“I once read this article in Harper’s,” said Zach, eyes still fixed on his screen, “about people who did all sorts of crazy shit on Ambien. They woke up in the corner of the room or boiled their underwear. This one woman, she buttered her cigarettes and ate them.”
“Harper’s published this?” I asked.
“Somewhere,” he said. “Cautionary tale.”
“That’s not a story about cigarettes,” Vadis corrected him, combing her hands through her hair, “it’s a story about Ambien.”
“Or butter,” I offered.
“It’s a story about the confluence of desire.”
“Don’t say desire,” she scolded him.
“An orgy of vices then.”
She looked at him hard.
“Really don’t say ‘orgy.’”
“The woman probably crushed up the pills and rolled the cigarettes in them,” Zach muttered.
“What?!” Vadis hissed.
“Like Mexican corn.”
“No one knows what you’re talking about.”
“Lola knows.”
“You guys can leave me out of this if you want,” I said.
How did these people wind up being my people? I’d had other friends before them, had I not? It was hard to remember. After Modern Psychology folded, it was as if a starting pistol had been fired and we scattered to separate corners of the professional universe. Vadis went to a “bedding and lifestyle” company run by a socialite （the arbitrary delineation between “bedding” and “lifestyle” amused us all）， running their events and producing their content （blog posts with headlines like “Thread Count On Me” and “Bath Bombs to Detonate Calm”）。 Her work complaints centered around her flighty, impetuous, presumptive boss, traits I associated with Vadis herself. It was therefore difficult to tell if the socialite was a real problem or if Vadis was unaccustomed to engaging her mirror.
Zach wound up overseeing the editorial page of a headhunting agency. The idea was that if Modern Psychology, the world’s preeminent psychology periodical, had seen fit to employ Zach, he must be a people person. He must have insight into the needs of people. When they fired him, they cited a personality conflict. The fact that it took them six months to come to this conclusion was alarming. Generally speaking, being fired would’ve been a badge of honor for Zach. Alas, to be an unemployed headhunter was to be the butt of a joke that even he did not find funny. Disillusioned with corporate America and “the hoi polloi corruption of media,” he went the practical route rather than settle for some “foggy facsimile” of culture. He entered the gig economy, delivering medical supplies, building bookshelves, drilling holes in the walls of useless liberal arts graduates, picking up dog medication for old ladies. He would’ve preferred to report to the dogs.
Of Clive’s protégés, only I stayed the course. Or the closest to the course. I wound up running the arts and culture vertical of a site called Radio New York, the pet project of a venture capitalist who mostly left us alone. I farmed out bite-size nostalgia in the mode of lists of popular books and movies and podcasts, or assigned essays on popular books or movies or podcasts or think pieces responding to widely circulated essays on popular books or movies or podcasts. The Lloyd Dobler nightmare for the new millennium. Radio New York stifled every voice and clipped every word count. The culture of quotas and reviews was difficult for some （me） and a given for others （anyone under the age of thirty-five）。 But at least the specter of media decay felt different than it had at Modern Psychology, where the end of the magazine felt greater than itself. In the new media landscape, reduction was baked into the deal. Like going to work as a stunt double. Probably nothing bad will happen to you immediately but probably something bad will happen to you eventually.
“Is there any of that spicy cauliflower thing left?” asked Vadis, looking down the length of the table.
The table had been demonstrably cleared, all dishes replaced by dessert menus.
“I worry about you sometimes,” said Zach.
“Worry about yourself,” she said, patting him on the cheek.
He jerked his head back in a halfhearted way that suggested that cheek would go unwashed. I touched my jacket on the back of my chair. It was a thin army jacket, flammable, more for style than utility. I told myself I would leave it as self-imposed collateral.
In the beginning, these dinners were a lifeline to the past. The brainchild of Clive Glenn, our erstwhile king, they came with the air of leadership, no matter how neutered. Which is what we wanted and what we had lost. There was a time when we’d spent every moment with one another, arguing over articles like “Arguing Productively with Your Coworkers.” We were shipwrecked from newsstands, kept alive by doctors’ offices that allowed us to claim a staggering 17.5 pairs of eyes per copy. We were not invited to the cool parties （except, sometimes, Vadis） or the all-day Twitter wars （except, often, Zach） or the televised panels （except, toward the end, Clive）。 But we had low health insurance deductibles and we could stand the sight of one another.