I took a deep breath. I could hear the sound of the needle’s tireless scratching. Jin twisted several knobs, clicking them off, and the whirring of the machines came to a halt.
“I don’t know,” I gave in, “maybe a perfect relationship is just on the tip of my tongue. That’s a clinical phenomenon, you know. It’s metacognition. You become momentarily conscious of your synapses firing.”
“I wrote the metacognition piece,” said Vadis.
“You did? That was a good piece.”
“Thanks.”
“So this is it?” I asked, rubbing my temples. “I come here every night and bludgeon these gentlemen with analysis until I am cured of indecision?”
“That’s closure,” said Vadis.
I leaned back in my chair and stared at the ceiling. Someone had done a poor job of repainting it. I could see where the roller of fresh paint had bumped against the wall.
“Men,” I said, plunking my chair to the floor. “I can never decide if I forgive them too easily or punish them too easily. My whole life, I’ve never known.”
I flicked the monitors from my fingers and tugged off the suction cup.
“Where do I put these?”
“Anywhere you want,” said Jin.
9
Because it couldn’t hurt, I dressed up before leaving the house. Or, if I was working from the office, before leaving for work. I wore shoes with heels and applied makeup using tips I’d acquired from shame-watching Chantal’s YouTube tutorials, her pupils eclipsed by the reflection of a ring light. The trick was to curl your eyelashes firmly and close to the base, right where the robot spiders get in. I tweezed, I scrubbed, I dusted, I blended. I did interesting things with belts. My younger coworkers, with whom I’d never really bonded enough to categorize our small talk as negative or positive, took notice. “You look nice today” expanded to “You look nice this week” which expanded to “What are you eating?” Potato chips and hard liquor, mostly. A surprisingly fast-acting diet if you really put your back into it.
After work, I’d zigzag through the streets of Chinatown, admiring the intersections of lettering I’d never understand, buying beverages significant enough to merit dome tops, then having to sweet-talk my way into salon bathrooms. I’d sit on the benches on concrete islands or on the biscotti-shaped stoops painted municipal red. I’d watch my reflection warp in the stainless steel doors. Or else I’d suggest drinks meetings be held in the area, dragging publicists to me under false pretenses, ostensibly to discuss Radio New York’s coverage of their productions and publications. I went in the evenings because I assumed it would increase my chances. Most of my exes were grown-ups now. They had responsibilities from which no amount of subliminal battering could distract them. They were no longer waking up at noon, still drunk, for instance.
I avoided Boots within reason or else I called him before I went （went hunting, went to be hunted）， but only after a relatively normal day had passed. It was in this window that I could convince myself nothing out of the ordinary was happening and thus convince him, too. This is how people must conduct affairs, I thought, by hitting the “refresh” button each morning, lying to themselves before they lied to anyone else. That was the secret, to put your denial mask on first before helping others. Most of the time, I got voice mail. Sometimes I got sent there on purpose. The time difference put him in afternoon meetings. When Boots and I did speak, I dodged the topic of myself with the kind of balletic skill that gets confused for curiosity, asking such detailed questions about glassware, it prompted him to offer me a job. Or else I interviewed him about the weather.
“You know what Mark Twain said about San Francisco?” I asked.
“‘The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.’”
“Yup, that’s it. That’s what he said.”
“Did we get something for Jess and Adam?”
“I keep forgetting. I’m sure the only thing left on the registry is a sleigh bed.”
“Seriously?” he said, annoyed at this symbol of my warped priorities. “What else have you been doing?”
“Taking a shit? I don’t know. Can’t you just send them a vase?”
“I’m not The Giving Tree, Lola.”
“They’re your friends,” I said, eyeing the glassware shelves. “I thought you’d prefer to send them something you made.”
“You just told me you forgot.”