The Shared Playlist

The app calls it "Our Mood," and it has been updating itself every morning for two years. It blends everything Eliot and his partner Kalinda listen to into one playlist. Then it adjusts the mix to how the two of them seem to feel.

Lately, though, something is wrong. Eliot notices it on the bus on Wednesday. The playlist, which used to bounce between her favorite dance tracks and his old rock albums, has turned slow and quiet. Piano. Rain sounds. A singer who whispers about leaving town.

He assumes the app has made a mistake. That evening, he opens the listening history to find out what he has been playing, and discovers that he hasn't played any of it. Every sad song is coming from Kalinda's side of the account.

He sits with that for a while. She has been getting home late, and she has been quieter at dinner. When he asks if something is wrong, she says she is just tired. He has been choosing to believe her, partly because the alternative is a conversation he doesn't know how to start.

On Thursday night, he puts the phone on the table between them. "The app thinks we're sad," he says.

Kalinda looks at the screen, then at him. "It's not wrong," she says.

"I looked at the history. These songs are yours."

"I know." She picks at the edge of a napkin. "I've been listening to them on the train. I didn't think the app would show you."

"It shows everything," Eliot says. "That's what it's for."

For a minute, neither of them speaks. Then she tells him about the job in the north. It was offered three weeks ago, and she has been carrying it around ever since. She didn't want to ask him to leave the city. She didn't want to give up the offer either, so she said nothing and let the music do her thinking.

"If I had told you sooner," she says, "you would have said it was fine, and I wouldn't have believed you."

"You might be right," he admits. "I would have said it was fine."

They talk until the soup goes cold. Nothing is decided, but several things are said that should have been said weeks earlier.

Around midnight, the app refreshes itself and asks, in small gray letters, how the mood has changed. Eliot hands her the phone. She chooses "mixed," and the first song to come out of the speaker is a loud, ridiculous tune from the summer they met.

Neither of them reaches for the skip button.