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“We never really know what’s going on in other people’s lives.”

            Sloane swallowed hard. It was unclear whether David and Edwin had said something or if Poppy was here of her own accord. Bidden, perhaps, by the dueling memes on the Internet.

            “We certainly don’t,” Sloane managed, holding on rather uselessly to her mother’s address.

            “I’m sorry,” said Poppy, patting the pockets of her kimono jacket. “I should have brought a flask. Anyway, say nothing,” she held up her hand. “The word on the street is that Edwin’s got edibles. Which will help.”

            Before Sloane could ask if these were meant to help Sloane in particular or the group at large, Poppy reached her hand out for piece of paper carrying her mother’s New York address. She spent a little time scrutinizing it, as if there were more than an address written there.  

            “I should send a card,” Sloane said, suddenly embarrassed. “Otherwise it makes no sense.”

            “Context is important.”

            Sloane sat down on the bed with a pad of hotel stationary and a pen.

            “I always travel with greeting cards,” said Poppy. “Because you never know. Want me to run and get you one? They’re fruit scented.”

            Sloane looked down at the empty piece of paper. All she could think to write was, HELP.

            “I’m sorry. I’m being nosy. I’m being…that was silly about the greeting cards. I don’t know a thing about your mom.”

            “My mom used to send me three birthday cards, all in separate envelopes,” Sloane said, stilling her pen. “When I first moved to France. I’d always ask her, why not just put them all in a manila envelope?”

            “Why three cards?”

            Poppy’s inquiry made it obvious that this, in fact, was the real question.

            “Oh,” she said. “She couldn’t decide.”

            “I’m sorry,” Poppy said, kneading her fingers. “But is it really true that your husband’s done with sex? Because I don’t, we don’t,” she turned her hands up. “With my husband. So it’s not something I’d miss. But I don’t know, that, maybe…”

            “It’s something I would miss.” Sloane had managed to silence her with her refusal to use ‘will.’ Her marital tense was conditional. The future could be perfect.

            She turned her attention back to the piece of paper. Wrote, Mom. I miss you back.

            “I am sorry,” said Poppy, rising. “I’m really not trying to be…whatever you think I’m trying to be.”

            Life had made Sloane defensive. She was sad to feel this. Sad to realize the world had hardened her to a point where even concern felt like an offense.

            “Forgive me,” Sloane said, holding on still to the piece of paper. “I’m not myself this…year.”

             “None of us are.” Poppy took the paper. “Two day priority alright?”

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            “Oh,” Sloane responded, taken aback by the thoughtfulness of such a gesture. “Sure! I guess I could, what would be nice would be, my mom…” she held the door ajar for Poppy to pass through.

            “Mine’s going to my stepkids. Trust me,” she said, watching Sloane’s brows raise. “I know. It’s hard when it’s step children. The whole self branding thing.” she made a hand gesture haloing herself. “People don’t want to hear what you’re doing for them unless they come from your own womb. Anyway, that yours?”

            They both looked at the massive chocolate likeness of The Future on Sloane’s bed.

            “So, this has been something, huh?” asked Poppy. Indicating the hotel, the tour, Sloane’s life, Sloane’s book.

            “There have been some unexpected turns,” Sloane responded, sitting at the desk to scribble out her mother’s address with the hotel pen.

            “You know,” Poppy was messing with the coffee capsules on the commode now, sorting them by color. “If you ever want to talk. I’m a little bit more of a…than you might think.”

            More of a what? More than what?

       

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            “There’s really no hope for any of us, is there,” asked Edwin with a shoulder heave. “We’re just living in a mall.” He looked up at Sloane with a bemused self-pity. “My kids, they’re good people. And these kids—” he gestured to the floor above them. “They seem like good people, too. But it doesn’t matter any more.” He shook his head despondently. “What’s frottage?”

            “Will you two do me a favor?” Sloane asked, ignoring the question by getting to her feet. “Would you two agree to get really drunk with me tonight?”

            “At your service,” said David, sweeping his hand across his belly.
            “I’ll get a head start,” said Edwin, lifting up an imaginary glass.

            “The world might be ending, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have fun, right?”

            “In-sou-ci-ant,” said Edwin, drawing the word out. “Like all the kids.”

            Sloane coaxed her hair into a disheveled bun. “And frottage, Edwin,” she said, twisting the stray pieces into place, “is the sexualized rubbing of two people’s body sections. My husband just publicly endorsed such aforementioned rubbing against the inner thigh.”

            “Tough week,” said David, with a grin.

            “Learn something every day,” whistled Edwin.

            “And while we’re at it,” Sloane continued, “the aspirational lawn care thing? It isn’t actually bullshit. People are going to be painting instead of watering their lawns. Because of water shortages. So, you know, Poppy,” she shrugged. “She might be on our side.”

            “I find you pretty benevolent for a person with a meme,” countered David.

            She parted her lips to retaliate something clever, but then she saw apparent seriousness in his eyes. These two people, or at least this one person, appeared to think that Sloane was in possession of a decent soul. And she thought the same thing about them. The world was a despicable, hopeless place until it wasn’t. There were still some reasons to rejoice. The smell of charcoals heating in a barbecue. Birthday candle light swaying with the force of an exhale. It was impossible, to be run through with this deep will to survive. To not just survive, but to enjoy one’s time on the planet. To forgive, forget, to fall in and out of love. So much beauty bookmarked by such fathomless stupidity. It could make you go insane weighing whether or not to give up.

            Sloane took her leave of the two gentlemen to go and ready her slideshow on the interpersonal applications of convenient things.

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Fell called when they reached the Henry Hudson with conciliatory news: current book sales had them well on track to make the bestseller list during the first week of her book’s publication. Fell’s tone was more upbeat than usual, the real reason for her call unspoken (Sloane’s books always hit the bestseller list of The New York Times), Fell was feeling guilty over her suggestion that Sloane get a divorce.

            It was crazy, Sloane knew it, to become so domestic at her age. But between the dogmatic ignorance of the rising right wing and the acidifying seas, it was like her mother with her miniature canvases: Sloane wanted something small and beautiful that she could control. So be it if it happened to be her marriage. Sloane didn’t make nice with Fell. She listened to what she had to say, thanked her for saying it, and then she hung up. Because her car was mad at her for some unknown reason, it calmed Sloane to be angry at somebody else.

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He had also spent the better part of that French autumn delivering his Sorbonne lectures in fetish Zentai suits, integral second-skin ware that covered up everything on his body, even his eyes and mouth. He claimed that the seamless body suits buttressed many of his controversial theories on touch. She claimed that his controversial theories were ruining their marriage, not to mention that they were in blatant opposition to her biological clock. But even in her own life, it was irrepressible, her foreknowledge of the ups and downs of trends. As it was with hemlines, profit margins, airplanes, so it was with human relationships. What went up, came down.

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            If this had been the past, if they had both been younger, Sloane would have taken his confession as an invitation to delve deeper into his life. There was a current between them, but it wavered, hesitant, like a flickering porch light. Sloane felt an attraction to him, but his kids, his wife, her blabbering husband, the overwhelming statuses of their adult lives made that attraction an uncomfortable weight to bear, like something ill-digested in her stomach. And yet, to not move closer to the heat felt inhuman and perverse. She didn’t know how to be a confidant to such a person without opening up her heart, and yet it was pointless and foolhardy, she might find a wealth of worlds within him, but there was nothing she could hold.

           

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“Sooo…” he said, finally turning towards her, his belongings arranged. “Sorry, I’m actually…I get a little weird on planes. I’m more of a train guy, but no one takes those any more.”

            “In Europe they do. I take trains all the time.”

            “I’d like to live in Europe,” he said, his comment coming out uncharacteristically vague. “You’re in Amsterdam?”

            “Paris, actually. My sister’s in Amsterdam though, so I go a lot. I teach at one of the art schools there, so. And you’re…in the Berkshires?”

            “Yep,” he said, unscrewing his water bottle top. “You know it?”

            “Sort of. I used to…this might sound crazy, but I have an energy therapist there.”

            David held on to the water in his mouth, bug-eyed, before swallowing it down. “Really.”

            “Yeah, it’s not as weird as it sounds. It’s because I’m constantly carrying this energy around, or like, tapping into other people’s and—”

            “No, no,” he said, looking at her. “I used to do Reiki. You know. So I know.”

            “Hmm,” she said, impressed. “Really?”

            “Oh yeah,” he nodded. “I used to be this, like… I don’t know. Really spiritual guy.”

            “Spiritual,” she repeated.

            “Yeah,” he said, fiddling with his water bottle cap. “It’s really something, isn’t it. The energy around us. I guess you’d understand. I don’t know if I could do it—Reiki—now. It’s like, people are so fractured. They’re just—everyone is in seventeen different places. Sorry,” he said, taking a startling deep breath.

            “For?” She looked past him up the aisle. There didn’t seem to be any stragglers there, no one coming for their empty seat.

            “For this,” he said, moving his hand in a circle around his head. “I’m just not completely here.”

            “You miss your family?” Sloane asked, trying to make her voice pique in the right place.

            “Well sure, but that’s not it. It’s just,” he exhaled again, looked at her. “I’m going through—fuck it. You know. A mid life crisis.”

            He followed his comment with a laugh, which invited Sloane to laugh also, but his admission made her sad. To be thrust so quickly into someone’s orbit, to feel the weight around them, to know you didn’t have enough time to discern the origin of their hows and whys.

            “It’s not a big deal,” he said, brushing something off his pants. “It really isn’t. It’s just that this is not a great time for me to be on tour. Sorry, whew! And the plane’s not even in the air yet! There’s a couple seats available, you might want to move!”