Chapter Seven
He finds emailing her to be a particular comfort when he returns home (or rather, as soon as he’s on the streetcar) from Kennedy High School.
The book club meetings are a specific kind of whiplash—Yael looks relieved when he shows up, then takes a deep breath and greets him icily.
Then she’s joking and laughing with the students and, albeit reluctantly, with him.
And when they put the library back together, she’s icy again.
And he’s, well … He doesn’t exactly disengage when she swipes at him.
Leo stops him afterward every time, making small talk like he’s working up to something bigger, and that’s what makes Ravi certain his effort is worth it.
Still, he regularly talks to exactly two adults in this city, and one of them seems to hate him on behalf of someone he didn’t mean to hurt and probably will never see again. He occasionally feels indignant about it, but that doesn’t change the fact that it kind of fucking sucks.
And so Elle, who seems as interested in everything he has to say as he is in what she sends him, has quickly become the best part of his day.
Maybe that’s why he finishes the episode so far in advance of his deadline—another excuse to start a conversation with her, because even when it’s about work, she usually says something that makes him laugh. Sometimes at an intentional joke, other times in confused amusement.
They’re flirting, sometimes. He thinks. Ravi’s definitely flirting, and some of what Elle says could be interpreted that way. But he also gets the sense that she’s just like that.
He waits a couple of days to send the finished podcast episode. Doesn’t want to seem overeager, even though he is. With it, he writes, Getting this to you a little bit early since it’s the first one and you might want me to make some changes.
She writes back, I’m sure it’s perfect but I’ll listen anyway, superspy.
The update comes an hour and a half later:
To: Kevin Kissoon
RE: Fahrenheit 451 Edited Episode
I’m pretty sure listening to yourself speak for thirty-four minutes straight violates the Eighth Amendment, but you make me sound funnier and a hell of a lot more coherent than I actually am.
To: Kevin Kissoon
RE: Fahrenheit 451 Edited Episode
NOT FISHING. SORRY.
To: Kevin Kissoon
RE: Fahrenheit 451 Edited Episode
Also, the Eighth Amendment forbids cruel and unusual punishment. I need to work on some more country-of-origin-neutral jokes. Maybe you know that already. I’m not assuming you don’t! Or that you do! Someone take my shovel before I bury myself deeper!
To: Elle Rex
RE: Fahrenheit 451 Edited Episode
I’m glad it worked out okay. And thank you for letting me know about the amendment. I think jokes work best when you explain them, preferably in several follow-up emails.
To: Kevin Kissoon
RE: Fahrenheit 451 Edited Episode
Rude. Here I was, successfully pretending that you hadn’t noticed exactly how often I do that.
To: Elle Rex
RE: Fahrenheit 451 Edited Episode
It’s okay. I like your fun facts.
To: Kevin Kissoon
RE: Fahrenheit 451 Edited Episode
Good, because info dumping is my love language (the guy who wrote the love languages book is actually an intensely conservative Christian who basically thinks the solution to all marital problems is to conform to gender roles
RE: Fahrenheit 451 Edited Episode
Endlessly fascinating. I’d say I wonder what goes on in your mind, but I’m certain that it’s just a collection of book quotes and depressing history.
To: Kevin Kissoon
RE: Fahrenheit 451 Edited Episode
You have no idea.
Ravi looks up at the open After Effects project on his computer. Still rendering. He itches to write back and say he wants to know whatever she’s willing to tell him, but that’s a little much for two o’clock on a Friday. Better reserved for the Not Work Thread, and that’s reserved for after hours.
Maybe it’s a little much even for the Not Work Thread.
It’s true, though. He wants to know everything about her.
Last week, at his suggestion, she’d set up an Instagram account for the podcast. So far, she’s posted his new cover art with the caption BETTER PRODUCTION VALUE COMING SOON and a well-staged shot of a beat-up copy of Fahrenheit 451 surrounded by matchbooks that look like they’ve been nicked from bars, captioned NEXT.
Disappointingly, her profile picture is also the cover art.
Disappointingly and embarrassingly for him, none of the thirty-two accounts that @sophomoreenglishagenda follows seem to be Elle’s personal Instagram, and searches through the already over two thousand followers for “Elle” and “Rex” turn up nothing.
Ravi’s probably being shallow, trying to find out what she looks like.
At one point, he even considered texting Sanaa about it, but they had more of a get-lunch-and-complain-about-our-coworkers relationship than an ask-if-your-best-friend-is-as-attractive-in-person-as-I-find-her-over-email relationship.
In Ravi’s defense, though, at this point it wouldn’t really matter what Elle looked like.
A thrill runs through him every time he gets a new message in the Not Work Thread; he gets a fizzy feeling in his stomach whenever a joke lands.
He convinced himself it was a one-off at first, but there are only so many days you can say that in a row before you start to accept that maybe it isn’t.
He’s due to pick Mia up from preschool in—he glances at the clock in the top right corner of his screen—less than an hour. The thin blue bar in the After Effects pop-up reaches one hundred percent, and he forces himself to get back to work.
“WHO ARE WE messaging?” Gina says. Yael looks up from her phone, quickly glancing around the library.
There are three kids here, each buried in a binder or a book.
Friday afternoons are always empty like this—nobody’s rushing to get homework done for the next period, and there’s a distinct absence of rowdy “study” groups or people trying to eat their lunches in here despite the many signs warning them not to.
“I don’t think we are messaging anybody,” Yael replies.
Gina huffs, perching on the checkout counter. “I just got told off by a student for giving them a failing grade on the charcoal drawing they turned in. The assignment was watercolor. My gray hairs are multiplying as we speak. Entertain me, Yael,” she says.
Yael hesitates, not sure how much she can say without giving herself away. She finds herself looking around the library once again.
“Jesus, Yael, why are you acting like you’re being followed?”
“I have a pen pal, kind of,” she says.
Gina peers at her out of the corner of her eye. “And you need to make sure nobody is listening to tell me that?”
“It’s related to something I feel like I shouldn’t be saying at work,” Yael clarifies.
“Okay, that is the perfect way to get me interested,” Gina says.
Yael looks her up and down, weighing the risks.
She could get in a lot of trouble if anyone on the school board found out, and Lauren Harrison, the principal, is obsessed with image.
But also, while Yael has to hide the grudge she still holds for the way she was tokenized as a student here (they had the second-worst Black graduation rate in the district at the time, and Yael was a convenient picture to plaster), Gina is in no way shy about hating Lauren, and only gets away with it because she has an MFA and a Midas touch for letters of recommendation.
And she’s kind of a black hole for gossip: swallows every bit she can reach, never reemitting it.
Maybe she’s the perfect person to talk to about this. “I have a podcast,” Yael whispers.
“?Ay, dios mío!” Gina says. “Someone call the feds.”
“I heavily critique books from high school reading lists,” Yael says, still whispering. “It’s funny, I hope, kind of profane, and definitely not PPS–approved.”
Gina cocks her head. “Damn, that is something to whisper about,” she says.
“You can’t tell anybody.”
“I wouldn’t—you could actually get in trouble for this,” Gina says.
“It’s all legal!” Yael squeaks. “I checked. And I use a pseudonym.”
“Good.” Gina drums her press-on nails on the counter. “So, the pen pal that has you blushing…”
“I wasn’t blushing,” Yael protests. Gina gives her that look again.
“Whatever. The podcast has been doing well—like, a lot better than I expected. And I don’t really have time for the amount of work it’s become, and I also don’t really have the artistic inclination for the website and stuff, so I hired someone to be my editor.
Honestly, I think he’s just doing it for fun; I’m not really paying him much. But I don’t know.… We talk.”
“You talk,” Gina repeats, one brow raised.
“About … stuff.”
“You’re really bad at this,” Gina says.
“Fine! About our lives, our feelings, whatever. He likes my jokes, and I like his. I’ve already told him things that only Sanaa and Charlie know, and he’s told me stuff he doesn’t tell anybody. Or at least he says he doesn’t tell anybody.”
“Okay, getting better,” Gina says. “Is it flirty?”
“Yes? I think. I don’t know.” Yael sighs.
“None of it really matters. He lives in New York.” And Yael can’t be in a relationship right now; she knows that.
She thought she’d been doing well—some low-level depression here and there, but she hadn’t had a brush with mania yet this calendar year.
Except, clearly, based on the very circumstances that led her to hire Kevin, she’s not doing okay, and she promised herself years ago that until she gets herself under control, she’s not bringing anybody else into her mess.
“Hmmm … doesn’t your best friend live there? You go a couple of times a year.”
Yael blinks, surprised that Gina remembered. “A couple of times a year isn’t enough for a real relationship.”