Hangover! (Pt. 2)
The continuation of the story of a software engineer in Rio de Janeiro.
This won’t make much sense if you haven’t read part one of the story, which you can find here:
Dev couldn’t quite believe that he was with her, that he was pulling this off. He was experienced with women, had slept with over sixty of them, but Isadora was on a different level. Her beauty chiseled away at the pretty girls of his past until they were all dust. They’d diminished in every dimension, like the small busts in Uffizi that have the misfortune of sharing a room with the David.
One week after his humiliation at work, Dev had approached Isadora in a flash of strength and madness. She’d been sitting at a simple beachside restaurant in Ipanema, her back to the ocean, her narrow blue eyes laughing, dancing, and reflecting the sun. With her dark-brown hair cut in a straight sleek bob, Dev thought that she looked like the girl from Pulp Fiction but even more striking. He’d been looking intently at her and when he walked past their eyes met for one, two, three, four. Inside his body he felt the fear of death but, sometimes, he responded to that sensation with action. Before his brain knew what he was doing he was walking toward the table in a black tunnel vision that was as complete as when one shoots a gun. He could hardly hear or think or see. He felt like he was walking off the edge of a cliff without knowing if there was water or concrete below. When a waitress approached him in the restaurant he pointed and mumbled incoherently. Then he caught the girl’s eye again; one moment later he was standing in front of her table.
The landing shocked him with its smoothness. He didn’t even feel the surface, he just cut right through. Isadora was smiling as Dev introduced himself, first to her and then to her friend. Her friend was also beautiful, in a more traditionally Brazilian way, with long brown hair and tan skin and brown eyes and white teeth. She asked Dev a warm series of questions which he answered with intention. All the while he could feel Isadora regarding him. After a few minutes the pair invited him to sit down, but he told them he couldn’t. “I’m late to meet a friend,” he said. “I’ve already mastered Brazilian time.”
Sure that she wouldn’t respond, he sent her a message that night. The next day she did. During their back-and-forth he fought against a primordial fear with the occasional paroxysm of excitement. When he finally asked her out and she replied, “Yes,” he was positive she wouldn’t show up to the date. But now there she was, sitting across from him in the pleasant night.
The two were seated on the patio of an expensive sushi restaurant on the main street of Leblon. Isadora was wearing a silk dress that, depending on the light, sometimes looked black and sometimes looked green. Behind her was the black glass of the restaurant window; in it Dev could see the reflection of her bare back. When he’d first realized that the back of her dress was non-existent, completely non-existent, he saw the streets of Marrakesh and Baghdad littered with collapsed men. He saw tongues melting in the heat.
As far as he could tell Isadora wasn’t wearing much make up; her entire appearance was a continuation from the beach. The most notable change, besides her outfit, was that her hair was now black and even sleeker than before, but everything lay along the same spectrum. Here in the night, without the sun’s glint, her blue eyes were still shining. Now they carried their own illumination, full of life and with a subtle but unmistakable capacity for irony.
“I’m already full,” Isadora said. “And these were just the appetizers. I don’t even need a main course.”
“Sake it is then,” Dev said.
“That’s a good plan,” she smiled.
Dev reached for the bottle in the ice bucket next to the table and refilled their small cups. The small plates on the table were all empty and the waiter came to clear them away. It’s happening, Dev thought. It’s really happening.
“So…” Isadora said.
“So…” Dev replied.
She smiled. “Are you going to miss Rio when you leave?”
“Yes but I can’t even imagine it. I don’t even know when I’m leaving yet.”
“What about work?”
“I work remote.”
“I just realized that I didn’t even ask you what you do.”
“That’s good,” Dev laughed. “I don’t think our jobs define us that much.”
“Well, they do in a way. It shows you what someone values, what someone is capable of.”
“But most of the people I know just work a job so they can do something else. For example, I’m a software engineer—”
Isadora’s eyes flashed open in surprise. She shifted back in her seat, away from him. When the initial shock cooled, the wryness that was perpetually threatening filtered in and took over her blue eyes. “Like, in tech?” she asked.
“Yes,” Dev said, smothering his anger with laughter. “Why do you look so surprised?”
“You just don’t seem like a tech guy.”
“Is that a compliment?”
“Claro.”
Dev could feel his face becoming hot. “You know Bitcoin, right?” he said, hoping that the word would function like the flash of a Rolex, praying that it would conjure up images of business class flights with a dozen girls next to him. “I work in that industry.”
Isadora giggled. “Yes, I’ve heard of Bitcoin.”
With his face hot the feeling of mortification suffused him again. He decided to change strategies. “I’m also working on a novel,” he said. “That’s my primary focus, what I’d like to do, but it’s hard to earn money that way.”
“That’s amazing.” Isadora’s face had become neutral, but the neutrality didn’t comfort Dev. He sensed that she’d composed herself as one does in the classroom yet, inside of her, a hysterical laugh was roaring through. “I’d love to read it one day,” she said.
“I’ll send you a copy. You can translate it to Portuguese.”
“Combinado,” she said with a small smile. “What’s it about?”
He told her and she nodded along, smiling, drinking occasionally from her sake. The more he spoke the more clearly he could see the position he was in. Before they’d been on even footing, but now he was looking up at her from thirty feet down. He was at the bottom of an empty grave and she was the shadow of the girl from Pulp Fiction.
“What do you do for work?” Dev asked.
“I’m a model,” she smiled.
“I could have guessed that. For how long?”
“Since I was seventeen.”
In her subtle smiles there was plenty of mocking, Dev was sure of it. The worst part was that he knew that she wasn’t doing it to hurt him—she just couldn’t help herself. He was amusing to her, like a funny little man one meets at the bus station.
“Do you like it?” Dev asked.
“Yes, I love it.”
“I feel like it’d be hard. Getting evaluated on your looks, the pressure, that sort of thing.”
“Yes,” she nodded, “but there are lots of good parts too. I’ve travelled all over the world. I’ve met lots of interesting people. Creatives, you know.”
When he heard the word “creatives” a tidal wave of anger rushed forward from the recesses of his consciousness. He continued to speak without hearing himself. He had no idea what he was saying. Inside, he raged. Dev hated “creatives” as much as he hated terrorists. What was a “creative” anyway? The son of a billionaire who writes one page of a novel each week? Some bitch who starts her own fashion brand so she can excuse her Instagram screen time? Some ketamine-addicted Russian flamer that “collects art” in Paris?
“And you?” Isadora asked.
“I really like the Red Hot Chili Peppers,” Dev heard himself saying.
“Me too, they’re great. I’m going to go to the bathroom.”
#
Fifteen minutes after his date came back from the bathroom she said that she needed to go. “I have to wake up early for a shoot.” As Dev signed the check he wondered if she had a rolodex of excuses that she flipped through to suit her sense of irony at a given moment. Outside on the sidewalk Isadora thanked him with a hug. In a final act of desperation, he threw himself onto her lips and she kissed him back, but he could feel her lips parting to laugh. He tried to battle through, kissing her even more passionately, but the hilarity overcame her and she pushed him away, still smiling.
“My Uber’s here,” she said.
“Text me when you get home,” Dev said.
“I will.”
Dev gave her a quick, final kiss then turned on his heel. Underneath the large trees in the cool evening with hardly anyone on the street he stormed two blocks down toward Boteco Belmonte. The bar/restaurant curved gracefully around the corner of the street; inside the lights were bright and most of the tables were empty. Outside circular high-tops ran across the sidewalk; Dev chose one right in front of the door-less entrance.
“Oi, irmão,” a waiter in a white button-down shirt said, walking towards him. “Tudo bem?”
“Tudo ótimo.”
“O que você gostaria?”
“Uísque,” Dev answered.
The waiter made a tick on his notepad and ripped it off the sheet for Dev to keep.
#
Two hours later the sheet had six tallies on it. The number disappointed Dev. His heroes not only wrote better than him and lived more fully than him but also drank more than him. He called the waiter over and gave him the sheet back. “One more whiskey,” Dev said. “To go.”
Walking down the empty streets in the dark he drank his bronze whiskey out of a plastic cup. “A model,” he said, taking a swig, talking aloud to himself. “Must be nice being a model. She didn’t like that I was a software engineer, did she? A model and a software engineer don’t go well together, I suppose. Appearances,” he grumbled. “Can’t be seen with a software engineer. How about a creative though? How about a little faggot who runs a ‘literary magazine?’ Would that be more your style, baby? No? All right. What about a trust fund kid that’s a ‘director?’ Closer? Good. What about an Instagram influencer? How about Jay Alvarez, baby? It’s all better than being a software engineer, isn’t it, my love?
“A writer,” he scoffed. “That really made an impression on her, you retard. You think anyone gives a fuck about writers anymore? Maybe sixty years ago she would have cared but, come on now, a writer? ‘I’m writing a novel,’” he said, mimicking himself in a stupid, high-pitched voice. “Boy was she impressed by that. You think writing gets you laid? How about that guy Jim Shepard? He’s writing stories like nobody’s business. But who does the model want, Jay Alvarez or Jim Shepard? Tell me, Jack.”
“Jim Shepard’s almost seventy years-old,” Jack Daniels said.
“Nevermind that. Imagine he was twenty-five with all of his accolades. In that case, who does the model want? Huh? Well, I’ll tell you who she wants: She wants that faggot Jay Alvarez.”
“That’s right.”
“You can’t even make a living as a writer anymore. You can’t really be a writer anymore, can you, Jack?”
“No, you can’t.”
“If I want to get ass, is it better to be a writer or an influencer? Tell me, Jack, writer or influencer?”
“Influencer.”
“That’s exactly right, Jack. There isn’t one single writer that gets laid off this shit anymore. Can I let you in on a little secret, Jack? Do you know why I started doing this? Do you know why I started writing?”
“To get laid.”
“That’s exactly right, Jack! I started writing to get laid. My whole life has been dedicated to getting laid. It’s the only thing I really care about, Jack, and if that’s the case then why the hell am I even writing in my spare time? What’s the best case scenario, that I sell a couple hundred copies of a book? No way, Jack, no way! It took me about two years but I’ve finally seen the light.”
“You’re going to become an influencer?”
“Yes,” Dev said. “That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
#
The next morning our hero woke up in low spirits. At least he was not too hungover. He’d poured four gallons of water into his belly before going to sleep; thus it hadn’t been too painful to get out of bed.
Sitting down to his computer in the bright kitchen Dev opened up Slack. Taking a sip of his hot coffee he was happy to find that there weren’t any messages he’d missed. But then when he checked his email he saw a calendar invitation titled “Quick Sync” from Tony Marcus, the CEO. It was for eleven a.m. Dev’s eyes widened and his heart rate increased. He searched the invitation hungrily for details. There were none. All he found was three buttons that allowed him to accept or equivocate or reject the meeting. His nerves started to race and he felt his face become hot and the electricity in his nerves raced even faster. He refreshed the page to make sure it wasn’t some technological anomaly; the invitation was still there when the page reloaded a moment later.
He was about to be fired and there wasn’t anything to do but wait. Closing his computer he sat down on the couch in the bright living room and opened up Instagram. His entire explore page was just tits and ass. He clicked on one of the squares and watched a girl with enormous melons—the high school word came back to him, randomly—shake up a cocktail in a skimpy bikini. He spent about five minutes with her before returning to the explore page for another ring around the rosie. Now he was clicking on another square that increased in size and filmed a girl’s large ass in miniscule shorts. She was bending over to put clothes into a laundry machine.
Dev got up off of the couch, went into his bedroom, and jerked off.
Then he returned to the couch and opened up Instagram again. Deliberately he searched for models, went into their comments, tried to get a sense of which men they were interacting with. He clicked on various handles that led him to accounts with blue checkmarks next to their names—this indicated fame. With the curiosity of a great scientist, Dev went through their profiles. He discovered that these men were not better looking than him, nor could they be much smarter. What they were good at was getting attention. If he’d been better at getting attention Isadora would have been his. But there were plenty of Isadoras out there. The main thing was to start getting attention now. If Dev could start getting attention, then the world would be his.
#
“There’s no easy way to put this,” Tony Marcus said, his broad face and shoulders reigning supreme in a Zoom panel, “but we’re laying off a big chunk of the company. Unfortunately you’re part of that chunk.”
Dev stared at him blankly, saying nothing.
“If it makes you feel any better,” Tony continued, “I’ll probably be out the door soon too. Ever since we took those big losses last quarter, the board has been up our asses… In any case, legal is going to send you some documents to sign. One of them is a non-disparagement agreement. If you sign it, in return for not talking shit on the company, you get three months of severance. You also get to keep your work laptop. If I were you I’d sign it, but you’re free to do as you like.”
“No doubt I’m signing it,” Dev said. “I need that severance badly.”
“Right… Well, anything else you want to say?”
“No, nothing. I really liked working with you, Tony. You’re a good guy.”
“It was a pleasure working with you too. If you ever need any help getting work in the future I’m always here to vouch for your”—he struggled for a while, trying to find the right word—“humanity.”
#
Sunglasses on, Dev walked down a sun-dappled street underneath a canopy of green leaves. All around him the tree trunks were enormous. They broke out of the sidewalk where they appeared next to scattered restaurant tables and lines that extended outside of small shops. There was the hum of quiet conversation and traffic in the distance and Dev turned right and walked until he reached the boardwalk by the ocean. A smattering of people were walking and running with the sun on their skin and the blue cloudless sky above. Hardly anyone was on the beach now except for the volleyball players who were sweating and squatting down, accentuating their perfect physiques. Normally Dev would have stopped to watch them, but instead he kept moving forward.
Near Posto Eleven he went into one of the beachside restaurants that he frequented. Like all of the others it was open on all sides; two waiters were working and every table was empty. He smiled at one of them who smiled back at him; the waiter offered up the entire space. Dev sat at a wooden table a few feet away from the restaurant’s edge, which led right onto the sand. A little further down there was an empty beach volleyball court and then there were two girls laying side-by-side in the sun before the ocean. Dev ordered a draft beer that came out in a frosted mug.
Sitting by the beach watching the waves, watching the girls, drinking his beer, Dev started nodding his head. Going out with Isadora was a step in the right direction. He’d gone up from college ball to the NFL. He’d felt the pressure, the speed, the agility, the hits. He’d gotten close to where he knew was meant to be.
Dev looked out to the horizon and there the path rendered itself. The following day he would write down a list of possibilities: travel, fashion, food, music, movies—a long list of what his Instagram and TikTok accounts could focus on. He would think through that list, research each of the industries, determine where he had the greatest competitive advantage. And then he would try and try and try again until he succeeded.
“It’s my destiny,” he whispered to himself aloud, watching the waves. “Girls like Isadora are my destiny.”