Page 53 of Lovely War
“Yeah, how?” I’m poring over clips from the last game, my screen full of tiny thumbnails like pieces of confetti. It’s my procrastination-slash-brainstorming hour, so they were as likely to find me in the middle of a deep dive on Mindy Kaling’s relationship with B. J. Novak as they were to find me working.
“Your hair,” Ben says without guile. “When you’re working, you always put it in a ponytail.”
Eric crunches down on his apple.
I touch my hair,no, don’t touch the hair,and my face flushes.
It’s clear when he realizes this wasn’t a normal thing to say. In one squirming motion he ducks his chin, rubs the back of his neck, and directs his gaze to the hallway, where nothing at all is happening. Eric watches him with a confounded squint, slowly chewing.
I’ve never thanked a piece of fruit before, but I’d kiss the waxy skin of this Granny Smith if I could. I don’t want to hear whatever Eric would say if his mouth weren’t full. He’s as subtle as a leopard print faux fur coat.
Once in high school, Shane Kowalski walked into a party while the perfect song from theGossip Girlsoundtrack was playing, and I tried to perch on the arm of the couch and throw my head back, a glamorous curve in my wrist as I held a red plastic cup. Eric looked at me then much like he’s looking at Ben now. “Why are you laughing like that?” he bellowed. “Are you having a neck spasm?”
I clear my throat. “What did you guys want to show me?”
Ben whips out his phone, and the Joint Task Force for Changing the Fucking Subject is all systems go. “Logan’s Instagram post,” he says, pulling up a photo of a sunrise with a cryptic, long-winded caption.
We’re fortunate it’s aBeach Housething, because Eric has an elaborate theory about the sun and Jasmine’s tattoo and whether Logan’s typos are a mistake or a code. I nod and make thoughtful noises at regular intervals, hoping I’m pulling off a reasonable impersonation of someone who’s listening.
I shouldn’t be surprised by Ben’s observation about my ponytail. It feels intimate, but isn’t it just factual? Does noticing things necessarily constitute an act of tenderness? I’d be able to tell if he was working. He does that thing with histongue, and he gets too close to the computer screen and coaxes his spreadsheets in a whisper, his mouth tracing words and numbers, soft and nearly silent.
We walk straight into each other’s offices now when we want to talk. No more knocking on an open door or asking if the other is busy. I show him half-finished videos and hover over his shoulder while he watches. He makes impassioned arguments in favor of certain player rotations and offensive schemes, test runs for conversations with Coach Thomas.
We don’t talk about the budget cuts. That’s a problem for our future selves.
The texting starts when Blake loses to the worst team in the conference. Within the first four messages we’re off the subject of basketball and onto political corruption and the gymnastics meet that comes on after the game.
Annie: should we watch and discuss
Ben: Obviously. Who you got?
Annie: gotta be LSU. they’re wearing bedazzled tiger stripes. you should take inspo from this look for our next game
Ben: I need to save my leotards for off days. They’re hand wash only.
Annie: i’m confused about how the scoring system works
Ben: Don’t bait me into talking about this unless you’re free for the next four hours.
Annie: aww did you memorize the rule book because of your sister?
Ben: Memorize it? I send a letter every year listing all the ways they need to fix it.
The following night a notorious member of the House of Representatives goes viral for stating that he doesn’t “believe in all that.” “All that” being the entire field of mathematics, because data shows that immigration has a positive impact on the economy. Ben sends me the video one minute after I see it myself.
Annie: lol numbers aren’t real
Ben:
Ben: Am I real?
Annie: not in the 5thcongressional district of arkansas
Within a couple days the new-message notifications with his name on them cease to surprise me. The texting becomes part of the natural fabric of my evenings and days off. We don’t talk about it at work, which gives it a clandestine aura.
It’s not that we’re discussing anything exceptionally intimate: mainly TV and Sasha, the news and our families. It’s the fact of the conversations themselves that makes them impossible to acknowledge, that we’re having them at home when we could wait eight hours until we see each other again.
The texting changes the way we communicate with each other, each time more familiar, more comfortable. Sometimes in person the morning after a long chat, we try to talk the way we did the day before, and it doesn’t feel right. We need to recalibrate the way we interact face-to-face to match the way we interact through our phones. Or maybe we don’t need to. We could maintain two parallel relationships, but that’s not what we do.
