"It's — forgive me, but it's fucking pretentious," Eduardo says, one hand held up in front of him and head slightly inclined, as if to give the words a tone of respect that isn't actually there. It's a turn of phrase that he wanted to avoid using, but there just isn't anything better, because that's what it is. Sushi and salad for every meal to make a point, to say, oh, look how fucking hip we are, with our cool, healthy meals, served on square plates with fancy garnishes, and Eduardo hates it. It's part of why the Silicon Valley never held any appeal to him, the whole lifestyle idealized there one that he finds distasteful, wholly disingenuous. The idea of Mark there, among them, both makes perfect sense and none at all. Easy to get swept up in as he's sure it is — another part of the reason why he never went out — surely the chance to be that cool when he never was before would be seductive, but it's hardly the Mark he thinks he knows, the real one. He'd question it, wonder if Mark really did succumb to all of that after all, rather than just following along as a way to fit in, but the comment about the burger leads Eduardo to believe that this is still the same Mark he's known all along. Not as well as he thought, of course, that much not being something he can let himself lose sight of, and maybe not entirely, depending on whether or not that Mark was capable of stabbing his best friend in the back all along and Eduardo never realized it, but the same at least to an extent, not unrecognizably altered by four years (Jesus, four fucking years, he thinks again) living it up as a pseudo-celebrity in Palo Alto.
(Eduardo imagines him, for a moment, as Sean was the day they first met him in that restaurant in New York. On a first-name basis with all of the staff, someone who people turned to look at when he walked into the room, the very fact of his presence commanding. It doesn't quite work; Mark's never had that level of charisma. What the image morphs into, instead, is Mark with Sean's arm around his shoulders, practically a fucking puppet as Sean does all the talking, never fitting in but wanting so desperately to that he'd do anything to seem like he did. What Facebook is is cool, Eduardo remembers vividly, and Mark, as an extension of it, would have to be as well. All of it leaves him wondering now how much of what happened was Mark and how much was Sean, if Mark was genuinely that disloyal or if he was coerced, following along with a plot to maintain the same position in everyone else's eyes and to not lose what he'd been gunning for ever since he first found out about final clubs. Either way, Eduardo supposes, it doesn't matter. The choice, in the end — the priority — was the same.)
"I mean, no one can really like sushi and salad that much, can they?" It's a continuation with hardly so much as a pause, both to stop his train of thoughts in its tracks and to downplay his own earlier statement, really, really not wanting Mark to be reminded of what he said before storming out of the office. If he can keep things calm, smooth it all over, he means to do so for as long as is physically possible, at least while there hasn't been any provocation, no mention of it or cutting remarks from Mark that have made him want to reconsider. "And you said yourself, it's not filling. Just... leaves and tiny portions of raw fish. I don't see why it even matters, anyway, there shouldn't be anything uncool about eating a decent meal."
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Date: 2011-05-21 01:48 am (UTC)(Eduardo imagines him, for a moment, as Sean was the day they first met him in that restaurant in New York. On a first-name basis with all of the staff, someone who people turned to look at when he walked into the room, the very fact of his presence commanding. It doesn't quite work; Mark's never had that level of charisma. What the image morphs into, instead, is Mark with Sean's arm around his shoulders, practically a fucking puppet as Sean does all the talking, never fitting in but wanting so desperately to that he'd do anything to seem like he did. What Facebook is is cool, Eduardo remembers vividly, and Mark, as an extension of it, would have to be as well. All of it leaves him wondering now how much of what happened was Mark and how much was Sean, if Mark was genuinely that disloyal or if he was coerced, following along with a plot to maintain the same position in everyone else's eyes and to not lose what he'd been gunning for ever since he first found out about final clubs. Either way, Eduardo supposes, it doesn't matter. The choice, in the end — the priority — was the same.)
"I mean, no one can really like sushi and salad that much, can they?" It's a continuation with hardly so much as a pause, both to stop his train of thoughts in its tracks and to downplay his own earlier statement, really, really not wanting Mark to be reminded of what he said before storming out of the office. If he can keep things calm, smooth it all over, he means to do so for as long as is physically possible, at least while there hasn't been any provocation, no mention of it or cutting remarks from Mark that have made him want to reconsider. "And you said yourself, it's not filling. Just... leaves and tiny portions of raw fish. I don't see why it even matters, anyway, there shouldn't be anything uncool about eating a decent meal."