Partners

Calisto walked out to the podium as the applause died down. Good, there was a podium. Something to anchor her unsteadiness. She squinted through the house lights, unable to register any particular face, the audience rendered a fuzzy abstraction of humanity. "Hello," she spoke into the microphone, waves of echoing sound crashing through her. "Good morning, and thank you for your interest in Lunch Dates. If you'll check beneath your seat we have provided info packets which include special offers for discounts on places to eat. You and a friend, or something more, can eat for free today. But our hope is that your good fortune will not end there." She felt herself droning. This part of the presentation always felt rote to her and she'd wanted to shorten it or skip it entirely and maybe tack it on at the end.

"You see, we believe there's someone out there for everybody. I mean, that's obvious. You ever see a couple and be like 'Eww, why?'" Scant laughter from the audience. "Well, we want to be that why."

She cleared her throat. The perfect memory of what she was supposed to say next was embedded deeply in her mind, but it wasn't what she wanted to say anymore. Instead, she began, "I started this site because I got dumped. No, that's not true. I mean I did, but that wasn't why."

Oh dear god. That kiss. He had kissed her and the effect of it was just barely starting to register. She hadn't even recoiled. In fact, it was suddenly making her feel dead sexy. He had kissed her when she had shown up drunk and disoriented. Had he planned it? It had a staged feel. A confidence booster of some sort? Still reeling from the memory, she soldiered on.

"The truth is, I met somebody. Under reallllllly strange circumstances. Maybe how you meet someone is just as important as who you meet. And we both were in some pain, ready to embark on some kind of new chapter, you might say. I don't need to be going into this. All I mean to say is, we wanted people like us to have new and exciting experiences as well."
It was astonishing at this point how functional she was being. She was way off script at this point, but the direction she was going in felt more intimate, which seemed to suit a dating site presentation. Monte was working the Powerpoint file projected behind her, but as she went on and her speech had less and less to do with any of the slides, he froze and watched with the rest of the audience, enraptured.
"Lunch Dates," she said (this part of the speech was actually in the script, though paraphrased greatly at this moment). "We call it that, but it's really for any meal, or even any occasion. Our careers, our professional lives, make it nearly impossible to really meet new people. You're out busting ass, eight days a week, going so hard that by the time you actually get some free time you're too exhausted to make any real connections.
"Lunch Dates changes all that. Changes..." She began to notice that people who hadn't bothered to be at the start of the presentation were now trickling in, often in groups. Was she slurring? If she wasn't so drunk, she'd be able to tell. Maybe she was talking too loud. She tried to get a handle on her volume level. "...all that. It changes all that by making connections faster than fast, more instantaneous than any other dating app. Food... We believe in food. What that means is, if you're eating the same food as someone, that's an immediate thing in common right there. Not like eating off someone's plate, oh God that'd be creepy." She chuckled with the audience. "Like tastes palates, that stuff, preferences. That's important. It might be more important than anything. All couples end up eating the same crap. Even if they don't at the start.
"We don't know why that is, but it seems universal. So right off the bat, that means your chances are awesome. Your potential maybe hinges on this. We don't know why. We also noticed that fat people tend to date other fat folks, and skinnies tend to attract others. No offense to people with different body types. But it's true, we looked into studies. We don't know why. Maybe it's because we're more comfortable that way. Maybe it challenges us to keep up or to improve. Maybe we're hardwired to find similarities. Maybe it's because love is not so much blind as it is stupid. Or, maybe it's because food is the most important thing in the world."
She coughed. "I wish I had water. Maybe that's more important than food. Anyway. My time is almost up, I think. Is it? I can't tell. Okay, I have to go. Thanks for listening, thanks for your time. Now go, please, download the app, it's free and easy to use. Please... do this for me. I don't... I don't have anything left. Basically my entire happiness is riding on this thing." Was she crying or just ready to cry? Her voice was sure wobbling. "Anyway, thanks. Now my partner Monte is going to conduct the Q&A session. I was supposed to, but I can't do this anymore. Excuse me."
She rushed offstage while Monte approached the podium nervously. No applause. The atmosphere in the room had gone poisonous. Pure trainwreck fascination. Now full-on blubbering, Calisto flopped down on the backstage couch, coughed, belched and vomited all over it.

Big Day

Calisto's at-a-glance Hawaiian Airlines wall calendar (a free handout from the company every new year) had October 15th circled several times, with the words BIG DAY" overlaid in red ink. But that morning, the bigness of the day just didn't seem as momentous as it once did . Far from the initial excitement booking the panel (with refreshments and info packets pprovided and time reserved a Q&A session at the end) at the 2014 Honolulu Business and Commerce Expo had generated, she instead spent that morning lying in bed going over all of the reasons why this entire enterprise had been ill-conceived from the start.

A dating site for people on their lunch breaks? What were they thinking? "Lunch Dates" had a nice ring to it, but the idea it had spawned from seemed half-baked and unimpressive at this point. The notion that people would be interested in meeting up in the middle of the day now made her feel embarrassed. Evening liaisons meant drinks and the romantic ardor of nightfall. It meant the window of time to find a meaningful connection was closing as each hour crept toward the inevitability of sleep, which causes people to make more impulsive decisions. They really hadn't thought this through.

She tried not to admit to herself that the way she and Monte had parted on their last meeting had anything to do with her lack of enthusiasm. His words had rung in her ears after they parted, and she had spent the night binging on Doritos and watching Adult Swim. Naomi had a dowdy pantsuit she never wore which Calisto positively swam in, and she pulled it on, checking to make sure it was as unflattering as possible, as if she had taken to heart Monte's condemnation of the previous day's attire.

Each bag of Doritos she had consumed was washed down with a mug of coffee, which she had told herself was for the purposes of keeping her alert as she crammed and reviewed her notes for their presentation. But her tendency for procrastination had instead evoked memories of those lost college semesters, where each all-night study session seemed to devolve into witching-hour shenanigans or fits of memory-erasing dozing. It turned out no amount of caffeine was enough to overcome her gift for avoidance of anything that brought on feelings of dread and failure.

Still, the stimulants (she had wiled away the hours with a bottomless cycle of junk food, then coffee, than cigarettes) had done their job. She was wired, full of nervous energy bordering on panic. But it was too much. She felt herself slipping into paranoia and delusions. So that morning instead of breakfast she poured out a shot of whiskey and slammed it, acting without thinking. The sourness felt good and the drink's sting seemed to have a cleansing effect on her fluttering stomach. She had another, then one more before realizing how insane this was. Calisto was no stranger to day drinking, at least in the early years, but dawn drinking? Rise and shine and chug. The pit into which she had poured so much coffee and Doritos started to churn and heave and she almost wanted to spew all of it out, as if it would purge her of regret and bitterness like some kind of emotional ipecac. But she gagged, staggered a bit and straightened out. Abusing herself in this way made her feel like any challenge that presented itself would be conquerable that day. Once the sickness passed, she didn't even feel drunk. The booze had merely taken the edge off of her self-induced anxiety and now imbued her with newfound courage. She pointed at her reflection in the mirror and said "It is ON," giggling girlishly.

Maybe if she had stayed home that day she would have merely passed out and this early-morning drunken episode would have come and gone with little more to show for it than a mild afternoon hangover. Instead she got to the Blaisdell Arena and immediately felt overwhelmed. People. People everywhere. Moving, talking, laughing, staring at her. A live musician was being blasted through the PA, calmly crooning "On the island, we do it island style..." and it was all that she could hear and the sound carouseled through her being like some foreign antibody. The resonance of the singer's voice and acoustic guitar filled her with nausea and loathing. At this point she couldn't even remember how she had gotten there.

Monte. Where was Monte? Clarity began to creep in somewhat. Their panel was

supposed to be reserved in the northeast wing. Northeast of what? she found herself thinking. Was direction relative, or did true North really exist? People on the other side of the world were upside down from her. The other side of the world was somewhere in Africa. She used to walk her fingers along the globe in her grade school classroom until she got there. The earth spins. That's how come people don't fall off of it. That and gravity. What the fuck was she doing, thinking, saying or feeling?

In the middle of it there was also excitement. Something would happen that day, and even if she'd made a complete fool of herself it was still an accomplishment. Think of all the sad people at home not making fools of themselves, what they were missing out on.

There was Monte and she bumbled over to him and folded him all up in a big clingy hug. Her business partner, friend, and probably something else. He pulled back from her and sniffed the air between them. "You smell like a frat boy," he said. "Are you OK?"

"I'm ready," she said. "We're on."

"We've got five minutes. God, I'm sorry I did this to you. This is too much pressure. We didn't lead up to it properly."

"I'm OK," she said. "If I lean too far to the left I'll barf, though. Don't let me lean."

He took her arm and placed it around his shoulders and walked her behind the partition where their stage was set up. Their audience was starting to fill out the rows of folding chairs in front of the stage. There was actually a couch backstage and he tried to get her to lay down in it. "No," she shook her head. "No lay downing. I'll start falling." They sat down together still clasped.

"Listen," he said. "This is kind of unnecessary. I found a guy who's willing to invest. You don't have to do this anymore."

"That's sweet," she said. "I'm still gonna do it, though. I don't know what else to do. After all this living, dreaming, breathing and working this is all I have."

"Calisto, you're shitfaced drunk," he said. "I can't let you do this. This has disaster written all over it."

"I'll be fine. Maybe you're right about disaster, but if it is then it's my disaster and it's too late to avoid it. Let me have it. I know exactly what to do. I stayed up all night practicing my lines. I have perfect pitch, posture and poise. I will never forgive you if you won't let me fuck this up exactly the way I want to. Let me play, coach. Put me in the game. I got this."

The announcer was introducing them. It was time to present. They looked at each other. Monte was backing down while trying to make it look like he wouldn't. She looked back at him with a determination that bordered on homocidal mania. She was up and the applause was starting. Monte said "Well, as long as I'm going against my better judgment," and took her face in both of his hands and kissed her on the open mouth. When he pulled away, she noticed that she'd stopped breathing and  felt sicker than ever. But then her breath came back to her and she knew she had to take the stage. The applause was dying down. His face urged her on. Her stomach guided her away from the nausea and into the empty blackness of her fears.

Operation Cockblock Rescue

"All right group, time to focus."

"That's still funny to you?" Monte said this to Dominic but Calisto could feel him eyeing her peripherally as he said it, like he was trying to shame the amusement out of her. Is this the best you could do, he seemed to imply. They had rented a conference room on the cheaper fringes of Seafood Square's outskirts, on the eve of the 2014 Hawaii Business And Commerce Expo, for the express purpose of surveying their users, but Calisto knew there was an ulterior motive to all this. This was about getting her and Dominic in a room together outside of work, and maybe getting to know some of his friends while she was at it. She was starting to wonder if the whole impetus for Lunch Dates wasn't an excuse to get closer to him. Of course she'd had all kinds of good motives for launching the dating site with Monte at the time (or so she'd told herself) but none of them seemed to matter anymore. Since he had volunteered to bring himself and his "wingman and wingma'ams" into the project to test-drive the beta version of the site, it was becoming impossible for her to envision some kind of entrepreneurial success that would be more rewarding than the smolder his eyes seemed to reserve only for her, as the question mark of his posture craned toward her lips, like they held some secret she was supposed to know already. 

"We are focused," Calisto said, clearing the daydreams out of her eyes. "It's just, we only reserved the room for one hour, so we should try to get through everything. Specifically, how satisfied would you say you are with the site?" "Honestly, compared to what we had going before, we not too impressed," said Leilani, a bookish-looking girl who could've been college-aged, or a lot younger. 

"I tried telling these guys about it already," said Dominic. "They weren't interested." 

"I'm interested if it tells us anything about whether you liked the site or not," said Monte.

"Let's hear them out," Calisto said. "Maybe there's some suggestion we could use." Monte fixed his sidelong gaze on her again, as if his patience was about to run out, and she hoped the lipsticked smile on her face (she'd dipped into Naomi's things to get dolled up for this, ostensibly to look impressive and professional, but really to try to be as sexy as possible for her co-worker) didn't betray too much of her inner smugness.

Dominic's wingman, Sebastian, spoke up. "Our system was designed to flatter strangers and kickstart conversations. It's not really comparable to this." His voice had a nervous shyness to it and it was difficult to picture this reserved, rotund youth having any sort of success with whatever gender he was after.

"I never thought it worked all that well, at least not the way you guys did," said Tina, who rounded out the foursome that made up the focus group. Calisto had tried to convince Monte that this group was an unlikely cross-section and that made them perfect as testers, but they were letting her down by conducting themselves more like an insular clique who seemed to hang together almost by default, as if unable to find anyone else. Both girls had shown up late and they had all wasted a bunch of time (in Monte's estimation, if not Calisto's) on introductions, catch-ups, gossip, and other unprofessional, non-business-related banter.

"Maybe we should actually tell them about it at some point," Dominic interrupted, perhaps taking notice of Monte's incessant watch-checking. "Tina is actually the one who came up with this tactic, so don't listen to her."

"I just said that one thing one time!" Tina protested.

"Basically, it's a reversal of your standard rescue cockblock," Dominic continued. "You know, someone chats you up and you want to retreat gracefully, so you signal your friend, and they come in and steal you away."

"Girls have been doing it for years," Sebastian said almost bitterly.

"So anyway, one night Tina got ditched by this other friend of ours who went home with some guy. And she said, you know what, I'll let her tell you."

Tina said "I said, 'This one guy rescued her from me.' It was just a dumb joke.'"

"But it worked!" said Leilani. "We tried it right away and it started working."

"So, the four of us go everywhere as a flock," Dominic said. "We pair off until one of us sees somebody we like. Then we go up to them and we say:"

"'Excuse me, can I ask for a favor?'" Sebastian responded to the prompt. "'This girl won't leave me alone, just talk to me until she gets the hint.'"

"That's an elegant ruse," Monte said. "So you're saying that works better than our site?"

"It accomplishes three things," Dominic replied. "One, it breaks the ice. Two, makes the other person feel important. Three, makes them feel superior to whoever we appear to be rejecting. And it was quick."

"Well, like you said," Calisto nodded to Sebastian, "This isn't really comparable. This is supposed to help you hook up with people quickly, while our site is supposed to connect you with someone who shares your taste."

"And your schedule," Monte added.

"What this thing supposed to do, anyway?" Leilani asked. "Is it like one Groupon for free food?"

"It's supposed to help you have lunch with people," Tina said.

"No, it's supposed to help you find people to have lunch with when you're already at the place where you go to eat," Dominic corrected them.

"Ohhhh, so like Tinder or Grinder, but for food?" Leilani asked.

"Yes," Calisto said, pretending she had heard of either of those things. "Precisely."

"So," Monte asked for the last time, "Operation Cockblock Rescue aside, how satisfied would each of you say you are with your experience using the site? Let's start with Tina."

"Meh," Tina said. "Average."

Leilani was next. "I dunno," she said. "I don't really use these kinda sites. I guess it works okay."

"I'm having a hard time finding new people on it," Sebastian said. "I went on two dates so far, and it keeps connecting me to the same people. I finally had to block them."

"Well, I for one have been very satisfied," Dominic said. "I found some good recommendations for places to eat, and I found one person from this site who I talk to almost every day. We haven't got together yet, but oh yeah, it's looking up."

"Thank you for your time, everybody," Calisto said. She and Monte shook hands with the four of them as they all left the conference room. Dominic left last, and looked her in the eye as the clasp of his hand lingered on hers. She heard herself thinking maintain eye contact and don't pass out.

"Don't worry about these guys," Dominic said. "You've got a good thing and it just needs to find its way to the right people."

Calisto just said "Thanks," quietly as Dominic rounded and walked out of the conference room door to join his friends. Monte was cleaning up their stuff, currently folding up a tripod for the mini camcorder he had brought to record their responses. Calisto went up to him to see if he needed any help but he was already putting it away half-finished.

"That went well," she said.

"Not bad for a huge waste of time. And a perfectly good conference room."

"Come on," she said. "It wasn't that bad."

"They didn't tell us anything we didn't already know. The site just needs more users. Thank you for wasting most of the one day I get with my kids."

"You didn't have to come to this," Calisto said. "This was all my idea."

"Maybe I didn't want to leave you alone with him," Monte said. "You probably would've gotten pounced if I wasn't here."

"Oh, don't make it about that," she said. "So he wants me to do well, what's the big deal?"

"Looks to me like you want him to do well. You want him to do well all over you."

"Don't be gross," she said.

"I'll show you the way you were looking at him sometime," Monte said, waving the camera case in the air. "Total eyefucks. But hey, if that's more important to you than this business."

"Stop," Calisto said. "You don't talk to me that way." He had been trying to leave and she was barricading him with her body.

Monte sighed. "I'm sorry. But you deserve better than that."

"You don't know anything about him. I'm starting to question whether you even know anything about me."

"Calisto, I just don't want you to make a mistake. This is a big thing we're doing and I'd prefer if we didn't blow it."

"Yeah, speaking of mistakes. That guy whose number you gave me? What the hell was that? Am I supposed to be forever grateful for that insult?"

"Just forget it," he said. "I should've known you wouldn't take that well."

"Tell you what. When I do fuck up my entire life and lose everything, than I'll let you swoop in and rescue me. Until then, we are strictly professional colleagues, and maybe we should keep it that way!"

"Fine!" Monte called after her as she was walking out. "And put those things away before you poke somebody's eye out!" The clack of her heels filled the empty hallway as angry tears beaded her eyelashes. She wasn't really upset at him, but found herself suddenly wanting his approval. In fact, she thought, he hadn't been this appealing since the night he was ignoring her at her place. They had the worst timing, these fleeting bouts of passion. Only under circumstances in which they absolutely could not be fulfilled did they seem to arise.

Calm your tits

They had agreed to meet at a Starbucks within walking distance of Seafood Square, ostensibly to discuss purchasing a booth at HBACE (which Marisa pronounced "H-Backy" as if this wasn't actually more cumbersome than just calling it by its full name), but when she got there it was clear that Monte had his own agenda. His laptop was open and when she tried to join him at his table he ushered her over to one behind him so they were sitting facing away from each other. "What is this," she said. "Shhh. It's market research. We're studying the clientele." "We're doing market research for Starbucks now?" "That couple over there," Monte motioned with an unsubtle flick of the elbow. "They met each other here thru our site." "No shit?" Calisto rubbernecked in the direction he had gestured and he tried again to shush her. "Discretion!" he hissed. "Can I at least sit at your table? I feel like we're secret agents or something." "Fine." She joined him again and they both attempted to watch this couple without being seen. "We need to become familiar with the types of weirdos who actually use the site," Monte said. "I've been tracking several of the most active accounts to no avail, but these two are the most promising ones so far." "Learned anything about them yet?" "Yeah, they're horrible people. I mean, they're meeting at a Starbucks. The girl over there gives her name as Gazelle Fujihara." "Gisele?" Calisto hoped she had heard incorrectly. She was pretty sure it had to be a given name -- a gazelle was about the last animal she'd think of in relation to this girl. More like a mouse or maybe a lobster. "Ga ga ga ga ga," said Monte. "The dude is supposedly named Blaine Makaiwi. Let's check out their profiles and then compare it to how they are in real life." They observed the couple while pretending not to, but Calisto failed to see how this was going to yield any useful data on their users. Blaine was dominating the conversation, going into great detail about a comic book he'd been reading, Gazelle doing her best to stay cordial. Calisto wondered if this had been their first meeting, or just the first one that Monte had decided to crash. He was furiously typing away the whole time as if every asinine word he was hearing was sending him off on another brainstorm. "This feels creepy," Calisto said. "No wonder people aren't signing up if this is what you're doing." "Do you have any better ideas?" He asked this with no hesitation, as if it was locked and ready to go the whole time. "I actually do," she said. "I wanted to talk to you about going offline temporarily." "That sounds like folding." "What I'm thinking is more like a re-launch. I think we should use HBACE to officially start over." Monte just stared back. "You know one interesting thing these two have in common? Neither of them have an online dating profile on any other site. I must've looked through all of them. We're the only service they use. Why do you think that is?" "How do you know they're not registered anywhere else? Maybe their profiles are locked. Maybe they're catfish on the other sites." "Then we are the only ones where they signed up as themselves. You don't think that's interesting? Now we just have to figure out why." "Why don't you go ask them? You've stalked them this far, and it sounds like they could use the company." Blaine had shifted the conversation into a play-by-play of the video game he had been playing the other night. According to his profile, he was ranked Bronze 2 on League of Legends, whatever that meant. "Don't knock the hustle," he said. "Anyway, I like the idea of taking the site down. As long as it comes back up at some point." "Marisa says we'll be able to increase our online profile tenfold. We were the victims of bad timing, that's all." "Put up a 'down for maintenance' sign and pray our users don't abandon us before we get back. I like it. But then what? We're going to the Expo and presenting a business that technically doesn't exist at the moment, how do we convince anybody to invest in it?" "It's not just about finding an investor, we have to make connections. Partnerships and networking and word-of-mouth and such." Calisto felt disgust with herself, spouting these half-remembered business cliches as if she understood them, but she hadn't thought about how it would look if they showed up at HBACE without a functioning website and it was making her reconsider the entire strategy. But then she thought, no, this is a typical jittery Monte misdirect, stay on message, especially after the next thing he said: "Word-of-mouth is only a good thing if you don't look like a joke to everybody. What good is them knowing our name if they can't take us seriously?" "Okay, calm your tits," Calisto said. His voice had been rising, perhaps involuntarily, to the point where Blaine had stopped talking and now he and Gazelle were looking in their direction, as if this drama that was unfolding was just the type of interesting turn of events that makes a good first date memorable. Was this Monte's plan all along, to cause a scene in front of their users to ensure they continued to use the site, just in case something weird happened again? Calisto rejected the idea, but it stayed in the back of her mind the rest of the time anyway. "You're thinking way too far ahead," she told him. "We can worry about what people think of us after they know who we are. For now, can we just focus on what's in front of us?" "Everything is always in front of us," Monte said. "I just prefer to take care of things before it's too late, that's all." He checked his phone for the time although he could have just looked at his laptop screen. "I have to get going," he said. "It's been nice seeing you." "I wanted to ask you something," Calisto said. "Is there any way you could hold down HBACE for me? I want us to be there, but I might not be able to make it." "If you can't be there, I can't be there," he said. "I can send Marisa, she's willing to fill in for me." "Marisa couldn't sell crack to a crackhead," Monte said, standing up. "Let's call this off." "No, wait! I'll be there." "Good. I'm the one who's blowing off a weekend with my kids, Jesus. If I can make it, you can." He left her sitting there, but turned back before he reached the door. "I almost forgot. Call this number." He handed her a card. "Eric told me your roommate's moving out and this guy can help you get set up." "What IS this?" The name on the card didn't seem to be for a real estate agent, but some kind of government agency. "He's a social worker that I know. He helps women in bad situations." "Monte, is this seriously the number for a battered woman's shelter? I can't call this." "Like I said, I know the guy, he'll get you in as a favor to me. It's not that bad, he's helped some of my friends. Eric told me you'd listen to me. You won't listen to them, just me. I'm just doing this for them. I told him you wouldn't listen to me either." "I'm sorry, it's just... you don't have to do this." "Give the guy a call," he said. "Good luck with everything." He left, and Calisto remained at the table being stared at by Blaine and Gazelle. When she returned their gaze, they looked back at each other and resumed as if nothing had distracted them.

Fake informercial

Growth was slow. They couldn't have picked a worse time to get started. The launch party had been the first weekend of October, but although the site had technically gone "live" at that point (in that one could sign up for it and build a profile, but not much else) it would be several more weeks before it was functional in any meaningful sense. Then by the time it was, people apparently weren't flocking to yet another new social/dating thing despite their efforts to publicize as much as possible. Calisto had registered the @lunchdates Twitter handle right away, and set about following as many local people and businesses she could find, but found it difficult to attract much attention amidst all the noise, earning perhaps one followback for every 10 accounts she'd hit up. Both her and Monte went to work canvassing the neighborhood with their piles of photocopied ads, walking to different parking structures around town to stick their little leaflets under windshield wiper blades, until they got harassed by enough security workers to stop it. When this would happen, Calisto would typically turn and run the other way, with they guy still calling out "Excuse me... Excuse me!" Monte, on the other hand, would typically try to talk to the man and attempt to sell him on their concept, who would invariably tell Monte that he was not allowed to accept any solicitation.
It all felt fruitless. "What the hell are we doing," Calisto said as they met up one day after a lunch-hour canvassing session to smoke out their frustrations.
"Building our brand," said Monte. "This is how it works."
"What has given you the impression that any of this has worked?" Calisto said. "Everywhere I go I'm stepping on these things. People pick them up and drop them in the street without looking at them."
"That's good! I want people to see us every time they look down."
"We have to try something else. I'm tracking our numbers and I'm not seeing any results."
"It will come," Monte tried to reassure her. "It's just the time of year."
"You keep saying that, but if it's true why didn't we wait until the right time of year?"
"Is this what you want, or isn't it? We're doing what we can, did you really think it would happen the way you wanted it to?"
Calisto demurred. She was learning to know better than to rise to Monte's baiting at this point. In a way they were getting to know each other more intimately than if they were lovers. The dynamic was similar -- he was constantly trying to talk her out of dissatisfaction. "I didn't want it to happen in any particular way, I just wanted it to happen at all," she said. She hadn't yet told him that the reason she was feeling so much urgency and impatience for things to take off quicker was because Naomi was moving in with Eric in the first week of December. Part of the reason was because she knew it would bring up a discussion about her wanting to redirect the money she was currently sinking into the site to finding her own place, and with Monte already so keen to question her commitment to the whole idea it was a discussion she wanted to avoid.
Adding to her difficulties was the fact that Marisa was getting more and more reluctant to continue to funnel her the money that was, after all, rightfully hers. She had recommended parceling it out slowly at first, both to ensure Almonds could continue to keep some of its revenue and remain open and to keep Lunch Dates online long enough for it to establish some kind of presence in the online world. These things tended to grow best through word of mouth, although there had been times when Monte would mockingly suggest "Let's just Flappy Bird this thing," referring to the practice of paying off
fake consumers to bump their app up in the rankings. The reason this was a mocking suggestion was because there still wasn't an app, and this was most likely the real reason why their growth had stagnated.
They had spoken with several developers, and it had turned out that paying someone to create the app for them would be more costly than they initially thought. The funding situation they were getting through Almonds was getting dicey too. One minute Marisa would be reassuring, telling that Lunch Dates technically wasn't costing her business anything because it was being factored into their "technological" budget. But when Calisto would ask for more than she was getting (which didn't amount to much more than roughly the same salary she was getting at work), Marisa would grow concerned and act as if giving her more would cripple both of them financially.
"Your mother meant for this money to last," she had said. "It's what she was living on."
"This is exactly what she wanted me to use this money for," Calisto responded. "Can I just get whatever I'm gonna get today and be done with it?"
"Are you familiar with the parable of the Prodigal Son? This way, it keeps flowing. Your way, it's gone. Yes, some of it is tied up in Almonds and that's partly why I'm reluctant to give you more. But believe me, your mother didn't want you to throw this at some high-risk venture and end up with nothing. Or worse, owing somebody."
"Things just aren't moving," Calisto said. "I wish she was here."
"She would tell you the same thing I'm telling you. She and I went through this ourselves when we were starting. I know it's tough, but you have to give it time. Come the holiday season, I'll be able to spare a little more for you. But to do what you are asking would be a big legal procedure. Maile wanted it to be this way. I think she even wanted me looking out for you. Your idea is good, you just have to trust that it'll catch on."
Calisto was growing to regret agreeing to this and other arrangements she had made. Even at her job she was feeling new demands being placed on her. She had interviewed for the Loss Inspector position the week after the launch party, and perhaps still riding the buzz from the excitement of her new business had absolutely knocked it out of the park. Loss Inspection meant lost luggage, which meant she really only had substantial work when people called the Customer Service line to report  missing bags, but it required an exorbitant amount of followup, outbound calls and spreadsheet work when they did. Actually the airlines didn't even lose luggage all that often, which meant plenty of downtime. This new wide-open work schedule afforded her the chance to get to know Dominic a little better, since he sat at the cubicle right outside of her new office and would often come in to ask questions or escalate a caller to her or just stay and shoot the shit with her.
She was even beginning to think of Dominic as a silent partner in their operation. He was the only person at work who she'd told about Lunch Dates, and he had agreed to sign up (under the username "D3M0N1C_666" which she had to admit she'd found pretty hot) and to get as many of his friends to sign up as possible, which gave them an early surge in traffic. But getting people signed up to social media wasn't the same thing as getting them to use it, and even though he continued to assure her that his friends were actively using and promoting the site, their usage rates just weren't reflecting that.
"Why don't you guys put up more ads?" he'd asked her one day. His slouch pressed into her door frame, effectively blocking anyone from getting in or out.
"We're cutting back on the type of advertising we've been doing," she said. "The results aren't justifying the cost."
"Well shouldn't you guys be like advertising on TV anyway? You can buy time pretty cheap on Olēlo."
"Great, so we just have to worry about production costs and hiring actor-models."
"You could do it yourselves and put it online for free. I've had this great idea for a fake infomercial that I've always wanted to use, but you can have it cause I'll never have anything to use it on."
"Thanks, but I can't just decide what to do. I have to run it by my partner."
"Why does he have a say? It's your mom's money you guys are using, right?" Calisto had been pondering this question more and more lately. It had been something that had gone so long unaddressed that to call it into question now would seem stranger than just staying the course, regardless of how strange the initial arrangement actually was.
"He's put in a lot of legwork on this thing. He doesn't have to help me. We came up with the concept together, so we're doing it together. Besides, I don't want to go it alone. And I like working with him." She often found herself in the position of having to defend Monte to Dominic, which was prone to happen after she'd spent so much time complaining about Monte to Dominic.
"Well I've heard your side of it, and it sure sounds like you came up with the idea on your own. To me, it sounds like he's taking credit. But to each your own."
There was a definite contrast between the two men, Calisto was thinking. Dominic was a younger fellow and could come across as both frustratingly overconfident and maddeningly insecure in a way that made her want to give him hugslaps. Monte, on the other hand, never made her feel like she had to build him up. He was himself sans apology, even if what "himself" meant was just another barrier against the world. "That fake informercial though, he might just go for it," she told him, wanting him to feel better while talking to her. "He likes cutesy things like that, sometimes."
"Did you ask him about that conference that's coming up?" Dominic was referring to the 2014 Hawaii Business & Commerce Expo, a trade show that came around after the holiday season. Calisto had mentioned this to Monte once, and he had balked because of the entrance fee. But that was before the situation had become as dire as it was now, and at this point she saw no reason not to spring for it, even if finding an additional investor turned out to be a pipe dream.
In fact, the only reservation she'd had about it at all was a petty, personal one, or so she told herself. It would be ridiculous to hold out based on this, she wanted to believe. There's too much at stake to let such a trivial matter get in the way, she attempted to reason. Yes, the 2014 Hawaii Business & Commerce Expo shouldn't be avoided at all costs just because there was an extremely high probability that James was going to be there.

I Beliebe in you

“What the shunck are you wearing?” Eric asked her that as soon as he saw her approaching.

Naomi made a groan sound. “Please don’t do that right now. You can’t just use that word the same way you use ‘fuck’ and say you invented a new word.” To Calisto she said “Thank you for letting us in. I’m so dumb I left my keys over at Eric’s again, and it’s been such a long, brutal day and I’m so done with it.”

Calisto held eye contact with both of them as she unlocked their door. “Sorry I locked you guys out. I was showing Monte the roof.”

“Where is he, we didn’t cockblock you guys, did we?” Eric laughed to no one and the girls entered in front of him.

“Don’t bother apologizing,” Naomi said. “I’m the one who’s always getting on your ass about leaving the door unlocked when you take out the trash. It’s really my fault.”

“That’s a good point,” Eric said, as if carrying on a dropped thread of conversation without missing a beat. “Should we lock Monte out?”
“Maybe he went home,” Calisto said. She had headed for the drinks and tried to pour out the last of the wine bottle Monte had brought. The scant few drops remaining formed a tiny puddle at the bottom of her glass which she gulped down immediately.

“Looks like you guys really got started without us. I’m so sorry we made you wait.” Calisto wasn’t hearing, wandering around the kitchen for more booze. Naomi followed and went sotto voce with her next few words: “This isn’t a crime scene, is it? What did the guy do?”

The bottle of vodka was going to be empty after the next shot. Was it okay to drink liquor after half a bottle of wine? Calisto couldn’t remember. They were cleaned out. “I’m going to the store,” she said. “I’ll be right back.” She would have made it out the door if Monte hadn’t chosen that moment to walk right in. It wasn’t that his physical frame couldn’t have been pushed aside, it was more that Calisto no longer felt any need to escape once the fact of his presence was established. To walk out now would seem rude, but it also would seem to grossly exaggerate the danger she had felt herself to be in just a moment earlier. Or, as an abstract topic of conversation, the man was overwhelming. As a matter of physical fact, he could be dealt with. The reality of who he was diminished the specter of his existence.

I beliebe in you

Was he tipsy or something? He just kind of stood there like his mind had gone blank.There was a moment where Calisto thought he might forget how to stand and just topple to the floor. That could happen when somebody was having an aneurysm, or was it a stroke? She’d heard it was one of those. The others looked back at him and Eric broke the silence with “Good to see you, Marshmallow Matey.” That didn’t necessarily break up the tension, which it was dawning on everybody occurred strictly between Monte and Calisto at this point, with the others only there to observe, but it did something.

“Baldo,” Monte acknowledged Eric’s salutation. This was followed up by more empty space.

Move the jaws, thought Calisto. Carry this ball to another place. “There’s nothing to drink here,” she said. “I was just going out to get some.”

“Let me go,” said Monte. “I was just peeing off the roof when I noticed this glass was empty and I could have been peeing into it.” He gestured with his mug unenthusiastically as he said this.

Naomi walked up and snatched the mug away. “Thank you for not peeing in our glass.”

“Calisto, we should go to the store together,” Monte said. “We can talk about stuff.”

Naomi was vigorously rinsing the mug out at the kitchen sink, as if worried he actually had peed in it, and said “Actually, can Eric go with you? I need Calisto to help me cook something up for you boys.” Calisto glanced over at Naomi giving her a questioning look. Naomi looked back as if expecting her to go along.

“Yyyyeah,” Calisto said. “She sets toast on fire if I’m not around.”

Eric stood up. “I guess it’s settled, then! Men run the errand, women run the kitchen. Come on, let’s get out of the way.” Monte stared at Calisto, looking for some sign of protest. She looked away until the two males were gone.

Naomi, who had busied herself setting dishes on the kitchen counter, put everything down and turned to Calisto. “What the hell was that?”
“I don’t know what…”
“Is he getting in your head? If I didn’t know any better I’d think you were falling for this guy.”
“It’s been a weird night. He didn’t do anything. All he did was cry in front of me. I was bad. I kind of jerked off in the bathroom while he was here.”

“Ugh, why?”
“I don’t know, I just knew that if I didn’t we’d get in trouble. My signals were getting all mixed and… he must not know how to take a hint or something. I’m probably just ovulating, it was nothing. It was any port in a storm or something. God, I don’t know, it’s just confusing right now. Like what are we? What are we doing, and what are we?”

Naomi backed off a bit. “I understand, it’s a confusing time. Just be careful. And call me next time. If you have to fingerblast yourself in order to keep your hands off a guy, you’re already in trouble.”

“Are we actually making anything?” Calisto asked. “I’m really hungry now.”

Naomi had already located a tube of cinnamon rolls from the fridge and set about twisting it until it popped open. “Tell me what happened,” she said, peeling off the outer wrapping and running her fingernails along the seam before finally forcing the package with a butterknife. “Was he hitting on you? Did you let yourself get sloppy drunk in front of him? Are you still sloppy drunk now?”
“Naomi, this is hard enough.” She began helping her by preheating the oven and peeling the individual rolls out. “I just felt close to him for like, 30 seconds. It’s already passed me by.”

“You said he cried? He cried and you got so turned on you had to get yourself off?”
“Eww, no! It was the other way around. I came out and he showed me the site and we went on the roof and he just started crying.”

“Ooh, are you going to show us the site?”
“I don’t know, we should wait til everybody gets back.” The site suddenly felt beside the point for Calisto, despite being their ostensible reason for gathering that night. The moment of triumph had passed, only those who were involved with it could understand.“It’s not that big a deal,” she said, 180ing from her initial reaction that the site was going to be their ticket to fame and fortune.

“Let’s not get sidetracked,” Naomi suggested. “You may be trying to fuck this whole thing up in classic Calisto fashion, but I Beliebe in you.”

“Did you just say you Beliebe in me?” Calisto scoffed. They both laughed and she felt the way Naomi had made her feel many times before, like someone was looking out for her. Lately, she realized, she had been getting that same feeling from another source.

Eric and Monte came through the door just as the oven timer was going off. Naomi had showered during the interval and was now lounging in a robe and pajama pants. Calisto had taken the opportunity to pore over the site once more, luxuriating in the creation of a thing to call her own, which she couldn’t have made without someone’s help. The two roomies had both enjoyed just being roomies again for a while. Who knew how much longer that would last, after all. Calisto had to admit that sending them out for the liquor had been a good idea, maybe for all of them.

“Did you guys get lost or something?” Naomi asked.

“There’s a price war going on or something,” Eric said. ”We ended up going six blocks the other way to save a buck or two. It was totally worth it, apparently.” Monte wasunloading bottles out of a bag as Calisto put a hot pan of cinnamon buns on a dishtowel.

“That smells fantastic,” Monte said, pouring Coke and whiskey into a paper cup.

“I was going to say the same thing,” Calisto responded.

“You guys really went overboard,” Naomi said. “We don’t really get this tanked.”
“We do tonight,” Monte said. “Hope you guys like the feeling of your head getting smashed in tomorrow morning.” He tossed back his drink, made another one and handed it, of all people, to Eric.

He lifted his cup and toasted, “To all the shuncks we’ve not yet shuncked.”

“The meaning has to be apparent by its usage,” Naomi said, not being heard.

“So you figured out what it means?” Calisto asked. “Or are you just throwing it around still.”

“Its meaning should be apparent by now,” Eric said.
“Well, Monte came up with just about the perfect meaning before you guys got here. Go on, tell him what you called him.” Calisto motioned with her head. Monte looked back at her, a blank expression suddenly filling with apprehension and attempting to signal, through raised eyebrows and flashes of teeth, to drop the subject.

“This should be good,” Eric said. “What did you call me this time?”

Monte gritted at Calisto, took his second drink and responded, “I told her you were a douchey cunt. Dou, chey, cunt.”

Even Naomi wasn’t quite sure what would happen next. The two males just stared at each other, and in the meantime Monte picked up a hot bun and took a bite. Eric broke the silence with a fit of laughter, and everyone eased up.

“That’s awesome! Okay, that is the definition.”

“Shouldn’t it be ‘Shunt’ if that’s what it means?” Naomi asked, as no one listened, as no one should.

Calisto and Naomi were cleaning up at the end of the night. Instead of getting tanked, they’d all imbibed one extra drink and felt exhausted, so Monte just left a liquor cabinet’s worth of alcohol in their kitchen, saying “Just bring it to work on Monday.” Eric excused himself next, saying he needed to go buy some floss and then floss his teeth. Half the cinnamon buns remained uneaten, so they’d been stashed in the microwave for quicker reheating the next morning.

“We should have company more often,” Naomi said, putting away the dishes they’d used.

“We never have people over anymore.”

“That turned out pretty fun,” Calisto admitted. “It was tough getting there, but we did eventually get chill.”

“Did you see Monte getting the staredown? I thought we’d be mopping up blood.”
“That was a nice moment. Not knowing who was going to blink first.”

Before they could go to bed Naomi made them sit on their couch together a little while longer, which meant she had something serious to discuss. Calisto knew what she was going to say and didn’t want to hear it, but also had nothing else to say herself, so she resorted to wondering about the potential for violence earlier in the night as if that topic required further investigation.

“Do you think Eric would be more likely to punch someone in the nose, or in the gut?” Naomi looked back at her, not having it. “Calisto.”

“In the junk?”

“Calisto, I’m sorry, but we have to do this.”
“Why? This isn’t fun, so we don’t have to do it. We’ll do it tomorrow and go to bed happy tonight. Please, Naomi, I just had a good night.”

“We have to do this. You’ll always have this night. I’m moving in with Eric.”

“You are.”

“This is how it has to go. I’m sorry but it just feels like we’re holding you back at this point. You’re free now.”

“So that’s it? You guys are getting married and that’s it?”

“Sure, we’re getting married. Eventually. But we have to do this first.”
“You practically live at his place now. Why not just stay there and this can be your vacation home? I’ll keep it nice for you.” Calisto knew her please were getting pathetic, but she barely saw her best friend as it was and this felt like the death knell for whatever friendship they still maintained, on a night where she felt closer to her than she had in quite some time.

“I’m sorry, Calisto. There’s a fine line between helping and enabling. We’ve been over this. We’ll still help you out while you’re looking for your next place. But you have to be looking. We can’t do it for you.”
Calisto lunged forward to embrace her friend. The two women hugged until the mood changed and Calisto pulled back. “Thanks for looking out for me, Naomi,” she said.

“Always,” said Naomi. “This is such an exciting time for you. No matter what happens next, you’re going to make it.”

Calisto laid up in bed that night sorting through the changes in her mind. It felt like she had come a longer way in this last night than she had the previous six months. For all the trouble she had given herself trying to make her life mean more than the sum of its failures and embarrassments, there was as much to be proud of in it as there was to point at and laugh. Even the ridiculous aspects of her life seemed too comical to actually cause her any pain. How could change be a bad thing if the fresh, joyful feeling of a new start was stirring her soul to such peaceful reflections?

Shortcut to intimacy

But there was a deeper question on her mind at that moment than scheming up ways to rekindle his old love. Was it the right time for this? In the moment, it didn’t seem to matter. They were just doing what they had always done. She didn’t notice any change in his usual phlegmatic self, despite the outpouring of some pretty upsetting personal history. He had described the events of his life as if they had happened to a friend of his, and not even a very close one.
Maybe she just still had difficulty reading him, after all this time. And of course she thought in passing that the question she was about to ask might open up some uncomfortable avenues among the already-twisted inroads they had made toward understanding one another. But the thing about an elephant in the room is that it is surprisingly easy to ignore – until someone mentions it.
“Why do Eric and Naomi keep telling me that you have a thing for me?” she asked. It was meant in the spirit of fun, and at no point was she expecting a real answer anyway. It had been a playful sort of evening, from the surreptitious self-pleasuring to the unveiling of the online vehicle they were both hitching their dreams to. Even the airing of sordid details from the past seemed to come more from a place of juicy gossip than living, breathing regret.
So when Monte just answered “Is that what they say?” and made a hurt-looking face, she didn’t know how to take it at first.
After enough time had passed that it became clear he wasn’t going to add on, she continued. “Just ever since you started helping me with the site. They’re like, ‘Oh, why would he team up with you for this, he must like you.’ They can’t imagine you’d have any other reason.”
“Do you think I like you?”
“I honestly can’t tell. You’re not the most heart-on-sleeve guy ever.”
“I don’t even know what I feel half the time,” he said, as if it had any application to the subject at hand. “And if I did, I wouldn’t trust those feelings anyway.”
That was when she felt it. The change was in the air long before it manifested itself in any sensory way. Calisto had never understood the expression “burst into tears” – as far as she could tell, it never happened. Tears would come unbidden, but they were always telegraphed well in advance. It was a slower process, more of a gradual release than a bursting. Purely physical reactions like throwing up or sneezing happened more spontaneously, yet nobody ever talked about “bursting into vomit”. People tended to give themselves over to emotion knowingly.
That was what she noticed Monte doing in the faint starlight. He must have realized what she was seeing, because he apologized before it even began. “Sorry, I’m crying a little.”
“It’s okay,” she said quietly.

“Goddammit,” he said. “Here it comes.” She looked away, for his sake more than for her own. No man, to her knowledge, enjoyed having a woman watching him cry. His breath was coming out all ragged and she knew he was shaking, without looking. She studied a streetlight, not thinking about anything else except for what she refused to acknowledge.

And then it was over. She felt the tremor pass as much as she heard it. They were both left wondering what the big deal was.

“Thanks for not being freaked out by my tears,” said Monte snuffling.

It wasn’t a question she would normally ask, but she could feel them connecting on a different level, as if openly weeping in front of someone was a shortcut to intimacy. “What was it about, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Oh, I’m just constantly holding back tears these days. Usually I’m better at it.” It was his standard non-answer, and she normally would’ve kept pressing, but the window of vulnerability seemed to have passed. So instead she decided to say something to make him feel like his behavior was normal.

“I do it all the time,” she said. “Everybody does, and the fact that we all pretend like we don’t only makes everybody feel like they’re crazy.”

“Okay, now you’re being freaked out,” Monte said.

“I’m not being freaked out, I’m being reassuring.”

“It was just a physical thing, it doesn’t need to be dissected.”

“All right then, forget it. All I’m saying is, it’s understandable.”

“No, I’m sorry. I appreciate what you’re doing, I’m just too much of an asshole to take it well,” Monte said after a quasi-thoughtful pause. “Or I’m just not used to it. Most people, they see you crying and everything becomes awkward. Except for my kids. Kids take everything in stride. My daughter saw me crying the other night, and she just said ‘Daddy, you’re crying.’ No hint of concern in the voice or anything, just matter-of-fact stating it. And it’s because she hasn’t been around long enough, she still assumes everything that happens is normal.”

“She doesn’t know that daddies aren’t supposed to cry,” Calisto said to herself.

“Yes! And maybe years later she’ll suddenly remember that and she’ll go, ‘Wow, I knew how fucked-up my dad was that long ago’. So yeah. Sorry for being such an asshole. I just don’t like crying in front of people. They’re always like, ‘Oh my god, are you okay?’”

Calisto recognized the exact situation he was referring to, and fighting the urge to laugh at the melodramatic face he was pulling as he did his impression of an over-concerned bystander. “It’s a human instinct,” she said. “People want to show they care.”

“Or they just want to seem like they care.”

“It’s the same thing,” Calisto said. “You appear to be sad, so I have to appear to take an interest. We’re all just following the same script. Look at you, what do you care if someone is sincere or not?”

“I care if you’re sincere,” Monte said.

His eyes were doing something funny as he said this, Calisto couldn’t tell whether it was on purpose, and she tried not to let it distract her. “You never answered my question.”

Her phone started buzzing so loud it seemed to wake them up, as if they’d forgotten other people exist in the world. Calisto read the text out loud.

“’Where RU guys?’” she said phonetically. “’We’re locked out.’ Dammit, they’re here.”

Monte laughed without looking at her. “You know what my son said to me the other day? We’re trying to potty-train him right now, so whenever he actually succeeds at it, we have to act like he just won the Super Bowl. We do the ‘Great job,’ high-five and everything. So the other day he walks in the room as I’m finishing up. He says, ‘You did it, Daddy! You’re a big boy!’”

“Wow, what a funny story,” Calisto said. “We need to go let them in.”

“Can’t they come up here?”

“We shouldn’t even be up here,” she said. “Come on, I’ll help you get up.” He was slumped over like he was nursing a chest wound and looked far too exhausted to get up on his own. Calisto hadn’t realized how long they had been on the ground until she heard the blood roaring in her own ears. The alcohol must have been part of it.

“You trust me?” he said to her outstretched hand. “I’m not going to read too much into this, am I?”

“Shut up,” she said, grabbing both of his hands and jerking upwards abruptly, annoyed. The man was a twig and popped to his feet so quickly that he stumbled forward a bit before getting his balance under him.

“Damn, you can really dead lift, girl,” he told her. “Now you sit down, let me try you.”

“Let go of my hands,” she said. “Let’s go.” She turned and walked and eventually he followed her.

Fancy plans

"What did you say?" She was woozy after flushing the toilet to allay suspicion and washing her hands, and didn't quite have all of her sense of hearing back.

"I said get your laptop ready. We're going live now."

It came back to her. He was here to do a business thing, and they were business partners. "Oh really?" She could hardly conceal her disinterest. Instead of calming her down, her little solo episode in the bathroom had actually made her feel more ready. She felt she had crossed some kind of line. Once you were comfortable enough around someone to go get yourself off and act like nothing had happened, you could no longer be just friends, it seemed. "Oh really?" she said again, differently, seeing if Monte would pick up on any change in her demeanor. She hadn't moved from the bathroom door since emerging from it.

"Yes, really. Come on, you're gonna miss it."

This was too much. Is this what she had been anticipating all night? Suddenly there was too much going on. The moment was already getting away from her. She became overwhelmed with the need to be alone, in order to properly take this all in. Had she been blind all this time to the fact that her life was changing before her eyes? Or maybe this was no different than what she had been through earlier, before she ever made any decisions to do anything with her mother's fortune. The difference was, she had imposed these life changes on herself, instead of letting them happen to her. And the fact of the matter was, there was no way she would have set these events in motion if those previous, traumatic experiences had not taken their toll and fundamentally destroyed her world.

So she decided that making her own fate was what mattered, not living up to someone else's legacy or wrangling some kind of monetary gain out of this effort. And just then it occurred to her that this was probably not ever going to make her rich, and for that moment, she didn't mind.

She had turned off her music and opened a browser window. Here it comes.

"And we are.... live," Monte said.

She refreshed her page, and took a good look at lunchdates.com for the first time.

It was pretty. The guy that Monte had been paying to create this page was as good as advertised. Making the most of a simple, thoroughly modern design, the site consisted of a small list of links and a log-in bar at the top, all laid out in a neat, organized fashion in tasteful whites, pinks and goldenrod yellows. An evocative graphic adorned the upper left-hand corner of the page, showing the title of the Web site over a sunset beach vista. A couple sat together at a table, unaware of any photographer, shown mostly in silhouette, as birds flew by in the distance and palm trees swayed in the wind behind their heads. It was a beautiful shot in its own right while immediately conveying the site's purpose.

"Oh Monte," she said.

"What do you think? It's not really how he described it, but it's close enough. I had this old engagement photo I wanted to use, but he said this would work better."

"It's perfect," Calisto said. Then she added, "I can't believe you did it!"

She glided across the floor and hugged him around the neck from behind, and he said "Whoa, hey," at a loss for words. It was the first time either one of them had touched the other, and the sudden contact made her draw back almost instantly. She couldn't help herself. Doing an about-face with respect to her previous position, she was now convinced this thing was going to make them both rich, how could it not? Grandiose ideas went racing through her head, ideas of expansion, registering new sites all over the mainland, flooding the marketplace with their brand. Making her own fate with this gentleman, who apparently would not only do anything for her, but would exceed her wildest expectations in the process.

"It's pretty cool, isn't it?" Then he raised his mug of wine and said, "Clink it!" Calisto went over to the kitchen counter and came back with her mug (and the remains of the wine bottle), and they clinked them together. "World domination," he said, as if reading her mind.

"Fancy plans," Calisto said. "And pants to match." They both drank and refilled. "So what's next?" she asked.

"Well, I'm already signed up. You should be next, and then when the two lollygaggers show up, we should get them registered. Hell, you should create a separate account for every e-mail address you have. That's what I'm doing."

"Yeah, I know. I meant, what's next tonight." She had moved up beside him, peering down at his face expectantly, the Web site reflected in his glasses. "Let me ask you something," she said. "How can someone who's in a band have no interest in music?"

He put the laptop aside and looked back at her, finally. "Where do you go to smoke around here?"

"We're not supposed to, but I could take you up to the roof."

"Up on the roof. Will you take me there if I tell you about the void that music has left in my life?"

It was too intriguing to not say yes. They left the apartment and clambered up the decrepit fire exit. City lights formed straight-line constellations below them. Cars turned their yellows or reds in their direction, the echoes of their cranked-up sound systems barely reaching them. The city looked like theirs from the taking, lying in wait like the calm before being taken by storm.

They had carried their mugs up with them too, brimmed and sitting at their feet in the darkness, their cherries the only extant light source. Calisto no longer wanted to hear whatever rehearsed answer he had to his question anymore and instead pointed with her cigarette hand and said "See that?"

"That dog?"

"No, that's not a dog. That building down there, with the swimming pool on the roof?"

"Yeah."

"That's where I'm moving, once we make a million dollars."

"You haven't found a place yet?" He was aware that her living situation was becoming precarious, as it seemed to come up every time they talked.

"I found it, I just can't afford it."

"You might want to find a place you can afford then. Is that why you wanted to do this?"

"I wanted to do this for all kinds of reasons. What are you gonna do with all your money?"

"First I'm gonna pour everything we make back into the site. We need to be going big."

"What about something fun?"

He drank, seeming to wave her question off. "I don't need a lot. The money is not important to me. What is important is making something that's bigger than myself. It kind of goes back to that music thing, what you were asking me. Music used to be the biggest thing in my life. I met my wife through the band. Ex-wife, I mean. We met at a show. After that we went to every show together. We thought we were soulmates. I mean we agreed on everything, and I have fairly bizarre tastes, not to brag or anything."

He stopped there, but continued to fix his gaze ahead as if he were still continuing his monologue in his head. She toyed with the idea of placing her hand on his, or on his knee. She wasn't feeling lascivious anymore, just in the mood for a friendly gesture. She didn't know how it would be interpreted though. "What happened then?" she asked in a voice too small for what she was feeling.

"It was my fault," he said. "I fucked around on her. She knows, but doesn't really, at this point. I mean, she has no proof. Anyway, by then we were pretty much already over. Turns out besides the music, we didn't really have that much in common. You ever have someone introduce you to someone else, and it goes badly, and that in turn makes you resent the person who introduced you? It was like that with me and music. It doesn't trigger the same things anymore. Once she was gone, that was gone too, that being the thing that made us seem right for each other in the first place. Do you get what my point is in saying all this?"

"No." She had some idea, but thought it best not to presume.

"My point is, I wanted to do something bigger than myself, and that's always a mistake because nothing is bigger than me. Life is just the process of figuring that out. We are born with everything we will ever need but we trick ourselves into thinking there's something more outside of us. That's why every goal you reach takes you farther away from the target."

That was not at all the point Calisto had thought he'd been making, and by this time she was feeling very good about her decision not to make out with him earlier just because she was in heat and he was there. It didn't mean he had no shot in hell, but for a start he would definitely have to stop spouting so much bullshit before she would let that happen. "I don't believe you," she said.

"What don't you believe?"

"That you really think that. If you did, then why do anything? Why not go live in some Zen monastery and eat dust for the rest of your life? I mean do you really not see the fallacy in your thinking?"

"Because," he said, "if I did that then I wouldn't be creating Lunch Dates with you. You're basically the last thing keeping me from dropping out of society."

"Then I hope this doesn't fail, because I'd hate for you to actually go through with dropping out of society only to find that it leaves you feeling as empty as anything else." She knew he was being insincere, but she bought the line anyway. If it was a lie, at least it was a pretty one. "You never answered my question."

"I was never going to," he said.

"What happened with you and your wife?"

"It's a fairly typical story, I guess. I was the opening act for this girl, we hooked up, and then one day I accidentally called her my wife's name. Turns out she's total crazypants and the first thing she does is call up my wife and tell her we're fucking. In front of me she pulls that shit, before I can stop her."

"What's your wife's name?" Calisto asked him.

"What?"

"What name did you call this girl by mistake?"

"My wife you mean? Her name was Lise."

"Elise?"

"Just Lise. Why does it matter?"

"It could have been accidental. Or you could have told her you were saying something else. What did this girl expect anyway, were you not ever supposed to say your wife's name around her?"
He didn't evince much interest in discussing the subject further. "Well, it just goes to show you. I liked this girl because she helped me with my music. That was a mistake. I don't even like playing music anymore since that mess."
This gave Calisto an idea. She liked to fancy herself a mender, despite all signs pointing to the strong possibility she had no ability to remedy even the simplest of her problems. But focusing on helping others had always appealed to her for the distraction it afforded from the help she herself needed. When her mother would be working through an especially rough time, during those days when the business was on the verge of going under and even Marisa had a difficult time buying into the dream, that was when Calisto could sense it was her time to step up and provide a little spark or show of support to keep them all going. So from that time forward, she vowed to help Monte rediscover his love for music. It seemed like the only thing she could do to repay him. She had no idea how to go about doing this, and was sure as hell not going to let a thing like that get in the way.

Launch party

Monte looked different than she had ever seen him. Part of it was the shirt and tie, which she had never seen him wore and suited him even though he committed the error of a sport jacket and jeans to go with it; Maile would've been appalled. But there was something else different in his appearance. He was a guy who tended to avoid eye contact completely, even when you were talking to him one on one you could watch his gaze shift nervously from your forehead to your mouth to your breasts (she gave him a pass on this, being used to her 36Cs pulling an inordinate amount of attention from both sexes. In fact, she knew her particular bustline was one of the few advantages she'd had over the likes of Naomi, who referred to herself as a "proud member of the Itty Bitty Titty Committee") But there was a new focus in his entire visage tonight. Even his normally crooked jaw seemed to settle into a straight, firm line. If he had indeed been cutting other people down, it seemed to be building him up. Perhaps this was the strangeness that Eric had been telling her about -- not smugness, confidence and determination. At least that's what she was willing to assume. In his left hand he was throttling a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon while his right was hauling a laptop bag.

"Whoa," he said, giving her the once-over. "Who are you all dressed up for tonight?"

"I could ask you the same question," she said, feeling her inner temperature rise without reddening her skin outwardly. "I mean, it's a special night, right?"

"Let's fucking hope so," he said, letting himself in. "I like your digs, not bad at all. I don't know what your problem is with this place." She had a habit of complaining about some aspect of their apartment -- the mess or the location or the neighbors -- whenever conversational fuel was running low.

"We don't have too many guests," she said. Monte had unloaded the laptop and switched it on, then placed the wine on the kitchen counter. "My usual problem is being alone. Were your kids okay?"

"They just want to hear the same ghost stories every night. I don't even need to be there, I just pop in a recording of me reading to them. Where's Katie Couric and Mr. Wonderful?"

"He just called me," she said. "Wanna sit down?" She remained on her feet as well, but without tilting in any particular direction, rather like a weather vane in low winds. Monte had already taken off his jacket -- it was obviously way too hot of a night for him to be wearing that, which made his effort all the sweeter -- and laid it neatly across the top of the couch before setting himself down on the cushions, still carrying the open laptop as it booted up. She hesitated for a moment before joining him on the couch.

"You ready for this?" he said without turning toward her. "How does it feel? What did he call you for?"

She decided to address the latter question. "To warn me about you. I heard you zinged him pretty good about his hair falling out."

"Which time? There were a couple of zingers."

"I don't know, something about how it's good he cut it all off because it's all falling out anyway."

"Yeah, that one was okay. He should've told you about the one where I said even the cancer patient we were operating on had more hair than him." Monte couldn't finish the sentence without breaking into a fit of the giggles.

"That's so mean! See, so he thinks this business is going to your head or something." She took the opportunity to look into him, while he was staring at the screen. His eyes normally went unnoticed behind their spectacles, but tonight with the new intensity and fire (yes, it was fire) behind them they positively popped. Deep-set, a chocolatey shade of brown, they seemed to plead and beckon to her for the first time, and she realized that she was indeed inching closer to him on the couch, as he continued to look away. Maybe he was becoming belligerent, and maybe she was starting to like that. "Is it true?" she asked.

"Yeah, the guy still had more hair than him."

"No, I mean, is it true you're being a total dick to everyone because of what we've got going together?"

He just said, "What we've got is too good to excuse any of my behavior."

She didn't understand. "Can you do something for me?" she asked. "Can you try to keep from lashing out at him when he's over here tonight? Not because I care about his feelings, but because I don't want to be put in the position of having to defend you to him?"

He turned his head to look at her for a moment, as if trying to decide if she was serious, then turned back to the laptop. "I wouldn't ask you to defend me to anybody."

She got up and walked toward the kitchen counter, too exasperated to pursue this point any further. She picked up the wine bottle he had brought over, got a corkscrew out of one of the drawers and popped it.

"Hey, don't pop the Cristal just yet," he said halfheartedly.

She held up the bottle and examined it. "This isn't Cristal, you cheap ass." She poured some into a coffee mug because it was one of the only clean cups they had. Monte had his back turned toward her, sunk into the couch, absorbed in whatever it was he was doing.

She took a gulp. "What are you doing?"

"Guess the party's starting early. I'll take one, hostess."

She made a noise that told him of her annoyance but obeyed. Bringing his mug over, she looked over his shoulder at a web page showing a bunch of numbers and percentages. He took this mug as she said "What is this shit?"

"Fantasy basketball," he said. Already she was groaning as he attempted to follow up with, "I'm logged into Skype and my guy is gonna give us a call when we're ready to go live. Til then, let me focus on something actually important."

"It's sooooo boring," she said, and she went to her own computer to fire up Pandora. She realized she had no idea what, if anything, Monte listened to. "What music do you like?" she asked him.

"The same shit everybody else likes."

She went through her playlists, "I've got Drake, Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Katy Perry, Bruno Mars, Pitbull, Taylor Swift, fun., Broadway stuff, Mumford & Sons, Disney songs, Rihanna, Ke$ha, Lady Gaga.... a lot of this stuff is from when I was younger. I don't really listen to most of it anymore."

"I really don't care." She felt uncertain about proceeding with this, but put on Taylor Swift anyway. When were Naomi and Eric going to get here? It was getting past 9:00 and she had already started drinking, pouring out her next round as the small computer speakers blasted a thin female voice saying the words "Trouble, trouble, trouble." Her thoughts went to Eric's words earlier about Monte having a thing for her. If he did, he sure betrayed no indication of it tonight, obsessing over his little box scores, demanding she serve him like she was some kind of barmaid, and not acting like he cared about what they were even supposed to be celebrating. Even the extra effort he had put into his appearance was striking a false note. It was probably more to impress her roommates (Eric was an honorary roommate) than her.

"You know what I think?" she said out loud without having actually thought anything at all. Her mood was turning playful, she was swaying back and forth to the pop songs, and waving her drink above her head. "You wouldn't really be needling Eric so much if you hated him, you would just be ignoring him or talking behind his back. The fact that you care enough to say these things to his face shows that you think more highly of him than you say. I think your little barbs come from a place of real affection."

"He's a douchey cunt," said Monte, still refusing to look up. "How's that for affection."

"You LIKE him," she giggled. "Anyway, that could be taken as a compliment. He's not just a cunt, he's a douchey one. Which means he's at least a little cleaner than a regular cunt." God, what was wrong with her? Was all it took a little alcohol and teenybopper music to turn her into one of those flirtatious airheads she so despised from her younger years?

"This hate-equals-love theory is bullshit," he said, without emotion. "Not everything means the opposite of what it means."

"All I'm saying is, you're going to the trouble of trying to come up with creative insults for him. Doesn't that mean you're going to some effort?"

"I do this in my sleep," he said. She just could not engage him tonight. You'd think somebody with a real crush on her would at least be taking the hint. Despite her efforts, she could not raise so much as a spark between them. It was too bad, because as a man Monte had a lot going for him. He listened to her, he was able to make her believe that he cared what happened to her, and he hadn't asked her to be anything but a smoking buddy and business partner to her. Compared to Dominic, in whose presence she felt like a live wire, his company only brought a mood of benign friendliness out of her. Of course, she had got the same charge out of James, who had managed to be both the worst and the best man she'd had. It was as of her heart was out to sabotage her head, or vice versa.

Thinking of these past and potential lovers was making her lightheaded. She thought about something James had told her after they had spent a night together, that time he said "You love like a hurricane." She remembered his bedroom that morning, clothes strewn across the floor of a prissily neat apartment, bedclothes rumpled and bunched up at the foot of the bed, exposing the blank mattress, as if even the bed itself had to be naked for this. She recalled the sweet sourness of the stifling air they breathed in afterward, the sudden silence which took over even as the discordant harmony of their final cries still reverberated off the walls, and how right it all felt.

She was going to get herself in trouble. The rhythms of the music were getting bumpier, and unconsciously she found herself gyrating right along. Under the skirt her thighs were rubbing together as she bent one knee, then the other. The wine was loosening her tongue and her hips, and she could sense that nothing good was going to come of this. She felt like a cat in need of a scratching post. She knew that Monte would probably not turn her down if she went up to him and began pushing her tongue past his teeth, but that this wouldn't be fair to him and would just lead to a lot of regret and guilt afterwards, and anyway, Naomi and Eric were expected anytime now, and they were supposed to be launching a business together, and this would only complicate things, she wasn't even into him, Jesus, he just happened to be there, she'd done plenty of making out and sleeping with boys she didn't really like and had resolved never to do so again.

So she put down her drink and said "I have to go to the bathroom."

She closed the door behind her and thought. Had it been so long since she was alone in a room with a man? Had she forgotten what this felt like, and therefore no longer knew how to conduct herself in this situation? The boy in the other room was oblivious, and when confronted with the obliviousness of a man it had been her custom to turn on the forwardness.

"Not tonight," she said quietly. "Not tonight."

She pulled down her skirt, as if she was really going to use the facilities just then. She felt herself up, and found that she was primed. God. There was only one thing to do.

The music had switched to a sparse, grinding drum track with laid-back female vocals singing something about "You can call me Queen Bee..." and gradually the music swelled and throbbed until it seemed to gain some sense of purpose. Calisto went at it furiously at first, hoping the sounds drowned her ragged breath, and finding no carrot at the end of the stick, made herself slow down, envying boys their simple onanistic methods. Just grab and go, essentially. If only she could have helped herself to Naomi's vibrator, which never got used, she was sure, unless one of them wasn't home. It was the sense of impending shame that eventually drove her over the edge. Not that she was any stranger to masturbating while somebody was in the next, or even the same, room -- she remembered getting herself off at age 11 while sitting in front of the TV with her mom, her favorite blanket bunched around her -- but of all the times, even in her wildest days, with a boy who allegedly liked her just a thin wall away, this had to have been unprecedented. She used to tell boys there was nothing she wouldn't try, and wondered now whether she had ever meant it. Certainly, for the right man, there was no debauchery too sick to lower herself to, and what if that man had been James? She came to the memory of his chin scruff chafing her collarbone, her lungs compressed beneath his weight, her heels dug into the small of his back. The Heavens parted and she felt herself borne up into them, a brief moment where the living and the dead shared communion.

Shunck

What if they had a launch party and nobody came?

After finishing picking up all the shit and dropping it in the bedroom, Calisto had vacuumed the rugs and swept the pieces of linoleum that stuck out from under them. They had a keyboard duster, one of those little aerosol cans with a nozzle thinner than a coffee straw, and she had taken this to every surface that had visible edges or corners. They didn't have a mop, and she had to content herself with wetting paper towels and wiping the floors on her hands and knees, along with wiping down the fridge, the doors, even parts of the wall that had been pre-stained prior to their move in.

By the time she gave up and decided it wasn't going to get any cleaner, it was 8:00 and she was still alone. Naomi had texted back that she might need to work late tonight, depending on how long the traffic jam caused by this freeway accident lasted, but congratulations, darling! Monte said he had his kids that night, and needed to get them to bed at his mom's before doing anything else. Eric would arrive when Naomi did. Monte's programmer was going to by communicating with them on Skype when things really got underway. Those were all the participants of their launch party, and she briefly considered rescheduling. She had felt a temptation to invite Dominic, but that would have complicated things, somehow. Anyway, she knew that Monte wouldn't have appreciated it.

She talked about him to Monte sparingly, always in hushed tones, never referring to him as Weird Sexual Chemistry Boy out loud, but letting on enough about the incredibly strained awkwardness of their every interaction that the effect came across.

One time they had seen him walking by. "Shit," said Calisto, and made to hide herself behind a bush.

"What?" Monte said.

"Nothing," she said, still crouching.

"Who do you see? Who is it?" Monte whispered. "Why are you hiding?"

"Just shut up!" she hissed back at him. "Act normal. I'll tell you later." The bush was a foot-and-a-half shorter than her and providing inadequate cover, so she scrambled behind Monte instead. He was wearing a long white lab coat over his scrubs and she was able to thin herself into invisibility behind his girth. Dominic passed by, wearing headphones and not looking in their direction, and as he made his way past them she rotated around Monte's white lab coat. She hadn't been paying attention, but the cigarette still burning in her fingers had been forgotten in her rush to conceal herself, and it had been burning a hole in the back of her coat, where it hung just below the waist.

Dominic was gone and she exhaled, taking a drag and suddenly noticing that she had burned monte's coat. "Oh god, sorry," she said.

"What?"

"I burned your coat." She pointed to the hem on his left side.

"You burned it? Oh Christ, do you realize this isn't mine? I have to put this back at the end of the day!"

"Sorry!"

"Now you have to tell me what the hell was that. Were you hiding from those cops over there?"

"No, it was just some guy I work with. I don't want him to know I smoke."

"Why?"

"Because I told him I didn't!" This was true, when they had once gotten into a conversation where Dominic was telling her how he hated smokers, and then stopped himself and added "You don't smoke, do you?" and the question had made her lose her mind or forget who she was or something and she'd answered "Nope."

Monte was never one to let anything go and pressed the issue. "That's it? What's it to him if you want to smoke?" Then he paused for a moment as if giving the matter further consideration and said "Fuck him. He owes me a new lab coat."

"Look, I just didn't feel like explaining it to him later," she said. "I wasn't expecting to see him this time of the day."

"What is he your boss or something? Or your office crush? Does he have a thing for you?"

"Just drop it," she said. "I don't have to go into it, so I won't."

"Which guy was he?" Monte was the kind of person, who, when faced with an impasse, tried to go an alternate but related route. "At least tell me that, so I can look out for him for you."

"It doesn't matter. Just please forget it."

"If it matters enough for you to almost set me on fire, I want to know."

"Fine. He was wearing the purple jacket."

"That fucker with the fake blond hair? Shit, I see that guy around here all the time. That's your big secret crush? I honestly think you can do better."

Calisto had, strangely, agreed with him even at the time. The reason she knew Monte was right is because she already had done better, at least in her mind. James was unquestionably a bigger catch than this guy, and anybody else she dated after that would amount to a lowering of her standard. The trouble was, it wasn't a matter of doing better or not doing better. Something in her wanted this boy in a way that defied notions of goodness or badness. It just simply was. Actually, the very irrationality of this wanton desire was what made her resistant to the idea of ever pursuing it. She had learned not to trust what she thought she wanted. Mentally she added this to her catalogue of reasons not to get with the boy, which ran like this:

1) They worked together. Fucking your co-workers was a bad idea for any number of reasons.

2) He was out of her league (which may seemed to contradict her belief that she could do "better" but really, anybody who caused the kinds of stirrings he did within her was ipso facto "out of her league")

3) It would go against her devotion to be Not Looking For Anything Right Now, to Learn How To Be Happy Alone, etc.

4) Maybe he has a girlfriend/will laugh in my face/thinks I'm gross, etc.

Calisto reviewed all of this information in much less time than it takes to actually explain it and revisited her anxiety about the party they were supposed to be having that night. With the place fixed up, she decided to actually spend some time on her appearance. She didn't know whether there was any direct relationship between looking decent and feeling decent, but decided not to take a chance. After a quick, lukewarm shower she sat around in a bathrobe trying to figure out what to wear that would match the sense of occasion she was still feeling.

Anything she wore to work was immediately out of the question. It had been a casual Friday, so she wanted to put on something a bit nicer than her standard issue skinny jeans and cartoon character t-shirt. Unfortunately, her wardrobe seemed to divide neatly into just that sort of dichotomy. Her two costumes consisted of Severe Professional Lady on one hand and Teenage Wallflower on the other, with very little in between. She eyed a green sundress which was intended to be worn to the beach (which she hadn't done since she bought it), and a glittery pair of dark stretch pants meant to be worn when she went clubbing (ditto). Her scan of her side of the closet lingered on a bright white maiden-style dress which she had worn exactly once, months ago, when she had refused to wear black for an occasion where that color choice was generally expected. Even as a tribute, that was also out of the question.

With a sigh, she gave up and decided it was another night for raiding Naomi's wardrobe. Naomi was much taller and noticeably slimmer than Calisto, but her side of the closet had the advantage of being stuffed to the gills. Because she wore a lot of pantsuits and skirt suits for her job, Naomi had all kinds of things she never wore, and Calisto laid out a pile of possibilities on the foot of her bed.

She felt jumpy all at once, and the apartment seemed silent, at least compared to the world outside. So she walked over to their clock radio and flipped it on, scanning for a song she could abide. She recalled a music video from her youth by some forgotten young pop starlet, where the singer's head stood still as an endless array of different fashions and styles superimposed and rearranged themselves on her body. The song was crap and she thought so even then, but the idea of reinventing oneself at the rate of 24 frames per second had stayed with her, and she looked for something to suit the mood, finally settling on the classic rock station, playing an 80s ballad she always recognized but didn't know who made it.

She cranked it up and sang along as she held things up on her in front of the mirror. "Forever young, I want to be forever young. Do you really want to live forever..."

She ultimately settled on a long floral print skirt and a navy blue camisole that fit her like a dream and had been an old standby going back to their college days. Something was missing, still. She rummaged among the pile of things she had created in their bedroom while cleaning up, and put on the scawlf. It added a sense of something offbeat, an ineffable quality, not-quite-hidden but not on full display either. Then she pulled her damp hair back in front of the mirror, and kept it that way, examining the reflection.

Something about what she saw there was weird. Then she had a heart-freezing moment, and ran to go looking for Naomi's glasses. Black horn rims, where the hell did she keep them? And why did Naomi bother keeping glasses around when she wore contacts 364 days of the year? They finally turned up on the bathroom sink. She put them on and stared at the mirror. Maybe it was the slight out-of-focus effect the prescription lenses had on her vision or just the unconventional (for her) fashion choices, but the thought landed on her as if from out of the sky and stuck in an uncomfortably close part of her mind:

Jesus. I look just like Her.

Marisa used to always call her a "dead ringer" for Maile, but Calisto had never seen it or considered it a flattering comparison. Her mother's looks were unbearably arch, to put it kindly, befitting a woman who would name her clothing line "Haughty", but not representative of the type of personality Calisto felt she exuded. She went looking for a photo of her mother to prove she was not going crazy but while going through her bedside drawer she stopped at a picture of James instead, the only one of him she had in her possession.

She was still staring at it when the sound of her phone ringing, plugged into the charger on the kitchen counter, broke her out of this reverie. She flicked off the clock radio and walked into the other room to answer it, an action that felt decidedly retro.

It was Eric's number, but in keeping with the throwback vibe that was suddenly pervading, she answered the phone as if she hadn't seen. "Hello?"

"Hey, so I came up with the dirtiest word ever. Wanna hear it?" His phone calls, or his interactions in general, often started with this kind of in media res non sequitur, if indeed a conversation can begin with one. Calisto didn't happen to be in the mood to play along, so she continued pretending to be old-fashioned instead.

"Hello, who is this?" she asked.

"So the way I see it, short "u" is the dirtiest vowel sound, so we start with that. All the best curse words have it. Then along the same lines there's the hard "c" sound. Put those two together and you're already halfway there. Are you following?"

"I think so?" Calisto said. "Who are you again?"

"It's cute that you keep doing that," he said. "So to balance out the other sounds, we put in the letter n and a "sh", which is an underused phoneme, especially in profanity, so it might still have some power to shock. Put them together and what have you got?"

"I don't know," Calisto said. "Cushion?"

"You've got... shunck. Sounds dirty, right? Now it just needs a definition."

Calisto gave up on her resistance to playing along. "Hmmm, I don't think it sounds dirty enough. Shunck just sounds like a bow-and-arrow sound effect, like in a cartoon. You know, shunck."

"Whatever," Eric said, not swayed. "Just expect to hear it come up in conversation from now on, while I try to wrangle some meaning out of it. Anyway, we're gonna be late and I'm bored, that's why this call."

"That's okay," Calisto said. "We never set a strict time, so really you can't be late."

There was a pause, the kind that either preceded closing things out and hanging up, or an oncoming topic which one party was hesitant to bring up. It turned out to be the latter. "So, have you seen Monte lately?" Eric asked finally.

"He's doing something with his kids tonight. No idea when he'll be here."

"Well, I gotta tell you, he's been acting weird at work lately. Like he's got something he needs to get off his chest, all the time. Have you noticed this? Is he being smug or weirdly cruel around everybody or just us?"

"What, you mean more than his usual smugness?"

"That's what I mean. You know what he said to me the other day? He saw that I shaved my head, and he came right up to me and said, 'Nice haircut, I'm glad to see you gave in. It's gonna happen anyway, so why wait for Father Time to finish the job? Nip that thing in the bud.'"

"Ouch," Calisto said, suppressing laughter, not least of all because Eric could hit the pitch and cadences of Monte's oddball voice dead on. Not that Eric was ever insecure about his receding hairline, but this did sound like an exaggerated version of Monte.

"Yeah, he was all snotty about it, though. Like he was only halfway kidding. You haven't noticed anything like this?"

"No, he's always been a perfect gentleman around me," Calisto said.

"Well, that's probably because he's always had the major-league hots for you."

"Why do you guys keep saying that?" She meant him and Naomi, who seemed to attribute everything the guy did for her to some imaginary schoolboy crush she swore he had.

"But anyway, it's not just me either. I took a walk to the break room once and there was a receptionist in there on the fucking verge of tears, being consoled by a friend. I overheard her saying that Monte had called her kid ugly."

"So what?"

"Her kid was there. She'd had to bring her to work that day, and your boy had walked right up to her and said 'Eww, you're ugly.' In front of her mother. Then he laughed and walked away!'"

"Okay," Calisto said, "I get it, he's a dick. But what is your point, telling me all this?"

"Callus, this is a guy who had said maybe 8 words total since the time he started working there, four months ago, and now he can't shut up or let someone say anything ever, without retorting with his own little brand of wit, which comes off more like bile. That tells me he either thinks he's got nothing to lose or he's just stopped caring what anybody thinks."

She hated when he called her that. "Didn't you used to hang out when he first started there?"

"We went to Squarehead's once, and I never repeated that mistake with him. But at least back then he acted like he had some consideration for others. My point is, and I'm sorry to do this on the night that you launch, but this business of yours? I think he might be pinning a little too much hope on it, and I think you should tell him that just because he has a side thing now doesn't give him license to shit on everybody else."

A knock rang out on the door. Calisto had listened to all she was going to anyway. "I have to go," she said. "I think he's here."

"Tell him," Eric told her. "Tell him that giving your money to other people doesn't make him Zuckerberg!"

"Okay, good-bye," she said, annoyingly, and put the phone down. She drew a deep breath, banished the sound of Eric's voice from her mind, wished she had done her makeup, and opened the door.