The Email From Tomorrow

His apartment was a fourth-floor walk-up above a nail salon, one bedroom if the tenant had no standards and a studio if he did. The radiator clanged like somebody trapped inside the wall. His laptop sat open on the kitchen table beside a stack of unopened envelopes. Student loans. Credit cards. COBRA paperwork. A debt collector with a tasteful blue logo. He had arranged them by threat level and then stopped opening them. At 11:58 p.m., with his shoes still wet, Ethan opened his email to check for job rejections. There were four. One began with "After careful consideration." Another thanked him for his "impressive background" before informing him that the company had selected candidates whose backgrounds were apparently more impressive.