Jillian

you went to grad school.”
Megan wiped and flushed and tried to use the flush sound to symbolically rid herself of the fantasy of saying something to Carrie about the llama.
“Show this guy a picture of your llama,” she said while she washed her hands. “Show this guy that picture of your llama.” Since it would make her feel better, she let herself cry whenever she wanted to. She put her head in her arms and her arms on the bathroom wall. When she finished, she washed her face and shook her fist at her reflection.
“I’ll get YOU!” said Megan.
God, I’m hilarious, she thought.
She walked back down the hallway and the hallway didn’t exist.
Everything about her life was so much the same from day to day that it almost didn’t exist.
•   •   •
Randy didn’t get what the big deal was about Jillian. He didn’t think she sounded like a liar, and he thought Megan was blowing things out of proportion. He’d suggested this once.
“Megan, do you think you’re redirecting your dissatisfaction with your job onto Jillian?”
She’d said, “Fuck you.”
Randy was sitting at his computer desk at home. He was confident that Megan’s Carrie thing was fleeting, despite her display last night, and he decided not to edit himself to accommodate her.
Megan opened the door.
“Hey,” said Randy.
Megan slipped out of her bag, coat, and shoes and then took off her skirt, tights, underpants, sweater, and bra on her walk to the bedroom. She got into pajamas, put her hair in a stupid-looking ponytail, and said “Hey” as she sat down at the kitchen table.
Randy started by mentioning some design work of Carrie’s that he’d seen.
“Hmm,” said Megan.
He had the magazine he’d seen it in, and he brought it to her, opened to the correct page. He took a seat.
“Oh, wow,” said Megan. She picked up the magazine and dropped it back down on the table.
“I think it’s really cool,” said Randy.
“Sure. It looks like everything else, if that’s what you mean by cool.”
“No, I mean, this is really professional work. It’s cool that it’s done by someone we know.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
“It’s just a formula. I don’t feel honored to know a formula. Only one in, I don’t know, ten thousand designers is a real artist. I don’t know any designers who’ve been artists since Bauhaus, and they were fighting Nazis with their designs, not . . . imported produce or whatever.”
Randy straightened. “Well, anyway, I was thinking it would be fun to ask Carrie to help me do some web design, and I wanted to ask if you thought her stuff would translate well to a website.”
Megan scratched her face. “Yeah. It’d translate well to a website, if that’s all you’re thinking about. But you could do this kind of stuff alone,” she said, gesturing at the magazine. “I mean, well, to me, the real hindrance in working with her—or anyone like her—would be the total hypocrisy of it all. Encouraging someone who considers herself to be a forerunning mind of our generation while all she’s doing is, essentially, coloring in the lines would make me, personally, want to fucking kill myself.”
Randy stared at her.
“What?” she said.
“I don’t see what Carrie does as hypocritical.”
“Oh, you used to agree with me. What, now that I’m applying the same idea to your precious darling Carrie, you don’t agree with me about how stupidly pretentious all of these graphic design assholes are, with their fucking letter-pressed business cards with their WordPress addresses on them? Playing around and being condescending about creative recycling and community-based whatever-the-fuck? Help me help you, Randy.”
Megan paused.
“I’m sure they all shampoo their pubes,” she said.
“I’m only talking about this one spread.”
“It’s hollow.”
“You know, that’s kind of what I do for a living.”
“It’s different.”
“Is it? I do web design for a living, and I like it. You’re talking about what I do. And, anyway, you buy organic produce.”
“Yeah, but I don’t kid myself that it’s a part of a movement I’m involved in. I know it’s just groceries. That self-important look in their eyes makes me puke.”
“Okay, so you don’t think I should work with her.”
“Do what you want, but I just think you or any fucking monkey with a reference image and a laptop could do what she does. I mean, all she really did was finish her homework. She’s not some kind of magic fairy genius.”
“Nobody thinks she’s a magic fairy genius,” said Randy.
“You say that now.”
“And why wouldn’t I want to work with someone who finished their homework? Or a magic fairy, for that matter?”
Not having a direct answer to this, Megan began the painful process of shutting the fuck up. The psychological resistance she felt was intense enough to have a physical counterpart, which was a grating feeling in the center of her chest.
“No, you’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry. I guess I just had a bad day. I don’t know why I’m ranting.”
She sat on the floor at Randy’s feet and put her head in his lap.
“How’s your butt?” he asked.
“Itchy.”
“How’s your head?”
“Horrible.”
“How was your day?”
“Uuuunnnnghghg. You know how when you drink a lot, the next morning you usually feel depressed? Just, like, chemically, because your body’s in withdrawal?”
“Well . . . yeah.”
“Or maybe it’s because your body gives off an excess of serotonin when you’re drunk, so in the morning you have depleted serotonin.”
“Is that how you feel?”
“Yeah, but I’m pretty sure it’s just a body thing. There must be some chemical reason why I keep replaying the night.” She had a biting memory. “Over and over. Because I didn’t really do anything that bad. But you know that feeling where you replay and then edit the conversations you had and then you feel really vulnerable and like everyone hates you, even though you didn’t do anything that out of the ordinary?”
“Yeah, I know that feeling. It’s a sugar crash or something.”
“I feel so stupid about that llama thing at the end of the night.”
“What? I’m sure Carrie doesn’t care, and I thought it was funny. It was funny.”
“She thinks I’m so disgusting.”
“No. She