Hot Takes
HOT TAKES
Now
The noise is deafening.
On Twitter, people who don’t know Rob create threads, some against him, others making him into a victim.
Colleagues around Shirin speak at her desk about “the whole Rob Grayson debate,” saying he is an embarrassment.
Florence and Lilian talk in the kitchen as they make their cups of tea. “It’s all gone a bit too far,” they say in hushed tones. “We should be able to separate the author from the writing.” Shirin is silent as she dunks her tea bag into boiling water, using a spoon to press it into the side of the mug. She is stone-faced, though breaking inside, thinking: No, it’s a fucking memoir, you idiots.
She is desperately empty—and lonely. She recognizes all of this and her routine takes over. She gets up every morning, goes to work, gets through the day, returns home, makes dinner, sits on her bed, eats, watches TV until it is acceptable for her to sleep. She lies there for hours, eyes closed, mind whirling. Soon, even food is unappealing. So much so that she resorts to soup for dinner, which always grows cold as she scrolls through Netflix for a show to watch.
In a last-ditch effort to pull herself out of the hole she is in, she asks Hana if she wants to do something. Hana replies that she is busy over the weekend, with the new friends she has made. They are going to a nightclub in Chelsea. Brunch in Knightsbridge. Things Shirin knows Hana can’t afford. She knows she shouldn’t blame Hana for not being there. She hasn’t confided in her. But she blames her anyway. It is easier to have someone to blame.
And so, for the next month, she continues. Work, dinner, TV, sleep. She counts the days until her trip to Tehran, imagining once she’s there all of this will feel distant and that she will be revived. It is this hope that she clings to.