So get this: they’re going to make a movie of my life.
Which she is, and she sticks by her thing not to even use her own phone, but right away I realize that it’s not an awful lot of fun being watched, which I suppose is what my readers are doing in a certain way, except they’re not in my house. The first day or two she just takes a lot of notes. It’s immediately bizarre to me to see someone writing something down when you’re in the middle of doing something absolutely mundane, something that as a writer you hadn’t previously considered worth writing down like hand-washing a sweater, which of course is not something Apple has ever witnessed, which perhaps would seem even more unusual to a non-chore-oriented person when followed by utilizing a tweezer to pry out the sink stopper, which broke ages ago, one of those numerous daily adjustments I stopped thinking about as anything that even needs a repair, like the way I play my answering machine messages back on my stereo because the machine records messages but won’t play them back, or the way I serve Leo (my pug) his Alpo out of my Chrysler Building mug on the sofa every night because he won’t eat until I’m eating and he won’t even eat on the floor by the table because it’s too far from me, which I personally think is really considerate on his part, and therefore I do not mind fixing him his dinner in my Chrysler Building mug seeing as how he’s so obviously trying to keep me company, all of which Apple scribbles down as somehow being crucial and noteworthy.
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Anyway so Apple asks a few questions about my love life and looks like she’s about to cry when I tell her I felt at my absolute loneliest when I was in love the one time (not the same pre-rehab ex; in hindsight I don’t know how to describe that other than a hostage situation) and I guess I don’t do a very good job of explaining, since she does seem to understand that we were right for each other but not the part about why I broke it off. Maybe I’m not so sure myself. I know I lose Apple somewhere in the middle of this story, but anyway, she listens to all this and looks at me empathetically but in that way that you know she has no resources to draw upon for this “part” and, look, I don’t wish these resources on anyone.
It was sort of disorienting at first, to put it mildly, living this way. Leo finally came around after he realized Apple wasn’t coming back, but I’d be lying if I said we were as close as we once were. I go out to the park sometimes, or to the museums, since you can obviously get in free when you pass for a Picasso, but I was starting to feel like I was in a bad horror movie and I did think about messing with people’s heads or robbing banks or something but it’s not really in me and I never did get interested in taking advantage of my, well, I don’t even know what I am now. I’m not invisible. I’m sort of just hidden. Like a chameleon, but without the taste for insects. So finally I just gave up hoping I’d be seen and decided to stay in most of the time. Which, to be honest, is not a dramatic change in lifestyle.
