looking glass green

a short story

this is the first short story i’ve written since college, and i only completed it because i invented a deadline for myself. as usual, i’m turning it in at the very last minute. so here it is. xo

---

He tells me again.

“She’s nice, really, just not as...” he pauses, thumbing the rim of his glass.

“Intellectual?” I offer.

“Yes, intellectual.” Suddenly there is a bit more air in the room. People begin to move about freely, breezing by one another on their way to and from the bar. I scan the surroundings in favor of looking at him, suppressing the thrill of the reveal. 

“Ah. I see.”

“I guess I just find myself missing our conversation. I need to be with a writer. A real one.” 

I begin to speak, but I can’t quite get the words out. This is the most important part — my favorite part. But now I am awake, and he is gone. Again.

-

I first met Alicia Moss, against my will, at an engagement dinner for a college friend who married up. I was there in support, but also for the free meal.

Halfway through my 4th glass of something expensive, I heard a throaty laugh from across the room. Leaning against the 18x24” Matisse (authenticated!) and dangling off the arm of my least memorable ex-boyfriend, was Alicia. To say I’d known of her prior would not really do my investigative commitment justice. 

Alicia Moss — according to The Guardian, The Washington Post, The Paris Review, and the substack of every Brooklynite twentysomething — is our modern patron saint of contemporary literature. She was discovered as a teen when she won a national essay contest, after which she set out on a year of daddy-funded international travel to collect more stories. Her “inspiration vacation,” according to a 2019 piece. 

That day, I personally felt inspired to shove my fingers down her throat and watch the prosecco regurgitate itself onto the Moroccan rug. This was my first fantasy involving Alicia Moss.

-

He tells me again.

“She’s nice, really, just not as...”

“Intellectual?”

“Yes, intellectual. But...” He trails off, and I hang onto the end of his word. “It’s so strange, she seems to have forgotten how to read. It’s really troubling.” 

I am unable to contain my glee, pulling my lips inwards and catching them between my teeth before I finally let out an uncharitable smile. 

“She forgot how to read?”

“Yeah, like... even menus and street signs. I said the name ‘Bukowski’ yesterday and she looked at me like I’d sworn at her. I just don’t think I can expect her to keep up with me. Up here, I mean.” He taps two fingers to his head. “You know what I mean.”

“I do,” I say, resting my chin on my outstretched hand. “I know who Bukowski is”

I want to live in this moment forever. I want him to say it again. I want him to go on about me, about how I understand, because I do. But now I am awake, and he is gone. Again.

-

It’s a slow morning at Splitz, so I’m standing behind the counter, doing my daily upkeep. @aliciamoss. Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter (except on Twitter where she’s @aliciawrites). Her Pinterest hasn’t been updated since she was apartment hunting in 2018, but I still check. Nothing on Instagram. I scan her Twitter. Then I name-search. A few photos of her at an event last week, posted by a fan. #indietwee #maryjanesarecomingback #coolgirlfashion. 

I’m a few pages deep into dupes for her patterned tights on The Real Real when I get a notification — a Google alert for her name. I click.

“Alicia Moss to release new essay collection: ‘Dusk’ via Penguin Random House.”

I charge out the back door almost immediately, struggling to get a cigarette out of my pocket and continue scrolling the article simultaneously. I think about feeling bad for abandoning the store, but it’s February in New York, and the only people wanting to shell out 8 dollars for hand rolled ice cream in this weather must have some sort of perversion that should be bred out of society anyway. They can wait. 

I rip off my stupid foam hat and squat near the subway grates, hoping to catch some warm air, still furiously scrolling. “Protegé heralded for her ingenuity.” “From her roots in Greenwich, CT.” “Explores the complicated relationship between a woman, her own mind, and the struggle to understand oneself in a shifting cultural landscape.” 

I call Steph, but she doesn’t answer. She’s probably in a meeting or hauling her boss’ kids to archery or something. I open a text, but my hands are shaking.

“Our fav nepotism lit chick has an essay collection dropping dot dot dot with fucking Penguin exclamation point some bullshit drivel about the absurdity of womanhood comma or something period call me when you can I’m being humiliating at work again”

Text-to-speech doesn’t quite get the words right, but I’m not in a state to copy-edit. I hear the hinge on the front door give its tired groan and the shuffling of feet on the entrance mat. I put my cigarette out in the snow. I put my hat back on.

-

The klonopin hits me harder than expected. I’m two pages into a host of notes on a piece I can’t even see anymore. The sun set hours ago, but I haven’t bothered to turn on any lights. The cool glow of my laptop is starting to make me feel like I’m falling into it, into the words I’m not sure I believe, into the words I couldn’t expect anyone else to. What’s that saying, write drunk and edit sober? Well, I write drunk and edit tranquilized, which must reflect my lack of confidence, or skill, or something else I wouldn’t know enough about to know that I lack it. 

Sleep finds me again, slumped over on the kitchen table. The palm of my hand rests on the keyboard, creating 9 pages of q’s that I’ll have to delete the next morning.

-

I see her from across the bar and it is all wrong. He is supposed to be here. He is supposed to say his lines and then I will say mine but now she is here and she’s coming closer. I shift my weight. I look down, trying to stare straight through my martini glass.

She slides into the booth on my side. We’re wearing the same dress and it hangs from her frame perfectly. Like it was a tailored fit, having always been made for her body instead of mine. 

Her hand on my leg, just where the dress stops. 

“I read your piece.”

“Um,” I start, still staring down the glass. Her fingers begin to move in circles across my skin. I start again. “Right, well it’s... um...”

She lifts my chin with her other hand. Our gazes meet. She is so warm.

“I understand it,” she says. I tremble.

“I don’t think... I don’t think you do.”

“No I do. I understand,” she says again. A great wash comes over the room. Figures blur in my periphery. Voices blend to a gentle hum. She slides her fingers below the lip of my dress, edging closer. Closer. “I understand.”

-

“I think it’s unhealthy.” Steph bites through a solid scone, pushing her sunglasses over her forehead. “She’s showing up in your dreams, dude? That’s... I don’t know. It’s Freudian.” 

I’m benzo-hungover at brunch, struggling through an Americano and suddenly wishing Steph and I didn’t vow to tell each other our every neuroses for the rest of our lives. 

“I think it’s fine,” I say, lying.

“You’re not trying to, like, single white female her or anything are you? It’s just weird. I don’t even remember you really being that hung up over Adam when things ended between you. But now you want to wear his new girlfriend as a skin suit or something.”

“No, I don’t think about Adam at all.” I tap my toes to the concrete, wishing I was floating on my back in a river somewhere. “Not at all.” I sip. “But also, I’m not obsessed with her, I'm just... annoyed.” 

“At what?”

“At... I don’t know, everything? What can I say, she’s a rich girl and everyone reads her. I’m jealous. I’m haggard and untalented and spinning out the last days of my youth in an ice cream shop. It’s humiliating. Whatever. That’s it.” I throw my head backwards, looking up towards the sky, half-hoping a pigeon flies by and blinds me with its shit.

“That speech sounds like the internal demise of a girl far simpler than you. That’s not it,” Steph says, gathering her keys. “But it’s something! You’ll figure it out.” She kisses me on the forehead.

“Have fun at work,” I yell after her.

“I won’t!”

-

I get fired on my walk home. Via text. My manager has apparently been reviewing the security footage and, appalled at my 15-to-20-to-30 minute smoke breaks during which I leave the register entirely unattended, has informed me that I am no longer welcome back. Which is fine.

At home, I rummage around in my bedside table. Parking tickets... perfume samplers... my vibrator. With 2 bars of battery. Nice.

In a feminist act of defiance, I stopped watching porn two years ago. I feel great about my moral conscience but since then I’ve taken to masturbating to my Twitter feed, scrolling haphazardly through pages of political discourse and ads for velvet couches and Buzzfeed links. I read an old coworker’s tweet about dropping a bottle of olive oil on the floor, and try to use that imagery to conjure a fantasy that suits me. Hot, young men writhing around on the floor... hot, young women soaping up their tits with oil... a down-on-his-luck executive chef yelling, sexily, at the new server over her mistake...nothing. But then, a ding. A Google alert.

The New York Times has published a review of Alicia Moss’ essay collection. And it’s “maudlin.”

I sift ravenously through the review. “A master class in self-pity.” I grind my hips into the vibrator. “Derivative.” My leg begins to shake. “A lukewarm debut.” I feel a pulse. “Melodramatic and overly verbose.” My phone slips from my hand and I try to finish. I get right up next to the edge of ecstasy, wanting it so bad, and I am so close, but then it’s gone. I let out a breath, sinking back underneath the covers and drawing the duvet over my head. 

-

The collection is out by the next Sunday. I wait until Monday to prove a point to Steph, and then take a brisk pace to the bookstore in the morning, pretending to pore over a few other titles before checking out.

Back at the apartment, I have a fake debate with myself about whether I should burn it or read it. But of course I’m going to read it. I’ve cleared my schedule. These are the kinds of things you can do when you’re unemployed.

- 

At six, the sun sinks behind the neighboring building. I’m lying supine on the living room floor, and I can hear the creaking of the hardwoods above. I wonder why I have never gotten to know the neighbors. The rush of the breeze comes in hard through the kitchen window, but I can’t get up to close it. I am in a paralysis of sorts, but one that I don’t mind. I let my body be heavy. I let thoughts spill onto the blush carpet beneath me, murmuring aloud, to no one in particular. 

-

Dusk by Alicia Moss, Page 167:

“It is only now that I realize how long I’ve spent in a shadow of my own creation. In fantasy and ecstasy of imagined worlds where I am absorbed and remembered in a way that is meaningful, though meaning itself is something that often escapes me. I want to be understood, put simply, but I do not know who I wish to understand me or what their approval would mean. I often think of it as the woman’s war —  imagining a cerebral acceptance, shouting into the void and wishing it would reply.”