The Circle

butchers who sold you meat, bakers who would drop off bread—”
    “But the milkman wasn’t scanning my house! I mean, anything with a UPC code can be
     scanned. Already, millions of people’s phones are scanning their homes and communicating
     all that information out to the world.”
    “And so what? You don’t want Charmin to know how much of their toilet paper you’re
     using? Is Charmin oppressing you in some significant way?”
    “No, Mae, it’s different. That would be easier to understand. Here, though, there
     are no oppressors. No one’s forcing you to do this. You willingly tie yourself to
     these leashes. And you willingly become utterly socially autistic. You no longer pick
     up on basic human communication clues. You’re at a table with three humans, all of
     whom are looking at you and trying to talk to you, and you’re staring at a screen,
     searching for strangers in Dubai.”
    “You’re not so pure, Mercer. You have an email account. You have a website.”
    “Here’s the thing, and it’s painful to say this to you. But you’re not very interesting
     anymore. You sit at a desk twelve hours a day and you have nothing to show for it
     except for some numbers that won’texist or be remembered in a week. You’re leaving no evidence that you lived. There’s
     no proof.”
    “Fuck you, Mercer.”
    “And worse, you’re not
doing
anything interesting anymore. You’re not seeing anything, saying anything. The weird
     paradox is that you think you’re at the center of things, and that makes your opinions
     more valuable, but you yourself are becoming less vibrant. I bet you haven’t done
     anything offscreen in months. Have you?”
    “You’re such a fucker, Mercer.”
    “Do you go outside anymore?”
    “You’re the interesting one, is that it? The idiot who makes chandeliers out of dead
     animal parts? You’re the wonderboy of all that’s fascinating?”
    “You know what I think, Mae? I think you think that sitting at your desk, frowning
     and smiling somehow makes you think you’re actually living some fascinating life.
     You comment on things, and that substitutes for doing them. You look at pictures of
     Nepal, push a smile button, and you think that’s the same as going there. I mean,
     what would happen if you actually went? Your CircleJerk ratings or whatever-the-fuck
     would drop below an acceptable level! Mae, do you realize how incredibly boring you’ve
     become?”
    For many years now, Mercer had been the human she’d loathed more than any other. This
     was not new. He’d always had the unique ability to send her into apoplexy. His professorial
     smugness. His antiquarian bullshit. And most of all, his baseline assumption—so wrong—thathe knew her. He knew the parts of her he liked and agreed with, and he pretended those
     were her true self, her essence. He knew nothing.
    But with every passing mile, as she drove home, she felt better. Better with every
     mile between her and that fat fuck. The fact that she’d ever slept with him made her
     physically sick. Had she been possessed by some weird demon? Her body must have been
     overtaken, for those three years, by some terrible force that blinded her to his wretchedness.
     He’d been fat even then, hadn’t he? What kind of guy is fat in high school? He’s talking
     to
me
about sitting behind a desk when he’s forty pounds overweight? The man was upside
     down.
    She would not talk to him again. She knew this, and there was comfort in that. Relief
     spread over her like warm water. She would never talk to him, write to him. She would
     insist that her parents sever any connection to him. She planned to destroy the chandelier,
     too; it would look like an accident. Maybe stage a break-in. Mae laughed to herself,
     thinking of exorcizing that fat idiot from her life. That ugly, ever-sweating moose-man
     would never have a say in her world again.
    She saw the sign for Maiden’s Voyages and thought nothing of it. She passed the exit
     and didn’t feel a thing. Seconds later, though, she was leaving the highway, and doubling
     back toward the beach. It was almost ten o’clock, so she knew the shop had been closed
     for hours. So what was she doing? She wasn’t reacting to Mercer’s bullshit questions
     about what she was or wasn’t doing outside. She was only seeing if the place was open;
     she knew it wouldn’t be, but maybe Marion was there, and maybe she’d let Mae take
     one out for half an hour?