Woke Up Lonely A Novel - By Fiona Maazel Page 0,17

And she rubbed her eye with the fat of her palm, which jutted from a sweater sleeve that was too long. “You know, like whatever in your life sucks enough to count as prerequisite for wanting to join the Helix.”

Ned smiled. Thinking, This woman’s all right. She hates her wrists.

“Me, I don’t normally do this kind of thing,” she said. “Mostly I set up other people, even if I like the guy, because I figure the other person could make him happier than me. So it’s like doing service.”

“Wow. Sounds like you have good Prereq, too.”

“I know. You got a rash?”

He’d been farming for a spot, several spots, on his back. Anxiety Itch. So many women, so much to tell. Sweat began to front along his hairline and rill down his face.

“No,” he said. “I mean, yes. I get nervous around people.”

“You read the helper lit?”

He shrugged.

“Me too,” she said, and she tugged at her hat—a beanie, really—which saved her at least one confession: I’ve got a crew cut, and whatever the reason, it’s not good.

She reached in her bag for the brochure. It was glossy, picture heavy. Smiling people who didn’t look brainwashed so much as happy, and, of course, a snap of Helix honcho, Thurlow Dan.

They looked over the material, which seemed to fortify the whys of their finding themselves here. What else was there to say? From the lounge came news of the birthday. Happy birthday, Olgo Panjabi, happy birthday to you. The voices sang at length, they sang with joy. The hodgepodging of ethnicities in this man’s name was all very beautiful—very consolidating—and people wanted to think about that, especially now.

“That was nice,” she said.

“You’re nice.”

“We should hang out at work,” she said, though he just stared at her blankly.

Ding, and the MC’s voice: “We are taking a break. Mingle.”

There was birthday cake in the lounge. There was Bruce Bollinger, whose lips were kissed with ganache. There was Olgo Panjabi, source of it all. Olgo, who was now sixty and in whose face was a foreboding about his new year of life, tempered by this impromptu swell of affection for him. There was, also, Anne-Janet and Ned. Interior claimed fifty-eight thousand employees; here were four. They had just met.

From the TV: “Each age is a dream that is dying or one that is coming to birth.” The president quoting FDR, who himself quoted an Irish poet.

From the TV: We have seen the threads of purpose that unite us. Two terms with this guy. That nasal voice. Those platitudes.

The bartender snorted. He was fluent in drinks that made you sick. Tonight was $5 Trips to Hell, a multi-schnapped, Red Bull, Jägermeister shot he mixed for six at the counter, saying, “The Helix probably pulled in ten thousand people tonight, events all over the country, and this jerk-off is saying we’ve seen the threads that hold us together? Unless he’s Helix, too, he hasn’t seen a thread in years.”

There was laughter. And secret looks. Half the bar was Helix already. Out to recruit, then back to the Bond. The Helix had bought personal data from ten Internet dating sites, which meant it had the emails and psychological vitae of more than fifty million people who had already contributed to the effort of finding each other, and, as such, were reasonably disposed to attend these events. Rest of Your Life Socials. And when the RYLS didn’t produce—when, in fact, they depressed everyone—a Helix Head would swoop in to suggest an alternate means of camaraderie. Weekly meetings. Daily meetings. A lovely house not five miles from here.

Ding.

“So this is my theory,” Ned said. “There is no more famous prototype for twins asunder than Luke and Leia. You know, from Star Wars.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And a twin rent from its other will always feel the loss.”

“Sounds reasonable. Only wasn’t there something hanky-panky about Luke and Leia?”

“No,” he said, appalled. “Luke is an ascetic.”

“Do you have a job?” she said, though her voice was so slouched in boredom, she sounded like a teller at the DMV.

“I guess. But it’s weird. I was reading a lot about weather-modification offices in China, silver iodide and cloud seeding. You know, how to make rain and stuff. It’s big in Texas.”

“And?”

“I got a call.”

“Saying what?”

But Ned did not want to say. It was too personal, even for this. He was obsessed with the Vonnegut brothers—one a scientist who discovered the prowess of silver iodide, the other a novelist whose ice-nine plunged the world into the next Frost—and it was