I didn’t know what the aftershave was called but I knew what the bottle looked like. I saw it in drugstores sometimes and if I was having a bad day I let myself screw the cap off.
Truly I am becoming a superfan. This is just vintage Sally Rooney and I am super into it. This is a single short story, sold in paperback, and apparently I bought it. Due to be a huge superfan.
It is often a mistake to read more of an author when you really like any single book of theirs, for the reason that you begin to see through their tricks (e.g., don’t read BLOOD MERIDIAN after THE ROAD. You find out McCarthy just has a thing for men in transit). But somehow this isn’t happening for me with Rooney, despite the fact that this tiny 33 page story, MR SALARY is straight from her playbook (i.e., tortured love affair, emotional distance, clever conversation).
Here a young woman who is pining for her much older housemate:
My love for him felt so total and so annihilating that it was often impossible for me to see him clearly at all
While being a super hard core millennial.
My suitcase was ugly and I was trying to carry it with a degree of irony
Honestly I am not sure any other generation has ever been so afraid of sincerity. Eventually she becomes brave enough to suggest they get together. This is triggered by, bizarrely, her seeing a sleeping bag in a river. Along with everyone else on the bridge, she thinks it is a body. When it is clear it is not, she realizes:
. . .I had stood there waiting to see the body in the river, ignoring the real living bodies all around me, as if death was more of a miracle than life was.
Write faster Sally Rooney! I need MORE!