Sociable

by Rebecca Harrington

  “Did you read it?” said Nicole.

  “Yes,” said Elinor. She had read the first couple of lines. “And it’s amazing. I mean, at least I’m happy I dated someone so smart, you know? I was maybe going to read it and be like, Hey, this is really good. Just to be nice. Because I feel like that’s probably a good thing, or whatever, since he works in journalism.”

  “Do you want to come out with me and my friends tonight?” said Nicole.

  “I’d love to,” said Elinor. She smiled. This was going to be the first time she was going to hang out with Nicole outside of the confines of work. She really liked Nicole. Talking to Nicole was pretty much exactly how she thought talking should go, theoretically.

  “We’re going to this magazine party. It’s probably going to be awful—”

  “Oh shit,” said Elinor. “I promised I would get a drink with my friend Sheila tonight, even though I’m kind of pissed at her honestly.”

  “Bring her!” said Nicole. “The more the merrier.”

  “I’ll see,” said Elinor. When Elinor got back to her table, she texted Sheila a confusing message that was, on the face of it, a tepid invitation to attend Nicole’s party, but was, in actuality, a plea for Sheila to reschedule their hangout. Sheila, however, refused to understand the subtext. She texted back that she would be extremely excited to hang out with Nicole, and told Elinor she would be happy to accompany her to the party. Elinor comforted herself with the thought that she was a very good person, and Sheila was lucky to have her as a friend.

  Chapter 9

  Facebook: 1 post: “What an inspiring, important article! Especially in these polarizing times. Great job Mike Moriarty [hyperlinked].” Attached is Mike’s article about Iran, which is not particularly inspiring actually, but instead rather strident. Elinor hadn’t read the whole thing. Ten likes, but no like from Mike Moriarty, the object.

  Twitter: Dull, some aggrieved spats, some quotations. Not worth repeating.

  Instagram: 1 photo: An expansive snap of the tops of several people’s heads and a person reading in the middle of the room. Caption: “Reading at @redhookartspace #RichardCooleyIsKillingIt.”

  · · ·

  The party was being held in some cavernous loft space. White Christmas lights were twirled around the scaffolding that held up the ceiling and large, square windows looked out on a bleak vista of other identical warehouses used for similar events. The room was packed with people—all clad in various noncolors and T-shirts, a hum of talk emanating from each of their groups like static from a speaker.

  “I’m going to get a drink,” said Elinor to Nicole, who was hanging her coat on a rack and texting with one thumb.

  “Me too,” said Nicole. “My friends say they’re near the bar.”

  “Great. I really need a drink, I think. What a shitty day.”

  As Elinor and Nicole walked toward the bar (which was wooden and free-standing, as if they had rolled it in like a coffin at a wake), Elinor scanned the room for Mike. It wouldn’t be shocking if he was here. He was a writer. Elinor couldn’t see him, however, in all the haircuts she scanned.

  After Elinor and Nicole ordered their drinks (two bitter glasses of white wine) Nicole spotted her friends. One girl with a bobbed haircut and square black spectacles and another girl wearing a sailor shirt. The girl in the stripes waved to Nicole.

  “Hey, guys,” said Nicole. “This is Elinor.”

  “Oh, hey,” said the striped girl. “I’m Gretchen.”

  “I’m sorry to drag you out here,” said the girl in the glasses.

  “There’s like, no one here,” said Gretchen. Some guy hip-checked Gretchen because he was walking very quickly toward the bar, and so as a group, they clutched their wines and migrated three feet to the left.

  “Should we go somewhere else?” said Nicole.

  “I mean, I guess we should stay for the reading?” said the glasses girl. “It would be a little rude if we left.”

  “Okay,” said Nicole. She took out her phone and started looking at it, and so Elinor took out her phone and started looking at it. Nothing was happening on Elinor’s phone. No one had texted her and no one had updated Instagram since she last used it. She started looking at this news app, but she had already read all the stories. In her whole life, she had never been so caught up on the ephemera of what was happening in the world and the microdiscussions those things engendered.

  “Did you see that thing Charmaine wrote?” asked the girl in the glasses, in the direction of Nicole. “We were just talking about it before you guys got here.”

  “I did. That was so crazy,” said Nicole.

  “I mean, it’s brave for her to write about her abortion, but she didn’t have to criticize her ex so much. I know him and I don’t think that’s right.”

  “I think anyone has the right to write anything. We can’t criticize her experience,” said Nicole, expansively. “At the same time, I felt like she was kind of deaf to how privileged it seemed. A lot of people don’t have access to abortion or the money for it.”

  “I think you are right,” said Gretchen. “Anyone can write about anything however they want to. But it was really weird how she did it, I think? It was like she was the only person who ever got an abortion. I don’t know.”

  “Yeah,” said Glasses Girl. “Also Jim just walked in.”

  “Who’s Jim?” said Elinor.

  “Jim is this guy Elise was seeing,” said Nicole, gesturing to the girl in the glasses.

  “He was a super nice guy, we both weren’t ready for anything,” said Elise. “He had just gotten out of something and I wanted to be single. But then I sent him a sext and he didn’t respond? So I got really pissed.”

  “That sucks,” said Elinor.

  “I just don’t know whether to say hi to him or not because of the sext.”

  “Do whatever you want, I think,” said Elinor. “I think you can’t do the wrong thing. Like, I just congratulated my ex on Facebook for an article he wrote. And at first I was like, Why am I doing this? but then I realized I can do what I want, and it was actually a really nice openhearted thing for me to compliment him on Facebook.”

  “Who’s your ex?” said Elise.

  “Mike Moriarty. He works for Memo Points Daily?”

  “Oh, I’ve heard of him. I think?”

  “His mom is Pam Johnson.”

  “Oh yeah, yeah, I think I know of him. Cool. Why did you guys break up?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Elinor. “Basically he had these people over at the house and I fell asleep and he got really mad at me and then he broke up with me. Well, it was mutual, kind of. But I was a little surprised.”

  “That’s so dick,” said Elise. “How long did you guys date?”

  “Four years.”

  “Wow, that is insanely dick.”

  “Yeah,” said Elinor. “I guess it is dick. He made me feel really guilty about falling asleep.”

  “Elise works for Buzzle,” said Nicole helpfully, before looking at her phone again.

  “How cool,” said Elinor. Buzzle was a website that Elinor read all the time. In many ways, it was similar to Journalism.ly, but it was also a little bit different in a way Elinor couldn’t quite put into words.

  “Yeah, I love it,” said Elise. “I’m working on a piece about how Taylor Swift is kind of like Amazing Amy from Gone Girl and how that’s really bad for women.”

  “Oh yeah?” said Elinor, feeling a pang of jealousy. Sometimes it was so embarrassing to say she was responsible for a very viral list. She wasn’t necessarily a cultural commentator like everyone else. She didn’t write think pieces, like Mike, or Nicole or Peter even. She decided to change the subject. “You know, it’s interesting that you say Mike is a dick. Maybe he was.”

  “Legit. I bet he’s just one of those broey journalist assholes. My ex was one of those. But now I’m at Buzzle so fuck him.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” said Elinor, warming to her theme. “And now he’s like, alwa
ys with this other girl on Instagram. But she’s really annoying. Her Instagram is like, literally just annoying landscapes. She thinks she’s amazing.”

  “Ugh, vom!” said Elise. “I think I’m going to write an essay about all the things you can learn from someone’s Instagram. Okay, I’m going to text Jim now and tell him I saw him so if we run into each other he just knows that I’m here.” Elise stood over her phone and started texting.

  Next to them, Nicole was talking to Gretchen about an OkCupid date.

  “He’s nice,” said Gretchen, “but look at these texts.” Nicole bent her head over the texts and Elinor stared at her own phone, willing it to update with something, which was when Sheila texted her that she was outside and needed Elinor to get her. Elinor felt a shiver of annoyance, which was irrational because she had just texted Sheila to see where she was.

  Elinor walked out of the warehouse without her coat on. It was very windy, and Elinor’s blouse whipped against her like a flag. She saw Sheila shambling around the corner, eventually.

  “Hey,” said Sheila, breathless. “Sorry I’m late.”

  “It’s no big deal,” said Elinor. “But let’s get inside though.”

  “What is this thing again?” asked Sheila, passing through a dark vestibule where two people were talking to each other in a dull corner. “I just had the worst day. You won’t believe what happened to me. Remember that girl, Megan, that I was telling you about?”

  “Uh-huh,” said Elinor, scanning the room for Nicole and her friends. They had moved. Where were they? Elinor saw Nicole and Gretchen finally, in the line for the bathroom. She started walking toward them, quickly.

  “Anyway, Megan like, wants to take over my shifts? And had talked to the supervisor about it? I was so pissed because I finally had stopped working all the time on the weekends, and now like, she’s trying to take that away from me? I literally almost cried in front of the supervisor.”

  “That sucks,” said Elinor. They had almost approached Nicole and Gretchen.

  “Hey, guys,” said Elinor, to the both of them. “Are you in line for the bathroom?”

  “Yeah,” said Nicole. “It’s a really long line.”

  “So this is my friend Sheila,” said Elinor.

  “Hey,” said Sheila.

  “Has the reading started?” said Elinor.

  “Who’s reading?” said Sheila, in a very fake-sounding voice.

  “There’s a lot of people,” said Nicole in a distracted way, looking at the top of Sheila’s head. “I just saw Richard Cooley.”

  “Wow,” said Elinor. Mike’s favorite journalist! Richard Cooley! Elinor involuntarily looked at Sheila to see if she was impressed by this reference. Sheila seemed oblivious.

  “I didn’t know he had a beard,” said Nicole. “He’s kind of really hot.”

  “Where is he?” said Elinor.

  “He’s over there,” said Nicole, pointing to a small man with a very pointy beard who had glasses on.

  “Oh, wow,” said Elinor.

  “Who’s he?” said Sheila in her fake-friendly voice again. “I’m sorry, I’m so ignorant. Even though I actually majored in this for like, a year.”

  “You aren’t ignorant,” said Nicole, laughing uncomfortably. “He’s just this reporter who writes amazing stuff about like, Goldman Sachs. He really hates them. He called them like, a flesh-eating bacteria in an article. It was amazing.”

  “I don’t know who that is,” said Sheila. She sighed. “I had the worst day.”

  “I’m going to tweet about this. I’m going to say I’m weirdly attracted to him. I don’t even care if it’s weird.” Nicole bent her head over her phone and started tweeting.

  “So, anyway,” said Sheila, in a slightly confidential tone. “I was just so pissed about this shifts thing. It’s just disrespectful. You know? Also, I guess I was in a bad mood today. I had my period. Ralph came over last night, and it’s like, I don’t know, should this guy even be in my life?”

  “Ralph’s sort of her boyfriend,” said Elinor to Gretchen, because Gretchen had come out of the bathroom and was smiling at them like she wanted to be included. Elinor was annoyed that Sheila was talking just loud enough so that Gretchen could hear, but not clearly enough at Gretchen so that she could participate.

  “No he’s not. He’s actually my platonic roommate? We just have a weird relationship.” Sheila laughed like a newscaster, and gave Elinor a dirty look. Elinor had forgotten she was like this around strangers.

  “Yeah, I’ve been there,” said Gretchen.

  “What are we talking about, ladies?” said Nicole, popping her head up from her phone.

  “Nothing really,” said Sheila.

  “No one is liking my tweet or my Instagram?” said Nicole. “But I feel like it’s not a good picture. I only got the side of his head. Maybe I’ll take it down.”

  “You take down pictures that don’t do well?” said Sheila, incredulously.

  “Yeah,” said Nicole, defiantly. “You don’t?”

  “I just figure it’s my experience,” said Sheila piously. “Obviously, it affects me if I don’t get a ton of likes, but I don’t really care. My Instagram is literally what I did that day.”

  No one responded to that.

  “Oh, look,” said Nicole. “The reading is about to start.”

  And it was true. There was requisite shuffling, and then Richard Cooley went to the front of the room and took out a sheaf of papers and put them on a lectern.

  * * *

  · · ·

  The reading lasted a long time, it seemed. Elinor started spacing out during it, looking at the other people, who all seemed in rapt attention. After the reading, she and Sheila took a cab uptown even though Elinor paid for most of it because her commute was so much longer.

  “That was fun,” said Elinor. “Wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” said Sheila. “That’s a cool place. I’d never been there before.”

  “Isn’t it? It’s a super cool place.”

  “And I liked your friends. They weren’t really into talking though?”

  “They are really into their phones, I know,” said Elinor.

  “I liked them,” said Sheila, as she tried to turn off the taxi TV.

  “Yeah,” said Elinor. “I think they are really interesting.”

  “I said they were really nice,” said Sheila. “Wasn’t that the first thing I said?”

  “It was,” said Elinor, unwilling to take her up on it. Sheila looked at her phone, and Elinor looked at her phone. Mike was green on Facebook chat. She had a perverse desire to say something to him. Why couldn’t she? It was so stupid that she couldn’t. But what did she even want to say? Maybe the whole problem was that Mike had always secretly thought she was dumb because she didn’t write think pieces. Well, fuck him, if that was true! What a dick thing. But then, maybe she was dumb—or at the very least dumber than he was, which was why he needed to leave her. At once, she felt a kind of dissociative anxiety, a pain in her arm. She whispered the word “shit” and opened the window.

  “Why did you say ‘shit’?” asked Sheila.

  “I forgot I had to do something,” said Elinor.

  * * *

  · · ·

  By the time Elinor got back to her apartment, she was tired. She had trouble getting the door open because a rectangular brown box was blocking the vestibule. She could see through the glass door that the box wasn’t for her or for Kathy, but for a man named Bob Dole, who lived in a unit called 3A. Did a man named Bob Dole live in their building? She knew there were other tenants, intellectually, because there were other silver mailboxes with other names on them, but she’d never examined the matter closely, or seen these other tenants in the flesh. She wondered if they had shared bathrooms as well.

  Elinor finally opened the door and walked up the stairs and into her room. It was messy. She hadn’t yet been able to afford one of those stand-up closet things, so she just had her clothing in a suitcase, crumpled in
balls. She often missed the apartment she shared with Mike, which even had a bathtub and room for a desk.

  Perhaps the reader might be questioning why Elinor was so obsessed with Mike even though he never answered any of her emails and maybe had another girlfriend. Shouldn’t she just move on? They didn’t even have that good of a relationship! Readers, I don’t even know what to tell you. Rapidly, the whole thing had dissolved into boring societal and symbolic forces that went well beyond Mike, but somehow applied to him, like most affairs of the heart.

  Elinor sat down on the foam pad and rolled her comforter up over her legs. She propped her computer up on her lap. Without really thinking about it, she opened Word on her computer. All of a sudden, she was seized with the inspiration for a great personal essay and cultural commentary.

  She didn’t even torture herself and look at Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter all in a row, like she usually did. Instead, she started writing in a torrent.

  Recently, I was at a party where almost everyone there was talking about the different pieces they were writing for various publications. All of them were personal essays or opinion essays—and I immediately felt a little intimidated. Although my job working at Journalism.ly makes me cover the news cycle, I don’t usually write about myself or my opinions.

  At one point, someone suggested I write a piece about a devastating breakup I had recently experienced. I was shocked. I looked around the group of brilliant, interesting women I was with. Did they agree? It seemed as if they did. Some of the women there even insisted that writing about your breakup is a cathartic experience. I left the party mulling over their words. There was a part of me that wanted to give a voice to my experience. But can I really reduce my ex-boyfriend to a think piece?

  The truth of it was, my breakup was all I had been thinking about for months. My boyfriend and I (I’ll call him “he”) had one of those devastatingly adorable meet cutes. He accidentally sat at my table in a coffee shop. I had recognized him from a class we had taken together, and we started talking. We traded witty barbs and trivia about ourselves that was startlingly similar (our rooms growing up were set up in the exact same way, which was just weird, actually). After that moment, we started hanging out constantly, and after several years, eventually living together. I loved the way he snored, the way he argued with the accepted truths of society, and his emotionally intense nature. Sure, sometimes he flinched in the face of intimacy. He would sometimes go dark for days and ignore me when we were out at parties. His moods were changeable and flickering, like the telescope I loved as a child that I never could quite see through. I told myself that that was natural, that we were young, that sometimes I had an intense nature too, and perhaps it overwhelmed him. I was struggling myself, trying to make it as a journalist, and sometimes I took his helpful remarks too personally, feeling like he didn’t really respect my writing. Maybe I was moody sometimes, and maybe I overreacted to things, but I thought we were happy. I didn’t realize that anything was wrong. I was too in love.