TO:Colin Yarmouth ([email protected])
FROM:Grace Landing ([email protected])
SUBJECT:yearbook
Hey Colin,
Long time no speak! How are you? Psych—I don’t really care. I just wanted to tell you thanks for totally fucking up my life in high school by giving me the nickname “Elvis.” I found your picture on your company’s website, and I wish you were fatter and balder, but for now I guess the fact that you’re mildly overweight and your hairline is receding will have to do. I would have contacted you on Facebook, but you don’t seem to have Facebook, which, like, how is that even possible?
Anywho, you suck and I hate you, but I also kind of miss you and remember the time you hit a grand slam at the game against Gompers that took us to the playoffs. That was so hot.
Have a nice life—or not—whatever.
Love always,
Elvis
Colin
Whoever started the La-Z-Boy company was a relaxation genius.I feel like it was probably a recently divorced, middle-aged dude who found himself furniture shopping solo, wandering through some overcrowded showroom looking like a deer in headlights, trying to make his way through the florals and the plaids to find something—anything!—that looked and felt appropriate for a bachelor pad. He probably sat on a dozen couches and realized that, for the first time in his life, he would be tasked with choosing this incredibly important piece of furniture based on the level of comfort experienced by his—andonlyhis—ass cheeks.
And, with that realization, suddenly nothing in the entire store was good enough.
I’m sure this entrepreneurial guy labored over memory foams and reclining mechanisms until he discovered the perfect combination that, with scientific precision, could coax any man into a gentle sleep on a date-free Saturday evening in front of the television after 11:00 p.m.
Until the iPhone people came along and fucked it all up by making a wristwatch that vibrates when you get an email.
I rub my eyes and open them, squinting at the blue light emanating from my living room wall. I hate that I’m conditioned to read my emailsas they come in. Even on weekends. I’ve been like this ever since I started working at the firm when my dad was still in charge. It’s his fault. He used to send me messages for no good reason, just to time how long it would take me to get back to him. “You’ve gotta be fast in a customer service industry, son,” he would say.
“We’re in estate planning,” I’d remind him. “We’re helping people plan for theirdeath, Dad. Why rush it?”
Then he’d roll his eyes, make some noise expressing his exasperation with me, and leave my office.
And yet, despite my clever devil’s advocating and the fact that my father has since retired, I’m still waking up to check this message.
I try to focus in on the tiny text, but I can’t see it. I reach over onto the end table and grab my cell phone.
Is this some kind of joke?
GraceLanding? From high school?
I read the lines of her email on my phone three times. It’s notlate, exactly, just two sketches into this week’s new episode of SNL.
Overweight?Is she crazy? I’m down to 13 percent body fat! What picture is she talking about?
And what’s this about a receding hairline? I’m thirty-one years old, for Christ’s sake! Sure, I sneak Rogaine into my hair regimen (it looks like product, for real—makes my hair look “styled”), but it’s not like I have a bald spot in the back or anything. I’d love to meet the ageless Supermansheended up with.
She’s drunk. I mean, right? Shemustbe drunk. Grace Landing never struck me as the kind of girl who’d send alcohol-induced hate mail, but anything’s possible, I guess. I only knew her fifteen years ago. Maybe she’s different now. Maybe she’s a chronic boozer—she could be the kind of girl who keeps a box of wine in the fridge for all I know. Or maybe she’s a huge party girl who goes out clubbing every weekend. Either way,insulting a guy you haven’t spoken to in fifteen years on hisworkemail makes drunk texting an ex look like child’s play.
She seemed pretty put together in high school, but people change, right?
Gracie
Ugh.
Hangovers, am I right?
I woke up in an empty bed. Or, I should say, a bed devoid of any other living being…although not actuallyempty.My sleeping companions last night included an almost-finished bottle of red wine (spoiler alert: my sheets are ruined), my kitchen scissors, my dead cell phone, fourteen pairs of thong underwear, all cut in half at the ass strap, and my high school yearbook.
