You

4

I never go to Greenpoint, where people chase whiskey with pickle juice, but I’m doing this for you, Beck. Just like I hurt my back for you when I fell out of your window so you wouldn’t see me when I was trying to see you, trying to know you. And I hate that you could see me here now and think that I’m some dick who overestimates the cultural value of Vice and drinks whatever fucking Vice tells me to drink. I didn’t go to college, Beck, so I don’t waste my adulthood trying to recapture my time in college. I’m not a soft motherfucker who never had the guts to live life right now, as is. I live for living and I’d order another vodka soda but that would mean speaking to the bartender in the Bukowski T-shirt and he’d ask me again what kind of club soda I want.

I’m in a mood and you’re up there reading in yellow stockings and there are holes in them and you’re trying too hard. You left Charlotte’s Web but I don’t look so hot, either. I had to climb out your window and it’s a short fall, but a fall is a fall and my back stings and if I hear the word pickleback one more time, I swear.

Your best friends are at the table next to mine, loud and disloyal, real F-train types with the boots and the overprocessed hair that quietly insults all the Jersey girls that do that shit on purpose. The three of you were at Brown together and now you’re in New York together and you all hate Girls and complain about it incessantly but isn’t that exactly what you’re all trying to do with your lives? Brooklyn, boys, and picklebacks?

You sit with the other quote unquote writers, which allows your friends to go on about you and unfortunately, they’re right: You’re so much more invested in being a writer—accepting compliments and drinking whiskey—than you are at writing. But fortunately, they’re also wrong: Everyone in this room is too full of pickle juice to understand your cowboy story.

Your friends are jealous. Chana’s the big critic, a girl version of Adam Levine with beady eyes and unwarranted self-confidence. “Explain to me again what this fucking MFA shit does for you if you’re not Lena Dunham?”

“I think maybe you can teach?” says Lynn, and Lynn is dead inside, like a corpse. She Instagrams methodically, clinically, as if she’s gathering evidence for defense, like her entire life is dedicated to proving that she has a life. She loudly mocks your reading at Lulu’s as she tweets about how psyched she is to be at a #readingatLulus, and I’m telling you, Beck, I swear.

Lynn again: “Do you think this is like an art opening where you go once and you’re good or is this gonna be like . . . an every week thing?”

“Do I set up a fucking runway every time I finish a design?” Chana vents. “No. I work on it and work on it more until I have a collection. And then I work on it again.”

“Is Peach coming?”

“Don’t put that in the universe.”

They might be talking about the unsmiling tall girl but it’s not like I can ask them.

“Sorry.” Lynn sighs. “At least at art openings you get free wine.”

“At least at art openings you get art. I’m sorry, but a fucking cowboy?”

Lynn shrugs and it just goes on, a machine gun that won’t stop, can’t stop.

“And can we talk about her costume?”

“She’s trying too hard. It’s kinda sad.”

“What the fuck are those tights?”

Lynn sighs and tweets and sighs and the machine-gun fire quickens for the last round.

“No wonder she didn’t get into Columbia,” Chana snipes.

“I feel like this is all cuz of Benji,” says Lynn. “I feel bad for her.”

Benji?

“Well, this is what happens when you fall for a sociopathic party boy.”

All I hear is fall for and you love him and you lie to them, to your computer, to yourself and you think they don’t know it and they do know it and oh no. Benji. No.

I have to stay tuned, present, and Lynn sighs. “You’re being mean.”

“I’m being real.” Chana huffs. “Benji is a snobby little prick. All he does is get fucked up on overpriced drugs and launch pretend businesses.”

“What did he major in?” Lynn wants to know.

“Who cares?” Chana snaps and I care and I want to know more and I want to cry and I don’t want you to fall for anyone but me.

“Well, I still wish he’d be nicer to her,” Lynn says.

Chana rolls her eyes and crunches on ice cubes and disagrees. “You know what it is? Beck is full of herself. And Benji is full of himself. I don’t feel bad for either one of them. She’s got us here pretending she’s a writer and he’s got the world pretending he’s a freaking artisan. What a joke. They both just love themselves. We’re not talking about overly sensitive, tortured souls writing poems about the bleakness of it all or whatever.”

Lynn is bored and I am too. She tries to steer Chana away from her diatribe. “I feel so fat right now.”

Chana grunts. Girls are mean. “You see all this crap about his organic soda company?” she asks. “Brooklyn makes me want to move to LA and buy a case of Red Bull and rock out to Mariah Carey.”

“You should tweet that,” Lynn says. “But not in a mean way.”

You are hugging the other writers and this means you will come here next and Lynn is relentlessly kind. She simpers. “I feel bad for her.”

Chana sniffs. “I just feel bad for the cowboys. They deserve better.”

You are sauntering over to the table, which means they have to stop talking about you and I am so happy when you finally arrive and hug your two-faced friends. They make golf claps and sing false praise and you guzzle your whiskey as if you can drink yourself into a Pulitzer Prize.

“Ladies, please,” you say, and you’re tipsier than I realized. “A girl can only tolerate so many compliments and cocktails.”

Chana puts a hand on your arm. “Honey, maybe no more cocktails?”

You pull your arm away. This is you postpartum. You birthed a story, and now what? “I’m fine.”

Lynn motions to the waitress. “Can we snag three picklebacks? This girl needs her liquid courage.”

“I don’t need any courage, Lynn. I just got up there and read a fucking story.”

Chana kisses your forehead. “And you read the shit out of that fucking story.”

You don’t buy it and you push her away. “Fuck both of you.”

It’s good that I see this side of you, the nasty drunk. It’s good to know all sides if you’re gonna love someone and I hate your friends a little less now. They exchange a look and you glance at the bar. “Did Benji already leave?”

“Sweetie, was he supposed to come?”

You sigh like you’ve been here before, like you don’t have the patience now, and you pick up your cracked phone. Lynn grabs it.

“Beck, no.”

“Gimme my phone.”

“Beck,” says Chana. “You invited him and he didn’t show. Leave it alone. Leave him alone.”

“You guys hate Benji,” you say. “What if he got hurt?”

Lynn looks away and Chana snorts. “What if he’s . . . an asshole?”

You can tell Lynn never wants to talk about any of this ever again. Of the three girls, she is the one who will eventually leave New York for a smaller, more manageable city where there are no fiction readings, where girls drink wine, and Maroon 5 plays in the local jukebox on Saturday nights. She will photograph her eventual, inevitable babies with the same gusto with which she photographs the shot glasses, the empty goblets, her shoes.

But Chana’s a lifer, our third wheel for the long haul. “Beck, listen to me. Benji is an asshole. Okay?”

I want to scream YES but I sit. Still. Benji.

“Listen, Beck,” Chana rails on. “Some guys are assholes and you have to accept that. You can buy him all the books in the world and he’s still gonna be Benji. He’ll never be Benjamin or, God forbid, Ben because he doesn’t have to, because he’s a permanent man-baby, okay? He and his club soda can fuck off and so can his stupid ass name. I mean seriously, Benji? Is he kidding? And the way he says it. Like it’s Asian or French. Ben Geeee. Dude, just fuck off.”

Lynn sighs. “I never thought about it that much. Benji. Ben Gee. Gee, Ben.”

There’s a little laughter now and I am learning things about Benji. I don’t like it but I have to accept it. Benji is real and I get another vodka soda. Benji.

You cross your arms and the waitress returns with your picklebacks and the mood has shifted. “So, you guys really liked my story?”

Lynn is quick. “I never knew you knew so much about cowboys.”

“I don’t,” you say and you are in a dark place and you pick up your shot and you knock it back and the girls exchange another look.

“You need to never speak to that fucker ever again,” Chana says.

“Okay,” you agree.

Lynn picks up her shot. Chana picks up her shot. You pick up your empty shot glass.

Chana makes a toast: “To never speaking to that fucker and his bullshit club soda and his fucking haircut and his no-show ass ever again.”

You all clink glasses but those girls have something to drink and your cup runneth empty. I go outside so I’ll know when you leave. Some asshole emerges, vomits.

Pickle juice, I swear.