by Eliza Gordon
Suddenly Howie’s chest rises on its own, and he starts coughing.
“Roll him sideways,” Marco says, helping me do just that as Howie vomits onto the damp gray concrete.
Marco digs through the Whole Foods basket, extracting a T-shirt that he uses to wipe Howie’s mouth and bearded chin. Howie blinks a few times and tries to speak, but whatever’s going on, it’s robbed him of his voice.
“Hey, Howie. Hey, big guy, you’re okay. It’s Dani. We’ve called for an ambulance. You stay awake and talk to me, okay? Don’t close your eyes again because I have a lot of unanswered questions about that Bernard Marx fellow,” I choke out, trying to hide the fear in my voice behind a strained smile as I watch his eyes flutter and his chest rise and fall.
My best guess: a stroke.
I stay with Howie, whispering how we’ve got everything covered, petting the back of his limp hand and his damp white hair while Marco runs around the end of the buildings and waits for the ambulance. Aldous climbs on top of Howie’s chest, sniffing around his face. “You’re a good girl, aren’t you, Aldous? We’ll take care of your dad.” I pet her and she reaches a paw, claws out, toward my face, purring like a Porsche. “Howie, does anything hurt? So I can tell the paramedics?”
He points at his head with his left hand. I ask him to squeeze my fingers with his right hand; he cannot. And the right side of his face is drooping—his eye, his mouth. This is not good. I hope the medics get here soon.
I continue asking yes-or-no questions—do you have food for Aldous, is it in the cart, did you hit your head—until he seems too tired to answer. I talk about my progress reading Brave New World, how Bernard Marx and his overwhelming discontent is so eye-opening that I feel like an Epsilon in an Alpha world, and that I know now why he wanted me to read it.
Howie manages a lopsided smile.
Sirens scream down the side street, growing closer.
All at once they stop, and Marco leads the fire department to where we’re tucked between these two buildings. Immediately the medics set to work on Howie, taking vitals, asking questions, cutting apart his beloved flannel shirt to attach chest leads, Howie’s eyes on me. With his still-functioning left hand, he points at the cat in my arms.
“I’ll take Aldous. Don’t worry. And if you promise me you’ll get better, I’ll read Chaucer—I swear I won’t fake it this time.”
He winks with his good eye.
“Don’t worry about your girl. I’ll take good care of her. She can babysit Hobbs the Depressed Goldfish until you’re back on your feet.”
One of the medics, a young woman with a gorgeous mahogany braid snaking down her back, asks me a few questions about Howie, though my answers are not at all helpful because I don’t know how to reach his next of kin, if he even has next of kin. He was never forthcoming about family stuff.
“Howie, we’re going to look in your basket for your wallet, okay?” He attempts a nod, and the redhead hands me and Marco each a pair of blue medical gloves. I don’t want to be a jerk and look like a germophobe—Howie is my friend—but I put the gloves on, just in case.
Digging through his prized possessions doesn’t reveal much: changes of clothing, a lot of books in black plastic bags, a metal box full of what must be family pictures (I pull this out and ask Marco to tuck it under Howie’s arm to take to the hospital), cans of pork and beans, the bag of cat food for Aldous, a few blankets, the sleeping bag I gave him for Christmas last year.
“No alcohol or evidence of drugs in here—do you know if Howie is taking any medication or if he’s a drinker or street-drug user?” the redhead asks. Her name tag reads MAHONEY.
“I’m not sure about medications. I don’t think he sees a doctor very often. He used to drink, but he’s recovering.”
“A lot of these guys are.”
“He has a PhD in English lit and other degrees in linguistics,” I say. I feel defensive. I don’t want this young Mahoney maligning my friend with her preconceived notions.
“That would explain the books,” Mahoney says. She finishes going through her side of the cart and reseats the plastic bag over the top of Howie’s stuff.
“What hospital are you guys going to?”
“Emanuel,” she says, pulling off her gloves, only to replace them with a new pair. She then pulls out her notebook and its tiny pen and jots down our names and contact info.
Mahoney walks over to rejoin her two male partners, grabbing a gear bag as they hoist the gurney atop its wheels in preparation for loading it into the rig.
“What do I do with this stuff?” I ask.
“We can’t take it with us,” Mahoney says. No shit, Sherlock. “Thanks for calling us, guys.” The door to the back of the ambulance slams shut, and Howie & Co. speed away, lights and siren.
Aldous mewls in my arms and bites down on the blue glove covering my finger.
The sob that had been choking me for the last half hour escapes; heartbroken tears spill down my face.
Marco wraps me in a hug, the smell of exertion and his cologne or aftershave comforting given the events of the last fifteen minutes. I so appreciate this.
The cat squeals between us. “Your friend will be all right, Dani. He’s in good hands,” he says quietly as he rubs my back and cups the back of my head for a beat.
But Aldous will have none of this, squirming in my arms, claws unsheathed.
Marco lets go and moves back to the cart, reaches in, and pulls out the cat food, spilling a small heap onto the pavement.
The kitten bounds from my grasp, nearly hanging herself when I grab for her leash. She opens her mouth so wide for that first crunchy bite, she looks more lion than domestic housecat.
“What are we to do with his things? It doesn’t feel right to leave them here,” Marco says.
I’m kneeling next to this cat who’s eating like she’s never seen food, and I look up at Marco. “Would it be weird if we pushed it back to the gym, and then I could unload it into my trunk? He’d lose the cart, but his books and stuff I could keep for him.”
The side of Marco’s mouth rises in a half smile. “You’re a good person, Steele with an e.”
“Howie’s my friend. To everyone else, he’s just this bum who washes windows and recycles pop cans. But if you listen to him, if you listen to some of his stories . . .” My throat tightens again, cutting off my words, and I think of just a couple of hours ago when Mr. Tough Love was feeding me a dish of truths on the weight bench: Everybody has a story.
“The lengths you will go to just to get out of your program are really quite remarkable,” Marco teases, pushing the cart free of the puddle it’s been resting in.
When Aldous has eaten her fill, I scoop her up and she nuzzles into me, her purrs quickly leading to sleep now that her belly is full. When my voice feels a little stronger, I nod at Marco pushing Howie’s shopping cart down the quiet residential street. “You’ve got a gym full of regular people doing regular exercises. I thought I’d come shake things up a little.”
“Well, suffice it to say you have definitely done that.”
THIRTY-TWO
Upon returning to the gym, I quickly retrieve my phone from my locker, the dozing cat still in my arms, only to find four missed calls from Viv, as well as text messages galore from both my sisters and even Trevor. I cannot look at these right now—I’m sad, and exhausted, and I need to get Aldous settled and stash Howie’s stuff in my car.
Under a renewed rainfall—so glad it waited until we got back here instead of while we were pushing the cart—Marco helps me unload Howie’s things into the trunk of Flex Kavana. Aldous curls up on a sweatshirt on the front passenger seat, oblivious to the world and probably just glad to be warm and fed. I’m weirdly jealous of that kitten.
My phone goes off again in my pocket. Could it be the hospital calling with an update for Howie already?
Marco pushes the cart around back, says he’ll slide it in next to the dumpster for now until we figure out what’s happening wit
h Howie.
The caller ID tells me it’s Viv. Again. Oh no, I hope she’s not having a miscarriage.
I brace myself for the worst and answer the phone.
“Hey, Viv, you okay?”
“Dani, where have you been? I’ve been trying to reach you for two hours.”
“I’m at the gym. Or I was. We were jogging over at Grant Park, and then we came across Howie, and I think he had a stroke and so we had to call the ambulance. Viv, are you okay? Is everything okay with the baby?”
“Dani . . . are you near a computer?”
“What? No. I’m—we’re just wrapping up.” Too much to explain what I’m actually doing right now.
“You need to get to a computer.”
“Okay. Why?”
“Can you get to one? Right now?”
“What the hell is going on, Viv? You’re scaring me.”
“Just go, Danielle.”
“Okay, okay—hang on for a sec.” Marco’s walking toward me from around back. “Hey, can I use your computer in the office real quick? My girlfriend is on the phone, and it sounds like an emergency.”
“Oh dear, another one?”
We hustle out of the rain and into the manager’s office of Hollywood Fitness. Marco logs on to the desktop and then offers me the chair.
“Viv, what am I looking for?”
“Dani . . . go to www.deardwaynewithlove.com.”
“What?”
“Just do it.”
“This is super weird, Viv—” I navigate to the address she’s provided, and once the page loads, my stomach falls out of my body and runs for the hills to start a new life free of me and my dramas.
“What the fuck is this, Viv . . . What is this . . .?” But I don’t need her to answer because I know exactly what it is.
It’s my blog. My private, unpublished, super-secret, super-safe-from-stupid-prying-sisters blog-as-a-diary, up there on the World Wide Web for every human person to see.
Viv’s voice buzzes in my ear. “I got an email earlier with this link—I think everyone in your address book got the email because the sender didn’t use a BCC. Dani, you’ve been hacked. I didn’t know what it was at first, but then I started reading it, and I realized it’s you. It’s your diary, isn’t it?”
“I . . . I gotta go. I’ll call you back.”
I can’t take my eyes off the screen as I scroll. Oh my dear baby Jesus, it’s all here. Every single entry. Every single confession, complaint, secret, divulgence—it’s all here.
My phone lights up again, making me jump as it buzzes against the IKEA-veneered desktop.
It’s a text message—on top of the other dozens of text messages. I scroll through. The email icon on the phone’s home screen shows a little red circle with white numerals inside: 42. There are forty-two emails waiting for me.
Ding. Nope. Forty-three.
Ding. Forty-four.
Seems there are a lot of people who are trying to reach me right now.
I click open one email—it’s from Shelly, one of the Cluckers. “Dani, is this you? Dude, you’ve been hacked! Everyone in the company got this email. You have to take this blog down before everyone reads through everything!”
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
Marco walks back into the office, his phone in his hand. “Hey, I got an email from you earlier,” he says, smiling. “You didn’t mention it.”
“No! No, don’t open it.”
His smile retreats. “Why do you look like you’re going to faint?”
Oh god, how—what—how—I can’t think straight. Twinkly lights in my peripheral vision. Train roaring in my ears . . .
Marco moves quick around the desk and shoves my head between my knees. “Deep breaths. In and out. Too much running and excitement for you tonight, methinks.”
I take a few cleansing breaths, and once the roar in my ears has subsided, I sit back slowly and point a finger to the screen.
“I’ve been hacked. Someone hacked me.”
He leans across my weak body still seated in the manager’s chair and squints at the screen. “What is this? Dear Dwayne Johnson?” He reads a few lines and then kneels before the screen. I don’t want him to read another word—shit, what did I say about him in my latest entries?
“This is your diary . . .”
I nod. And then the tears, piggybacked with panic, and then I’m near hyperventilating as I push him away from the screen and try to log out of Blogger, but the logout won’t work, and whatever the hacker has done, he or she has wrested control of my life’s most intimate missives from me. How am I going to take this down before it does damage I will never be able to repair?
“It was supposed to be safe,” I sob. “It was supposed to be safe.”
Marco closes the browser tab and, for the second time tonight, pulls me against him. I wish I could enjoy this, but everything is ruined and my life is over.
“I have a friend,” he says. “We’ll get to the bottom of this. Let me make a call.”
“How did this even happen? Who would want to hack me? Who would even know about this blog?” I push back against the faux leather chair. Marco stands and scrolls through his phone.
“Is someone mad at you? Someone with an ax to grind? Could it have been Trevor?” Marco asks.
“No, I seriously doubt it. I mean, unless he was lying to me about being computer illiterate, but I doubt it—”
Wait.
Dick pics.
Trevor’s dick pic.
Trevor’s dick pic on Lisa Rogers’s computer monitor.
Lisa Rogers’s ponytail in my hand as I slam her to the floor.
Lisa Rogers in trouble with the FBI and Homeland Security and everyone else whose name involves acronyms and long prison sentences and black-op sites.
“Shit. Shit.”
“What?”
“I need to call the FBI.”
Marco chuckles. “Dani, I know this is an embarrassment for you, but I don’t think—”
“I gotta go.” I stand and push past him, not stopping as he calls my name, asking me to wait until he can get ahold of his friend.
The door of Hollywood Fitness shushes closed behind me, and the hiss of car tires on the wet asphalt of Sandy Boulevard underscores the alarm screaming in my head.
You’ve really done it this time, Steele.
THIRTY-THREE
On the drive home, I’m serenaded alternately by my phone and Aldous. I think she needs to pee.
What in the actual hell is going on?
It had to be Lisa Rogers. This is payback for what happened at the office, right? Does she know we’ve all been talking to Agent Superman? Does she know the feds are involved and they’re looking for her?
Of course she does, genius. You straight-up blabbed about it to DJ in one of your posts. Now the whole world knows the US government is after her!
I check my mirrors obsessively—am I being watched? Oh god, is she going to find me and put one of those dark pillowcases over my head and zip-tie my hands and then take me somewhere to be tortured until I tell her everything I know? Because I will be super terrible at torture. They’ll pour one jug of water on my towel-covered face, and I will sell my soul to make it stop.
When a car that looks like Trevor’s slides in behind me, my heart thuds against my damp sports bra, now uncomfortably cold from the abrupt end of exercise. When the car passes, I exhale so loudly, Aldous answers me with a mewl of her own.
“I know, sweetie. We’re almost home.”
Shit, she’s going to need a cat box, litter, food, some toys—I have no idea how long Howie will be out of commission, and I can’t have Aldous peeing in my piles of laundry or eating Hobbs. But I must get home and deal with this—this—hacking . . . Jesus, I’ve become one of those people on the news who I used to shake my head at because they were hacked after using QWERTY or their birth year as their one password for all their accounts.
I’m too long at a stoplight; the driver behind me courteou
sly lets me know with the soulful stylings of his Ford F-150’s horn.
I don’t have time for a proper pet store. Grocery store it is.
Oh man, I didn’t write anything awful about anyone at the grocery store, did I?
What did I write? If the ever-increasing number of text messages and emails is any indication . . . I wrote a lot.
I have to focus.
Into the store. Kitten chow. Cat litter. Cat litter pan and poop scoop. Fluffy mouse-shaped catnip toy to keep Aldous out of the fishbowl.
Home. Everything inside. Litter poured, food in the bowl, fresh water.
Open my laptop. Eighty-two emails waiting for me.
My phone battery’s at 11 percent, a response to the jump in activity. I plug it in, open a beer, put a second beer on standby, and one at a time, I scroll through.
Ohhhhhh boy . . .
You are the worst sister ever. CALL MY OFFICE IMMEDIATELY.
Did u really right about my dick on the INTERNET? Expect to hear from my atterney!
YOU FOUND MY SEX TOYS—AND PUT IT ONLINE? OMG, Dani! You took a picture? I’m the PRESIDENT OF THE KINDERGARTEN PTA!!!
Seriously, Danielle, you need to take down the post where it says I cheated on my SATs. And the Ex-Lax cake—DANI, that girl is a patient of mine now! This is extremely grave. And if the authorities read that Mommy has pot growing in her basement . . .
Mommy’s heart is going to be broken when she hears about this. I still cannot BELIEVE you fed my son CANDY? YOU WILL NEVER BABYSIT FOR ME AGAIN.
U faked the groaning when we were doing it? Bitch!
You gave them PIZZA HUT *and* DRUGGED THEM? I should call the police.
Dani, call me. Unless you don’t want to talk about my ANNOYING FERTILITY ISSUES.
And Dante is NOT a serial killer. HE’S FIVE.
Whut the hell is wrong w/ Red Lobster? I thot U liked shrimp scampi. U ate enough for 5 people!
Is this payback for me reading your diaries when we were in high school? We were KIDS, Danielle!
I can’t believe U told the whole world my penis is curved. I hope Lisa got a good punch in 2.