Gossip blogger haunted by Lena Dunham

Chapter 2

Emma put her latte next to her keyboard and sat down at her desk. She was wearing the same pants she'd worn to work every day for the past six months, her only pair of boots, a black sweater so linty it looked speckled, and a coat whose lining was so ripped, the pockets were now just slits.

At least her hair and makeup were on point.

Her boss, Marian, walked by.

"Morning, Em," she said. "I'm assuming you heard about Lena's Vogue cover?"

"Of course." She looked down; she felt guilty. She'd unfollowed Lena. She just couldn't stand the sight of her.

"Good, somehow our Twitter and Instagram feeds stopped showing her updates again, so I re-followed her last night. Can you look into fixing that bug? It makes absolutely no sense."

"Yeah," Emma said, looking down at her desk.

"Also, work on getting a post up about the cover, obvi. Link to all our old stories about the rumors. Maybe compare her cover to Mindy's Elle one, since they're both heavier and didn't get full body shots?"

Ugh, god, Mindy was another one.

"On it," Emma said.

She knew she was safe from the delusions as long as she was in a crowded office. It was only a problem when she was alone and particularly exhausted.

She had to get more sleep. Or maybe a boyfriend.

Emma put her hand on her computer mouse and shook it until the screen of her ancient work PC flicked on. Pushing her headphones into her ears, she started Beyoncé's new album again. She'd already listened to the whole thing once on her commute. Yes, her commute was that long.

It was 9:15 a.m. and already, at least five blogs had posted about the cover. Emma had to get moving. At least she was surrounded by her colleagues, safely ensconced in a group of people, where she guessed Lena couldn't appear.

Taking a deep breath, Emma typed v-o-g-u-e-.-c-o-m into Google Chrome.

There she was, the "voice of a generation." She wasn't even wearing nail polish.

Reading the profile, Emma had to stop after this graf with fellow rich kid Allison Williams crowing about how amaaaaazing her friend was:

"She writes constantly," says Williams. "Late at night, early in the morning, constantly." Dunham writes on planes; at the Girls studio; and, not infrequently, in bed. (It is her great ambition to be the sort of writer who sits down to work, but she hasn't ever gotten there; the small white desk she set up in her apartment is used mostly by her boyfriend, Jack Antonoff, a guitarist in the indie band Fun.) She says, "I actually work pretty well within the whirlwind of my life."

Emma basically never wrote when she wasn't at work, she thought. She had excuses: a long commute and not enough money for non-paying side gigs, she told herself. She conveniently forgot about the four hours a night she spent watching the Kardashians.

No longer interested in torturing herself with the written portion of the Vogue feature, she started clicking through photos of the actress-writer-director looking amazing in couture all over Brooklyn - the borough where Emma had to live because she couldn't afford Manhattan. Lena could afford Manhattan, but chose to live in Brooklyn Heights because her dog used to pee there or something. What was she doing, posing in Emma's borough, wearing clothes that cost more than most Brooklyn residents' entire annual salaries? Was it supposed to be a joke?

Then, Emma got to a photo of Lena looking resplendent in a Céline coat, shot by Annie Leibovitz, at an elevated subway stop.

Wait. Was that - there was no way.

It was a picture of Lena, posing at Emma's subway stop.

It was the Myrtle/Broadway JMZ, the place where Emma started and ended every workday, hands jammed in her pockets, earbuds blocking out other people's gum-chewing noises, eyes lowered to avoid looking at anyone.

Emma started to panic. Was Lena trying to send her a message? A warning? This was disconcerting.

She felt a hand on her shoulder and jumped. Pulling her earbuds out, she turned and saw her coworker, Jason.

"What the fuck's your deal?" he asked. "You look like you haven't slept in days and you skinned a dirty couch to make your shirt."

She rolled her eyes. "What do you want from me?"

"You didn't log into gchat yet and I've been trying to get your attention for like, a full minute. Go on chat."

Jason turned and walked away while Emma dutifully opened a new tab for Gmail. A message from Jason blinked to the screen almost immediately.

"I have a contact for lena," he said.

Emma could feel the color draining from her face. "Explain," she typed.

"My bf styles her bfs band and he mentioned the blog. She said she loves your writing and she wants to meet you for an interview."

Emma was going to throw up.

"Brb," she typed. She grabbed the bathroom key and her iPhone and sprinted out the office door and down the hallway. Fumbling with the key, she finally got the door open. She threw the key into the sink, ran into a stall and put her hands on the walls, willing the vomit to stay inside her so she wouldn't have to spring for another latte.

She breathed in loudly, then exhaled. Standing up straight, she backed up and leaned against the bathroom door. The nausea was subsiding. What was her problem? This was excellent news. One of the most talented entertainers of her generation - of any generation - liked her writing. Sure, she had some weird mental bipolar shit in her own head surrounding Lena. Obviously she'd be able to get some sleep and push it all away in order to interview the real Lena. What was the issue?

The issue, Emma reasoned next, was that this was all a sick ploy for Lena to get some real face time with Emma and tell her all of her faults in front of an audience of Emma's colleagues. The issue was that Lena clearly didn't like her writing; she was lying. Nobody liked her writing. Lena obviously intended to embarrass Emma publicly by unleashing a tweetstorm of embarrassing Notepad entries and unflattering front-camera selfies, culled from Emma's very iPhone.

Her iPhone. Needing a distraction, Emma pulled it out of her pocket and started to mindlessly thumb through it. She hit the little blue Twitter icon - and in a second, she realized she was still logged into her work account, so photos and tweets about her enemy would be flooding her screen.

They did — there was Lena's cover again, embedded in a tweet. She averted her eyes immediately while feverishly pressing the home button - but it was too late.

The voice came from outside the stall.

"Hey, Emma."

It was her. Again.

"Come out," Lena said. "I want you to meet my friend Beyoncé."