Chapter Text
The night Eduardo accidentally sells his soul to the devil, he’s drunk, sad, and his jacket is missing.
“Where is it?” Eduardo asks his empty room. “Fuck!” He trips over a discarded textbook – Macro Economics – and stumbles, grabbing the edge of the bed to steady himself.
Next to hand, the letter summoning him to be deposed in his own fucking lawsuit sits unfolded, it’s neat typeface mocking him.
Eduardo sinks down onto the ground, rubbing his eyes. The letter is still mocking him, even though he can’t see it. His hands drop and he squints at the calendar.
June 8th: Graduation!
Eduardo checks his watch. June 5th, 10:47 PM.
“Ah,” he mutters. “Need alcohol.”
Amidst the half packed boxes, the fucking deposition letter and a lot of scattered clothes (but not his fucking jacket), Eduardo finds a dusty, unopened bottle of Jack Daniels that Dustin had given him and Mark after Facebook had hit 100,000 users. It had been some sort of a joke. Eduardo doesn’t remember much from that day other than the chicken.
(Ow.)
Mark hadn’t touched it, because he preferred beer, and Eduardo had never touched it because he preferred scotch or tequila. Unfortunately, all of his scotch is packed.
Something in his head reminds him how often he got drunk and just stared helplessly at Mark, and he flushes and groans.
“Okay. Shot glasses.”
They’re packed, of course, and he refuses – refuses – to go out and buy coke or some other random mixer.
Fuck Mark Zuckerberg. Fuck mixers. Fuck Facebook.
The deposition letter mocks him from on his bed. Eduardo sits down on the floor, leaning against his bed, and uncaps the bottle, then takes a swig. He doesn’t need shot glasses.
Turns out Special Edition Jack Daniels tastes like shit. It’s nothing like whiskey, which Eduardo was expecting, but no. It’s a hundred fucking proof and it burns so fucking much that Eduardo gasps, his eyes watering.
He can remember the joke now – Dustin had giggled while presenting it to Eduardo and even Chris had cracked a smile. Mark had been coding.
“Because you’re so classy,” Dustin had explained, “and Jack Daniels is so hick.”
“Also, you’re Portuguese, and this is essential American liquor,” Chris added. “It’s part of your education.”
“I’ve been in the States for years,” Eduardo had protested, but he had accepted it and put it on his desk, looked at it but never touched it. Not until today.
He gets drunk alarmingly fast. It is a hundred proof, but in no time the room is spinning and Eduardo is trying and failing to stand up. The depositions letter catches his eye and he snatches it up. He has to grab for it three times before it actually works.
“Fuuuuuck,” he drags it out, too tired to snap the word off. “Maark.” Somehow he’s on the bed, face smushed against his blanket. “Actually,” he tells the empty room. “It’s my fault. I’m the one coming – ” a hiccup. The bottle of Jack is on the floor, the cap next to it. “Coming back for everything. Asshole.” Eduardo laughs. “You’re such an asshole, Mark. And you’re in California.”
You didn’t come out.
“Yes, I know,” Eduardo lectures. He lifts his head up. Everything is fuzzy. With some difficulty he manages to rotate himself and reach down to grab the bottle of Jack Daniels. He takes a swig, slopping all over his dress shirt and laughs as the alcohol burns its way down his throat.
“I wish you were here,” he whispers, looking down at the Jack Daniels bottle so he won’t look at the stupid deposition letter. “I wish anyone was –” he hiccups. “Anyone was here. I just want a friend but you fucking took all of them.”
Like a divorce, Eduardo thinks, and laughs. It echoes oddly and he shivers, and takes another gulp.
“I would fucking –” another drink, and he gasps. “I would sell my soul to have someone here. Someone who actually fucking cared.”
He’s at the height of self-pity and he knows it and it only makes it worse. Eduardo takes another drink, tipping the bottle up.
He doesn’t remember anything after that.
*
When he comes too, his head is mashed against a pillow, he’s drooling and someone is hitting his head with a sledgehammer.
“Stop,” Eduardo mutters, and groans, because talking fucking hurts.
“I’m not doing anything,” someone says and Eduardo jumps.
He sits up, entire body fuzzy, and looks around.
A short woman is sitting on the end of his bed, regarding him with one raised eyebrow. Her skin is four or five shades darker than his and her hair is curly on top and shaved on the sides. She looks – pitying. Amused.
She’s also a total stranger.
“Who the fuck are you?” Eduardo demands. Normally he would have asked more gently, because he, unlike some people – Mark, he’s talking about Mark – actually has manners, but his dorm is locked and he doesn’t know this person and can’t really remember last night.
A discreet glance at his bedside table shows an uncapped bottle of Jack Daniels.
“You don’t remember,” the woman says. Eduardo wracks his brains.
“Did we…”
“No,” the woman doesn’t let him finish his sentence. “No. You sold your soul to me.”
“…What?” Because what?!!
The woman smiles. It manages to be not nice and sympathetic at the same time. “It’s a contract, you can’t go back on it. Not even with a really nice lawyer, which apparently you have.” She holds up the deposition papers.
“Hang on,” Eduardo says, and he might still be a little drunk. “Are you – are you the devil?”
“I prefer Satan,” says the woman. “Full name: Satan, Lord of Darkness, Destroyer of Worlds, Duchess of Hell, Queen of Death, Empress of Suffering, The Fallen One, Tempter, etc etc etc. But you can call me Tan.”
“I…” Eduardo reached over and took another swig. It still burned. His head immediately felt better. Yep, still drunk.
“Um,” he says, because how does one talk to Satan? “I was drunk. It doesn’t count.”
“It counts,” Tan says, waving her hand at the Jack Daniels bottle. “Sorry, I don’t make the rules. Alcohol wasn’t a thing when the whole selling-soul-contract business was first evented.”
“And when was that, exactly?”
“The beginning of your world.”
“Okay, I need a minute.” Eduardo pinches the bridge of his nose. Then he takes another sip – more of a gulp – because he sold his fucking soul. “Why did I sell my soul to you?”
“You wanted a friend,” Tan says, and there’s definitely sympathy in her dark eyes. “Sorry about the whole…” she moves one elegant finger in a circle a few times, “Facebook thing.”
“So even Hell knows about that,” Eduardo says, flat. Alcohol does wonders for not feeling anything. He should try it more often.
“We both had a significant hand in it, actually,” Tan says, rubbing her palms on her jeans. “Me, and my twin.”
“Your twin?”
“God.”
“Of course,” Eduardo snarks, because he hasn’t been awake for ten minutes and this is already fucking too much. “Of course you guys did. What, is Sean Parker actually a demon?”
“He’s human,” Tan says with a disinterested shrug. “But your friend Chris is a demon.”
“Chris is evil?”
“No,” Tan says. “Chris is just a demon. How do you think he’s so efficient all the time?”
“Ah,” Eduardo says, because he doesn’t know what else to say. “Are there any other supernatural players in my life?”
“Christy. She’s an angel.”
“She is not,” Eduardo starts, heated, and Tan laughs.
“Angels and demons don’t work like you people think they do,” she says. “Angels aren’t always good.” A slow, dangerous smile unfurls across her lips. “I’m certainly not.”
“What about Mark?” Eduardo asks, because he has to know. Has to know if this whole thing has been – divine. If he’s being punished.
Tan’s expression shifts. “No,” she says, wrinkling her nose. It takes Eduardo a minute to realize she’s perplexed. “He’s human. He revolutionized the Internet and the way humans communicate, he did it with almost no funding and no help and he’s human.”
Eduardo is filled with a sort of fierce, twisted pride that he immediately hates himself for.
“That’s Mark,” he says, because what else is there to say? Mark is so fucking incredible that divine (does the devil count as divine?) players have noticed him and Eduardo is the fuck up in the corner.
He takes another drink.
“Yeah, I think you’ve had enough,” Tan says and the bottle is suddenly in her hands. She sniffs it and wrinkles her nose.
“So…” Eduardo says, and he’s not drunk enough for this. “Who’s going to be my friend?”
“Oh,” Tan says, and smiles. “I am.”
*
Between finals, packing and fucking graduation, Eduardo doesn’t really have time to think about this whole situation. That’s what he was calling it – his situation. He keeps seeing Tan out of the corner of his eye, and sometimes she looked different but he always knows it’s her.
He graduates magna cum laude, because he is not a failure at everything – he knows his father is thinking it, but neither he or nor Eduardo say it – and after his parents help move out of the dorm, after the dinner, after the painfully awkward conversation and the drinks, Eduardo returns to his hotel room and collapses onto the king sized bed.
Tan appears in the armchair in the corner.
“Why do you see me as a woman?” She asks, out of nowhere, and Eduardo props himself up on his elbows and looks at her.
She’s real, and he’s a little tipsy but not enough to hallucinate, and she’s fucking real. This is real.
“I – are you not?”
“I’m nonbinary, to use a modern term,” Tan shrugs. “It really depends on how other people perceive me. So – why do you see me as a woman? Do you hate women?”
No? Eduardo scowls at that, because he doesn’t. He’s a gentleman.
“You hate your mother,” Tan says after a minute, mouth twisting. “I see.”
“Excuse me,” Eduardo snaps, “but can you not do your whole ‘all knowing’ thing? It’s rude.”
“It was a guess,” Tan gives him a half smile. “But that’s pretty common, for survivors of –”
“Don’t.” Eduardo orders, and Tan falls silent. They look at each other and then Eduardo sighs and sits up, burying his face in his hands.
“This is real,” he says.
“It is,” Tan says gently.
“I don’t feel any different,” Eduardo says quietly. “Not – lighter, or anything. Not like I’m missing anything.”
“Your soul isn’t heavy,” Tan tells him. “That’s your heart.”
Eduardo’s entire body is heavy, weighed down like there are stones in his pockets and he hurts in a sort of vicious, angry way that makes him think of Mark.
“You really hate yourself, don’t you?” Tan asks. Eduardo peeks at her from behind his hands. Her eyes are so dark he can’t look away, and the breath leaves his lungs as he swallows.
“Yes.” He whispers.
“Okay.” Tan says. She sits with him, and they don’t say anything, and Eduardo is glad.
*
It’s early on still, and Eduardo is avoiding his parents by reading in his hotel room. Tan is there too, stretched out on the other side of the bed and reading his economics textbook, which she thinks is “stupid, but fascinating.”
“You said Chris wasn’t evil,” Eduardo says out of nowhere, looking up from The Economist. “But he’s a demon.”
“I’m not evil,” Tan responds, “and I’m the devil.”
“Can you explain that, please?” Eduardo asks, because he’s having trouble and he’s totally sober, and he’s doing his best.
“All things need balance. That means multiple sides. Sometimes it’s simplest to have two opposing forces – what you have named good and evil. The truth is we’re just opposite. Order and Chaos, if you like. But nothing is that binary.” Tan smiles. “In the Beginning, before we knew this, there was just God. And then God realized They needed an opposing force, and I volunteered.
“God is your twin?”
“We weren’t born twins but we are now. We’re not…related. We’re just twins in the term of balance. Opposites. Two sides of the same coin.”
“Did you used to be an angel?”
“Yes.”
“But you fell?”
“I…sauntered,” Tan is smiling, eyes wrinkling up at the corners and Eduardo falls a bit in love with her, because that’s who he is; he loves too much, and too easily.
“Vaguely downward?” He asks, laughing, because he’s read Good Omens, and Tan laughs outright.
“You volunteered,” Eduardo says after the laughter stops. “So you didn’t mind? You don’t miss…Them? I was,” he laughs, self conscious, “envisioning a Romeo and Juliet situation, here.”
Tan’s face is blank, a careful non-expression.
“It’s complicated,” she says, and Eduardo thinks about Facebook.
He doesn’t want to move back to Miami. His father avoids him and his mother stifles him and he loves and hates them both, in different ways. There are too many shadows between them.
He applies to a hedge fund in New York City and is accepted, and his parents help move there, help him move into a respectable apartment. It’s a loft in the financial district, with it’s own courtyard and plenty of natural light.
“It’s good,” his mother says in Portuguese, looking around his apartment, “that you have money from that summer.”
From betting on oil shares. Eduardo is painfully aware of how much money he has from that ($278,976) and how many shares of Facebook he has (12).
“Yes.” Eduardo agrees in the same language.
“When do the depositions start?” His father asks, standing near one of the large windows and scowling out at the view beyond.
Eduardo swallows, turns to put something away – a pot, into a cupboard. His hands are shaking.
“I don’t know.” He switches to English, doesn’t notice until he feels two sets of eyes on his back. Mark does not get to have Portuguese. “There is another lawsuit. The Winklevoss and Divya Narendra are also suing. It could…delay us.”
“Hmph,” his father grunts, his disdain clear in the small sound and Eduardo busies himself with unpacking another pot.
His parents leave that evening and Tan appears. She looks different this time, looks Latino, like him, with a long face, full lips, and wildly curly hair.
“Nice place,” she says, helping herself to a glass of wine. Her nails are long and sharp looking and Eduardo wonders, for what feels like the hundredth time, how he got himself into this.
“You look different,” he says instead. “Nice, though.”
Tan waves an airy hand. “I had an errand to run,” she says. “Needed a different costume.”
“Oh.” Eduardo pours himself a glass of wine – a small one. He doesn’t ever want to be that drunk, ever again.
“When d’you start work?” Tan asks, and that’s the creepy thing about it. She knows things without Eduardo having to tell her.
“In a week,” Eduardo admits.
“So you have time to kill.”
“Yep.”
“And the depositions?”
“I don’t know,” Eduardo repeats, thinking of his father. “There’s another lawsuit.”
“Yes,” Tan agrees. “I suppose there is.”
*
Work is – stressful. Eduardo works to analyze data and trends and then report them as often as possible so the higher ups can make investments. His awareness of a hedge fund is as good as an economics majors’ is, but he knows that the average person has an only nebulous awareness of them, and he explains this to his coworker, Preeta, over drinks. She laughs at him, flipping back her shiny black hair, and orders another round.
“You don’t seem happy,” she accuses him, and she’s known him two weeks but she already knows that. Eduardo flushes, blames the heat of the bar and then remembers she probably can’t see him too well. The bar they’re in is hip and artfully dim; it caters to the young professionals with money, and it’s full of them tonight.
“Is anyone happy at their job?” he flips the question, grinning at her and Preeta sucks on her lime and laughs.
“I am,” she says. “But my brother hates his.”
“What does he do?”
“He works for a law firm, in Boston,” Preeta waves her hand in Massachusetts’ vague direction. “Went to Harvard law.”
“I went there. Not, law, but Harvard.”
“Of course you did,” Preeta says, teasing, and Eduardo rolls his eyes and picks up a new drink.
He settles into his new job and he slicks his hair back and buys expensive shoes and expensive suits and gets his shirts starched and dry-cleaned. He wears expensive cologne, buys fresh produce and has a kitchen that looks sterile and modern; almost antiseptic in the fact it’s almost never used.
At night, he lies awake and hurts so much he can hardly breathe.
He starts sleeping less, peers at the bags under his eyes in the mirrors and mumbles curses to himself in slippery Portuguese, because he’s vain enough to care about under eye circles, but practical enough to know that he’ll have more. A lot more. He’s an economist; he’s never going to be will rested.
He starts staying late, hunched over in his cubicle in the dim light of the classy green lamp they gave him. His coworkers notice but don’t comment, and he thinks he’s getting away with it – the endless espresso, the lack of sleep, the shaking hands and the constant numbers – until he looks up to find Tan sitting on his desk.
She looks like she belongs there, in a pencil skirt and long sleeved blouse. She’s in what he thinks of as her neutral state; the thin, elegant black woman with the short hair and the large doe eyes. He blinks at her, too tired to really say anything, and his eyes follow the line of her body down to a bit of ink that peeks out from the sleeve of her blouse.
“This isn’t good for you,” Tan says, standing up until she’s behind him. She leans down and presses ctrl + s, the motion a whisper of what Mark does every five seconds and Eduardo inhales sharply, a sudden pain coalescing beneath his ribs.
“I’m…working,” he says when he has a voice again and Tan throws him a look, fingers still on the keys. She powers down his machine effortlessly and then takes a step backward, graceful even in sky-high wedges.
Eduardo stands shakily, grabbing his suit jacket from the back of his chair. Tan takes his arm, like he’s escorting her to a ball, and leads him out of his own office. The lights shut off behind them, whether due to her influence or to some energy saving mechanism, Eduardo doesn’t know.
The doorman waves them out of the building and then they are outside, the air still muggy even at 1 am. The street lamps give Tan a halo, the light reflecting and cascading on her skin. She is otherworldly in the most literal sense and now she looks it; she steps forward, holding his hand, and he extends his arm but does not follow. Tan ends up turning to look at him, the axis of her body slowly shifting and Eduardo feels the axis of his world shift, and hates it.
“I need to stop,” he says suddenly, and he is not drunk but he’s brutally honest nonetheless.
Tan tugs on his arm and he falls into step beside her; they walk in silence for the block. The noises of the city overwhelm them, the cars and the distant sounds of the bridge and boats, the laughter, the whooshing of air conditioners and the dinging of store bells.
“Stop what?” Tan prompts as they stroll across a crosswalk.
“What?” Eduardo asks. The night has washed away his thoughts and all he notices is taste is the grit in his mouth, the fatigue like a film on his skin. “Oh. I need to – to stop making people the center of my life.”
Tan glances at him, quick, her eyes bright even against the grimy darkness of New York City.
“Having more than one friend would help.” She suggests quietly, voice remarkably free of judgment and Eduardo throws back his head and laughs. He wonders what people will think when they see them together; perhaps they are in love, perhaps they are on a date and she has said something immensely charming and funny, instead of something rational and painful in its honesty.
It is common sense. It is absurd.
“I don’t really know how to – to not fall into someone’s orbit.”
“I think you willingly put yourself there,” they pause at a stop-light. The light pulses green, then yellow, then red and they cross the cross walk. Tan is far too at ease in her heels to be a human woman. “Maybe it’s just where you’re the most comfortable.”
“I’m a mess.” Eduardo says with a dry, self-deprecating laugh that people usually find charming. Tan just raises an eyebrow. She doesn’t suggest he go to therapy. Eduardo refuses to consider it.
At his building, she kisses his cheek and watches him unlock the door. When it creaks open, he glances over his shoulder, but she’s gone.
*
With Mark it had been so easy to fall into his orbit and Mark hadn’t even wanted it, had rarely looked up from his coding or acknowledged Eduardo. But Eduardo had wanted so much, had wanted acknowledgment and maybe that’s why he jumped at the chance to fund Mark’s project when Mark approached him.
He had been Mark’s friend, though, surely. Had hung out with him, had gotten drunk with him. Had read his blog at 2 am, had rushed over when Erica broke up, had spent time with Mark and Erica. Had waited for Mark outside the academic hearing, had waited for him outside of his suite, had levered him out of his chair and into the bathroom or kitchen, because some things were essential to survival.
Once he had put his hand on Mark’s shoulder and had ended up touching skin; the neck of the t-shirt was stretched out and gaped wide and Eduardo was touching smooth, soft skin that stretched over a shoulder blade and Mark’s collarbone. And Mark had been so boneless, so tired, that he had leaned back in his chair and turned his head so he cheek was pressed against Eduardo’s hand.
“Mark,” Eduardo had counted to ten before saying anything, had forced his voice not to shake. Mark’s eyelashes had fluttered, hands still on the keyboard, utterly exhausted. He was tired and relaxed, and Eduardo had stood there, drawn tight as a bowstring with an arrow pointing straight at Mark’s heart.
“Wardo,” Mark had said, quietly, and fallen asleep.
Mark’s pulse was slow and strong and Eduardo could feel it like a drum that resounded through his body, from his nose to the soles of his feet. It was a low, steady counterpart to the frantic fluttering of his own pulse, the excitement, the amazement, and the hunger for more.
*
July sweeps into August, which staggers into September and Eduardo finds himself missing school and hating it – he misses Harvard before, resents after.
Preeta is also fresh out of school. She catches him looking repeatedly at his calendar and finally perches on his desk, shoving one of his calculators out of the way.
“We’re going out tonight,” she informs him, crossing her legs. Eduardo glances at them out of a deeply ingrained habit rather than any lust, and then looks up at her face. She’s smirking at him. He shrugs.
“Why?”
“Do you really need a reason, Saverin?” she demands, eyebrows drawing together. He stares at her and she sighs. “Because you’re obviously college-sick, and need to be reminded how awesome it is to be out of school.”
“Right,” Eduardo says, leaning back in his chair. It’s very comfortable, especially ergonomic for people who spend too much time at their desk and Eduardo thinks, for the thousandth time, of Mark, and scowls. “Okay. What time?”
Preeta raises an eyebrow at his expression but doesn’t remark on it. “Eight. Be finished by then!” She hops off of his desk and saunters off and Eduardo sighs, and gets to work.
Preeta orders a gin and tonic for herself and a scotch for Eduardo and they talk about absolutely nothing for the first hour. And then, when Eduardo is loose and warm from his scotch and Preeta is a bit more giggly then usual, Preeta leans forward seriously and Eduardo knows he’s fucked.
“You cofounded Facebook,” she says and it’s like a slap in a face. Eduardo jerks. He’s sitting down but had he been standing, he would have staggered back like he did the first time his father punched him in the gut. Preeta winces and grabs his hand, squeezing it. “I mean,” she says, hasty, “we don’t have to talk about it.”
“It’s…” Eduardo trails off because it’s not fine, but Preeta is his friend. “I did.” He admits, like it’s a secret. “I cofounded it.”
“And…”
“And Mark – I mean, they diluted my shares.”
Preeta blinks at him. She has incredibly thick lashes, the kind dolls have and Eduardo peers at her for a minute, focusing on them, trying to forget the question.
“Because I was a shitty CFO,” he says finally. “Because – we had – it was different for me, then it was for other people. There was a parting of…views.” He drops his head into his hands. “I don’t know,” he confesses finally. “There was so much going on, and I was flying back and forth every week, and they didn’t tell me everything, it just happened.”
“You didn’t know?”
“It was an ambush,” he’s numb now, the wound too deep to hurt and Eduardo feels the scar tissue bunching around the probing words. “It was…it was a mistake. The entire thing was a mistake.”
Preeta’s face is unreadable. “You need another drink.” She doesn’t ask, are you still friends with Mark? She doesn’t ask, was it really your fault? She doesn’t ask, are you sure it was a mistake?
It’s good. Eduardo has no answers for those questions.
(No, he’s not still friends with Mark. He just doesn’t know if Mark knows that.)
*
September blurs into October. Eduardo looks up one day and sees the leaves of the trees that decorates streets turning scarlet and copper. He checks the weather, sees the chill in the air is new and semi-permanent and hunts again, fruitlessly, for his missing jacket.
(“Buy a new one,” Tan suggests.
“No!” Eduardo snaps, and Tan laughs at him.)
It’s halfway to Halloween when Chris calls him, his voice creaky from phone static. Eduardo skulks into a corner outside of his building that smells like stale cigarette smoke and cradles the one between his ear and one hand.
“Wardo,” Chris says, crackling. Eduardo thinks, demon and swallows. “I’m going to be in New York in a few days and I was hoping we could get lunch.”
“Oh!” Eduardo says, scuffing a foot against the dirty pavement. “Yeah. Yeah, when?”
“Next week.”
“Is it…just you, or?”
“Just me.” Chris confirms. “It’s a press…release…thing. It’s complicated, and I doubt you’d care if I explained it.”
Eduardo remembers, Efficient. He thinks of Tan, saying Chris is a demon, not evil. “I have a new friend,” Eduardo says, not sure what he’s saying.
“Oh?” Chris’s voice is flavored with enough surprise that it translates through the phone.
“Yeah,” Eduardo says. “I think you know her.”
“Did she go to Harvard?”
“No.”
“What’s her name?”
“She told me to call her Tan.”
There’s silence. Eduardo shakes a bit, scuffs his shoe again. He has his back to the door, something he would ordinarily never do. He curls forward, hunching, feeling Chris’s slow breathing on the other side of the phone.
“You’re fucked,” Chris says, very quietly, and disconnects.
“I know,” Eduardo says. No one is listening.
*
Chris stares at Eduardo from across the table and Eduardo does his best not to fidget.
The waiter comes by, prattles about specials and Chris orders for both of them – an apple chicken walnut salad with grapes, arugula, and goat cheese. He does not ask Eduardo if Eduardo minds.
(Eduardo doesn’t really mind. He trusts Chris and he’s still trying to figure out how he feels about that.)
They’re in a secluded corner, the light from the window gilding Chris’s hair and glinting off of the silverware. Eduardo’s back is against the wall, and he can see the door.
“So, how have you been?” Chris asks, taking a sip of water. His eyes are very dark, but still blue. Eduardo had forgotten that about him.
“Good,” Eduardo says, and wonders for a minute if it’s a lie. He has been good, but he is also an empty man with a hole in his chest who cannot log onto Facebook without sweating. Is that ‘good’? Or is that normal? “I work at a hedge fund.”
“Oh? Which one?” Chris asks. He’s holding a fork almost idly, fingers wrapped around it. Eduardo wonders if Chris is going to stab him with it.
“Blackstone.” Eduardo smiles. “What about you, Chris?”
“Oh, you know,” Chris waves a careless hand. It looks artful. It reminds Eduardo of all of Tan’s little movements – movements that look graceful, and artful, and are supposed to look careless. He suspects they are not. “Work is work.” He pauses delicately. “Mark is Mark. Dustin is insufferable, as usual. And California is still so warm…it’s nice to feel autumn properly.”
“It’s weird,” Eduardo says, obediently playing a part. “The leaves change colors, it gets colder. I know it’s normal but…”
“It’s not Brazil.” Chris smiles without teeth, sympathetic. The waiter appears, carrying their food and asks them if they want fresh ground pepper. Chris says no; Eduardo says yes. The waiter obeys, and then withdraws.
Eduardo looks at Chris, and the atmosphere changes, constricting. Chris is holding a fork and a knife, the air of civilization, and Eduardo is afraid.
Chris leans forward. “Your soul is missing,” he says, smiling, but there are flames in his eyes and his voice is dark. “I could always see it, can always see them fluttering around, perching on the bones of your ribs – but yours is gone.”
“She has it.” Eduardo admits. Chris jerks the hand holding the knife impatiently. The movement is fast, is jerky. Is inhuman.
“Yes,” Chris’s voice is clipped. “You can’t get back, you know that.”
“It was a mistake.”
“It always is.” Chris takes a bite of his salad. “Why?”
Eduardo copies him. The goat cheese is very good. He thinks, idly, about visiting Greece one day. “Why what?”
“Why did you do it?” Chris’s face is carefully blank. Eduardo is familiar with this expression of his; he’s seen it directed at Mark hundreds of times.
Eduardo flushes and sees Chris shrug. “I’ve heard it all, Wardo. Money, power, women – there’s no use being embarrassed now.” He takes another sip of water.
“I wanted a friend.” Eduardo speaks without realizing, voice flat.
Chris drops his glass. It shatters all over the hardwood floor of the restaurant and Eduardo ducks instinctively, hands over his head. He straightens when he hears the waiter rushing over to them, and as he looks up he sees Chris staring at him.
Chris’s mouth is a thin line and his eyes are wet, and Eduardo wonders for the first time, do demons have hearts?
“Sir, are you alright?!” The waiter demands, looking down at the glass. Chris looks away from Eduardo, up at the waiter, and smiles.
“I’m so sorry,” he says. “I slipped.”
*
Chris goes home, hugging Eduardo tightly with one arm curled around Eduardo’s neck. Eduardo watches him disappear into a yellow cab and flips up the collar of his peacoat. He’s very cold, suddenly, fingers shaking, as if Chris has taken all of the warmth with him. That’s ridiculous, it’s ridiculous – he forces himself to turn around, to begin to walk back to his apartment. It’s close to the East River, right across from Brooklyn and today it smells fresh, the brisk wind almost erasing the standard city smells of garbage and overcrowding and instead carrying the briny smell of the water, and the freshness of the air.
A white woman with a sneering mouth is waiting outside his apartment, brown hair pulled back into a severe looking braid. Eduardo has spent the last block watching her carefully; she hasn’t looked over at him, not once, but her mouth curves into a knowing smile.
He stops in front of her.
“You’re getting better,” Tan says, smiling. He unlocks the front door and holds it open for her; it’s a habit, one Dustin would always tease him for.
“I saw Chris,” Eduardo tells her in the elevator, stabbing the 4 button.
In the elevator, Tan leans against the wall, eyes half hooded. “I know.” She answers. The mirrored walls show infinite versions of her, all wearing navy blue wool, her dark eyes mocking him, her many mouths curving into half smiles.
Eduardo is surprised that she has a reflection. He avoids looking at himself, Chris’s words from earlier playing in his head.
“Did you go to Italian?” Tan asks as the elevator dings and the doors roll open. Eduardo shakes his head, happy to leave the mirrors behind. He and Tan walk down the quiet, carpeted hallway, him slightly in front. “Why?” He pauses in front of the door, half turns to her. “Do I have garlic breath?”
Tan laughs. “Open the door,” she orders and he obeys, shutting it behind her and locking it.
She smells like lilacs.
Eduardo unbuttons his count, watching Tan do the same.
“Why Italian?” he asks, taking her coat from her and hanging it up.
“Oh,” Tan says, like it’s nothing. “I found him during the Renaissance, in Milan. He was Cristoforo, back then.”
Eduardo crosses to his kitchen, shoes knocking against his hardwood floors. Oak, the realtor had said. He opens a cupboard, pulls out a glass he had bought with his parents at Crate & Barrel, fills it with water, takes a drink, and then almost drops it into the stainless steel sink.
“Cristoforo?” He repeats, voice cracking. “How old is Chris, Tan?”
She wrinkles her nose. “Five hundred and….seventy five? Seventy six?” She shrugs. “At least five hundred and seventy years old.”
“Oh, my god,” Eduardo says faintly. “I didn’t – I didn’t realize that you could…become a demon.”
Tan folds onto the couch gracefully, her eyes on his. “Yes,” she says, head tilting. “It takes time.”
“Will that…will that happen to me?” Eduardo asks as he turns his back on her, rummaging in the cupboard for absolutely nothing.
“No, I don’t think so,” Tan answers. Eduardo thinks she might be smiling.
He relaxes, shutting the cupboard door and pours her a glass of water, brings it and his own over to the couch where she’s sitting. Tan isn’t looking at him, is looking at the courtyard – empty, and bleak in the fading light.
“You should really do something with it,” she suggests.
“Like what?”
“Mm,” Tan sips her water. “Plants?”
“It’s the wrong season for that,” Eduardo points out, and Tan shrugs.
“Tell me about lunch,” she orders, and he obeys.
People are beginning to want reports on their money, want to know how much they can spend on gifts and holiday transportation. Eduardo works feverishly and stays late. Preeta, having bullied her way into getting the cubicle across from him, does too. More then once they abandon any pretense of work and wander down to the break room together, making bad coffee.
(Preeta pours too much cream and sugar into hers. Eduardo is politely appalled.)
When they’re not out on the town together, their dynamic is different, softer. Preeta treats him like her brother, is all hands and foul mouth when they’re alone.
Eduardo tries very hard not to fall in love with her.
“Fuck this,” Preeta groans, flipping through a file. It’s 12:37 AM and the client – Jonah Boroughs – had called their office at 3 that afternoon and demanded his report be done by the next day. “What is it about money that makes people so awful?”
Eduardo smiles grimly and tries not to think about Mark. He likes to pretend it doesn’t hurt anymore, that he’s not affected. So well it’s working well. He likes this route better than being openly angry, than having his heart scraped raw down to the nerve, down to the pulsing, living mechanics of it all.
He likes scar tissue. He encourages it.
“I don’t have time for this,” Preeta is mostly talking to herself, scowling fiercely at the report in front of her. “Aunty wants to introduce me to someone tomorrow, I need to at least be well rested, I do not have time for this.”
“Oh?” Eduardo asks, looking up. “Is that serious? Whenever my mother wanted to introduce me to someone, she was hoping we’d get married.”
Preeta is momentarily distracted. “She knows you’re gay, right?”
“Hey,” Eduardo protests, but he’s smiling. “I’ve had girlfriends.”
“Is it like a 60-40 situation?”
“It’s a whoever I’m attracted to situation.”
Preeta gives him a long look. “Ahuh,” she says, clearly not believing him. Mentally, Eduardo edits his answer. It’s a whoever will love me back situation.
“I fall in love really easily,” Eduardo admits after a long pause, looking back down at the reports. “Too easily.”
“I know,” Preeta agrees. For a minute the silence is taunt and dangerous, and then Preeta sighs. “No, it’s not serious. My aunties are always setting me up.” She gets up from her desk, moving until she’s perched on Eduardo’s. He leans back in his chair in order to meet her eyes.
“How many aunties do you have?”
“They aren’t actually related to me,” Preeta explains, grabbing one of his pens and doodling idly on an envelope. “They’re like – friends of the family. Spinsters.”
“I thought Indian women had arranged marriages.”
Preeta kicks him in the shin and he winces. “Don’t be an idiot,” she snaps. Eduardo holds up his hands.
“Sorry,” he says. “I still don’t know a lot.”
“Traditional families do arranged marriages,” Preeta says after a minute, still doodling. She’s drawn a cock and balls, surrounded by flowers and thick, ornamental leaves. “But it’s not like…life or death. You can say no if you want.” She wrinkles her nose. “This aunty of mine, Aunty Bhuvi…she’s traditional, but my parents aren’t.”
“So she’s just ‘introducing’ you instead of….”
“Yeah.” Preeta flips the envelope over and begins a new doodle. “You might know him, actually. His name is Divya. His parents really like mine because my brother showed Divya around when Divya was a freshmen at Harvard.”
Eduardo’s stomach swoops, lurching up. He coughs, picks up his coffee – now barely warm – and takes a gulp. Preeta watches him, eyebrows raised.
“Sorry,” Eduardo gasps, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “But – is his name Divya Narendra?”
“Yep,” Preeta says, pointing at him with her pen. It’s a very fancy pen. He can’t quite believe she used it to draw a penis on an official company envelope. “My aunty is actually his mother’s younger sister, believe it or not.” She pauses. “You do know him. From the Harvard Investors Association?”
“That, and, from Facebook stuff.”
Preeta frowns. “Divya was involved in Facebook?”
“No, he wasn’t. That’s the whole problem.”
“I don’t understand.”
Eduardo runs a hand through his hair.
“Mark…crashed the Harvard servers with a really stupid project of his. It was offensive, very sexist. He got academic probation because of it, but it also got him noticed. Divya and the Winklevii – sorry, the Winklevoss Twins, Cameron and Tyler, were trying to launch their website.”
“The Winklevii?” Preeta repeats.
“Mark used to call them that,” Eduardo flushes.
“He’s not a very nice person, is he.” Preeta doesn’t phrase it like a question.
“Ah, um, he has his moments.” Eduardo looks up; Preeta is raising her eyebrows again. “Anyway - ah, Mark started Facebook and then Divya and the Winklevoss accused him of stealing their idea. They had apparently approached him with a similar idea, called ConnectU.”
Preeta absorbs this in silence, tapping her pen against Eduardo’s desk. “Did you know?” she asks finally.
“No,” Eduardo meets her eyes. “I didn’t find out until I got their letter letting us know they intended to sue.”
“Damn,” Preeta says. Eduardo reaches over and snags the envelope, tugging it away from her. She’s drawn a caricature of him.
“My hair is not that big,” Eduardo objects, and Preeta laughs.
“Do you like Divya? Is he a good guy?” she asks, twisting the pen until the nib disappears.
“He’s smart, passionate. Has a temper. Has a strong moral compass. Was always nice to me until he found out I was working with Mark on Facebook.”
“Hmm.” Preeta purses her lips.
“Look, why don’t you get out of here?” Eduardo suggests, tugging the reports closer to the edge of the desk. “I can finish these. It’s not problem.”
“Are you sure?” Preeta asks, which means she wants to go.
“Yeah,” Eduardo smiles up at her. “But – you have to tell me all about your hot date.”
“Aunty is introducing us, which means she’s going to be there, there’s nothing hot about it,” Preeta grumbles. She reaches over the divider for her share of the reports and slaps them down on the end of Eduardo’s desk. “I owe you, babe.”
“Kick ass. Go to sleep.”
“Will do.” Preeta drops a kiss on his forehead and walks off, the clipping of her heels echoing on the marble floor. Eduardo doesn’t watch her go.
He’s up til almost four working on the report, and contemplates sleeping in his desk and just staying there; maybe it’ll be easier.
But he doesn’t; he stumbles home, unbuttoning his shirt in the elevator. He shucks it, his shoes and his pants as soon as he gets through the door and locks it, and passes out fully clothed on top of the duvet.
Eduardo’s not rich enough to have an assistant that will come physically pull him out of his bed so it’s a miracle he walks up at 9, despite sleeping through three alarms. He’s still late.
It takes him forty-five minutes to make it into work, and he knows he looks like shit. His hair isn’t slicked back, so it’s enormous and his shaving job is patchy at best. He’s also pretty sure this tie doesn’t go with this shirt, all.
But even all of that doesn’t explain the looks he’s getting, and it definitely doesn’t explain the thumbs up.
Are people just pleased he got the report done? He doesn’t even know some of these people.
Preeta accosts him even before he’s sat down at his desk.
“I tried calling you, like, six times!” She snaps, taking his briefcase from it, setting it down on his desk and then grabbing his arm so she can tow him back towards the door.
“I know,” Eduardo says. His voice is more rasp than not today. He really doesn’t do well on less than six hours of sleep, and he thinks he got less than four.
“Why didn’t you pick up?” Preeta demands, dragging him through the doors of their building and into the alcove people use to smoke. There are already people there. “Out!” she barks and they obey, stubbing out their cigarettes or stepping on them and leaving.
“I was running late,” Eduardo explains, and then yawns. “It took me…almost four more hours after you left to finish the report…” another yawn. “What’s this about, Preeta? What’s wrong?”
“Eduardo,” she says and he begins to sweat, because Preeta’s face is composed, her tone heavy and solid like steel. “Blackstone signed a really big client. We just found out. They signed a year long contract.”
“That’s…good?” Eduardo sits down on the bench and peers up at her. “I don’t understand what the problem is.”
“Eduardo,” Preeta says again, hands fluttering by her sides. She’s wearing pink today. He really likes the color. “The new client…it’s Facebook. It’s Mark, Eduardo.”
Eduardo stops breathing.
“What?” He says, but his voice is an extension of himself, is just as brittle and cold as his body, as his heart. And damnit, this isn’t fair, he was making a life for himself, he was doing okay, how dare Mark come in and ruin it, how dare Mark do this. How did he even find out? Eduardo hasn’t logged into Facebook for a long time, hasn’t updated his work information – he can’t, hasn’t figured out how to use the website, hasn’t figured out how to get past the yawning black hole in his heart.
“Oh, my god,” Eduardo gasps, clutching at his face and turning away from Preeta, collapsing in on himself the way he would whenever his father used his fists instead of his words.
“Eduardo!” Preeta is in front of him, suddenly, pink fabric and brown skin and black hair. She’s clutching his hands, is kneeling in front of him. “Eduardo, Eduardo,” she keeps repeating his name. “Breathe.”
“He’s not supposed to be here,” Eduardo tells her, voice hitching. He stops, swallows, blinks until his eyes have stopped burning. He does not allow himself to come apart that way, not anymore. “He’s not supposed to have found me – this is mine. He’s not supposed to take it.”
“Honey,” Preeta says. “Mark wasn’t just a business partner, was he?”
“No, he was my best friend – but –”
He focuses on Preeta’s face, is relieved to see she’s no longer so composed. It’s like he can read her thoughts, can read what kind of person does that to their best friend? in the way she clenches her jaw.
“He can’t be here,” Eduardo says at last, when his pulse is no longer thundering in his ears and everything has become cold and numb and far away. It’s late October, and the frost has been collecting on top of the manicured lawns of Battery Park, on the stubborn leaves on the trees that line the streets. Eduardo thinks perhaps he is being frosted over too, thinks that perhaps it’s safer that way.
“He signed a twelve month contract,” Preeta says quietly. She’s sitting next to him now. “He’s here for at least a year.”
“No,” Eduardo says, shaking his head. “No. I’m not.”
“Honey…”
“You don’t understand,” Eduardo says. “I’m –” I’m in love with him, he does not say. “He –” he betrayed me. He ruined my life. He broke my heart. He can’t do this. “This – ” This isn’t fair. It’s not right. I hate this. How dare he.
“Eduardo,” Preeta says, pulling him into a hug. “I think I understand, a little. I’m so sorry.” She releases him. “Just don’t do anything rash, okay?” She pauses. “You’ve already made up your mind, haven’t you?”
“I can’t be where he is,” Eduardo says finally, turning to her. “Do you understand? I can’t – ”
“You have to leave to take care of yourself,” Preeta is smiling at him. Her voice is soft. “I do.”
Eduardo sags, leaning against her. “Thank you,” he says softly, squeezing his eyes shut.
“What are friends for?” Preeta asks, and laughs.
Chris calls when Eduardo’s out to lunch, trying to figure out how to draft his letter of resignation.
Eduardo stares at the phone warily. It buzzes insistently, almost knocking against his plate of spaghetti. He finally picks it up, accepts the call.
“Eduardo?” Chris sounds like a carefully contained bomb. “Eduardo, are you there?”
He’d been planning to say something nasty, and cruel, and pointed. He’d been planning to be self righteous and unyielding, to knock Chris flat on his back and then end the call. Instead he curls his fingers around his fork and asks, willing his voice not to shake: “How could you?”
“Eduardo,” Chris’s voice is tender. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I didn’t realize he’d do that.”
“I can’t believe you,” Eduardo snaps, ducking his head. The other patrons of the restaurants are studiously ignoring him. The back of his neck is hot. “Blackstone is mine. Mark had no right – you had no right –”
“I didn’t tell Mark where you worked, Eduardo,” Chris interrupts. “I just – he asked how you were and I told him you were doing okay –” Eduardo wonders if that’s true, if this is ‘okay’ because all of the scar tissue he’s spent damn near two years cultivating has been ripped off like it was only a scab. It was too easily; had he been lying to himself? Or is this how it is? “- and that you were working for a hedge fund. And I told him if he wanted to know any more than that he’d have to ask you himself.”
Eduardo covers his eyes with one hand. “Chris…you can’t tell Mark that.”
“I know!” Chris snaps. “I was…flustered, from our lunch. I forgot that if you try to set a fucking boundary with Mark he’ll take it as a challenge instead of respecting it like a grown adult.”
Eduardo catches his waiter’s eye and signals for the bill. “He probably cross indexed every hedge fund in New York with my name.”
“That’s exactly what he did,” Chris sounds rueful. “We’ve both spent too much time around him, because we both actually understand his computer jargon.”
Eduardo switches the phone from one hand to the other in order to grab his wallet.
“Are you in the office?”
“No, at lunch. I’m having Italian.” He pauses, fishes out his credit card and puts it into the server book. The server takes it and his plate. “Tan was surprised we didn’t have Italian.”
“Tan talks too much,” Chris snaps and Eduardo laughs, then quiets.
“They say Mark signed a twelve month contract with Blackstone.” He says. “Is there anyway to get that cancelled?”
“No,” Chris says simply. “I’ve looked into it, and asked Mark. He doesn’t understand what he’s done wrong. He thinks he’s doing you a favor, bringing your fund business.”
“What?!” Eduardo demands, so loudly that the couple at the nearby table look over. “I don’t need it! I don’t need his business, Chris! Or his favors.”
“I know,” Chris assures him. “Eduardo – he’s trying to be nice.”
“Well, he can stop it,” Eduardo snaps. The waiter returns, offering him the server book. Eduardo uses one hand to open it, wedging his phone between his ear and shoulder as he signs the receipt and adds a tip. “This isn’t – this isn’t the way to go about asking my forgiveness, or something, and fuck him for thinking it is!”
People are staring. Eduardo finds he doesn’t care. It’s liberating.
Chris hmms, a sound that means he wants to ask something but doesn’t think he can. Eduardo knows that sound from being friends with Chris for years.
“I don’t care,” Eduardo says, rising and collecting his coat and briefcase, and stalking about of the restaurant. He pauses on the sidewalk in front of it; the cold bites into him but he can’t put on his coat, not yet. “I don’t care if he’s hurting too, Christopher. He did this. It’s his fault. And I am tired of being the bigger person, the better person. He doesn’t deserve me. Maybe he never did. And don’t you dare ask me to reach out to him, or to feel bad for him, or to forgive him.”
“Do you think it’s possible?” Chris asks bluntly, all pretense gone. Eduardo likes Chris best blunt: he likes to know what he’s working with.
He shoves away the thought that says, that’s what he liked about Mark.
“Possible to forgive him? I don’t know.” That, at least, is honest – but then again, Eduardo was never a liar. “I don’t think so.”
He hangs up so he won’t keep talking. He’s shaking.
The doorman to the restaurant walks over, offers to hold his briefcase, offers to help him with his coat. Eduardo accepts, and fuck, maybe he’s pathetic. But he lets himself pretend the doorman’s quick, efficient, impersonal touches are out of genuine care. Of course it’s not, and of course Eduardo knows that. They’ve all got a job to do. Eduardo is just trying to figure out when Mark’s job became ‘break Eduardo’s heart as often as possible.’
*
He hands in his letter of resignation the next day. His boss, a reserved woman named Ola Zawadzki, eyes him as he sits quietly in front of her desk.
“Eduardo,” she says, her slight Polish accent tugging on the syllables of his name. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Ola almost never swears. She reminds himself of his mother, always put together, lipstick flawless, clothes without a wrinkle, voice soft and polite until she’s pushed past her breaking point. Ola never swears, has played the game of Wall Street by being so soft, so polished, so feminine that she became a tiny, sharp blade, ideal for being wedged between ribs, ideal for striking the heart.
(Preeta had explained all of this, was able to understand the way one woman understands another; Eduardo had listened and tried to reconcile this with the knowledge his mother, who is so similar and yet is no more a tiny, sharp blade then she is someone who cusses freely.)
But Ola’s swearing now, red lips twisted in a frown and Eduardo straightens his shoulders and meets her gaze.
“What job is possibly better then this, Eduardo?” Ola continues after a pause. “Wall Street is a white man’s club. I gave you an in. Are you really going to pass it up?” Are you really going to throw this back in my face? Is heavy between them.
Eduardo resists the urge to fidget. “It’s personal,” he says finally, having to drag the words out of his throat where they are lodged beneath his Adam’s apple.
“You can’t be personal in business,” Ola says. The words linger for a few seconds before her eyes widen almost unperceptively, her lips parting.
(Rewind, back to June, when she had sat behind this exact desk and asked him about Facebook. Rewind to when he said, “It was personal for me, it wasn’t for him. I was stupid. It won’t happen ever again.” And she had seen that he was nursing this wound the way someone else would nurse a beer, tears and condensation mixing, and let it go, had smiled and said I tend to have a spot soft for fellow first generation immigrants.
Rewind to a week after that, when she had emailed him telling him he was hired, and to not let it ever happen again.)
“Yes,” the words punch out of him; his hands ball into fists. “I know.”
“I was under the impression that Mr. Zuckerberg signing a contract with us was your business,” Ola says, red lips pursed. She’s still meeting his gaze, staring him into the face while the cracks in his mask widen. She’s always been tough. He can’t even look at himself in the mirror anymore.
“No,” Eduardo reins himself back in, a proverbial hand pressed over his very physical wound. “I haven’t spoken to Mark in two years.”
He’s shaking, from exhaustion, from too much caffeine, from having this conversation – he doesn’t know. It’s a finely controlled tremor that Ola doesn’t deign to comment on. Instead she stares at him, pretty and pale like a hunting hawk and he swallows and stares back, mouth dry. He’s blinking too much. She’s blinking hardly at all.
He expects her to say you’re making a mistake, to say you’ll regret this, to say you can’t run forever.
(Is he running? Or is he limping, tracking blood in the snow, something wild and pathetic slinking off to a dark den to die?)
Ola shakes her head at him, just once, eyes fluttering shut for a moment.
“And if he follows you to your new job?” She asks. Her voice is the sound a twig makes when it is snapped in half. “What then?”
Eduardo stands up, buttoning his jacket and smiles at her. “Thank you so much for the opportunity and for your time,” he says, gaze oscillating between the space next to her head and her eyes. “It’s been a pleasure.”
He leaves, shuts the door carefully behind him to put a solid sheet of glass between them. And then he walks slowly, carefully, down the glass-lined hallway, passing through the larger room full of cubicles and computers, his shoes clacking against the polished marble floor.
It is 2004. They have just hit a million members. He has been shot in the heart with an unforeseen gun. He is dying.
It is 2006. The gun continues to surprise him. His wound festers. Nothing has changed.