by S. J. Maher
Just that morning she’d posted a cheerful, encouraging message on my Facebook page after I announced my new job: Congrats! You’re so smart!
Lucas White, Linda’s friend, a hot black guy with a nice smile and spiky dreads, posted on Facebook to congratulate me and ask if I still had time to work on our documentary. Of course, Lucas!
Ling Mai, a pretty, pierced Asian girl who was friends with Linda and Lucas, sent me messages on several platforms congratulating me.
Well, Linda, Lucas, and Ling Mai, I thought, you are about to reveal to your online friends a hitherto carefully concealed love of cheese.
I spent hours having them join cheese fancier groups, even filched a few old posts from real cheese lovers, and had them post them on their blogs. Soon Linda and her friends would be well-loved guideposts to the cheese world. Then they would discover Cheese of the Month and would not be able to contain their enthusiasm.
It wasn’t a great plan, but it was all I had. Wayne was adorable, but our relationship would work better if he worked someplace else anyway.
I could support him emotionally when he got outsourced, help him find more satisfying, rewarding work. It was the kind of funny story we could tell people years later sitting on the porch of our summer place in Martha’s Vineyard.
13
I decide to do a complete inventory of the storage locker, to see if there might be anything that will help me make my escape.
I drag everything out of Jess’s old bags of clothes and find a few useful items. Unfortunately, there’s no underwear, which is what I need the most, but there are some old T-shirts I can take.
There’s nothing useful in the kitchen stuff—why did she ever come to own an egg separator? In the camping stuff, though, there’s a nice little black canvas daypack, which will be my getaway bag.
I start going through the boxes of documents. There are a lot of old essays and notebooks from law school, some old rental agreements and bills. I’m surprised to find a bunch of stuff that has to do with me.
When I was in my first year at college, I fell in love with Gary, a young English professor, while sitting in a Shakespeare class that I had dreaded taking. He was brilliant, or seemed so to me, and he did lovely recitations, making the text come alive, which made me get Shakespeare for the first time.
Near the end of first semester, I went to see him during office hours and asked his advice about how I could study Shakespeare more intensively. He knew I had a crush on him. He encouraged me, lent me a book—Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt. I emailed him a few days later, told him I loved it. He suggested that I return it to his apartment.
Quivering with nerves and desire, I turned up, clutching the book, and he invited me in, gave me a glass of wine, compared me to a summer’s day, and we made the beast with two backs.
We had a brief, intense affair, which ended suddenly two days later when he left me in his apartment briefly to go out for wine. I used his laptop to go online and a Facebook message notification popped up on the screen. It was from his wife, a Harvard professor, whom I hadn’t known existed.
I slapped him when he returned, stormed off and got drunk and cried on the shoulder of JFXBF, who was also in the Shakespeare class. He comforted me and soon he was my bf.
Gary didn’t take it well and sent me harassing emails, wanting to see me. I told him no, then ignored him, then he sent an email where he basically threatened to flunk me if I wouldn’t see him.
I didn’t know what to do, so I asked Jess for help. She was in her first year of law school, so she relished the opportunity to play law talker.
Big sister dealt with it. Gary disappeared and stopped emailing me, and a new professor was teaching his class. I got an A, which I deserved. JFXBF got a C.
I never knew how she did it. Sitting on the sleeping bag, I learn how.
She had printed out all the emails she sent Gary, copied to the head of the English department, and all the emails they’d sent her.
He had repeatedly emailed her, basically pleading to keep his job, begging for the chance to apologize. He denied ever threatening to flunk me and said the emails that he sent were only an effort to meet with me to make sure I was okay, to sort out the end of our relationship and make sure that we could continue in our roles as professor and student. He quoted from his emails at length, trying to show that they weren’t threatening.
She ignored all that and insisted that the school had to make a change so that I could receive the same chance as any student to get a fair grade, and, fairly quickly, he was gone.
I sit on the sleeping bag for an hour, reading and rereading the old email chain.
I find it depressing, both because Gary, my former boogeyman, comes across as so pathetic, and because Jess can’t help me now.
14
Wayne was waiting outside Output, a big Brooklyn nightclub, when I got there for Alvin’s party.
He was facing the other way, looking elegant, leaning on a bus stop pole, reading his phone.
He hadn’t noticed me, so I stood there for a moment, behind one of those little caged sidewalk maples, and looked him over. He was still in khakis, but was now wearing a blue polo. He must have gone home to change.
I smoothed out my suit and tried to think about what I should say to him. I was still thinking when he spoke without turning.
“Are you spying on me, Candy?”
I started, felt myself blushing, and then realized that he had used his phone’s camera—selfie style—to look behind him.
I tried to be nonchalant.
“Oh. Hi, Wayne. Spying? Not at all. Just waiting for Rebecca. I hadn’t noticed you.”
He turned to me and smiled.
“Do you mind if I call you Candy?”
I had to stop myself from fiddling with my hair and tried to look away from his smile, but instead ended up looking at the front of his pants.
“The beer is gone.”
“Not really. It’s still there. These are different pants. I went home to change.”
“God, I felt like an idiot. I’ll have to find a way to make it up to you.”
I realized as I said that that I was still gazing at the front of his pants and seemed to be suggesting an indecent quid pro quo. I blushed again and quickly looked up at his eyes, which was another mistake.
“Maybe I can help you find bowhunting hot spots or something,” I said.
Thankfully, Rebecca arrived then, ending Blush Fest 2018. She looked great in a low-cut lime-green cocktail dress. She dealt with the bouncers so that we strolled right in.
It was a normal Brooklyn club, with a crowd of twentysomethings drinking cocktails and trying to look hip. A lot of the guys had beards and there were a lot of retro clothes, but some of the people had also spent money on nice nightclub outfits. Some of the girls were dancing to the throbbing trap music. A crowd was lined up at the bar.
Rebecca led us upstairs to a rooftop patio, where a blond girl in a black minidress was standing guard at the entrance. She and Rebecca kissed cheeks and we proceeded to the bar, where a handsome, tousle-haired young man was making cocktails.
“Have you ever had a Paper Plane?” he asked us. “Drink of the night!”
“I’ll have one of those,” said Rebecca. She looked at us. “Three of those. They’re delicious.”
I took a nervous sip. She was right.
The night felt alive with possibilities. This was the not the kind of party I usually attended. The people were more glamorous, richer, more blasé. Before I could really take it all in, Rebecca was off again. We followed her across the patio and up to a smaller terrace, with a view of the glittering lights of Midtown in the distance.
A florid-faced man in expensive-looking slacks and a shiny polo shirt was holding forth there, surrounded by a seemingly admiring group of young people.
“Rebecca,” he called out, pulling away from his entourage. “Hey, sweetie.”
They did the two-cheek kiss and Rebecca introduce
d us.
Alvin Beaconsfield was tall, taller even than Wayne, and powerful looking, with big arms and shoulders and thick legs, although he had a good-sized potbelly.
His hands were big. His red face was big. The hair on the back of his head was wiry, standing on end. In the front, he was balding, save for a defiant half-moon-shaped tuft on his forehead.
“So you’re the social media wizards, are you?” he said. “Damn. Damn! Gonna make some money off you!” He was smiling and waving an empty cocktail glass.
He turned to Rebecca.
“Honey,” he said, passing her his glass, “go tell Dave to make me another one of these things, a double this time, and bring back the same for Candace and Wayne here, too.”
He was awful.
“I am glad you guys signed on. I had a look at your résumés. Impressed.”
He turned to Wayne.
“Tell me. Why did you come to us? With a computer science degree from MIT, this seems an odd choice.”
Wayne smiled and tossed a lock of hair off his brow.
“I know a lot about computers,” he said. “But not much about business. If you study killer apps—the billion-dollar apps—you learn that most of the time the secret behind them is social. I want to learn that.”
God, he was confident.
“Also, it’s right around the corner from my apartment. I can wake up at eight forty-five and be at my desk by nine.”
“Ha!” said Alvin. “Ha! Ha! Good stuff.”
He turned to me.
“And how about you, hot stuff? You have a degree in English lit, seem to have the social touch. Why aren’t you working for a publisher or university?”
I wanted to say: Because I couldn’t get a job at a publishing house or university, as you must know, you disgusting man. Instead, I gave him my sassy smile.
“I think social media, and not print, is the dominant medium of our era, and it’s changing so quickly. I want to ride the wave. I think of it like surfing.”
He smiled and clapped his big, meaty hands together.
“Good stuff. A couple of little go-getters. Good good good. I told Craig to hire go-getters and he did. And he’s told you there’s no job in the fall if you don’t make conversions?”
I nodded.
“He mentioned something about that,” said Wayne, as if it didn’t really concern him.
“Good,” said Alvin. “Great. Fuck yeah. Get you two hotshots hustling, show us what you can do.”
He laughed and we laughed with him.
“Sounds like a good deal,” said Wayne.
There was something about that that Alvin didn’t like. He beckoned us toward him, glanced around to make sure nobody else could hear us, and fixed each of us with a separate short look to make sure he had our attention. He was drunk.
“The deal,” he said. “You want to know what the deal is? I made money when I sold WhizIt. That’s the situation.”
WhizIt, I had learned from Google, was a social address collection and sorting company. Beaconsfield and the other NYU computer nerds who started it sold it for hundreds of millions.
“I could sit around and do nothing, have blow job contests for the rest of my life.” He clapped his hand over his mouth.
“Oops. Sorry, Candy. I should have said fellatio contests. You know, round robins. In Maui. Cocktails. Fast boats. Cocaine. Fake titties.”
He pursed his lips and shook his face, blowing air through his lips to give the impression, I realized with horror, of a man rubbing his face between fake breasts.
“I would be bored,” he said, suddenly, and frowned. “I would get so bored. So I amuse myself. I buy media, restaurants, bars, start-ups. I buy them to have fun and end up making money. I throw parties.”
He gestured at the patio, then leaned in and whispered in my ear.
“To be honest, I get a lot of interesting pussy this way.”
I pulled away and gave him a thin smile, but it was forced and he knew it and he met my eye and held it. I wanted to slap him or throw my drink in his face. I actually thought about doing it but realized: oh, it’s empty.
Wayne laughed, uneasily.
“Here comes Becca with the drinks, Wayne,” Alvin said, looking up. “Tell me, how’d you like to get your wiener into that? Huh?”
A pained bark of a laugh came from Wayne.
“I know you would, unless you’re a fag. You a fag, Wayne?”
Wayne laughed, nervously. “No,” he said.
“I didn’t think so. Craig would have told me.”
I was furious. He couldn’t talk like that. I opened my mouth to tell Alvin that what he had just said was offensive, inappropriate, and illegal. Then I felt Wayne’s hand on my arm, just above my elbow, squeezing gently, twice.
I interpreted the squeeze to mean: It’s not worth it. Ignore it. And also, I like you. I held my tongue.
Then Rebecca was there delivering the drinks and Alvin was winking and leaving us.
Rebecca smiled at us.
“Too much,” I said. “I can’t even.”
“Do we have to, in the normal course of our jobs, have anything to do with Alvin?” Wayne asked.
Rebecca’s smile froze.
“Did Alvin say something inappropriate?” she asked. “He does that.”
“You could say that,” I said. “Worse than that. Illegal.”
She held up her hand.
“I don’t want to know,” she said. “I don’t really feel like looking for another job this week.”
She turned to Wayne.
“You might not ever meet him again,” she said. “Craig and I deal with him but you likely don’t have to.”
She could see we were unimpressed.
“He enjoys shocking people. That’s his idea of fun. But he also likes to give opportunities to talented people. Like you two. How are your projects going?”
“Just getting started,” said Wayne. “Learning about bowhunting.”
“Same with me,” I said. “Except, you know, cheese.”
“Bowhunting,” said Rebecca. “Right. I wanted to talk to you about that. Have you ever tried it?”
Wayne laughed.
“I grew up on the Upper West Side,” he said. “So, no.”
“I have,” said Rebecca. “I actually brought down an elk once. The head is still on the wall of my dad’s garage. One of my proudest moments.”
“Where did you grow up?” Wayne asked.
“Northern Michigan,” she said. “My dad is a big hunter. I grew up eating more game than beef.”
“I’m a vegan,” I said. Neither of them looked at me.
“Wow,” said Wayne, leaning toward her. “I need to pick your brain. I don’t know anything about bowhunting.”
“I think hunting is wrong,” I said.
They ignored me.
“In fact, I think cheese is wrong,” I said.
“It’s really hard,” said Rebecca. “You have to scrub yourself clean, so that you have no scent, and stay absolutely still, so animals will approach you. I wasn’t good at that part. Staying motionless, waiting for Bambi to come along.”
She mimed standing straight and pulling back a bow, with her legs spread and her chest pushed out, which made her boobs stick out of her low-cut dress.
Wayne was, I thought, watching her with unbecoming interest, which made me suddenly cross.
“Why don’t I get us some more drinks?” I said.
Neither of them noticed when I left.
15
I realize that I’m not thinking about giving myself up or ending my life anymore.
After successfully leaving my lair, dyeing my hair, replenishing my supplies, and avoiding detection, I feel sort of cheerful and myself for the first time since things went sideways. I’m still psychotically depressed about recent events, when I think about them, but I’m not thinking about them. I’m thinking about the future.
As I do my morning pacing, I make up my mind. Time to go. I stop paci
ng because I suddenly see I should save my strength. Time to get out of town.
I think the lady at the mall may have seen my picture on the front page of the New York Post, but she was likely too dumb to make the connection. And they don’t carry that paper everywhere. And that was yesterday’s paper. There will be some other nonsense on the front page today.
It’s a big country. They can’t all have heard about the hunt for the Hipster Killer.
I don’t have enough money for an airplane ticket. In fact, after buying hair dye, a sub, and some granola bars, I have $84, which I don’t even want to spend on bus fare. And for all I know, they’re watching the bus stations.
I’m worried about cameras and computer programs that can pick someone out of a crowd. I don’t know much about facial recognition software, but I figure I should stay away from the obvious places.
I need to find a way out of town and I can’t be too picky about it. It’s time to improvise. I’m thinking about what I know about the neighborhood, when I realize what I should do.
Last year, the only time I paid Jess a visit to see her boring but nice waterfront condo, I reacted with a poorly disguised mixture of envy and disgust so she took me to a nearby dive bar called Lucky 7, where she thought I’d be more comfortable. I was. It was exactly like the place where JFXBF worked in Brooklyn: loud punk music, black walls plastered with stickers and graffiti, terrible bathrooms, really cheap drinks. I wouldn’t know anybody there. I can have beers and see if a way out of town presents itself.
First, I need to dress for nightlife. I rummage through Jess’s discards for something that looks a little bit rock and roll and try on some outfits. I finally settle on an old pink tank top, which is way more revealing than the clothes I normally wear. Oh well. It doesn’t look too slutty under the jean jacket.
Then I pack up my little bag and make my final exit from my concrete bunker. I take my pee bowl outside and dump it, so that nobody could know someone has been living there.
I wander until I find a Dunkin’ Donuts, where I sit down to write and enjoy a coffee and (vegan) hash brown, which leaves me with $82.