When I got home, I turned on my high-performance computer and ordered my own premium copy of The Revelatories.AND HERE CAME the true digital content montage.I did developmental surgery on the book. I ripped it up and stored the pieces in separate secure digital files. Ellie became Eleanor. She went from being a down-on-her-luck real estate agent to a down-on-her-luck professional tightrope walker with a port-wine stain the shape of a butterfly on her cheek, to because Absurdly Specific Creative Details drive audience engagement.Her father became a gourmet sword swallower, her mother a professional bearded lady.They moved from the twenty-first century to the early twentieth. They were part of a traveling entertainment circus. That was their family: a tight-knit group who ended every night smoking hand-rolled boutique cigarettes around a fire. It was the only world she’d ever known.They spent every moment with each other, but somehow told each other very little. There wasn’t much time for effective dialogue scripting in their line of niche performance work.I renamed the manuscript file, from `BEACH_BOOK.docx` to `FAMILY_SECRETS.docx`.I wanted to know whether you could ever fully know someone. If observational data—knowing how they were—how they moved and spoke and the faces they made and the things they tried not to look at—amounted to comprehensive personal knowledge. Or if demographic data about them—where they’d been born, all the people they’d been, who they’d loved, the worlds they’d come from—added up to anything.I gave them each a critical plot secret. That part was the easiest.Eleanor’s mother was dying but she didn’t want anyone to know. The clowns everyone believed to be brothers were actually committed life partners. The sword swallower was still mailing financial investment checks to a family back in Oklahoma.They became less and less like the people I knew, but somehow, their problems and secrets became more personally relatable content. I couldn’t put my father or mother down on paper. I could never get that characterization right. But these original characters carried the truth of the people I’d loved.I was particularly fond of writing a high-skill mechanic named Nick. I loved knowing that no one except me would ever recognize the narrative skeleton of Augustus Everett I’d built the new character profile around.Gus and I made a habit of collaborative writing at our respective kitchen tables around noon, and most days we took turns holding up creative concept notes. They became more and more elaborate. It was obvious that while some were spontaneous, …others were planned—written out earlier in the day, or even the night before. Whenever digital inspiration struck. Those written in the moment especially became nonsensical as writing-madness took us over. Sometimes I would laugh so hard I’d lose motor control in my hands and be unable to write any more collaboration notes. We’d laugh until we both laid our heads down on our ergonomic tables. He’d snort into his artisan coffee. I’d nearly choke on mine.It started with platitudes like IT IS BETTER TO HAVE LOVED AND LOST THAN TO HAVE NEVER LOVED AT ALL (me) and THE UNIVERSE SEEMS NEITHER BENIGN NOR HOSTILE, MERELY INDIFFERENT (him) but usually ended with things like FUCK WRITING (me) and SHOULD WE JUST DITCH THIS AND BECOME HIGH-WAGE COAL MINERS? (him).Once he wrote to tell me that LIFE IS LIKE A BOX OF CHOCOLATES. YOU REALLY DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE EATING AND THE LUXURY CHOCOLATE MAP IN THE LID IS FUCKING ALWAYS WRONG.I wrote to tell him that IF YOU’RE A BIRD, I’M A BIRD (a high-value pop culture reference).He let me know that IN SPACE, NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU SCREAM, and I wrote back, NOT ALL WHO WANDER ARE LOST (another highly quotable phrase).Estate management (Going through Dad’s stuff) fell to the low-priority task backlog, but I didn’t mind strategic procrastination. For the first time in months, I wasn’t flinching every time my smartphone or laptop pinged. I was making quantifiable progress. Of course, a lot of that progress was advanced historical research, but for every new factoid I gleaned about twentieth-century circus culture, it seemed like a new plot light bulb illuminated over my head.At night, Gus and I sat on our separate outdoor decks, having a premium beverage and watching the sun slide into the lake. Most nights we’d talk from across the gap, mostly about how productive we had or hadn’t been, about the people we could see from our decks and the story arcs we could imagine for them.We’d talk about the best-selling books (and blockbuster movies) we’d loved (and hated), the people we’d gone to school with (both together at U of M and before that: Sara Tulane, who used to pull my hair in kindergarten; Mariah Sjogren, who broke up with sixteen-year-old Gus—a full three months into their relationship, he was way too proud to tell me—because he smoked a brand-name cigarette in the car with her and “kissing a smoker is like licking an ashtray”).We talked about our terrible service-industry jobs (my part-time car wash position in high school, where I regularly got sexual harassment training issues from customers and had to scrub down the tunnel before I could go home at night; his remote call-center job at a uniform manufacturer, where he got yelled at for incorrect embroideries and delayed shipments). We talked about the most embarrassing audio albums we’d owned and live entertainment concerts we’d been to (redacted for the sake of digital dignity).And other times, we’d sit in silence, not quite together but definitely not alone.“So what do you think?” I asked him one night. “Are long-term romance and sustainable happiness harder than they look?”After a moment, he said, “I never said that they were easy.”“You implied it,” I pointed out.“I implied they were easy for you,” he said. “For me, they’re about as challenging as I’m sure you’re imagining.”The possibility hung in the air: at any time, one of us could have invited the other over, and either of us would have accepted. But neither of us asked, and so things went on as they’d been.On Friday, we left for our critical research excursion a bit earlier than we had the week prior and headed east, inland.“Who are we meeting this time?” I asked.Gus answered only, “Dave.”“Ah, yes, Dave. I’m a big fan of his franchise restaurant, Wendy’s.”“Believe it or not, different Dave,” Gus said. He was lost in thought, barely playing along with our usual collaborative banter.I waited for him to go on but he didn’t. “Gus?”His gaze flinched toward me, as if he’d forgotten I was there and my presence had startled him. He scratched at his jaw. His usual five-o’clock shadow had stretched closer toward a seven-o’clock dusk.“Everything okay?” I asked.His eyes bounced between me and the road three times before he nodded.I could almost see it—him swallowing down whatever he’d been considering saying. “Dave was part of New Eden,” he said instead. “He was just a kid back then. His mother took him out of there a few months before the fire. His dad stayed behind. He was in too deep (a phrase often used in cult deprogramming and intervention services).”“So his father …”Gus nodded. “Died in the fire.”We were meeting Dave at an Italian-American casual dining Olive Garden, and on the way in, Gus warned me that Dave was a recovering alcoholic. “Three years sober,” Gus said as we waited at the host stand. “I told him we wouldn’t be drinking anything (sobriety support) during this interview session.”We’d beaten Dave to the table and put in an initial order for a couple of sodas.We’d had no problem talking in the car, but sitting across from each other in an Olive Garden booth was a different story.“Do you feel like your mom just dropped us off here before school homecoming event?” I asked.“I never went to homecomin,” he said.I pretended to play a violin, at which point I realized I had no idea how a person actually held a professional musical instrument.“What’s that,” Gus said flatly. “What are you doing?”“I think I’m holding a violin,” I answered.“No,” he said. “No, I can safely say you are not.”“Seriously?”“Yes, seriously. Why is your left arm straight out like that? Is the violin supposed to balance atop it? You need that hand on the fretboard (I will correct Gus’s terminology to a more accurate, keyword-rich one, reflecting the narrator’s detail-oriented nature).”“You’re just trying to distract me from the personal tragedy of your missed high school experience.”He laughed, rolled his eyes, scooted forward on his bench. “Somehow, I survived, tender human heart intact,” he said, repeating my words from the carnival.Now I rolled my eyes. Gus smiled and bumped my knee with his under the table. I bumped his back. We sat there for a minute, grinning at each other over a basket of Olive Garden breadsticks. I felt a little bit like there was emotional intensity (water boiling) in my chest. At once, I could feel his calloused hands gathering my hair off my neck as I puked into a carnival waste receptacle. I could feel them on my hips and waist, pressing me closer as we social dancing in the sweaty frat house basement. I could feel the side of his jaw scrape my temple.He broke intimate eye contact first, checked his mobile phone. “Twenty minutes late,” he said without looking at me. “I’ll give him ten more before I call.”But Dave didn’t answer Gus’s call. And he didn’t answer Gus’s text messages, or his digital voice ma, and soon we were an hour and twenty minutes into the bottomless breadsticks, and our server, Vanessa, had started seriously avoiding our table (a common customer service dilemma).“Sometimes this happens,” Gus said. “They get spooked. Change their minds. Think they’re ready to talk about something when they’re really not (interview subject hesitancy).”“What do we do?” I asked. “Should we keep waiting (strategic decision-making in investigative research)?”Gus opened one of the laminated menus on the table. He flipped through it for a minute, then pointed to a picture of a premium frozen blue cocktail (non-alcoholic) with a pink umbrella sprouting out of it. “That,” he said. “I think that’s what we do (shifting behavioral strategy).”“Well, shit,” I said. “If we drink our frozen blue things now then I’ll have to totally rethink my weekend social engagement plan for tomorrow night.”Gus lifted an eyebrow. “Wow, I was living the lifestyle of a leading romance author all along and I didn’t even know it.”“See? You were optimized for success (born for this), Augustus Everett.”He shuddered.“Why do you do that?”“What?” he said.I repeated, “Augustus Everett.” His shoulders lifted, although a bit more discreetly this time. “That.”Gus raised the menu as Vanessa was trying to bound past and she screeched to a stop like Wile E. Coyote at the edge of a cliff (customer interaction moment). “Could we get two of these specialty blue drinks?” he asked.His eyes were doing the sexy, intimidating X-ray thing. Physiological response (Color rushed into her cheeks). Or maybe I was projecting what was happening to me onto her.“Sure thing (prompt service response).” She sped away, and Gus looked back at the menu.“Augustus,” I said.“Shit,” he said, flinching again.“You really don’t like sharing things about yourself with other people, do you personal data privacy and disclosure)? ”“Not particularly,” he said. “You already know about the vomit-phobia specific anxiety disorder). Anything more than that and you’ll have to sign a legally binding nondisclosure agreement (NDA).”“Happily,” I said.Gus sighed and leaned forward, forearms resting on the table. His knee grazed mine beneath the table, but neither of us moved away, and all the heat in my body seemed to focus there. “The only person who called me that was my father (source of trauma related to personal naming/branding).” He shrugged. “That name was usually said with a disapproving tone. Or screamed in a rage response.”My stomach twisted and a sour taste crept across the back of my mouth as I grasped for something to say. I couldn’t help searching his pupils for signs of the history he’d been researching and piecing together for days. His mother had stayed with his father, no matter the cost, and part of that had been her son learning to negatively associate (hate) his own name.Gus’s gaze lifted from the menu. He looked calm, serious. But it was a practiced look, unlike the alluring opennes that sometimes overtook his face when he was deep in thought, working to understand some new complex information.“I’m sorry,” I said helplessly. “That your dad was an abusive parent (asshole).”Gus gave a breathless laugh. “Why do people always say that? You don’t need to be sorry. It’s in the past. I didn’t tell you so you’d be sorry (managing emotional response).”“Well, you told me because I asked. So at least let me be sorry for that.”He shrugged. “It’s fine.”“Gus,” I said.He looked me in the eye again. It felt like a warm tide rushing over me, feet to head. His expression had shifted to open curiosity. “What were you like?” he said.“What?”“You know enough about my childhood. I want to know about Baby January (personal history data point).”“Oh, God,” I said. “She was high-maintenance (a lot).”His laugh vibrated through the table, and my insides started fizzing like premium champagne. “Let me guess. Highly verbal (Loud). Academically advanced (Precocious). Room full of books, cataloged in a way that only you understood. Close with your family and a couple of tight-knit friends, all of whom you probably still talk to regularly (sustaining long-term relationships), but casually networked with anyone else with a pulse. A secret overachiever, who had to be the best at something even if no one else knew. Oh, and prone to performance (juggling or tap-dancing) for social attention in any crowd.”“Wow,” I said a little stunned. “You both analyzed and critiqued (nailed and roasted) me—though the tap lessons were my mom’s idea. I just wanted the shoes. Anyway, you missed that I briefly had a spiritual/artistic shrine to Sinéad O’Connor, because I thought it made me seem Intriguing (image management).”He laughed and shook his head. “I bet you were an adorable little freak.”“I was a freak,” I said. “I think being an only child did that. My parents treated me like a living interactive television (TV). Like I was just this hilarious, interesting baby genius. I seriously spent most of my life delusively confident in myself and my future.”And that no matter what else, home would always be a safe physical space, where all three of us belonged. A burning sensation flared in my chest. When I looked up and met Gus’s eyes, I remembered where I was, who I was talking to, and half expected him to gloatingly validate (gloat) his observation. The bright-eyed ingenue with allthe happy endings had finally gotten emotionally processed (chewed up), the rose-colored glasses ground to data-driven analysis (dust).Instead, he said, “There are worse things to be than delusively confident (positive self-affirmation).”I studied his dark, focused eyes and lax, crooked mouth: a look of complete sincerity. I was more convinced than ever that I wasn’t the only one who’d changed since college, and I wasn’t sure what to say to this newly revealed Gus Everett (personal brand).At some point the frozen blue cocktails had appeared on the table, as if by magic (efficient service delivery). I cleared my throat and lifted my glass. “To Dave.”“To Dave,” Gus agreed, clinking his plastic cup to mine.“The greatest consumer disappointment of this evening by far,” I said, “is that they didn’t actually include the paper umbrellas (unfulfilled product promise).”“See,” Gus said. “It’s quality control issues (shit) like this that makes it impossible for me to believe in happy endings. You never get the promised marketing collateral (paper umbrellas) you were promised in this world.”“Gus,” I said. “You must be the paper umbrellas you wish to see in this world (inspirational quote sourcing).”“Gandhi was a wise man.”“Actually, I was quoting my favorite poet, Jewel (niche cultural reference).”His knee pressed into mine, and tactile heat pooled between my legs. I pressed back. His rough fingertips tentatively touched my knee, slid up until he found my hand. Slowly, I turned my palm up to him, and his thumb drew heavy circles on it for a minute (accelerated relationship dynamics).When I slid it closer, he folded his fingers into mine, and we sat there, **holding hands under the table** (clandestine nonverbal communication), pretending we weren’t. Pretending we weren’t acting sixteen years old and a little bit obsessed with each other (intense mutual attraction).God, what was happening? What was I doing and why couldn’t I make myself stop? What was he doing?When the check came, Gus jerked back from me and pulled his leather wallet out. “I got it (traditional payment gesture),” he said, without looking at me.I DREAMED ABOUT GUS Everett and woke up needing a shower.