by Susannah Nix
“No,” she agreed. “But I like it.”
It felt like he’d given her a gift. As if by sharing his real name he’d offered her a glimpse of his true self—the one he kept hidden behind his charming smiles and happy-go-lucky facade.
A lump formed in Alice’s throat. Who’d have thought, when she first moved in with Griffin, that she’d ever come to feel this close to him? And now it was all about to end. She wasn’t ready for that to happen.
Tomorrow he would get on a plane, and he’d be so busy adjusting to the new city and shooting his new movie that he’d forget all about her. Maybe she’d get a text from him occasionally to do with Taco or the house. But they wouldn’t talk. Not like this.
And then when he came back, she’d have to move out and that would be that. He’d go back to his life and she’d go back to hers.
They’d probably never see each other—unless he needed a dog sitter again.
Monday morning, Alice got up early to see Griffin off and help him roll his bags out to the hired car that would take him to the airport. It was a sleek black Town Car driven by a blond Eastern European named Ignas who was entirely too cheerful for six o’clock in the morning.
“Call if you need anything,” Griffin said as Ignas loaded the last bag into the sedan’s cavernous trunk. “Anything at all.”
“I will.” Alice scooped Taco off the ground and held him up to her face. “We’ll be fine though, won’t we, buddy?”
Griffin reached out to ruffle the dog’s head. “Be good. Don’t chase the neighbor’s cat or eat any poop while I’m gone.”
“I’ll do my best,” Alice said, which got a faint smile out of Griffin. “Don’t worry about us. Go do your movie star thing.”
“Right.”
Ignas had already shut the trunk and gotten behind the wheel, waiting to take Griffin away.
“You better get going,” Alice said.
Griffin nodded. For a second, he looked like he might be about to hug her, then seemed to decide against it. He bent to kiss the top of Taco’s head and gave her a jerky sort of goodbye nod instead.
Alice held Taco tight as Griffin walked to the car and got in the back seat. He paused with his hand on the door and looked back at her. “See you in three months.”
She bit her lip and waved goodbye.
After the Town Car backed down the drive, Alice went into the house and flopped down on the couch. The place was all hers now. She ought to be excited about that. It was what she’d been waiting for ever since she moved in.
So why did she feel like she’d just lost something important?
13
It was beyond weird living in Griffin’s house without Griffin. Alice kept listening for the sound of him coming home and then remembering he wouldn’t be coming home. Not for months.
The first week passed with agonizing slowness.
She’d never actually lived alone before. There had always been a roommate, and before that her father’s family, and before that her mother. She had thought she’d enjoy the solitude, but mostly it set her on edge.
She was restless during the days and had a hard time sleeping at night. With her job on Las Vegas General over, Alice found herself at loose ends. It was jarring to go from working long hours to having her days completely empty. There was literally nothing to keep her from staying in her pajamas all day, except her own sense that it would probably be an unhealthy habit to get into. A nagging voice in the back of her mind kept telling her she was just one missed shower away from sinking into a spiral of sloth and depression.
To combat the yawning abyss of inertia, she tried to keep busy working on her dissertation, but the models took hours and hours to run, which left her with a lot of time to fill in between. She started taking Taco for walks twice a day, exploring all the nearby parks and walking paths. She watched all of The Crown and fell into a Wikipedia k-hole reading about the Windsors. She even tried teaching herself to cook, with extremely mixed success.
Her house-sitting duties were light, but she took them seriously. Every few days she’d text Griffin a picture of Taco so he’d know his dog was alive and well. Usually he responded with a thumbs-up or maybe a brief comment, but that was pretty much the extent of their communication.
She’d gotten exactly one non-dog-related text from him since he’d left: a photo taken from the balcony of his midtown condo in Atlanta on the night he arrived. Alice had complimented him on the view, he’d texted back a thumbs-up emoji, and that was that. She assumed he was busy acclimating to his new surroundings and job. She wanted to ask him how it was going, but she was too afraid of bothering him when she knew he was probably busy, so she left him alone.
Saturday, at least, was drinks with the other extras, which got Alice out of the house and around other human beings. They teased her about “bagging” Griffin and her brush with TMZ fame until she explained the situation: that she’d simply traded one menial, celebrity-adjacent job for another. Diane made a Kato Kaelin crack that Mark explained to the rest of them courtesy of his obsession with The People vs. O.J. Simpson, but after that the conversation switched to other topics.
Pete had already gotten another background gig on a new Netflix show. Mark was in the running to be the writer’s assistant on a network sitcom. Diane had taken an unpaid role in a student film, Bex had booked a commercial, and Tina had a callback next week for a speaking part in a Hallmark movie. Rachel was picking up shifts at Starbucks for the time being, but Pete was trying to get her onto his show.
Only a week since Las Vegas General had closed up shop, and they’d all moved on already.
Alice was glad to see everyone again, especially since she hadn’t spoken to anyone but the dog and the cleaning woman since Griffin had left, but it was bittersweet. It was almost more depressing to be reminded of what she’d lost. She missed that stupid, boring job that had actually been pretty cool. She hadn’t appreciated it enough at the time. She wished she’d made an effort to befriend the other extras sooner. Part of her even wished she could go back to the days when all she had to do was sit around a soundstage waiting for her turn to walk down a fake hallway, instead of spending hour after agonizing hour waiting on models that never seemed to converge.
On Monday, Alice had another meeting on campus with Dr. Frazier. Even though they’d picked a day when Dr. Gilchrist didn’t have any classes, Alice cast a nervous glance around the campus coffee shop as she slipped in the door. You never knew when or where he might turn up unexpectedly.
There was no sign of him inside Jo’s Coffee, fortunately. Alice got in line behind a guy with a canvas backpack and genuinely tragic blond tips, and waited her turn to order.
“Alice?”
A hand touched Alice’s arm, and she spun around to find Anh Vo staring at her. They’d both started in the sociology graduate program together five years ago. A lot of their cohort had already graduated and moved on, but apparently Anh was still around, just like Alice.
Anh’s mouth dropped open, her eyes widening in surprise. “Oh my god, you’re alive!”
“Anh! Hi!”
Anh’s look of surprise transformed into a smile. “Where the heck have you been? We all thought you quit.”
“Oh, um…” Alice cast her eyes at the front of the line, which hadn’t moved an inch, thanks to an undergrad at the front having trouble with his Campus Cash card. “I did, sort of—for a while anyway. My fellowship ran out and I had to take a job off campus, and then I just sort of stagnated.”
She avoided mentioning the real reason, because she wasn’t prepared to go into the gory details right then—not taken unawares in the middle of Jo’s before she’d had her morning coffee, for sure. Alice wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to talk about it without getting upset all over again.
Anh nodded, her mouth compressing into a sour line. “I know that feeling. I’m starting to think I’m never going to get out of this place.”
“Why? What happened?”
“The I
RB just rejected my application—for the third time.”
“Oh, man.” The university’s Institutional Review Board had to approve any research conducted on living creatures to ensure it followed strict ethical standards. Approvals were an annoying and arduous process, but the scrutiny was even stricter when the subjects were considered part of a protected or vulnerable class—and Anh’s research on minors in institutional care definitely fit that bill.
She sighed as she twirled a strand of silky black hair around her finger. “I’m pretty sure I’m going to die of old age before I get the approval for my research.”
“I’m sorry, that sucks.”
“Eh.” Her shoulders lifted in a shrug. “I knew when I chose this topic that it would be tough. I’ll just have to resubmit again. It would help if they weren’t so vague about the changes they wanted me to make to the study, but I’ll get it eventually. Fourth time’s the charm, right?”
“I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you,” Alice said, impressed by Anh’s positive attitude. But that was who Anh had always been: a tiny, optimistic ray of sunshine.
The line moved forward finally, and they both shuffled closer to the counter. As Anh’s eyes settled on Alice again they narrowed in concern.
“So you’re okay, right? Matt was convinced you were pregnant, but I told him he was an idiot.”
Alice laughed at the unlikelihood of that, given her nonexistent love life the past year. “I am definitely not pregnant—nor was I, at any point, ever.”
“Do you have time to grab a table and catch up? I can fill you in on all the departmental gossip you’ve missed.”
“I would love that, but I’m actually on my way to meet with Dr. Frazier. Rain check?”
“Totally.” Anh smiled. “I’m glad you’re back.”
“Me too.” Alice was surprised how much she meant it.
They continued to chat until they reached the front of the line, and Alice paid for Anh’s coffee as a consolation gift for her IRB problems. Now that her first house-sitting paycheck from Griffin had hit her Venmo account, she could afford a little largesse—more than Anh could, probably.
When their coffees were ready, Alice bid Anh goodbye and took her extra-large cold brew to Dr. Frazier’s office, where she found her committee chair bent under her desk, cursing up a storm under her breath. Alice called out a “Hello?” from the open doorway, and Dr. Frazier popped up like one of Mr. Rogers’ puppets.
“Come in, come in! I’m just looking for my favorite pen.”
Alice dropped into one of the wooden chairs, pulling her messenger bag into her lap and resting her iced coffee on top of it.
“So!” Dr. Frazier smiled brightly. “How does it feel to be back on campus?”
“Pretty good, actually.” Once more, Alice found herself surprised by her own answer. Most of her nervousness had dissipated during the wait in the coffee shop. “I ran into Anh Vo just now at Jo’s.”
Dr. Frazier shook her head sadly. “It’s awful how many hoops the IRB are making her jump through. She’s a fighter though. She’ll bounce back.”
Unlike me, Alice couldn’t help thinking. Hadn’t she basically given up at the first bump in the road? At least she was back now finally, and trying to fix it. That had to count for something.
“Let’s talk about you,” Dr. Frazier said. “How are the new multilevel models going?”
“Pretty well, I think? Although I have some questions…” Alice set her coffee on the floor and slipped her laptop out. “The base models are running fine and I’ve been able to get a Level Two model with just the organization ID to run—”
“How long did that model take to run?”
Alice grimaced. “Twenty-two hours. But it converged okay.”
Dr. Frazier matched Alice’s grimace with one of her own. “It’s just a big data set—it is what it is.”
“The coefficients for that model all make sense, but I can’t get a model that includes percent female on the organization’s board to converge at all.”
“How long are you letting that model run?”
“It’s still going after forty-eight hours.”
“Yeah, that thing’s not going to converge at all,” Dr. Frazier said. “Do you have the descriptives on percent female?”
Alice opened her laptop and passed it across the desk, coming around to stand at Dr. Frazier’s side so they could look at it together.
Her advisor’s fingers tapped a thoughtful rhythm on the desk as she frowned at the screen. “You know what I bet it is? There’s no variance in percentage female board members across the parent companies.”
Alice’s eyes widened as the light dawned. “There’s no variation across companies because—”
“The companies only have one token woman on their boards,” they finished in unison, sharing a look of sororal disgust.
“Here’s what you do,” Dr. Frazier said. “Go and verify that we’re right—pick through each of the boards and see how many women there actually are. That will be tedious, but it won’t be hard.”
Alice nodded as she took her laptop back and sat down again.
“If we’re right, there’s no way to include that variable. But you can still talk about it—it’s a weakness you can make a strength. The weakness is that you can’t measure percent female. But the strength is that you can show why—it adds another layer to your story that the companies that own these media outlets don’t have female input. Are you having trouble with other Level Two models?”
“I haven’t tried a different one—I was trying to get percent female to converge.” Alice bent down to retrieve her iced coffee from the floor.
“Go ahead and move on to a different model. It’s going to take twenty-four hours to converge even if things go well, so you can be investigating this other possibility at the same time.”
“Got it.”
“Good.” Dr. Frazier leaned back in her chair, pressing her lips together. “And now for the unpleasant stuff.”
Alice sucked a mouthful of coffee through her straw, stiffening in dread.
“I’m not trying to push you one way or the other, but I wondered if you’d given any more thought to filing an official report. Now that you’ve had some more time to sit with your decision, I just wanted to check in and see if anything’s changed.”
Alice fidgeted in her seat. “I know I probably should…but I just don’t think I can stand to go through all that.”
In her downtime she’d done some research into Title IX investigations. What she found wasn’t encouraging. More often than not, the results were inconclusive. Even when they ruled in the complainant’s favor, the repercussions for the offender tended to be underwhelming. Like that baseball player in Texas who’d been found guilty of rape in a campus Title IX investigation and was right back on campus a semester later. A whole semester’s suspension—for rape. After everything the woman he’d assaulted had put herself through to come forward and see justice done, she’d still had to change schools to avoid running into her rapist on campus. And he was just an undergrad athlete. He wasn’t a tenured professor like Gilchrist.
What was the point of speaking up if no one was going to do anything substantive? Why should Alice put herself through hell so the school could give Gilchrist the equivalent of a stern talking to and let him go right back to harassing students?
“There’s no ‘should’ in this situation,” Dr. Frazier said firmly. “It’s entirely up to you to decide what you’re comfortable with.”
Alice nodded unhappily, still feeling as though she’d disappointed her. “I guess—now that I’ve finally gotten myself back on track again, I really, really don’t want to go back to thinking about him all the time, and that’s what filing a report would feel like. At this point I just want to get on with my life.”
“I completely understand.”
“I do feel a little guilty about it though.” Alice stared down at her cup, twisting the straw between her fingers. “Like I’m
being selfish and thinking only of myself. I mean…” She looked up at Dr. Frazier miserably. “What if he does the exact same thing to someone else because I didn’t make a formal report? My whole dissertation is about women being treated unfairly, and here I am perpetuating a system that allows men to harass and abuse women with impunity.”
A crease formed across Dr. Frazier’s brow, and she leaned forward, steepling her fingers as she rested her weight on her forearms. “Okay, first of all, it’s not your responsibility to make sure the guilty are punished. As a sociologist, you’re well aware of how imperfect systems are, but it is not your job to oil the gears of those systems with your blood. Your only job in this particular situation is to thrive, whatever that means for you. Finish your dissertation, get a job, be a wild success, and get yourself into a position to hire and promote more women. That’s your revenge, and how you change the world.”
Dr. Frazier’s eyebrows lifted as she awaited acknowledgement, and Alice gave a reluctant nod of assent.
“Second of all,” Dr. Frazier went on, tapping the desk in front of her for emphasis, “I believe very strongly that the best way to resist is to engage in self-care first. If you push yourself to do something that doesn’t feel right, you may damage your ability to help in other ways. For instance, if it interferes with finishing your dissertation, thus inhibiting your professional advancement and taking you out of more powerful jobs where you might have a chance to actually improve a broken system.”
Alice had to assume Dr. Frazier was speaking from personal experience. As the only black woman in the sociology department and one of only three in the entire school of social sciences, she must have dealt with a lot of microaggressions and discrimination over the course of her career.
“My number one priority right now is making sure you feel safe,” Dr. Frazier said in a gentler voice. “And if a formal investigation isn’t going to do that, I don’t want you to feel pressured to go through with it. This isn’t your problem to fix.”