David Shafer - Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

“You know about…” About what? What should he ask her if she knew about? His deadline? Serve-whales?

“I know all I need to know, Mark, about you and this situation right here. You’re stalling; you’ve had four days to signal your intentions clearly, four days to pick up the phone and say yes, please, and, thank you, yes.” She made four days sound like an eternity. “Let me assure you that without Straw behind you, you would have been given zero time to mull things over. You don’t want people thinking that you think you’re too good for them.”

A teenage waiter arrived with their mains. When he’d retreated, Mark said to Diane, “Okay, Pope sent you, didn’t he?”

“Pope? If Pope wanted to convey his concern about you, he would do it more directly.” Then she softened a bit. “Tessa sent me.”

He just looked at her. How many masks?

“She said you should give up the menthols?”

Okay. Diane was from Tessa. Tessa was a friend, he was certain.

“Tessa said to tell you you’re on thin ice. You may have hurt Straw’s feelings.” Then Diane leaned in and loud-whispered the next part: “Take the fucking job, Deveraux. What’s the holdup?”

What’s the holdup? Now he leaned in and whispered loudly, “The holdup? You serious? How about the massive undersea vaults of stolen information? That beast just gorging itself with every minute detail of our lives so that one day the computer can tell the person what kind of day he had? We’re just supposed to look the other way on that?”

Diane sat back. “You’re supposed to change your perspective. Isn’t that one of your saws?”

Actually, it was Tell Yourself a Better Story, but he got her point. “That’s in the abstract,” he said. “Like, you apply that shit case by case.” It felt good to be the one at the table pointing out what was wrong with this model.

Maybe Diane saw him puff a bit, up on his (only slightly elevated) moral ground, because she sounded tough again when she said, “You must know by now that there are carrots and sticks in this game, right? Those computers have been gorging on every minute detail of your life. Don’t you want to keep that safe?” Only the tiniest lilt of sarcasm on safe .

He had no answer to that.

“They moved up your next presentation. The Nike thing you were going to do next month? You’re doing that next weekend instead.”

He’d done something at Nike a year ago; he’d knocked it out of the park, actually. Digging Deep and Finding Killer App.

“I’m not prepared for Nike,” he said.

“I told you — you’ll be supplied the content. But Mark?”

“Yeah?”

“You better bring your A-game. They’ll want to see that you can dance.”

“The Nike people?”

“No, you moron. Our people. You need to commit. You get a few of those Nike pooh-bahs behind SineLife and you will have earned your first paycheck. You phone it in, like you’ve been doing, you may just run out of rope.”

And as if she were on Diane’s team, a waitress who had snuck up behind Mark said, “Would you like me to wrap that up for you?” Mark hadn’t touched his food.

“Yeah, Mark,” said Diane, “you could bring yours to your nice homeless friend.” The waitress cleared their plates and retreated. Diane wrote a phone number on a piece of paper. “This is Tessa’s direct line. About nine people have it. She said you should call her if you need any more help making this decision.” She gave him the piece of paper. “But Mark?”

“Yeah?”

“You do not need any more help making this decision.” And then she was gathering her purse and getting up.

That was it? He was supposed to walk back across eight lanes of traffic to his shittier hotel? There was only one chance at relief here. So as she stood up, and without giving himself time to consider it, he said to her, “Invite me up.” He looked at her hard, but with his mouth a little open, his eyes saying Please but also Come on, you know you want it. “You can tell me more about the thin ice.”

She smiled. Some encouragement in the smile.

But she was digging in her purse. “Wow,” she said, “I’ve only ever heard about people like you.” She put three twenties neatly on the tablecloth and walked away.

And so he was sitting alone in Fontana di Trevi in Creekville or Rockville or Rocky Creek, Illinois. He looked around to see if anyone was witness. Only a busboy, bringing him his boxed Alfredo on a tray the size of a shield.

His hotel room did turn out to have a minibar and Mark made maxi use of it. There was a Law & Order marathon on. If he stayed in the middle of his bed, sucking from the little bottles and clicking up and down during the commercials, he was able to avoid thinking about the situation.

Then, in the opening segment of the next Law & Order, a fruit vendor was found dead in his store, prone over produce, and, Lenny, the older detective, delivered his zinger: If this is the carrot, I’d hate to see the stick .

You must know by now that there are carrots and sticks in this game, Diane had said. Mark was filled with dread and panic again. He clicked around. Shane was playing on a high-up channel. His dad loved this movie. He switched from dark liquor to clear. He opened a seven-dollar box of Junior Mints.

Later, when the alcohol had smoothed the turbid seas and blurred his vision, he had an idea. It came to him in the bright light of the plastic bathroom. You know who would love this shit? he thought to himself, focusing hard on a far tile. Leo Crane would love this shit. Leo was always the first to see the patterns beneath the surface. He was always talking about sifting data . That summer they pretty much lived together on Mass. Ave. They shared that motorbike. There was a beautiful girl who worked at the deli. Leo came over every day after his shift at Widener. Widener still had that little rabbit-hole door to the stacks. Leo would come in and he’d say, Data sets, Deveraux! Great data sets today.

Yeah, Leo would love this shit. Leo was in Portland. Nike was in Portland. Of course!

This was such an excellent idea that Mark had to begin executing it at once. He stood, but forgot (1) that his underpants were still around his ankles, and (2) that he was holding a box of Junior Mints. Falling, he scattered the minty rounds about the bathroom in a wide arc. His humerus made hard contact with a corner of the plastic bathtub. The pain was so sharp he could only yell, Gah!

Then, recovering on the cool tile, he remembered that he had insulted Leo Crane in his stupid book and then totally dumped him and then stolen material from his weird blog, which had gotten weirder, until, when last Mark looked at it, it seemed like Leo was headed toward the Crane curse. In that big kitchen on the garden level of the Riverside Drive place, Leo’s mom used to tell tales about her husband’s “eccentric” brothers. Barking mad, they sounded.

But you never know. Whose genotype is without booby traps? And maybe Leo would let him borrow some material, for old times’ sake.

He erected himself and left the bathroom, stepping on the scattered Junior Mints and mashing them into minty brown squidges. He found his computer. Using one hand to cover one eye, and one finger to carefully depress keys, he navigated his SineMail and composed the following:

Leo, old friend. It’s been so long and that’s all my fault. I will be in your city this weekend. Let’s have dinner. friday or saturday or brunch. If brunch too gay then drinking.