Maher - Social Misconduct

For Camille

Rsum

Razors pain you;

Rivers are damp;

Acids stain you;

And drugs cause cramp.

Guns arent lawful;

Nooses give;

Gas smells awful;

You might as well live.

Dorothy Parker

I dropped my phone into the Hudson River yesterday.

I was standing at the back of the ferry, traveling to Jersey City from the floating, glass-walled terminal at the foot of One World Trade Center. I stood there, in the wind and sun, like a carefree tourist, gaping at the Freedom Tower, and put my hand over the rail and opened it and let my iPhone X fall into the churning water below.

I didnt look down to see it sink below the surface, in case they were watching me. I dont think they were, though, because they didnt need to watch me. Not while I had the phone. But I couldnt be sure, and I cant afford to take any chances.

Thats my new motto. Take no chances.

I keep thinking about that stupid phone, sitting on the bottom of the river, because I keep thinking, Hey! This is boring! I should check my phone. Oh, I cant. Its on the bottom of the river. That happens less often today than it did yesterday. I hope that soon it will go away completely.

I hate writing by hand.

I bought this notebook just before I got on the ferry, for $24.95, at a shop near the terminal, one of those places that used to sell books and now sells calendars and candlesticks. I wanted to see if anyone was following me before I got on the ferry, so I popped into the shop, looked around, saw a stack of Moleskines, and bought one on impulse, with cash.

It feels strange to be writing with a pen again, and not just because my hand hurts from where the subway train hit it.

My handwriting looks like it belongs to an earlier version of myself, a junior high school student doing a book report, or sharing her feelings about One Direction. My words dont look like my thoughts, which are in Times New Roman or Helvetica, depending on my mood, not this weird girlish script.

Im glad I have the notebook, though, because I need a record of important events that I can recall clearly now but that I know will fade or become distorted over time. This is my AutoRecover, my backup.

Also, I need something to do.

All I do is wait and think, try to figure out what happened to me, stare at the steel door and hope it doesnt open, and absently reach for my phone every five minutes, then remember that its at the bottom of the river.

The phone was sitting in the middle of Rebeccas blond wooden desk when I first saw it, in its glossy white cardboard box, like a present waiting to be opened.

Rebeccas stylishly furnished office was at the front of the building, a brick room with windows overlooking Sixteenth Streeta contrast to the crowded, windowless space in the back where the click-drivers worked. On the window behind the desk there were a bunch of yellow sticky notes. Rebecca and her friend in the office across Sixteenth Street put emoticons on their windows every day, a playful interoffice social semaphore. Today it was a :-0.

She waited until I sat down, then looked at the box and smiled. I could tell she was relishing the tiny drama of the moment.

So, Candace, I have some good news for you, she said.

I tried to look like I was mildly pleased. Inside: mariachi music.

Id been driving clicks for SoSol for eight months, sharing a table with a half-dozen other sullen young people. We competed to see who could come up with the worst clickbait ads, taking ironic pride in fat-shaming celebrities, making self-loathing wisecracks to hide our grim competitiveness.

Working for the New Media Lab would be different. SoSol (formerly Social Solutions) was launching a marketing branch, with real clients, not the kind that sell weight-loss pills and herbal erection boosters to idiots.

Id had the feeling I was going to get the job. Beatrice, my best friend among the clickbait crew, had also applied. She was smart and sassy but ostentatiously disengaged from her work, well past the point of the dignity-maintaining detachment I sustained, saving her real energy for her art and Rudy, her partner.

But Beatrice wasnt in here with Rebecca. I was.

Rebecca closed her laptop and leaned back in her chair.

I just got the email from Craig, she said. And Im pleased to tell you we want you to be part of the launch team.

She smiled at me expectantly.

What to say?

Awesome! Thank you for the opportunity. Im really excited.

Is that what she wanted? Did she need more enthusiasm? Should I suck up?

Rebecca is early twenties, African American, like, really African, Kenyan or something, and beautiful, with shiny ebony skin and stunning lips and cheekbones, always stylishly dressed, like a model moonlighting. Shes hard to read.

I hope youre ready to work hard because I pushed for you to be on the team, she said, and looked at me.

What did that mean? Did it mean Craig, her boss, wanted someone else?

I thought he liked me. Hes in his forties, gay, stylish, energetic, kind of a remote figure to the clickbait crew, but in the interview we seemed to connect.

I found him more straightforward to deal with than Rebecca. He seemed to only want me to demonstrate that I accepted his leadership and thought he was awesome, which was easy enough to fake. Rebecca always seemed to want something I wasnt giving her, or to be disappointed that I hadnt said something or done something that I didnt know I should say or do.

Thank you, Rebecca. Im pumped.

She looked at me with a brittle smile, as if she wasnt sure shed made the right call.

It wasnt an easy decision. There were so many good candidates. I felt, though, that your work here was so good we should give you a shot. You showed real initiative and creativity with CelluVibe.

I nodded modestly.

CelluVibe is a handheld electric massager that deluded fat girls across America use to vibrate their dimpled skin in the mistaken belief that it will somehow remove their fat cells. An ad I designedwith red circles around the cottage cheese on Britney Spearss thighsblew out all our metrics, making lots of money for SoSol, coarsening the culture, ripping off countless lovelorn chubbos, and making me the secretly self-hating star of the clickbait crew.

I was really pleased at how that caught on.

Virality, said Rebecca. Thats what you bring. And thats what we need.

Ask about money. Ask about money.

Im really going to throw myself into this, Rebecca. This is where I want my career to go, so Im supermotivated, partly because Id like to eventually make a little more money.

Rebeccas smile got thinner.

Would there be a raise, um, attached to the promotion?

Not initially. No. Its a start-up, so we are going to prioritize cost-control until it produces revenue. But if it works the way we think it will, it would be kind of normal for your compensation to be addressed.

Okay. So no raise right away, which wouldnt help me pay down my credit card debt, or allow me to travel anyplace interesting before I was too old to enjoy myself.

I was going to ask her when we might revisit the question when Kevin appeared at the door. Kevin was the tech guy, and the only lumpy person at SoSol, a sad wannabe hipster. He had a sandy receding hairline, a stupid sandy mustache, baggy jeans, and a faded Rush T-shirt. There was a chain connecting his belt to his wallet.

Kevin, there you are! said Rebecca. Can you help Candace set up her new phone?

He walked to the desk, opened the box, booted up the phone, got me to sign in with my iCloud password, and hovered behind me until I noticed from the reflection in the phone that he was looking down my scoop-neck top. He was actually gaping.