Love, Theoretically

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

It was my fifth or sixth date through Faux, four years ago, and Francesca, the app manager, was scrambling to find someone last minute. “The client doesn’t even want a preliminary meeting,” she told me over the phone. I was running across campus, from an astroparticle seminar to an Intro to Physics TA meeting, frantically dodging gaggles of undergrads. “All he needs is ‘arm candy’—his words. It’s the formal inauguration of a new golf course, and he wants to impress his boss. If someone asks, you met through friends a couple of months ago and work in insurance. Background check’s good, and he’ll pay extra for short notice—you in?”

Rent was due in a week, and I had a grand total of two rotten bananas in the fridge. So I wore one of the three cheap cocktail dresses Cece and I had gone halfsies on, watched a winged eyeliner tutorial, and in the cab ride to the suburbs, got myself carsick editing a fellowship application due the following day.

Austin had gelled-back hair and answered the phone with “Talk to me.” Not a bad client as much as an absentee one. “Arm candy” seemed to be code for pretty wallpaper, which meant that my job was to sit at our table, smile widely when he introduced me as Lizzie, and wonder why the fancy asparagus crepes were decorated with strawberries. There was lots of downtime, which I used to do some grading, phone hidden under the expensive linen tablecloth. At the end of the night he gave me a ride. We chatted about the hows and whys of golf till we got downtown, at which point he offered me seventy bucks to have sex with him. I said no.

To be fair, he started lower. And to be fairer, I had to say no several times (peppered with a few yeses when questions veered to “Are you serious?” and “Are you saying people pay you to just look hot next to them?” and “Are you really going to act like a bitch?”). I wasn’t too scared, because we were on a non-deserted sidewalk. I turned on my heels and ignored him as he yelled, “You’re not even that hot! Your tits are tiny and your makeup is shit!”

The following day I told Francesca, who made a gagging noise on the phone, asked the million-dollar question (“God, Elsie. Why are men?”), and blocked him from the client database. For the following fake dates, I made an effort to do better makeup and use push-up bras. As a people pleaser and a graduate student, I was primed to take all sorts of constructive criticism to heart.

And that was the end of it.

Or just an intermission? Because when Austin looks at me and snorts and says, “No, she’s not,” the temperature around me drops. I look into Austin’s resentful eyes, and my nerves screech. My brain ices over and then shatters into a million tiny razor-sharp fragments that crash noisily into my skull.

I know that I am fucked. Well and truly fucked.

Monica gasps. “For God’s sake, Voight’s about to spill his wineglass on my Fendi chair.” She scurries away, and I cannot breathe.

“What are you doing here?” Austin takes a step closer, and the smell hits: he’s been drinking. I’m going to puke in the cow skull.

“Hi, Austin. How are you?” I sound solid, I think. Self-assured, but he ignores me.

“Honestly, it’s a good move. You kind of sucked as a hooker.”

My shoulder blades make sudden contact with something hard and warm. I must have physically recoiled. And pushed back into—

Jack is behind me. Witnessing all of this. Cross-referencing notes about how terrible I am with Austin. Shit. Shit—“What did you just say?” he asks.

“You ever hire her?” He points at me with his chin.

I can’t see Jack’s face, but I hear the frown in his voice. “Elsie is a physicist.”

Austin laughs. It blends seamlessly with the chatter in the background, because people are still eating. Drinking. Arguing. While my professional life falls apart. “Dude, no way. Elsie here is, like, an escort.”

Anger bleeds into my panic and I stiffen. “This is incorrect,” I hiss. “Not that there would be anything wrong with it, but Faux is a fake-dating app, which you’d know if you read the terms and conditions you agreed to when you signed up. But you’re too busy whacking balls around with a crowbar to learn basic literacy or how to treat your fellow humans with respect. Step away from me, or—”

“At least I’m not some kind of hooker who doesn’t even bother to fuck her clients—”

“Hey.” Jack’s palm closes around my arm and pulls me back into him, like I’m an unruly child who might walk into traffic. His voice is low and menacing, and I feel it reverberate through my own skin. “Austin. You heard her. She asked you to step away.”

Austin lets out an ugly laugh. “This is my house.”

“Then go to your room and play with your Transformers figurines. Leave her alone.”

“Jack, I paid her to go out with me. You don’t understand—”

“I understand what I’m seeing, so listen to me, asshole.” Jack’s tone is chilling. Terrifyingly calm. Austin pales and takes a small step back, and I almost feel sorry for him. “You’re harassing a woman who asked you to get out of her personal space while she’s at a work function. Because she rejected you.”

“But I paid her to—”

“I don’t care. She asked you to leave. Get the fuck out of my sight.”

Austin doesn’t want to leave. It’s clear in his flared nostrils, in his twitching jaw while he stares at the place above my shoulders where Jack has taken up residence. But he doesn’t stand a chance: after a few frustrated seconds he mutters “Fuck this” and finally, finally takes a step back.

My heart starts beating again.

“And one more thing,” Jack adds.

Austin swallows. “What?”

“If you say anything about this, to anyone, including your mother, I’m going to make sure you regret it for a long, long time. Understood?”

Austin presses his lips together and nods once, tight. Then he disappears into the crowd, into another room, and—

I free my arms and turn around, meaning to . . . I don’t know. Thank Jack? Explain myself? Play off what just happened as a fever dream?

Problem is, he’s staring down at me. Watching me with sharp, inflexible eyes that miss nothing, and—

He sees everything. Every molecule I am built of—he could list it, describe it, reproduce it in a lab. He sees the rebar structure in me, and I . . . I see nothing. I understand nothing.

I still have no idea what he wants me to be.

“Jack,” I say. A barely there whisper, but he can hear me. He can hear everything. “Jack. I . . . I just . . .” I shake my head. And then I can’t stand to be seen anymore, so I take a step back and weave my way through the room, looking for Monica to make my excuses.