messages: Are you ok??? Answer us??? And then, just as quickly, going dark again.
After leaving Howard’s, she decided to text instead of call Louis, waiting to have the conversation later when he was his full embodied self. But after she texted him with a short update her phone rang straightaway. She was just getting balanced on her bike and had to put the kickstand down again, then remembered to unplug the headphones when she heard his voice so close in her ears.
“This is the best!” He sounded like he was smiling into the phone. “They finally recognize you!”
She frowned. “It’s not like I’ve just been waiting around to be recognized.”
“Don’t be so modest.”
“I’m not being modest. I just don’t feel like I’m in a position yet to—”
“You were going to get here eventually. It just came sooner than expected.”
“But I didn’t expect. Being a consultant is not what I was ever going for.”
“You have to own it! It’s your destiny,” he said, laughing. “We’ll be a family of consultants.”
“I wanted to keep doing research.”
“You can keep doing research.”
“I don’t know. This is real consulting. You know what I mean. I’m not an artist like you. I’ll have to do efficiency studies and audits and all the rest.”
“Every job has red tape. You know I spend half my time in my inbox. But in the rest of your time you’ll be able to do what you want. You can look at what needs to be better and just make it better. How many consultants does RANDI have right now? Only twenty or so? This is huge!”
As he went on encouraging, his enthusiasm seemed to have less and less to do with her. She felt embarrassed by it. She derailed the compliments and asked about his return to work. He promised to bring home one of the bouquets he’d been gifted. His inbox was legendarily full, the backlog seemingly impenetrable; he’d set the interns on it like a pack of dogs.
“Prinz says hi, by the way.” So Prinz was with him. This wasn’t unusual, on the surface; Prinz was always lingering around.
“What are you guys up to?”
“He just bought me this book about psychotropics that he’s been telling me about.”
Next, a tangent on psychotropic substances that could restructure human memory, altering the structure of the brain to heal the damage caused by negative events. Anja might have thought it was interesting, but she was too busy mentally trying to reconcile Louis with this person who was voluntarily telling her so many things on the phone. “Prinz says the book says sometimes people look twenty years younger after their memories are hardwired. The stories are wild.”
“Is he staying there all day or something?”
“He just wanted to check up on me.”
“That’s nice of him.”
“Yep.”
She paused. “Working late?”
“I don’t know. Depends how much I get done on this project that’s finally taking off.”
“Cool.” The question hung in the pause; she breathed it into the phone, lodging it in the hardware. She wasn’t going to ask. She hedged her bet. “I guess we’ll talk later, then.”
“Prinz and I were thinking we might grab a bite for dinner.”
“Of course. Have fun.” She was careful not to inflect with bitterness.
“Come! Why don’t you come with us?”
“Don’t worry about it. You guys should hang out.”
She was thinking so hard about each of her responses that she wasn’t sure whether she was responding in real time or if there was a perceptible delay. The dynamic between them in this conversation was so out of whack and yet so locked in place. She couldn’t figure out how to reroute it. Her very worst insecurities—his lack of dependence on her, his turning to the social sphere for fulfillment instead of to her, his smooth invulnerability—which hadn’t reared their heads in ages, were bucking again now. Why were they back? Was she the one driving the dynamic, or he? Or no one?
“I already talked to Dam and Laura about maybe having dinner with them anyway,” she lied.
“Oh, okay. Never mind.” He managed to sound mildly rejected.
She backtracked, “I wasn’t sure of your plans . . .”
“It’s fine. We’ll see each other later tonight.”
No, she decided, if there was someone making the conversation go this way, it was him. He always knew what he was doing.
Anja knew she was whining and she also knew Laura and Dam wouldn’t penalize her for it. She had eaten only three shrimp, picking them out from their little corn tortilla cradles with her fingers, but had compensated for the lack of calories with straight vodka.
“Since he got back it seems like all our conversations have a subtext,” she said, in Laura’s direction. “There’s fishy shadows under the water.”
“Every relationship has fish,” Laura said. “The question is why you’re looking below deck.”
“Such wisdom. My sister is very wise late at night,” Dam put in.
“I know,” said Anja. “I’m looking for them on purpose, it’s like I want to find them. But I know a big fish is coming. I can feel the fish.”
“How long has he even been back for? Twenty-four hours? Stop freaking out,” said Laura. “You’ll make things worse if you freak out.”
“I always make things worse by freaking out.”
She had retreated to Laura and Dam’s house for dinner without even calling ahead to invite herself. Maybe a remnant of Spanish home life, the two of them ate together most weeknights, after which Dam would do the dishes and then do drugs and leave for a dark place where he hoped to arrive before they took hold. He was already dressed to go out, a black triangle bra visible beneath a loosely woven yellow tank top, knee-high boots propped up against the wall by the door, vinyl trench coat hung over the back of his chair. There were two long dreads trailing from his scalp that hadn’t been there the week before.
Laura said, “You know the big relationship fish is always coming. If it’s not the breakup fish now, it will be the death fish someday. You can only hope it’s a slow, crippled fish.”
“At least you got a fish,” said Dam. Anja registered that he was hunched over his plate, red-faced and droopy-eyed.
“Are you just drinking in solidarity with me?” she asked.
“Solidarity, baby. I’m also experiencing that fundamental human conflict between reason and emotion within myself.” He checked his phone, which he had been doing compulsively as they ate, then closed his eyes and pressed it dramatically to his heart.
“Uh-oh. Who is he?”
“Federico.”
“Frederico?”
“Federico. He’s a horrible little old troll. He’s a misogynist and I’m pretty sure he’s racist. He’s the absolute worst.”
“Then why are you so desperate for him to call?”
Dam made the shape of a big O with his hands. “He’s also the wurst,” he said, grinning. “But all he does is work all the time. He works at Finster, actually, managing something.”
“Who doesn’t work at Finster,” Laura said.
“Do you think he could explain to me what’s going on over there?” Anja asked.
“Not