by Liza Palmer
“You’re stalking Tavia Keppel,” Hugo says.
“Dressed like that,” Lynn adds.
“Yes and yes,” I say.
“And a meeting with her is…” Reuben trails off.
“We’re too late for that. Tavia will read our story, she will place it with the right people, and I will take down Chris Lawrence,” I say, hopping down off the counter.
“Well, okay,” Lynn says. Reuben and Hugo are quiet.
“I know I sound nuts. Just in case—”
“No, we weren’t going to say a thing,” Hugo says, smiling.
“You look nuts, but sound—” Reuben starts.
“I’d say more determined than nuts,” Hugo says. Lynn and Reuben nod in agreement.
“Sound determined and look nuts.” I pull Billy’s truck keys out of my pocket. “I’ll take it.”
Lynn, Hugo, and Reuben wish me an exhausted good luck, and within the hour I’m pulling Billy’s truck into a parking structure just across from the Platform in Culver City.
It’s when I step out of the truck that I realize how sore I am from the morning of moving. Muscles I hardly knew I had seize and buckle as I walk to the elevator. Fortunately, I got here in plenty of time, as it’ll probably take me around forty-five minutes just to walk across the street.
The Platform is a posh outdoor shopping mall located in an incredibly un-posh section of Culver City that’s just under a freeway overpass. It has outdoor seating, expensive boutiques, and restaurants that serve a menu full of different kinds of salads: the Platform is the embodiment of Los Angeles.
I stop into Blue Bottle and buy a coffee and something to nosh on as I continue to the furthest corner of the Platform. This is where the most coveted spin class in Los Angeles should be letting out in fewer than twenty minutes.
I find a seat on a slatted bench just across from the spin place and in front of a fancy home goods store where everything looks amazing and comfortably unaffordable. I sip my coffee and wait.
I don’t practice my pitch. I’m not nervous. I am also covered in moving dirt from head to toe, probably (definitely) stink, and am wearing a stained gray sweatshirt emblazoned with the silhouette of a woman and the words “LOWOOD INSTITUTION LACROSSE.” Billy got it for me for Christmas. Said that it combined two of my favorite things: Jane Eyre and baggy clothing.
Once I finish my pastry, I pull out my phone to check the time and see that my group text with Hani, Elise, and Thornton is blowing up.
“just a pitch, take it or leave it, but maybe we should bring back the code names for this text thread,” Hani texts. She is shot down almost immediately. Her next tactic is to type a string of single letters, spelling out:
G
O
O
D
L
U
C
K
Elise reminds me of the talking points that we worked out last night. Then she, like Hani, offers good luck. In the group text Thornton simply types, “you got this.”
I look at his text, switch over to his contact saved into my phone, and press Call.
“Hey,” he says.
“I’m calling you so I don’t get nervous.”
“Good plan.” I am struck silent, staring at the entrance to the spin place with the heat of a thousand suns. Thornton gets the hint. “So, Lynn is all moved in?”
“Yeah, we got the last of her stuff over there just in time.”
“Did you have a chance to go home before heading over to Culver?”
“Nope.”
“So you went right from moving day—”
“Yep.”
“Well, it’ll be a conversation starter.”
“I need to say this because I have to get it up and out. What if she’s not even here, what if she says no and what if all of this was for nothing?”
“All of those things aren’t mutually exclusive.”
“Right … right.”
“For as much as Tavia likes to think so, she’s not the only game in town.”
“Totally.”
“This is actually one of those instances where she needs you way more than you need her.” I am quiet. “I pushed it, didn’t I? You were okay with those first two, but—”
“You got a bit cocky on that last one.” I notice a few people starting to stream out of the spin place.
“I stand by it.”
“I’d better get going. They’re starting to come out.”
“Okay, good luck.” I scan the sweaty, beautiful people as they exit the spin place.
“Thanks.” I hang up my phone, and flip it in my hands as I wait. Another sip of coffee. I stand. Sit. Stand. Throw my pastry trash away. Sit. Stand. And then I see her.
Striding out in a matching set of white leggings, a sports bra, and a chartreuse zip-up hoodie, Tavia digs out her phone from her workout bag and bobs and weaves through the outgoing traffic. I throw my coffee in the bin and walk toward her.
“Tavia,” I say. My voice is strong. Tavia stops when she sees me.
“Joan?” She walks toward me and clutches me from the side. I feel like I’m being jostled in a crowded bar rather than being hugged. At some point, I pat her shoulder to signal I’m done being “hugged.” Which is when she smells me. “Are you coming from a … long hike?”
“Runyon Canyon,” I lie.
“Oh, fun.” She pokes and swipes at her phone, continuing on toward the parking structure. “Okay, well … Lovely to run into you!” Tavia picks up her pace, but I keep up.
“I have a story for you,” I say.
“Yes, I’m sure you do, but—”
“Are you acquainted with the tech company Bloom and its two founders, Chris Lawrence and Asher Lyndon?” Tavia flicks her gaze toward me.
“We asked them to speak at a small business round table aimed at the millennials just this past quarter.” Tavia sniffs. “They declined.”
“Did they?”
“It was incredibly shortsighted … from a business standpoint.” Tavia waves at a trio of women who were, by the looks of their expensive athleisure wear and copious amounts of sweat, probably in the spin class with Tavia. She scrolls through several texts as we walk. The Platform is not a big shopping mall. One block at the most and we are nearing the end of it. My time is running out.
“I’ve actually written my story up.” I pull the printed pages from my purse. “It’ll be much better if you just read it.” I hand her the pages. She looks as though I’ve presented her with a high-caloric meal laden with carbs. She looks from the offending pages back up to me. “My writing speaks for itself.” I will my hands to stop shaking before the ruffling pages give me away. “Please.”
Tavia takes the pages, crumples them in her hand, shifts her workout bag to the other shoulder, and lets out a long sigh. I take a deep breath and make myself hold the space. Tavia drops her phone into her purse and with a slight sneer and a raised overly botoxed eyebrow begins reading the pages. After only a few seconds, she leans forward only slightly toward the pages.
Tavia flips the first page back and pushes her designer glasses further up her perfect nose. Her eyes race across the second page. Eyebrows shoot up. Mouth contorts. She flips the second page back onto the first and dives into the third page. She cringes. A sharp intake of breath. A hand at her chest and she almost rips the page just to get to the fourth and final sheet. A gasp as she comes to the end. She holds the pages tightly in her hand. She looks up at me and I wait. Breathless.
“Is this true?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“And can you prove it?”
“Yes.”
“This is big,” she says, pulling her phone from her purse. “This is big.”
“Tavia, if I could—”
“It’ll have to be vetted within an inch of its life, but—” She taps away on her phone.
“Now, let’s talk terms.” I hold out my hand for the pages. Tavia hands them back to me in a reluctant haze. I fold
them up and put them back in my purse. She watches every movement.
“Terms?”
“I get final approval over which publication I’d prefer, as well as any and all edits. All four names on the byline appear everywhere the story is. And lastly, the contract will be negotiated through our attorney,” I say, handing Tavia Elise’s mom’s business card. Tavia takes it.
“Attorney,” she absently repeats.
“I know what I have, Tavia.” She nods. “If the negotiations meet our approval, only then will we send over a digital copy of the story.” Tavia stands there, her phone now limp in her hand. She nods her head.
“Okay,” she says with an efficient nod. “I’ll call—” Tavia looks at the card. “Kerri Nakamura from the car.”
“She’s waiting for your call,” I say, noticing that we’ve arrived at the end of the Platform and are now approaching the intersection just across from the parking structure. I push the pedestrian walk button. Tavia and I are quiet as we watch the red numbers count down. She taps away on her phone and I replay everything I just said and wonder if I should have gotten an iced tea at Blue Bottle and told her she really must try it and then give her one to take “to go.”
The light turns and Tavia and I walk across the street and into the structure where we both pay our parking fees in a truly awkward silence in which I fight every urge not to apologize for being “such a bitch.” We ride the elevator in silence, and just as we’re about to peel off to our respective cars—
“Where is it you see this story going?” I ask, my hand curling around the door handle of Billy’s truck.
“Everywhere, Joan.” She looks up from her sleek black Mercedes and makes eye contact with me. “Everywhere.”
* * *
I swipe open my phone as I sit on the curb outside my house, waiting for Thornton to come pick me up early Monday morning. I haven’t heard from Tavia, but Mrs. Nakamura says they’ve been going back and forth about terms since yesterday.
I felt unmoored when I woke up this morning. I’ve lived and breathed this story for the last month. It’s been my constant companion. And now it’s out of my hands and, along with it, all of the hopes and dreams for what it could be and what I fantasized it could do. And maybe even how it could save me.
But what if it doesn’t?
What if the story doesn’t fail, but instead does just okay? It makes a few waves, I save the name tag I get from whatever fancy movie studio I’ve been allowed on for just that one hour of whatever meeting I dressed up way too much for, and Bloom continues on with a slap on the wrist like nothing ever happened.
I know this is where I’m supposed to take the high road—trot out all of my learnings and stare off into the middle distance while musing about how truly noble my quiet life of anonymous scribblings will be, but … fuck that.
I want this story to reverberate around the world as a warning to all the Chris Lawrences out there.
We’re coming for you.
We’re coming for you.
Thornton pulls up; I climb in and throw my bag in the back seat. I lean across and kiss him as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.
“You ready to take down a couple of tech bros?” Thornton asks.
“Every day,” I say, buckling my seat belt.
“Damn right,” he says, pulling down my long driveway and on toward Bloom one last time.
Thornton and I walk into Bloom. Once again, I’m in the lobby that isn’t a lobby with seating options that aren’t actually seating options now leaving a job that was never really a job. I look over at reception and immediately feel guilty as Caspian waves excitedly to the both of us.
“This sucks,” I whisper to Thornton.
“I know,” he says, waving back to Caspian. “Okay, I’m going to hit this head on.” I smile and give him a sneaky wave. “See you back up in the loft.”
Thornton peels off and goes over to Caspian, who chatters about the weekend and what he had planned for the day and what does Thornton think of his new kilt. Thornton likes it, he says. Caspian twirls in celebration.
I scan the main area of Bloom and see Hani embracing Ivy as if she’s going off to war. Elise is just behind her, apologizing and pulling her off. Ivy, of course, lunges into Hani for an even longer hug, sermonizing about big emotions and loving as wild as she wants to!
I walk through the main area to the loft in an almost automatic haze, climb the stairs, drop my bag on my desk, and pick up my coffee mug. I zip the little Batmobile around my desk and then catch myself. How quickly this place became routine. I look over at the graphics team, huddled up in their usual Monday morning meeting. Then I glance at Hani’s desk. The whole thing is cleaned off. She must have come in early. Taking her lead, I drop the Batmobile and The Golden Notebook that Anne still thinks I’m reading into my bag.
No matter what, today is my last day at Bloom.
I check my phone. No news from Mrs. Nakamura or Tavia. That’s fine. This is fine. Now holding on a bit too tightly to my coffee mug, I pick my way down the stairs and walk toward the canteen and the Bloom coffee machine. As I walk, I catch sight of Asher and Chris. They’re walking into Scooby Doo with that same group of suit-wearing adults who I now know are Bloom’s board of directors. A board with no idea what’s coming. Or maybe they do know? Maybe Chris and Asher are just pawns of a greedy, faceless monolith of tech business people who want success at any cost. We’ll soon find out.
I set my mug in the line and force myself to look around. It really is a shame that CAM didn’t work, because what Chris and Asher tried to build here could have been wonderful if it were meant to grow something instead of hide something. These kids would have done anything for them, and instead of cultivating that, they exploited it. These hardworking kids deserved better.
“It doesn’t feel real,” Elise says, settling in just beside me.
“I feel so guilty,” I say in a whisper.
“Don’t.” She waits and I turn toward her. “This is our moral obligation. These kids have to learn this lesson. It’s a hard one, but if they don’t learn it now then somewhere down the line they’re going to blindly follow someone into much more dangerous territory than this.”
“You’re right,” I say, really hearing her. “You’re right.”
“This will teach them to question authority. The power and inconvenience of dissent is always a hard lesson to learn,” she says. She puts her hand on my arm. “Stay strong. This is much bigger than our discomfort.”
“Well, goddamn,” I say, laughing.
“You like that?” she asks, shifting our mugs forward in the line.
“Holy shit.”
“That’s the speech I came up with last night when I woke up in a flop sweat imagining poor, innocent Caspian packing up his little desk and wondering why people had been mean to him.” We both look over at Caspian as he labors over which beret to wear today. “I don’t think Hani and I are going to make it to lunch.”
“I saw her desk was already cleared off,” I say.
“Yeah, we packed it up before anyone was in the office,” she says.
“She’s pretty great,” I say, and Elise flat-out blushes as a smile breaks across her face.
“She is,” Elise squeaks out. We are quiet. “And don’t think we don’t know about you and Thornton.”
“What?”
“Hani thought you guys would do it in the car, but I had money on the Alpine Inn,” Elise says.
“I … how…”
“Because we’re hot lady spies, that’s why,” Elise says, holding her hands up as if she’s bringing home the chorus in a ’90s R&B music video.
“I don’t know whether to be embarrassed or—”
“Don’t be embarrassed,” she says. The girl in front of me removes her mug from the drip tray and I step forward. My fingers move across the keypad with speed and ease as Elise continues talking. The machine clunks and whirrs to life. “He really is incredibly decent.” I brush off some
stray crumbs from the counter as my coffee streams into my awaiting mug. I can’t look at her.
“I’m not used to…” I look back over at my mug and see that the coffee is done. I pull my mug from the drip tray as Elise sets hers down. She waits. “Things working out.”
“Seeing as how all of us are going to be unemployed by day’s end, might want to rethink your definition of ‘working out,’” she says, punching her own arcane code for perfect coffee. She turns toward me.
“That’s definitely true,” I say.
“Although I’d rather be on our side than theirs right about now,” Elise says, pulling her mug from the drip tray.
“You’ll let me know if you hear from your mom?” I ask.
“You’ll be the first,” she says. We say our goodbyes as she heads over to her dark corner of the office and I walk back toward the loft.
“Joan, right?” Chris. On his phone. Hoodie and jeans. A can of fancy club soda tucked under his arm.
“Yeah. Yes,” I say. He is standing just outside Scooby Doo. I wait as he taps away on his phone. Does he know? Were we wrong about there not being any security cameras at the server farm and do they know that we know?
“So, I see that you’re settling in fairly well?” he finally asks.
I’m going to take you down, motherfucker.
“I am,” I say. Mackenzie walks up to Chris and hands him the ledger for what is probably the meeting he’s standing just outside of.
“Getting back on your feet is hard,” Chris says. Mackenzie doesn’t move from Chris’s side. I wait for him to dismiss her, but he doesn’t.
“Yeah, well, I think I’m going to be with you guys for the long haul,” I say.
“Wonderful, wonderful,” he says.
“Thank you again,” I say, meaning every word. I look from Chris to Mackenzie and then back to Chris. “You truly have given me the opportunity of a lifetime.”
“You’re welcome,” he says.
“Well, I’ll leave you two to it,” I say with a polite smile. I look past Chris and Mackenzie to Hani and Thornton watching our conversation with horrified paralysis. I step to the side and continue toward my friends. Hani bounds up the stairs in front of us as Thornton and I follow.