For You Page by Ashley Lopez
Editorial intern Brianna Weaver on today’s short: Ashley Lopez’s “For You Page” is a vivid piece brought to life on the basis of connection with one another through TikTok’s algorithm. The story will keep you wondering what happens next and hungry for more.
for you page
Crows can be trained to recycle cigarettes. They are able to spot a butt on the sidewalk at seven hundred feet. They earn a food pellet for every filter disposed of properly. Max clicks on the article, careful not to let the lit end of her Marlboro touch her phone.
She uses smoke breaks to avoid her tables. At Gaijin Garden, each place setting is equipped only with chopsticks. You must ask for a fork. Meaning everyone follows her movements, trying to catch her eye as their fingers struggle to pilot the chopsticks.
Her habit started the summer before she could buy. The pastry chef with the dimples let her bum American Spirits. His body was like a fist, the muscles in his jaw clenched even when exhaling. He called her Loosie. Max assumed he was confused about her name, and they laughed together when she finally asked, their first inside joke. Loosie: a single cigarette for those not looking to buy the whole pack.
She repaid him in videos. Now, her TikTok algorithm is curated to his tastes. Any story with animals was for him: an elephant befriending a donkey on a dusty Kenyan nature preserve, a dog prancing along the cobbled streets of Kensington, a frog living on the Canadian border secreting a vertigo-curing protein. He leaned in to watch, curls dripping forward, careful not to get too close and risk staining her white button up.
Max pauses on a picture of a crow midway through the article. His neck is bent, obsidian eyes cocksure. With the filter hanging out his beak, he resembles the pastry chef, tilting his good ear toward her as she complained about her mother not wanting Max to move away for college. He said, You’re bigger than this place, and she believed him because he seemed like the kind of person who knew. He never gave advice. Instead, he hooked his pinky finger through hers, squeezing until she quieted. She knew the manager saw them standing together like this once when she left early.
There were questions circling the pastry chef. How long is too long for a smoke break? How long is too long for a hug? But they understood the rules. She was a stranger invading his shore, a summertime girl who smelled like the honeycrisp body wash her mom bought. He told her she had to ask for what she wanted.
I don’t need a lawsuit on my hands, the manager said when asked why the pastry chef was let go. The week of Thanksgiving was slow at Gaijin Garden. From the floor-to-ceiling windows, the front of house staff watched a string of cars cross the Mississippi River Bridge, the kitchen’s addition of Kung Pao Turkey and Cranberry Sweet and Sour Sauce futile. The firing was stuck in everyone’s craw. Max heard the bartenders discussing it while counting their tills. He was worth more than her to this place, one said.
Mad skills with those bao buns.
It was nobody’s business if he wanted to get a little strange in the alley.
The bartender held up a twenty, scraping her thumb along the president’s jacket, searching for the texture that proved it was real. He’s an idiot, she said.
The pastry chef went to school for poetry but didn’t graduate. He said her mom was right about picking a practical major. As much as I’d like to see you here, I hope you’ve got some big internship next summer, he said. They were sharing a coke, no ice. He brought it for them to split in a plastic to-go soup container, a slice of lemon from the bar squeezed in the way she preferred. Who would I share cigarettes with? she asked.
Don’t you read the news? He ashed, not looking where the embers fell. Louisiana is changing the legal age for smokes in August. Twenty-one. You’ll be back on my tobacco teat soon. He pinched the filter with his thumb and forefinger, holding her gaze to see whether she would choose to laugh.
She thumbs the share button, and her phone gives her options. She picks Facebook, the only way they’re connected now. His profile picture is still the one from Gaijin Garden’s kitchen: clean chef’s whites, holding two sugar buns delicately in his square palms. She messages him a link to the article about the crows. Sends a selfie too: head cocked, half-smoked contraband cigarette hanging from her lips.
During dinner service she sneaks into cubicles shielding the POS systems from guests, checking to see if he’s responded. She picks apart the hastily sent photo: eyetooth turned in shyly, broken hairs frizzing along her part. Once, she sees three dots appear, a sign that he is typing. But no message comes.
Max learned in Environmental Science class that crows know how to drop walnuts high enough to break the outer shell but avoid shattering the inner meat. They can navigate traffic lights. They remember the faces of those who have wronged them.
After the money is counted and the chopsticks put away, she finds her car in the parking garage. Sitting in the driver’s seat, she rereads the article. She wants to see it through his eyes, to understand why he won’t reply. The new pastry chef is searching for her car, holding keys in front of her like a Honda Civic dowsing rod. She trained at Le Cordon Bleu. The manager introduced her at family meal, called her a move in the right direction.
The article says the program began in France. These crows were selected because they could differentiate between what is for them and what is not. Scientists hoped people would be encouraged to properly dispose of their cigarettes. Shame is a great motivator. But a bird was injured by a smoldering cigarillo, and the project was shut down. This sounds like a cop out to Max. The article doesn’t say what happened to the birds afterward. She sees them, still searching for loosies.
Ashley Lopez received her MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. Her fiction and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, The Rumpus, Split Lip Magazine, and elsewhere. She works in publishing and lives in Brooklyn.
