Social Misconduct

by S. J. Maher

  It is pushing 4:00 a.m. by the time I get on the highway. I have to stop for gas, which is a bit of a challenge to buy without a credit card. First I have to give the teller $20. Then I have to pump it. Then I load up on lousy gas station coffee and Oreos, which are vegan BTW, and hit the road.

  Down to $175. Still, I’m out of the city and moving farther away, and I have more money than I started with this morning.

  I feel okay, but exhausted.

  I keep my speed just a bit higher than the speed limit. The last thing I need is to have the police stop me. Not only am I wanted, I’m also driving without a license, and I must be above the legal alcohol limit. I creep up behind a slow minivan and let them set the pace, driving through the ugly halogen-lit outskirts of Jersey City.

  I’m so tired now that my eyes start to close. I roll down the windows, turn up a hip-hop station, and lean forward but still find myself nodding off.

  I remember a trick my dad told me about years ago. I pull over, take off my socks and shoes, and it works. It makes it superhard to fall asleep.

  The sun is a red ball rising over the refinery towers by the time I get to Scranton. I drive downtown, find a big parking lot in front of a mall, park the car, crawl into the backseat, and fall asleep.

  34

  Wayne and I shared a cab uptown, which was nice. He confessed he was relieved that the bowhunting client was a dud, admitted the whole subject appalled him.

  “The way these guys talk in their web chats is . . . horrible,” he said, searching for words. “They’re so insensitive to the suffering of these animals.”

  He asked me about ethical veganism, and I told him how I gave up animal products after watching a documentary on factory farming. He told me that he was still eating meat but found himself increasingly troubled by it.

  By the time we got to Central Park, I felt like if I didn’t watch myself, I’d find myself snuggling up against him.

  We were headed to the Parkview Lounge, a big shiny lounge on the fourth floor of the Time Warner Center. Normally, I would have been excited going there, but thinking about seeing Alvin again, I felt bile in the back of my throat. As we rode the escalator, I sneaked an Ambien and immediately felt calmer just for having taken it.

  A stylish woman in a cocktail dress led us in. The place was full of rich media businesspeople, from Time Warner or whatever, and a sprinkling of rich tourists, who were themselves likely media businesspeople. Japanese. French. Italians. Australians. TV people, with good clothes, hair, makeup, and cosmetic surgery. They were swilling expensive cocktails and drinking good wine, showing off, striding over marble floors to stand and look at themselves in the mirrored bar, eyeballing the expensive, beautifully lit bottles of fancy liquor, watching other people come and go.

  Alvin and Rebecca were already seated and had a great table, right in front of the window, looking down on Columbus Circle, where there are always yellow cabs and limos going around the Christopher Columbus statue.

  Alvin rose from his mauve silk chair to shake my hand first then Wayne’s.

  “Nice to see you both,” he said, smiling.

  He was in a beautiful gray suit with a creamy, open-collared white shirt. Rebecca was in a form-fitting black cocktail dress. An ice bucket with a bottle of Moët & Chandon was on the table. Alvin gestured and a waiter soon had all of us holding flutes of champagne.

  Alvin held up his glass for a toast. “To success!”

  We all joined in, and then he turned to me.

  “So you’re selling cheese,” he said.

  “Last time I checked, two hundred and sixty-eight conversions. I sent out the big blast right before leaving the office. I expect to hit a thousand tonight.”

  “Becca tells me you got your hands on a list,” said Alvin.

  “I did.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “I promised I wouldn’t tell. It’s that kind of deal.”

  He smiled and nodded and then suddenly his smile was gone.

  “No,” he said and fixed me with a hard look. “Cut the shit. Where’d you get it?”

  That threw me for a loop.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Where’d you get the fucking list? Did you steal it?”

  I looked at him more closely and saw that he was testing me.

  I smiled. “I have friends who want to help me.”

  He was suddenly smiling again.

  “Ha!” he said. “No doubt you do. One does. Good. Good. We don’t need to know. Fair enough. You promised.”

  His eyes narrowed.

  “You’re a funny one,” he said. “One night you stomp off because I said ‘pussy.’ The next day you tweet a tit pic.”

  “I was hacked. I’m so sorry if it caused any problems for SoSol. I’m doing everything I can to remedy the situation. Believe me, it’s been a nightmare.”

  He snorted.

  “I couldn’t give a fuck if you tweet pictures of your tits every day. They’re your titties. It’s a free country. I’m just saying I don’t have a read on you yet.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I smiled, frowned, looked away, cleared my throat. Thankfully, he turned to Wayne.

  “How are the bows and arrows going?” he asked.

  Poor Wayne!

  “Terribly,” Wayne said. “Every bowhunter already knows Bowhunting.com. I can’t find a target market that needs reaching. I’m link-pimping but I don’t think it will work.”

  “So either it’s a dud or you are?” said Alvin.

  “I suppose so.”

  Alvin nodded, then clapped his hands.

  “Okay,” he said, leaning in conspiratorially, drawing us all closer. “I was just telling Becca here that this afternoon I got a signature from my old buddy Jeff, the CEO of WordUp. We have a deal to push them clicks for three months.”

  He looked around to see if we were getting the import of this. We were.

  “We get a piece of the action for three months,” he said. “It’s all open book. They see everything we do, regular reports and all that happy horseshit. Our job is to pimp it, spam it, SEO, SEM, drive motherfucking clicks, not design it or invent it. We eat a piece of what we kill, but the real prize would be in convincing them to sign up for longer. I want you two on this full-time,” he said, nodding at Wayne and me.

  “Is there a budget?” I asked.

  “If we need one,” he said. “Becca and Craig can handle those decisions. We’ll get an outline of their social media strategy tomorrow, I hope. I want a plan, within a day or two, for how to proceed. How we going to sell this?”

  I cleared my throat.

  “I have a list,” I said. “Or I can get one. Again, I promised not to say where I got it, but it will make this a lot easier.”

  I had his attention, and Rebecca’s and Wayne’s.

  In my pocket my phone kept buzzing, a sort of steady repetitive buzz, distracting me as I tried to make the sale.

  “What kind of list?” said Alvin.

  “Net-savvy book lovers. Millions of them. Their email addresses.”

  “That would make this a lot fucking easier,” said Alvin. “Where’d you get it?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Let me frack it. Like I did with the cheese.”

  Rebecca cleared her throat.

  “This makes me nervous,” she said. “Fishy lists make me nervous.”

  “There’s nothing fishy about it,” I said. “Nobody needs to know how I got their emails.”

  Alvin was nodding, but Rebecca looked unconvinced. Wayne looked like he didn’t know what to think.

  Alvin stood up.

  “Let me think about it,” he said. “I’m going for a slash. Be right back.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  I needed to check my phone so I followed him toward the bathrooms.

  “Yours is that one,” he said, pointing, with a smile I didn’t like.

  35

  I wake up with a bad kink in my neck in the
backseat of the Mustang. FML.

  I have to pee and I am so hungry.

  I crawl out of the car, make a mental note of its location, and head into the mall, which looks like it’s getting murdered by the big box stores.

  First thing I need is a new hat. A Devils hat won’t help me blend in in Pennsylvania.

  I drop the Devils hat in a trash can and wander around looking for one that says DON’T BOTHER LOOKING AT ME, so I go in and out of the crappy stores that gird the loins of Scranton’s young and restless. Old Navy, etc.

  Ugh. Do I have to look like a Scranton mall rat? Would such a person like NASCAR? Should I get a hat with a country singer’s name on it? Like Toby Keith or somebody? Like, really? How do girls dress here?

  There are two looks: mall rat and young professional.

  I decide to eat a veggie sub, have a coffee, write, and think about my new look.

  I went proletarian in Jersey. Now what if I change it up, go upscale? I am kind of freaked out by how much the idea cheers me up. I come up with a plan.

  I go to a salon.

  “I’m looking for an asymmetrical cut,” I tell the gum-chewing lady there, a fashion nightmare with a turkey neck and a port-wine stain on her cheek, someone I would normally never let near my hair.

  “Like a bob?” she asks.

  “Sort of, but higher on one side than the other.”

  “Like Jennifer Lawrence had?”

  “That’s the one. In that movie.”

  The result is surprisingly good. I look like a striving, wannabe upwardly mobile young person, like a Scranton yuppie.

  I need clothes to match. At the clearance racks at Abercrombie & Fitch I find a spaghetti-strap black cotton dress that would pass, on casual inspection, for weekend casual wear. I get a cute little pink ball cap.

  I put on my new outfit and go to the drugstore to buy a bottle of blond Clairol.

  I feel good about my makeover, although the mall day leaves a dent in my getaway stash. I am down to $124.

  Not good.

  36

  I went into the fancy bathroom, then into a stall to pee, and checked my cheese conversions. Eight hundred and twenty-eight! Yes!

  Then I checked my messages.

  I had a series of one-word text messages from Presumably Declan, almost a hundred of them, delivered every ten seconds for the past fifteen minutes.

  Hey.

  Hey.

  Hey.

  Over and over again. Another one landed as I held the phone in my hand. Each time one landed, the phone buzzed.

  Hey.

  What?

  I don’t like when you ignore me.

  I didn’t know what to make of this.

  What’s up?

  I need you to see what you’re about to share with the world.

  What do you mean?

  Then he texted me a photo, which I recognized with horror.

  It was a picture of me and JFXBF, or part of him.

  Back when we were deeply in love, JFXBF wanted to take sex pictures, so on his birthday last year, I let him take pictures of me while I had my way with him, on the condition that he use my phone, so that only I would have the pictures, which were locked, safely I thought, in my phone’s memory.

  The light was garish and my makeup was smeared and the whole thing looked like it belonged in the Twitter feed of @amateurhawties. POV BJ. My mascara had run and my face was, uh, wet.

  I broke out into an icy sweat.

  Don’t send it. Please don’t send it. Please.

  Take off your panties.

  Not that again.

  Leave them in the bathroom. I want you to go back to the table without them.

  And you won’t send the tweet?

  I won’t.

  I needed to regain control of my Twitter account, or failing that, delete it. I also needed to delete each and every nasty picture from my phone. I couldn’t do those things now. I could do all that when I got home. For now, I had to stop him from tweeting that picture.

  Okay. I’ll do what you say.

  I know you will. Don’t try to trick me. I’ll know. Take off your panties and throw them in the trash. Now.

  I had to do it so I did it. I took off my underwear, smoothed my skirt, left the stall, tossed my underwear in the trash, and washed my hands.

  My phone vibrated again. I pulled it out. WTF? I always have my phone set to no vibration.

  Was that so hard?

  Why are you doing this?

  You have to do what I say. If you fuck with me again, it could be bad for you.

  How did you get that picture?

  I’m helping your career. In return, you’re going to do some things for me. Nothing too bad. But you have to do them.

  This is cruel.

  Go back to the table. ttyl

  Don’t tweet that picture.

  I checked my Twitter feed. My last tweet had been that afternoon. Whew.

  I wanted to break down sobbing but everyone was waiting for me. I pushed my anxiety down and headed back to the table with a fake smile on my face.

  “Excuse me,” I said, trying to look chipper. “I just checked the cheese account. Eight hundred plus conversions.”

  Rebecca said, “You go, girl,” but Alvin looked irritated. His iPhone was on the table and he glanced at the time.

  “All right,” he said. “Candy, I want you to give Rebecca a plan, a proposal, for WordUp. A few pages, whatever. Then we can consider next steps.”

  “Brilliant!” I said. “I’ll work on it tomorrow.”

  Rebecca nodded. We all stood up.

  The champagne had apparently already been paid for. I drank the last little bit in my glass.

  “Thanks for the champagne,” I said.

  “My pleasure,” said Alvin. “You hustled your ass to sell that fucking loser Cheese of the Month thing. Nice to see it. The hustle, I mean. Not the ass, although it’s nice, too.”

  I was turning away from the table as he said that. I was shocked to feel him give my bottom a squeeze and a slap.

  “Whoa,” I said, turning to scowl at him. “Mr. Beaconsfield, that’s not appropriate.”

  I could see he knew I was thinking about slapping him. He held up his hands in a gesture of innocence and ducked his head in mock fear.

  “I’m going to get myself in trouble again, aren’t I?”

  Rebecca sighed.

  “There’s a line, Alvin,” she said. “Not everyone gets your jokes.”

  He frowned, thought about it, and then smiled.

  “Quite right, Becca,” he said. “When you’re right, you’re right.”

  He turned to me.

  “My apologies, Ms. Walker,” he said and held out his hand. “That was inappropriate. I forgot myself and I’m sorry.”

  I hesitated before taking his disgusting hand in mine.

  “Apology accepted,” I said. “Thanks again for the champagne.”

  “Wow,” he said. “When you get mad, you really blush, don’t you?”

  He turned to Wayne and took his hand.

  “Don’t worry about the fucking bows and arrows, kid,” he said. “That was a shit sheet.”

  He kissed Rebecca on the cheek and was gone.

  “You okay?” Rebecca asked me.

  I nodded.

  “I’m okay, but I don’t want him to touch me again.”

  She put her fingers to the bridge of her nose and squeezed.

  “He won’t,” she said. “I’ll talk to him about it.”

  “Rebecca, that was so out of line,” said Wayne.

  She suddenly looked very tired.

  “I know,” she said. “I didn’t sign up for this.”

  37

  In my stylish new dress and haircut, I set out to find the Scranton public library, which is, thankfully, a short walk from the mall.

  I sit down at one of the computers and learn that the news of the manhunt for the Hipster Killer is not good.

  The police found Doucheb
ro, so now this is officially a crime spree. The Post is milking it. There was a short wire article that was carried by the New York Times and a bunch of other outlets.

  But the Post story is particularly not good.

  Headline: “Cops Hot on Trail of Hipster Killer.”

  A witness saw me doing shots with Douchebro at the bar. And the reporter found Irena, who was no doubt thrilled to tell her story.

  There’s a picture of me from the bank machine security camera in my Devils hat, and a picture of Douchebro with his car, in happier times. They even interviewed his mother about what a nice guy he was.

  It enrages me. I want to smash the monitor. There’s nothing in the article about how Douchebro tried to rape me. I am sure I wasn’t the first. Doesn’t serial rape count as a crime spree?

  And they’ve used the topless picture of me, with little stars over my nipples, making me look like a sex-crazed lunatic, and, just to make things really terrible, a picture of the Fourteenth Street subway platform.

  The scumbag reporter even talked to my poor mom.

  “We are praying for Candace. We just want her to come home and get the help she needs.”

  I close the window and think, How did I, the victim of a sick campaign of sexual exploitation, end up looking like the villain?

  Everybody reading the Post will think I am completely insane.

  Good thing I’m staying a step ahead of them.

  Take no chances.

  I check Linda Wainwright’s Facebook. She has a message from Irene!

  What a nightmare! I can’t believe it. I haven’t been able to work at all since I saw the news, which is too bad because the orders are piling up. If even half of what they’re saying is true, then Candace is a terrible person. I don’t know what to think, either. She was so nice when I talked to her on the phone. Do you know her well?

  I sit there for a while, trying to figure out how to reply, and finally settle on this:

  Oh, Irene, thanks so much for responding. I wasn’t sure I should message you or not, but the whole thing has been bothering me so much. I’m not surprised you find yourself unable to work. I haven’t been able to do anything except obsess about it since I read the first story. There sure are some weird things about this, and it doesn’t all make sense. I have to wonder if the truth isn’t more complicated than the news stories make it sound. I have some facts about the whole thing that I haven’t shared with anyone because I don’t know if I should get involved. But Candace told me you have recordings of telephone conversations with her and Craig. I think they could contain information that clears her. If I’m wrong, well, nothing ventured, nothing lost.