My old colleagues from Riot.com remained in contact via an online user group dubbed Laugh Riot.
It was animated with chatter at first, people signing up and saying
hello, dressing up what they were doing now as best they could, poking
around for jobs. Then it ebbed, as these things always do. But now and
again there’d be a burst of conversation. On one such occasion it was
suggested that the old gang get together for drinks.
We
met at some nondescript happy-hour joint in Midtown. It was good to see
people. Some more than others. We stood around in a circle, grinning
mindlessly. Conversation proceeded in fits and starts.
Finally,
the crowd thinned out. Melissa remained, alone at the bar, leaning over
the dregs of her Maker’s Mark. I sidled up and offered her another. We
began to talk. We’d practically never spoken before. Had we, in fact,
ever spoken at all?
She’d
been in marketing. That I knew. I remembered walking down the row of
cubicles to mine each day, at approximately 10:15, and passing her to my
right. She had a charming habit of slinking down in her chair and
covering her mouth with the collar of her turtleneck shirt. As though
she’d just as soon vanish. She was dark-haired, green-eyed. With an
alluring little pout. Every day I’d glance at her and think: I’d love to fuck her. Too bad I never, ever will.
Now
that we no longer worked together, now that I no longer saw her every
day, every morning—I was emboldened somehow. Out from under the sallow
fluorescence of the office, I was freed. I was someone else. And when
she looked at me that night, she confirmed my transformation.