tab day 2 - laurie is an altless

Gillan shouted, "Section 2, you get to go home! See you tomorrow!" Some approximation of chipper, as always. On the bright side, I thought, maybe I can get a little housework done. Like I did yesterday. And the day before. Every day I do so much housework. Fuck I'm lazy. I grumbled something incomprehensible and traded one headset for another, the volume low.
Laurie checked her phone and followed me out to the pillars out front. She looked pretty exhausted. I checked my phone, tabbed to Bravo to check the timers on his phone; laundry would be done in about 15. I tabbed back, set a timer on the alpha's phone for 14 minutes. Laurie was still there, looking at her phone. I smiled and waved, and she did the same. "We never seem to get out at the same time. What route do you take?"
"The 43, usually, but this time of day I take the 41 usually. Hey, check this out." She showed me a picture on her phone. Goya's 'Sleep of Reason' with Stallone's screaming face shopped, grayscale, onto the sleeping figure.
I snorted a laugh. "Where do you find those?"
"Oh, uh, I made that one," she replied awkwardly.
"Jesus, that's really good. Can I see it again?"
She handed the phone back nervously. As we walked toward the bus stop together, I studied the image. The crook of the arm had many artifacts of careful copy-paste; I could see now it was a crease in the shirt elsewhere, flipped and turned to give texture below his face, which itself had been erased in parts to make room for a carefully cropped hand and part of the sleeve. It wasn't a professional job, but at a glance it was a work of beauty; even the errors were impressive in their way, indicative of care if not particularly of skill. "Christ, you did this? I mean, not the print, that's Goya, right?"
She snickered. "Yeah, uh, yes, that's mine. A guy in my chat room was making Rambo shops of old paintings, like Hopper and stuff, and I went through my stuff and found a Goya print and said, y'know what, I can do that. So I asked him for the Rambo face he'd cropped, started fiddling with it."
Where the hell does she find the time? I went silent for a moment, ruminating on the way my own time is spent. I handed the phone back when she extended her hand. "Wow," I said. I have been wasting my life. "That's actually really good. Do you have more?"
She shrugged. "Yeah, I do, but his are better. He's really good at it. What's up?"
I scratched an itch on my cheek and kept my eyes down. "Sorry about that. I'm doing laundry, too, and it's kind of annoying. Charlie's asleep, and here I am coming home early, I'm just kinda pissed off about not getting in my hours today. It's obnoxious having all three of us around the apartment, makes me feel like I should be getting something done."
"Frank, ease up. You can only get so much done. I think you're probably giving one hundred percent, which is probably too much." Easy for you to say, you make content. I didn't really feel bitter per se, but I was certainly a bit envious of her motivation. After a pause, she spoke again. "When I was young there was this TV show. Japanese. Nobody else liked the ending, but it struck a chord with me. Lead character was real moody, came off really unmotivated. He did things because other people expected it of him, but he was so unhappy, and he made some really bad moves now and then, just shitty things people shouldn't do." She was staring at her feet as we walked. I glanced behind us, briefly certain we were being followed, but saw nothing. "But at the end he was talking to himself, talking to things outside himself too, and they pointed out, these people, that his reality was shaped funny because it's, uh, it's of his own making, even though it reflects what he sees, and in reality he's not that bad. And nobody but him thinks he is. At the end, he's smiling, I think it's the first time we actually really see him smile. That kind of smile where your cheeks crinkle up." She was doing it a bit herself.
"A Duchenne smile. I learned about that in classes." I rolled my shoulders, stiff from sitting hunched over at the desk. "What brings it to mind?"
"He was always giving one hundred percent, and a lot of the time that still meant not getting a lot done, because one hundred percent was really messing him up. If you keep doing it, the total it's coming out of keeps dropping. A hundred percent today isn't the same as a hundred percent yesterday."
I'd heard it before, actually. Maybe this time it will make an impact because Laurie said it. "You seem to have more than me," I replied. It's true, I thought, so I may as well say it.
"Nah, it's just-- I--" She stammered. "It doesn't really matter, right? Who cares as long as you're trying your best."
We'd reached the stop. I held up a hand as I sat down, checking my phone again. "Hold up, I gotta tab back." I waited a couple more seconds, killed the timer and tabbed to Bravo. Naturally I'd been too conservative. I still had about a minute thirty left. I checked the transit app for the 41, checked for new e-mails, tagged centrip and tabbed back. "Sorry about that, wanted to check the laundry."
She looked up from her phone, smiled in that sunny way. I noticed the cheeks weren't crinkling. "It's okay, but thanks for telling me. About tabbing, I mean, not the laundry."
"What's your tag room? Mine's pound-winter. I could send an invite."
"I'd like that! You met Apollonia there, right?"
"No, we've known each other for years, actually, and I invited her into #winter when I found it. But yeah, she's there, too."
"She sounds great. Um, mine's pound-pound-stars, with an exclamation point. Nobody really plays anymore, and I was never any good at it anyway. They migrated from the old room when the tag app got big enough. We keep in touch, it's nice, but you'd probably get bored; they're quieter than most rooms."
"Guess that's how it is with old crews, you just get comfortable and don't talk much?"
"Yeah, a bit. Probably they're just all busy, though." We were both looking down at our phones, the universal posture of our cohort. I glanced over, saw she was still smiling that wistful smile. Looking back at my phone I couldn't really think straight. "Oh shit," I muttered, "tabbing." She'd said she liked that I'd told her, I thought to myself. Tabbing back to Bravo, I pocketed the phone, got up and put the laundry into my rolling basket and headed for the door. Another customer had already tabbed in and was making dagger eyes at me as he stood waiting with his wet laundry. I flipped him off on the way out and walked to my apartment. Once I was upstairs I sat on the computer tower, glanced at Charlie, then tabbed back to Alpha, staring dumbly at the phone in his hand.
"Bus is almost here. You secure over there?"
"Yeah, I'm good, Bravo just got home." I had to open the transit app on this phone. I hear the rich kids have a sort of metaphone that copies everything they do from one phone to another. I couldn't help but think I'd kill for something like that. My mind's eye filled with Laurie's dead body, an aerosol spray of blood where her head had been struck. I winced, shook my head. "Yeah, looks like it's running early. You secure over there?"
"Sure," she chirped and stood up, walking to a pillar near the boarding zone. I followed, hands in my pockets. There was that damn image again, though. I winced and shook my head again, took out my phone and turned on DEVO. Waiting for the bus I drummed my fingers on my thigh to the staccato guitar, nodding my head along with it; no more wincing, no more shaking, just nod and listen. I hate that shit.