Elsewhere by Yan Ge

Author:Yan Ge
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2022-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

It was not entirely rootless speculation. For a start, Alex had 1,257 Facebook friends. And just in the last month, he had checked in at Vicar Street twice (Feb. 10th and 17th), Grogan’s three times (Feb. 7th, 8th and 20th), The Lord Edward twice (Feb. 5th and 22nd), The Long Hall three times (Feb. 2nd, 14th and 25th), and Bowes four times (I don’t even bother to recheck the dates).

I understand you might say: But sure it’s February, where can he go if not the pub? But still. Plus, how would you feel if I told you that among the fourteen visits to local pubs, Alex was feeling crazy for seven of them, and excited on five of these occasions. There were only two times where he was tagged so I wouldn’t be able to know how exactly he felt. But he certainly looked very well in the photos with his friends. And so did his friends.

So is it possible that he was a philanderer who played a prank on me via Facebook, because I was, according to Friend A, not cute?

On the other hand, there were things that suggested a slightly different lifestyle. For instance, he had read 572 books on Goodreads, rated 493 of them (3.73 avg.) and written eighty-nine reviews. He volunteered for numerous (twenty-three) events at Insomnia Ireland, helping people who suffer from either coffee addiction and/or sleep deprivation. He was the guitarist in a band on Bandcamp, where they had uploaded three songs (‘How to Murder the Moon’, ‘Hippopotamus’ and ‘The Telly Is On’). He also hosted a tour on Airbnb, which was called Phoenix Park Walk: learn about Irish trees and shrubs. He charged thirty euro per person and had three five-star reviews.

And so on and so forth.

I slouched in front of my laptop, searching through all the online statistics of Alex Whelan. My roommate came over to knock on my door and she said: ‘Would you stop watching Chinese soap operas? Work on your thesis.’

‘Did my mother tell you to say this?’ I asked her without turning back.

‘No!’ she exclaimed. ‘She is only concerned about you, you know?’

‘Relax. I am doing research for my thesis,’ I said, scrolling down Alex’s friends’ pages.

‘I can see from here that’s Facebook!’ she bellowed, and left.

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