Startup

by Doree Shafrir

  “I get that,” Sabrina said. “I’m not, like, advocating this, but you would be completely within your rights to sue him and TakeOff for this.”

  “Oh God, I don’t want to do that,” Isabel said. “I mean, that wouldn’t be fair to him. He did some fucked-up stuff but I don’t want to, like, destroy him.”

  “I don’t really want you to destroy him either. I don’t think Mack is a bad person. I mean, he’s not totally, one hundred percent a good person either, but who is? I just…” She thought about how to phrase what she was about to say. “I just think women should speak up about this kind of stuff. You know? Like what if some woman hears your story and is like, ‘Oh wow, that’s what’s been happening to me and it’s not right’?”

  As she said this, she wondered: Did Isabel even know what sexual harassment was? Sabrina tried to think about what she’d thought sexual harassment was when she was twenty-six. Probably that it had to involve, like, your boss slapping your ass in front of everyone. It was such a vague, loaded term—you were supposed to know it when you saw it, but how were you really supposed to be able to tell? At some of the other places Sabrina had worked, they had been forced to sit through hours of harassment-prevention training, and she struggled to recall something—anything—from that training. But maybe it was one of those “if you have to ask…” kinds of situations. If it looks like sexual harassment, if it smells like sexual harassment, if it’s making you upset enough that you have to leave work in the middle of the day and ask your much older coworker what to do, then maybe it’s sexual harassment.

  Isabel thought about this for a minute. “I guess. But why do I have to be that person? Isn’t there, like, some other woman out there who could be that person?”

  You have to be that person because nothing bad has ever happened to you, Sabrina thought. You have to be that person because everything in your life has come easily, because you are beautiful and rich and this is one fucking thing you could do that would help people.

  She wanted to say all that to Isabel, but instead she just asked, “Did you love Mack?”

  “Oh God, no.” Now Isabel answered quickly. “No. It was never about love. But I thought we were both on the same page about that. We would joke about it, or at least, I thought it was a joke. He’d be like, ‘When you get a boyfriend, work’s gonna be so boring,’ and I’d be like, ‘Just make sure whoever your girlfriend is isn’t prettier than me.’ You know, stuff like that. But the whole time, I was going on dates with other people and I’m pretty sure he was too. But then I met Andrew and I realized how different it felt. I guess I just wasn’t into Mack. And that’s when he decided he couldn’t handle it.” She paused. “You know, I think things got really bad when I posted about Andrew on Instagram. It was like, until that moment, if I was only Snapchatting it, he could pretend that the thing with Andrew was just as casual as we had been. Does that make sense?”

  “Right,” Sabrina said. She was struggling to bring herself, mentally, to this world Isabel lived in. It didn’t feel like she had been twenty-six that long ago until she was confronted with the reality of actually being twenty-six. Certainly there was a lot that was the same—living with roommates, being able to stay out until one on a weeknight and get into work only slightly the worse for wear, thinking you were old because you were so close to being in your late twenties, which was dangerously close to being thirty. But there was this whole other element to Isabel’s existence—living your life in public, on social media, before you really knew who you were—that felt wholly foreign to Sabrina, and somehow scarier.

  “You’re on Instagram, right?” Isabel asked suddenly. “I’ll follow you.”

  “Um, yeah, but I don’t post very much.” She was suddenly self-conscious about her Instagram presence, which was a private account where she mostly posted pictures of her kids. “It’s at-sabrinablum-seventy-nine.”

  “Seventy-nine,” Isabel said thoughtfully. “That’s when you were born?” Sabrina nodded. “I’m eighty-nine. Like Taylor Swift.”

  “My daughter has recently discovered Taylor Swift,” Sabrina said. “Her nanny showed her some of her videos on YouTube. So now she begs me to let her watch them.”

  Isabel laughed. “I can’t even imagine growing up right now and that being, like, a thing.”

  “But do you even remember a time when you didn’t have internet?”

  Isabel thought about this for a moment. “No. I guess not. I mean, when I was really little I don’t think we had it. But I was probably like six when we got AOL.”

  “You were on AOL when you were six?”

  Isabel laughed. “No, no. I wasn’t allowed to go on till I was probably like ten? But I would watch my mom and my older brother.”

  “Still. I can’t imagine growing up with AOL. I mean, I was already a sentient, conscious person when you were born. I have a cousin who was born in 1989 and I remember it.”

  Isabel shrugged. “I mean, yeah. I’m ten years younger than you. And someday I’ll be as old as you are now, and I’ll be having this conversation with someone who was born in 1999.” She was quiet for a moment. “Anyway. I guess we should get back. But…” She seemed to be having trouble articulating the question. “What do you think I should do?”

  “About what, exactly,” Sabrina said. “About Mack? About Andrew? About talking to Katya? About being twenty-six?”

  “Well, all of it, but really, I guess…Like part of me just wants to quit and forget about everything and part of me wants to stay just to, like, spite Mack. But listen. Can you please say something to Dan? Just tell him that you don’t think it’s a real story and he should tell Katya to leave me alone.”

  “I…I don’t think I can do that, Isabel,” Sabrina said. “And honestly, I don’t think you should want me to do that.”

  Isabel sighed. “Fine. I guess I’ll just figure things out for myself.”

  19

  Stand and Deliver

  ON HIS LAST day at TakeOff, Casper Kim came to the door of Mack’s office around lunchtime and knocked, even though it was open. “Come in!” Mack said, way too cheerfully. Dial it back, he thought. “How’s the last day treating you?”

  Casper smiled and sat down on the couch. “Gotta say, it’s been a little more emotional than I was expecting. Did you see my whole team dressed as me?” For Casper’s last day at TakeOff, his entire group had worn high-top sneakers, sweatshirts, and jeans. They had even gotten the thick black-rimmed glasses he always wore, and a couple of the guys had tried to style their hair the same way as him, with a swoop of bangs in front. They’d all arrived at work early and were there when Casper showed up at ten thirty, and Mack watched from his desk as Casper grinned and high-fived all of them.

  “I did.” Good. Let him feel bad about leaving them. “Pretty great.”

  “Yeah. Listen, I just wanted to say thanks for everything. I had a great time here.”

  Since their last conversation in his office a couple weeks ago—the one where Casper had quit—Mack hadn’t exactly been avoiding Casper, but he also hadn’t been going out of his way to talk to him. He was wrestling with what his exact emotions were about Casper’s departure. On the one hand, he knew that this was normal for companies. When people left, they hopefully carried some of your company’s DNA with them to their new workplace, so you were constantly pollinating other businesses, and eventually you had this big network of people who had formerly worked for you. That was the charitable view. The less generous way of looking at it, and this was the way (despite his best efforts) that Mack had been thinking about Casper leaving, was that it wasn’t fair that people you had grown attached to, whom you had confided in, whom you had grown the company alongside, whom you had groomed, just got to leave! Without even thinking about how it might affect you or being remotely grateful for everything you had done for them!

  Still, he was throwing Casper a good-bye party that night at Flatiron Social, because that was what you did. And he wasn’t going to act bitter or
say anything harsh about Casper to anyone. Besides Jason, of course. But to everyone else, he was going to seem completely gracious and magnanimous: Of course he was sad to see Casper go, but of course it was a great opportunity for him, and of course he was welcome back at TakeOff anytime. The first was true, the second was debatable, and the third was a complete lie. There was no way Mack would let someone back who had betrayed him like that. Right before a new product launch! It was so typical of people in his generation. He hated to say it, but sometimes he nodded along when he read an article about “entitled millennials.” No one had any goddamn loyalty anymore.

  “Thanks, Casper. That means a lot. You ready for tonight?”

  “Yeah,” Casper said. “I mean, I think so. I’ve never had a good-bye party thrown for me.”

  “This was your first real job. I always forget that.”

  “Yeah. I mean, I had internships. I mean…I’m only twenty-three. I gotta thank you again for taking a chance on me. Letting me lead a team. That meant a lot.”

  “Well, thank you.” They were both quiet. Casper nodded and stuck out his hand. Mack shook it and felt slightly mollified. Maybe his toast to Casper at drinks tonight wouldn’t be quite as undermining as he had secretly been planning.

  At six thirty, the office had been slowly emptying for the last half hour or so, and now he counted only about ten people left on the floor. Normally he would be peeved that people were leaving this early, but it was nice how it seemed like nearly everyone was going to Casper’s good-bye. It meant that he had a strong team, that he had really built something. He pinged Jason on Slack: walk over to Flatiron w/me?

  Jason responded with the thumbs-up emoji and almost instantly materialized at the door to Mack’s office. “Thought you’d never ask, boss. Let’s mosey.” As they were waiting for the elevator, Mack’s phone vibrated with a notification from Twitter that he had been mentioned in a tweet. He opened the Twitter app and found himself on the account of a Twitter user called @invisibletechman. The tweet said: Hearing that there are some founders who need to learn to keep it in their pants. @mackmcallister you know anything about this?

  “The fuck?” Mack said. He showed Jason the tweet. “Who is this person? And why the hell are they at-ing me on this tweet?”

  Jason glanced at it. “Who knows, man. Probably just some jealous idiot. I’d ignore it.” The elevator came and they got on. Mack didn’t respond. It was all well and good for Jason to say ignore it, but he wasn’t the one being tweeted at about sleeping around! “How many followers does he have, anyway?” Jason asked.

  Mack clicked through to @invisibletechman’s profile page. “Like two thousand.”

  Jason looked surprised. “Huh. That’s more than I thought he would.”

  The doors to the lobby opened and they walked out. “That’s hardly reassuring.”

  “Sorry.” Jason grinned. “But look, there are worse things to be accused of. So you have sex. Big deal! Is that a crime? Not the last time I checked.”

  “It’s just…I dunno.” Mack shook his head. There was something weird about the tweet. It didn’t exactly say that he was sleeping around; it said he couldn’t keep it in his pants. Which was a little too close for comfort considering certain Snapchats he used to send. But Jason didn’t need to know that. Nobody needed to know that. And nobody did know that. He was vaguely comforted by the idea that if Isabel had, God forbid, told anyone that they used to exchange nudes at work, she would be just as implicated as he was. There were no innocent parties here.

  “Let’s just go to the bar, get some drinks, say some nice shit about Casper, and forget about dumb anonymous Twitter accounts saying dumb anonymous shit. Okay?”

  “Yeah, okay.” The company had rented out the back room of the bar, and as they made their way there, Mack glanced at his phone again. A couple of people whose names he didn’t recognize had responded to @invisibletechman’s tweet—one with a , one with the comment Some? lol. He put his phone in his pocket. There was no point in worrying about this now. Hopefully it would just go away.

  The back room was packed. He spotted Casper in the corner talking to a couple of his look-alikes. He made a mental note to gently remind Casper about the nonsolicitation clause in his contract—he wasn’t allowed to hire anyone from TakeOff for a year, and Mack would be watching carefully to make sure that he didn’t. He had a feeling that the people on Casper’s team were dying to continue working for him; everyone seemed to love him. Jason had disappeared into the crowd, so Mack made his way to the bar and ordered a drink. It was open bar until nine, which seemed more than generous, but as he sipped his whiskey on the rocks he hoped that people were leaving the bartender tips. He took out a five-dollar bill and left it on the bar.

  He glanced around the room. He hadn’t been sure if Isabel would have the nerve to show up, but there she was, chatting away with Chelsea, one of the girls on Casper’s team, who was also wearing the Casper uniform. Could Isabel possibly be connected to the tweet? There was no way, he decided quickly. For one thing, Isabel wasn’t conniving enough to orchestrate something like that—despite being the Engagement Hero, she personally wasn’t very active on social media, except for Instagram. And Snapchat. But…still. Maybe he’d ask her. He walked over to where she was standing.

  “Hi, Isabel. Hi, Chelsea,” he said.

  “Hey, Mack! Like my outfit?” Chelsea grinned. She was tiny, and the sweatshirt and high-tops looked ridiculous on her.

  “I always said that product is the most creative team at the company,” he said. Isabel was silent, and, although he wasn’t looking at her at the moment, he could feel her glaring at him. “Would you mind…I just need to chat with Isabel for a second.”

  “Of course. No problem! Isabel, I’ll catch up with you later.”

  Isabel nodded and smiled. “Yup. See ya, Chels.” As soon as Chelsea walked away, her smile disappeared. “Please tell me you’re not about to attempt to have a serious conversation with me at a going-away party.” She drained her drink and set it on the cocktail table next to them.

  “Depends on your definition of serious,” Mack said. Isabel’s face was impassive. “No, I mean, I just…” Ugh. He was still thinking about the tweet. Might as well ask her about it. “Did you see this tweet that went up a few minutes ago?”

  “‘This tweet,’” Isabel repeated. “Can you be a little more specific?”

  He took out his phone, opened Twitter, and found the tweet. Isabel read it, her face still a blank. “No, I hadn’t seen it. What about it?”

  “Just seems like an interesting coincidence.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I have no idea what you’re trying to insinuate, but whatever it is, I didn’t do it. But just so you know…there’s a reporter who’s been asking around about us.”

  “Wait. What?”

  Isabel shrugged. “I don’t even know why I’m telling you this. It’s not like you’ve been looking out for me.”

  He realized as she was talking that the sick thing was that if she suddenly smiled and said, Hey, just kidding, I broke up with Andrew and I want us to go back to the way we were, he would take her back. Not that there was anything to really go back to. He tried to tell himself that he just missed the sex, the texting, the charge he got from seeing her in the office and knowing that they shared a secret. But maybe he actually missed…her. She got him. She knew how hard he had worked to make this company what it was, had seen him start it from almost nothing. She had been there for the late nights and the app updates that crashed and the funding presentations that had bombed. And he got her too—he knew how much she longed to be taken seriously. She was so pretty that people assumed that she wasn’t smart, although she actually was, and that she didn’t need to work hard. Even her family seemed to feel that way; he heard her on the phone with her mom once, explaining that she couldn’t come home to Connecticut that weekend to go sailing with the family because she had to work, and her mother just had not understood this concept at all. He adm
ired that she’d stood up to her mom like that and that she took work as seriously as she did. At least, he had admired that in her.

  “You know,” he said softly, “we could go back to the way things were.” As soon as he said it, he knew it was a mistake. It was the truth—they could go back to the way things were—but it was a possibility that, he saw now, existed only in his own mind.

  She scrunched up her face and turned to him, head cocked to one side. “The way things were,” she said. “The way things were. I don’t know what that even means. You and I…we weren’t even really a thing! It went on as long as it did only because we work together. That’s it. We weren’t in love. The sex wasn’t even that good. I don’t know if we even really like each other. And I think the only reason you’re so focused on getting me back is because I’ve moved on. Got that? I’ve. Moved. On.” She squinted at him. “You don’t get it, do you? Because you’ve never not been able to have something you really wanted.”

  “I think you’re actually talking about yourself,” he said quietly.

  “Excuse me?” she said.

  “Nothing. Never mind.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Whatever, Mack. You know, I was trying to keep our whole thing quiet out of respect for you and respect for Andrew because he used to consider you a friend.” Yeah, right, Mack thought. “But you’re just acting like…ugh. You guys are all the same. You won’t take no for an answer! Let me put it in terms you can understand better…we were not in beta, okay? We just were. Our thing was what it was. It was never going to progress to anything else. Andrew and I, we just, like, launched right away. We brought the product to market and users loved it. We—”

  “Okay! I get it.” He hated, with every inch of his being, that Isabel was right. Those were terms he could understand. “God, sometimes I wish we’d just never even met,” he said. Before Isabel could say anything, he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned around, and there was Jason.