The Glitch_A Novel

by Elisabeth Cohen

  Across the room I heard, very distinctly, a young woman say, “It’s not a starring role, Irwin, I’m just grateful to be breaking into…”

  It was as if I were sniffing something strange in the air. And then I heard it again: that voice. It carried across the room. It was so amped up and confident, audible to me without effort despite all the party sounds—it was the pop-up web ad of voices. A cool shiver cascaded down my spine.

  “What did you mean, trends?” I asked Cullen.

  “It’s the second one like that I’ve seen tonight.”

  The second one. Another dress like mine. I felt understandably nervous. Not about the dress, about what was underneath. Not the person’s compression sucker slip, I want to clarify, but who the person was wearing it. I had a flicker of a thought, which I tried to suppress, that Michelle was at the party, and she’d dressed as my twin. Of course that was completely crazy. I angled my hand over my eyes, getting a good look around.

  “Excuse me,” I said, lurching away from Cullen and Greer. I heard snatches of conversation as I wriggled through the crowd.

  “They’ve got to incentivize the millennials.”

  “Can the opera do that?”

  I was trying not to listen, but suddenly I was overhearing lots of conversations at the party, and they all sounded ominous and directed at me. “She’s a fool to think so.” “I couldn’t get it to work.” “It wasn’t what I wanted!” I hoped the people talking weren’t talking about Conch.

  I scanned the room and saw two men in khakis part to reveal a sliver of blue, like the blue of my dress. I watched, waiting for a better view, and made out a familiar style, seen from the back.

  Someone had one hand on my cheek and the other gripping my forearm. It was Greer. “Breathe,” she said. “I can see the distress in your alignment. I know how this must feel. Sending you ease.”

  “You think I’m worried because somebody else has the same dress?” I said, trying to sound breezy.

  “It’s not just about the dress, is it?” Greer’s eyes searched my face. “It’s about aging, the passage of time, the decaying physical body, losing your looks…”

  “Everything’s fantastic,” I said.

  “You have a lot of self-confidence,” Greer said. “Good for you.”

  I approached the person in the blue dress. I felt a glimmer of expectation about who she might be. She had nice shoulder blades.

  I tapped her shoulder. “You have marvelous taste!” I said ingratiatingly. She turned. In the hang time before my next heartbeat, my Conch buzzed. “Say hello…” my Conch began. My chest went tight. “…to Shelley Stone.”

  “Hi,” I said. I looked straight at Michelle.

  From looking over my seatmates’ shoulders as they read magazines on airplanes, I’ve learned that if two people wear the same outfit, popular opinion can settle who “rocked it” more persuasively. I wondered, if put to a vote, which of us that would be and how lopsidedly the voting percentages would fall. It always seems to me from studying these pairs of photos for clues about regular people’s tastes that the more famous person always wins. If the two people are approximately equal in fame, then the winner is decided by which camera angle is more flattering, although to reinforce the fiction of a meritocratic society, that decision is justified in terms of the person’s choice of shoe. But I was too rattled to notice Michelle’s shoes.

  “What are you doing here?” I demanded.

  “Cullen invited me.”

  I was having a mild psychic glitch. I kept recognizing her dress and having the infinitesimal prick of pleasure the recognition brought (I’d liked the dress so much when I’d seen it on the rack at the store), and then hard on the heels of the pleasure came the dismay it was her. I was too stunned to act; I just stared.

  “Come over here,” she said, taking the initiative, and also my arm. “Did you see the cake?” She led me over to the kitchen, which looked like a steampunk meth lab. There was a huge, pillowy cake on the counter. The cake was rectangular and covered in whorls of buttercream. Strawberry halves sank deep in the corners. A message looped across the top in strings of dark chocolate, so jazzily written it could hardly be read. I made out an S.

  “See, it’s for your birthday. It’s my birthday too.”

  I’m losing my mind, I thought. She has the same dress. The same birthday. How can she not be me?

  “So I was waiting for the money,” she went on. “What happened?”

  “What money?” But as I said it I knew. “Oh—the money you asked me to wire. I discussed that with you. That was a firm no.”

  “This dress was expensive!” she complained. “Although I left the tags on inside so I can return it.”

  “That’s so dishonest,” I said, appalled.

  I stared at her, taking her in. I was intently concentrating on the way her body moved, the expressions that swept across her face as she talked. She still looked like a relative of mine, like a version of me in which the threads had been woven correctly but not pulled tight. She needed to pluck her eyebrows and do targeted ab work. Also, layers in her hair would reduce the poufiness. I had such a wealth of experience in these areas. Yet there was something about her skin that was simply better, younger, more collagen-y, it didn’t matter what she did or didn’t do. Mostly, though, she needed to go back to wherever she came from.

  “Look, I need the SportConch. Just give me the prototype and I’ll go. I’ll leave right now, out that door.” She pointed at the exit. “You never have to see me again.” She lowered her voice. People were looking at us.

  I hesitated. I had no intention of giving her the SportConch prototype, even if I’d had it.

  She sensed my hesitation, though not why. “We can spend time together too. You know, just us, hanging out.”

  “I thought you weren’t interested.”

  “I changed my mind. You’re fascinating. I can’t wait to hear what’s in store.”

  “Well, I doubt it’s all fascinating,” I said, and I couldn’t help but preen a little. “As for spending time together, my schedule is very full but I’m sure we can arrange something.”

  She was looking past me, across the room to Cullen, who was demonstrating a wrestling hold on Irwin. “I was hoping he’d be more into me.”

  “He likes fish,” I said.

  “Instead of people?”

  “In addition.” Cullen’s preferred type, if he has one, has not yet come into focus for me.

  “About the money I asked for. How about a small check?”

  I could feel my stress level rising; I took cleansing breaths. I needed to get fresh air.

  “Look at that!” said someone with a rudimentary gift for pattern recognition, noticing our dresses. “Wow, that’s amazing. Get a photo.” I was annoyed. I hated that my taste in dresses was apparently just the same as when I was a poorly dressed nineteen-year-old versus a sleek thirty-nine-year-old tastemaker. I tried to remember and implement a three-point plan for handling extreme stress.

  I rebutted. “It’s an ocean-themed party, and we happen to both be in ocean-themed dresses. I’d say that’s not surprising.”

  “Some women,” the guy remarked to me, “would find it upsetting.”

  I shrugged. I feel like I have very little in common with most women, or men for that matter. I pushed my way outside and stepped onto Cullen’s balcony.

  Behind me was the bright quadrangle of the glass doors, through them the party, the people who I hoped weren’t seeing me out here. The wafting smell of herbs—dill, tarragon, marijuana—from Cullen’s pots. A tomato plant, spiraling up its cone-like support.

  I clinked an Ativan out into my palm—normally it’s calming enough simply to have them in my bag. But at this moment I needed to swallow one. Ativan slows down time for me, slows down my racing heart and makes me feel like I could reach up and snatch a speeding bullet out of the air. I breathed in deeply, taking a moment to take stock, before going back in to face the party.

 
“Nobody likes me,” I said aloud, and felt the full wave of everything behind it, the realization that it was truer than I’d even been able to admit.

  It’s not just that people are intimidated by you, but also that they don’t like you. That’s the part your mother doesn’t tell you.

  I leaned back against the balcony railing. I had hardly drunk any alcohol, but plane travel is dehydrating and the Ativan on top of a few sips of white wine was loosening the relationship between me and the other bits of me. My perceptions were blurring at the edges. Sound and motion were beginning to pull apart, operating at different speeds. Through the window I watched people mill, hug, eat sushi, check their phones, and pick up shards of cheese with their fingers when nobody was looking. Against the back wall, Irwin, egged on by Cullen, was doing a parkour move where he lunged at the wall, windmilled his feet straight up, and flipped himself over to land back on the floor. Or this was the goal. Irwin made it two steps up the wall and then came right back down. I didn’t know much about parkour but could tell he wasn’t good. As a parent I suspected this activity was likely to end in spinal injury, but as someone with a dotted-line reporting obligation to the person asking him to do it, I just watched. Why wouldn’t Cullen hang out with me more? He never invited me to come over to his apartment/clubhouse or go to one of his urban ninja classes across the Bay. Not that I wanted to, but I wouldn’t mind being asked. We worked together really well, we had a close, personal, intimate work relationship, sometimes instant agreement on business decisions without a word of discussion; why wasn’t it the same thing as being friends?

  I texted Christine. Remember how you said my dress was matronly? Obviously not, because an extremely attractive young person is wearing it too. My stalker, in fact. Remember I told you about her?

  She replied right away. Sounds like an exciting night. Send pics, I’m stuck at work. A moment later, she sent another message. Did you call Walter like I suggested?

  I didn’t like that she was referring to him by name. They were from separate parts of my life, the pre and the post.

  No, I banged back. Sometimes Christine was right, though. I tried to picture him, couldn’t, and tried on the idea of missing him. Then I whispered his name and tapped my Conch to search for him.

  “Recent results,” my Conch buzzed. “News alert: there’s a story that might interest you in the…Marathon County Weekly Reporter.” I smiled. That’s not even a publication that I’d guess would be online. Although everything is going digital now, and that’s why this is such an opportune time to be in the aural information-streaming space. The story was recent; it was amazing how you could not think of someone for years and all at once find out what they had just been up to. I nodded to confirm. “Sure,” I said. “Read it to me.”

  “Headline,” my Conch intoned, “Local Man Remembers Lightning Strike That Destroyed Champion Sycamore.”

  I straightened up. Lightning strike?

  My Conch seemed worried: “Your blood pressure is very high. You may want to sit down until this spike subsides.”

  “Go on,” I whispered to my Conch.

  The story was about Walter’s recollections of that night. “Send link to my phone,” I asked my Conch. I wanted to see the big photo I knew would be there, and it was, in the form of Walter in work boots posed beside a barn. He looked extremely old.

  The Conch began reading the article. “Webster’s defines lightning as…” it began. “Twenty years ago, that definition took on special meaning for a local man when he…” I listened for mentions of myself, but the story was about the toll the strike had taken on Walter, and how he’d lost sight in one eye (I didn’t remember that). I scrolled ahead in the story. The tree (another victim) was also pictured. Now Walter filled his days with a job at the tire store, and in his spare time made wooden bowls on a lathe. It mentioned me in passing (“Fun Trivial Fact, also with him that night was Shellie Stoner!”). Shellie Stoner, the paper said, had risen to prominence as head of a technology company called the Conch that made personal listening gadgets. She reportedly made millions of dollars per year and didn’t spend any of it in Wisconsin. The article continued:

  “ ‘You still keep in touch with her?’ I asked Walter, an avuncular man whose good eye still twinkles despite all he’s been through.

  “ ‘Nah,’ he said, with gentle mirth. ‘She always was a—rhymes with witch.’ ”

  Oh, Walter, I thought.

  When Walter had kissed me that night it was with only his lips (the dry, outside part), no tongue, like he was delivering some kind of benediction. Like I was very lucky to be getting this dry Wisconsin-boy kiss on a metal cooler. I thought kissing him would be more exciting, because I’d known him so long, and I liked him so much, but it was a relief to realize even then there was nothing to it. In movies it’s more elaborate, but everything is different in movies—the ceilings are higher, the sun is out even at dinnertime, people always hand-wash their dishes when it’s time to have an important conversation—movies aren’t a good way to know what your life will be like. This was just like a fist bump, but with lips. I’d hardly had time to register the disappointment when I’d noticed a purple glow on the tree and his hair standing on end.

  I was knocked out of those thoughts by a bang from inside the loft and a peal—many peals—of breaking glass. I flinched. Way too loud to be a wineglass’s festive little fracturing tinkle. Inside, everyone had all at once stopped talking. I let myself in from the balcony. Irwin lay on his back on the floor, surrounded by shards of glass. The aquarium had shattered, and water was flowing across the floor, sloshing across people’s shoes, carrying along in its current a toothpicked scallop that floated and bobbed like a buoy. There was a faint violet cast to the water, perhaps a tint picked up from the gray concrete floor. As I moved closer, I heard a thumping, and then I saw on the floor, camouflaged by the concrete, the electric eel.

  Cullen crouched over Irwin, holding his floppy hand, checking his pulse. The electric eel (which properly should be called a knife fish—Cullen and I have worked together a long time) writhed in a puddle on the ground. All the guests who saw it backed away uselessly. These were people who paid good money to kiteboard, to adventure-trek, to send their children on Outward Bound expeditions, to have trainers inflict exercise on them, but nobody wanted to deal with the glass or the fish. If you don’t pay for it, it isn’t valuable adversity, I suppose. The eel raised its head. The ruffle along its belly rippled, starting at the head and moving outward to the tip. It was rather disgusting. It looked like a soft baseball bat, or a long, ropy poop.

  Michelle was right there. “Grab it!” I yelled, but she didn’t seem to hear. It raised its head toward Michelle, and she screamed. She picked up a serving fork off a cheese platter and threw it at the eel. It missed by a lot. What was her plan, to get into Cullen’s good graces by killing his eel? Poor planning is one of the biggest obstacles to success. The other female CEO put up her hands, as if to surrender. She scooted backward so fast her tortoiseshell glasses slid down her nose.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” I said. Perhaps I thought it. In any case my crisis management training kicked in. I confirmed that I was wearing shoes (Care) and stepped carefully through water and glass shards toward him. Or her—even at this point in my life, after all I’ve been through, unconscious bias still causes me to default to the male sometimes, such as with certain medical specialties and invertebrates. Whatever the fish’s sex, I approached, leaned over, grateful my dress was a practical length, and captured it with my hands. There was an instant when I thought: maybe there will be no shock. That thought squeezed itself into the tiny interval between grasping the fish and feeling the shock itself. Then the shock came: jittery, clean. It felt like a crisp series of jolts, like aluminum foil getting vigorously scrunched around a heap of holiday cookies. I held on to the eel, the experience of shock intermittently blacking out my awareness of the party. When I couldn’t feel anymore, raw determination kept me going. Basic
ally, as always. Consciousness came in little slices, intermittently. “Happy birthday, Shelley,” wobbled a hologram display on the wall, which I read between jolts. How ironic, I thought. Here I am, again, twenty years later, and this is how I’m celebrating? I wore heavy earrings for this? It was not as bad as the lightning. It was like a minor resemblance; a birthday candle instead of a house fire.

  There was no terror, this time, just the execution of responsibility: I knew what needed to be done, so I did it. I didn’t lose my grip, even when the eel thrashed with surprising musculature, even when the numbness had reached my chest. I trapped the fish against my body so I wouldn’t drop it, was dimly aware that people were watching me, and felt searing pain from the metal of my underwire bra. “Which way is the bathroom?” I asked. I received diffuse direction and tottered toward it. I’m glad I wore heels, I thought. Heels lift you above the fishy aquarium water now smeared across the floor, and they make your calves look svelte and taut meanwhile. I was curious about Cullen’s bed, and I got a quick view of it. It was large and low, without many pillows.

  I went through to his bathroom and started the tub, the way you do for a toddler. In point of fact I don’t often start the tub for a toddler, since Melissa usually does it, but I have done it before, which is more than you could have said for most people present. The large fish thumped unhappily in my grip, not unlike a toddler. It was heavy, and it was harder and harder to hold on.

  Cullen’s tub was very clean, deep, and surrounded by brown granite. There was an orchid on the corner, like in a hotel ad, and I wondered who had put it there. Probably he never used it. Or he had good cleaning people. People—women, who am I kidding. I thought this while waves of shock still coursed through me. Who has cleaning men? Even I employ only female household help, and would be, despite my commitment to gender equity, dubious about the motivations or qualifications of male applicants. We have so far to go toward real equality. My arms still had no feeling in them.