Fake Accounts
Page 28
Without breaking eye contact, or what would have been eye contact if he hadn’t been in shadow from the sun, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. It was the same wallet he’d had when we were together, an expensive zippered thing, now worn at the corners but holding up well. I got it for him for his birthday. He opened it and took out a twenty-euro note. The shades of blue, the gothic windows, the hologram. Holding the bill in his left hand he closed the wallet with his right and put it back in his pocket unzippered, broke his awkward charitable posture, and stood up straight. The sun was in my eyes again and I brought my hand up to shade them. “Yes,” he said, maybe pityingly, maybe exasperatedly, maybe patronizingly, maybe guiltily, maybe shamefully, maybe ruefully, maybe matter-of-factly, maybe absolutely, totally, completely devoid of any feeling at all. He lifted my saucer and coffee cup, ignoring the wasps, which dispersed into chaos, and slipped the note under it. “That’s part of the point.”
Acknowledgments
THE UNATTRIBUTED, PARAPHRASED QUOTE ON PAGE 50 COMES from Norman Rush’s novel Mating: “Underneath everything in America he sometimes imagined there was a subliminal sound like an orange crate cracking when you stand on it, except that this sound never stopped.”
Thanks to my agent, Alia Hanna Habib, as well as Rebecca Gardner and the rest of the Gernert Company. Thanks to my editor, Kendall Storey, and everyone at Catapult, and to Anna Kelly and everyone at 4th Estate. Thanks to Eva-Marie von Hippel for giving this book a home in Berlin.
Many people read and commented on early drafts and sections, including Erika Allen, Callie Beusman, Jeremy Gordon, Monica Heisey, Martin Jackson, Ryan Nees, Hanson O’Haver, Damion Searls, James Yeh, and Matt Zeitlin. Ben Mauk gifted me the perfect title. Special thanks to Dave Wingrave for being an essential reader and patient friend, even though I am very annoying. Thanks to Alyssa Mastromonaco for getting it, and for the support, wisdom, and friendship. Thanks to my family.
Finally, thanks to Jeffrey Kirkwood, whose likeness doesn’t appear in these pages at all, though without him they wouldn’t be nearly as good. The rest will be for, and never about, you.
© Pete Voelker
LAUREN OYLER’s essays on books and culture have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, London Review of Books, The Guardian, New York magazine’s The Cut, The New Republic, Bookforum, and elsewhere. Born and raised in West Virginia, she now divides her time between New York and Berlin.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2021 by Lauren Oyler
All rights reserved
ISBN: 978-1-948226-92-9
Jacket design by Nicole Caputo
Book design by Jordan Koluch
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020943095