—SHERLOCK HOLMES If You Can't Say Something Nice … Elliott left me a plaintive message the following Monday. When he called I was napping in the same position I'd flopped myself down in after work, so I actually just caught the tone of it, which seemed to be plaintive. When I went to hit PLAY, the tiny cassette made a screeching sound and ejected itself, also defecating lots of brown silky tape containing the last probable communiqué I might ever get from Elliott. I turned off the ringer on my phone and balanced cucumber slices on my distended eyes. They started to hurt from the cold, which gave me goosebumps, so I ate them instead. I felt restless. I didn't know what to do with myself. It was a feeling I remembered having had before, and it always hit me as a sort of shock. I had a superstitious ritual that, when I felt it, I would have to say to myself, “I'm lonely.” The last time I did this was in the pink downstairs bathroom of my parents’ house, where I locked myself during one Thanksgiving dinner in high school.
