by JA Huss
“No, man. I do. I find you fascinating.”
“Yeah? Why?”
He shrugs. Not an answer, but OK. “Seriously, what’s going on?” he asks.
I sigh out in puffs of breath. “Oh, I’m just adjusting to the newness of everything happening at once, I think. I don’t always do well with change.”
“Why not?”
“Not sure. Always been that way. My dad died when I was a kid, and then my mom sent me to boarding school, so I was always on the move, and you know, basic Psych 101 whatever. And then I sort of found the thing I love, the thing that makes me feel purposeful—which is art—and then that didn’t go the way I thought it would and now...”
“Ooooohhhhhh,” he says, like he just cracked a programming code.
“What, ooooohhhhhh? Ooooohhhhhh what?”
“The rock climbing thing. I get it now.”
“Hell are you talking about?”
“Your rock climbing obsession. The one that kept you in the middle of Moab while we were opening the offices so that a nineteen-year-old working in his first job in the real world was left to rally the troops and give a rousing speech welcoming a hundred and fifty employees to THE FUTURE of the audio-visual revolution.”
“I heard it was a great speech.”
“It was OK. But the point is that it makes sense now why you’re so addicted to it.”
“Yeah? Why’s that, Sigmund?”
He leans down to me. “The rocks don’t move. The mountains are stationary. They’re timeless. Impassive. Constant. And when you’re scaling one—or whatever the hell it is you do—you can feel confident that it’ll stay where it is. I mean, you know, unless there’s a rock slide or avalanche or whatever. Then you’re screwed.”
I crack open my water, look at him, shake my head. “You always been like this?”
“Like what?”
“Like you.”
He shrugs again. Again, not an answer, but...
“I met a girl.” Was that me? Jesus. Wow. I was not expecting to blurt that out.
“Ooooooh.” Again with the “ooooooh” from this guy. “Do tell.”
“Tell what? Nothing to tell, really. I met this girl on the freeway. I borrowed her phone charger. Turns out she works in the building. I gave her her charger back. Turns out she also lives in my building. I asked her to dinner. She came out with me and my friend Pierce. I tried to walk her home. She got weird. I think she may be a prostitute on the side. She kissed me on the cheek. I kissed her on the mouth. She pushed me out of the elevator into my apartment. I thought all night about going downstairs to ask her what the fuck. But then I remembered I don’t actually know which apartment she’s in. So I jerked off to her a couple of times. Then the next thing I knew, it was morning. And I’m kind of out of sorts. That’s all.”
He chews at his bottom lip for a moment before saying, “Cool, man. OK. I got work to do. See ya,” and starts off.
“Wait,” I call. He stops and turns. “I need you to do something for me.”
“What? Not some weird sex thing?”
“What? No! Why would you...? How are we coming along with IN-VERSE?”
“OK. Not bad. Why?”
Before I get a chance to answer him, my cell rings. I look. Holding up the phone, I say, “This is why. I’ll tell you more later. Oh, and I’ll probably be up for that rematch when I feel less cloudy.”
“OK. But I wasn’t even playing with my dominant hand, so—”
“Go work, man.” He leaves. I answer the phone. “Bonjour.”
“You see this shit?”
“Oh, not bad. You? How was the stewardess?”
“Flight attendant. Jesus, man. Join us in the twenty-first century.” The guy is confusing sometimes. “Have. You. Seen. This?”
“I don’t know what this is.”
“Come to my office.” And he hangs up. In turn, I hang my head. I draw myself up from my seat, and as I cross to head up to Pierce’s office, I glance out through the huge picture windows at the unmoving and constant mountains outside.
“Go on in,” says Myrtle, before she goes back to lovingly sucking on the straw in her iced whatever-it-is that she’s drinking. I can’t help noticing the red lipstick on the green straw. She smirks and again, my hands go to protect my crotch out of some weird instinct.
“It’s slander!” Pierce is yelling into the speaker phone. I assume he’s talking to... “It’s fucking slander, Derek!” I knew it was Derek.
“It’s not slander,” says Derek. “It meets no legal definition of slander.”
“Yeah? What’s the legal definition?”
“Making a false spoken statement damaging to a person’s reputation.”
“And this isn’t that?”
“No.”
“WHY?”
“Le Man is not a person. And, as far as I can tell, she’s not saying anything false.”
“She’s saying she didn’t steal my concept.”
“OK.”
“She did.”
“You know this how?”
“She must have!”
“Why?”
“Because she’s saying she didn’t!”
I pause where I’m standing to simply appreciate the display of circular logic.
“Sorry, Pierce,” says Derek, “I don’t think we have strong legal footing to pursue an action based on the equivalent of a ‘he who smelt it dealt it’ accusation. Look, we’ve baited her to come out into the open with the threat of legal action, and it’s clearly working. So let’s just keep on with the plan. Until we know who the woman is...”
“I’m on that,” Pierce says, hanging up the call and looking at me like I’m his saving grace. Which makes me feel stressed and sad at once. The mountains outside his windows look different somehow than they did on my floor.
“What is it now?” I ask.
“This.” He points at his monitor and once again, I swing around to see what there is to see. And once again, those breasts. Pierce hits the space bar and I hear the sound of Sultry Siren speaking to me.
“Well, hi, kids.” I have to say, we did a really good job with Sultry Siren. It’s sexy as hell. The breasts don’t hurt. “It’s been an unexpectedly exciting day. First, the Sexpert wants to thank all of you who have been here from the start, and for all of you new fans who are just discovering this channel... welcome,” she purrs. At the use of the word “Sexpert,” Pierce grabs up his golf club. I think he only has the one. I know I don’t know much about golf, but I’m pretty sure you need more than one club to really make a go of it.
The faceless voice continues, “So, if you heard about me on 93.3 this morning, thanks for dropping by. And thanks to 93.3 for getting the word out there. The Sexpert owes everyone at the station there a big. Wet. Juicy. Thank you.” I swear she actually fucks the microphone with her vocal cords when she says ‘thank you.’ Or, I guess, actually, they’re my vocal cords. This whole thing is so strange.
“But unfortunately,” she goes on, “what started as a great day turned into a not very nice day at all.” She pouts that second part. “Because it seems that some very mean man is alllll over the internet saying that the Sexpert—me—is his creation. And that somehow, little old me stole his idea. And I’m here to tell you all that that is simply not true. Cross my heart.”
I have this weird little moment of déjà vu when she says that last bit. It’s curious to hear an expression I use a lot being spoken by a voice I created. It’s surreal. What is very real is the way she accentuates crossing her heart so that her finger grazes her nipple though the fabric of her...
Sleeveless...
Dress.
I blink twice and kind of twist my neck. Suddenly Pierce hits the space bar again and stops the stream.
“That’s not slander?” he asks.
“What? What are you talking about? Which part?”
“She called me mean!”
“Man, I—”
“Am I crazy?” He flops o
nto his throne.
“What?”
“Am I? I mean, this is nuts, yeah? You were right. I’m looking for something to blame my failure on. It’s me. I’m to blame. It’s all my fault. Shit.”
He drops the golf club to the ground and slumps down, looking almost exactly like what he is. A broken boy prince. My heart goes out to him. I come over and kneel down.
“Highness...”
“Stop,” he says.
“I’m sorry. Look, seriously, no. You are not a failure. Look around, man. This is not what failing looks like.”
“I inherited all this shit.”
“So? There are plenty of people who inherit more and do less with it. Look at me.” He doesn’t. “Look. At. Me.” He does. “You are fiercely capable, and you have vision, and that is special and rare and should be celebrated. Are you hearing me?”
“I dunno,” he mumbles, looking lost.
“Dig this. I was just talking with my lead developer, Dev—”
“Your lead developer is called Dev?”
“Not now. Stay focused.” I snap my fingers at him. “He says we’re in good shape on an app that we’re developing that can...” I trail off. If I open this jar up, there’s no putting back inside what could spill out.
“That can what?”
“Basically, that can grab the vocal signature of any voice in the world and then run it through a database that will match it to its owner. A vocal thumbprint.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Where do you get the database from?”
I shake my head from side to side and kind of hold my breath. “That’s... Don’t worry about it.”
“Dude,” he says, sitting up in his chair, “are you into some illegal shit now?”
“No! No, it’s all completely legal. Hyper-legal, actually.”
He narrows his eyes at me and I just stare at him and nod, watching him sort out the implications.
“Are you...” he whispers now. “Are you working on some spy shit?”
“Mmmmmm,” I moan, resisting the words that want to leave my mouth, and then... “We all have to play our part to defend democracy.”
There’s a long, long moment where neither of us says anything. Then, finally, he says, matter-of-factly, “You went to art school.”
“Yeah.” I laugh, sorrowfully. “I know.”
And after another long moment, he says, “But it’s not her voice. She’s using your thing to disguise it.”
“Yeah. But that part’s easy. The stripping-down component is built into the app itself.”
“It is?”
I nod.
“Do people know this?”
“I do. And now you do. We’re people.”
He drops his head and closes his eyes. He starts, “You don’t have to—”
“I got you, man. OK? I got you. Look, at the very least, I will bring you the source. After that, you can decide what to do with the info. If you wanna sue some chick sitting in her bedroom making videos, you can do that.”
He looks sad for a second and says, “It’s what my dad would do.”
“I know, man. I know. Look, lemme go pretend I care about my company, OK? But, hey, I’m on this. I got you, mon frère.”
He nods slowly at first, getting more vigorous as he goes. I pat him on the knee, stand, and head for the door. As I get there he says, “Oh. Who was that chick last night?”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. I mean, I’m thrilled, obviously, but who is she?”
“Pierce, she... Eden. Eden Presley?” He looks at me with a blank stare. “She runs your social media department?” Still nothing. “She’s friends with Myrtle? She was up here yesterday?” Nada. I raise my eyebrows and shake my head. “OK. I’ll talk to you later, man.”
“Andrew?” I turn back. It looks like he wants to say, ‘thank you.’ He opens his mouth to speak... “Bang her if you didn’t. She has a great rack.”
I smile and huff a breath. I want to tell him he’s welcome. So I say, “I’ll try, man. I’ll try.”
I walk out of the office, past Myrtle who says, “Bye, Andrew,” in a syrupy way that freaks me out, and I arrive at the elevator bank. Something about that video is gnawing at me. It’s not fair to say that I don’t know what, because I do, but it’s just too...
Nah.
The elevator doors open and there’s no one else in the car. I half expected to see Eden, only because... I dunno. That’s the relationship we seem to be forming. If we are forming a relationship. Hell, I dunno what you call it. I just know that I don’t feel like I can be trapped in a box right now.
Last night we talked about this being a walking community. And right now I feel like walking. So I decide to take the stairs.
I open the stairwell door, step inside, and begin trotting back down to my floor when I hear, in a voice I know, “Are you kidding me right now?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN - EDEN
My desk phone rings. But I’m in the middle of composing a tweet to thwart that harlot Sexpert and bring people over to Le Man website to read a repurposed article about how to… well, let me just give you the title.
How to Find Your Way Through the Vaginal Forest and Hit Her Button.
I swear to God, that was the title.
And there was a picture of a man lost in a forest as a graphic.
‘Was’ is the operative word here. Because holy shit, I don’t know who they were targeting with that title, but it’s bad. And I don’t even have time to get into how spectacularly that graphic missed the mark.
So now it’s called How to Eat Her Like Dessert and there’s a picture of a pink cupcake with a cherry on top of pink frosting. And sprinkles. Because sprinkles and frosting are—
“No,” Gretchen says, walking up to my desk. “And I just buzzed your phone and no one answered, which is why I’m now standing at your desk. Why do you try my patience, Eden?”
I push my glasses up my nose and squint at her. “Which part was a no?”
“The cupcake,” she says. “This isn’t Cosmo, Eden. No man wants to see a picture of a cupcake while he’s learning to…” She does a little wiggle move with her finger, which I can only presume is her gesture for eating a girl out.
“Well, you’re wrong,” I say, looking up at her. “This is the perfect graphic.”
“Get rid of it,” she snaps. “No cupcakes.”
I pout. Because that cupcake is so beautiful. And the cherry and the pink… “But it’s so delicious-looking, Gretchen. It makes men want to think of…” I look up at her again. “Delicious lady bits.”
Gretchen’s face contorts into this horrible, grouchy frown. “We’re not Penthouse, either, Eden. Find something appropriate for our customer base or I’ll let Pierce know we need to get a new marketing team.”
Team? I’m the only one on this team. But I don’t say that. I just make a sad face and stare at my computer.
“And that title. Just keep the titles and make new graphics, Eden. I didn’t tell you to rewrite anything. You’re not a writer.” And then she laughs.
But I kinda am. I’ve written most of the scripts for the Sexpert this past year and that’s how I know this title and this cupcake are both perfect.
“OK,” I say, putting on my fake cheer. Because I don’t want to fight with my boss. “What did you need?”
“The art department just called me. They have a question about a graphic and need you up there now so they can get the next article on track for approval. And if that graphic is pink, has sprinkles, or is a picture of a dessert, find a new one.”
With that she turns on her heel and walks away.
I sigh, tired of taking orders from her when I’m the one who’s qualified. She doesn’t have a booming YouTube channel. And holy shit, Sexpert Channel is going crazy. Zoey texted me six times this morning to update me on our subscribers. She was so excited when we reached two hundred and fifty thousand last night, she called me at four AM. Apparently
she was up all night just hitting refresh, watching the numbers climb in real time.
She even opened her bottle of Moët Champagne she’s been saving since her baby shower to celebrate when we got to half a million this morning.
It’s pretty fun and a part of me wishes I wasn’t stuck here at my job and was home with her celebrating instead.
I hate having to hide. I can’t even tell Myrtle about our new success.
“Eden!” Gretchen barks from her office. “Why are you still here?”
“Going!” I sing out, then grab my tablet and phone and make my way to the elevator. Just as I push the button my phone dings a text in my hand so I glance down at the screen.
Myrtle: Guess who’s here?
Me: I’m on my wayup now for graphics c u ina sec
Myrtle: He’s leaving right now. Better hurry.
Me: shit andrew?
Myrtle: Hurry! He’s waiting for the elevator.
Oh, thank you for the heads up, Myrtle. Because now I’m definitely taking the stairs up to the art department. The last thing I need is to see Andrew again. Last night was a total disaster. I mean—how unlucky can one girl get? I feel like the universe is conspiring against me. And it’s not fair because Zoey and I have been working so hard on this Sexpert thing trying to make a go at it and finally, the very day we actually have a chance to make some actual money and move up, the whole thing gets tainted with stupid accusations that aren’t even true.
At least I don’t think they’re true.
There’s this little part of me that has doubts. Like maybe I did overhear Pierce saying something about his idea for the Sexpert and just don’t remember. I’m that kind of girl. I’m always… ruffled.
The elevator dings and I realize Andrew could be on the other side of those doors right this second. So I spin around, open the door to the stairs, and duck inside.
When I look up who do I see? “Are you kidding me right now?”
“How lucky can a guy get?” Andrew laughs.
“Funny.” I sigh. “I was just thinking the exact opposite. But apparently a girl can always get more unlucky than she is already.”