18.
Michael’s still at the laptop when Wendy gets home. She stomps through the kitchen, opening fridge and cabinets, nibbling on something, running the tap. She kicks off her heels and makes her way toward the airbed, glass of water in one hand, Bloomingdale’s bag in the other. Half a graham cracker hangs from her mouth. She puts the bag down and chews.
“Where were you?” says Michael. He’s been online for hours, refreshing Twitter, googling Gatsby Murder. The latest: a witness saw Devor buy a dozen baseball bats at the Modell’s in Times Square two days before the murder, and another claims to have marched behind him to the Zone. Two people claim to have seen Devor during the riot, brandishing a police Taser, but another says she saw him buying beer at a bodega on the Upper West Side around the time that the murder took place.
Roughly half of Twitter thinks Devor is guilty, but the other half argues in his defense, claiming the banks masterminded the murder and framed Devor to discredit #Occupy. Little hard evidence backs these suppositions, but something rings true. Ricky was disliked by many at C&S, and if Edward Jin and the others sat down in a smoky room and plotted to knock off one of their own, Michael imagines Ricky would make the top of their list.
The strangest thing he’s found, however, is speculation of a different sort. Among the deluge of shitposts on Reddit, Michael found someone insisting that Communitiv.ly, on behalf of a secret group called Project Pinky, is running a stealth PR campaign to tank the UBI by framing Devor.
“I got a drink,” says Wendy, done eating, butt on the air mattress, trying and failing to remove her tights.
“That I can see,” says Michael.
Wendy manages to free her legs, though she kicks over her water in the process.
“You went shopping,” says Michael. He takes off his T-shirt and uses it to cover the spill. Wendy faces the wall.
“I’m confused,” he says.
She’s focused on her phone.
“Confused why?” she says after a second. “Confused because we owe hundreds of thousands in credit card debt? Confused because you owned three million dollars’ worth of shares in your own investment bank and now those shares are worthless? I know it’s confusing that something like that could happen. That someone as responsible as you could let that happen.”
Wendy puts down the phone. She wears an expression Michael has seen once before. It is not the expression Wendy wore when the doctor quietly informed them of her failure to find Nina’s heartbeat, as if the softness of her voice might cushion the blow. No, this is the expression Michael saw shortly after, when the doctor asked if he wanted to hold their dead child. Michael paused for too long before saying yes. He paused, and in that pause he stepped out of the present. He stepped into the future to wonder how he’d look back on the moment, how the experience—her skull in his palm, the caress of his thumb across its ridges—might later haunt and traumatize, degrade any future instance of happy feeling.
“I’m sorry,” says Michael.
“What was that? I don’t think I heard you. Did you just apologize? Did you just whisper I’m sorry as if that would make it okay?”
Michael hits the wall with the rear of his skull. He says, “I’m so sorry.”
“Fuck your sorry,” says Wendy.
She pulls the envelope from her purse and fans a stack of hundred-dollar bills. She balls up a bill and flicks it at Michael’s nose. It bounces off. She throws money in the air and they both watch it fall.
Wendy’s usually respectful of money above all things, arranging the bills in her wallet by denomination and rolling loose coins while she watches TV. This atypical display lets him know just how angry she is, and how drunk.
“I got paid,” Wendy says. “Now aren’t you glad I went to work today?”
“You went to Bloomingdale’s.”
“Is there a problem? Is there a problem with me spending my money that I earned?”
Michael collects the bills from the floor. He puts them back in the envelope and places the envelope on the bed.
“Ricky was my friend too,” says Wendy.
“I know that.”
“Abstaining from purchasing clothing is not going to bring him back.”
“No.”
Michael goes to the bathroom to give her a moment to calm down. He pees and brushes his teeth. He returns and stands nude before Wendy. It feels like an offer. Here I am to take or leave, is what he’s trying to say. Wendy taps at her phone. She doesn’t look up. Michael gets back in the bed and pulls the blanket to his chin. She tugs it back in her direction, tells him not to be a hog. She watches Instagram stories: a pop singer discussing lactation; Michael’s cousin, Hannah, cooking eggplant parmesan.
“I read a thing online,” Michael says. “I read a thing online about Communitiv.ly. That you’re trying to frame Jay Devor for the murder. Is that what you’re doing at work?”
“I’ll tell you what I’m doing,” says Wendy. “I’m making sure the world remembers your friend as a better person than we both know he was. You should be thanking me.”
“You’re not framing Devor?”
“To frame someone, he has to be innocent.”
“There’s no evidence.”
“Then who did it, huh?”
Wendy picks up the envelope and counts the cash like she’s suspicious Michael stole some.
“We should use the money to start paying . . .” he says.
“My money. It’s not the money. It’s my money.”
“I just meant . . .”
“You just meant what? That if we pay off the cards we can go back to normal? Should we move to a studio in the Bronx with a Murphy bed and a hot plate?”
Michael thinks she’s being bourgeois. These may not be the blissed-out days of frivolous spending, but they still have more earning power than
