An Absolutely Remarkable Thing (An Absolutely Remarkable Thing #1)(50)
Robin had said this lady was no-nonsense. She had bylines in every major newspaper and magazine in the world and had several books as well, the most popular of which I had downloaded on Audible and listened to a bit of, called Luck Be a Liar. It was about how people are fooled by imagined or insignificant patterns into believing things that are very wrong. I liked it.
“OK, let’s do it,” I said.
“OK,” Sylvia replied, “your place or mine?”
“Why not right here? Let’s build an outline,” I said, not really knowing what that meant.
Robin said nothing. I think he was terrified of showing me how pleased he was because he thought maybe I’d notice and change my mind just to spite him.
In an hour’s time, we had built a book. It wasn’t written, but it was constructed. It had an introduction in which I talked a bit about me, but other than that, the chapters were basically arguments against being afraid of the Carls and that was that. Easy! I took the outline home that night and I fleshed out some of the sections. Sylvia sent them back to me with some comments and ideas for whom we could talk to to get quotes and more robust backing for my ideas.
March 10
@TheCADDY95: April May is pretty cute, but she completely ruins it by being so full of herself.
@AprilMaybeNot: I mean, definitionally though, what else am I supposed to be full of? It’s just me in here. Well, me and an embarrassing number of Doritos.
I’ve been so stressed that I injured myself. I’m twenty-three years old and my back has flipped out, maybe from sleeping weird, maybe from staying up late working on the final revisions of the book, maybe from stress. Let’s be honest, it’s from stress. I’ve been interviewed for TV, radio, magazines, and newspapers for two months straight. First I was telling my own story, then I was defending Carl, but before long, I was defending the president, the Constitution, and freedom of speech. Robin had hired tutors specializing in press relations, government, and international law to try to make it sound like I knew WTF I was talking about.
The scary part was that I had started to actually know WTF I was talking about. And I passionately believed it.
Robin also booked me this appointment at a day spa. Just some alone time to get my whole body rubbed by a stranger, get my toes fancied up, and maybe come out of it feeling a bit more like a human. The people at the place were all deferential and nice. They knew who I was and they would have been happy to talk, but they also knew when a client didn’t want to and, honestly, I didn’t want to.
This is going to sound weird, but, like, it was nice to just have someone touch me. Flirting with Robin was like flirting with a statue. He kept it so professional that we didn’t even hug. Sometimes I’d lie in my bed at night and fantasize about someone lying on top of me. I just wanted to feel another human. I’d been so cooped up working on the book, staring at it, talking to Sylvia about it. It was like my body had stopped existing.
Anyway, I came out of the massage feeling slightly refreshed. The silent time was a good opportunity to put myself in check and make sure that I was working on all the things I wanted to be working on—that the not sleeping and stress were worth it. I thanked the ladies in the lobby as I left and they looked a little nervous, which I just put down to them not quite knowing how to behave around April May.
It became apparent that it was more than this when a woman came out of the back, having finished her spa day as well. She was in her fifties, she looked as pampered and primped as could be, and she was using that voice that some rich people in New York use that says, “I’m only talking to one person, but I would nonetheless like everyone in the world to hear me.”
“. . . and her nerve! She gets on with Rachel Carver and thinks she can go toe-to-toe on international relations. She’s a child! It would be funny if it weren’t so disgusting.” She was accompanied by the massage therapist who had been working on her.
Hah, that’s funny, I thought. I was on the Rachel Carver show like three days ago.
Everyone in the room knew what was going on way before I did. Everyone wanted to stop it; no one could. Her therapist tried to change the subject rapidly, glancing in my direction. “I really hope your IT band is feeling better, ma’am, it really seemed to loosen during the session.”
“Yes, well, it’s probably all of this drama. I just hate that that thing is in my city and there’s nothing I can do about it. And people like that child—” And that’s when she saw me. She immediately went silent, which was the moment I finally realized that she’d been talking about me.
“Well, let’s just get you checked out so you can be on your way,” the therapist said to her.
Robin had already paid for me, so I just turned around to leave the lobby, heading into the hallway and then the elevator, which blessedly arrived before the woman came out of the spa studio.
This dumb little moment was the first time I heard a stranger hating me in public. I knew then, for real, that thousands of people were having that exact conversation all over the world every moment of every day. Those people were real, and their thoughts were formed by overblown or just straight made-up stories about me that I could never adequately defend myself against.
People all over the world whom I had never met and would never meet hated me. Hated. And what they thought about me was completely out of my control.
At this point in my life I was tweeting about pretty much everything of note that happened to me. You can never stop creating content, both because it feels nice to have people listen and because you have to keep people’s attention. And I had become accustomed to measuring my life in likes. I did not tweet about this encounter. I didn’t even tell anyone about it. I just texted Robin to tell him how wonderful my spa day was and how great he was for thinking of me. I knew that if I stopped being mad at that lady (and at all her compatriots all over the world), I would have to experience some feelings that were much worse than rage.