by S. J. Maher
I suddenly launch myself drunkenly at him, planting a kiss on his disgusting protruding lips.
I put my right hand on his belt buckle. With my left hand, I grope for the two Jägerbombs on the bar.
I brush the front of his pants with the back of my hand. Ugh!
Desperate times. Desperate measures.
I keep my tongue in his mouth while I slide his Jägerbomb closer to me. I slide mine toward him. I can feel his penis harden against my hand. It is so gross. I will need Purell after this.
“Fuck,” he says, when I pull away. “You better be careful. You’re going to get me all excited.”
“I’m sorry. I promise I’ll be good. I’m a good girl, really. Time for me to go to my friend’s house. Yup. Got to call a cab.”
“Wait. We’ve got to do these last Jägers first.”
I look down, as if surprised to see them in front of us on the bar.
“Oh my God! Shots!”
“Shots shots shots shots!” he chants.
We toast and drink. He is trying to hide his smile.
26
I was in the office an hour early, waiting for Kevin, jittery from about a bucket of coffee, snappy, exhausted, and hyperalert.
I’d slept for about an hour, although I spent hours in bed, with my eyes closed, trying to sleep. I eventually took two Ambiens but even then I couldn’t stop thinking about how that photo would follow me for the rest of my life.
No matter what I did, anybody I ever met could check out a picture of my breasts. Also, by reacting the way I did, and blaming myself, they’d believe I’d tweeted the picture myself as a way of getting attention. Many anonymous assholes had already concluded that’s what I’d done. And lots of people, including my bosses, my family, guys I’d want to go out with, might think that was true.
My brain entered an awful feedback loop, thinking about my situation and dwelling on how awful it was.
I wrote and deleted a half-dozen clarifying tweets, and I emailed Francis for help. He advised me to do nothing right away.
When I finally managed to do a little clear thinking, I realized that someone must have hacked my phone. It had to be Declan. When I opened that file he sent me, I had to enter my password. He must have hacked me then.
I decided to email Kevin.
To: Kevin Reisenger
From: Candace Walker
Date: June 20, 2018, 12:38 a.m.
Subject: So, I have a little problem.
Someone seems to have hacked my phone and tweeted a private picture from my account. Can you meet me early tomorrow to unhack my phone?
He replied almost immediately.
To: Candace Walker
From: Kevin Reisenger
Date: June 20, 2018, 12:44 a.m.
Subject: So, I have a little problem.
That’s terrible, Walker. Do you have any idea who did this? How do you know you were hacked?
I can meet you at 8 a.m. so we get your phone cleared for the start of the workday.
I realized on the way to the subway that I wasn’t sure how to handle the whole thing. I needed Jess’s advice. I texted her as I waited for the L train.
Sis, I have a little problem I’d like to talk to you about. Someone hacked my phone and tweeted a topless pic. If you have a minute this morning, I’d like to talk to you about next steps.
I managed to get a seat and settled in to fret. I spent the trip being bumped by a squat Hispanic woman standing in front of me. Her gray potbelly, peeking out from under her cheap polyester tank top, was right in my face. I felt irritated by her and looked up at her haggard, acne-scarred face. She looked back at me and I quickly turned my eyes back to my knees. Her face was so forlorn, so sad, as if she had never known love in her life, not from her parents or a lover or a friend. Involuntarily, I started to imagine her life as an unwanted child in Mexico or Puerto Rico or some other poor hot place, living with a father who didn’t love her. I didn’t like thinking about that, and I didn’t want to look into those sad black eyes again.
When we got to Union Square, we returned to cell service, and I had a text from Jess.
Call me.
I called her from the platform.
“Hey,” she said, quietly and flatly.
“So, it seems bad,” I said.
“I found the tweet. How did it happen?”
“I’m not sure. I think I got phished. I was at an event with Francis last night. I got some weird, harassing messages from this guy, Declan. I wouldn’t do what he asked. Then my phone went dead. When I got home, I rebooted the phone and the tweet was up.”
“Then you tweeted that it was a mistake. Was it a mistake? Did you do it or were you hacked?”
“I was hacked.”
“How sure are you?”
“I don’t know. Pretty sure.”
“Pretty sure. Well, the answer’s in the phone. You need to get it to your IT department, tell them it was hacked, get them to check it out.”
“I know. I have an appointment at eight with the IT guy.”
“Tell him you were hacked. Don’t tell him you’re not sure.”
“Okay.”
“I have to be in a meeting that started five minutes ago. Are you okay?”
“Yes. Stressed.”
“Keep it bottled up. Let it out later. Be professional. K?”
“K.”
“Gotta go. Talk later. You got this.”
* * *
I was at my desk, typing up some thoughts to give Craig on the whole mess when Kevin arrived, carrying a big coffee and looking dumb in baggy jeans and an OBEY T-shirt.
“Hey, Walker,” he said. “How’s it going?”
“Terrible. Someone stole a . . . private . . . picture of me and put it on the internet. Really bad.”
He kind of froze in his tracks.
“Right. That is bad.”
“My phone was hacked. Someone sent me harassing texts, then my phone went dead. When it came back to life, he had tweeted out a topless pic of me.”
He headed for his little windowless office, which was full of shelves loaded with computer parts and spools of wire. I followed him, speaking at an overcaffeinated pace, telling him that I hoped he could find out who had hacked me.
“On Twitter you said that you sent the pic by mistake.”
“I didn’t. I was freaking out when I sent that. I was hacked.”
“How sure are you?” he said, easing into his office chair.
“Really sure,” I said. “I tweeted the kitty pic. I wouldn’t tweet that other pic. Never. No way. Why?”
“It was on your phone? That topless pic?”
“I guess. Does that matter? I mean, I suppose it was in the cloud. It’s still private. People aren’t supposed to steal your private pictures, right?”
“I can’t tell anything until I look at your phone.” He held up his hand to get me to stop talking, then extended it.
I gave him the phone and continued to explain what I thought might have happened.
He plugged it into his Mac and then waited. Nothing happened.
He fussed with it.
“Was it powered on a minute ago?” he asked.
“Yes, it was at, like, 80 percent.”
“It doesn’t seem to be now. We might have to wait for it to power up.”
It eventually rebooted and then it had a funny screen with the Apple logo and timer bar.
He looked up at me.
“Did you mean to wipe your phone?” he asked.
“What?”
“This phone is being wiped. As we speak. It’s just finishing. Did you wipe it?”
“What? No. No! I don’t know how to do that. I just handed it to you. It was . . . normal, like, a minute ago.”
He looked down at it and up at me.
“Well, it’s not normal now. It’s been bricked. Either you did it, or someone hacked it, and they did it.”
“They can do that?”
“If the phone was comp
romised, yes. They could do it remotely at any time. Maybe they decided to wipe the phone before I could plug it in and download data that would have showed their footprints.”
“But how would they know you were going to do that?”
He looked away, sighed, and looked back at me.
“If they turned on the mic, they could have heard us talking.”
I stared blankly at him.
“They can do that?”
“They can do that.”
I sat down on the desk.
Maybe that’s how Declan knew I was peeing, I thought. He could hear it. Creepy!
“Someone can use my phone like a bug?”
“Yeah. Depending on who it is, and what they can do, they might even be able to do it when the phone’s powered down.”
“What?”
“It depends on the capability of whoever hacked your phone. It would take me about ten minutes to set up your phone so I could hear everything when it’s on. The NSA or Mossad could do it so they could hear what you’re doing when the phone’s powered off.”
“I don’t like that.”
“The point is, I don’t really know what they could do. For all I know, they could turn it into a bat and have it fly back to their office at night.”
“What?”
“I mean I don’t know what they can do. They can do lots of things.”
“More than listen to me?”
“They can listen to you, know your location at all times, know when you go to sleep, when you wake up, see all your texts and, uh, pictures. Did you have other private pictures on your phone?”
Shit. Likely. I hadn’t thought of that. I wasn’t going to tell Creeper Kevin that.
“They would have everything that was on my phone?”
“Sure. If it’s compromised, it’s compromised. Same goes for any accounts you used on your phone. Twitter. Facebook. Instagram. Snapchat. Gmail. It’s best to assume it’s all compromised.”
“Fuck. I’d better change all my passwords.”
“Let me see if I can find anything on this. Do you know what a Faraday cage is?”
I did not.
“It’s used to shield a phone from electromagnetic waves, including radio waves. Ideally, if your phone gets hacked, you put it in a Faraday cage, get it to a shielded room, hook it to a computer, and you can see what the hackers were up to. They can’t wipe it then.”
“Do you have one?” I asked him.
“No. I’d use tinfoil, like the cops do. When they arrest gangsters, they wrap their phones in tinfoil, so they can’t be remotely wiped. You got to use a lot, wrap it good.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
27
Jess got roofied by some scumbag in her sophomore year—no assault, thank goodness, because her friends realized that she was acting weird and hustled her home, but she had a total blackout, which was scary. So for a while I was obsessed with roofies and read a bunch of horror stories online.
It takes about twenty minutes for the drug to kick in, after which the drugged party gets groggy and suggestible. I want that to happen to Douchebro, but not while he is behind the wheel.
My plan is to make him wait in the bar for a bit, but as soon as we down the last Jägerbomb, he is raring to go.
“So were you serious about the couch?” I ask him, touching his arm. “I really would love a drive tomorrow, and I’d rather not go back to Hoboken tonight.”
“Totally,” he says. “No prob. It’s a comfortable couch. We can have a nightcap, then I’ll tuck you in.”
“Are you sure?” I ask. “I’m pretty tired. I mean, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. I may seem like a crazy girl, but I’m actually pretty conservative about some things.”
Translation: You’re not getting laid.
“Oh yeah!” he says. “No problem. I’m tired myself.”
Ha. He thinks I’ll be drugged and compliant within half an hour. I hate him.
It feels strange to present as relaxed and drunk, when I am actually furiously angry.
“Should we do one more shot?” I ask. “No. Wait. You have to drive, don’t you? Are you all right to drive?”
He is keen to get me out of there.
“I’m fine. I’ve only had a few. No problem. But I shouldn’t have any more. You ready to leave?”
“Yes,” I say. “But first I have to pee.”
I kill five minutes sitting in a stall. I’ll just have to keep him occupied in the parking lot for five minutes before the roofie kicks in.
When I get back to the bar, he smiles at me, looking drunk but not drugged.
“There you are,” he says and kisses me. Fuck.
I hope this works. I really do not enjoy touching this guy.
He pulls me close and puts his tongue in my mouth. I squirm but let him kiss me. Gross. Then the bartender breaks it up. I’m sure he’s disappointed to see me in the arms of Douchebro rather than him.
“Guys,” he says. “We’re closing. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”
There is a crush of drunken hipsters at the door.
Oh shit. One of the people trying to get out is Irena, an irritating Russian Jersey girl I knew from a class at NYU.
The second I catch sight of her, our eyes lock and she smiles in recognition.
“Candace!” she says. “Hey!”
“No, I’m Lisa.”
She frowns in drunken confusion.
“Candace?”
“I don’t know you.”
I grab James’s hand and pull him back into the bar. There’s another exit, and I tug him toward it. I don’t think he heard my exchange with Irena.
“Come on,” I say. “This is bullshit. Let’s go this way.”
He follows me.
28
I found Rebecca and Craig in his office. They were sitting around the coffee table where they had interviewed me for the job.
I stuck my head in the door and smiled.
“Guys, sorry to interrupt, but I have an, um, issue I’d like to fill you in on.”
“Sure,” said Rebecca. “What’s up?”
I sat on one of the chairs and put my Mac on the coffee table.
I had made a quick PowerPoint presentation, explaining that I’d been hacked, and was taking steps to mitigate the situation.
The last screen had a picture of me shrugging and the text: Likely negative impact on SoSol = zero.
What could they say? I had it under control.
I quickly pivoted to my cheese success, flipping through slides showing the numbers. I had forty-eight conversions and revealed my plan to top one thousand in the next few days.
I showed how I had used different strategies with different groups and tracked the response rate. I followed up with how I intended to refine the pitch with two more test groups before blasting it wide and sitting back to enjoy the cheese harvest.
“Wow,” said Craig. “If you’re right, this is going to earn us some money. Good for you!”
I grinned. “Yay me!”
Rebecca asked, “So how did you find these cheese lovers?”
I had thought about lying, telling them that I’d harvested addresses, but I was afraid they’d ask me to replicate the technique, and I couldn’t.
“I managed to get my hands on a list of cheese lovers. From a friend.”
I could see Rebecca was composing a follow-up question, but Craig clapped his hands together.
“You used your initiative,” he said.
I decided to feed him some of his own bullshit.
“I’m matching customers with a service they didn’t even know they wanted. This is the kind of thing social does way better than traditional advertising.”
“The potential is huge,” he said.
“I find it really exciting. I can’t wait to take what I’ve learned from this and apply it to something more interesting.”
“Hm,” he said. “I might have something in
mind for you.”
He glanced at Rebecca, who looked displeased.
“We haven’t got it sorted out yet,” she said.
“No. But I want to give Candace something to think about.”
Rebecca turned to me.
“You’ll have to promise to keep quiet about this until Alvin gets the contract signed,” she said.
I nodded enthusiastically. “I promise.”
Craig smiled.
“We’re very close to a deal with WordUp,” he said. “It’s modeled on our arrangements with Cheese of the Month and Bowhunting.com. We only get paid for the conversions we bring them. The idea is that they’re outsourcing their social media marketing, so they can focus on the customer experience.”
“Wow,” I said. “Just wow.”
WordUp was a new advertising-driven online publishing portal aimed at mobile phone users. The idea was to feed texts to commuters who want to read—mostly genre fiction—on the bus or subway. Legacy publishing was trying to sell them books. WordUp was giving them stories, all for free, betting that they could make enough money through clickthroughs to make it pay.
I had applied for a job there and got nothing but an automatically generated email thanking me for my interest. I so wanted to be part of it.
“I think you should get first crack at WordUp,” said Craig. “You’ll have to be more careful to get approval for branding and messages, since we can expect WordUp to track what we’re doing more closely than the cheese people, but I like your approach.”
“I really really would love to work on WordUp. It’s such a paradigm shifter, potentially. And I get it. I love books. My degree is in literature.”
“We need to talk with Alvin,” said Rebecca.
“Right,” said Craig. “I just want to let you know what we’re working on, get you thinking about. Don’t talk to anyone else about it.”
“And keep focused on Cheese of the Month for now,” said Rebecca. “Let’s see how those conversion numbers go.”
I promised I wouldn’t breathe a word to a soul and expressed enthusiasm for continued cheese work.
Back at my desk, I entered social media damage control mode for a while. I blocked some people discussing my topless selfie on Twitter and sent out a few social media tweets, to remind people that I was not an amateur hawtie.