Gold Digger

The morning meant hangover and strong coffee, juices delivered automatically from the smoothie bar Elena preferred. They lived together in a loft in Brooklyn Heights, no mortgage just yet because the question of children still hung in the air. 

They had met at a reading given by Colson Whitehead where a coked-out Vic, the opener, stumbled through one of his better stories and Elena, bored, beautiful Elena, was intrigued by his delivery. They hooked up several times, usually fumbling after drinks, and he accompanied her to more than one event, but while the initial spark was there it was somehow clear that their relationship had no future. Vic was a dirty kid from Indiana, no money to speak of, living in a sublet in Bushwick with an even-tempered young couple and an app development wiz, while Elena had her own place (the loft) and put on her own shows in outerborough galleries, and had a trust fund courtesy of her father’s copper mine in Argentina.  

It wasn’t that Elena was shallow, more that Elena didn’t want to engage in anything resembling a serious relationship with someone not serious, and the truth was that Vic was simply a mess. None of his work had taken off, and as a person he was more interested in partying than living. And while Elena could party with him, she had explained multiple times that she didn’t just want someone to do drugs with.

“I like you a great deal,” she said in perfect, accented English. “Sometimes I even think I am in love with you. But I cannot be with you, because of how you are.”

So one day, filled with a Gatsbian passion to make Elena his, Vic sat down and wrote a novel. The entire process, fuelled with illicit adderall and pot after pot of strong coffee, was completed in ten months, an insane amphetamine trip through his own memories. He mined his relationships, his great passionate love affairs, his pathos, all that had befallen him in the brisk 27 years of his life. 

What was it that attracted him to Elena? Her lifestyle, mostly, plastic cups of wine at gallery showings, parties in houses owned by the people who threw them, Dean & Deluca, charcuterie boards, Instagram, no credit limit on her AmEx. On some level he understood that he was a gold digger, but he told himself that it was her art, her freewheeling attitude and foreign exoticism. His own undeniably mercenary attitude aside, there had to have been something there or else he wouldn’t have written the novel. In a fit of hubris, he dedicated it to her, and settled into the long process of querying agents.

Most novels live and die with no one being the wiser. Writing a novel is a fool’s errand, something arrogant people with dreams of fame and no great talent do to pass the time. 

Vic’s novel took the fuck off.

The third agent he queried called him directly, breathless, unable to put it down. The publisher bought it in a near six-figure, two-book deal. Advance copies earned favorable tweets from respected writers. When it came out it put him on 30 under 30 lists. It was near as big a success as a first time literary novel can garner, and it made Victor Adewale a household name in exceedingly limited circles. 

Most importantly, it turned around his relationship with Elena. Now she knew what he was capable of, and now he was a serious author. In the best turn of fate, she associated the novel’s hero with Vic, making him seem romantic, troubled, and of course, super woke. It was mostly due to his Nigerian pen name replacing his African-American legal one, making it seem that he was one with the Nigerian protagonist when in reality he’d taken the name and character largely from one of his friends, a very pretty junkie named Kyle. 

Elena had chosen to believe that the novel had really been written for her, that the emotions contained within were meant for her. In reality, Vic had been writing for Kyle the whole time. They had shared a brief love affair back in Indiana, one that ended thanks to Kyle’s excessive drug use. The boy had lived on in Vic’s heart, and in booze-soaked reveries he composed the novel often crying his way through entire chapters. It was from Kyle that he had cribbed the pen name, perhaps a sublimation of his wish that they had remained together. Elena remained oblivious to all of this, for it was not worth risking the basis of his stability on the policy of truth.

And it wasn’t as if Vic hadn’t done 28 days on his father’s dime right before heading to New York. In light of all that the coke was ill advised, but he and Kyle had shared a painkiller habit, and uppers weren’t a problem for him. 

All this to say that when he woke up, sipping alternately from his compostable plastic cup of juice and mug of coffee, chasing his morning doctor-prescribed amphetamines with a shot of Pappy Van Winkle, there was nothing in the world for Vic to want, and if he was unhappy it was due to something innate which he had no interest in confronting. 

But it was a surprise when he got an email from a familiar address. 

Coming to New York. Would like to meet and discuss things. K. Adewale.

Ah. Well, there it was.

Elena unlocked the door and came in, sweaty and spandex-clad from her morning jog. She picked up her green juice and jabbed a straw in it all in one motion, before falling onto the chaise.

“Good morning, love,” said Vic. 

She nodded, panting. She sniffed the air. “Drinking already?”

He held up the shot glass. “Hair of the dog,” 

She smiled indulgently and pulled her phone out of the case on her arm, arranging the drink in front of her in preparation for her morning Instagram.

His mind raced as he wondered what Kyle could possibly want. Not to get back together, surely? No, of course not, and if he did then he would have to explain that there was no way he’d be leaving his well-off fiance for a junkie. 

“What’s your plan today?” Elena asked.

He looked up at her and smiled, and affixed the thought of Kyle in his mind so thoroughly as to convince her that the adoration he showed in just a single look was more than satisfactory an answer.

Vic showed up to the meeting a little tight and clutching a flask of Pappy in his Member’s Only jacket. He hadn’t intended on getting drunk but he’d had lunch with an old professor whom he hoped would one day be able to finagle him a teaching position at the old university, and hinted strongly that he’d be able to. They’d ran long and things had gotten boozy, as they often did between writers. 

Kyle had insisted, for some reason, on meeting before dark, in a coffee shop. The decision caused Vic some internal raising of eyebrows, but to each their own. If this was on its way to a hookup then surely they could lose plenty of time moving to a second location. 

He showed up to the Lower East Side cafe fifteen minutes late, and yet couldn’t see Kyle anywhere in the cramped spot. Vic felt relief: So it wasn’t his problem that he’d shown up late. The junkie would surely do the same. 

A woman stood up and called his name. He squinted at her, then she called again, and finally Vic recognized Kyle.

Except it wasn’t Kyle, but someone that looked like Kyle’s imaginary sister. A light skinned black woman with long, straight black hair streaked through with purple, rounder than Kyle, softer around the edges, and wearing a black poncho and leggings and lots of fake costume jewelry, but with undeniably the same facial structure. Also, tits.

Vic swayed up to the woman. “Kyle, is that you?”

The woman flinched. “It’s just K, now.”

Against his own consciousness, Vic pulled K into a hug, which she reciprocated stiffly. They sat down at the tiny rickey table.

“So, how are things?” Vic asked. “What are you doing in the city?”

“Here with my partner, visiting their parents in Queens.”

“Oh wow, okay. How’s that going? Having a partner I mean? How’d they wind up in Indiana.”

“I haven’t lived in Indiana in years. I’ve been staying in Seattle. Working at a nonprofit. We have a nice little place and quite honestly, I’ve been blessed.”

A sort of relief washed over Vic. So he wasn’t dealing with a junkie, after all. There was no danger of him associating with someone beneath his professional class. It seemed as if K was a completely new person, a vaguely attractive girl he had met at random in a coffee shop after a satisfying lunch of a light sandwich and several beers. 

He leaned forward, conspiratorial. “I’ve got a flask. Drink to your success?”

K flinched. “I’m also two years clean and sober, so I would rather not.”

Disappointment. “Good for you.”

“That’s partially why I’m here. Part of the program is making amends, and I wanted to make amends with you while I happened to be here. So,” she took a deep breath. “I apologize for enabling you. I apologize for holding a resentment against you, for your well-off parents and the kind of lifestyle you’ve been able to lead.”

Now confusion, and a little anger. “Why would you resent me? What is this self-righteous bullshit?”

K smiled. “Come on, Vic. Don’t make me say it. Let’s just let this be, okay?”

“No, I want to know.” The audacity of this junkie. As if she had authority to judge actions. Moral low ground is where she lived, belonged. But part of him feared what she might say, what objective truth could be revealed. Perfection remained unattainable, and even someone like her could score now and again. In his deep down it was clear that he wouldn’t be able to withstand certain words. Accusations could shatter cracked ego. “Enumerate my sins.”

Now it was K’s turn to lean forward. K’s turn to offer something. “You stole my fucking name, Vic. You stole my name, and you took my story and wrote a novel about me, and then you dedicated it to another woman, whoever Elena is.”

As if it was ever hers to begin with. The lives surrounding Vic were his to take and use as he wished. 

Still the guilt burned him. He badly wished to extricate himself from the situation but he couldn’t. He was transfixed with the pain of it. There would be no relief, no catharsis. He wanted it to hurt, but to no end. Just as he had dealt with watching himself become this thing, this meat, so too would he watch her eviscerate it, with the same dispassionate glare. It didn’t matter. He had become what he was meant to be, what his father had wanted him to be, a cut above, a transcendent figure on a small scale. 

Vic chuckled. “So just to be clear, this isn’t a hookup?”

“Are you drunk? I literally just told you I have a partner. We’re monogamous. We’re happy. We have a cat and a dog and a turtle.”

He took a swig from the flask.

“I’m allowed to drink. Normal people drink.”

“I’m trying to tell you that I forgive you, and I don’t care if you think anything of it or not. You got to dry out in a cushy rehab your father paid for, and I had to dry out in a jail cell and the backroom of a Walmart, trying to work my way back into something like ordinary life.”

It had taken him years to become this. Teenage years spent wasted, early twenties just a haze of booze and pills and a college degree he retained nothing from. The reclamation was his birthright. Returning, even surpassing his upper-middle-class upbringing, in the true American fashion. The guilt, the ever present guilt, the sense that something was wrong, only redoubled in this woman’s presence. It was as if he had been meant to be her, a modest woman living a modest life, and not risen to the heights he deserved. It only increased his frustration to simply be in her presence. 

“Okay, definitely not a hookup.”

“You’re so immature.”

For a brief moment he considered killing her. How easy it would be to tackle her to the ground and wrap his hands around her neck. No one in the coffee shop would care. Trans women were murdered all the time, and everyone assumed it was their fault somehow. This would be no different. 

“I love you. You realize that, right? You’re the only person I’ve ever loved.”

“Vic.” At this point the woman was crying. “I don’t want anything to do with you.”

He was going to tell Elena, when he got home. He was going to admit who he really loved, and set her free of him. He went to the Treehouse and indulged himself right through happy hour, and scored a little subpar coke from the bartender of which he took a few healthy bumps to get his courage up.

She was still awake when he got home, watching some art film made up of white gays streaked with paint screaming nonsense at each other.

“What is this?” he asked.

“I-Be Area. It’s really good. I watch it once a year.”

“Baby?”

She turned and looked at him with genuine adoration, even if her attention was distracted. And in his drunken haze he thought of all the things he would have to give up. Having plenty of groceries in the fridge, easy access to semi-kiny sex, good drugs, fun events, concerts, cab rides, an apartment with an elevator and a balcony, some approximation of human warmth and comfort and all the things that were good in the world.

“Never mind.”