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 unless he texts me back. It’s been six hours!” Dam shouted, flinging his phone across the room. It ricocheted off the wall molding and ended up near the bookshelf. Dam leaped out of his chair toward it. After checking it for messages one last time, he clutched it in his palm and smashed it against the windowpane. There was a loud crack.
“It’s fine,” he said, turning the phone over to inspect it. “The protective case works after all.” He looked up at the window. “The window’s cracked, though.”
They made a toast to Federico, who Dam agreed it was time to let go of, and Laura stood, wobbly, to plug her phone into the cuboid speaker hovering near the window.
Even though the speaker was floating three feet above the floor, magnetized as advertised, its Bluetooth connection had never worked, so they had to connect content-filled devices to it with a long black USB cable, which undermined the aesthetic effect. The tether wound upward from the floor to its floating dock, feeding content into the mothership.
“Just another reason the past is prologue,” said Laura, fumbling with the cord until a sound stuttered through. “You heard this mix by Koolhaas yet?”
Anja shook her head humbly. It was clear from the way Laura had asked whether she knew the mix, not the producer, that she had missed something, a scrap of cultural matter that was inconsequential on its own but when combined with a whole lot of other things she didn’t know could become liability—could make her into a person who didn’t know things.
Anja didn’t pretend to know things she didn’t know. She was peripherally aware that she had other
