Down the Rabbit Hole

CHAPTER ONE

It happened so fast. The dumping. Jeremy and Macy were sitting on the patio of their favorite café, on a strangely balmy day in November, when Macy stood up, said she’d had enough and left.

Well, maybe she’d said a little more than that, but Jeremy couldn’t remember exactly, and the gist was the same.

At first he’d thought she was kidding. In general, women didn’t dump Jeremy Abbott, though that wasn’t why he’d been floored. It wasn’t until he saw her shoes heading past the table—he’d been looking at his phone at the time—and glanced up to see her striding toward the patio gate, curls bobbing, shoulders straight, purse bouncing off her hip, that he realized she’d been serious.

He looked back at her seat, half expecting her to still be there because the other scenario was too weird, but the chair canted outward exactly as if somebody had abruptly stood and ended a relationship.

She’d finished her omelet, he noted blankly. In record time. His was still half-eaten on his plate. And moments before, he’d been laughing at some joke she’d made.

Although in retrospect, maybe it wasn’t a joke.

The most damning part was that he’d thought things were going well—really well. Well to the point of thinking, Holy shit, maybe this is IT.

No so for Macy, whose thoughts apparently ran more to the Exit, stage left end of the spectrum.

He’d have said he couldn’t have been more shocked, but that was before the next thing happened.

He kept an eye on her auburn head as it moved through the crowd, and he tried to stand to go after her. Because it was ridiculous—you don’t just end a nearly seven-month relationship with an I’m outta here over brunch. Where was the explanation, the It’s not you it’s me, at least a freaking apology for potentially, maybe, possibly hurting his feelings?

But he couldn’t. Couldn’t go after her, couldn’t get out of the chair, couldn’t, in fact, do anything except grab hold of the table while the most unbelievable feeling of suction rose through his legs to his torso and up across his chest like a flood tide.

Could he be having a heart attack? He was only thirty-four! Headlines and Facebook links and Sponsor My Walkathon email pleas flooded his mind with details about unexpected deaths, early-onset illnesses, it-could-happen-to-you disasters.

He looked at the people around him, obliviously chatting and eating and sipping coffee. He glanced at the breakfast congealing on his plate, the fork quivering beside it, his coffee jumping in the cup as if electrified.

His fingers ached as they clutched the edge of the table. His body compressed in on itself—collarbone into ribs, ribs into waist, waist into hips—like a giant wave pressing down on his shoulders, squishing him into a smaller and smaller square, like the paper-covered blocks his parents used to get out of their trash compactor.

Except he got smaller still, down to a shoe box, then a milk carton, until finally . . . finally . . .

He was inhaled by his smartphone. Into his smartphone.

It was like getting flushed down a toilet, or being sucked out an airplane window at thirty-five thousand feet.

He could only tell what was happening because, while everything else shrank, the cell phone got bigger and bigger, eventually looming like a skyscraper in front of him, until finally he was drawn into its center, tumbling down a darkened hallway until he ended up where he was now: an enormous cubicle-filled room.

The carpet beneath his feet was of the gray industrial type, the exact shade and texture of the cubicle walls, which were fabric with thick plastic supports. They were just like the cube he’d had in his first job out of college as a copyeditor. He tipped his head to look into the one directly in front of him. Just like those at his first job, a desktop wrapped the inside of three of the walls, a rolling chair in front of it. There appeared to be nothing else there, no computer, no printer, no in- or outbox, no paper, pen, nothing. It was a brand-new cube waiting for a brand-new employee.

It was so far from the sunny café patio, from the clatter of plates and the honking of horns, the slamming of car doors and the passing of pedestrians, the exodus of Macy . . . that he thought he must have passed out and be dreaming.

Except it didn’t feel like a dream.

For a moment the floor seemed to dip beneath his feet. Then he remembered to breathe, and shoved aside the ache in the center of his chest brought on by the thought of Macy. His hand reached for the phone holster at his belt and found it empty.

What had happened? Had he died?

He turned his head, looked down a mile-long hallway lined with cubes, the doorless entries expressing nothing, and saw only a row of cavities in an oversized mouth. He walked a few steps over and peered into the next cubicle. An Asian guy wearing a plaid shirt and a thick black watch was hunched over his desk, gazing at a wall full of screens.

Thank god, he thought, the human presence calming him.

“Excuse me,” he said, moving toward the opening. “Hello? Excuse me.”

The guy didn’t respond, just moved his head fractionally from side to side as his gaze jumped from one screen to another. Had he not heard, or had he heard and decided to ignore him? Jeremy’s attention shifted to the wall of screens. They were like nothing he’d ever seen before. They had no edges, no glass, no seeming substance at all, except for the myriad images, charts, documents and moving pictures they seemed to be displaying. And there were dozens of them, some larger than others; a few were as large as televisions.

“I’m sorry,” he said louder, unnerved by the guy’s absorption. “Can I ask you something?” Ordinarily he wouldn’t bother someone so deep in concentration, but panic was building inside him. What was this place?

Still no response. Jeremy moved to the next cubicle. Another guy, this one heavyset and impeccably dressed in a medium-gray suit with white shirt and blue tie. He wore fashionable glasses, and he too stared at his wall full of screens.

Jeremy cleared his throat. “Hi,” he said. “I’m sorry to bother you, but can I ask you something?”

Same thing. No response. Could he be invisible? Was this some kind of Ghost of Workplace Future–type experience? He touched the man’s shoulder. It felt real. But the suited man did little more than blink and reach up to brush the spot that Jeremy had touched as if ridding himself of a spider.

Jeremy moved on. A woman inhabited the next one, brown hair, business attire, good posture, deaf as a post. Two more men, equally oblivious. He halted then, listening more closely. There seemed to be people in every cube, but there was not a sound to be heard. He walked the outer hallway created by cubicles on one side and a wall of the room on the other, passing one cubicle after another, all of them occupied by someone—man or woman, young or old, black or white, fat or thin, neat or messy—none of whom paid him one iota of attention. It freaked him out.

After walking the length of the hall—which took no small amount of time—he stood on tiptoe, only to see a static sea of zigzagging cubicle walls. Above them lay an endless expanse of rectangular fluorescent lights; in front of him, an endless gray hallway. It was dizzying.

His heart raced, and sweat broke out along his hairline. He turned to go back to where he started, hoping to find the way out, but all he discovered when he arrived back at the empty cube was a name tag attached to the outer wall.

Jeremy Abbott

The sight of his own name caught him in the solar plexus like a punch.

He gasped, then forced an exhale.

He was in hell. He had to be. Or some really, really weird dream. But he hadn’t fallen asleep and he felt more lucid than he had in years. Also more terrified.

His hand reached again for the cell phone case on his belt, but the moment he touched it he remembered it was empty. He’d only wanted to know the time. He looked around the room again, this time for a clock, and realized with a sinking feeling that there was none. In hell, he thought, time probably didn’t exist.

His heart climbed into his throat, deciding to pound furiously there and block his windpipe. Fearing he might faint, he grabbed for the chair in “his” cubicle and plopped into it. It rolled and struck the desk with its back. Jeremy planted his feet and put his head between his knees, breathing deeply. A sound like a computer booting up had him rising nearly as swiftly.

Suddenly, on what had been the plain gray fabric walls of his cube, appeared the same collection of screens he’d seen on the other people’s walls.

His eyes took in the sight, flicking from one to the other, and only a moment passed before he recognized what he was looking at. Apps! More specifically, smartphone apps. There were the calendar, settings, maps, messages, email, phone, web browser. The stock market. And then there were Redfin, Facebook, Twitter, TV Guide, NFL, Soccer, Tennis Channel—all the personal apps he had on his phone—and as he looked at them, they opened. He was controlling his iPhone with his mind! He looked around, wanting to tell someone, because this was freaking awesome. A mind-controlled smartphone!

But of course all those other people already knew it. No wonder they’d been too absorbed to hear him. Either that or they had literally been absorbed.

Was that what had happened? Had he been transported into the future, where—where what? He was his cell phone?

Novelty turned into nausea.

Then he remembered the words Macy had said just before standing up and dumping him: Someday you’re going to get sucked right into that thing and nobody will ever see you again.

* * *

Macy strode down the street, swallowing over the lump in her throat and blinking to stop tears from overflowing her eyelids. She paused and looked up at the sky, willing them back into her tear ducts even as another wave of regret washed over her.

She was crying, on the street, over a guy. What had become of her?

She remembered the first time she’d noticed the problem—or rather, noticed how big of a problem it was. She and Jeremy had taken a hike to the top of Sugarloaf Mountain. The air had been soft with summer’s last breath and the leaves were falling, crunching under their feet as they walked. They made it to the top, bursting out of the woods onto a rocky outcropping that showed nothing but rolling hills and a carpet of trees transitioning from green to orange, yellow and red. The breeze had kicked up, gently moving her hair from her forehead, and she’d gasped at the beauty before her, feeling as if the whole world was a magical place. It was a moment of such sublime happiness that she couldn’t think of another place on the planet she’d rather be.

This is it, she’d thought. This is the guy. This is what I’ve been searching for my whole life.

She’d turned to Jeremy, buoyant to be sharing it with him, convinced he had to be feeling it too, the profound connection, the certainty that this was something special, only to find him looking at his phone, thumb pushing screens aside, eyes riveted.

It struck her so hard, she couldn’t help it; she’d wanted to cry. She felt crushed. Had she fallen into the classic trap of believing that because she felt something, he did too? Was he here just to placate her? Was this the kind of moment, the kind of shared activity, that would disappear completely as the relationship aged? Would they end up at the same kitchen table inhabiting completely different worlds?

After a minute, perhaps sensing her silence, he looked up with an oblivious grin and said, “Can you believe it? I’ve got a signal up here!”

She’d turned away quickly, blinking back tears of disillusionment, and said something about the view, at which point he had joined her on the rock. But she could tell he wasn’t where she was, that he had no conception of the magic he had squelched.

By the time they’d gone to their respective homes, changed clothes and gotten back together for dinner that night she’d shaken most of it off, and the next morning he’d been charming at breakfast. Though he’d been checking work emails when she came downstairs, he’d put the phone down the moment he became aware of her.

“She’s alive!” he’d joked, and those sleepy gray eyes of his smiled. He wore a faded sweatshirt and well-worn jeans, his wavy hair tumbled wildly on his head like he hadn’t even glanced in a mirror, and she felt her heart lurch at the beauty of him.

She, on the other hand, had scrubbed her face, applied emergency makeup from her purse, and tried to casual-ize the outfit she’d worn the night before by going barefoot in her black skinny jeans and leaving her white shirt untucked.

“We’ve got to get you a pair of sweats to keep here,” he said, rising to wrap her in a good-morning hug.

She put her arms around him and breathed in the laundry-fresh scent of his T-shirt. The feeling of rightness returned, and she pictured them sitting around in their pj’s on Sunday mornings, reading the paper and sharing the interesting bits. She didn’t need to hike; they’d find other things to do together, things that he found special.

“How did you sleep?” His voice was intimately low, vibrating against her cheek where her face pressed against his chest.

“Like a coma patient.”

The sound of his chuckle, and the feel of it against her body, made her toes curl. She squeezed him tighter.

“Let me get you some coffee.”

“Coffee,” she breathed, starting to let go of him.

But he held her tighter and said, “Nope, we can do this. Trust me. Follow my lead.” And he shuffled her over to the coffeemaker, where he poured her a cup one-handed and then prepared it exactly the way she liked it: dollop of cream, spoonful of sugar.

Laughing, she took it from him with one hand and sipped. “Perfect. But this could get awkward when you make me breakfast. How are you going to peel the potatoes for the hash browns?”

He laughed. “Madam, you underestimate me.” He shuffled them over to the freezer, pulled it open, extracted a box of Bob Evans breakfast sandwiches and tossed it toward the microwave. “Voilà. Breakfast.”

She laughed, her smile feeling unquenchable, and said, “Mr. Abbott, you’re an amazing man.”

Those ridiculously lashed eyes gazed down at her for a long moment, making her feel every kind of beautiful. “You’ve got it backward,” he said softly. “I’m an amazed man, Ms. Serafini. Every day more amazed, by you.” And he’d kissed her. Kissed her with the gentle finesse of a man falling in love.

She had swan-dived off the edge then, and felt herself willing to give everything for the man who made her feel like this. He was present for this magic, she’d thought, and that was enough.

She’d been so happy she hadn’t even minded when, three minutes later as she was opening the box of Bob Evans breakfast sandwiches, he’d been back at the table, absorbed in his iPad.

Now, remembering how she’d duped herself made her feel even sadder. She was just like all the girls in those anti-smartphone videos, the girls looking lost as their boyfriends ignored them for their phones. The girls she’d chalked up as having chosen to love rather than be loved, like wallflowers satisfied with a wink from the cute guy, or spinsters secretly in love with their married bosses.

She wasn’t like that. She refused to be. And so she’d made the only decision she could: to leave the man she cared about because she’d rather be alone than love a man who was not in love with her. Because since that lovely morning it had become increasingly clear that what she felt was a thousand percent more intense than what he did. How else to explain his ever-decreasing attention, the diminishing eye contact, the dwindling ability to pay attention to the moment for more than five minutes at a time? How else to reconcile that instead of her presence in his life lessening his phone/tablet/screen obsession, he had instead gotten more comfortable indulging it around her?

So she steeled herself, willed the tears away, and reminded herself she’d done the right thing. As she turned up her street, eyes on her apartment building, she remembered countless other times she’d tried to talk to him, only to end up addressing the top of his head as he scrolled through his phone’s many offerings. And she knew that more and more lately she’d found herself talking more quickly, so as to hold his interest long enough to finish her story before he reached for the holster at his belt. And then there was the fact that she’d started making it a point not to ask any question that could be looked up online, so as not to lose him to the Internet for the next five minutes. And how many zillions of minutes had she wasted waiting while he searched for some answer, some inconsequential detail, before the conversation could resume?

The evidence was overwhelming.

He didn’t even look at her anymore. The soulful eye contact from their early relationship was now a thing of the past. She would estimate fifty percent of the time they were together he was looking down at the phone in his hands. It was like competing with another woman who was always with them, inertly smug with her ability to know all, provide all and triumph over anything Macy had to offer.

Almost anything. Sex could still win.

But that was not enough. Not for her. She’d held on as long as she could. She’d made the point to him as many times as she was able without humiliating herself. And she’d come to the unhappy conclusion that she just wasn’t enough for Jeremy Abbott.

CHAPTER TWO

The apps appeared to be his, so Jeremy checked his email, text messages, Twitter and Facebook. He hadn’t missed much in the cyber world. A normal amount of time had passed, which he knew because the clock on the screens seemed to be accurate, so he found himself finally able to take a few normal, deep breaths. If he were really in hell, would he be able to check his email?

Despite himself, and knowing he had far more important considerations that should be occupying the front burner, he scanned his inbox again for anything from Macy. Also despite himself, considering he could be dead and in hell, he was disappointed to find nothing. No apology for dumping him out of the blue, no follow-up explanation, nothing to offer hope that they might be able to talk this thing out. It seemed to be . . . over.

A twisting began in his chest. Could he be having a heart attack—in hell?

He had to stop thinking about Macy. He had enough problems right now without dwelling on heartbreak, and just thinking about Macy made his insides turn into something cramped and painful, so he turned his mind to the safe haven of work. He managed to answer several client emails, making sure he’d still have a job if and when he ever returned, and included one to his administrative assistant asking for a reply on some inconsequential issue. If she wrote back he’d know something more bizarre than dying had taken place.

Then he sent one to his boss—just in case—telling him he had to be out for a few days. A family emergency.

He closed out his email and looked around the cubicle. There seemed to be screens for every app—or rather each app was an illuminated area in his cubicle—all in the same order as on his phone. Except . . . he leaned closer to a small one on the lower right. It was a bright yellow sun, with a red heart inside. As he looked close, the app opened into a larger screen in front of him. Find a Girl, Contact a Girl, See the Girls Looking at You.

Great, he thought, closing the app immediately. Just what he needed right now, a dating site. He hoped it wasn’t a sign that things with Macy were well and truly finished.

He turned the chair away from the screens and looked out at the empty hall. “His” cubicle was on the edge of the farm, so his view out was a white wall. It might have been the cubicle where he’d started his career, except that the wall was not dinged up by people racing office chairs down the hallway for late-night stress relief.

In fact, the whole place seemed recently built and sterile as an operating room. He listened again, straining his ears against the silence. Not even the tapping of keyboards could be heard. It was a weird sort of solitary confinement, being among hundreds but completely alone and seemingly invisible. Rising from his chair, he lifted his chin, then stood on tiptoe, to try to see across the sea of cubicles. He was about to dip back down onto his feet when another head popped up ten or fifteen yards to his right.

His toes went numb and he dropped to his soles, heart pounding rapidly. He immediately went up on tiptoe again and didn’t see the first guy, but a few yards to the left, another head appeared. It was like a life-sized game of Whack-A-Mole.

“Yo!” the second guy said, waving a hand. “Can you see me?”

Jeremy’s heart leapt. He raised a hand in return. “Hey. Can you see me?”

“Yeah! Yeah, I can! And you can hear me, right? And see me?” He continued to wave his hand. He had a thick, dark thatch of hair and a broad forehead.

“Loud and clear, and I’m looking right at you.”

“Finally!” It was hard to tell the guy’s expression, since only the top of his head and his eyes were visible, but he seemed to be smiling.

“Where are we?” Jeremy called.

The guy’s eyebrows fell. “You don’t know?”

Jeremy shook his head. “You don’t either?”

The guy disappeared, and Jeremy heard a small, discouraged “No.”

“How about you?” Jeremy called. “The other guy—there was another guy over there. Hey!”

Nobody answered. Had the other guy left, or been a figment of his imagination?

“Hey, did you see that other guy? Are you still there?”

“What?”

Jeremy took the moment to drop back to his feet, then exited the cubicle. “Hang on!” he called. “I’m coming to find you.”

He turned right and headed down the long hallway. He passed multiple cubbyholes just like his, all occupied by people staring at their screens, until finally he reached the corner. He turned and started down another interminable row.

He should have reached the one who’d spoken to him by now, but nobody seemed the least bit aware of their surroundings, let alone to be looking for him, so he stopped, hands on his hips, and called, “Are you still there?”

No answer.

Disappointment threatened to swamp him. He was crazy. Someone had put him in an institution and he was imagining the cube farm, the silent preoccupied people, the colorful screens. The only real things were the four white walls and he was actually in a straitjacket. Or he was wandering around some giant man-made rat maze, perhaps observed, perhaps failing this test, failing all the tests.

“Hello!” he yelled, fear giving his voice volume. He began to jog down the aisle, arms out to either side slapping the wall, the cubicles, the wall, the cubicles. “Answer me!”

The industrial carpet, the fabric-lined cubicles all conspired to suck his voice into an abyss. The room was huge, and there was no echo, just the dead thumping of his feet on the rug. He ran until his breath ripped audibly from his throat and his chest burned.

“Dude!”

The voice from behind him made Jeremy damn near jump out of his skin. He spun around to see a short, dark-haired, square-headed guy in a shirt and tie and wrinkled khakis. He was built like a wrestler and stood with his arms out from his sides as if about to draw in a gunfight. It might have been aggressive except he looked he like might cry.

He panted as he took the guy in. “Are you the one I was just talking to?”

“I was gonna ask you the same thing! Where the fuck are we, man?”

Jeremy started to laugh—hysteria, doubtless—when the guy launched himself forward and he found himself being hugged tight around the waist.

Just as abruptly the guy let go. “Sorry, man. I’m just so glad to see someone. I mean, Jesus, this place, it’s huge, and I haven’t talked to anyone since I got here.”

“So all these other people can’t see you either, huh? How long have you been here?”

“I don’t know, man, days. One minute I was sitting in a meeting, checking my emails, and the next minute I’m like here, you know? It was okay at first, but now, I mean, what the hell, right? At least we got our stuff.” He gestured back into his cube and Jeremy saw an array of screens similar to those that he had. “I’d really be batshit otherwise.”

Jeremy’s breath was slowly getting back to normal, but “days” threatened to make him hyperventilate.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Brian. Yours?” He held out a hand.

“Jeremy.” They shook. “So how’d you get here, Brian?”

Brian’s face clouded. “Oh, man, it was awful.” He went on to describe sensations that were eerily similar to the ones Jeremy’d experienced.

“And you said you were . . . what, checking your email? On your phone?”

“That’s right. I just got this new Samsung, thing is fucking awesome. If I had it here I’d blow your mind with it. I’m talking hashtag-phone-gasm, right? I mean, I don’t even know what all it can do yet and I’m on it all the time. You know?”

Jeremy nodded slowly. “Did anybody say anything to you before you, uh, before you ended up here?”

“What do you mean? I was in a meeting.”

“I mean did anybody tell you to get off your phone, or ask you to listen up or anything like that?”

Brian shrugged. “Hell, I don’t know. I was watching this video my buddy Ev sent, with this sweet chick in it wearing nothing but—”

Something from inside his cubicle dinged and Brian’s head whipped around for all the world like the dog in Up when it saw a squirrel. Brian turned without finishing his sentence and bent toward the screen.

“Brian,” Jeremy said, “did you see that other guy who popped up? Reddish hair? Looked annoyed?”

“Pay attention, boys and girls! Are you paying attention?” a female voice boomed over the cubicles. You could hear the smile in her voice but at the same time she sounded far from benevolent. “That’s why you’re here, boys and girls, to Pay. Attention. Get what I’m saying?”

The voice was getting closer. Jeremy glanced at Brian, who turned from his screens and looked at Jeremy with wide-eyed terror.

“What?” Jeremy asked. “Who is that?”

“Oh man,” Brian said, dropping into his seat. “Oh man. It’s her. Mrs. Hartz. Quick! Pay attention!” And with that, he turned back to his screens, hunching like all the rest of them, eyes riveted.

“Why? Who is it? What’s she going to do? Brian?”

But the guy was trembling in his seat, ignoring him.

Jeremy turned toward the voice. What the hell? What on earth could anybody do to them now? They were already in hell.

He watched the hall to see if she would come this way, and he didn’t have to wait long. She swung around the corner like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in Ghostbusters—about eight feet tall with a spherical body clothed completely in red, from her dress to her hose to her sensible shoes. Incongruously perched atop her fire-engine red hair was a tiara that did its best to sparkle despite being outgunned by the sheer massive proportions of the wearer. With her smallish head, thin legs, and colossal torso, she looked like a gigantic walking aneurysm.

“What is this?” she boomed, spying Jeremy. As she approached, her yellow eyes became eerily clear and narrowed with displeasure. “You’re not in your office! You’re not paying attention!”

It was hard to miss the malevolent gleam in her eye, as if his noncompliance might give her permission to do something awful.

“I’m paying attention to you,” he said. He found himself sweating, despite his confidence that there was little she could do to hurt him.

“I’m not the point,” she said.

“There’s a point?” The question sounded sarcastic but he meant it. In fact the idea that there was a point gave him hope.

“That question proves you’re not paying attention!” Her voice was piercing, especially at close range, but it was the waves of hostility and impatience that were most unnerving. “Look at all the other boys and girls; are you doing what they’re doing?” She bent from the waist to peer in at Brian. Though his back was to her, Jeremy could tell his trembling had increased from the force of her attention.

She laughed—a gruesome sound—and her eyes shifted to Jeremy, conspiratorial. “I don’t think he’s truly paying attention, do you?”

“Actually, yeah. I do.”

“Well, that shows what you know. Get back to your office now and pay close attention—all the answers you seek are there. Go on. Now.” She made shooing motions with her hands, moving toward him. “Go on!”

As if pushed by an invisible force field, he backed away from her.

“Wait,” he said, before she propelled him any faster. “Who are you?”

She stopped, her yellow eyes going wide and her red-lipped mouth gaping into a smile. As she bent toward him, her hands on her hips, his nervous glance fell on her tiara, upon which a large rhinestone heart anchored the center position, flanked by dozens of smaller heart-shaped glittery things, some of them on springs and bouncing with tiny ineffectual glee.

“Who am I?” She reared up, her hands on her hips, and boomed a laugh. Next to them, a mousy-haired girl in a cubicle looked over her shoulder. Spotting Jeremy, she turned in her seat, eyes alive with interest.

“Hi,” she said, her lipsticked mouth broadening into a smile.

“Not him, you idiot,” Mrs. Hartz snarled. “He’s not real. Get back to work.”

The girl flushed and snapped back to her computer.

Mrs. Hartz crossed her arms over her chest and regarded him. “I am Queenie Hartz—that’s Mrs. Hartz to you—and I run this place. You’d do best to listen to me or else . . .”

Her eyes—brows raised, impish smile—demanded that he ask.

“Or else what?” he complied.

“Or else . . . off with your head!” she crowed. With another flick of her hands he was tumbled backward down the hall until he reached the corner, bumped off the adjacent wall, and then rolled another dozen feet or more and found himself sprawled in front of his own cubicle.

“Pay attention, boys and girls!” her voice said, much farther off now. “You know what happens if you don’t pay attention!”

Angry, he picked himself up and brushed himself off. “No!” he called back. “What happens?”

There was an unnerving moment of silence before a peal of maniacal laughter shivered through the air-conditioned room. “Nothing!”

* * *

“It was just . . .” Macy swept her hair back behind her ear and concentrated on her menu, hoping her inner turmoil did not show on her face. “Disappointing. That’s all. I thought there was more to him.”

“You were with him for seven months, Macy,” her sister-in-law, Carolyn, said. “That’s longer than, like, anyone in your history of dating. Are you trying to tell me you were looking for something more all that time and couldn’t find it?”

“No.” Macy looked up, wondering how to make herself clear without revealing the humiliating truth that she’d lost a guy to a phone. “There was a lot there, I’ll admit it. But when it came down to it he just wasn’t everything I wanted him to be. And it was just under seven months. Enough time to spot the flaws.”

Carolyn slapped her menu down on the table. Macy noted a flush creep into her pale cheeks and felt terrible. She understood Carolyn’s disbelief. He had seemed perfect for her. She had thought so too.

“I’m sorry,” Carolyn said. “I just don’t understand you. Surely you know that everybody has flaws.”

“Of course. But they have to match up, you know? They have to be flaws you can live with.”

“Sure, but . . .” Carolyn made a frustrated sound. “We liked him! Even your obnoxiously overprotective brother liked him. And believe me, when Lute likes someone you’re dating, things are a lot easier at our house, I can tell you.”

Macy lay the menu in her lap and smiled at her. “Then I’m sorry. I truly didn’t intend to disrupt your home life.”

Carolyn sighed. “It’s not that, and you know it. Something must have happened, because the last time I saw you, you were head over heels.”

Macy snorted, then took a sip of her water, eyes skittering away from her sister-in-law’s too-perceptive gaze.

“Hey, it was subtle but I spotted it.” Carolyn jabbed a finger into the table. “I’ve known you since you were ten, okay? And now you tell me you’ve dumped him. I have to say I’m shocked. And a little skeptical that he just wasn’t everything you wanted him to be.” This last she said in a voice intended to imitate Macy’s, but it smacked dangerously of Minnie Mouse.

“See?” Macy sat forward. “This is why I don’t like dinner parties. If I hadn’t brought him to your little shindig you’d have never known him, never liked him, and peace would reign again in the world. Instead, this little ripple in my pond has your boat rocking. But okay, we went. Did you not notice how absent he was half the time?”

“It wasn’t just our little shindig. It was Thanksgiving too.” Carolyn’s brows drew together. “What do you mean, absent? Oh, well, he did take that phone call.”

“And he spent the whole evening checking his email. He did that on Thanksgiving too, remember?”

“But he was expecting something, right? A contract or something?”

Macy waved a hand. “Whatever. What about the time Lute caught him checking Facebook?”

“He did?” Carolyn was starting to look doubtful. Then her face cleared. “Wasn’t he trying to get in touch with his niece? Or sister? Or someone like that?”

“His cousin.” She sighed heavily, giving Carolyn a helpless look. “But there was always something like that. Something he had to pick that damn thing up for—maybe something valid, maybe not—but either way, he’d look and then he’d get sucked into it and poof! He’d be gone.”

“What do you mean, he’d be gone? He leaves?”

“Mentally!” Macy picked up her water glass. The agitation was beginning again. She took a few quick swallows. “You know, I spent months feeling like it must be me. That I must be boring. So I upped the chatter, tried to engage him, felt bad about myself and why he couldn’t seem to focus on me for more than five minutes at a time. And you know what I finally realized?”

Carolyn looked at her, probably surprised by the heat in her voice. “What?”

“That I was bored. Me! Not him. For the longest time I was sure that I was the problem, that if I were smarter, prettier, more interesting, he’d put the damn phone down. But no. The problem wasn’t me, it was him. Sitting at a table watching someone look at their phone is boring. So one day I’d just had enough. See ya!” She flipped a hand and shrugged, letting her gaze slip past Carolyn so she couldn’t read the hurt in it.

Carolyn nodded. “Yeah, okay. I can see that.”

The waiter arrived and took their orders. When he was gone, Macy added, “Besides, my life coach says it’s inefficient to spend time with people you’re hoping will change, that it’s a surefire way to derail your future.”

“Life coach.” Carolyn snorted.

“Stop it, I told you how much he’s helped me. I’m focused now. I’m clearing my life of anything that doesn’t serve my goals, and it’s working. The fact is, if love is not adding value to my life, it has no place in it. Letting things without value take up space in your life drains your energy for fulfilling yourself with what’s really important.”

Carolyn frowned for a long moment, then, as if she hadn’t even heard what Macy had just said, asked, “But couldn’t you have talked about it? Did you tell him the phone thing was a problem? You know, relationships are hard work. It’s a cliché, but everybody says it for a reason. Not everything’s going to be perfect right—”

Macy held up a hand. “Carolyn, I love you. But if you continue down that conversational path my head will explode. C’mon, I’m not an idiot. I’m twenty-nine years old. I know a relationship takes work.”

“Okay, sorry.”

“I did talk to him. First I joked about it. Then a couple of times I asked him to put the phone away.”

“And did he?”

“Of course. But the thing was, the next time we were out it was the same problem. And I don’t want to be that woman, the one who’s always nagging about not getting any attention. If he isn’t into me enough now, at seven months in, to keep the phone holstered, what’ll he be like in five years? Ten?” She poked listlessly at the tablecloth with her fork. “God forbid I’m ever in one of those dead relationships.”

She spoke with assurance, but inside that knot was forming again, the one that tightened every time she thought about Jeremy. There’d been so many things right about him . . . except for the one very wrong fact that he wasn’t into her enough.

That was what it came down to, every time. And it was that which caused the doors of her heart to slam closed. She’d rather be alone than be with someone who loved her less than she loved him.

“Well, all I know is I don’t want to be the one to tell Luther Serafini his baby sister’s on the prowl again.” Carolyn shook her head as she loosed her silverware from its rolled-up napkin.

Macy jerked her eyes to Carolyn. “On the prowl!” she protested.

“Before you met Jeremy you were using a spreadsheet to keep track of your dates, remember?”

Her face went hot. “There was a reason for that!”

“Of course there was.” Carolyn laughed.

“Look,” she said, leaning forward, “here’s the thing. My life coach had me make a life plan, which was great, because it’s only when you know where you’re going that you can make the right decisions to get you there. But I felt like, until I found the right guy I couldn’t get the rest of my life in order. I know, I know, I don’t need a guy to be whole and all that. And I don’t! But I want a guy, I want the right guy. But until I find him I can’t get the whole rest of the show on the road. Do you know what I mean?”

Carolyn looked at her like she had three heads. “The whole rest of the show?”

“Yeah, you know, making sure I’m in the right job, the one with the best benefits, maternity leave and career track. Planning exactly where I want to be on that track when I decide to have children, so I won’t lose ground. Then I can start looking at neighborhoods, think about buying a house, calculate the down payment needed and the payments we can afford. I can research new cars that would be family friendly and could be paid for by the time we have to start contributing to college savings accounts, figure out how to adjust our retirement savings, stuff like that, you know? Just make sure my priorities reflect my goals, the future I’m going to manifest for myself.”

Carolyn was quiet a long moment, fingering one earring, a grave look on her face. “And you say you broke up with Jeremy? Not the other way around?”

She knew she shouldn’t have confided all that. “What?”

“You just scared the crap out of me, and I’m not even dating you. So, that little speech? Save that for the losers, because it’s the perfect formula to make a guy run screaming.”

“Not the right guy. Not a practical guy.”

“Not a boring guy.”

Macy sat back, conviction warring with confusion. “But that’s who I am, Carolyn. I’m a planner, you know that.”

“Honey,” Carolyn continued, “there’s planning, and there’s crafting a prison sentence. In your plan, the guy doesn’t seem to matter much, beyond setting that whole unbelievably dull-sounding machinery in motion.”

“Of course the guy matters! He’s at the crux of the whole thing!” She bunched her hands together illustratively. Then she looked up. “What do you mean, dull? You’re married, you’ve got kids, you must have thought about all this stuff.”

“Yeah, right.” Carolyn rolled her eyes. “We got together in high school, remember? Back when planning was Hey, who’s getting the keg for this weekend?”

“Huh. You were lucky. You got the whole thing settled early. My trouble is I keep meeting guys who don’t live up to their billing. They seem great on the outside, and they can maintain that facade for a few dates—or, like in Jeremy’s case, a few months—but then, inevitably, the Problem shows up.” She leaned back. “There’s always a Problem. With Jeremy it was the freaking phone. I mean, who wants to look across the table at the top of someone’s head for the rest of their life?”

“If you’re lucky, it’ll have hair on it.”

“Oh, it’ll have hair. I require pictures of parents and grandparents on the second date.”

Carolyn closed her mouth, gathered her napkin and rose from the table.

Macy laughed. “Carolyn, stop! I was kidding!”

“I’ll be right back. I have to think about an adequate response to all that”—she rolled a hand—“stuff.” She walked off.

Chuckling, Macy pulled her phone from her purse, thinking, See? It’s okay when someone leaves the table to check the phone. There is proper cell phone etiquette, and there is cell phone rudeness. A sigh escaped her as she slid her finger across the screen, entered her passcode and saw that nobody had emailed or texted. She’d sort of expected something from Jeremy, a What’s going on? or Can’t we talk about this? But there was nothing. He must have agreed with her decision . . .

She gazed at the familiar checkerboard of apps. Familiar, that was, except for one yellow icon in the lower right corner that seemed to be throbbing.

She looked closer. iLove, it read underneath it. Inside the box was a red heart, surrounded by a bright yellow sun, which was the thing that seemed to be pulsating. She put her finger to the icon and the app burst into a bright full-screen sun, and then up popped what looked like a dating website. Find a Guy, Contact a Guy, See the Guys Looking at You—all with little red heart icons.

Her mouth dropped open. She hadn’t downloaded that. What, were apps just self-installing now? That’ll be the day, she thought, when she used a dating website. It was scary enough going out with someone you’d already laid eyes on. Setting yourself up on a blind date was an idea beyond horrifying.

She closed the application and deleted it.

CHAPTER THREE

Macy’s phone rang again and she nearly threw it against the wall. All day the phone had been ringing, and not once had it been Jeremy.

“Macy Serafini.” She tucked the phone between her shoulder and ear, identified the caller and pulled up the account file on her computer. She was nodding over the client’s points when her coworker April appeared in her doorway. She held up a finger.

“Yes,” she said, nodding, “yes. We can try that.” She waved April in. “Let me put something together on that and I’ll email you Monday, how’s that?”

April settled herself in the armchair across from Macy’s desk and began examining her fingernails.

Macy leaned her head back on her chair and gave a silent scream as the client droned on about things they had discussed multiple times already.

Bud Forester, she mouthed to April, identifying the client who drove them all crazy. April smirked.

If StockSolutions weren’t such an important client, she’d hand the account off to her assistant.

As usual, the conversation went on way too long. Also as usual, he finished by asking her out—even though she’d told him multiple times she was seeing someone. The fact that she wasn’t anymore was something she didn’t even consider telling him.

“I’m sorry, Bud, but I have plans with my boyfriend this weekend. Let me know how the concert is, though, okay?”

He took the news as he always did—with cheerful resignation—and they hung up.

April drew her long blonde hair around her shoulder and twisted it with one hand. “Didn’t you break up with your boyfriend?”

“Yes.” Macy frowned at the phone. “And it seems to have stuck.”

April dropped her hair. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. I thought I’d hear from him.” She swiveled her chair and put her hand on the computer mouse, opening up her work email.

“Why?”

She glanced at the list of impersonal messages, not one of them from Jeremy. “Well, because I was kind of abrupt about it.”

“No kidding.” Deadpan.

Macy grimaced and closed the program. “I know, it’s stupid. I just thought he might call. God knows he’s never very far from a phone!”

“What, to chat about the breakup?”

“No. But you’d think he’d want to know what brought me to that point, since it obviously took him by surprise. Why wouldn’t he want to know that? Did he really not care?”

“So you dump the guy out of the blue and you’re upset because he hasn’t called you. Isn’t that considered having your cake and eating it too? Why don’t you call him, if you’ve got something you want to explain?”

Macy shook her head, rested her elbows on her desk and put her chin in her hands. She felt so tired. It was exhausting not thinking about Jeremy, and she’d been at it for a week now. “No, don’t you see? That would defeat the purpose. I was going for shock and awe, but he didn’t even notice.”

“I understand. You were going for the quick fix. Don’t you know you should never break up with a guy unless you really mean it? Otherwise, karma makes it so that the next time you see him he’s with some ridiculously hot chick.”

Macy’s throat closed at the thought. She picked up a pen and tapped it on the desk blotter. “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised. Jeremy’s perfect when he’s paying attention. Unfortunately that’s only about forty percent of the time. The other sixty you spend watching him look at his phone.”

“That might be enough for some women.”

At the mention of cell phones Macy picked hers up, slid her thumb across the screen to look for texts or messages, and found nothing yet again. Yep, Jeremy was just fine with the breakup.

“And yeah, I see what you mean,” April said drily.

Macy put her phone aside. “Sorry. I was just checking . . . See, if he’d called me it would mean he’d woken up to the problem, or would be open to hearing what the problem was. But if I call him it’ll just be me telling him one more time that his constant distraction bothers me. And that hasn’t worked.”

“Which means it was a good thing you broke up with him. If this is all the notice he’s taken of it he was probably done anyway, right?”

The blunt words struck her hard, and she picked up her phone again. She looked at it blindly a moment before something penetrated. “What the heck? I thought I deleted this.”

“What?” April leaned forward.

The pulsating yellow icon was back in the bottom right corner of her screen—iLove. She pressed the icon and held it with the intention of deleting it, then changed her mind.

“Wait a minute.” She cancelled the delete function. “Have you ever heard of a dating site called iLove?”

April shook her head. “It must be new, because I’ve heard of all the dating sites.” She got up and came around the desk, leaning over Macy’s shoulder. “Jeez, is that suggestive or what? Look at it, it’s throbbing, for god’s sake. Open it!”

Macy tapped the icon and the app sprang to life. Find a Guy, Contact a Guy, See the Guys Looking at You . . .

“‘See the Guys Looking at You,’” Macy read. “How stalkery is that?”

“Go up, go up, go up.” April pointed, moving her finger like it was on the screen. “Go to Find a Guy. Let’s just see who they’ve got. How have I not seen this site?”

Macy tapped the red heart, which was also throbbing, and up came a screen that read What Are You Looking For?

“Ooh, this is fun.” April straightened, grabbed the chair placed against the wall and dragged it over. “Let’s join.”

“April!” Macy laughed. “No way. Besides, look at the time. I have to get some work done today, you know.”

“It’ll only take a minute. Besides, it’s Friday.”

“Your point being? You actually think I’m going to find a guy for tonight?” Macy scoffed.

April shot her a raised eyebrow. “My point being that you can work all weekend since you’re not seeing anybody anymore.”

She scrolled down the page, scanning the questions.

Your guy is:

Tall

Short

Either, as long as he’s taller than me

Size doesn’t matter

Your guy likes:

Books

Movies

Museums

Artsy-fartsy stuff nobody understands

An NCIS marathon on his big-ass TV

“I notice they don’t say ‘anything happening on the two-by-five screen in his palm,’” Macy quipped.

“Quiet. We’re getting to the essay portion.” April took the phone from her hand and held it so they both could see while she scrolled faster. “What are you going to tell them about you? ‘Hates technology. Wants undivided attention. Will dump you at the drop of a hat.’”

April laughed, but Macy folded her arms. “Hey. That’s not fair. I don’t think it’s too much to ask to not play second fiddle to an electronic device.”

April rolled her eyes. “Enough with the cell phone stuff. There had to be other stuff wrong with Jeremy or you wouldn’t have dumped him, right?”

Macy paused, considering for the hundredth time that she might have been hasty. Then she recalled the feeling of sitting there while he searched for someone or something more interesting than her to interact with.

“Right?” April insisted, suddenly looking appalled.

“Of course! The phone was indicative of so many things. It meant . . .” She didn’t want to put it into words.

“It meant . . . ?” April insisted.

“Well, that he couldn’t sustain a conversation. That he didn’t understand proper etiquette. That he was inconsiderate, rude, oblivious.”

“He didn’t understand proper etiquette?” April’s brows were at her hairline. “You’re kidding, right?”

Macy paused, feeling the words back up in her throat. “All right, here it is. He couldn’t stop going for his phone because he wasn’t interested in me. Okay? You said it yourself before. The fact that he hasn’t called means he was done too.”

She took the phone back, moving her thumb up and down on the screen and once again fighting the urge to cry. She couldn’t remember ever feeling this upset over a breakup. They were usually a relief. Where was the relief?

“Hey, careful, you’re going to lose our place.” April took the phone from her again, smiling gently when Macy looked at her. “We can do this like an interview, okay? I’ll ask questions and you answer them, and I’ll put them in. What the heck, it could be fun. And you never know. You lost a guy because of a phone—who’s to say you can’t find a guy because of one too?”

* * *

Jeremy retreated to his cubicle, pondering Mrs. Hartz’s response to his question. If you don’t pay attention, nothing happens. True enough, in general.

He sank down into his office chair, wondering if it was supposed to be a meaningful message, like something that should be helpful. He gazed at his screens. Was sitting in this box surrounded by his virtual life considered paying attention? The others all seemed to think so.

It was good in one way. He could contact people, maintain his work, make sure people didn’t think he was dead so his life wouldn’t be a total mess if he ever got out of here and back to it. Which would be when? How long could he have purely virtual relationships before his real life started breaking down? He couldn’t even consider the question without freaking.

Had Macy really done this to him?

Okay, he was crazy. Macy couldn’t have done this to him, because it was clearly some psychotic episode going on inside his brain. It couldn’t be real. And if it wasn’t real then Macy couldn’t have done it. Not that he believed she would have even if she could.

But she could have been the reason for his psychotic break. How could he have gotten things so wrong? He’d thought they were . . . falling in love.

What a sap he was for getting choked up. He stood up and bounced on the balls of his feet a few times, then brought his hands up to boxing position and jabbed at the air, once, twice, threefourfive. Get a grip. Be strong. You can get over this—over her. And hopefully that’ll get you back to reality.

He reached for his phone again, then rolled his eyes at how slow he was to break the habit when he knew it wasn’t there. It was like constantly flipping light switches when the power was out.

He decided to leave his cubicle—Mrs. Hartz be damned—and, on a whim, started to jog. He sprinted for ten cubicles and slowed for ten, going back and forth between the two while keeping an eye on what was inside each cube as he passed. Which was still one hypnotized person after another. But the exercise was invigorating, made him feel more like himself, so he continued running.

Jeremy’s heart was just beginning to race again with anxiety when a break in the wall suddenly opened up on his left. He stumbled to a halt in front of it and found himself looking into a marbled alcove that housed a bank of elevators.

“Yes.” He moved swiftly to the call buttons, pressed the down arrow, and looked above the sets of doors for illuminated numbers. Nothing, he thought, figures. Still, elevators went to ground floors and ground floors led outside. If he could get out onto the street, he could figure out where he was.

After several minutes with no change in elevator status, Jeremy pressed the “up” arrow so that both were lit. Immediately he heard movement behind one of the bays, the familiar lurch and roll of an elevator car moving in the shaft. Finally there was a ding and the far left doors opened, the up arrow shining red in the dim alcove.

Squelching a moment of fear that this might not be an improvement over his current situation, he boarded the elevator. After all, any change would be a good thing, wouldn’t it? He wasn’t going to get anywhere trapped in that cube farm with the Queen of Hartz breathing down his neck.

The elevator offered thirteen floors, something he decided to scoff at instead of hyperventilate over, and he pressed 1. So what if the elevator said it was going up? He stood back, waiting for the doors to close. When they did nothing, he moved forward and pressed 2. The elevator indicated that he was on the fifth floor, so anything below him would be a step in the right direction, but it didn’t take long to realize nothing was going to happen if he kept pressing the lower numbers. So he tried 6. Still nothing. Frustrated, he pressed them all—all thirteen of them lit up except for 5, the one he was on—and the door groaned shut.

The trip was short, the doors moaning open again on 7. He stepped into an alcove just like the one on the fifth floor and turned, fully expecting to see a cube farm exactly like the one he’d just left. What met his eyes, however, was more like a giant, humming casino. There were cubes, all right, but each one was brightly lit and pulsing with color and sound. He walked slowly forward, into the din, squinting against the glare of the lights. Apart from being the circus version of his floor, these cubes had aisles between each one so it was easy to walk to whichever blinding set of lights most intrigued you.

For some reason he glanced up, and his mouth dropped open. The ceiling was mirrored, so that the entire room’s cubes were visible at once, and the sight of it was unmistakable. The layout was exactly like the apps on a smartphone, each cubicle representing an app.

Could this be his phone?

As it happened, the Mail app was just in front of him to the left, so he turned toward it. If it wasn’t his, he might be able to find out who was contacting whom from this giant phonelike warehouse, and what they were saying. Maybe this was the brains behind the whole operation.

With a bracing breath, he stepped into the cubicle—and was immediately assailed by visions of folders and envelopes and one half-written message on a large screen right in front of him.

Bud, following up on our conversation earlier today, I’ve done some research and it seems StockSolutions has made virtually no changes to their logo, website, advertising or visibility in the market in the sixteen years they’ve been in business. I believe this could explain their lackluster performance with the public, their approach being the same—

Whoever had been writing the note had left off in the middle of it. Either that or they were still working on it. In any case, the note didn’t seem to have any bearing on this room or this building or the poor beleaguered souls trapped here.

He left the mail app and walked down the line. There was a music app—like a radio stuck between stations, multiple songs played at once—and a clothing app, with hologram models slouching and sauntering about the cubicle. Shoes walked themselves around in another. Hotel rooms drifted across cubicle walls in yet another. And on and on past YouTube and Amazon and real estate sites. One app whispered Spanish phrases as he went by. Another played tinkly music and urged him to relax. The Candy Crush game nearly deafened him, its cartoon characters waving flags at him to play, and the New York Times crossword demanded a three-letter word for a mythical Persian bird. He’d bet Macy knew the answer to that.

Some of the apps he passed weren’t open, but they were all lit up like pinball machines waiting for a quarter. He kept going until he got to one wreathed in a blinding yellow light. Squinting, he peered into the cubicle and saw a pulsing red center. He took a tentative step toward the door and was immediately yanked inside and swept into a chair. A screen opened up in front of him proclaiming itself to be the iLove Profile Page. Someone was typing.

Who I’m looking for . . .

I’m looking for a man who’s paying attention—

The phrase “paying attention” jerked him upright in his seat. Was this what he was supposed to be looking at? Should he have investigated that app on his own screen more closely? He continued reading.

. . . who knows the value of eye contact and asking questions. He has to be sincere, not just going through the motions, and he should be genuinely interested in people. He should be strong and smart, but confident enough to admit when he’s wrong or when the woman he’s with is right. He must be ethical, conscientious, generous and not petty. He should know how to make a girl feel special.

“He should be a boy scout,” Jeremy told the screen. “Don’t forget ‘Be prepared’!”

He should not be afraid of powerful women. The man I’m looking for is comfortable in his own skin and sure of his place in the world. He should also have a very large penis—

Jeremy blinked. Then the cursor rapidly backed up over the last sentence.

* * *

“Delete delete delete!” Macy squealed.

April cackled like a witch over a cauldron, pecking at the backspace key. She had moved from the phone to the computer for ease of typing.

“What if you’d accidentally uploaded that?” Macy couldn’t help a burst of laughter. “I’d be swarmed by perverts!”

“You think there are that many big penises out there?” April scoffed.

“I think there are that many men who think they have big penises out there.”

The two of them cracked up again, and April poured another slug of wine into Macy’s coffee mug. They’d stayed late to write the profile—April running out to get wine and Chinese food—and Macy was getting just tipsy enough to think that maybe this was worth trying. After all, she could sit at the privacy of her own computer and flip through scads of men without ever having to leave her chair. The filtering aspects of it were awesome. You could knock out guys who smoked with the click of the mouse. You could choose them by political party. You could search by age, status, college degree—even hair or eye color, if you were that picky.

“I’ve never really liked blond guys,” Macy admitted when they got to that section.

“Give me a break,” April said. “Ruling out blonds is like men ruling out women with small breasts. Tell me you’re not that person.”

“Of course not.” She waved the suggestion off with her mug. “I was only saying. It’s weird, what you look for and what you don’t, what’s attractive and what’s not. It’s so . . . inexplicable. It’s a wonder anybody finds anybody. Don’t put that in there.” She clasped her mug in both hands, elbows on armrests and lips on the rim. “Though maybe you should add something about not being in love with technology . . .”

“Calling all Luddites,” April typed. “That’ll be our headline. You’ll end up with a guy who’s been living under a rock. With an illicit computer.”

They’d gotten through the multiple choice questions quickly and were halfway through the essay. April had typed in a few positive things about Macy and was racing through what she wanted in a guy.

“What else?” April sat with her hands poised over the computer keyboard. Taking another sip of her wine, Macy leaned over to see what she’d written so far. It all sounded pretty cliché, but she thought it best not to mention that to April. She was, after all, just trying to help.

“He should be funny, and well-read,” Macy added. “With a goofy sense of humor.” She smiled, remembering Jeremy doing an impromptu dance while taking off his boxers in the middle of her bedroom. “And he should have kick-ass shoulders. Dreamy eyes, and long fingers . . .” Fingers that caressed with just the right amount of pressure, not tickling, yet not poking. A touch that sent shivers not just down a girl’s spine but into her toes, melting her insides . . .

“Yeah, we all know what long fingers means.”

Macy snorted. “That’s not what I meant.”

“I’m not putting all that. Especially not ‘goofy.’ You’ll end up with some loser bodybuilder with a kick-ass comic book collection.”

April laughed hard at her own joke, but Macy suddenly felt depressed. She put her mug down, blinking at the top of her desk.

“What? It was funny!” April protested. “Okay I’m putting down here that you want someone fit, with a good sense of humor . . .”

“I think I’ve made a terrible mistake.”

April looked over at her, then down at the desk where Macy was gazing. “What do you mean? Did you forget to do something?”

“No.” She looked up at her friend, her stomach in her throat, the conviction of having let something slip through her fingers filling her. How had she lost it? What had she been thinking?

“About Jeremy, I mean,” she continued, her voice reedy. “I think I’ve made a mistake. I can’t stop thinking about him. He was perfect, except for that one thing.”

April’s face lost its glee. “That one thing being that he didn’t pay any attention to you.”

She pictured Jeremy’s eyes gazing down at her as his body moved over hers, their breath mingling while their torsos arched and flexed together, legs tangling. “He paid attention to me sometimes.”

April made a sound in the back of her throat. “Sometimes. Listen to yourself. You’re a powerful woman, Mace. Look, it says so right here.” She jabbed at a place on the screen. “Come on, don’t get all maudlin on me now, or I’m taking my Three-Buck Chuck back. Jeremy was an addict, and like with any addict, you were number two. Is that what you want?”

It was true. At times, it was true.

“Remember that time you told me he spent the entire evening on his phone while you were trapped in a conversation with Weird Mildred at Rob and Frank’s?”

“Ugh.” Macy shuddered. She’d tried and tried to catch his eye, but not once did he look up to see where she was; and when she finally had escaped Weird Mildred, she’d gotten caught by the woman who ran the co-op, who went on and on about organic carrots. Something about how they shouldn’t be grown on farms, but in people’s backyards because that soil doesn’t usually have a history of pesticides— Could that be true?

“And he waited in the car with his phone one time, didn’t he? Instead of going in to your cousin’s baby shower?”

She tapped her fingers on her desk. “I had to go get him. To be fair, it was a baby shower. Most of the guys there looked miserable.”

“Sure, but if you say you’ll go, you go. You don’t sit in the freaking car.”

Macy turned to her. “I thought you liked Jeremy.”

“I did!” She lifted a shoulder, let it drop, continued to scroll down the profile page. “But, I don’t know, it just seemed like . . .”

Macy waited, but April didn’t finish.

“Seemed like what?” she pushed.

April exhaled and took her hand off the mouse. She turned the swivel chair toward her. “Don’t get mad.”

A bad feeling erupted in Macy’s stomach. “I never get mad at you.”

“Well, okay, don’t get upset, then.”

“Just spit it out,” Macy said, feeling ill. “Was he cheating on me? Did he make a pass at you? Oh my god, it’s not one of those things like Suzanne’s boyfriend where you all took an oath not to tell—”

“Oh for god’s sake, no! To be honest, I started thinking it wasn’t right when you told me about that time he answered a text in the middle of having sex with you.”

Macy’s cheeks flamed. “That was a work thing. It was really important. And we weren’t supposed to be having sex, actually. We were at the tennis club, in one of those unisex bathrooms near the pro shop.”

April laughed and rustled Macy’s hair. “That’s right! I was so proud of you, thinking outside the box like that. A public restroom! That was a first for you, wasn’t it?”

But he had taken the text, she was thinking now. He must have had one eye on the phone the whole time . . .

“Seriously,” April said, “and I’ll only say this once, in case you end up back together with him.”

Macy’s eyes shifted to hers, knowing it was hopeless. He’d texted during sex. You didn’t come back from that. Granted, that had been months ago, but in light of all the evidence since then, it was significant now.

“What?” Macy was uncomfortable under April’s scrutinizing gaze.

“He just wasn’t that into you,” she said finally, looking at her sorrowfully. “I hate to say it, but if you have to fight for a guy’s attention, that’s the bottom line.”

“You don’t . . . ?” April’s words were injury enough, but she steeled herself and forced the question. “You don’t think he was in love with me?”

April’s expression got sadder, and it was so unfamiliar a look that it, more than anything else, convinced Macy she must be right. Then April shrugged and her face retrieved some wryness. “Eh, love. Maybe it was his version of love. I’m not calling him a liar. But I know you, and it wasn’t your version.”

Macy slumped and put her hands over her face. “I know,” she said in a small voice. Emotion threatened to swallow her, but she pushed it back. It was the wine making her weak. She’d broken up with the guy because she’d known that what April said was true.

After a moment she straightened her spine, pushed her hair back off her face, and said, far more confidently than she felt, “All right, let’s do it. Let’s finish this stupid thing and post it. I’m moving on.”

April’s expression was instantly delighted. “Yesss!” She lifted a fist in the air, then lowered it to Macy. “Fist bump, sister. You are on your way!”

“On my way to what?” Macy fist-bumped April’s ring with a wince.

“To happiness, my friend.” April turned back to the computer. “Now, choose a picture . . .”

CHAPTER FOUR

Jeremy looked back up at the ceiling. Stuff was going on here, emails being written, that iLove profile page being worked on. As hard as it was to believe—though really, no harder than all the rest of it—he was starting to think the seventh floor was somebody else’s cell phone. Each cube was an app, some of the apps were being used, and he could do nothing but watch.

But it wasn’t his phone. Certainly he hadn’t filled out a profile looking for a man. Nor had he written an email to anybody named Bud.

Was being here a message that he should be paying attention to that heart-throbbing app? He watched as the typist finished the essay with some blahblah about having a sense of humor and a sensitive side and whatever.

He stood up and left the cubicle, the forces that had sucked him in apparently having had enough of him. He looked up at the ceiling again, saw the face of the giant phone, and decided to check out the photos. If this place made any sense at all—and that was in some doubt—he’d be in this person’s cell phone for a reason. Pictures might be the quickest way to figure out whose it was.

He went straight down the aisle from iLove to Photos, where he was once again immediately zapped inside. On the large screen in front of him was Macy’s gorgeous face.

His breath left him in a whoosh. He should have suspected, but he’d felt so hopeless it hadn’t even occurred to him—he was in Macy’s phone. That email was to one of her PR clients. She was filling out a dating profile.

His heart twisted.

Most of the recent photos were of the two of them, or just him, and he had a moment of feeling glad she hadn’t deleted them. Then again, it hadn’t been very long. As he scrolled through the photos, he began to notice how many of the ones of him showed him bent over his cell phone—at restaurant tables, on city streets, in her living room, his kitchen, in bed . . .

He scanned the folders, opening a video. Immediately he heard her laughter, then the shaking screen revealed her face. God, she was beautiful—her eyes wet with laughter and sparkling as they looked at him holding the camera.

He remembered the day. They’d gone hiking, her hair was windblown, her cheeks pink, and they’d gotten to laughing over something. Her laugh was so infectious, her face so brilliant with joy, that he’d wanted to capture it. Of course he hadn’t told her that, or she’d have gotten embarrassed and cynical. She never believed compliments.

They’d hiked one of the steeper trails that day, tramping through old fallen leaves, though the colors hadn’t quite changed yet. Macy had said she loved fall the best because its breezes were summer heat wrapped in cold, as opposed to spring, which was winter cold veneered with warmth.

“Two old ladies,” she said, marching up the path ahead of him, her booted feet picking their way over roots and rocks with confidence, “one with a feather duster, the other a knife.”

“That’s—visual,” he said, thinking he could use something like that in an ad. “But why two old ladies? I’d think spring would be a young woman.”

“Because every season is wise. But they’re not all kind.” She tossed a smile over her shoulder at him. “Do you think I’m crazy now?”

“Did you make that up?” he asked.

She dropped back as the trail widened so they could walk side by side. “Years ago, when I was a kid.”

“Then yes.” He grinned down at her and put an arm around her shoulders.

She stopped, her hands going to his waist, fingers through two side belt loops, and looked up at him. Her eyes shone as she pulled him close. “And you still like me?”

His heart had caught in his throat. He couldn’t speak, so he only nodded, bringing one hand up to smooth strands of hair from her face.

She sighed. “Good. Because I really like you.”

They kissed, and the fire that always burned between them flared to life. They’d said they loved each other that night, as they curled up under the warmth of her down comforter, sated from food and fresh air and vigorous exercise. Jeremy couldn’t remember ever being happier.

Sitting in the cubicle of Macy’s photos, he watched the video of her laughing over and over and over, until finally he rose, knowing he had to do something. He had to get out, he had to talk to her. He had to tell her how much she meant to him, even if she still wanted to let him go. What a fool he’d been, taking her for granted. Not that he’d realized it at the time, but now he did. Noticing how many times he reached for his phone, how often he wanted to turn from the “now” of this place to the “maybe” of a message from her—even if the “now” was whacked and the “maybe” not happening—he realized that the retreat into his apps was habitual. Even here, inside a smartphone, he reached for his phone.

But even if that weren’t enough, the countless pictures of him looking at his phone, reaching for his phone, holding his phone, would have convinced him. He was appalled with himself. If he never saw another smartphone screen again he’d be happy, if only he could get out of here and back to her. But right now all he had were smartphone screens, and he had to use them the best way he knew how.

As he moved back down the hallway toward the elevators he was suddenly arrested by the sound of her voice. He stopped and listened. “Don’t forget eggs again!” “Call Mom.” “Tell Lute he was right.”

Had to be her Reminders app. He moved on to Messages, heard what had to be audio texts. “I don’t know how to get his attention! I must be the most boring person on the planet. Do you think it’s me?” Then the sound of her laughter again—clearly in a different conversation—and finally, “I don’t think I can do this anymore . . .”

The elevators, thank god, were right where he’d left them. He pushed the down arrow and waited, one shoulder leaning against the wall. He was exhausted and upset. He wished he could go to sleep and wake up back at home. He would run to Macy’s apartment and beg her to give him another chance. He’d reform. He’d get a dumb phone. He’d learn to pay attention.

He felt the penny drop—the truth of the matter suddenly glaringly obvious. He got it now. It was about him, his lack of presence. And he could fix that! Shouldn’t that get him out of here? Because once he was free he was going straight to Macy to tell her he understood at last.

She had left behind an enormous void within him. He wasn’t the sentimental sort, so he wasn’t getting mawkish on himself, but as things had progressed he had felt somehow less alone in the world. Safer. Like everything had a point. It wasn’t that the rest of his life was bad. His job was great, his friends were top notch, and numerous, but there was something about Macy that had completed the puzzle. She fit, and with her he’d felt whole.

And then he’d blown it.

She’d tried to warn him, but he hadn’t listened to her. Thinking back on it he recalled multiple conversations about his phone use. Most of them joking—he’d thought—but some of them serious. Heartfelt.

Why hadn’t he paid more attention?

Why hadn’t he realized that if she left him, he’d be heartbroken—even in the face of an apparent psychotic break?

The elevator doors opened with a clamor of hinges and electronics. He pushed himself off the wall and stepped inside. Just for the hell of it he pressed all the buttons again, but was not surprised when he ended up back on 5. The doors eased open, and he was back in the sterile world of non-glowing, non-throbbing, non-dinging cubicles.

Just outside of the elevator alcove he stopped and listened. Still silent. He glanced left, the route he believed went to his cubicle, then right, and nearly jumped out of his skin at the appearance of the elusive red-haired guy. The one he’d seen just before spotting Brian.

Impossibly tall and stooped with self-consciousness, he was thin, with a hangdog look to go with his past-due haircut and indoorsy complexion. He was older than Jeremy by probably ten years, and his eyes looked faded.

He addressed Jeremy with a dead gaze. “Hey.”

Jeremy looked up—way up—and held out a hand. Between the giant Mrs. Hartz and now this guy, he wondered if he’d accidentally ingested something that said Drink Me on it. Or was it the Eat Me that had made Alice small?

“It’s you!” Jeremy beamed. “I’ve been looking for you. Did you hear me calling earlier?”

“Yeah.” The red-haired guy glanced down, then offered his hand. It felt like a collection of popsicle sticks in Jeremy’s.

“I’m Jeremy Abbott.”

“Kyle.”

“Listen, I’m glad to meet you. Do you mind answering some questions? What is this place? Do you know? Have you been here long? Have you got any idea how we get out?”

Kyle nodded his shaggy head. “Yeah, so, we got, uh, sent here by stuff we did, you know?”

Jeremy raised his brows. Kyle seemed to think that was enough information. “Sent here? By who? What stuff? How do we find out? Is this some kind of purgatory?”

Kyle took a deep breath and let it out, as if fatigued by the questions. “Yeah, so, I’m not sure? But it seems like somebody, maybe some kind of witch or alien? Or maybe God? Sent us here.” His arms flopped up and down in a bizarre expression of ignorance. “Yeah, so we need to work on ourselves, fix stuff, and then we can go home.”

Jeremy’s heartbeat accelerated. “So we’re not dead?”

Kyle gave an incredulous look. “No, we’re not dead.”

Jeremy had no idea how much he’d feared the opposite answer until he got this one. Muscles he didn’t know he’d tensed let go and relaxed. “Okay, good. So we did stuff we need to fix. I think I figured out what I did. So how do we get out once we know?”

“Yeah, so, um, I know I need to get better with girls? Uh, women. Stupid,” he muttered to himself. “And I know ’cause I’m here. This is some stupid dating app, where we are, and we can only get out when we get dates.”

Jeremy held out his hands. “Hold on. You’re saying this here is an app?” He spread his arms out to encompass the room. Why wasn’t it dinging and flashing and whirring like the apps upstairs? “The whole floor?”

Kyle nodded.

“For people who need to get better with girls?” This wasn’t what he’d expected. It was the phone thing—it had to be. Jeremy had never had women problems. Not until Macy dumped him. Unless . . . “Or with a certain girl?”

Kyle did that thing with his arms again. “Whatever. Some people have, like, money problems or whatever, and they go somewhere else. Other places like this. Rehabilitation apps.”

Jeremy rapidly put the pieces together in his head. “So you’re saying I’m here because I’ve got relationship problems.”

Kyle’s mouth turned down. “I don’t know. I think it’s, like, online problems. I think it all has to do with the device, you know?”

“Ah. The device.” It was all coming together, his thoughts, the photos on Macy’s phone, that poignant note in her voice when she’d said to someone in an audio text, I must be the most boring person on the planet.

He could kick himself.

Macy’s last words flew through his mind again. Someday you’re going to get sucked right into that thing . . .

“Yeah, like if you like being on your phone or your tablet or computer or whatever a lot you can do that here. It’s like device heaven, you know? I loved it, at first.”

“Here,” Jeremy reiterated, to be sure. “You loved it here.”

“Yeah. Except for the other people. I hate it when there’s noise. Like that day you got here, yelling across to Brian over there.”

“Wait, that day I got here—that was today. Right? That was earlier today.” Sweat broke out on his brow, under his arms.

Kyle wheezed a short laugh. “No, that was, like, a week ago. Look at your calendar.”

A sudden dizzy spell had him searching for the wall with one hand.

“Look, so, I got a question for you,” Kyle continued.

He’d lost a week. A week! He pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut. Maybe he hadn’t figured everything out.

“Where’d you go?” Kyle continued. “Because, I think I’ve decided to go home now. I been here, I dunno, months, and it was great, but now . . . I think I discovered I want someone. Like a girlfriend.”

Jeremy looked up. “Months?” He thought Kyle might be blushing, because his wan face suddenly looked alive.

Kyle shifted, pushed his hands farther into his pockets and stepped closer. “Yeah. So where’d you go, how’d you get out?”

“I took an elevator.” He swung an arm back toward the elevator alcove, only to see a blank wall where it once had been. “Oh shit.”

Kyle looked at where Jeremy gestured, then looked back. “Uh-huh.”

“It was there. I swear it.”

“Uh-huh.” Kyle was nodding. “I meant how’d you get a date? Cuz I can’t get one.”

“A date?” Jeremy’s neck was starting to hurt from looking up to see Kyle’s face. “No. What are you talking about?”

“You gotta get a date, man. That’s how you get out.”

“That’s how we get out?” Kyle had just given him the magic formula! He could have kissed him. “We get out!” He laughed, somewhat hysterically. “Come with me back to my cubicle, okay? Let’s figure this thing out. We’ll both get out of here.”

They walked down the hallway, Jeremy—who wasn’t short—taking twice the steps that Kyle did with his never-ending legs. His mind was spinning, thinking about how often he went for his cell phone, and how many times Macy had mentioned that he might want to put it away. The key to this whole thing was there somewhere, he was sure of it. Did he need to do some actual rehab? Was that how to mitigate this prison sentence and get back to Macy?

In a sudden flash he remembered what she’d said shortly before she’d walked off—what he’d thought was a joke. “I can’t compete with your phone. I’ll never be able to give you what it gives you.”

Hah. What a jerk he’d been.

The thing was, it wasn’t her! He did it to everybody. Hell, he remembered hearing his text alert go off and checking the phone in the shower one time. Damn near ruined the thing—but he’d answered! Thank god for the talk-to-text feature.

By the time they’d found Jeremy’s cubicle, Kyle was panting for breath and looking paler than ever. Jeremy looked at him in concern. “This isn’t a moment too soon for you, buddy. You need some fresh air and exercise. You’ve been sitting in front of these computers too long.”

Kyle gazed at the array of screens in Jeremy’s cube. “Naw, this is normal. I do the same thing at home.”

Jeremy sighed, but a vague chill swept up his spine as he realized he was not that much different from Kyle. He just always had his screen with him.

He glanced at his email program, noting that he had 422 emails. As he looked at the app it opened, the first email being from his administrative assistant asking, Where the hell ARE you? Harrison’s shitting bricks!

He’d have to sort that out later. Maybe tell them some kind of virus had knocked him out, sent him to the hospital . . .

He looked at his phone app, but it was the one square that never opened, no matter how long he looked at it.

“I don’t suppose we can call anyone, can we?” he asked Kyle.

Kyle laughed, a dopey-dog laugh. “Yeah, right. Naw, we can text and email and tweet and post to Facebook and pretty much everything else, but we can’t use the actual phone part. You can dial any number you want and it won’t go through. I’ve tried. It’s great.”

Great. Jeremy sighed. He mentally shut off the mail and plopped himself in his chair. “Okay, so we need to go here, right?” He opened the iLove app. A large welcome screen appeared.

Macy was on this site, he thought.

“What’d they say about you?” Kyle asked.

Jeremy was clicking around the site. Find a Girl, Contact a Girl, See the Girls Looking at You . . .

“Who?”

“On your profile. Haven’t you looked? Why do you think you haven’t gotten any mail?”

“Kyle, I’m not on this site. This is the first time I’ve even opened the app.”

“Oh man.” Kyle shook his head slowly. “Then how’d you get out?”

He craned his neck to look up at the towering Kyle. “I didn’t get out. I just went upstairs. You’re saying I have to do this to get out?”

“Upstairs?” Kyle repeated. “I thought there was only a downstairs.”

It took half a lifetime but Jeremy finally bled Kyle of all the information he had on the subject. According to him, to get out of here Jeremy had to get a date with a woman (or man or whatever, depending on who you were) on this site, at which time he could get out to go on the date. Afterward, he’d end up back here. The only way to stop this cycle was to establish a real relationship with the right woman. Then he would get out permanently.

Macy, he thought again. If he could find her on here, maybe he could get a date and actually get to see her. He wouldn’t have to send her any emotional email bombs, or make up reasons why they couldn’t get together to talk . . . A flutter of hope bounced around in his chest. If he saw her he could convince her to give him another chance. Maybe.

If that didn’t work he didn’t know what he’d do. Because how in the world could he start a real relationship with a new woman when he was still in love with the last one?

“That could take forever,” he thought out loud. Then, to Kyle, “Relationships take time, you know? And in the meantime, what? I lose my job and go broke? Who makes the rules around here?”

“They don’t let that happen,” Kyle said. “Look at me, I’ve been here for months and I still have my job.”

“How do you even know?” Jeremy threw up his hands. “You’ve been trapped in here like a mouse with a big block of cheese.”

“Yeah, well, online banking. They’re still paying me, so I’m still working.”

“This is crazy,” Jeremy muttered, dropping his elbow on the desk and putting his head in his hand. How would he even find Macy? Nobody used their real name on here, just those cutesy “handles.”

“Yeah, well, we’re not the only ones. People who get into trouble gambling, or in the stock market, or watching too much porn, or whatever, on their phones are sent to places like this too. Same kinda rules.”

“And how do you know that?” Jeremy sat up straight.

“Queenie Hartz told me. She thought I didn’t get it. But, see, I did get it, I just didn’t want to go out on any dates. Not that that’s been a problem, not with what they wrote about me.”

“What do you mean, ‘they’?”

“Look, you got mail.” Kyle reached over and took the mouse, dragging it swiftly across the page to Jeremy’s mailbox. It contained one note from someone named SeriousFun844.

Dear GnatMan: Are you kidding with this profile? Do you actually think someone’s going to think it’s cute? Why don’t you write something serious? Share something of yourself. We don’t bite, you know. You’re a good-looking guy, if that’s really your picture. But if you’re actually the jerk portrayed in the essay, forget it. Telling people you’re an asshole up front still doesn’t make it okay to be an asshole.

Let me know. I’m serious.

And I’m fun. :-) Gina

Jeremy stared at the words. “I’m portrayed as an asshole?”

“Probably.” Kyle moved the mouse over to the profile and clicked. “That’s what they do, list all your worst qualities. And don’t even think about changing it, it doesn’t work. It just adds more bad stuff.”

The first problem was the picture. It was him, all right, and not a bad shot, but it had been a photo of him and Macy at a restaurant last summer, out of which she had been rather obviously and ungracefully cropped.

Then, to cap it off were the words:

I’m fresh out of a relationship and in desperate need of a new one. I always have to be with someone—even if it’s just for arm candy. Though I would love to fall head over heels for someone, for most of my life I believed love was impossible, if not simply a delusional dream of the desperate. Well, count me in now!

I’m self-centered and self-gratifying. I pay minimal attention to my dates unless they’re wearing something hot and we’re about to have sex. Sometimes superficial and regularly overconfident, I can be an insensitive bastard to those who can do nothing for me.

The thing went on in the same vein, ringing just enough bells of veracity to sink Jeremy’s spirits. Was that really who he was? He certainly recognized some of the base impulses, but he hadn’t acted on them, had he? He tried his best to be a decent guy. No, he was a decent guy.

Wasn’t he?

Jesus, if Macy saw that . . . how could he write to her now? Even if he could find her?

“So if everybody on here has a crappy profile, why would anyone not in this crazy place use the app?” Jeremy asked, scrolling through the litany of horrors that was his dating profile. “Who wants to pick out a jerk to date?”

“Oh the site’s open to everybody. We’re a really small percentage overall. You can look around and see. Most people are normal.”

Which would make it even harder to attract someone—and even easier for Macy to find someone better than him. Losing hope rapidly, he looked up at his own handle.

“Why am I called ‘GnatMan’?” he asked, hoping it showed a kind of appealing self-deprecation, some awareness of his place in the universe, or maybe some clue that the profile was a big joke.

But, like the grim reaper, Kyle reached out one long finger and pointed at a line in the essay: I have the attention span of a gnat.

* * *

Macy could hardly believe her eyes. Two weeks after breaking up with Jeremy and then hearing absolutely nothing from him, she was sitting in her office after hours looking at his grinning face on an iLove dating profile. He’d actually come up in her Guys You Should Look At section!

Her entire body flushed with mortification. He’d certainly gotten over her in a hurry.

She leaned close. She had taken that photo! They’d been waiting for a table at Captain Newick’s and he’d been smiling so big—he had a killer smile—that she told him he looked like the picture of the cartoon captain on the wall behind him. He’d gathered her in close and they took a selfie with the sign. But only she knew it was behind him now, as it—along with herself—had been unceremoniously cropped out of the picture.

Memories of that day, when they’d driven out to the bay in search of bushels of crabs and cold beers, the sun hot on their heads in Jeremy’s convertible, enveloped her like mid-August humidity. She too had worn a grin that threatened to crack her face wide open, and she hadn’t even cared that her hair was blowing like a willow in a tornado and was likely to look like a tumbleweed before it was all over. Jeremy was laughing and glancing at her so often it was as if he couldn’t believe his luck, and they were singing together to the music, unself-conscious and electric. Neither one of them had had a care in the world beyond finding the elusive Captain Newick’s, which instead of being on the bay was on a back road by a river that fed into it, and boasted the best steamed blue crabs within reach of the city.

He hadn’t been on his phone at all that day. In fact she hadn’t even been aware of the problem yet. She’d still had the wild intoxicating idea that there weren’t any problems between them.

Every woman on here would want that guy, she knew. The one who was totally there, undistracted, happy, in tune. The guy who seemed like he’d be there forever, making up for everything you’d ever lost in your life.

Until he disappeared and you became the superfluous doll across the table from the guy making love to his cell phone.

Had he seen her profile?

She hoped if he had that he took it as a sign that she was over him, even though she was as far from that as she could be. She may have broken up with him, but that didn’t mean the dream had died—the dream that she’d found the right one, that he was all he’d seemed to be, that she had stumbled upon nirvana. It was the dream that was so very hard to let go of. At least that was what she had been telling herself.

She knew better now. Staring down the barrel of the dating gun, she was afraid she wanted nobody but Jeremy. Even the Jeremy who listened with half an ear and couldn’t drag his eyes from a backlit screen.

She flipped a pen through her fingers, chewing on the inside of her cheek. Then, despite herself, she clicked on his profile. It might make her feel worse, but if she didn’t look she’d spend too much time wondering what he’d said.

As she’d learned to do on the other profiles, she skipped quickly over the multiple-choice section and went straight to the personal essay.

Sometimes superficial and regularly overconfident, I can be an insensitive bastard to those who can do nothing for me. I like things my own way and am persuasive enough to get them. I use my charm to make people like me, and am lost when it doesn’t work. I do not trust my own substance. I occasionally use people. I tend to disappear on women I’ve lost interest in. I have a bad habit of not paying attention to people, of only hearing what I want to hear, of taking people for granted. I want love but have no idea what it actually is. If I’m with you, I’ll likely only spend ten minutes out of every hour actually focused on you. The rest of the time I’ll be carrying on conversations with others who are potentially more interesting on my phone because I have the attention span of a gnat. I have an insatiable need to be entertained at every moment. I blame others for my boredom.

What the heck—?

Was this a joke? Was it aimed at her? She was the one who’d complained about his inattention, his phone dependence and, yes, maybe she’d accused him of needing to be entertained all the damn time—but she didn’t say any of that other stuff. Is that what he’d thought? Or was it just true?

Was he going for some kind of sympathy? Did he hope people would take it as a joke? It wasn’t funny to her.

She leaned forward and reread it. I tend to disappear on women I’ve lost interest in. He’d disappeared on her, that was for sure.

She sat back in her chair, gripping the pen in her fingers. It was here in black-and-white—he’d lost interest in her. She had broken up with him, but there was obviously no going back. She considered writing to him, asking him what he was doing there. Had he known she was on iLove too, and was he making fun of her, the site or himself? Or maybe all three? But it would be too humiliating. If he saw her profile at all, let him think she was far too busy with other men to be looking at him.

She clicked on See the Guys Looking at You and up came a screen of head shots of smiling men, short paragraphs listing their vitals next to them. Here was HardLovinMan22 in a blurry shot wearing a cowboy hat, thirty-four years old, Aries, nonsmoker, in a suburb not far from hers. And Waiting4You, balding, sweet-smiled, thirty-eight, Pisces, nonsmoker, closer to downtown. ReelMeIn was posed, not surprisingly, with a fishing rod.

But Jeremy gnawed at her, and she scrolled down through the several pages of guys who’d looked at her, searching for his photo in the lineup.

He wasn’t there.

And now she was wasting time second-guessing herself again. He was not that into her. Even April had seen it. It was time to let go—especially since she’d already let him go.

She glanced again at the guy in the cowboy hat. He looked nice. She wasn’t into cowboys, especially, but she wouldn’t mind a simple, uncomplicated date. She clicked, read the pleasant essay and decided to write. It was time to get off the computer and out on a date. There’d be no getting over Jeremy sitting here in her office.

She dropped the pen on the desk and started typing.

CHAPTER FIVE

Macy’s hands were sweating, and she was having trouble taking a deep breath. Her mouth was dry and her smile felt stiff as she asked the restaurant’s hostess if anybody had mentioned that they were meeting someone here.

The blonde was wearing earrings the size of handcuffs, and she pointed a manicured hand toward the front of the dining room. “Yes, are you looking for that gentleman by the window?”

Macy glanced over, took in the thirtysomething man in the blue button-down shirt with no tie and a pale complexion, and tried to match his features to the guy in the T-shirt and cowboy hat online. Because she was already nervous, this test nearly undid her. Despite the fact that she’d printed out and studied his profile like an SAT primer, she couldn’t tell if it was the same person or not. She’d thought he was more rugged-looking, but then a cowboy hat would do that, wouldn’t it? The chin could be the same, but . . .

She’d have to admit to the stylish young hostess—who probably never in her life would have to resort to online dating—that she did not know what her date looked like.

“Actually, ahhh . . .” As she leaned toward the girl, a couple tried to inch around her to put their name on the wait list, adding two more sets of ears to the problem.

The girl leaned toward her as the guy said something about a table for two. “I’m sorry?”

“Did he say he was waiting for someone named Macy?” she asked as quietly as she could.

The girl’s finely arched brows drew down and, bless her heart, she moved around the hostess stand toward Macy. “He didn’t say, I’m sorry. Would you like me to go ask him?”

Macy would have liked nothing better, but the line of people behind her was growing, and she didn’t want to hold everyone up. “It’s okay, I’ll do it. But thank you.”

The blonde gave her an understanding smile; she probably saw blind dates all the time. “Good luck.”

Macy gave a short laugh and wound through the tables toward the man by the window. He was kind of cute, she thought, nicely dressed in khakis and that blue Oxford shirt, square jaw, thick hair. No cowboy hat.

He stood as she approached, looking uncertain. He was taller than her, but not by much. Maybe five-eight.

“Are you Bill?” she asked.

His face cleared as if he’d had the same worries she had. “Yes, yes, I am. It’s nice to meet you.” He held out his hand and she took it in one of those wimpy girl-handshakes for fear of his noting her damp palms.

She let her purse slide down off her shoulder and reached for the chair, but he leprechauned around her with a smile. “Let me get that!”

“Oh! Thank you.” She gave a faint laugh and sat, hoping the waiter would arrive immediately to take her drink order.

Bill returned to his seat, leaning onto his forearms and clasping his hands, looking at her intently. He had a glass of something with a lime in it in front of him.

“You look just like your pictures!” he enthused.

She smoothed the back of her hair down with one hand—it had been breezy outside, and she imagined herself obliviously sitting there with it beehived around her head.

“Thanks, uh . . .” She couldn’t say the same. He looked like the kind of guy who wouldn’t put on a cowboy hat if you held a six-shooter to his head and made him. “You look . . . a little different from yours.”

He wilted. “I know. It’s the hat.”

“Do you, ah, wear cowboy hats often? Are you a country and western guy?” She tried to imagine the two of them two-stepping around a dance floor.

“Actually, no.” He appeared to be blushing. “I never wear hats, and I’m much more of a classical music guy. But there was this one time . . . I went to Houston with my, my, my, well, my ex-girlfriend, if you must know, and she took the picture. So . . . I don’t know why I used it.” He tried to chuckle and shrugged.

“Oh,” she said, a picture of the situation materializing. She gave him a smile. “You looked really happy. In the picture.”

“I do?” He looked at her. “I—I guess I was. We were both—or at least I thought we both were, on that trip.”

The waiter arrived, and she ordered a red wine. Bill ordered another gin and tonic.

“How long were you two together?” Macy asked, mostly to fill the silence that remained after the waiter left.

“Almost a year.” He said it with a note of pride in his voice. “We were doing great too, until I screwed up.”

“What did you do?”

He polished off what was left of his drink and looked at her ruefully. “I canceled on some plans we made for Thanksgiving. It was the stupidest thing. I had lost my job and I wasn’t feeling good about myself—I just couldn’t meet her family like that. You know?” His face suddenly cleared. “But it’s okay, I have a job now. No worries about that!” He laughed nervously. “Doing just fine now, it was a temporary problem, a layoff.”

“Hey, a lot of people have gone through that. But good for you for getting back on your feet!”

He nodded absently. “Yeah, yeah I did. But it was too late. See, my girlfriend—I’m sorry, ex-girlfriend, she’s a great girl, but she tends to make snap decisions. That’s why we were good together. I’m the deliberate one, she’s impulsive. I thought we brought out the best in each other.”

It crossed Macy’s mind that it probably wasn’t a good sign to be talking about a guy’s ex-girlfriend right off the bat on a first date, but she wasn’t feeling any immediate attraction anyway, so she figured they might as well have a genuine conversation.

“So you canceled on Thanksgiving and she broke up with you?”

“Yeah.” He nodded to himself again. “Yeah.”

“Did you explain why you canceled?”

He took a deep breath. “Yeah, I did. But she . . . she didn’t think that was a good enough reason. I guess she thought I was being weak, or something.”

“Really? It’s a big deal to meet someone’s family. You want to be confident.”

“That’s what I said. But she said I needed to man up.”

“Man up? She said that?”

He tipped his head. “But hey, enough about me. Jeez, sorry. Tell me about you! Have you got an ex-boyfriend we can talk about?”

Macy laughed. “Sure, we can talk about me, but I have one last question. How long ago did you break up?”

“Just a couple weeks ago.”

“And you’re online dating already?” She thought of Jeremy, online after only a couple of weeks. Then again, so was she. She held up her hands. “Sorry! That sounded really judgmental.”

He leaned forward. “No, it’s okay. In fact, I want to explain. I had thought, initially, that in order to ‘man up’ in the wake of the breakup I should get right back on the horse.”

“Hence the cowboy hat?”

“Oh, hey, I never thought of that! No, see, I got online, found iLove, and who do you think popped up in my Girls You Should Look At list?”

“Your ex-girlfriend.”

“That’s right. So I put the hat picture up as a sign. To her. A reminder that we had something, that I could be someone else for a minute. Or something like that.” He gripped his head with his hands and gave a mock growl. “Argh, I don’t know. Maybe I just wanted to remind her I’m still here. Like I said, she makes snap decisions. Guess I was hoping I’d be one of the ones she regretted.”

Macy thought about Jeremy’s picture. He had zillions of pictures of himself, several of them professional head shots for his job. Why had he chosen that one when there were dozens he wouldn’t have to crop? Was it meant as a signal to her?

Then she thought about his essay. It had been full of things she’d said to him, criticisms and complaints and cynical observations. She spent a horrified moment wondering if that was all she’d ever said to him, negative, complaining things. But maybe he was trying to tell her hegot it. That he understood the problem she had with him.

But if that were the case, why wouldn’t he simply call her?

Because she’d broken up with him. She’d pulled the plug, suddenly and without mercy. Certainly Jeremy had no manning up to do—if he was thrown out, he would move right on.

“I’m sorry,” Bill said, the sincerity in his voice breaking through her reverie. “I’ve gone on and on about me and my ex-girlfriend. That’s like number one on the ‘don’t’ list for first dates. I’m sure you’re thinking I’m not ready to date, aren’t you?”

It took her a minute to refocus on Bill. “No, no. It’s okay. I . . . To be honest, I’m pretty fresh out of a relationship myself,” she said, thinking, I make snap decisions too. “Why don’t we treat this as a dinner between friends, huh? No pressure.”

He smiled. “You’re on. Though I may live to regret getting caught in the friend zone.”

As it turned out Bill was every bit as nice as he seemed, but he was so agreeable about everything, taking on every opinion that she had no matter what the topic, that Macy started to understand a little of what the ex-girlfriend might have had a problem with. It would bother her too, she thought, mentally putting an X next to his name. Then she caught herself. Was she being—once again—too picky?

The thought made her try harder to see him as a romantic candidate. She upped her energy level, made jokes, looked him in the eye, tried to imagine kissing him, but the more of an effort she made, the more defeated she felt. There was absolutely nothing wrong with Bill, but she was pretty sure that by the end of the evening she’d have no desire to see him again. There simply was no spark.

She was sagging under the thought when a familiar laugh caught her ear. She jerked her head to the left to see, just beyond the near table, another two-top, where a pretty brunette sat holding a glass of wine across from, and gazing into the eyes of, Jeremy.

Her stomach plummeted to the floor as her wine threatened to launch in the opposite direction. Jeremy was leaning forward, seemingly hanging on the brunette’s every word, and the brunette was eating it up. Just as Macy had, when she’d had his full attention. She wondered how long it would be before Jeremy reached for his phone, but when her gaze dropped to his belt, where the ubiquitous holster resided, she was shocked to see it wasn’t there.

Macy got abruptly to her feet, causing Bill to stop mid-sentence. “Is something wrong? I’ve been talking too much, haven’t I? I always do that. I’m sor—”

But before he could get the apology out she excused herself to go to the restroom. She couldn’t do this, she thought. It was too soon. Or too late. Or something.

She’d screwed up. She’d mistakenly condemned Jeremy as imperfect and so she’d bailed—just as she had on dozens of other occasions. The difference was, she hadn’t been in love with all those other people she’d judged and found wanting.

But Jeremy had been different.

Jeremy had been the one. And she’d thrown him away.

* * *

Jeremy’s fingers dropped to his belt only to find for the one millionth time that his cell phone was not there. He thought he’d noticed the addiction when he was in bizarro world, but now, out in reality, it was so much worse. He’d had no idea how many times he went for the phone in the course of a conversation—and he wasn’t even bored. He was far too anxious to be bored.

It had come to him in a flash, the way to find Macy, the details aligning themselves quickly. Jeremy had access to Macy’s cell phone. Hadn’t he seen the beginnings of her essay as she’d been writing it? So why couldn’t he go back up there and find out when and where her next date was going to be? Then he could line up a date and see her there. Voilà! They could run into each other accidentally and he could talk to her, face-to-face, without having to wait until he figured out how to get out of bizarro world.

He couldn’t pause to think about whether it was ethical or fair or, hell, even creepy, cyberstalking her that way. But hey, it wasn’t fair that he was trapped in his mobile either, so Eat that, ethics, he thought savagely. And he’d done it. He’d found the place and the time, and then he’d groveled his way into a date, thanking god that the rules of bizarro allowed him to at least write his own emails.

He looked across the table at Gina. He’d answered her note, saying that his profile wasn’t a joke but more a kind of atonement. He’d listed all of the awful flaws he could think of and exposed them. It was as close to the truth as he could get, and something told him that the iLove universe would accept nothing less. Still, somehow, miraculously, she’d agreed to go out with him.

The problem was he was only here to find Macy. Gina was a very nice woman. Attractive too. But looking into this woman’s blue eyes only made him want to see Macy’s brown ones. And watching this woman’s high-heeled sashay made him want to see Macy’s resolute walk in flats. And hearing this woman’s breathy explanations of what made her tick made him want to hear Macy’s teasing banter.

The fact was he wasn’t going to get over Macy, so while lying to Gina was wrong, it was his only option. Unless he wanted to live in that room full of damaged cubicle dwellers forever.

His hand went for his phone with half a notion of checking out Macy’s Facebook picture again—maybe she’d do a check-in at the restaurant—but it still wasn’t there, so he brought his elbow back to the table, his eyes riveted to his date’s face, feigning interest.

Gina, he reminded himself. What was she talking about? Her job? He let his eyes wander a bit to the scene behind her, but there was no sign of Macy.

He was just wondering how he could make this night last as long as necessary in order to find her when his eye was caught by shining auburn hair on a petite woman moving with swift determination across the dining room. His heart swooped upward. He’d know the set of those shoulders anywhere, the bob of those curls, the curve of that hip.

Without realizing he’d moved he was on his feet. Gina looked up at him in surprise. He smiled, apologized and said he’d be right back, then he took off after Macy.

He caught up to her in the wood-paneled hallway leading to the restrooms.

“Macy!” Just saying her name out loud made him feel like the wind had finally caught his sails.

She turned, clearly unsurprised to see him.

Her mouth was set, but her eyes looked tragic.

“Are you okay?” he asked, taking an involuntary step toward her. He reached for her, one hand out, before remembering he wasn’t allowed to touch her anymore, their being broken up and all.

“Yes. Fine,” she said, with a forced smile. “How are you, Jeremy? It’s nice to see you.”

His brows dropped. Was she angry? Because of the time warp of bizarro he knew it had been longer for her than for him. He’d have hoped that would make her happier to see him, but it seemed to have had the opposite effect.

“I’m—well, I’m glad to see you too. Are you— How have you been?” The meaninglessness of the words made him want to weep. But what to say? How to tell her he was sorry, how to beg for another chance? Just leap right in?

It didn’t feel right.

She took a breath; he could see her chest rise with the effort and he wished he could hug her. A futile longing stabbed him.

“I’ve been fine,” she said. “Really, just great. And you?”

He hunched into his shoulders, pressing his hands in his pockets. “Not . . . I wouldn’t say ‘fine.’” He tried another smile, wondering at the look in her eyes, so at odds with the detached tone of her voice. “Pretty not fine, actually. But—but you, you’re okay?”

“Sure.” She nodded with that tight smile, but he knew her, and he could’ve sworn she was trying not to cry. “I’m sorry you haven’t been fine. You seem to have a nice new, um . . . your date looks nice.”

“To be honest, I have no idea if she is or she isn’t,” he said, dropping his shoulders—along with all efforts at concealment.

“Oh.” That startled her. “First date?”

“Yeah. Are you here with someone?”

She flushed red. “Yes.”

There was a tense moment where they simply stood there, looking at each other. Then she did the most unexpected thing. Clasping her hands together, she stepped toward him. “Jeremy, I just want to say, I’m so sorry. And I’m sorry to do this to you while you’re on a date with”—she swept an arm out toward the dining room—“that nice woman. But I just—I have to say I’m sorry. About the whole . . .” She swirled her hand in a circle, looking down, shaking her head. “Breaking-up thing.”

The breaking-up thing?

“The breaking-up thing?” he asked out loud.

“I know I probably just beat you to the punch, but the way I did it!” She put her hands over her eyes. “I’m so ashamed. I’m impulsive and make snap decisions and I act on them too quickly, before I’ve thought. I’m just like Bill’s ex-girlfriend!”

“Bill?”

“And I hope to god she’s sorry too, because he’s a really nice guy.” She looked up and wagged a finger. Then she flushed and put a hand over her mouth, gazing at him. “But you. God, Jeremy, you didn’t deserve me. I mean the awful me, just walking out like that. And I understand why you didn’t call or anything. You were done anyway, but I wish we—”

“There you are!” a male voice said. “I was just beginning to wonder if . . .” The guy’s voice trailed off as he took in Jeremy. “Oh,” he said, with an expression like a smacked child. “Have I interrupted something?”

Yes, Jeremy wanted to say, a thousand times yes. What on earth was she talking about, beating him to the punch? She thought he was done? With what?

Macy’s eyes darted from Jeremy to her date and back. She seemed on the verge of saying more, but she stopped herself and said, “No, not at all. I just ran into an old friend. Bill, this is Jeremy. Jeremy, Bill.”

Bill stepped up and shook his hand. “Good to meet you.” His eyes shifted to Macy. “Uh, I’ll just meet you back out there. I wanted to be sure you were okay, is all.” He nodded at her, waiting.

“Okay,” she said. “Sure. I’ll be right back.”

But Bill lingered another minute, so she turned a falsely bright look on him and said, “Jeremy, great to see you. Hope you have a nice evening.” Then she disappeared into the ladies’ room.

Jeremy leaned back against the hall wall, then noticed Bill still standing there, hands in his pockets, head cocked like a spaniel awaiting a treat.

“Are you the ex-boyfriend?” he asked.

Jeremy spent a moment adjusting to the title. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

“She mentioned she was getting over someone.”

“Did she?” Getting over. Not over. Was this some kind of test? Was Mrs. Hartz watching even now?

“Yeah.” The guy smiled and looked down, thinking. “To be honest I don’t think she’s let go yet. Hope I’m not out of line telling you that.”

Jeremy straightened. “No. No, not at all.” He gave a short laugh. “Really?”

Bill raised his hands and eyebrows, then turned back to the dining room.

Jeremy looked to the ladies’ room door. How weird would it be if he were still out here when she came back?

CHAPTER SIX

Macy had trouble catching her breath. What had she said? She couldn’t even remember. There were so many things she’d wanted to say but couldn’t. And they’d been standing outside the bathrooms. And he was there with another woman! She was pretty sure she’d been inappropriate.

She hadn’t even let him say anything. And he’d been about to say something, hadn’t he? She wished it were a tape she could rewind. Oh, if only Bill hadn’t shown up when he did!

She pulled her purse up and pawed through it for her phone.

“Carolyn?” she said, grateful that her sister-in-law had answered and not her brother.

“Macy, hi! I’ve been meaning to call you. Lute and I were just talking about it. There’s a guy in my office—”

“Wait. I need to ask you something,” she said, lowering her voice at the sound of someone entering the restroom.

“Where are you?” Carolyn asked, her voice taking on the same hushed tone as Macy’s.

“I’m on a date.”

“Great!” Her voice bounced through the phone.

“No, it’s not like that. I’m in the restroom. I just ran into Jeremy.”

“Oohhhh.”

“Yeah. And oh god, Carolyn, I made the biggest mistake. You were so right about me. I judged him too fast, too harshly, I shouldn’t have judged him at all! I loved him. Why did I give up on him?”

“’Cause that’s what you do, hon,” she said, not without sympathy. “I’ve been thinking about this, and I actually think you’re the one who’s afraid of commitment. All that talk about planning for kids and houses and career tracks, all that stuff I said would chase a guy off in half a second? I think it backfired. You freaked yourself out, Macy. You chased yourself off.”

Macy paused, the ring of truth echoing through the phone. “Oh my god,” she said, mostly to herself. She had freaked herself out. She’d looked at Jeremy’s phone use and she hadn’t seen a temporary problem, she’d seen a lifetime of neglect. She had loved him, that was for sure, but not as much as she’d feared for herself in light of him.

“I know,” Carolyn said. “But here’s the thing, Mace. You can change that. You don’t have to have everything planned out and all the little boxes checked the moment you fall in love, or even when you get married. A relationship’s a path, not a room. Let it wind around the forest for a little while.”

Tears clogged Macy’s throat. “That’s really beautiful,” she said, unrolling some toilet paper and pressing it to her eyes.

“Then, when you get to a clearing, you decide what comes next, which new path to take. Maybe it’s one that’s been well traveled, maybe one the deer have made. Maybe it’s not even a path yet and you have to hack your way through, like Michael Douglas in, shoot, what was that movie?”

“Romancing the Stone,” Macy said, pulling bits of toilet paper off her eyelashes.

“Right. Well, sometimes that’s what relationships take, a little hacking through the underbrush—”

“Uh, Care? I think you’ve taken that analogy about as far it’ll go,” Macy said, choking back a laugh.

“Fine, okay. But my point stands.”

“You’re right, you’re absolutely right. But my question is, what do I do now? Do I go back out there and try to talk to him?”

“No no no. You’re on a date, right? Where is he?”

“I don’t know. At the table, I guess. I’m in the ladies’ room.” On cue, the woman in the other stall flushed the toilet.

“Right. So you go out, finish your date, then you call Jeremy tomorrow. Arrange a place to talk, because you shouldn’t have important conversations like that on the phone if you can help it.”

“But he’s right here now. I feel like if I let him go I . . . I don’t know, I might not be able to find him again.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Just a feeling.” She shook her head. She was thinking superstitious and talking crazy. “I’m sorry, you’re right. I’ll wait and talk to him tomorrow.”

“Good girl.” She heard the smile in Carolyn’s voice. “I’m glad you ran into him. I always thought it was a mistake to break up.”

Macy heard the other woman finish washing her hands and leave the restroom.

“I know. Okay,” Macy said, unlocking the stall door to move to the mirror. “I’m good now. Thank you.”

“And call me after you’ve talked to him.”

“I will.” She smiled, hung up, then caught sight of herself. Her mascara was all over her face and strands of her hair were stuck to her cheeks. Yeah, she thought, it’ll be better to call . . .

* * *

Jeremy was still standing near the restroom when he saw Gina coming toward him.

“Is everything all right?” she asked, her tone somewhere between concern and suspicion.

“Fine,” Jeremy said brightly, trying to act as if he’d been heading back to the table. “I ran into an old friend, that’s all. I’m thinking of having another drink. How about you? Maybe move to the bar for a Bailey’s or something?”

Gina looked surprised. “Sure, I guess so. I mean, there’s always the chance of overdoing a good thing on a first date, but . . .” She looked at him, eyebrows raised.

He squelched a grimace. He was using her, there were no two ways about it. But if the date ended he’d end up back in bizarro, and without being able to actually talk to Macy, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to straighten things out with her.

“A quick one. If we see evidence of damage we’ll leave immediately.” He gave her his most charming smile and she giggled and acquiesced, then continued on to the restroom.

He settled up with the waiter at the table, then picked two seats at the end of the bar closest to the restrooms, figuring Macy would probably be out before Gina. But minutes later it was Gina who emerged, and the look on her face was dark and wooden. She spotted him immediately and moved toward him, eyes steady on his face.

He became aware of a deep feeling of dread, like what he imagined animals must feel when faced with a gun, despite not knowing exactly what damage a gun could do.

“What can I get for you?” he asked in his most oblivious-guy way.

“Nothing,” she said. “And I don’t appreciate being used.”

“What are you talking about?” Had Macy said something to her? Was Macy still somehow mad at him—had she told Gina something bad?

“I guess I understand now why you wrote the profile you wrote. You really are an asshole, aren’t you? All that stuff about confessing your sins in order to get rid of them—”

“Well—”

“That was all just a load of crap, wasn’t it?” she continued.

“Gina,” he said calmly, patting the chair next to him. “What’s going on? You went into the restroom just fine, and now you’re mad. Did something happen?”

She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. “Are you going to tell me that you didn’t pick these seats so you could see your ex-girlfriend again? Are you using me to make her jealous or what?”

“My ex-girlfriend?” he repeated, but he couldn’t muster the tone to make confusion believable.

“Yes, your ex-girlfriend. Don’t play dumb with me. I just heard her on the phone in the bathroom talking about you. You were dead set on coming to this restaurant too. Was it because you knew she’d be here? You were never interested in me for one second, were you? Admit it.”

She had him pegged. What could he say? All of it was true.

He had visions of Queenie Hartz giving him the evil eye when he returned to his cubicle, so he said, “All right. It’s true, at least partly. And I’m really, truly sorry. But the circumstances aren’t what you think.”

Her color had risen along with her eyebrows. “Oh yeah? I think I ended up on a date with a stalker, that’s the only circumstances I’m seeing.”

“Please sit down,” he pleaded, low. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Macy exit the hallway down which the restrooms lay, glancing at him as she made her way back to her table.

His date, apparently, barely heard him.

“If I were your ex-girlfriend—and if I were ever your girlfriend I can guaran-damn-tee I would be an ex—I’d run screaming for the hills if I saw you. You are one twisted son of a bitch.” She leaned forward and poked him in the chest on the word “twisted.” Heads were beginning to turn in their direction. “I’ve got half a mind to report you to iLove at the very least, if not the police. Or maybe I’ll just clue your ex in when she comes out.”

“Please don’t say anything to iLove,” Jeremy said, rising.

“Why? Are you already in trouble with them? Have others complained too?” She shook her head. “Damn it. I knew you’d be too good to be true. First I thought you’d probably used someone else’s picture, but then I saw you and you were that same good-looking guy. Well. Now I understand. You’re sick. You’re—”

“Yeah, I know, you’re absolutely right. Let’s just go.” He tried to take her elbow to guide her toward the door, but she jerked away from him.

“Take your hands off me!”

The bartender was approaching, a disturbed look on his face.

Jeremy held up his hands. “Okay, whatever you say. I’m sorry. Do you want to leave first, or should I?”

“And don’t try to contact me ever again, even to apologize or anything, because I am blocking you, buddy. You’re the worst bad news I’ve had for a long time, and if I see you again I will report you.” With that, she stalked out of the restaurant, leaving a long bar full of curious faces to gawk at him.

He swallowed and chuckled impotently, feeling his face go hot. Then he glanced over to where Macy sat with her date. Both of them had turned to see what the commotion was. Macy’s face was confused, but her date looked decidedly wary.

Could it be any worse if he walked over to her and asked to talk for a minute? He could try to explain, though what he could possibly say at this moment eluded him. He could at least request another time to talk—surely bizarro would let him out if he had a bona fide date, even if it wasn’t through iLove. Then again, it would be more of an appointment than a date. And making an appointment with her and not showing would be the death knell for his chances of winning her back.

No, he had to talk to her now. He tried to take a step in her direction, but when he picked up his foot it got yanked to the side. He looked down, expecting to see himself caught on something, maybe someone’s coat that had fallen off their chair. But there was nothing, and in another instant his other foot was jerked in the same direction. Then as if someone were pushing on his back he was propelled straight toward the door. He tried to resist but it was futile, and as he pushed through the door, tilting and flailing, he felt that weird suction and instead of finding himself outside on the sidewalk his feet felt the industrial-grade carpeting beneath them and he stumbled into the corridor just across from his cubicle.

Despair hit him like an anvil from a high window. He wanted to scream, but was afraid he would scare himself with the lunacy of it.

Then it got worse. The floor trembled and a loud voice called out, “Where is he? Where’s my boy Jeremy? A little birdie told me he hasn’t been paying attention! And you know what happens when we don’t pay attention?” Queenie Hartz turned the corner at the end of the hallway and lumbered toward him, her eyes gleaming red like a dog’s in a flash photo.

Nothing, he wanted to say, but the dread in his gut turned into outright fear, and he launched himself into his cubicle, locking his eyes on his screens.

A second later she loomed in the doorway.

“We get your type in here allll the time,” she said in a voice low and silky. “Trying to buck the system. Thinking they can outsmart the game. And you know what happens to them?”

Jeremy gritted his teeth. “They get dragged back here against their will?”

“Time and again.”

He could see her grinning from the corner of his eye.

“Have you learned anything today, young man?”

He frowned, staring sightlessly at his email inbox. “Actually, no.” He turned toward her, and looked up, up, up to her broad, maniacal face. The tiara twinkled in the fluorescent lighting.

“And why not?” Her tone gained a harder edge.

“Because, here’s the thing. We’re supposed to find a real relationship, right? That’s the point of iLove? Well, that’s what I was doing.”

“Is. That. Right.”

“Yeah, it was. Not with Gina, of course, but Macy. You know, the one whose phone I get to wander around in upstairs? So I must be here to get back together with her, right? Or else why would one entire floor of this building be dedicated to my accessing her cell phone?”

“Upstairs?” she scoffed. “There is no upstairs. Whatever you think is up there is in your very own head, young man. And I guess it doesn’t surprise me any that what you got up there is nothing but another cellular phone.”

Could he be so crazy that he was crazy even here? Or was the place just built to make him think so? “Okay, sure. But listen, if there’s one thing I know, it’s that Macy is the girl for me. I’m not going to find anyone on iLove unless it’s her. So if you let me out of here I will build a relationship with her, a real relationship.”

“Just let you out, huh?”

“Look, you took away all of my tools to make this right. I can’t see her, I can’t talk to her, even on the phone. I can’t even find her on iLove, at least not the way things are set up here. So I had to resort to . . . something else.”

“We didn’t take away your tools. You have all of your tools.” She swept a hand toward his array of screens. “You have everything you thought you needed when you were out before. What’s different now?”

“What’s different? I could see people before, touch them, have face-to-face relationships.”

“Honey,” she said, leaning an elbow on the top of his cubicle wall, “that is exactly the point. You saw people, touched people, had face-to-face relationships, but all you were facing was your smartphone.”

“I get that now,” he said eagerly. “I do. I swear I do. Look, if you let me email her, let me get out of here for a date with her, I know I can make everything right.”

“You want special rules, just for you?”

He exhaled in frustration. “All right, then, just tell me how to find her on iLove. If I make a date that way can I get out and see her?”

“Sure, you know the rules. So that’s what you want? Me to tell you how to find her on iLove?” she asked sweetly.

“Yes!”

“And you’ll do everything else the right way?”

“Yes. Absolutely. I promise.” He gave her his sincerest smile, then held up three fingers. “Scout’s honor.”

“What a load of BS, mister. Here you are asking me out of one side of your mouth to break the rules, while out of the other side you’re promising to do everything the right way. You’ve got to get your head on straight, that’s what you’ve got to do. And start paying attention!”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Macy picked up her phone for the dozenth time and looked for the little red 1 that would tell her she had a text or an email or a voice mail. She even checked her Facebook page to see if Jeremy might have messaged her there, but there was nothing.

Two days ago, right after she’d seen him at the restaurant, she’d called him. His voice mail had picked up immediately and she hadn’t wanted to leave a message. Then she’d tried again the next day. Same thing. She tried once more yesterday but she figured by then he must have seen her in his missed call list and was simply not calling back. The many possible reasons for this made her want to cry, but that didn’t stop her from hoping he’d get in touch.

“Jeez, I’m really starting to see what you mean about Jeremy,” April said, pushing through a rack of spandex yoga pants and eyeing her skeptically.

Macy looked up, her heart leaping at the possibility that April had spotted him. “About Jeremy? What do you mean?”

“About how annoying it is to be with someone constantly looking at their phone. You’ve barely taken your eyes off that thing the last few days. Not since you saw him at that restaurant. You’re not still thinking you’ll hear from him, are you? He was on a date, for pity’s sake.”

Macy smarted at the words. “You don’t have to be so blunt about it.”

“I’m sorry. But you’ve been mooning around for weeks now, and it’s time to move on. I’m worried about you.” April sighed and pushed away from the clothing rack. “Come on, let’s get out of here. They never put the good stuff on sale and I’m just not the type to do yoga in leopard-print tights.”

Macy shot her a look. “Yes you are.”

“Well, yeah, but only if they really look like a leopard, not some cheesy pattern in green and orange.”

“What, like made of fur?” Macy said absently, thinking all of life was pointless when you couldn’t reach the one you loved. She felt as if she were the one who’d been dumped, and frankly, spending time in the faux-friendly world of her cell phone was a lot more comfortable than walking around like a dead extra in somebody else’s movie.

The inanity of her conversation with April was making her tired. She wished she hadn’t agreed to go out after work—she’d rather be home in bed—but April was right. She’d done nothing the last few weeks but angst about Jeremy. It was time to get out. But even that wasn’t working.

She’d been holed up in her head so long she could barely make conversation. It was so bad she’d been afraid to see her life coach for fear of being outed as one of the fools done in by love. He’d already pointed out how her relationship was not adding value to her life; if he discovered that the relationship was over and she had descended into life immobility because of it he’d probably drop her as a client. She’d been pretty lax at work too. Where was this going to end? How was she supposed to get over him? Things had only gotten worse as time had passed.

They zipped up their coats and pulled on their gloves and headed for the exit. In a heavy-handed bit of symbolism, winter had descended suddenly and without mercy that week. She pulled her collar up, anticipating the icy wind.

“Why don’t you just call him, then?” April said, turning to her once they were outside. “You want to talk to him, so take the bull by the horns. What the hell, right? If it takes that to get him out of your system then just do it!”

“I have called him. Several times. He doesn’t pick up.”

April’s face went from frustration to comprehension. “Oh, honey,” she said, putting an arm around Macy’s shoulders. “I get it now. Come on, let’s go get a drink somewhere.”

Macy held the phone in the palm of her hand and gazed at it helplessly. “Do you think my phone could be broken?”

As if on cue, the thing chimed.

April laughed. “I guess not.”

“That’s not my ring tone. What is that?” She unlocked the phone, and Jeremy’s face popped up on her screen.

“Oh my god, he’s FaceTiming you!” April leapt away from Macy’s side so she wouldn’t be visible in the screen. “Take it take it take it,” she hissed.

Macy flushed, and her finger trembled as she tapped the phone to take the call. “Hey,” she said, with a shaking voice.

In her peripheral vision April seemed to be gesturing something to her, moving her hands emphatically up and down.

“Macy!” His face could not have looked more delighted to see her. “Is that really you?”

She laughed, confused. “Of course it’s me.” Then she frowned. “Did you mean to call someone else?”

“No!” He looked stricken. “It’s just—I haven’t been able to get through on the regular phone. The phone part of my phone doesn’t work, see, but then I remembered FaceTime. It’s not actually the phone so it works. I’m sure there’s some metaphor in there somewhere,” he muttered, rolling his eyes. “But then I wasn’t sure it was allowed—well, anyway, never mind. It’s a long story. Have you got a minute to talk?”

She had no idea what he was talking about, but her heart began to soar anyway. “Yes! Yes, I’m just—I just got out of work. What’s up?” She tried to sound casual and glanced at April, who was still doing that movement.

“Macy . . .” He looked at her a long moment.

She caught sight of herself in the little box in the corner, the one that showed how she looked to him, and realized why April was gesturing. She looked awful. She jerked the phone up to face level and farther away, so it wasn’t looking at her from below, and she instantly looked less ghoulish. April popped herself theatrically on the forehead as if to say, Finally.

“Hey, can I call you right back?” she asked, thinking she should also get into some better lighting. “I’m out on the street and—”

“No!” he shouted. “No, no, don’t hang up. Please don’t hang up. Can you hear me?”

She looked around at the people looking at her and turned the phone down a notch, but she didn’t want to miss anything he said so she turned it back up. “Yes, but so can a lot of other people.”

“I don’t care. I don’t want to risk not being able to call back. Listen, I’ve come to a realization. What you were trying to say the other night, that you thought I was done? What did you mean by that?”

She looked around again. Several people at a bus stop were looking at her curiously. She dropped her voice. “Oh, you know. That you . . . you obviously didn’t feel the same way about me that I felt about you.”

“What?” he said loudly, as if by increasing his volume he could increase hers. “I didn’t catch that.”

“I said, that I know you wanted out of the relationship,” she nearly shouted, “that you didn’t love me anymore.”

“That’s what I thought you meant!” He looked happy about this. “But Macy, here’s the thing. I mean, I know I was a jerk about the phone. I get that now. Believe me, I really understand now. But I’ve been thinking all this time that it was about me, my problem, my . . . addiction, I guess you could call it. So I’ve been frustrated about what to do. How to get out of here—of the mess I made, that is. It’s hard to explain.”

“No, but Jeremy, it wasn’t about that at all. It was me. I was so intolerant. And I’m so sorry I made you feel like it was you. The problem is that I’m spoiled and impulsive—”

“Stop it. No, you’re not. But I did realize that the problem was about you.”

“I know! I was the problem. I have no patience! I could have given you another chance. Heck, I could have just gotten over it.”

“That’s not what I’m saying. I thought the problem was mine, that it was something that I needed to change but hadn’t gotten around to working on yet. What I didn’t realize was not that I had become a jerk, or an idiot, or a guy who was a lousy boyfriend—all of those things were true, but they were still all about me. I finally realized that I wasn’t truly paying attention to anybody but me. The phone was just a symptom. And all the rest of this stuff happened because of what that was doing to you!” He paused, shaking his head. “Did you honestly think I didn’t love you?”

Macy gripped the phone in both hands, looking deeply into his eyes, drinking in his full-blown and distraught attention. “Well . . . yes. I mean, I don’t blame you. If I wasn’t interesting, why wouldn’t you tune out? But you know, now that you say all of that I think I was doing the same thing. I was only thinking about me and what I wanted.”

He ran a hand through his hair in a gesture so dear to her that her breath caught. “Macy, oh, Macy. That is so far from the truth. You were right there with me and I was always somewhere else. I can’t believe I did that to you. The number one thing in a relationship has to be emotional security, and I gave you none of that. I was such an idiot, Mace.”

She swallowed hard over the lump in her throat and gave a light laugh. “The number one thing in a relationship? Did you Google that?”

He looked sheepish and laughed. “Actually I did. I’ve been . . . uh . . . working on things. On myself. Or rather, not myself. Trying to figure out what went wrong.”

“You were? Then . . . are you saying . . . ?” She couldn’t get the words out. She could not ask him if he still loved her, because even after all of this, she was scared to death he might say no.

“Macy, I’ve never loved anyone like I love you. And it wasn’t about the phone, or the iPad or whatever, it was about me not knowing how to love. Not knowing how to nurture love, and build it, and take care of it the way it should be taken care of.”

A tear slipped down her face and she smiled. “Google again?”

He gave her a look she hadn’t seen since one of their earliest moments in bed. “Just the vocabulary, Mace. The feelings are all mine. And I’m so, so sorry. I ruined everything.”

She swiped at her cheeks to dry them with her gloves and gave him a watery smile. “But I did the same thing. I made snap judgments and then—then I bailed on you. And in the cruelest way!”

His lips were pressed together, and his eyes looked as if they might be wet too. She gripped the phone harder, brought it closer to try to see if he was tearing up, then realized that her face was getting huge on his screen. She yanked it back.

“I miss you, Macy,” he said. “God, I miss you so much. I wish . . . I wish I could go back in time, back to when I was lucky enough to have your love.”

“Jeremy, I still love you! You don’t know how much I wish I could undo it all, the misunderstanding, the breakup—” As she said the words the screen went blank. Then her phone vibrated and the app closed itself down. “No!” she wailed, shaking the phone in her hands. She took the finger of one glove in her teeth and pulled it off, then started poking the app with her finger. But instead of opening back up, the entire phone shut itself off. “No!”

“Macy,” April said, coming closer.

Macy looked up and saw a crowd of people near the bus stop watching her, their faces looking as devastated as she felt, like they were watching the sad ending of her life’s movie.

“Macy, turn around,” April said.

Macy caught the smile on April’s face and spun to look behind her. Weaving through the crowd on the sidewalk, Jeremy was moving toward her, his eyes scanning the people all around until his gaze landed on hers.

Her mouth dropped open, the glove fell to the ground and he stopped.

“You were right here?” she asked, not knowing what else to say. “All along? Why didn’t you just—?”

But instead of speaking he moved swiftly toward her. Before she could get another word out his arms were around her and he was kissing her.

She didn’t hear the applause from the group of tired commuters waiting for the bus. And she missed it when April said that she’d call her later. She didn’t even hear her cell phone dropping to the ground.

The only things she was aware of were Jeremy’s arms tight around her and his lips on hers. When the kiss broke he pulled her closer, one hand on the back of her head. “I’m not letting you go again. I’m never going to be that fool again, Macy, I promise. Doubtless I’ll be some other kind of fool somewhere along the line, but don’t you ever doubt that I love you.”

She pulled back, her eyes capturing his. “I was the fool. And I’ve learned my lesson.”

He smiled, and his eyes were wet this time, she was sure.

“Marry me,” he said.

She gasped.

“I know. It’s crazy. It hasn’t even been a year, so it’s probably too soon, but I know what I want. Just tell me I have a shot, that you’ll think about it, that we can move in that direction. And when the time comes I promise I’ll do it right,” he continued. “I’ll get a ring, get down on one knee, all that stuff, but please tell me now, so I can breathe, that you still love me. Tell me I have a shot at making you mine forever, my wonderful, patient, loving girl.”

She could barely speak for the smile on her face, but as a tear of joy dribbled out the corner of her eye, she said, “Oh, Jeremy. I do still love you. And you have way more than a shot.”

Something brushed against her leg, and she looked down.

“Hey!” Jeremy pulled her gently to the side and confronted the kid who was scooping up her phone from the ground.

The boy flushed and held it out to him. “I was just picking it up for her.”

“Hang on.” Jeremy took Macy’s phone back and handed the boy his own. “Take this one instead. I don’t want it anymore.”

“Cool!” The kid grinned and took off.

Macy laughed. “That was not necessary.”

“Trust me, I have my reasons.” He gazed at her warmly. “I never want to lose you again, Macy.”

She shook her head. “You never really lost me before. I was yours all along.” She smiled. “And I always will be.”