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: : : —HI, BABY, SHE SAYS INTO the phone, to Gary. She sits on the edge of the couch, flips off her shoes with her feet, and begins to move dirty dishes over to the coffee table so that she can lie down and curl up for a bit. —How's it going? she asks.
—I don't know, Gary says. —Not too good.
—What's up? she says, concerned.
—My computer died this week, he says.
—Oh no—what happened—?
—I'm not really sure, he says. —I just went to turn it on a couple of days ago and it just kind of—did nothing. Like, you know, I pushed the power button and it just kind of—sat there?
—Oh that sucks, Lydia says.
—Yeah, Gary says. —It does kind of suck. Especially since, you know—all my photos of my woodworking stuff are on there—basically my whole portfolio—
—You have backups of that stuff, right—?
—Probably— Gary says. —I mean, I've burned a slideshow of those pictures to CD-R a bunch of times—you know, to show to clients or whatever—but mostly it's like I burn them and then immediately give them away. I might have a copy around somewhere in the office but at the moment I couldn't tell you exactly where—
—Listen—did you check and make sure—I mean, did you just do stuff like make sure everything was plugged in and everything? I know it sounds kind of dumb but I can't tell you the number of times that I've thought my computer was fucked up and it turned out to be something really simple—
—No, Gary says, —I mean, yeah, first I just did the old walk away for an hour and maybe when you come back the problem will have fixed itself thing? But that didn't help—so I went through, wiggled all the cords, I checked the outlet to make sure it wasn't just like the outlet had burned out or something—but nothing.
—Fuck.
—Yeah no kidding, Gary says. —So—he sighs— yesterday Darren came over and poked around in there and he says it's either the power supply or the motherboard—or both—so he wants to come over this weekend, run a couple of tests, and then we're going to have to go down to CompUSA or wherever and I'm going to have to buy a new one of whatever it is that got fucked.
—But wait a second, Lydia says. —This weekend—
—Yeah, Gary says, —I know. It sucks but I don't think I'm going to be able to make it down to Chicago to see you.
Lydia, stung, retreats into silence for a moment before offering: —Couldn't you and Darren do your whole thing like later on in the week?
—It's not really the time that's the issue, Gary says. —It's the money. I mean—you know that money's been really tight for me ever since the price of the studio went up, so it was already going to be difficult for me to scrape together the money for the car rental, and that was before this shit with the computer happened—I'm going to be lucky if I can get that problem solved for less than a hundred bucks. So I'm just—I spent a lot of time looking at the numbers last night and I'm just not seeing a way—
—I can loan you the money if you want, Lydia says, although she knows that this wouldn't really be as easy as she's making it sound, money for her is really tight as well. But still. She hasn't seen him since the middle of July and she's starting to really miss him.
—I don't know, Gary says. —I mean, I thought about that, but I'd hate to do that—it would feel kind of—fucked up to me—
You know what feels fucked up to me? Lydia thinks. Going a month without seeing you. But she manages to not say this.
—So, Gary says, —I don't know, maybe we could reschedule? I'm finishing up a cabinet for this guy—I should have a check from him around the fifteenth— She's obscurely pleased to note that he sounds miserable.
—I don't know, she says. —I mean, this weekend is so perfect, with me having Monday off and everything—I don't think I'm going to be able to get a day off later on in the month; we're going to be working on a big proposal around that time—
A long sigh from Gary. —Look, he says, —I'm sorry—I know you were looking forward to seeing me and I was looking forward to seeing you, too—but I'm just a little low on options right now. So we need to come up with an alternate plan—so maybe we can, like, work together to figure something out?
You know what working together would look like to me? Lydia thinks. Working together would look like you moving out here to be with me, or inviting me to move out there to be with you. It doesn't make sense for us to be living in separate apartments, each of us by ourselves. We both complain about how broke we are but we never stop to think about how much money we're blowing money on separate rents and on all this stupid long-distance back and forth—we should just be together. How about that? But again she doesn't say this.
Instead she says: —Sure. I guess. Sure.
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