The Last Word On Nothing

I am alone as I write this, as I have been most days the last eight months. There are many things I know I miss: french fries fresh out of a restaurant kitchen, killing time in a bookstore. Other deficits have been more subtle, things I know aren’t available to me right now but that I haven’t consciously desired, like eating at an airport Chili’s. (Don’t get me wrong — I love a good Chili’s, but the airport ones are always disappointing.)

Also on that list: the little observations about my friends that make me feel a part of their lives, like having a bourbon at a friend’s house and noticing their new plant, or going to a wedding and noticing how much the bride’s mom resembles her aunts. Lately, the cumulative lack has finally made itself known, like how anemia can take hold after years of iron deficiency — and as a result, I’m looking for tender details everywhere.

1: I am running with the dog and as we pass the grocery store, a well-dressed young man emerges with a bouquet of flowers. I wonder where he’s going. We leapfrog positions for blocks as the dog sprints ahead, then stops to pee. Finally, he crosses the street and disappears into a house I walk by most days — there are handmade cardboard signs in the window saying “Racism is a pandemic” and “Black Lives Matter,” and a sign advertising the Seattle Cascade’s ultimate frisbee season. I’ve always wondered who lives there and now (I think) I have my answer.

2: I obsessively play the New York Times Spelling Bee every day, and my friend Kate tells me about another word game she thinks I’ll like. It’s called “Guess my word,” and, surprise, you guess a word selected by someone named H. Ryan Jones (I only know this because he hosts the game on his personal website). For each word you enter, the game tells you whether Jones’s word is before or after yours, and once you guess the chosen word, you’re invited to enter your name for inclusion on the game’s scoreboard, which lists people’s names, the number of guesses they made before discovering the chosen word, and — most crucially — the exact sequence of words they entered to get there.

I am fascinated by this scoreboard. Some people have a clear strategy of picking simple, short words to gauge what letter(s) the chosen word must begin with; for instance, Rose starts with “no,” then “go,” then “do,” then “bo.” Others seem to have a theme to their guesses; KateB, today, guessed “gopher” and “alligator.” Then there are the people like Dan who appear to have no strategy, but just guess really great words: ludicrous, dismal, brusque, antipathy. I wonder if whoever posted as username Rabbit realizes they created some beautiful phrases for found poetry: “magic hollow dangerous ballerina.” I spend entirely too much time reading what are probably random responses from people and imagining what they must be like based on their guesses.

3: I open Venmo to pay a friend back for a group gift we’re sending. I don’t use the app often, and I’m struck by the names on this endless feed of tiny transactions. A writer I met 5 years ago has several interactions with the woman he was dating when we first met; hey, that must mean they’re still together, which is nice! A musician friend appears to be getting virtual tips for a free show she played via Instagram Live last week, and I’m glad people are (literally) repaying her generosity. From the rest of the feed, I deduce that two high school friends had dinner together, my college friend must have a new roommate, and that a former student got a haircut recently.

Some of the payments are between two people I know, or at least whose names I recognize — a friend and her mother-in-law — but I get most curious when friends I’ve drifted apart from pay people I don’t know. Is it a new friend? Someone they’ve just started dating? A coworker? What are their lives like now? I don’t know, but it appears they had a burrito for lunch.