With nothing to do, I wandered back over to Bloomingdale’s and ended up drifting through the bathing suit department. It was empty and a saleswoman approached. “Are you going somewhere warm?” she asked.
“Yes, to the Bahamas with my boyfriend and his family.” The lie came out again without my even thinking about it. If I couldn’t have it all, I could at least imagine having it all, couldn’t I?
She pulled out a beautiful Eres bikini. “Try this.”
I headed for the dressing room. She soon knocked on the door with a few more suits for me to try. I fell in love with an orange Norma Kamali with lavender flowers.
“It looks great on you!” she said as I timidly opened the changing room door. I looked at the tag—$185, just for the bottom.
“It’s a little expensive for me,” I said. Even when fantasizing I was pragmatic. I’m so not cool.
“Well, you look great. Give me your phone—I’ll take a picture for you to send to your boyfriend. Maybe he’ll buy it for you.”
I want to be able to buy my own Norma Kamali suit, I thought as I handed her my phone and posed for a photo. She looked at it and laughed.
“Check this out—with that picture of palm trees behind you, it looks like you’re already in the Bahamas!” As she left she added, “Here’s my card. Tell your BF that if he really loves you, he should call me for that suit!”
I sat down and looked at the picture. I looked great in the suit, and she was right, it did look like I was in the Bahamas. I couldn’t help myself. I posted it on Instagram—#ItsBetterInTheBahamas. There were seven likes by the time I hooked my bra, double that by the time I zipped my jeans. And in the all-caps word of my first comment, I was once again AMAZING!!!!!!!
My friends began texting me—“You’re in the Bahamas?” “Who are you with?” “You got vacation time from Sotheby’s already?”
I invented a boyfriend, Charles, to go along with my dream job and my fabulous coolness. To avoid any risk of being found out and having to lie to people’s faces, I turned down all invitations, excusing myself on the grounds of prior commitments related to said boyfriend, job, and fab coolness. The more excuses I made, the more pictures I posted to back them up. The busier I looked, the more popular and sought-after I became and the more likes I racked up. Every like fed my suffering ego. It was a dizzying cycle, and pretty soon I was on Instagram all the time, managing my pretend life.
Bloomingdale’s seemed to be the perfect resource for all things Instagram-likable. A tight forty-five-degree-angled selfie shot in the housewares department holding my cool new immersion mixer: 198 likes; napping on six on my new Calvin Klein bedding, photo-enhanced with Beyoncé’s favorite filter, Valencia: 243 likes; rushing to work with just a peek of my new Hermès bag in the corner, Lo-Fi filter: 372 likes and one covetous comment: Is that the new Berline bag? #SoJel comment.
It became a full-time job. Every Monday I would check the New York Social Diary calendar and map out my fictional appearances for the week. I would turn down an invitation to dinner with a “Sorry, opening-night gala at the Met!” Which I then had to follow with a photo of me in a Carolina Herrera gown from the fancy designer floor, with the always flattering Mayfair filter: a whopping 379 likes! I attended all the right charitable events in all the right designers—Gucci, Galliano, and Gabbana—and just last week I wore the most perfect little black Max Hammer, which Natalie, the saleswoman, told me was the dress of the season, to the New York Public Library benefit. No filter, 432 likes, one regram.
That Max Hammer dress helped me make an awesome connection in the art world; maybe this whole fake-life thing could help me get a real life after all. Apparently Thea Baxter, who graduated from Brown a few years before me and now works at Christie’s, is one of my 900 new Instagram followers. On one of my many lazy Monday mornings she called me (Yes! Called me!) to say she had seen my Max Hammer post and had been searching all over for me at the library benefit, but to no avail. I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself: while I was managing my virtual life by matching up the hottest NYC event with the hottest look at Bloomie’s, she was looking for me IRL. She went on to ask me about my responsibilities at Sotheby’s but, lucky for me, quickly turned her sights to what she really wanted to know: my salary.
“That Max Hammer dress you were wearing was gorgeous. You killed it. What are they paying you over at Sotheby’s?”
I hemmed and hawed, mumbling something about not wanting to talk about money, as I Googled starting salaries at Sotheby’s.
“C’mon, I’ll tell you what my starting salary was at Christie’s,” she pleaded.
“Fifty-two thousand,” I lied, adding a few grand to the Google results to annoy her.
“Are you off today?” she asked.
I paused and contemplated my two choices. “Yes,” I answered and held my breath.