Ava treated Noah to another one of her laughs. “Guilty as charged,” she said. “I just couldn’t help myself.”
“Last night you offered to explain to me why you use a fake name on Facebook. If you’re willing, I’d like to hear.”
“Purely for a sense of freedom,” Ava said. “The beauty of the virtual online world is anonymity. Using a made-up name magnifies that and enhances my freedom. I’m sure you have heard the expression: On the Internet no one knows you are a dog.”
It was Noah’s turn to laugh. “No, I haven’t heard that. But I get it.”
“Using a made-up name allows me to avoid my own hang-ups,” Ava explained. “I don’t have to be me. I can project onto Gail Shafter whatever identities I want. And using my avatar, technoself, I can do it without fear of being judged. If someone doesn’t like my digital me and acts like a troll, I can block them. In real life I can’t do that. And social media can be wonderfully dynamic, whereas real-life social interaction tends to be static.”
“I’ve never heard the term technoself. Is that something new?”
“In the tech world, nothing is new. As soon as something is out, like a new app, the next day it is old. Things are changing at warp speed. So no, it is not new. In fact, technoself studies have become an entire interdisciplinary domain of scholarly research. It is where our culture is going. We are all becoming cyborgs with our devices, particularly with our phones.”
“You’re making me feel old.”
“In the teenage mind, you are old. They are the ones who are driving the pace.”
“You mentioned you were addicted to social media when you were a teenager, and it was a disaster. How so?”
“I became obsessed with my digital reputation to the detriment of everything else, including my schoolwork. At one point, I got cyberbullied on SixDegrees to the point I couldn’t go to school for a week. Well, it wasn’t called cyberbullying back then, just harassment. But it was a disaster. I did so poorly academically that I didn’t even think about going to college after high school. I had to work, so I worked for a dentist. Luckily, I quickly saw the light.”
“Is that why Gail Shafter works for a dentist?” Noah asked.
“You got it. It’s something I know about.”
“What about dating apps and websites? Do you use them?”
“Of course. Why not? They are particularly fun. Especially now with the swipe-right-or-swipe-left feature. Hot-or-not, what a great game! It empowers even the most pitiful creeps. Online, anyone who is digitally clever can be popular or even famous. Look at the Kardashians.”
“Have you ever met anyone in real life that you met on a dating app?”
“Hell, no! I’d never in a million years do that. Everybody lies on those sites. I like to play around with them, but I’d never actually look for anyone on Tinder or any of the others. We’re all becoming narcissistic charlatans to one degree or another. Meeting up with someone you met online would be too risky. Besides, it would defeat the whole anonymity thing.”
“Aren’t you worried somebody sufficiently enamored with Gail Shafter and armed with technical knowhow could get Gail’s address here on Louisburg Square?”
“There was a time when that might have happened because I had a proxy server that turned out to be almost worthless. But my computer people set me up with a proper encryption. There’s no worry now. And what about you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Have you ever used a dating app or website?”
Noah didn’t answer right away. Like most people, he had, but questioned if he should admit it to Ava. What convinced him to come clean was that she readily admitted she’d used them herself so there would be no judgment. “Actually, I did use OkCupid for a couple of weeks not long after it came out. So I used it once.”
“Uh-oh,” Ava voiced. She flashed a knowing smile. “This is sounding serious. Did you meet someone online and then meet up with them in person?”
“I did,” Noah admitted. “Her name was Leslie Brooks. She was a Columbia undergrad. We ended up living together for the last year of my medical school, and then she came up here to Boston to go to Harvard Business School.”
“Sweet,” Ava said with sincerity. “I guess there are some successes. Are you guys still together?”
“Nope,” Noah said. “She left two years ago for a finance job in New York.”
“Four years together; that’s impressive. Are you still seeing each other?”
“No,” Noah said simply. “She couldn’t really adjust to my commitment to medicine, which I don’t blame her for. In retrospect, she was counting on my hours getting less as I advanced up the training ladder, like it does for most people. Unfortunately, for me they got more, so she bailed out. She’s engaged now.”
“I think only those of us in medicine understand,” Ava said. “So who are you seeing now?”
“No one,” Noah said. Inwardly he cringed, wondering if Ava would think of him as socially hopeless.
“That doesn’t seem appropriate for a healthy man like yourself,” Ava said with a slight, mischievous smile. “As a fellow doctor, I’d like to ask how you manage.”
Noah stared back at Ava. He agonized for a beat, questioning if he should take the bait. “I’m resourceful,” he said after a pause. “There is always online porn.”
Ava roared with laughter and clapped her hands. “You are a trip, Dr. Rothauser. Now I have to wonder which of us is more addicted to the Internet.”
“There’s no way I am addicted,” Noah said. He found her mirth contagious and was laughing at himself even though he questioned why he had said what he did. He was thankful she had taken the comment in a nonjudgmental, humorous fashion.
After putting down her liquor glass, Ava leaned forward. “Last night I showed you most of my house. But there is one cool thing I did not show you. Interested?”
“Sure,” Noah said with a shrug. “Give me a clue.”
“I put a deck on the top of the building and the view is to die for. And it’s a beautiful summer night.”
He followed her up two flights of the central, nautilus-like stairway that spiraled from the very first floor. When they gained the sixth and final floor and pretending to be out of breath, Noah said, “With all these stairs you don’t need to work out.”
“Sometimes I take the elevator,” Ava said.
“Elevator? I didn’t know you had an elevator.” Noah had never been in a private home that had an elevator.
“The doors are disguised so as not to be intrusive,” Ava explained. She pointed to the wall to their immediate right. “Here’s one here.”
All Noah could see was a door-sized, rectangular, grooved outline that even cut through the dado and its trim. “Wow,” he said. “I never would have guessed. But there’s no call button.”
“It’s WiFi,” Ava said. “Welcome to the tech world.”
As Noah followed Ava into the room, he berated himself for acting like such a simpleton. Looking around, he guessed he was in the master bedroom. It was a large space occupying the entire width of the house. The west wall was a bank of French doors with the lights of the city visible through the multipanes just above the row of buildings that lined the next street down the hill.
“This is my bedroom,” Ava said proudly.
“Very nice,” Noah said. In actuality, he thought it was a lot more than nice. The room had a high cathedral ceiling, and the bed was at least a king and was set against the north wall; both cats were curled up against decorative pillows. Behind the bed was a trompe l’oeil mural of an open window looking out onto a European mountain scene. The south wall had a period marble fireplace similar to those in the living room. A second door on the east wall led into the marble master bath. The lighting was subdued, giving the room an overall restful ambience.