Fakebook (27 page)

I was proud of my part in that. It was a long road from cold-calling art directors and inventing an internship to the graphics bullpen with a wall full of awards. It was a long road indeed.

But it felt at its end.

“Wait? Now you're hooking up with a girl from jury duty?” Mark said with surprise.

“Well, yeah, I guess,” I answered back into my phone, as I rotated my living-room chair and caught a glimpse of my superhero shipper—compounding my sense of pride.

“And the last girl…you met her on the JFK Air Train? I thought you were bad at this!”

“Government infrastructure, it seems, is my sweet spot.”

“Unbelievable.”

“Your tax dollars at work.”

“I thought what I was about to tell you would cheer you up, but doesn't sound like you need it.”

“I could always be happier. What's up?”

“A project came up at Lisa's work, so she can't make it to Jackson Hole. Want to take her place? Four days of skiing and eating game meat—leave Thursday night, come back Monday. It's already paid for.”

A free trip to the Rockies…that sounded pretty great. And lord knew I could use a vacation. But man…I'd spent a lot of time out of the office. The perception was that I'd had a month of half days. Asking for time off this soon after wouldn't go over well, especially with short notice.

Listen to me. A group of people used the phrase “pulling a Cicirelli,” but the real Dave Cicirelli was worried about taking a long weekend? Screw it. I was expecting an offer from LiveWired anyway.

“Yeah,” I said. “Sounds great.”

The whole flight over, we were calling it a “bro-cation.” This, we decided, was like a normal vacation, but with a lot more high-fiving. The trip was off to a good start. But during the lulls in conversation on the flight there, I began to write.

I was in a different place than at any other point of Fakebook. The end no longer felt a long way off, but almost imminent. If Fakebook crashed now, so be it. I was comfortable with my life, with its opportunities and its challenges. I felt capable, more sure-footed than I had been when I started this. I felt like I had some clarity.

So when I wrote the long-awaited explanation of how Fake Dave ended up in Mexico, I wrote it uninhibitedly. It was long; it was insane; it was highly implausible.

But it was more than that. It was an expression of all I'd done. It felt personal and, in its own way, completely honest. A couple hours after touchdown, from a hotel lobby in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, I sent out the note that sent Fakebook toward its final, absurd conclusion.

Uh oh.

Last night, I created a post that could destroy Fakebook—but I didn't know it yet. Instead I had breakfast on my mind.

“I'll have the duck sausage,” Mark said to the waitress, “and the bison bacon.”

“Two sides?” the waitress at the Snake Creek Lodge asked.

“Oh right. I guess eggs and toast as well,” Mark said.

My brother's gluttony is one of his most endearing qualities…if only because he enjoys it so damn much. He approaches each meal with such an unbridled, child-like sense of wonder and enthusiasm—like a kid who realizes he can have sprinkles on his ice cream.

“I'll just have the oatmeal,” I said, looking at the prices.

“That's ridiculous,” Mark said.

“No, I'm all right,” I said. “That's all I want.”

“You got it,” the waitress said, and began walking away.

“Actually…” my brother called to her, “can you swap the eggs with…elk sausage?”

Mark and I are very similar in a lot of ways, but we're still separated by the lifestyle distance you can achieve between your midtwenties and your midthirties, and with an Ivy League MBA versus a state-school art degree. And more often than I'm comfortable with, when we get food together, he'll pick up the bill.

“Bro,” Mark said to me while I was scraping the last bit of oatmeal from my bowl. “Listen, I know some of these meals are expensive. But I got it. I won't enjoy the trip as much if you just eat oatmeal.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But Mark, I don't know…It's like when I order something, I'm appealing to your generosity. I don't want to assume things, you know?”

“Of course not,” Mark said. “And the moment you act that way is the moment it ends.”

“Ha. Fair enough,” I said, “but still. I don't feel right about it.”

Mark cut a slice of elk sausage and put it on my plate.

“You pick up the beer,” he said, “and I'll pick up the game meat. Take a bite.”

So I did. “
Holy
shit!
” I exclaimed. That was a rather inappropriate thing to yell out in a crowded family restaurant, but I stand by it. My god…why don't we have more elk in the world?

“Holy shit,” I whispered, looking somewhat sheepishly around the restaurant and eventually at my laughing brother.

I'm a novice skier. This trip was just my third trip ever. But I'm halfway decent, considering. I spent the morning on my own, going down a few of the less challenging slopes. I felt pretty good.

As early afternoon came around, I thought it time to join my brother on a more challenging trail, so I hopped on the gondola. It wasn't a ski lift like the others, where your feet dangle. It was an enclosed tram car and I felt a little cheated of the open-air views. Still, even through the window I could appreciate the sheer aesthetic of Grand Teton looming over us and the skiers below.

There's just something about the scale of mountains that moves me.

I've spent my whole life going through seven-foot doorways into rooms with eight-foot ceilings. Even living in New York, a city built for a staggering volume of people but still scaled for people. It's a dense sea of doorways and chairs and windows and taxi cabs. And for all the chaos of a city, it's still an environment that has you and me in mind.

Not true of mountains. Mountains are indescribably big. And riding a gondola to the top of one is a great reminder of our place. Looking out the window, I just marveled at it. How the ski lodge that I and a thousand other people were staying in looked small and pathetic from there. How the canopy of towering trees and gigantic boulders were suddenly small—nothing more than a texture that carpeted the landscape, made with total indifference toward our convenience.

Just then, it dawned on me…I'd been on this gondola way too long. I was supposed to ski all the way down? That was insane. It was a fucking mountain!

I felt my phone vibrate as we finally approached the top. I took a quick look—it was Ted calling. I lifted my gaze from my phone and noticed the curvature of the earth falling away below me.

If this is the last chance I ever have to talk to another human being, I thought, I didn't want it to be Ted.

I put my phone back in my pocket and took my first cautious, terrified push down the mountain, trying to ignore the flock of birds flying below.

When I finally got back to the ski village at the base of the mountain, I was exhausted and relieved. I wobble-walked back through the ski lodge's impressive entrance—something that had looked so small from that mountaintop—and headed toward my room. I tossed my clothes off into a lump and took a shower.

Only after I fished my phone out of the pockets of my terror-sweat-soaked pants did I see the real reason to be alarmed. I had five missed calls from Ted. Something was up.

I give Ted a ring—still too relieved to be back on earth for the implications of his frantic calling to really register.

“Where were you?” Ted exclaimed. “I've been trying to call you all afternoon!”

“I'm sorry, Ted,” I said. “I had more pressing concerns.” Like fast-approaching cliffsides.

“Have you been on Facebook today?”

“Nah. Hey, you ever wonder why no one invented skis with brakes yet?”

“Look. Now.”

So I did.

“I see,” I said.

Elliott's accusation scared me and surprised me a little. It even excited me a little. Was this it? Was this the moment I had both dreaded and courted for all these past months: the moment I would finally be called out as a phony for the whole world to see?

“Well, Ted, I like what you wrote.”

And I did. It was a perfect response. Ted's ability to never challenge anyone's suspicions but instead deflect their curiosity had been really effective in getting people to accept the uncertainty of Fakebook with a shrug of their shoulders.

And suggesting that I may not be a reliable narrator was a stroke of genius. It was savvy and clever and something I frankly wish I'd thought of. It compounded the mystery rather than dismissing it—suggesting that there might be a complex alternative to the whole thing falling apart. It's like when your mom tells you that the mall Santa works for the real Santa.

I left the room and went in search of my brother, who was sitting at a table in the outdoor deck under a heat lamp. He'd ordered lunch—we were splitting a gourmet bison burger and each having a glass of wine. I couldn't wait to take a bite.

“This is it,” I told him. “Someone called Fakebook out. I think I'm at the end of the road.”

“What are you going to do now?” Mark asked.

“What else can I do? Confess.”

Mark and I let out an evil laugh and toasted my moment of honesty. We even took a photo commemorating the occasion. It was so perfect. It captured my smug look of satisfaction. I was even tempted to post it—to have this image of my shit-eating grin be the definitive end of Fakebook.

But I resisted.

And before I had a chance to finish my Four Seasons bison burger with wild boar bacon and crumbled blue cheese that had been aged eight months in an oak cask, Elliott responded.

“
What?
” I blurted out.

“What's the matter?” Mark asked facetiously. “They didn't try to pass off a 2008 Malbec as a 2007, did they?”

“No…Elliott called Tatooine, and they denied I worked there. Chris was supposed to have me covered!”

“Wait, Elliott? Elliott Askew? I think I used to babysit him.”

I ignored him as I frantically dialed Tatooine.

“Hi, this is Dave Cicirelli. Is Chris Bailey there?”

“Speaking.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“Wait? Is this about that guy from Facebook? I'm sorry, dude. My partner picked up when your friend called. He didn't know.”

“All right…” I said, somewhat deflated.

“Good luck, dude.”

I put my phone down and took a gulp of wine.

I don't know why I underestimated Elliott when I posted my wise-ass truthful response. To be honest, I don't know if I was even thinking about him when I did it. It was just such an opportunity to get away with yet another thing. Through all this, I clearly still can't resist the temptation.

If I'd been thinking clearly, I could have followed Ted's lead and deflected Elliott's questions. I could have raised the stakes on him tugging on the thread—after all, he took a risk and called me a liar. If he was wrong and I was actually peso-less, struggling to get back to America after narrowly avoiding total brainwashing by a nefarious cult leader…well, he'd really look like a twat.

It was checkmate.

“You all right, Bro?” Mark asked.

“Yeah…I guess this is it,” I said. “It's funny. I almost feel relieved. I mean…I've been simultaneously courting and deferring this moment for half a year. Part of me…part of me thinks, ‘Let this be it.'”

I glanced over my shoulder at the mountain. I could see the gondola that we took up that morning go all the way to the peak. My phone was vibrating on the tabletop. The incoming call was from a New Jersey area code. I knew exactly who it was.

“Hello, Elliott.”

Elliott Askew was exactly who Fakebook was all about. He was the perfect Facebook friend—an out-of-sight, out-of-mind acquaintance whom Facebook never allowed to stay out of sight.