We Are Watching Eliza Bright

by A. E. Osworth

Suzanne: can we find out?

  Devonte: …not ethically?

  Suzanne: screw ethics

  Devonte: I don’t screw ethics.

  Suzanne: well is it ethical to let her get hurt?

  Suzanne: dev?

  Devonte: okay fine

  Devonte: wow, i found that fast

  Devonte: people are already talking about it. like other people did the work, i didnt have to

  Devonte: maybe you dont want to go over there?

  Devonte: anyone can find this rn

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  When Lewis sees the photo, it is a cocktail of emotions. Livid; vindicated. A heady mixture, intoxicating. Proven right and also deeply wronged. The mixture is more than that, even, though those are the two main flavors. There are also notes of longing, of wishing to be closer to Preston. Jealousy. And on the nose, we have the smell of Eliza having ruined his chances at this closeness, a mentor-mentee relationship that was budding and is now dead. On the finish, we have something extremely familiar. The specific rage of victimhood. The one caused by forced impotence, of external forces colluding against him, making sure he can’t get ahead, and all because he had the great misfortune to be born a straight, white man. No one wants to take responsibility for their own misfortune anymore. And so they have crowned a boogeyman. And we are that monster. Lewis is that monster.

  If they’d step back for just one second, they would see it for what it is: another form of egregious discrimination. Instead of their precious fucking equality, they’re turning around and standing on our necks instead. And that isn’t the way forward! But everyone’s letting them do it because they’re fags or females or illegals or whatever. Whatever fucking sob story of the minute they’re peddling in their latest race to the bottom, to be the most denigrated and most degenerate, their Oppression Olympics. Everyone’s letting them do it, and what are we supposed to do in response? They’re taking away our successes, our opportunities. There’s a reason we’re the greatest country on earth. And it’s because of us. We’re rich and powerful and no one fucks with us, and why? It’s not because of them. They’ll come crawling back when their beloved experimental society fails. They already are.

  It isn’t hard to find out where Preston lives. And if Lewis doesn’t do it, someone would. Leaky Joe, The Inspectre, Evrlrnr. It’s just not terribly difficult to do. But no one has done it yet, when Lewis sees the photo. It used to be much easier; Instagram pinpointed every user on a map. But they got wise, killed the feature, and now we have to do a little more work. But not with Preston. Preston’s building has several businesses in it: a comics shop, a dry cleaner and, yes, even a Starbucks. And with his location services turned on, it predicts and automatically tags those three every time. It doesn’t require a rocket scientist, and Lewis is smarter than most.

  Chapter Seventy-Four

  Here is another point at which we very accurately know what’s going on, and in real time. Some of us are right here, in meatspace, in the Starbucks. If straining ears made sounds, Eliza would hear the whine and creak of them as she walks in. We say nothing, not to her. She doesn’t need to know, doesn’t deserve to know. We know, though. We know, and so 4chan knows. Reddit knows. When we know something, we know something. We all know it.

  Eliza decides not to hurry. Her hair is tucked up under Preston’s hat and she leaves his sunglasses on her face. Jean-Pascale doesn’t show any sign he recognizes her. She steps up to the counter to order a coffee, black; she feels so tired. When she takes her cup and sits down across from him, he starts and looks up from his phone as she removes her silly disguise, lets her hair fall from the hat. Our suspicions are confirmed. We pull out our phones. We begin to type the conversation, the parts we can hear. He settles back in his chair, but he is not settled. He is leaning forward, magnetized. He is uncomfortable.

  “Hi,” he says.

  “Well,” she says.

  He lets out a puff of air he’s been holding in his chest. “Thank you. For meeting me. You didn’t have to.”

  “You’re right. I didn’t.” Eliza taps her fingers on the table. It feels strange when she’s mean. We’re not used to her being mean. Not openly, at least. We are much more used to the candy-coated, rat-mouthed girl, even if the caramel is hiding a rotten apple.

  “Listen. It’s weird, what I wanted to say. I wanted to, well, apologize.” Jean-Pascale pauses, grimaces. “And I wanted to say that I think it’s all wrong, what happened. Is happening. It’s just all so—wrong. And that moment, when you got fired.” He winces, takes another deep breath. “I wanted to let you know I’ve been fired.”

  “I know,” Eliza interrupts.

  “And that I didn’t do what they say I did. But I’m not fighting the termination.”

  Eliza’s been looking out the window, making her disinterest plain. Now she turns her head. “Wait,” she says. “It wasn’t you who posted my file?”

  Jean-Pascale shakes his head so hard he looks like a little boy. “No. But I took the folder. It was an accident, but I didn’t give it back. I was afraid—what it would look like—Lewis said they’d think I stole it—I tried to hide it.”

  “So who put it online?”

  Jean-Pascale’s eyes flick around. We imagine he doesn’t want to answer the question—we could be listening, after all—but Eliza’s stare wins. “I think it could have only been Lewis. He’s the only one who knew I had it.”

  “That fucker,” Eliza says, with emphasis on what sounds like every letter. A mother glares at her from one table over and gestures to her toddler girl. “Sorry,” Eliza mutters. “Why aren’t you fighting the termination, if it wasn’t you?”

  Jean-Pascale winces again. “I let it happen. I thought the code—80085—was funny. I made it up, actually. I didn’t put it on the server, but I thought of it. I didn’t turn the folder back in.” He pushes his coffee cup around the table with his pointer finger, not looking her in the eyes. “And I think the worst thing is I looked at your part of the patch again. You were right. We introduced errors. You’re a good developer and I know it. All this, and we lost someone good.”

  “That’s what I told you. That I was careful, I knew shit, I’d given games my pound of flesh. You didn’t believe me before.”

  “I know. I am sorry. About that too.”

  Eliza pauses long here, and we tap away on our phones. “There’s someone on the internet who’s trying to get to me in real life. Someone was at my apartment this morning.”

  “What?”

  “You don’t think—it couldn’t be Lewis, could it?”

  JP is about to say no, absolutely not, Lewis would never do such a thing. But he pauses, too long and hard. “I don’t know” is what he finally settles on. “I don’t actually know.”

  “He seems so—involved. If he released the folder, if he made sure you took the fall for it.”

  We pause here. Could The Inspectre be Lewis Fleishman? We ponder this; we know how it shakes out, of course, and with the timeline, well—it would be impossible. But we only know what the newspapers tell us about the whens of things and about who gets accused of what; it would make sense. It could make sense for Lewis to have a backup character, make sense that The Inspectre always seems to be around—being on the game at work is, after all, his job. He’s close enough to Eliza in proximity to take action. What if we rewound all the way to the calm before the storm, when we watched Lewis Fleishman play video games in his apartment, his window glowing electric blue. What if he was playing as The Inspectre, and not Doctor Moriarty? And we didn’t check in on him last night—what if, in his bag, he had a box with a Barbie doll in it, a bouquet of bodega flowers? What if he spent the broadcast cutting the face from a doll, and if his apartment is searched, we will find the discarded countenance flattened on his desk, pressed like a blossom with the weight and heat from a coffee cup? What if, after his mother went on the date, after she didn’t come home, he left his apartment in the wee hours of the morning and nailed his art pr
oject to Eliza’s door? Hung around to take the photo? The Inspectre is one of us, but he must revel in the speculation. Because unlike the rest of us, he isn’t very forthcoming.

  A third person sits down at their table; Eliza jumps. “Suzanne,” she sighs, relieved she knows the intruder. We fight not to turn our heads, to openly stare. Things are getting good. “What are you doing here?”

  “Surprise,” Suzanne answers, her voice flat. “We need to go.” She narrows her eyes at Jean-Pascale while reaching for Eliza’s elbow, ready to haul her up by the arm. We notice she’s hyperaware, her eyes darting at all of us. They land in all the wrong places. They land on stereotypes, the people she thinks we are. But they don’t linger where they ought to. Stupid. It’s also stupid she doesn’t grab Eliza and march her directly out the door. Her fingers on her friend’s arm are soft. They lack conviction. “What are you even doing here?” This isn’t a question for Eliza, but rather JP, who nervously stares down his cup of coffee.

  “I’m apologizing,” he says, without looking up.

  “Too little too late, friendo.”

  “He didn’t do my file,” Eliza interjects.

  Suzanne snorts. “Sure. Convenient. Let’s leave. Leave time now.”

  “No, I swear I didn’t!” JP says, alarmed. He doesn’t like being accused of lying, not at all.

  Suzanne smells blood, metaphorically speaking, and she forgets us. Her focus is laser-like on JP. “Oh. You swear?” Her eyebrow cocks up like she’s preparing to shoot a gun.

  Eliza tunes out the sparring, but they continue. Eventually JP stops defending and takes it, each small verbal cut, looking intently into his cup with basset hound eyes. She’s more uncomfortable than she’d have previously expected, watching Suzanne excoriate Jean-Pascale like this. She hadn’t been about to forgive him, not in the slightest. She was going to give him the requisite hard time. Or she was going to sue him and eat his soul. They all do. But we can see her face soften as he withers under Suzanne’s biting tongue. Eliza knows being in her friend’s cross hairs is harrowing. “Shouldn’t you be at work?” she interrupts and checks her watch—Preston’s, actually. Another thing she borrowed.

  “Yeah. I’m letting everything go to voicemail like we’re closed. And if anyone argues with me, well—” She runs her eyes up and down JP, who still hasn’t looked back up at her. “They’ve frankly got bigger issues right now.”

  “Why are you here, though?” Eliza asks.

  “You ignored your texts, your phone calls.”

  “Oh,” Eliza says. She holds up her new phone.

  Suzanne curses and the air turns blue around her. Babies cry; dogs howl; stay-at-home wine-moms get very angry. “You could’ve told a bitch,” is where she ends up, followed quickly by, “but this is not our biggest problem right now—”

  Eliza grabs Suzanne’s arm right back. “Wait, Suzanne. How did you get here?”

  “It’s part of what I came to tell you—it’s easy to find Preston. And there’s a photo. Of you and him. Everyone knows. Everyone knows you’re at his apartment, everyone knows his address. And everyone knows where you’re sitting right now, too. I have Google alerts on everything to do with you, and I was on my way to his place when another one hit, so I changed course. People are in here. People are in here with you and they’re telling the internet about it. Look, it’s all over Twitter and I don’t want to haul you around like you’re a child or a suitcase but we have to leave.” She offers up her phone as evidence. Eliza takes it, looks at the screen. The Inspectre’s Twitter profile is pulled up—the default egg on a green background, the bar at the top of the app that tells the user there are more tweets to be loaded, recent ones. Suzanne intends for her to see the photo of her and Preston, but Eliza taps the bar. Refreshes the page.

  She gasps. Drops the phone in the middle of the table and whirls toward the window, eyes wide, lips parted like a sex doll. Suzanne and JP lean in, over the phone, stare down at it.

  We have, of course, seen it by now. Even those of us watching the interaction in person. Especially us. Sure, it is tweeted publicly, and so we can all enjoy it. But there are only a select few of us who can see her face. Priceless like a Mastercard commercial. Eliza has just seen a photo of herself, Jean-Pascale and Suzanne sitting in the Starbucks, framed by a window.

  “@theinspectre: well hello, @yrface. It’s nice to see you.”

  Jean-Pascale leaps up and runs out the door, paces in front of the building and squints at passersby, trying to see if anyone is loitering, if anyone is holding up a phone.

  Let’s pause here for a second: no matter how we feel about Eliza, about Suzanne, about The Inspectre, every single one of us loves Jean-Pascale more in this moment. The outburst of collective love, entirely unspoiled by dissent, is difficult to justify. Why the fuck do we feel like this? And why so sudden, so strong? Because this is our story and because we can pause and digress as much as we want to interrogate it. Because it isn’t logical, the feeling, and it requires examination.

  Neither is it logical that Jean-Pascale gets up and hunts down an errant photographer when everything we know about The Inspectre suggests he’ll be gone and hidden before he hits the send button. He’s in a building or around the corner or even in a taxi, speeding away. Things change in a second; everything is instant. And even if The Inspectre makes a mistake, even if he sticks around—what’s Jean-Pascale going to do, exactly? He finds The Inspectre and then what? Holds him down while someone calls the police? For tweeting a photo in a public place? Will he take a swing at him? Jean-Pascale isn’t a violent person outside Windy City—he is not big on the consequences of fighting. And none of us know at this point what The Inspectre is capable of. The Inspectre could shoot him, stab him, tase him. JP doesn’t think about that.

  It is in this logical failure that we find the catalyst of our love. His action is reactionary, chaotic. But not only is it that—it is paternal, it is protective. It is good. Our gasp of feeling correlates to the precise moment that JP’s alignment changes; where we all align ourselves with him. We’re all Jean-Pascale.

  But back to it: He tries to find the angle where the photo was taken, but when he realizes it could have been zoomed in, flipped on its axis—The Inspectre could have been across the street in either direction—he comes back inside. But Eliza and Suzanne, they’re already reading the other tweets. There are so many more.

  Chapter Seventy-Five

  @theinspectre: i’m so sorry, @HumanMan

  @theinspectre: but you crossed a line today, @HumanMan

  @theinspectre: @HumanMan you hid a cunt from me

  @theinspectre: @HumanMan there’s a code, you know

  @theinspectre: the more crass among us would call it ‘bros before hos’ @HumanMan

  @theinspectre: @HumanMan I prefer to think ‘misters before sisters’

  @theinspectre: but it’s clear, @HumanMan, that she’s not your sister

  @theinspectre: @HumanMan i can respect that

  @theinspectre: many men do stupid things in the name of pussy, @HumanMan

  @theinspectre: you got in my way, @HumanMan, and you broke the code

  @theinspectre: so I broke my code too, @HumanMan

  @theinspectre: i promise i won’t do it again, @HumanMan

  @theinspectre: @HumanMan as long as you promise not to break yours again

  @theinspectre: and don’t worry, @HumanMan, he didn’t pay the ultimate price

  @theinspectre: @HumanMan just a small fine

  Chapter Seventy-Six

  What the fuck does this mean,” Suzanne states more than asks. Jean-Pascale looks green again, and Suzanne reaches over to pinch his arm. “Buck up, wuss, this isn’t about you.”

  For a second, Eliza doesn’t know what this could mean either. It sounds like nonsense. The ramblings of an internet crazy. But all at once she drops the phone as though the battery has heated up, the second time in what feels like seconds. “Dog,” she says. “Dog is in the apartment. He didn’t ta
ke Dog to work today because I was there.” She tears out the front door, Suzanne and JP close behind.

  “Wait!” Suzanne is shouting. “I’m dialing the police, you can’t just go in there, he could still be there! He could still be in there.” We lose sight of them as they rocket down the street; we are now glued to our phones, reading everything twice, three times. We want to suck every inference, every hidden nuance in each 140-character bite. Eliza, fueled by adrenaline or perhaps simply small and fast, outstrips her compatriots. The doorman stares at her as she runs in, but recognizes her and lets her pass. She pushes the elevator button and, mercifully, one is already on the ground floor. She wishes fervently for the Wonkavator—to move diagonally and let her directly in without running down the hall. She wishes for teleportation.

  When Eliza arrives at the front door, she wishes she hadn’t gotten there as quickly. No one is behind her; she has no backup. But the door is ajar. The whole doorknob has been removed and now there is a yawning hole. She can hear Dog whining.

  We can pause here too, because here is where another gasp of feeling escapes, one that surprises us even more. Because this time, we love Eliza. We love her like we do Jean-Pascale. It is so confusing. We love that damn fool as she flies toward an open door, to where her stalker may very well be waiting, all for the love of Dog. Whatever we feel about her before or after, here is the moment that changes us forever. In this brief moment, we repudiate The Inspectre. We cast him out. He is not us. We didn’t make him. He acts alone.

  She pushes through. The door bangs against the wall, leaving a divot and announcing her presence. There is blood on the floor, but not as much as either she or we were expecting. “Dog?” Eliza calls out—she isn’t thinking clearly, or she wouldn’t make a sound. She hears another whimper and runs toward the bathroom just as Suzanne and Jean-Pascale squeeze, two at once, through the doorway. Eliza opens the shower curtain to a scared, shaking Dog. He is whining and bloody, and minus a tail, but otherwise appears to be fine. It has been excised with precision, the knife-line sharp and accurate. It is the same loving cut as the doll, we think, and we are not sure how we know that. But we do. Tiny Eliza lifts Dog bodily—he is not a small dog—and starts heading back toward the door. Jean-Pascale is looking suspiciously green, the same as when we last saw him faint. “Fucking pull it together, JP, and Yelp a vet’s office,” Eliza says from underneath Dog. She grunts.