“I am. I just don’t feel like it right now.”
Elinor felt very tired all of a sudden.
“You know what,” said Elinor. “I’m going to go.” It was fifty-nine minutes in. She had done her duty.
“ ’K,” said Jeff, jerking his head up. “Text me later if you want to meet up. It was good to meet you. Let me know how that journalism thing goes.”
“Will do!” said Elinor. She hugged him with the top front of her body and took a cab home. On the way home, Jeff texted, “lmk if you want to meet up later.” She didn’t respond.
* * *
· · ·
Elinor’s life hobbled on—a maimed animal plodding down a country road—with occasional respites. For one, she found an apartment on Craigslist. It was nine hundred dollars a month. And it was a studio! In Astoria, sort of! It didn’t have a bathroom or a kitchen or a sink, but that was fine. She just had to share a hall bathroom with the landlord, who was a very old woman. And she could buy a hot plate, which was a lot like a kitchen. Eventually, she would move into a real apartment in Brooklyn, but in the meantime, she could stop interviewing to be someone’s roommate. She was starting to hate all of these traumatized dogs who couldn’t stop barking. But that made her feel like a bad person.
At work one day, Elinor was finishing up a story called “The 10 Things Any Woman Doesn’t Want to Hear on a Date”—the first one was “Look at this video of my friend from home”—when Peter walked up to her.
“Hey, Elinor,” said Peter. “I’m just checking in with you. What are you working on? The Vans sneakers list didn’t do that well and I just want to help you make this piece a real blockbuster, so let me know if there is anything I can do to help.”
“J.W. told me to do the Vans sneakers one,” said Elinor.
“He did?” said Peter. “But he’s on partnerships.”
“I know. But he’s my mentor. Or he said he was my mentor? Whatever that means. I don’t really get it.” Elinor hadn’t seen J.W. since their talk. When she had emailed him her Vans sneakers story, he didn’t respond. He had bought a large blind for one of the glass walls of the conference room so you couldn’t see in anymore.
“J.W. is your mentor?” said Peter.
“I mean, I don’t know. I guess so?”
“I guess a person can have two mentors.”
“Or one mentor,” said Elinor. “Or no mentors.”
“And one of the problems with women in the workforce is that they say that older men don’t really mentor younger women because everyone finds it really creepy,” said Peter. He had a sad look on his face again. “But you actually have two male mentors! Which just says a lot about the values this place has.”
“But what if like, I don’t even want a mentor or anything?”
“I should talk to J.W. about what he’s mentoring you about, so that we don’t overlap on what we mentor. What did you think about my idea that I emailed you today? When are you going to start working on that?”
“ ‘Ten Things Breast Cancer Awareness Month Does’? I’ll get to it after I finish this thing. Like, five minutes.”
“Okay, but get on it. I think it could be huge.”
Privately Elinor didn’t agree.
“But, even though I’m mentoring you about this, I won’t be able to be that involved. Tim just quit. So I have a lot more work now.”
“Who is Tim?” Elinor still didn’t really know anybody at the Journalism.ly because no one ever talked or introduced themselves or went out after work. She knew only Nicole.
“Tim? Maybe J.W. can introduce you to him in his capacity as mentor. Tim did product design and he’s leaving to start an online zine about SoulCycle. J.W. was really upset about it, because he’s the fifth person to quit this month.”
“Well, I have to do something even worse than working,” said Elinor.
“What’s that?” said Peter.
“I have to move on Saturday.” Elinor was really not looking forward to moving. She still had three days left in her apartment and she was treasuring them. She hadn’t even put anything in boxes yet. She bought boxes though. They were sitting in a flat pile near her bathtub-shower and they were getting a little wet because water kept splattering on them, and yet still, Elinor had not moved them to a safer location.
“Where are you moving to?” asked Peter.
“Queens.”
“Roommates?”
“No,” said Elinor. “It’s like a studio. And then there is this bathroom out in the hall.”
“Why don’t you move to Brooklyn?” said Peter. “That’s where I live.”
“I know,” said Elinor. “I would have.”
“Brooklyn’s great. There are all these coffee shops. And such cool people. You should move there.”
“That sounds great,” said Elinor, feeling like a loser. It was very typical of her to somehow not live in the place where all of the zeitgeist was happening. “I actually really wanted to move to Brooklyn. I’m still going to. This is just a transitional place. I was having trouble finding roommates. And sometimes I feel like I’m actually too old to have Craigslist roommates? Well, I guess I sort of have a roommate still—”
“Do you have anyone to help you move?”
“Uh, no. I don’t. But it’s not that much stuff. I don’t even have a bed.”
“What do you sleep on?” asked Peter.
“Ha-ha, I was just joking,” said Elinor, now embarrassed about the foam pad. “It’s basically a futon, which is like a bed. Anyway, I just don’t have a frame. It’s not hard to move.”
“Where’s Mike?” asked Peter.
“Um.” Elinor knew this moment had to arrive at some point. It was odd to her, however, that she still had no real narrative for any of it. “We’re kind of not together anymore.”
“A break?” said Peter.
“Yeah. It’s okay. We’re still really good friends. He’s just going through some stuff right now.” Elinor thought of Andrea’s face, in profile like a Pre-Raphaelite painting, and quickly dismissed it.
“Oh,” said Peter. His eyes had the frozen look of someone who had wandered into a closet where people were arguing.
“I still really respect Mike,” said Elinor. “He’s such a good guy and an amazing friend.”
Peter nodded, and his visible fear dissipated slightly.
“Well, if you want I can help you.”
“Help what?”
“Move.”
“Oh my god,” said Elinor. “You don’t have to do that.”
“I do have to work that day, but I can definitely help you. I should be done at the office around two p.m.”
“Uh, thanks,” said Elinor. Idly, she wondered if Peter was even in love with her. However, every single time Elinor thought someone was in love with her, he never ever was. Like, that really skinny guy she dated in college who seemed to have no feeling toward her at all. It was surprising, at the time, how much this hurt Elinor’s feelings, and perhaps she could attribute the sting to the element of surprise. Before they slept together, she was convinced she was doing him a special favor he would never forget. He was always looking at her across the room. When they actually did have sex, he seemed to be floating above his body, his eyes screwed shut. He never spoke to her again after they finally did it. He dated someone else senior year. Sometimes Elinor looked her up on Facebook.
“Okay, see you then!” said Peter, a bit too enthusiastically. He went back to his desk.
* * *
· · ·
It was 2:14 p.m. when Peter arrived at her door to help her move. Elinor was slightly annoyed at herself, and oddly also at Peter for his appearance. She still hadn’t done much packing. She had put one or two posters in a box that wasn’t totally taped together. She had removed the shower curtain and fully exposed the bathtub—which was a mistake. There was still all this brown stuff on the bottom of the bathtub from when they moved in. Seeing it decontextualized, it looked embarrassing. What the
hell was it? And did they somehow cause it?
She hadn’t actually thought that Peter was going to come help her move anyway. The offer had seemed like one of those empty things people say and don’t do. But he had texted last night asking her what time he was supposed to arrive. She said 2:00 but then she slept in until 1:47. So fuck Peter.
When Elinor opened the door for Peter (after two minutes of looking at herself in the mirror, dazed, her hair forming a pyramid), he hugged her with one arm. Luckily it was brief. Elinor led him into the apartment.
“How was work?”
Peter looked around circumspectly. She saw he saw the wet boxes.
“Fine,” said Peter.
“What did you do?”
“A bunch of shit. I don’t know. J.W. sent me kind of a weird email last night.”
“Oh,” said Elinor. “Why was it weird?”
“Well, Sean was cc’d,” said Peter, who leaned against the single cabinet that happened to make up Elinor’s kitchen and looked down at the floor. “So it was really bad. Because Sean was mad that we hadn’t put up this viral Vine that everyone’s talking about. You know that one of that kid who eats a glow stick and then his eyes glow?”
“No,” said Elinor.
“Yeah, apparently, everyone’s obsessed with it. And someone showed it to Sean this weekend and he was like, mad that we didn’t have it on our site. He emailed me and J.W. about it.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, and then I chimed in and was like, ‘I’ll have it up shortly,’ and J.W. was like, ‘Peter, you should really be on top of breaking Vines, we need Vines to be more systematic,’ which would have been fine if Sean wasn’t cc’d but he was cc’d, so it was so awkward. It was like I wasn’t on top of breaking Vines, when that’s not even my job. I’m trying to get our Music.ly ready for the election!”
“Ugh, that sucks,” said Elinor. “Is he trying to mentor you or something?”
“No. J.W. really doesn’t understand how swamped I am. Still, he’s a brilliant writer,” said Peter in a change of tone, as if, suddenly, he was composing the eulogy for J.W.’s funeral. “So what do you want me to move?”
“Well, uh, I guess you should start with some of these smaller boxes of kitchen stuff. I’ll wrap up some of the stuff in the desk and start packing that. I don’t have a bed, so the desk is probably it, really.”
“Okay,” said Peter, nicely not mentioning the foam pad. He opened up Elinor’s one cabinet and started putting things into a box. He did this in silence for ten minutes.
“What do you think of J.W.?” he said, abruptly.
“I don’t know. He’s fine.”
“I just feel like we should really delegate someone else to be on breaking Vines,” said Peter with unexpected vitriol, slamming a box on top of another box. “Because that person is not me. I am so overloaded from tweeting, and from my own writing.”
“Yeah.” Elinor hoped that box didn’t have plates in it, because it sounded like it did.
“I mean, from now on I’m going to be on top of Vines more. But I also think we should hire a Vine person. Sean is right that we shouldn’t miss stuff like that because Vines are important.”
“If you say so,” said Elinor. “Should I start a Vine account? Are you on Vine?”
“No,” said Peter. “I mean, I have an account but I don’t use it.”
For the next two hours (Elinor had no idea it was going to take so long, but somehow it did; apparently, she had a lot of stuff) Peter moved Elinor out of her apartment.
It was hard work. Peter completely disassembled the desk. He scraped poster gum off the walls. He wrapped several forks individually in newspaper. Throughout the move, he was mostly silent, and after some abortive attempts at conversation, Elinor was too. It was when they got off the subway with the first group of boxes that he started to speak in earnest. Elinor was having trouble with her box; it kept slipping out of her hands, it seemed to be covered in a slick of dust.
“So what’s the deal with you and Mike?” he said abruptly. This was not what Elinor was expecting Peter to say, especially after how much it had seemed to upset his humors the last time.
“The deal?” Elinor juggled her box. “It’s complicated. Why?”
“No reason,” said Peter. “I’m just wondering.”
“I mean, did Mike tell you anything at all about it? Has he been talking about it with everyone? Is that why you ask?”
“No, no.” Peter looked off into space. “Mike and I actually don’t talk very much.”
“Oh. I thought you did.”
“No. We’re both really busy. I should get a drink with him actually. I’d love to hear about Memo Points Daily.”
“Okay.” Then Elinor decided to say something she had been thinking in such a constant refrain that she almost felt she had said it at some point before. “Is he seeing someone else? He’s allowed to,” she added quickly. “I won’t be mad if you tell me.”
“I really don’t know.” Peter stared at his box. “I said I don’t talk to him that much.”
“But just if you’ve seen him? That was all I meant. If you had seen him, maybe.”
“I didn’t.”
They walked along in silence.
Eventually, Peter and Elinor got to her new apartment. It was a brick building with small, arcane windows like a power plant’s. They were greeted at the door by Elinor’s landlord, Kathy, a tiny woman with a grizzled face.
“I was wondering when you’d show up,” she said.
“Hahaha,” said Elinor. “I’m sorry, I know I said four and it’s four-thirty.”
“Next time, tell me if you are going to be moving late into the night. I don’t have all day. Here is the key.”
“Thank you,” said Elinor. “This is my friend Peter.”
“Nice to meet you,” said Kathy “I’ll show you up to the room.”
They walked up four flights to a small, dark door in the back of the building.
“You didn’t tell me it was a walk-up,” said Peter in a whisper.
“I’m sorry,” said Elinor, quietly.
“Now, I don’t want you using the bathroom at all hours of the night. We share a wall,” said the landlord. “And it’s a very sensitive toilet.”
“It’s probably going to be way better than being in the basement though,” Peter kept whispering. “Way more light.”
“It doesn’t actually have that much more light,” said Elinor, “which is kind of funny.”
“Okay, this key unlocks the top lock, this one unlocks the bottom lock. It’s a very temperamental key, so just jiggle it,” said Kathy. She was still mad, obviously.
“Okay,” said Elinor.
“Use your own towels. Don’t use my towels.”
“I won’t,” said Elinor. “I would never do that. Thanks so much, Kathy.”
Kathy shrugged and went back into her apartment.
Elinor pried the door open. It was a very small room—having Peter in there was a bit too much for it. There was only one window, very high on the wall, like a porthole in a ship’s cabin.
“Is your desk going to fit?” asked Peter.
* * *
· · ·
“Well, that’s the last of it,” Peter announced.
“Thank you so much,” said Elinor. She was sweating into her tank top’s built-in bra.
“It’s fine,” said Peter, looking around her apartment again. They’d had to leave the desk on the street, so it was just a foam pad and some books. Her clothes were still in her suitcase because there wasn’t a closet. Elinor needed to get one of those fabric-covered hanger things.
“Do you want to get pizza?” said Elinor. “I’ll take you out. I owe you hugely for helping me move.”
“No,” said Peter. “I really don’t need anything. I’m okay. I’ve got to go.”
“Really? I feel so bad. Do you want money?” Elinor had taken out cash. She went over to her purse and started rifling through it.
&
nbsp; Peter squinted at her. “That’s okay. Seriously. I’ve got so much work. We both do actually.”
“Okay,” said Elinor. “Well, thank you so much!”
“It’s fine.” Peter waved to her without looking at her and left. He seemed a bit upset, but Elinor didn’t know why. She didn’t care really either.
* * *
· · ·
The next day, Elinor lay in bed, the back of her T-shirt adhering to the foam pad. She heard a dim rush of water emanate from the wall. She was probably near the bathroom pipes—she heard a constant rushing that sometimes intensified but never really stopped.
Elinor rolled to her other side and looked at her phone—a tiny pink square with a cracked screen. Her phone said she had a text. Maybe it was Mike, worried about her now transient life.
It was from Jeff.
Have you seen this? Rofl
It was a link to a viral Vine of the kid who ate a glow stick and then his eyes glowed.
Chapter 8
Facebook: 1 post: A selfie of Elinor clad in some kind of spandex horror that indicates she has recently been to the gym. Comment: “In troubling, polarizing times, it is important to take time for yourself and remember who you are outside of the political circus. That is why I did yoga last night. Thanks so much to the people at @gangstersweat. You guys make yoga fun and you really helped with my self-care!” Thirty likes.
Twitter: 28 tweets. Sample: “When things are hard that just means you have to work harder at it —Robert Frost.”
Instagram: 2 pictures. The first seems to be taken out the window of a moving vehicle. It is night. All you can see are blurry swirling lights. Caption: “#nighthawks.” Five likes, because, honestly, what the fuck.
The second is a selfie with a granulated, washed-out filter on it. Elinor is smirking, mouth closed. Her shirt is slightly low cut. She is holding the camera above her. Possibly she is lying on the foam pad even though you can’t really see that. Caption: “Mood =” and then an emoji of painting nails. Twenty-two likes.
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