by Tash Skilton
Then I see who sent the message. Nick, not a client. Nick, the guy I was sort of seeing in LA. (Emphasis on “sort of.” He was Mary’s weed delivery guy, so our hours were . . . irregular.)
I didn’t ghost you, I correct him. I told you I was moving.
You didn’t respond to any of my messages! THAT’S GHOSTING.
No, that’s saying goodbye. Ghosting is a mystery that’s never solved.
Have a nice life, I GUESS. Your boss owes me 2k in back weed.
I’m sure that’s true, but what am I supposed to do about it?
You’ll have to take that up with Mary.
Block, move on.
For the next two hours I alternate between working on my spec script and logging in to the Sweet Nothings portal. On my sixteenth try, three clients have become available, so I frantically move my cursor to click on one of the boxes but I’m not fast enough because the screen refreshes into the usual wah-wah: There are currently no ghostwriting jobs. The graphic has changed, at least, from the sexy foot to a person whispering something into another person’s ear. (Sweet nothings, one must presume.) At least the tech guys are keeping busy. It’s a much nicer look for the site. Now if only I could get a piece of the action.
I shoot another glare in Table Thief’s direction. I would’ve been quicker on the uptake if he hadn’t stolen my breakfast and workstation.
Two p.m. rolls around and he’s still there.
I mosey over to the counter—mercifully, Evelynn’s shift has ended, so I have an opportunity to seem normal to the current barista—and get a refill on my coffee. I stare longingly at a black bean and quinoa bowl. It’s the cheapest thing on the menu, but it’s still too rich for my one-client blood.
Back at my child-size table, an e-mail has arrived from Clifford. Probably another NDA to sign, or an updated protocol handbook (rumor has it he stole it from his prior company). I click the Dropbox link in the body of the text and music suddenly bursts out of my laptop speakers: The Weeknd, crooning loudly that, due to the way I work it, I’ve er-er-er-er-er-earned it.
What is happening! I stab my finger on the lower-volume key until the song is muted. The people in line raise their eyebrows. One of them shakes her head at me. And I just know Table Thief heard it, too.
Blushing, I put my headphones on, attach them to the laptop, and tentatively bring the volume back up, double-checking to make sure no one else can hear. It’s a video. Heart pounding, but convinced it will be a private viewing this time, I reload the file. Over a black screen, The Weeknd assures me again that I earned it. Then Clifford appears. He actually walks toward the camera like he’s approaching me across a room in real life.
“Greetings, Rockstar! Don’t worry, that song cost us nothing because it’s for parody purposes. But girl, you earned it.”
Does he have one auto-message for female ghostwriters and one for men? I wonder idly. And if so, is that offensive to either group?
“If you’re seeing this message, it means you totally powered up! Your latest client . . .”—a weird pause, followed by an overdub in postproduction of—“. . . Tess Riley . . .”—before returning to his regular voice, “has deleted his or her dating profile. Which means you have a success story! Yes!” (Pause for overdub again . . .) “Tess Riley . . . has found true love! What does this mean? It means YOU get a $500 bonus” (KA-CHING sound effect, with animated coins falling around Clifford) “and a DIY party in your honor. Check your mail, alligator, for a bubbly surprise. Most important for YOU, it means you automatically get the next client that comes down the pike. No need to scramble, it’s all yours. Congratulations, and have a great day or night.”
I’m still reeling from the unexpected communiqué from Clifford and The Weeknd, but there’s no denying it’s wonderful news. Five hundred bucks will pay for countless taxi rides. If I ever went anywhere, I’d be psyched.
It finally hits me, the reason it’s so difficult to nab clients in the portal: Most of them are filtered into the accounts of freelancers who’ve proven themselves. Clifford’s either a dick or a mastermind when it comes to motivation. Those with no aptitude for the job won’t even need to be fired; they’ll simply never get clients, without knowing why. Like being ghosted. I’m not sure how I feel about that, but regardless, I did earn it, dammit. Tess Riley wanted an architect, twenty-eight to thirty-seven, with a soccer-player body. She crossed her fingers for a man of South American or Dutch descent. Did I deliver? You bet your sweet ass I did!
Mateo Van de Berg was both.
I close my laptop and pack up, floating on a wave of satisfaction. Time to call it a day, leave on a high note (if only; some weed would be a great way to calm down for the trek home). A siren rages in the distance, drawing ever closer, and I cringe, reminded of what I’m about to walk out into. The city, alive and unrelenting, ready to toss me around like an old hacky sack.
I pass Table Thief on my way out. He glances at me and I look away just as quickly, but not before we make eye contact. I take a deep breath and push the exit door. And then, despite the noise and crowds threatening me, I smile, briefly, to myself. Because he doesn’t know it, but today is the last day he will ever sit there.
CHAPTER 3
MILES
Evelynn wasn’t kidding about the bottomless cup of coffee. I Am Legend is over there in her corner table, hunched over her laptop for almost the whole day, every now and again shooting a dirty look my way. But like I said, I’ve lived in New York City for fifteen years. If I can’t handle death ray eyes from some doe-eyed brunette, I deserve to have my MetroCard revoked.
By the way, even if she hadn’t told me, I’d have figured out she wasn’t from New York by virtue of her outfit. It’s the end of April and she’s in a tank top and shorts. We had a blizzard less than two weeks ago, which might—though really doesn’t—explain the combat boots. Although maybe it’s just her way of letting the world know she has a smoking hot bod but will also kick your ass if you stare too long. Which I can respect. Less obvious to decipher is the bizarre fingerless knit glove things that come up to her elbows and were clearly homemade by someone who was either drunk or gleefully looking to use the #nailedit hashtag. Wherever she’s from, it’s probably devoid of seasons and, let’s face it, culture. Maybe someplace utterly predictable, like Florida.
Whatever her story, I need to ignore her. Just like I need to ignore why I haven’t been to Café Crudité in six weeks. It’s not that this was exactly “our place,” mine and Jordan’s. But we used to go here sometimes, together, back when she lived around the corner with three roommates, back before we made the leap to cross a bridge and moved to a borough that didn’t start with “Man” and end with “holy hell, that’s how much you’re charging for this closet, but Jesus that is a nice terrace, I can fit a chair out there and have, like, outdoor space, where do I sign?”
I mean, we also made the leap to move in together, of course, but at the time, the Brooklyn thing seemed like the bigger deal. Sidenote: Last year Miles was such a douchebag.
And a moron. A goddamn romantic in this day and age—and at his age? Like it took him thirty-one years to realize that happily ever after literally belongs in a fairy tale. For children. As Gemma, the British girl I briefly dated before Jordan, used to say: what a nob.
But, anyway, this nob has stayed away from this café lately because there were too many memories of grabbing a cup of coffee on mornings after spending the night, or sometimes loitering here after dinner because they were lax about that and we didn’t particularly have a hell of a lot of money. Which was why when the TITMH offices vanished in a poof of whatever Clifford was smoking, it was my go-to place to park my ass and get some work done. Even if it was a bit of a trek from Brooklyn, coming here kept up my daily routine of heading out to “the office.”
Which is why I’m here, now. This is the last place I remember actually giving a shit about my job. And if I’m now forced, by threat of professional disgrace and unemployment, to try and show up
as some semblance of former Employee of the Century Miles Ibrahim . . . this seems like the logical place to go.
I open up Jude Campbell’s questionnaire and read it. Then I reread it, again and again, until I memorize it. No more string quartet surprises for me. I click over to the three dating website profiles he’s linked out to and peruse them. I start to make notes on what we can change. He doesn’t have a lot of info out there, which is a rookie mistake. You don’t want to write a dissertation, but you do want to have enough content to show that you took time to fill the profile out. That demonstrates follow-through and dedication to the cause. Of course, there is a fine line between being thorough and TL;DR, which is a lot of where I come in. The words should be carefully chosen to reflect our clients’ (enhanced and copyedited) personalities; they should sparkle . . . but leave you wanting more.
I e-mail Jude, introducing myself as his Tell It to My Heart writer and asking him when he might be free to meet, letting him know I could do it as early as today. I’ve just hit send when music comes blasting from a corner table, warranting a glance in that direction.
It’s I Am Legend, whose face has turned bright pink, Bambi lashes fluttering as she frantically hits keys on her laptop. I’m pretty sure that’s a song from Fifty Shades of Grey. Is that what she’s doing here? Does hoarding free food while she watches soft-core porn in public get her off or something? I watch her for a second, curious whether I can discern if she’s turned on. Then I catch myself. Under no circumstances am I to be checking out women again, even if it’s purely anthropological.
A whoosh alerts me that I have an incoming message. An e-mail from Jude, who says he can meet at four p.m. today. Excellent. Eager and communicative is a good sign in a client. I e-mail him back with directions to Café Crudité.
Then I take out my phone to test myself on how well I’ve absorbed my client’s profile.
I open up 24/7, one of the scores of dating apps I have downloaded (as a work thing, of course, because I, myself, am obviously never dating again. The profiles aren’t even set up as me, but as a hodgepodge of background info I made up and pictures stolen from a Google Images search that I’m pretty sure are from a random Czech college brochure). I look over the twenty-four thumbnail images and short profile snippets that have popped up as the daily matches for “me.” And then I pick the five that I think Jude might be most likely to select. I hesitate, choosing between a financial analyst who plays softball on the weekends and a marketing coordinator who is a Pilates instructor. I end up going with Miss Pilates: probably has more free time along with being more limber. I’ll check my answers with Jude at the end of our meeting.
Now I just have forty-five minutes to kill before he gets here. I’m feeling a little hungry, but the biscotti are gone (obviously) and some desperate person even took the kale muffins. I glance over to the corner table and see that I Am Legend is on her way out too, throwing one last glare my way before she reaches the door. Fare thee well, Tampa Bay. You better toughen up fast or New York will break you within a week, sending you back to the sun-soaked swamps whence you came.
Despite my rumbling stomach, I decide against buying anything to eat. Even with my due diligence today, who knows if I’m still going to be employed next week, and I’ll be kicking myself if I have to skip out on dinner because I got tempted by a four-dollar cake pop. And now that Legend is gone, there’s no one interesting here to even look at/stare down as an unofficial tour guide on the Real New York Experience.
I take out my phone again. And before I know exactly what I’m doing, I’ve opened up Instagram and have navigated over to Jordan’s pregnancy post. This time, I only spend a minute or so looking at the picture itself before I get whirlpooled into the rabbit hole of comments.
In between the congrats and the OMGs are some real gems.
“Way to go, Miles and Jordan!” from Greta, the German foreign exchange student my parents hosted one summer. Aha! At least I’m not the only one who thought the baby might be mine. Though I should probably write her . . . not that I’m exactly sure how that e-mail is going to go:
Then a simple “Congratulations” from . . . is this for real?! My aunt Fatma?
And then, as if she can sense both my impending breakdown and the incredulous thoughts I’m having about her own mother, I get a text.
How’s it going?
It’s Aisha, my cousin.
Is your Spidey sense on high alert? I write. Aisha has a knack—or I like to think we both do—for sensing the exact moment when the other person is in need of a check-in. It probably has something to do with both of us being only children. She’s the closest thing I have to a sibling, and vice versa.
I hope you are not looking at Jordan’s post. Or writing her. Or thinking about her, she writes.
Of course not, I type back. Why would I ever write her? I mean, aside from this morning, but obviously it was pure adrenaline steering that boat. But speaking of writing things, you might want to have a talk with your mother.
Oh God. What did she do now?
Oh, nothing, I type. Just congratulated my ex-fiancée on the baby she’s having with another man. On Instagram. NBD.
There’s a considerable pause before Aisha writes again. You know how they have parental lock features on phones? They should really have one that goes the other way too. FOR parents. I’ll talk to her. Again. I’m sorry.
I laugh despite myself. Honestly? It’s probably the first time I’ve laughed since Jordan’s “We need to talk.” So maybe you should thank her.
Do you need me to tell you Jordan doesn’t deserve you and you’re better off and you’ll be over her before you know it?
I type out No and then, thinking better of it, delete it and replace it with, It couldn’t hurt . . .
Well, then, she doesn’t deserve you. You are absolutely better off without her. And you’ll be over her much, much sooner than you think. It wasn’t meant to be.
I laugh, bitterly this time. I don’t believe in meant-to-be.
Yeah, right, she types back. This is Dumped Miles talking. Write me again in two months when you’re back to Secret Rom-Com-Loving Miles.
Hey, I write. It was never a secret.
True, she types back. Heart on Your Sleeve Miles. I’ll be waiting for you.
Yeah, yeah.
In the meantime . . . just delete Instagram from your phone.
I look down at my phone and hesitate. Can I really do that? I mean, can anyone really do that?
Yes, you can do it. Aisha responds to my brain signals again. And, trust me, I’ll be making sure my mom does too.
I sigh, and then click the buttons to remove the app. Fine. Anything else?
Yes. ♥ you.
♥ you too.
And if I ever see Jordan again, I will 100% kick her ass.
I laugh. Aisha is about four foot eleven but does an intense kickboxing boot camp class three times a week. I wouldn’t take any bets against her. Thank you, I write back. Though maybe not in her condition.
You’re right, she writes. I’ll give her an IOU for . . . let’s say . . . 8 months postpartum?
Sounds fair.
The front door jangles and I look up to see a familiar face walking through it. Gotta run. My client’s here.
Ooh. Scope him out for me? I could definitely use a little extra work this month.
Will do.
I stand up as I put my phone away, calling out Jude’s name to get his attention since I have the advantage of knowing what he looks like. He’s got artfully styled reddish-brown hair and an equally well-groomed beard. His eyes are green and he’s almost definitely picked out his form-fitting T-shirt to highlight both them and his biceps, obviously a perk of his job as a personal trainer. If this was twenty years ago, and this guy was just trying to pick up girls in a bar . . . he definitely wouldn’t need my help.
As it is, it won’t even be a stretch to recommend Aisha’s photography services to him. Considering what he’s got to work w
ith, and Aisha’s magic mix of the right lighting, the right poses, and her secret-sauce filter . . . I’m pretty sure she could make him look like Jude Law if she wanted to.
“Hello. Miles, is it?” he says, as he walks over toward my outstretched hand.
Yeah, the accent was the right choice. Sure, it might be a little hard to figure out exactly what he’s saying, but it’s probably just hard to hear over the sound of all the dropping panties.
“Yes. Hi, Jude. A pleasure to meet you. Please have a seat.” We shake hands, and he gets settled down at the table across from me. “Can I get you anything? A cup of coffee?”
“Oh, no, thank you,” he says. “I’m actually off of caffeine these days.” Noted. He thinks for a second. “But do you think they’d be able to get me a cup of hot water with some lemon in it?”
“I’m sure that can be arranged. I’ll be right back.” I wait in line and give my drink order to Evelynn’s replacement barista, who doesn’t comment on the fact that I’ve been sitting here for hours and have now ordered something she has to give me for free. I leave a dollar in her tip jar for good karma.
“Ta,” Jude says when I place the mug in front of him, and then laughs. “Sorry, this is a little awkward, isn’t it? Meeting someone who’s supposed to be impersonating me.”
I put up my hands. “Don’t think of it like that. Just think of it like a coach. Or a copy editor. I’m helping you come across as the best version of yourself on paper. Or, you know, the screen.”
Jude nods. “Yeah, I’ve gathered I need some help in that department. The problem is, I absolutely never know what to write back, and then I forget, and before I know it I’ve accidentally ‘ghosted.’ Or something. That’s what a couple of the girls called it.”
I nod. “Writing is a skill set. You’re basically just hiring a consultant to help you with getting your foot in the door. No different than if you hired, say, someone to help you with your résumé.”