This Modern Love

by Ray Hecht

  No.

  He felt a rage directed inwardly. How dare he be reminded? He felt contempt for the social networking corporation’s lack of empathy in even keeping deceased profiles.

  Scrolling down at the years-old RIP’s and emoji tears—so pathetic, so lacking in anything real—Jack most of all felt ashamed of himself. At the core of his being, nothing but a deep, horrifying sense of inner loathing and guilt.

  His food came, interrupting the tumultuous inner dialogue. Surprised, he almost dropped his phone.

  “Whoa, honey!” said the middle-aged server, condescendingly. “Take it easy. Here’s your hash browns. Enjoy.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  Master of compartmentalization that he was, Jack Davidson clicked off and thusly forgot about Gillian Leigh Walker.

  Half-eating, and careful not to drip oily hash browns on his phone, he went to the notebook app.

  The title: What did we learn today?

  – Don’t meet women who live far away, he typed. – Adjust settings and narrow the range to two or three miles from now on.

  Make sure to bring up addresses in convos.

  Consider logistics more thoroughly.

  No more long drives.

  Time is the greatest resource.

  Food half-finished, he returned to his email. A quick reply, one-handed: – Janelle, please get it together. This isn’t right. You don’t know me at all. You’re an awesome girl, I appreciate your thoughts and concern, but damn it’s not going to work. Have some self-respect and move on. I will always remember time together and treasure it, but you need to know that we weren’t meant to be. I know you will understand soon.

  I wish you the best

  And for now we need to cut our ties.

  Goodbye and good luck…

  It was a form letter.

  Send.

  And then he deleted the conversation.

  Lastly, he had to check his mother’s voicemail. What was she doing calling so late anyway? Something bizarre about an uncle needing bail because of running over a dog or some fucking train wreck circumstance that always seemed to happen with that side of the family. A traffic stop gone wrong, an expensive habit. More complications. Wasn’t the first time.

  It never ends. Whatever.

  Looking around in this strange, empty diner, he wished he was home.

  But which home? Mom’s place? That is, her old place with Dad where he had grown up, or the new house she had lived in since the divorce? Or, was the concept of home the thing he once shared with Gillian from those particular years? Surely home did not mean the rot apartment he was currently splitting with a stranger? Did home mean anything whatsoever?

  No, not really. It’s one thing to wish to be home.

  It’s another thing to find a home.

  Really, there’s no such thing.

  * * *

  Jack, almost immediately after enacting the new rule covering long distances, subsequently broke that rule and opened the hookup app. It was just as he stared down to the opposing tables, and he thought he caught the young server girl in a brief flash of eye-to-eye contact. But he might have been imagining it.

  He didn’t need eye contact. He didn’t need a connection. He needed blue light.

  He just hoped she used the same app on her breaks, and that she would notice him.

  10

  Andrea

  At the precise cusp of dawn, her eyes open. No matter how sleep-deprived, at a certain time, the eyes always open. For Andrea Diaz, days were meant to be strewn with many naps, many interrupted REMs. No pattern. Every new day filled with chaos, every time an original adventure. But mornings were the same, predictable and pure. An oasis of stability, an island of daily repetitiveness, an awakening never to change.

  Outside, the dawn chorus of robins began. They sang their sweet songs, much like Andrea did, for reasons of sex and security and personal validation. They sang their little hearts out, as evolution demanded them to, and why shouldn’t they? The promise of a partner, of eggs to raise, of a joyous albeit short future. They did as they were programmed to do.

  Andrea’s programming insisted that she wake up and make coffee and check her device for messages. She was torn; she didn’t want to wake up. Even the need to urinate must be suppressed.

  The feeling of skin against skin was too comfortable. Limbs knotted together like braided hair. Such limbs were a bit too effeminate for Andrea’s tastes, a bit too soft and a bit too sweet-smelling. But it was a fairly good sensation, she had to admit. The arms were strong. The legs were long. The skin was warm.

  Slowly, breasts rose and fell with each breath. A body shifted a bit, and two cheeks touched. Andrea closed her eyes, wide awake, and soaked in the presence.

  Cera—not Molly—slept most peacefully. She had no such programming. If left to her own devices, she could just as easily stay like this until the late afternoon. The birds and their songs were only dreams, nothing more.

  Andrea looked around. She noticed a phone on the floor. It was blinking a hazy flash of light. It wasn’t hers to notice.

  Carefully, as beams of sunlight crept and bounced from corners, she maneuvered her arm outside of the pile and somehow reached the phone without getting caught.

  Cera’s Grapephone S-6009, the one with the dick pics coldly gazed at earlier, was better than Andrea’s. The model was newer, the metal smoother, cleaner, and it was bedazzled with fake plastic diamonds.

  Even the OS was an updated version. Didn’t take Andrea long to figure out how to use the system, which was more or less the same, but it was amusing to see her familiar icons in sleeker versions.

  She tapped on the gallery, a flat little photo frame, and curiously glanced at the dick pics folder. Her hunch was proven right: Some new ones had surfaced.

  This was followed by a tap on a tiny envelope over home page. A conversation opened.

  — You r so hot, said Blake.

  — Haha, answered Andrea.

  — I love your website.

  — Tks

  — Why didn’t you tell me about the Molly Cupcake persona? Its brilliant, I really dig it!

  — Well, a girl’s gotta have secrets…

  — When do I get a show?

  — Oh come on.

  — I mean it. Aren’t we friends?

  — Ye we r good friends.

  — Friends share.

  — Friends share that?

  — Why not. U now we’re all open-minded here.

  — Yeah.

  — So Gimme a heads up

  — Fine.

  A slew of ecstatic tiny yellow spheres.

  — As a matter of fact, I’ll be on tonight… ….

  Even more spheres, followed up by, — WOW

  — :)

  — I am so hard right now

  And he proceeded to send an all-new set of erection portraits.

  “I knew it,” whispered Andrea, soft as silk.

  She scrolled quickly. All things considered, it was a pretty fine-looking penis. Certainly a seven or an eight. No wonder they were saved for posterity. However, that wasn’t what concerned her. The stings of jealousy that came from the attention far outweighed interest in mundane images of a friend’s most private organ.

  It was Cera’s flirty replies that stung deepest. Her own emojis, those perfect representations of living language, said it all. They laughed and smirked and shone with impossibly large smiles. They encouraged, and in turn received more attention, and it spiraled into a two-way virtual orgy.

  Andrea had enough. She tossed the device across the room.

  As it flew in mid-air, a sudden flash of comprehension flickered behind her eyes: Wait, so Blake was watching the entire time?!

  Before she had time to sift through her memories and question which screenname could have been the man she knew, the Grapephone banged against the wall with the sound of a cracking brick, then bounced twice on the hard floor and clicking all the way.

  And he
r sleeping friend stirred.

  The fear. It wasn’t okay to throw a friend’s expensive products. She couldn’t even see it; the damned thing was at an angle behind an empty bookcase. Was it shattered?

  “What time is it?” Cera quietly asked, her hips moving like waves.

  “It’s early,” Andrea whispered back. “Don’t get up. Go back to sleep.”

  Arms broke free of the cuddle pile and stretched to the heavens. “I have to pee so bad.”

  “Lay here with me.” A squeeze. A nod of the head.

  “Hey!” she laughed. “That tickles. Seriously. Let me go.”

  “Stay.”

  “I’ll be right back. Girl, you crazy”

  Cera stood up, and kicked some sex toys across the floor. Nude, she walked without ceremony to the nearest bathroom down the hall, perky breasts bouncing. The door was wide open, not that Andrea could see anything, but the sound of urine streaming and toilet flushing was clear as freshwater.

  “We sure drank a lot,” Cera said to the darkness as she sat on the edge of the mattress.

  “Hmpf,” Andrea replied, and grabbed her friend by the hips. Laughter once more, and the two fell and rolled and intertwined. Nipples brushed. Toes flicked. Andrea felt the wet stickiness of a warm crotch slide up her knee.

  The kiss was brief. Nobody knew who started it. With no audience, there was no arousal. It just seemed a necessary formality. Andrea herself lost track of whether or not she initiated, but once her tongue was pulled out she immediately regretted it and knew she wanted to back away. Yet Cera did all the backing away.

  “Stay,” Andrea repeated.

  “For a minute.”

  “Let’s sleep.”

  A yawn.

  “I can’t sleep.”

  “Please try.”

  Lying still, each girl tried, but neither was able to drift back to the slumbering lands. Andrea’s eyes reopened with each chirp out the window. Cera, anxious about her own busy life, soon concluded she needed to return to the familiar confines of her own home as soon as possible.

  “I have to get going,” Cera said, after a rest of only a few minutes.

  “Come on.” Another squeeze.

  “Sorry, babe. A lot going on. I just can’t crash her today. Hey, how awesome was last night? Really cool.”

  “Yeah…”

  “We’ll have to do it again soon, and make some more bank!”

  “I guess so.”

  With tremendous effort, Cera stood up. She brushed her torso, stretched again to the heavens, scratched her eyes, and she was let go.

  Grunts and moans as articles of clothing were searched for and pasted on, one by one. The body became hidden, cowering beneath bras and lacy underthings before totally vanishing under the weight of a sensible top. The skinny jeans were last, only pulled up after cleaning out the living room. Bottomless, Cera had carefully folded all the extra lingerie and rinsed off the vibratory wands and cleanly stuffed the remaining wigs into the bursting designer bag.

  “Where’s my phone? Oh there it is.” There was no further comment.

  Andrea didn’t bother with clothes herself. What’s the point? She knew it was bad form so early in the morning, but decided to go straight for the wine. It was lukewarm, going stale after being open to the air all night, and yet the bottle called out to her. Half a glass left puddled at the bottom, she poured the stuff into a white paper cup. It quickly went down her throat with no taste at all.

  “What a night,” she heard.

  “So that’s it?”

  “I guess that’s it.”

  Cera was almost dressed at this point. The garments were ready. Her legs were ready. The sun was ready.

  “Babe…”

  One came in for a hug, and Andrea backed away and took another sip. “When do I get my money?” she asked distastefully.

  “You know I’m good for it.”

  “Like, whatever.”

  “Not a morning person, huh?”

  “I fucking guess so.”

  “You’ll get your money when you get it. Don’t be a bitch.”

  “I want the paperwork by tomorrow.”

  “Fine. I’m going. Bye.”

  No.

  No don’t go.

  A door slammed. A motor started. The sign of a day ending, and another beginning, yet barely perceptible, foamy at the edges, like two clouds splitting. “Please don’t leave me alone,” Andrea Diaz silently begged, mouthing the words, empty and cold as the vacuum of space. “Please don’t leave me alone.”

  * * *

  The body, stiff and dead and useless.

  Eyes, bloodied. Red lines zig-zagging through viscous fluid.

  Lungs breaking. Heart twitching.

  The light, haunting.

  Paralysis overwhelmed her. The familiar, old friend. One that she never quite got used to.

  The memories were confusing to her and she couldn’t recall how she came to this position. In a bed. Unable to move. Sensing a presence. Something dangerous was lurking. Something that would destroy everything. It was near. It was getting nearer.

  She couldn’t escape. Reality was coming apart. There was something wrong.

  And she couldn’t move.

  She was sleeping. Was she? She was waking up. Or wasn’t she?

  She was living and she was dying and the light was shining directly on her sweat-and-teared-chilled face, yet there was a darkness and it was coming closer. Something. It was coming closer.

  Nobody was there to help her.

  Nobody cared for her.

  Everyone left.

  She was scared.

  And nobody cares.

  11

  Ben

  —Hey man.

  Nothing.

  —Matt, my man.

  Absolutely nothing.

  —You wouldn’t believe the day I’m having. Know its late, but do feel free to hit me up if you’d like to shoot the shit dude…

  Now he was just plain desperate.

  Ben knew he was pushing his luck by trying to reach out and engage with someone at this time of night. But what else could he do? It had been a long hour since he had snuck out to avoid the embarrassing situation he had inadvertently caused at home. What was he thinking, inviting a girl inside the home when Jack was clearly on a date with someone else?! (Then again, another part of him felt good to sabotage the guy just a little. Scratch away at that perfect platinum armor to expose the soft and dramatic underbelly.)

  So what to do now? While Ben could play the night owl on occasion, that tended to be more the kind of thing to do in front of the computer. At home. Indoors.

  There wasn’t much in the area. He ended up wandering through a drug store, the kind that was part supermarket. Looked at magazines. Bought some potato chips. Strolled slowly. Generally killed time.

  Once outside again, he noticed one of those 24-hour gyms down the road. He took his time walking past the dark parking lot, and peeked up to the second floor of the building. Looked nearly empty, save for a couple of surprisingly large Asian bodybuilders and one thin woman on a treadmill. Barely discernable, a sleepy employee at the desk played with his phone and struggled to stay awake.

  —Just going to the gym, he texted, feeling proud.

  After hitting send, he realized he actually had to do it.

  As he walked along the dilapidated building’s sharp edge, the glass windows by way of moonlight formed misshapen reflections. Ben looked at his mirrored self from the side, focusing on his sad and jagged paunch, and he kept walking until he reached the entrance and the reflection disappeared.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Oh. Hello.” The employee seemed surprised that anyone would talk to him. He was young, a student perhaps. Closer inspection of the desk revealed a tangle of textbooks and notes, though untouched for some time.

  “I’m, uh, looking to try out this gym,” said Ben.

  “Sure thing.” He dug through the cabinets and produced a form to be fille
d out. “Do you have your credit card and ID?”

  Ben’s memories betrayed him, and recalled that he had done this dance before. Joined a gym, got a membership card, paid online for subscriptions full of workout programs, and so on. Many times over. The math didn’t lie: Nothing ever came of it.

  This time will be different, he vowed, damning the law of averages.

  There was a certain narrative in the air. After such a complicated day, it must all be headed towards something. The humiliation, the purging, the shame. It had to be leading to some positive outcome. In a paradoxical way, he pressed at his soft round stomach and felt as optimistic as ever.

  I mean, he thought to himself, how great would it be to get the Missed Connections up and running and be in shape?

  He did some calculations in his head, and gave himself ninety-nine days to present the new Ben Weiss. The vision of a lean, rich businessman awaited. Most striking of all, his mind’s eyes presented a girl wrapped around a solidly pumped arm. It made sense.

  The employee didn’t have to pitch a thing.

  Inwardly, the young part-timer was stifling down his own ecstatic sentiment. He didn’t want to fuck this up. His textbooks from the local City College weren’t cheap, and the commission would come out to about hundred or so. That would cover a whole semester’s worth. With luck, he could keep the pace and be able to move out of his dad’s place and afford an upgraded used car within the year. His online girlfriend would be happy about that. And the other gym guys, those meathead trainers, they thought the night shift would amount to nothing. He’d show them…

  But mostly he wanted to go home and get stoned and go to sleep.

  Ben interrupted the employee’s internal dialogue by signing the form. “What?” “Oh.” “Your plastic, please.” Cards were swiped, documents were scanned, and identification was copied and printed. Ben posed for a low-res digital picture, and the picture sucked.

  Next, the quick tour of the facilities. The locker room, the weight-training corner, treadmills, Stairlords, spinners, and big empty studios used for aerobics classes.

  “Yoga on Thursdays and Sundays,” the employee said. Ben glanced at the schedule and wondered about the teacher.