Love And Miss Communication Part 9

Now she yearned for her computer, and not just to look up the particulars of egg freezing. She had plenty of other research: 1. Read more about McQualin's M&A practice.

2. Determine if Luke Gla.s.sc.o.c.k had left the country.

3. Find out where Jack and his new wife were residing (could it be his studio walk-up in the West Village that he insisted on calling his "flat"?) and pa.s.s by there by chance.

4. Check how much money was left in her savings account.

She did have a vague sense of how much she had socked away; it should be enough to last for a while as long as she was prudent. This was easier said than done. The opportunities to part with money were endless now that she didn't have the commute that took her up and down the same exact streets and into Manhattan's underworld via the C train for the last eight years. Low on discretionary cash, she'd have to be merely a window-shopper of the city's fineries.

Besides the pressing inquiries, there were many other little itches that only the web could scratch. When she tossed her computer into the Reservoir, she abandoned a Words with Friends game in which she had a substantial lead over Stasia. She lost out on covetous sale items saved in her shopping cart on Net-a-Porter. And she couldn't remember who the senators from New York were but was too ashamed to ask anyone. How the h.e.l.l could she ever figure that out without the Internet? Maybe at the library. But she didn't know where the library was without her computer, except for the daunting main branch on Forty-Second Street with the ma.s.sive lion sculptures guarding the entrance.

Agitated by the idea of Stasia being pregnant and exasperated that she couldn't refresh herself on the egg-freezing procedure, Evie flung herself on her bed, resolved to identify a bright side in her life.

Sus.h.i.+.

That was it. Pregnant women couldn't eat raw fish. But she could. She reached for the phone to call her favorite j.a.panese restaurant, Haru. Jack never wanted to order in from there-he was always poo-pooing its lack of inventiveness and deriding any eatery that was part of a "chain."

She dialed Haru's number, which fortunately she'd committed to memory.

"Hi, I'd like to place an order for delivery."

"For how many?"

"One. I'd like a salmon-avocado roll, one eel roll, one spicy tuna roll, and three pieces of tuna sus.h.i.+, plus a house salad." She was suddenly ravenous and ecstatic about devouring sus.h.i.+ without having Jack critique the presentation of the avocado slices on her salad.

"You say one person?"

Evie sighed. "Yes, one person. How much will that be?"

"Forty-eight dollars and sixteen cents."

That was a bit steep for a solo lunch in her apartment. She decided to cut back.

"Which is the kind of fish that has a lot of mercury-the eel, the salmon, or the tuna?"

"You say you want add Mercury Roll. Now fifty-five dollars. Be there in fifteen minutes."

"No, no. I don't want a Mercury Roll. I was asking which of your fish has high mercury levels. It's the eel, right?"

"Okay, you want one more eel roll. Sixty-one dollars. Thank you." The woman hung up, leaving Evie alone in her apartment to await a mercury-laden meal she couldn't afford. Now she could add the inconvenience of not being able to look up mercury levels in fish to her list of living-without-Google annoyances.

It was undoubtedly getting harder for Evie to ignore the mounting inconveniences of being computer-less. But still she was confident about maintaining her abstinence. Albeit slowly, quitting the web was purifying her mind the way drinking kale shakes would detox her body. Without Facebook's news feed streaming into her mind like an IV drip, she felt freer than she had in years. Free from reading things like "Alice Saltz (a sycophantic Baker Smith a.s.sociate with her lips st.i.tched to the partner Bill Black's a.s.s) got promoted" and "Harry Shamos (Evie's high school ex, the guy who dropped her before the big dance) posted new pictures to the alb.u.m 'The Shamos Twins-6 months.'" She was free from feeling like she needed to measure up with posts of her own. Free from discovering things about people she was better off not knowing. Free from scouring dating websites for fresh meat. And that was worth not knowing who the senators from New York were for at least a little while longer.

Even though Tracy was the openly pregnant one, her bulbous stomach inviting attention and unwanted petting everywhere she went, Evie couldn't stop fixating on whether Stasia too was with child. A pit in her belly formed whenever she questioned if all her friends knew about the baby but were keeping it from her for fear she'd have a breakdown. She tried to put up a strong front to them most of the time, but who was she kidding? She had succ.u.mbed to a gloomier disposition the minute she and Jack split, and her halfhearted attempts at covering it up weren't particularly convincing.

After one week of torturous curiosity, she decided to call Caroline to sniff around.

A familiar accented woman picked up the phone at Caroline's house.

"Michaels residence, can I help you?"

In the background, Evie heard the girls laughing and Jerome yelling, "You better run. I'm going to get you!" It was strange to think of him like that, the Wall Street t.i.tan horsing around with the toddlers.

"May I speak to Caroline? This is Evie Rosen." It was frustrating that she had to identify herself, but she knew the next question would be "Who may I tell her is calling?" if she didn't.

She heard the housekeeper say, "Mrs. Michaels, are you available to take a call from Miss Rosen?" Even the freaking maid knew she was a "Miss" and not a "Mrs." Caroline and Jerome probably talked about their unfortunate single friend Evie while turning the pages of their four-volume wedding alb.u.m. And the whole "Mrs. Michaels" thing was so pretentious. If this had been just five years ago, the conversation would be more like, "Mrs. Michaels, are you available for Miss Rosen to sc.r.a.pe you off the floor of the men's room at Automatic Slim's? Security is on the way." Caroline Michaels (nee Murphy) thought being Irish and Texan meant she had a wooden leg. It did not.

Caroline came to the phone quickly and said breathlessly, "Evie, I'm so happy it's you. I have great news. First, though, how is your grandmother doing? Jerome said he knows a few of the trustees at Sloan Kettering if you need any strings pulled."

"Thanks, but things seem to be under control. My grandmother seems eerily calm, which I can't quite figure out. So what's this great news?"

"Just that I have the best guy to set you up with."

Evie gripped the phone more tightly. Caroline didn't offer to set her up frequently. If it were Tracy, she'd suspect it was some hipster friend of her husband's and be totally uninterested. Stasia's scattered attempts over the years led Evie to believe her only criteria were male and single. Paul and Marco claimed to know very few straight men and were frequently apologizing that they couldn't find anyone for her to date. Which was okay with Evie, because she wasn't just looking for "anyone."

"He's very good-looking," Caroline went on. "Black hair. Really wavy and thick. Dark eyes. And he's tall."

"Keep talking."

"He's intelligent, successful," Caroline continued. "He works for-I mean with-Jerome at JCM Capital. Started six months ago. I just met him at the corporate retreat. He's got good schools and all that c.r.a.p I know you care about."

Did she care that much about pedigree? Or was it the optics? She supposed it was both. Caroline was telling her that this guy was smart, so she didn't need any independent verification, did she? She was upset she was as transparent as celery skin to her friends. She spoke often about wanting to meet a great guy and claimed that she didn't care about the resume details-"so long as he's nice and smart" was her tagline-but here Caroline was calling her out without a second thought. And she called it c.r.a.p.

"I don't care about where he went to school," Evie self-consciously fibbed. "Tell me more."

"Well, his name is Harry Persophenis. His parents are Greek."

The image of John Stamos was now complete.

"Anyway, he already has your number and is going to call you. He asked for your e-mail address but I told him your computer was hacked. I didn't want him to think you were a freak."

Evie was grateful. It was hard enough for her friends to grasp why she had disconnected-she didn't want to get into it on dates. She hung up the phone after thanking Caroline, deciding for now to avoid asking her about Stasia. Evie spent the rest of the day feeling optimistic about her new setup. She let her mind travel to ridiculous places-like two years from now when they'd get married on a Greek Island in a ceremony far more picturesque than Jack's Turkish nuptials, then Harry would leave Jerome's office to open his own office where she'd head up a crackerjack team of attorneys as lead in-house counsel.

Energized, she treated herself to a new sweater at a cute boutique on her block and then called Bette to see how she was feeling. She casually let it drop that she had a date coming up. It was a bold move, sharing this information with Bette, who was likely to ask, "Have you met his parents yet? Vhat do zey do for a living?" It was tricky for Evie to cross the two generations that separated them and explain that even if she were dating someone, meeting the family would be out of the question for at least six months.

It was safer in Evie's case anyway.

When Bette first met Jack, she asked him to repeat his last name about three times. "Did you say Kiplitz?" "No, Grandma, he said Kipling." Then Bette proceeded to drop rampant Yiddish phrases into their conversation, hoping to see if they flummoxed Jack. Unsatisfied, or at least unsure of his reaction, she asked him directly which synagogue in London his family belonged to. She nearly choked on her babka when Jack explained that he was only half-Jewish. Evie thought Bette might go into cardiac arrest then and there until he clarified it was on his mother's side, the so-called right side.

"Very nice, bubbela," Bette now responded. "Just enjoy yourself."

Excuse me? Who gave her grandmother an unauthorized lobotomy?

"Tell me, Evie, how vas ze meeting vith Dr. Gold? I'm in good hands?"

"Definitely. And I checked with my friend's husband who trained with him and he said he's a great surgeon."

"You spent some time vith him? You veren't rus.h.i.+ng out ze door to get to one of your fakakta exercise cla.s.ses?"

"You're the one who lives at Zumba Gold. I did speak to him for a long time, and as good as he seems, I still think waiting for him to operate is ridiculous. Don't you want to know the pathology already?" Evie was proud of herself for slipping in the medical terminology.

"No. I've made up my mind," she said firmly, and Evie knew the case was closed.

After hanging up with Bette, she hit Book-A-Saurus, a mom-and-pop retailer on West Seventy-Eighth Street. Everything but the megastores were going extinct on the Upper West Side, and Evie wondered if the owners had acknowledged how apt the name of their store was. She waved to Stella, the owner's college-age daughter whom she'd gotten to know over the past few weeks, and settled on an orange beanbag chair with the latest issues of New York s.p.a.ces, Elle Decor, and Veranda. Evie had grown accustomed to reading there, watching Stella open the delivery boxes, or hearing the locals complain about the erection of a new condominium that would obstruct their views. These little bits of commerce and conversation made her feel connected to her neighborhood-the one she claimed to love but perhaps didn't quite know that well when she was always at the office.

Studying the shelter magazines, Evie was surprised how easily her mind arranged a comprehensive bulletin board of the images she liked, even without the help of Pinterest. The pictures of one deco-style co-op on Park Avenue were so intoxicating Evie decided on the spot to give her studio a moderate facelift. It would be the consolation prize for not being able to afford the one-bedroom apartment she'd been keeping tabs on when the partner dream was still alive. She would repaint her kitchen (maybe in cerulean?) and buy one good piece of furniture. Fran would certainly not object to an advance on her Chanukah present.

After picking up a slice of pizza, Evie returned home with her bag of magazines and settled into her coziest sweats for the night. It occurred to her as she channel-surfed that she didn't know Harry the Greek's vintage. Caroline had been ambiguous about his work relations.h.i.+p with Jerome. She wondered if he was a fresh-from-business-school a.s.sociate or someone Jerome reconnected with at his hundredth college reunion. Suddenly John Stamos was looking a lot more like Aristotle Onasis. She called Tracy, hoping she would do the reconnaissance for her.

Tracy's husband, Jake, picked up on what felt like the ninth ring, although she had lost count after five.

"h.e.l.lo?" He sounded dazed.

"It's Evie. You all right?"

"Yeah, I'm just working. I feel like I'm really having a creative breakthrough."

"Oh yeah. With what?" She wondered what it was this time. Slam poetry? African drumming?

"I feel like my latest script's got a lot of potential, you know. I was just revising a key scene where my protagonist's vulnerability really comes through. It's when we first learn that his piano teacher molested him in his grandmother's pantry. I need to find a great director for this project."

Screenwriting. She hadn't thought of that one.

"Well good luck." She didn't dare ask about the children's music he was supposedly producing a few months ago. "Is Tracy there?"

"Evie, just the person I wanted to talk to," Tracy boomed into the phone. It was the second time she'd heard that today. Without being able to e-mail her, it seemed like her friends had lots of important information saved up to share.

"Oh yeah? And why is that? And what's with Jake? I didn't know he was a screenwriter now."

"Well, he is. He's got a lot of different projects going," Tracy responded defensively.

"Got it. I just didn't realize. So what did you want to talk to me about?"

"Well, the reason I wanted to talk to you is because I have a job for you. Seeing as you're unemployed and refusing to use the computer, I wasn't sure what your plans were to find another, um, revenue source. But it just so happens you're in luck."

Evie looked out her window across the street. It was dark, but in the apartment building opposite hers she could make out the silhouette of a man hunched over his computer with mounds of paperwork piled on either side. He looked so d.a.m.n productive, as did most of the people she took inventory of as her eyes scanned the floors of the high-rise from top to bottom. Her most commercial activity of the last few months was a trip to the bank to deposit a fifty-dollar rebate check. She did need to go back to work. Without a job, she'd fixate too much on Bette, simultaneously worrying about her dying of cancer and wanting to kill her for nagging about her love life.

"Okay, which firm? How did you hear about it?"

"Well, it's not a firm so much as working around a lot of people who are going to be lawyers." Tracy paused and asked Jake to bring her three scoops of Neapolitan. Evie begrudged Tracy's ability to eat anything she wanted now, even if it was only for nine months and she'd look like a house after she gave birth. The forty-calorie no-sugar-added fruit pops in Evie's freezer were an insult to the notion of dessert.

"So it's a teaching job? I would take an a.s.sistant professors.h.i.+p if some law school would have me. I don't have any experience, though."

"Nope. Much better. Working with me. At Brighton." Tracy literally squealed.

"What in the world are you talking about? I can't teach high school."

"Not teaching. Lawyering, or whatever you call it. Brighton's in-house counsel was just indicted for income-tax fraud, so they need someone to temporarily fill his shoes while they do a proper vetting for a permanent replacement. And I recommended you." Tracy let the indictment roll off her tongue as if it were sick leave.

"I don't think I'm qualified, Trace. I don't know anything about representing a school."

"Apparently most of the legal work is done pro bono by big firms where the school has connections. You would be more of a liaison. Besides, the headmaster seemed delighted when I suggested an eighth-year a.s.sociate from Baker Smith. He wants to meet with you right away."

Evie wasn't totally surprised. Her firm's name carried quite a bit of cachet. Bragging rights were among the main things she missed.

"I really appreciate this. I do. And believe me, I could use the money. But I'm not even sure I want to keep on lawyering. Maybe this is a chance for me to start something else. You know, change course."

"And do what?"

Evie had no answer.

"So it's settled. You'll call the headmaster and set up an interview. It'll be so fun to see each other all the time. Though I'm not sure how much longer I'll be able to go in."

"Why's that?"

Tracy cleared her throat. "Something like my cervix is shortening. Or maybe it's softening, and my v.a.g.i.n.a is shortening. I don't know. Jake is freaking out. My doctor said bed rest is a possibility."

"Sweetie, that sucks. You sure you're okay?" If Evie's doctor ever told her something like that, she would spend the remainder of her pregnancy standing on her head. Hypochondria and pregnancy no doubt made for poor bedfellows.

"I'll be fine. Lots of women get put on bed rest. I just hope we can still have s.e.x."

Tracy was insatiably h.o.r.n.y at this point in her pregnancy, a welcome change from the nonstop puking of the first trimester. Last spring, she told the girls in her cla.s.s that they should never have s.e.x because it could lead to morning sickness. It was an unconventional abstinence lecture, but Tracy threw up so many times during cla.s.s Evie wouldn't have been surprised if a few of her students had thought twice before rounding home plate, which was a good thing, because based on what Evie heard from Tracy, these city kids were running four years ahead of schedule in just about every way.

"I'll keep my fingers crossed for you. Oh, before we hang up, I need you to look up some guy named Harry Persophonis, or Persophole, or something. You have a job for me and apparently Caroline has a man for me. He works at Jerome's office. Try to figure out how old he is. I'm worried he's ancient."

"Evie, I love you, and I support your decision to quit the Internet. Frankly, it's a human experiment I don't think I'd have the strength to endure. But if you're going to do this, you've got to do it right. I'm not going to be your standby Googler."

Evie grunted into the phone. "Fine, don't. But if this guy shows up with a spare set of teeth in his pocket, you're dead to me."

"You know, I mark my students down if they use excessive hyperbole. I would have to flunk you," Tracy said. "By the way, just how long do you plan to not use the Internet for? It's quite subversive."

"It's not so crazy. Have you read The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains?"

"Um, no. Have you?"

Evie could sense Tracy's sideways glance through the phone.

"Well, not yet. But I'm sure I'll be riveted when I do." Stella at Book-A-Saurus had recommended it to her.

"You'll have to let me know. Seriously though, are you waiting for the New York Times to do a feature on you?"

"Certainly not. I'm staying off-line until I turn thirty-five," Evie announced, astonished by how naturally the answer came to her. She wasn't sure she'd make it to May 29, her birthday, but it seemed a logical goal to choose. After all, she was devastated on her last birthday when she'd received only thirty-three "HBD" posts on her Facebook timeline. And she had quit the Internet in June. That would make her hiatus nearly a year long, which had a comforting circularity to it.

When she hung up the phone she snuggled under her duvet, her heels running along the edge of the faux-snakeskin bench at the base of her bed. If she got the Brighton job, even temporarily, she could buy the high-gloss gray lacquer night tables she adored. The modest makeover of her living quarters would certainly get an extra boost. She tucked the covers tightly around her body. Her skin felt electrified as it rubbed against the baby-soft sheets. She had lost her job, lost Jack, and might be losing her beloved grandmother. She had shut off the virtual world-her BlackBerry (if someone had retrieved it from the wastebasket) now in the hands of an eager new a.s.sociate at the firm and her computer at the bottom of the Reservoir's murky waters. But still a faint optimism crept through her, from her tingly toes to her flushed cheeks as she drifted off to sleep.