan’s spike and tried to detach the eel from his face.
“Kill it!” Dan screamed. “Kill it! Kill it! Kill it! Kill it!”
“I’m trying!”
“Kill it!” Dan repeated. “Aaaaaaah! Kill it!”
I jabbed the spike into the monster’s yellow eyes. It shrieked and slithered down into the sewage. A rat dragged the carcass out of sight.
“Hey!” Dan shouted as the rodent ran off with his meal. “Hey!”
I looked up at my friend. His expression was impassive, but I could tell he was in pain. His bruised hands were trembling and he was bleeding from a large gash in his face.
If I wanted to get him out of the sewer, I was going to have to strategize.
“Dan,” I said cautiously, “I don’t know about this place.”
He cocked his chin. “What’s wrong with it?”
I hesitated. “It’s sort of… played out.”
“Played out?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It used to be chill? Now all anyone cares about is who’s got the newest eel. It’s turning into another Park Slope.”
Dan nodded slowly. “I guess it has gotten sort of bougie.”
“It’s totally bougie!” I said, rolling my eyes for emphasis. “Now come on, let’s go to that party.”
“There’s a party?”
“Yeah! It’s in this old brick building called Mount Sinai. It’s a pretty crazy scene. They’ve got all these beds set up. And people walking around in gowns. Lots of drugs.”
“Sounds pretty chill.”
He followed me up the ladder and I Ubered us to the ER.
“This is pretty cool,” he said as some orderlies cut off his clothing and sedated him.
“It’s cool,” I assured him.
A nurse dressed his wounds and slid some paper slippers on his feet.
“Nice kicks,” I said. Dan smiled proudly and drifted off to sleep.
RIP
Rip reached into his minifridge and pulled out a Four Loko. The government had banned the beverage months ago, claiming its high caffeine and alcohol content caused liver damage. But he’d saved one can to drink on a special occasion. And now, for the first time since graduating, he finally had something worth celebrating.
At 12:00 a.m. EST, he had officially achieved funding on Kickstarter for his jazz blog. Starting tomorrow, he’d be sticking it to the mainstream jazz media one post at a time.
His parents had offered to get him an internship at Jazz Masters Monthly (they were friends with the editor in chief). But Rip wasn’t interested in working for a soulless place like that. How could a corporate-owned magazine possibly be an authority on jazz? He’d done some digging online and found out that the same company that owned Jazz Masters Monthly owned Cat Fancy. Who gave a shit about cats?
“Their office is in midtown,” his mother told him over the phone. “So be sure to wear a suit.”
“I don’t own a suit,” Rip told her proudly.
“Buy one,” she begged. “Please, just put it on the card.”
Rip said he would but never got around to it. Instead, the night before the interview, he stayed up late jamming with Fish and Stinky. They’d been in an experimental acid trio at Brown called the Ketchup Dilemma, and even though they’d been out of school for five years, they still made jamming a priority. They were taking a break between songs to snort some Adderall when the answer to Rip’s problems suddenly popped into his head. He didn’t need to put on some suit and take the G to the L to Manhattan every day. He could start his own magazine, on the World Wide Fucking Web. At 4:00 a.m. he sent an email to the editor, canceling the interview and wishing him luck with his “corporate rag.” His friends laughed and cheered as he CC’d his parents and clicked Send. Forget being an intern for some monthly magazine. He was going to be the founder of a daily one.
Now, after sixty days of waiting, he’d finally raised the funds he needed to get started. He had six thousand dollars to pay the Web designer, one thousand to buy albums to review, and thirty-five hundred to make promotional T-shirts. He also had an ice-cold Four Loko in his hand. He reclined on his futon and poured the sour liquid down his throat. He was tired, but he didn’t want to sleep. He couldn’t wait for tomorrow.
Rip woke up with a horrible taste in his mouth. He opened the blinds and recoiled at the brightness of the sun. It was noon, if not later, and he was starving. He rummaged through the futon, found his phone, and called up Stinky.
“Breakfast?” he asked.
“It’s two p.m.,” Stinky said.
Rip laughed.
“So?”
“I’m at work.”
Rip was confused.
“When did you get a job?”
“I gotta go,” Stinky said. “That’s a client on the other line.”
“A client?” Rip stood up with excitement. “That mean you’re dealing again?”
“What? No. I’m in advertising.”
Rip felt his throat go dry.
“Stinky,” he said, “what’s going on?”
“It’s Stanley,” said Stinky. “And I’m sorry, but I have to go.”
Rip staggered into the bathroom and gasped. He’d never been able to grow a beard before; the hairs always came in unevenly. Now his entire face was covered in thick black fur. It was terrifying but also pretty cool. He looked sort of like the drummer from the Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey. He was about to post a picture on Instagram when he noticed something disconcerting. The front of his beard was black and lush, but the sides were thinning and flecked with streaks of gray.
“Fuck,” Rip said.
His phone began to vibrat
e in his hands. He waited for it to stop, but it kept on throbbing, like a bird trying to escape from his clutches. Eventually, after five or six minutes, the shaking subsided and a line of text flashed nightmarishly onto the screen. Rip’s eyes widened. He had over four thousand voice mails.
He brewed a pot of stale Blue Bottle and spent the afternoon catching up. Stinky was managing accounts at BBDO, one of the biggest international advertising agencies on earth. Fish had gone to law school, taken a job at White & Case, and moved into a brownstone in Park Slope. His sister was married with a daughter, and his parents had moved to Boca Raton. The Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey had changed lineups. The year was 2014. Rip wasn’t twenty-seven anymore.
He was thirty.
“Sorry I’m late,” Rip said. “The G took forever.”
“Why didn’t you take a cab?” Fish asked.
“What?”
“A cab,” Stinky said. “So you’d be on time.”
Rip stared blankly at his friends. He was confused and frightened.
“Well, we’ve lost our table,” Fish said, throwing his manicured hands up in frustration. “So I guess Ruby Foo’s it is.”
“Whoa,” Rip said. “That place is kind of pricey. Can’t we just, like, go to Burritoville? They’ve got free chips and those sauces.”
His friends ignored him and bounded south, their black loafers slapping against the pavement.
“I’m so hungover,” Rip said. “That Four Loko fucked me up big-time.”
Fish nodded. “You should do a cleanse.”
“A what?”
“A cleanse,” Fish said. “I’ve been on one for six weeks. No alcohol, no caffeine, no refined sugar. I feel fantastic.”
They got to Ruby Foo’s and sat down in a booth.
“Sparkling or tap?” asked a waiter.
“Sparkling,” Fish and Stinky said in unison.
The waiter carefully poured them Pellegrino. His cheeks were full and rosy, and some pimples were clustered around his hairline. Rip winced at the realization that the waiter was younger than he was.
“You guys know I slept for three years, right?” he asked his friends.
Stinky sipped his Pellegrino. “You should see a doctor,” he said. “Someone good.”
