“Okay,” I said, my voice coming out more steadily than I thought it would. He turned around, looking at me with those eyes I could plunge straight into. “I’ll have breakfast with you.”
He grinned. My heart nearly crashed. I bit the tip of my tongue as I caught up to him and we started walking down to the street together.
Don’t fall in love, I told myself.Love never works out for you. Some people are meant for love. You are meant for garlic sticks.
“Oh.” He gave me that smile that caused hurricanes in my chest. “My name is Mark.”
Chapter 2:
Mark
Hello. My name is Mark. I am a happiness addict.
I thought I had reached a point of satiating my need for happiness. After abandoning my parent's shelter of money and status, I started earning everything I wanted. I began living with a distinct purpose, I began eating well, and I worked out twice as hard. Still, when I look out at the crowd that has gathered for my art show in the Swalini exhibition space, I don’t feel anything.
If this is happiness, it’s overrated.
The exhibition space for my art show is in a dome-shaped building. My agent remade the area to give off a sense of yearning. Ribbons twisted to look like birds hang from the ceiling and footprints that appear to be running are scattered on the floor. It’s almost juvenile, but in Paris, it takes more than good art to catch people’s attention. Melodrama sells tickets.
Standing in the center of the exhibition, I’m enclosed by a circle of Alina’s friends—Madison, the Ivy League graduate who always manages to bring up her time at Brown University; Brian, who is constantly compensating for his dropout status by arguing with everyone; and Jaclyn, whose parents paid for her GPA, her multiple therapists, and somehow still owe her for her desperate need for approval.
“It’s all so brilliant,” Madison says, her fingertips brushing against my wrist. I snake my arm around her, setting my empty wine glass on a caterer’s tray and snatching a new one. She continues, “Paris, of course, is beautiful, but people look at beauty like that and never try to dig deeper beneath the surface. They want to see that beauty, but they don’t want to feel anything. My friends and I at Brown called that personal hedonism.”
“All of humanity refers to it as hedonism, Madison,” Brian says. “Also, not to be a contrarian, but there are emotions when we witness beautiful things. Joy, appreciation, admiration. They’re positive emotions. The paradigm of emotion isn’t that they’re self-destructive. Positivity isn’t false solely based on its existence.”
The wine is making me lighter, making me more liberated, and best of all, making these people moderately interesting. I finish the wine, looking around Jaclyn to find another caterer.
Jaclyn rearranges her hands around her wine glass for the thousandth time. “Um, I think, maybe, Madison is just pointing out that people love Paris superficially. Like, um, it’s like Mark’s painting of the Eiffel Tower contrasted beside the, um, naked woman. It’s saying people see the Paris attractions like a naked stranger. We’re in love with our perceptions, um, not with what something truly is. People are infatuated, but not in love. Isn’t that right, Mark? Or I’m completely off base. It’s okay if I am.”
“You are the closest,” I say. “Have you seen a caterer? I need more wine.”
It’s not my intention to come off as a dick. All of Alina’s friends are products of their environment. They’re raised to believe they’re special based solely on the fact that they were born into rich families who could pave their road to success and give them a Maserati to drive down it. If my parents had been slightly more coddling and I’d been fine with being coddled, I could have been the same as them. I can’t judge them too harshly, but I can visualize them as AI machines, spitting back the same bullshit in the same embellished rhetoric, desperately attempting to sound knowledgeable.
Maybe they’ve built me into the same machine. It would explain why everything passes by me without any heat or intensity. But, no, that’s just the way life works and it’s all good when there’s alcohol to keep me from cracking under the monotony.
A hand slides around my waist as a hip taps against my upper leg. I turn to see a woman wearing a tight blue dress, which contrasts strangely with her dyed red hair. Even if it comes across as eccentric, she is the type of woman who would look stunning in anything. She kisses my cheek, the scent of alcohol slipping past me.
“Hey, lover,” she purrs. “I’ve seen several interested buyers. This might be your best show yet. I suppose it’s a great present before your homecoming, isn’t it? A reminder of how great Paris is to you.”
“I don’t need a reminder of how great Paris is,” I say. I look over her head, wondering where all of the fucking caterers went.
“Mmm. I think you might.” She kisses me again, aiming for my mouth, but I turn as I think I see the stark white hue of a caterer’s shirt. It’s just a woman’s blouse. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t be flying back to the States. You have enough people keeping everything in line at the company and you can take care of anything from here. They invented video calls for a reason.”
“I’d prefer to be more involved,” I say. “I created it. I need it to succeed.”
It’s not a lie, but it’s not a complete truth either. 2Resonance is the only entity that gives me a purpose. I care about Alina and my art gives me peace of mind, but 2Resonance gives me fulfillment. It shows that I’m affecting people all over the world from various social-economic classes and not just my girlfriend or the unhealthily affluent. When I’m not involved in the company, I have to dive into the small things and take the tiny sparks of satisfaction before it leaves me wanting more.
“Well, we’ll just have to enjoy the rest of the night together,” Alina says, but something else has caught my eye.
A small white dog is sleeping in the exhibition space. It’s nearly impossible that it would be the same dog from six years ago, but it looks the same.
What had she named it? Petit. French for small.
“Excuse me,” I say to Alina, stepping around her to walk toward the dog. As I get closer, I find it strange how still the dog is laying down. I notice the eye isn’t an eye, but a shadow. I notice it isn’t fur but yarn.
I stop a few feet away. It’s not a dog. It’s a bundled-up scarf, abandoned on the floor.
“Mark?” Alina asks. I spin around. She must have followed me over. I pick up the scarf.
