The Unknowns Read Online Free

drive to the top of Twin Peaks to hold hands and watch the sunrise.
    Giving up, I remove the mask and emerge from the bedroom into my apartment’s vast living room/kitchen/dining area. The light through the casement windows is lurid and exhausting, and when I reach the couch I collapse on it and gaze out at the skyline. When I bought this place the view of downtown seemed a thrilling prospect, but four months later it looks like something off a postcard. I’m wearing the same underwear and T-shirt I had on last night, now sour-smelling and soft, and the couch’s coarse fabric is slightly rough against my bare legs. I’m aware that there’s something I’m trying to forget, and the awareness prompts me to investigate, and then I remember last night’s indiscretion and my brain winces and tries to vomit. I go to the fridge for a Gatorade, and keeping my balance requires more concentration than usual. I drink half the Gatorade standing by the fridge with the door open so the cool air prickles the hair on my legs. Is there a way to ensure that I never see Laurenagain? She’s probably just as embarrassed as I am. Obviously she’s nowhere near as embarrassed as I am. She’s probably embarrassed, although not as embarrassed as I am, and wants to forget the whole thing. Or else: over the next few days our five-hour artificially instigated love affair will tug at the back of her mind, and she’ll decide the only way to scratch the itch is for the two of us to meet for coffee and review our feelings about the events in question and start erecting a mandatory friendship. She could get my email address pretty easily. I shut the refrigerator door and flip open my laptop, which is sitting on the granite surface of the kitchen island. Once it wakes up and finds the wireless connection I refresh my email, but of course there’s nothing from her, only an invitation to speak on a couple of panels at the Digital Future Conference in March. She won’t email today—she’ll give me a few days to contact her first. I set the email client to alert me when a new message arrives and wonder if there will be any girls at the Digital Future Conference. Where is Maya right now? It’s 8:12 on Saturday. She’s asleep in Justin’s bed, her head on his shoulder in the morning-after composition familiar from American cinema, a sheet draped over her to hide her nipples from the camera. I can’t remember the specifics of her face, just hair and glasses and an expression of compassionate skepticism. The newspapers are waiting downstairs, and the crossword would occupy me for half an hour. I put on the pants I wore last night and then ride barefoot down to the lobby in the nearly silent elevator. When I bought the apartment I decided I’d take the stairs every time, to build some exercise into my routine, but I’m always in a hurry or tired in a way that justifies taking the elevator, or else I’ve just done something noble and thus deserve to take the elevator as a reward. I am aware that these are excuses that prevent me from gaining the health benefits of taking the stairs, and I’ve started trying to tell myself I should take the stairs anyway, even when I’m feeling rushed or exhausted or virtuous, but this particular unslept serotonin-starved humiliatedmorning is clearly not the morning to abjure the elevator at last. The newspapers are just outside the building’s frosted-glass front door, the
Times
in its blue bag, the
Chronicle
in yellow. As I stoop to pick them up I wonder if Maya is sending me an email asking if I want to hang out sometime. I recognize the absurdity of this thought and try to dismiss it, but I nevertheless return to the elevator at a faster pace and am disappointed when the doors don’t open as soon as I press the call button. I shuffle from foot to foot on the cold painted concrete, waiting.
    Eventually the metal doors part and reveal the family from the third floor, a young couple with a two-year-old and an