Chapter 5
Thursday Night Festivities end up including: axe-throwing, whiskey tasting, jazz club.
It feels to Danny like Julian has read a pamphlet somewhere on acceptable masculinity.
“I’m sorry,” Julian says at one point. “Cabot and Brooks said they wanted to plan it, and I was too busy to realize it was a terrible idea.”
“I mean, all that matters is that you’re having fun,” Danny says.
“Do I really look like the kind of man who would have fun throwing axes?” Julian says.
“Your hair says no. But your tattoo of the Augustus Saint-Gaudens statue of Diana in the American Wing of the Met says I contain multitudes.”
“But you, tough guy,” Julian says. “You really scream elite axe thrower.”
“Actually, we kid detectives were bigger in the slingshot game.”
Danny gets back to the room before Eve. He lies on the bed and checks his phone. Pays a bill. Scrolls through work messages. Opens Pattern.
He looks at his and Eve’s score. It’s gone up to a ninety-two, both because Pattern’s predictions are getting more accurate and because he and Eve have a better relationship than they did six months ago. He finds himself compulsively checking a few times a day, just to see if it’s changed.
He opens the chat window.
Bug: Hi hi! Want to chat?
Danny: I just paid my credit card bill and threw up in my mouth a little
Bug: Bad news bears! Have you considered not doing that?
Danny: I had to buy a $1200 tux for this wedding. But also, like, why did I eat a $22 fast casual Mediterranean grain bowl every single day this week?
Bug: I could make a joke about your insatiable love of hummus, but based on our previous conversations, I wonder if your stress has more to do with your relationships. Do you feel inferior to Eve’s family? Like you will never belong?
Danny types himself a note to check the configuration on Bug’s bluntness.
Danny: Stab me in the heart why don’t you
Bug: Sorry about that! But let’s not hide from tough feelings :)
Danny: You know, if you’re not successful, I won’t be able to start paying myself a normal salary, and then I won’t pay back my college loans, and then I won’t be able to stay in New York. So it would be awesome if you were successful.
Bug: Ah, I see. You fear Eve won’t love you if you aren’t financially successful. Have you talked to her about this?
Danny: Yes.
Bug: Great! How did it go?
Danny: She was kind and understanding and I felt so much better for fifteen minutes.
Bug: And then?
Danny: And then we went to work and I went back to feeling the exact same way.
Bug: Would you like me to suggest some relationship optimization ideas?
Danny: Sure.
Bug: Great! It’s really nice how much you care about Eve. Let me write some suggestions :)
Ideas for Eve
Eve can get easily overwhelmed. Offer her a calm and comforting setting when she returns, but don’t force her to open up if she needs to decompress after an intense day.
Share something nice you noticed about her today.
Put on some music you both like to help her feel at ease. I think Alias Paradise is just the thing for you two tonight!
Danny connects his phone to the room speaker and puts on Alias Paradise, a band whose concert he and Eve went to last month. A moment later, he hears footsteps outside.
The key scanner beeps, and the door opens.
Eve emerges in with her hair coming out of its ponytail and she smiles at him and he feels an almost painful trepidatious ache at the base of his throat, because he feels certain that this is the point of it all, and uncertain, now that he’s found it, how he’s supposed to go about the business of the rest of his life.
“How was it?” she asks.
“They made me throw an axe.”
“Honey,” Eve says. She climbs onto the bed and lies with the whole of her bodyweight dead across him. He is pleasantly squished. “I’m sure you were very brave.”
“That’s what everyone is saying. How was your night?”
“Good.”
He wants to ask what she means by good, and if she can elaborate, but he does as Bug told him and doesn’t force it. He just runs his hand through her hair and lets them sit there in the calm.
“I love this song,” Eve says.
“Yeah? Me too.”
Another moment of silence.
“I liked watching you with Chloe,” Danny says. “She looked nervous, but then you pulled her into the group.”
“Oh,” Eve says, “she would’ve done just fine on her own. But—thank you.”
Another silence.
“Hey,” Eve says then. “So something weird happened.”
“What’s that?”
“So we were all drinking cocktails at the beach, right? And Gigi was playing music. I mean, someone was playing music, but I assume Gigi made the playlist because it was all her vibe, you know? And then ‘AWAKE/ARISE’ came on.”
“AWAKE/ARISE” is a song from Eve’s first album.
A lyric explanation website informed Danny that this was a reference to Paradise Lost. “Has anyone shown you the maze beneath Manhattan? Underneath the C where the light can’t reach.
” Danny remembers listening to that song when it first came out, when Eve was just Julian’s little sister, as he stood on a street corner near Union Square with the night dark and deep around him.
He had lived in New York for two years at that point but still felt so far from local.
He remembers picturing Eve, then, as he had last seen her—a senior in college, her hair in a messy bun, an overlarge crewneck and classic sunglasses.
Both younger and older than Danny. He remembers thinking, Yes, you’re a New Yorker, and it’s effortless.
He remembers imagining that deep underground, far below the subway, there were other tunnels, a secret only true New Yorkers knew, and he remembers wishing she would show him the maze beneath Manhattan.
It has always been one of Danny’s favorites of Eve’s songs, because although Paradise Lost allusions don’t do much for him, Danny understands what it means to long.
“Great song,” Danny says.
“Well, one of Gigi’s college friends was like, ‘Ugh, skip.’ ”
“Incorrect!”
“And then Gigi’s other friend was like, ‘Oh my god, shut up, that’s Julian’s sister, she’s right there, blah blah.’ And then everyone was apologizing and awkward and I just wanted to jump in the ocean. You know? I wish no one I knew had to listen to my music. Do you feel that way? With the app?”
Danny considers. “No, actually. I think I’m just flattered that anyone wants to use it.”
“Does what I’m saying make any sense, though?”
“Yeah. I think so.”
“I can’t think of how to explain it better. Too sleepy.”
Danny kisses her forehead. “We have time.”
Shortly before Danny’s mother left, she found him at home watching TV and said, “Promise me consumption won’t be your only hobby.
” He was twelve. It was also shortly before he enrolled in an online coding class for the first time.
He felt, in those months after she left, the deep weight of not mattering, and it was creation—the writing of code, the solving of puzzles, the enlivening of numbers into actions—that made him feel sane.
He resented and appreciated her for teaching him that—to create rather than just consume.
But he always thought of creation as the making of something someone else would consume.
Danny makes an app; other people use it.
But now there’s this thing with Eve, and it’s a thing they have created. It cannot be used by anyone else. And yet, when Danny gives to this thing, he feels the same way he feels when he codes. Like he is making something that matters.