When I’m done, I sit a minute feeling like I’m standing on the edge of the digital abyss into which you’ve fallen. I found you online, and, now that you’ve disappeared, I only have your electronic footprint to follow. I’ve hired a person I have only ever communicated via the dark web to help me.
What are you going to do if you find him? Robin wants to know. She’s over by the fire, a shadow in the corner.
“I haven’t gotten that far,” I tell her.
Maybe you should let him disappear.
She’s right, of course.
Another ping: I’ll be in touch.
How?
The chat window closes.
I send an email to my accountant and ask him to transfer the Bitcoin. I know I’ll get a phone call, probably pretty quickly.
Then I call Jax.
“You will not believe the level of my productivity today,” she says by way of answering. “You would be proud.”
“Really?” I say. “Because when I logged on to Netflix, it looks to me like you’ve been binge-watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” I didn’t log on to Netflix. I just know her that well.
“Well,” she says. “That, too. BUT—I did Dear Birdie all by myself. I wrote a THOUSAND words on my book. AND I did my nails.”
“Back up,” I say. “You did Dear Birdie?”
“Easy, girl, I didn’t send to Liz. I was waiting for your call.”
“Okay,” I say. “Read.”
I look at my email and see that she sent the Dear Birdie missives about an hour ago. I could easily read them myself, but I like to hear the words out loud.
She reads the letters and her answers: a hoarder who wants to change since her husband left and her daughter won’t see her; a young man who feels brokenhearted because women reject him and he wants an expensive, painful surgery to fix his weak jaw hoping that will help; a woman complaining that her millennial employees are all lazy and self-involved.
Jax reads her answers and I have to say, her responses are almost word for word what I would have written, but with her own special butt-kicking flair.
Get some help, sister, she writes to the hoarder, after offering some information on the psychology of hoarding, suggesting therapy, and offering words of support. Clean up your house and bring your family home.
Love is a head trip, she tells our incel. When you work on yourself from the inside, find your authentic groove and live your life from that place, you’ll attract the right woman, the one who will love you for who you ARE, not how you LOOK. Do NOT go under the knife. I guarantee that’s not going to help you.
Then, some love for millennials who get a bad rap a lot of the time. Maybe they just have a better work-life balance. Maybe if you started going home at five occasionally, you would resent them less. After all, didn’t people fight for the eight-hour workday?
I make a few tweaks in the shared document. But mainly, I leave them as is.
“You could be Dear Birdie,” I tell her when we’re done and have sent the file off to Liz.
“No, thanks,” she says. “I don’t think I can do this every day, Wren. It’s hard. People—are in so much pain.”
“Some of them,” I say. “Yeah.”
She heaves a sigh. Then, “The mauler, as I have come to think of him, has been texting me all day.”
“We blocked him.”
I hear her open the refrigerator, rummage around. She’s only going to find lettuce, some stale pizza, a half-eaten container of Thai Amazing Chicken, which was somewhat less than amazing. There’s a cheap bottle of white that’s been in there for ages.
“I might have unblocked him?” she says.
“Jax.”
“Do you not go to the grocery store?” she asks. “Maybe—is it possible—that I overreacted. Maybe it was a misunderstanding?”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “Oh, my God. He ripped your dress.”
“I think—it was an accident?”
I let silence be my answer to that.
“I know,” she says after a beat. “I know. I’ll block him again. I will.”
More silence from me. Then, “You’re not thinking about seeing him again.”
“No,” she says. But she sounds wishy-washy. “No.”
I can hardly judge her. Here I am, chasing after you. A liar at least, maybe far worse. Why?
“How could I have been so wrong about someone?” she asks, echoing my own feelings. Her voice softens when she’s sad.
“Sometimes we see what we want to see,” I say.