Timothy can see the regret on Sam’s face immediately, but that knowledge is secondary to the actual, physical pain he feels in his gut, in his heart, all the way down to the soles of his feet. Is Sam right?Ishe jealous of his niece? Yes. No. He doesn’t know.
“You think I’m jealous of you? Standing around taking pictures of yourself, expecting to get famous for it? That’s not art, Sammy. That’s self-indulgence. That’s a waste. A waste of you.”
Even though the sky is now the dusky blue-black that comes just before nightfall, with the barest filament of color left, more floss than ribbon, he imagines he can see her winding up like a pitcher about to deliver a fastball, and here it comes. Wham. Bam. Over the plate, a perfect strike. “I’m notexpectingto get famous,” Sam says. “I’malreadyfamous. And I’m so done with this conversation.”
Sam
After the first three months Tink pronounces Xanadu a success. The numbers look good: really good. “There’s a lot of eyeballs on you guys,” she says. “A lot of eyeballs.” There’s just one thing, Tink adds. Their neighbor, a tiny, wealthy octogenarian with jet-black hair, filed a noise complaint with the co-op board. Tink took care of it, but they need to be a little more careful. Tink adds a rule to the whiteboard: Keep the noise at a seven out of ten.
Xanadu spawns two sets of couples: Scooter and Kylie, Nathan and Alice.
Over Christmas, Sam expects that they will all scatter back to their homes of origin, but nobody leaves. Boom Boom and Kylie are Jewish. Scooter is from the Bronx, so he goes for part of the day to bring presents to his siblings and his mom, but he’s back at Xanadu before dark. So Sam doesn’t leave either. It’s the first Christmas she’s ever spent away from home. She misses her mom’s special peppermint hot chocolate. She misses Christmas Eve Mass at St. Thomas More, when the children’s choir sings “O Come, All Ye Faithful.” She even misses Henry, who is bringing his girlfriend, Ava, home with him. Ava’s parents are in Europe for the holiday.
But! Tink comes by in the morning with a gift for each of them: perfume for the girls, Xbox games for the boys. The eight of them make a Christmas video together. The weather outside is frightful, so they start drinking at 3 p.m.
Every sooften over the past months, Sam’s mother has called to check in, and Sam has told her small, tame stories about the camaraderie and hijinks in the house. She figured her mom would want to hear about the hijinks. Now she tells her about the time Kylie tried to make pesto but didn’t screw the top to the food processor on correctly. You can imagine how that turned out: not well.
“What’d you do about the pesto?” her mom asks.
“Kylie used it for content.”
“The pesto?”
“The video.”
“So you guys are paid to... make food incorrectly? And make a mess, and take videos of the mess?” Amy says wonderingly.
“Not exactly.”
“I’ve made dinner almost every night for the past twenty-two years and nobody’s ever paid me to make a mess.” Amy laughs, possibly mirthlessly.
“We’re paid to produce content, Mom,” says Sam. “A lot of different things can be content.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to come home, honey? Maybe for New Year’s Eve, since you didn’t make it for Christmas?” Sam’s mother had been absolutely heartbroken that Sam hadn’t come home for Christmas. How’d Sam know? Amy told her:I’m absolutely heartbroken, Sam.
On New Year’s Eve they are all going to Tao Downtown. It’s orchestrated, but it’s supposed to look accidental. They have a table. She can’t miss New Year’s Eve.
“Mom. I’m sure.” Then, as an afterthought: “But thank you.” As a thought after the afterthought: “Really. Thank you.” Her parents will probably play board games and drink prosecco. “Poor man’s champagne,” Alice calls prosecco.
The gang from Xanadu stays out until 4a.m.on New Year’s Day. They dance and dance and dance. There are celebrities at Tao Downtown, real celebrities, like (minor) movie stars, but it turns out that to a lot of people the Xanadu crew are now celebrities too. It is on the dancefloor at Tao Downtown on New Year’s Eve that something starts between Tucker and Sam. When they’re waiting for another round his hand finds hers under the table; when they’re dancing, she can’t stop staring at his neck, and imagining her lips on it. Does he feel it too? She’s not sure, so she sets the thoughts aside and keeps dancing. The night is young. Not really, actually, but they are young, so it doesn’t matter that the night is growing old.
Tink comes by the next day after noon and discovers that one of the one-of-a-kind lights hanging over the kitchen island is broken. (“How can it be one of a kind?” whispers Tucker to Sam. “There are six of them.”) He snakes his hand across Sam’s back and she leans into him. She didn’t make it up, the chemistry from the night before. Her knees are weak.
“Who’s responsible?” Tink asks. “I need to know, now. I’m not fucking around, you guys.” Her lip curls up in an unattractive way.
Nobody owns up. Nobody, in fact, remembers.
Tink has a video camera installed. “Sorry, gang,” she says. “It’s just that it’s my reputation on the line here.”
In January, Sam sleeps with Tucker for the first time. They try to keep it secret, sort of, at first... but not really, because people (followers) love collab house relationships.
“Own it,” says Tink, when she learns that there is now a third couple in Xanadu. “Monetize it.”
The thought of a bunch of middle schoolers sitting in their bedrooms like a collective third wheel in their relationship makes Sam a little uncomfortable. She’s had one serious boyfriend before, junior year in high school, for eight months, but she’s still pretty new at all of this, and she’s not sure she wantseverythingto be content.
And yet the numbers and views and followers keep growing and growing. Coupled-Up Sam, it turns out, is far more valuable than Solo Sam. Who is she, really, to complain about who’s watching? After all, this is what she came for. (Is it? Isn’t it?)
Now Tucker and Sam, yes, it’s official: they are a thing. They make a video to “Love You Like a Love Song” by Selena Gomez. Retro. Theirfollowers go crazy. The song goes to the top of the Spotify downloads for that week; Selena Gomez thanks them on Twitter and calls them the “Golden Couple.”
