“I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I just wanted to keep going faster.”
“I know,” she said. He looked at her expectantly, like he was waiting to be admonished. “Let me see your wrists.”
He held up his forearms. No wounds. No scars. No hesitation marks. Just unbroken skin and pale blue veins.
She placed her palms on his hands and gently lowered his arms.
A normal person might inquire, What was that about? What’s wrong with my wrists? But William just sat there with Christina’s hands on his.
“I’m glad you came,” he said.
“I didn’t have anything else on my social calendar.”
He nodded at the window. “Think we’re good?”
Christina turned. Outside, Melissa was posing with the officer while her outstretched hand took a selfie.
“That was quick,” Christina said.
“That’s why they call her the fixer.”
“Nobody calls her that.”
Melissa’s #CopSelfie was heavily retweeted. While they spent the afternoon stuck in traffic on the Major Deegan Expressway, she mounted an all-out social media blitz to capitalize on their momentum.
She set the air freshener to “Maui” and put everyone to work monitoring keywords and relevant mentions. Twitter feeds scrolled through the beach-scented interior, painting their faces with translucent hashtags. Pics and reblogs and memes crowded the windows. She set the whirling digital matrix for half-opacity so she could keep an eye on the city skyline as they crept through the Bronx.
It was the most exhilarating multitasking she’d ever done. Otto let her use apps that she’d only read about, beta versions of tools that weren’t available to the general public and possibly never would be. She created a SocialOracle account to run predictive models of the future of her social success—at this rate, how many followers could she expect tomorrow, a week from now, a year? Which fashion-world influencers and celebrities were likely to respond to certain pics and GIFs over others? As chatter spiraled inward toward the four people at the core of the #AutonomousRoadTrip, Otto brought them into the epicenter of what would be College Melissa’s life.
At 3:28 p.m., the state trooper in the photo issued an apology on his Facebook page after hundreds of people called him out for letting a speeder go free and being dumb enough to post about it. The internet assumed that Melissa had flirted #CopSelfie into existence, but in reality the trooper was a serious car guy. She had diagnosed the situation and spoke to him like a normal person shooting the shit about an incredible new prototype. The whole point of the picture was that they were standing in front of Autonomous, not that some horny young cop was snapping a photo with an eighteen-year-old girl he’d just pulled over.
There was nothing she could do about the internet’s perception of the photo. It was no use overexplaining anything you posted online. That only served to make the situation worse, creating a vortex with you at the center, protesting too much.
Everybody in the car, including Daniel, also assumed that she’d flirted her way out of a ticket. That was a perception she could easily change. But as soon as she’d climbed back inside, she caught William eyeing her cleavage (for the millionth time today; did guys think they were being subtle?) while Christina shot her a look of disgust that she obviously thought she was hiding in her usual pinched-face glare.
So what if Melissa had done what they all assumed in order to make the ticket go away? Sometimes there was a fierce pride in inhabiting the skin of the person everyone thought you were. It was like a social experiment, seeing how far you could push a caricature made of other people’s preconceived notions. The problem was, when you spent too much time doubling down, even your boyfriend failed to see past the persona, forgot that he knew you better than that.
In the first few months of their relationship, they used to hiss at each other like cats until they cracked up.
Daniel was still getting used to the mechanics of Otto’s displays. She watched as he dragged a feed monitoring #Autonomous with aching slowness, using two fingers like he was making a stiff horizontal peace sign. His coordination seemed a little off—troubling for someone about to play college basketball.
At 3:58 p.m., the precise moment the car veered into the Manhattan-bound lane on the RFK Bridge, influencer Tyrone Cain regrammed the photo they’d taken with Patricia Ming-Waller, and Melissa’s follower count topped 2,000.
It had been 976 when they left Fremont Hills.
At 4:13 p.m., they turned onto Houston Street. Melissa remembered the day she discovered how effervescent and sprightly she looked in dresses with asymmetrical hemlines, and how overjoyed she’d been to find that these designs dovetailed perfectly with her skills. This feeling of life falling into place around her talents was the reason she’d decided to come to New York. Autonomous stopped for a red light at Houston and Avenue C. Melissa stepped away from her spherical news rotations and knelt on the bench to peer out at the city.
People in Fremont Hills looked at her oddly when she said she couldn’t wait to get to New York. Her aunt Linda and uncle Dave did this thing where they scrunched up their faces one at a time, as if sucking the air from each other’s lungs in order to speak.
Linda: (scrunch in) But you’re living on top of each other down there! How does anybody BREATHE? (scrunch out)
Dave: (scrunch in) I’ll tell you something, last time I was there, it stunk like piss! You know they just leave the trash out on the sidewalk for the animals to get at, and they wonder why they got a rat problem. (scrunch out)
The light turned green and the car moved west. Melissa’s hungry eyes took in the scene. She almost wished Linda and Dave were here. You see? You see how beautiful this place is? But she knew she was seeing New York through different eyes than the Aunt Lindas and Uncle Daves
