Love and Miss Communication (8 page)

After returning to her own page with the task of deleting Baker Smith, she decided to click on her firm’s link one last time. Someone at her office had organized an unofficial Baker Smith group, and all the lawyers who were on Facebook were able to join at their discretion. It was mostly young associates who joined, and Evie started combing through their profile pages. Once she removed herself from the list, she would no longer be able to see these people’s profiles unless she was independently friends with them. She quickly got sucked into looking at their photos of swanky travel, dreamy weddings, and Raphaelian babies. One woman, whom she recognized from passing in the firm’s hallways as a fairly new litigation associate, had posted pictures of a recent trip to Turkey, where she and Jack had mused about visiting when they could both get away from work.

She studied the pictures, Photoshopping herself into the scenery. The girl had visited all the major sites, including Ephesus, Cappadocia, and Istanbul. After a dozen sightseeing photos, Evie came to a group of wedding shots. The affair appeared lavish, and Evie became engrossed looking at the fashionable dresses and colorful jewelry. Some of the guests were adorned with intricate henna tattoos snaking all the way up their toned arms. There were several shots of just the food. Platters of vibrantly colored Turkish delights made Evie’s mouth water.

She started clicking through the photos faster to get to the bride and groom. She found a striking photo of them from the back. The bride’s scalloped-edge veil rivaled Princess Di’s in length and intricacy. The groom stood about a foot taller than the bride and had wavy brown hair circling a tiny bald spot. Evie grew curious for a front view. The next few pictures showed the couple from a distance standing under the wedding canopy. Finally, the last photo in the album showed the bride and groom, knot tied, walking happily hand in hand back down the aisle. The bride was radiant. She was exotic—impossibly thin, with Mediterranean skin and black straight hair tied in a chic knot resting on one shoulder. Her white teeth appeared like tiny index cards in a neat row. Her dress managed to be fashion-forward but still elegant. Evie was so caught up in studying the bride that she barely glanced at the groom.

When she finally did focus on him, she saw that it was Jack. The groom was Jack Kipling.

Evie vomited everything she had eaten that day right there in her bed, directly onto her laptop.

# # #

It was a full five minutes before Evie could get off the bed. She sat shivering, stunned into paralysis even as her throat was burning.
When she finally unfroze, she wiped her computer screen with some crumpled tissues and brought it closer to her face to confirm that her eyes weren’t playing cruel tricks on her. The groom was her Jack. The man who told her on date number one that his parents’ messy divorce had turned him off from marriage for good. The man who clung to those beliefs after two years in a loving and supportive relationship. Their breakup rivaled the pain of losing her father. She had coped primarily by telling herself that at least Jack would die alone.

Who was this girl?

Evie needed to know every single detail about her. There was no question that Jack’s new wife was beautiful. God help her if she had an amazing career to boot. Maybe she was pregnant. A baby could explain everything. Evie stared at the screen, tilting it backward and sideways to see if a sliver of a swollen belly was visible under the bride’s silk gown. The only thing she could make out under the dress’s bodice was a protruding rib cage. If the bride wasn’t with child, she was probably a Turkish princess. Evie couldn’t compete with royalty. But she didn’t even know if Turkey was a monarchy. Jack would know. Apparently he’d made it to Turkey after all.

Evie slid off her bed and went to the kitchen for some paper towels to wipe off her keyboard. The empty roll stared at her from the top of the garbage. She ducked into the bathroom instead and reached for a wad of toilet paper. She plopped back down on the bed and set about cleaning out the nooks and crannies of her computer. Once the mess was cleared, she double-clicked the Google icon. It took a full minute to load—much longer than normal, but at least it appeared to be working. Without looking up, she typed “Jack Kipling” and “Turkish princess” and hit Search. Again she thought, who was this girl? What magic had she worked on Jack? What qualities did she have that made her “forever” material and Evie a mere stopover?

She glanced up at the results and didn’t see Jack’s name anywhere. She wondered if she accidentally typed in the wrong search terms in her distressed state. She checked the search box and saw a series of random numbers and letters in no apparent order. The recent numbness in her legs probably was symptomatic of a brain tumor. Now the delusions were starting.

She closed Google and double-clicked to reopen it. Nothing happened. She triple-clicked. Quadruple-clicked. Nada. She tried Microsoft Excel. That opened with no problem. She felt temporarily relieved that her computer wasn’t totally fried. So she couldn’t look up anything of any consequence. She could make charts!

Without much hesitation, she threw on shorts and a tank, hoping the weather was still as warm as when she was on her morning stroll with Tracy. Normally, she’d be one click away from a humidity analysis and a minute-by-minute precipitation graph. Without a BlackBerry, or a working iPad and computer, she just stuck her head out the window and decided her outfit would do.

As she rang for the elevator, it dawned on Evie that she had no idea where to get her computer fixed. That was just the sort of thing she would have looked up. If she hadn’t been in such a foul mood, she would have chuckled at the irony. Instead she stood in her apartment building’s long hallway and considered which of her neighbor’s bells she could ring. Most people were at work, where Evie would also have been if her life hadn’t recently overturned. There were a few elderly people on her hall, but she didn’t think any would be too welcoming. Mrs. Teitelbaum had it in for Evie ever since she wouldn’t sign the old lady’s petition to ban music after 9:00
P.M
. Mr. Warren, who smelled like cigars and Depends, was also a no. Evie had been dodging him for six months after he suggested fixing her up with his grandson, a coroner in Sioux Falls. She rushed to the lobby, thinking she could ask one of the doormen for help.

“Nico!” Evie gushed, gripping at the sleeve of the doorman’s uniform with her free hand. “Where can I get my computer fixed?”

“I think there might be a place on Seventy-Second Street,” he said, gently trying to free his elbow. “Oh wait, never mind, that closed. Oh—I know. There’s a repair shop near my place in Queens that’ll charge you half what you’ll get fleeced for around here. Want me to get their info? It’s called Al’s Technology World. Or is it Abe’s? You know what, I’m not sure. You better just look it up. Rockaway Boulevard.”

“I can’t look it up! That’s the problem,” Evie explained. “Thanks, Nico, but I gotta go.”

She flung herself through the revolving doors and headed north on Broadway until at last she came upon a Best Buy. The service department was tucked two levels down in the subbasement. She hoped it wasn’t too unrealistic to expect her computer to be fixed within an hour. Luckily there was only one person ahead of her in line. It was midafternoon on a workday, and she no longer had to cram her errands in on the weekend with the rest of the employed masses.

While waiting for her turn, her cell phone rang.

“Hello?” she asked cautiously, praying it wasn’t her mother or, God forbid, Bette, on the other end. Eventually she would tell them about Jack, but today was not the day.

“It’s Stasia. Where are you? You didn’t e-mail me back. I got nervous.”

“Phew, it’s you. I’m at the electronics store—my computer’s broken.”

“Yikes. I knew something was wrong when you didn’t respond in two minutes. I’m just calling because Rick thought you might want to come to see a movie with us tonight. I told him you were staging a be-in.”

Evie sighed, with a deep inhalation through the nose that she
held on to until she felt nauseated. To think it was Rick’s idea to invite her out with them to make sure she was doing all right. Maybe Stasia and Rick would have infertility and Evie could get a break from secretly envying them. God, what an awful thought that was. Evie winced at her jealousy.

“Yeah—maybe. I’ll call you later. Listen, I have some big news. Jack’s married.”

“WHAT? TO WHO? HOW? ARE YOU SURE?” At least she hadn’t known.

“Yes—I’m sure. I stumbled onto his wedding pictures online. It’s a long story.” Even as she said it, she knew Stasia wouldn’t believe her. She’d think she was snooping on Jack. Not that it was above her to do that, but in this case she had happened upon the pictures by sheer coincidence.

“He married some Turkish princess who looks anorexic but might be pregnant.”

“She’s anorexic and she’s pregnant? Evie—what are you saying?”

The bell dinged and it was Evie’s turn at the service window.

“Stas—I gotta go. It’s my turn. I’ll call you later about the movie.”

Evie approached and placed her laptop on the desk. The service technician wrinkled his nose in disgust. Obviously the smell of vomit hadn’t fully worn off.

“Ma’am, what happened here?”

“My three-year-old niece threw up on my laptop and it doesn’t seem to be working now. Can you fix it?” At least she was a quick thinker. That and clovering her tongue were her special talents.

“I’m sorry but I don’t think we’ll be able to fix this. Once a computer gets this—um—soiled, it’s usually toast. I suggest you go upstairs and look for a new one.” He handed her back the laptop, along with a rebate coupon for an iMac.

Evie dashed back upstairs, taking the steps of the escalator two at a time. A salesperson with trifocals and a muffin’s worth of crumbs in his beard offered help. Geek Squad, indeed.

“Is there a computer that’s working that I could use—you know, to try it out?”

“Of course, ma’am. This one right here is connected to the Internet.” He babbled on about the hard drive and megapixels, but Evie’s fingers were already busy at work. She repeated the search on Jack that she had attempted earlier. A slew of articles came up about his restaurants, but she couldn’t find anything on his wedding. Her eyes darted all over the screen, looking for the words “bride” and “ceremony” or anything else nuptial-related.

“Jack Kipling, huh?” the salesperson said. “Just took the wife to one of his restaurants for our anniversary. That was a good meal.”

This guy’s married? Every pot has its cover, Bette would say.

“Oh yeah? Well he onced bribed a health department official not to report mouse droppings in the kitchen.” How many times had she pledged never to repeat that? At least one for each time Jack swore he’d never get married. So much for promises.

“Listen, I’m afraid I’m not ready to commit to another computer right now,” she added, grabbing her things and heading out in search of an Internet café where she might continue with more privacy.

Miraculously she found one a few blocks away from the electronics store, in a second-floor shop above a Korean restaurant. The café smelled like a mixture of disinfectant and kimchi, and was almost entirely abandoned save for a sleeping hobo wearing shoes fashioned out of hand towels. Evie cringed as she sat down at the computer farthest away from the homeless guy and slid her credit card into the machine. An error message appeared.

“Excuse me,” she said to the attendant, a Goth teen with blackened lips and indecipherable words tattooed on her forearm.
Evie desperately didn’t want to know what they said. “This computer isn’t working.”

“Sorry, lady. You’ll have to use that one,” she said, pointing to the computer adjacent to the homeless man. “Next to Sleeping Beauty.”

Evie held her breath and booted up the machine. Her knee shook vigorously as she waited for the monitor to load. Just as she was about to open Google, she froze.

What was she doing?

She was sitting next to a reeking hobo in a dirty Internet café so she could look up Jack’s wife. It wouldn’t do her any good to find out more information. He was married. Finding out what school his wife went to, or whether she was a successful entrepreneur or even carrying his child, wasn’t going to make him any less married.

It was unhealthy, to the point of pathological, her obsession with knowing everything about everyone. What good had stalking people online done her? She’d rejected perfectly good dates because of meaningless things she’d discovered on the Internet—a job title she didn’t think was impressive enough or an unflattering photo. Her last decent date ditched her because she cyber-snooped on him—and she had the wrong guy anyway.

She lost her job because of her Internet addiction. That should have been enough of a wake-up call, but no. Instead, she was spending her unemployment surfing the web for upward of seven hours a day. She spent way too much time agonizing over her profile pictures on Facebook, JDate, and Match.com. Her vision was all but shot from the hours wasted staring at her inbox waiting for e-mails from guys she’d gone out with once. If someone really liked her they could pick up the freaking phone and call.

She was going to quit the Internet! But what did that mean? All good things, as far as she could tell at that moment:

         
No more stalking people on Google.

         
No more Facebooking exes.

         
No more reading twits on Twitter.

         
No more posting pictures and waiting for “likes.”

         
No more refreshing Gmail every thirty seconds.

         
No more hashtagging meaningless combinations of words.

         
No more Instagramming every instant.

         
No more Foursquaring her whereabouts.

         
No more bidding on eBay for the thrill of competition.

         
No more pretend job hunting on Monster.