“Fuck?” Janelle finished. “Oh, honey. You are seriously delusional if you think he isn’t jerking off to you right this second and thinking about how he can get in your size twenty-five jeans.”
Size twenty-four, actually, Katya thought. “That’s gross, Janelle.”
“Sorry, but that’s just reality. Don’t you know that by now? Where have you been?”
“You know what, forget it, I shouldn’t have even mentioned it. I’m actually just going to go to bed.” Janelle was looking at her in a way that Katya couldn’t quite parse. It seemed like pity mixed with curiosity.
“Oooookay. You do you. I need to get back to watching Monica put a turkey on her head anyway.”
“Huh?” Katya said. “Who’s Monica?”
“I always forget you don’t know any pop culture,” Janelle said. “Never mind, it’s a Friends thing.”
That conversation had been her sole attempt to process with someone else what had happened with Dan. Since that one conversation, all she had been feeling was confused. She was relieved that things hadn’t gone any further the other night, but every so often her brain stubbornly went to a place that she didn’t want it to go to: thinking about him in the tiniest romantic way. There had been something sweet about the way he had kissed her—he had a look on his face that was so eager. Even when things had been hard in her life—having no luck finding a job after graduation, trying desperately to save enough money to move out of her dad and stepmom’s apartment—she’d had a conviction, deep down, that things would work out. She was tough. She knew how to take care of herself. But now, suddenly, things were starting to feel just a bit out of her control, and she didn’t like it.
And now, a couple days later, she wasn’t totally sure, but it seemed like Victor wasn’t speaking to her. She’d texted him twice and gotten no response, which was completely out of character for him. Or at least, it was out of character for their relationship. He always texted her back right away, and she didn’t like this new dynamic. She didn’t feel the need to tell him about Dan, maybe because she hadn’t totally come to terms with what had happened with Dan. In the two days since, they’d kept their distance at work. They’d managed to avoid each other on smoke breaks, and he hadn’t even come by her desk to say hi.
But he was not leaving her alone on text or on Slack. Busy after work? She felt her chest tightening. Her desk mate, Kevin, who covered transportation apps, looked over at her.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah, why?” she said. “Does it not look like everything’s okay?”
“Hey, check yourself, just asking. You just seem on edge. I was trying to be nice.”
“Well…thanks. But you can be nice somewhere else today.”
“Damn, that’s harsh even for you,” he said, almost admiringly. “What’re you working on?”
“I’m working on nothing,” she said. “That’s part of the problem.”
“Wait. So there is a problem.”
“You’re way too proud of yourself right now. I need to work.”
“All righty,” he said. “You do your work. I was just gonna suggest that you could look into that invisibletechman Twitter account, if you haven’t already. Trevor told me about it.”
Damn it; invisibletechman had been on her radar, and she’d completely forgotten about it with everything else that was going on. It was galling that it was Kevin bringing it up now. “What made you say that?”
He shrugged. “I keep seeing it retweeted into my timeline and no one really knows who it is.”
“Aren’t you kind of tired of anonymous Twitter accounts?” she said. “Like, don’t they seem kind of played out to you?”
“I dunno,” Kevin said. “If they’re saying stuff that’s like…worthy, then nah.”
“I guess. I just don’t get the anonymity. It’s very…Gossip Girl,” she said. Gossip Girl had started when she was in high school at Brooklyn Tech. She hadn’t known anyone personally who lived on the Upper East Side or who went to private school. She knew that these people existed; she saw them occasionally when her classes went on field trips to the Met or the Guggenheim, these girls with long smooth hair and bags that probably cost more than the rent on both her parents’ apartments put together.
Kevin laughed. “It was literally just a suggestion—oh, shit,” he said.
“What?” she said.
“‘Hearing that shit went down at TakeOff drinks the other night—anyone know anything?’” Kevin read out.
“Where is that from?”
“Invisibletechman. See? I told you it was something.”
“Fuck,” Katya said. “Dan’s gonna kill me.”
“Why?” Kevin asked, but before she could respond, another Slack notification from Dan popped up that just said, You see this? with a link to the @invisibletechman tweet.
“How the fuck did he see that already?” Katya said.
“Probably the same way I saw it?” Kevin said. “Looking at Twitter?”
“I get that,” Katya said. “I dunno. I’m just surprised he saw it so quickly. I’m usually faster than him.”
And now Dan was actually at her desk. “You weren’t responding!” he said. She saw Kevin smirk and turn back to his computer.
“Sorry, I was busy,” she said.
“Did you see what I just sent you? Something went down the other night, apparently.”
“Yeah, actually, Kevin told me right before you Slacked me,” she said. “What do you think it could be?”
“That’s your job.” He grinned; he seemed jittery with excitement.
“If only my best source at that company wasn’t your wife,” she said under her breath.
“Hm?” he said.
“Nothing,” she said. “I’ll look into it.”
“Great.” He lowered his voice. “Did you, uh, see my other message?”
“Yeah,” she said. He looked at her expectantly. “I’ll…respond to it.”
He smiled. “Great. And yeah, if we could have something on that today, that’d be…well, that’d be great. Maybe see if Mack has any comment.”
“Okay,” she said, thinking, Please go away now. He stood there for another moment as though waiting for her to say something else, and then, after a few more awkward seconds, he said, “Great. And let me know if you want to”—he pantomimed smoking—“later.”
“Will do,” she said. He finally walked away. She clicked on Slack and went to Dan’s direct messages. I’m busy tonight, she wrote.
He typed back:
Dan: I feel like you’ve been ignoring me since the other night
Katya: huh? how have I been ignoring you?
Dan: we haven’t talked at all
Katya: idk what to say to that. I’m just trying to act normal and not make other ppl think something’s up btwn us
Dan: i get that but…i guess i just miss you
I’m literally right here! she typed, and then deleted it. How can you miss me, I’m right here, she typed, and then deleted that. Don’t be silly, she typed. That, too, got deleted. Fuck, she thought. The way Dan was acting…it was starting to feel like he did not think of the other night as just a onetime fluke that had happened because Katya was feeling really fucking vulnerable and—selfishly?—knew that he’d be there for her. Wasn’t it supposed to go without saying that nothing else was going to happen between them? He was married! Wait, she thought. I am a cliché! I’m the young woman hooking up with her boss. She corrected her internal monologue. I’m the young woman who kissed her boss one night when she was drunk and sad. Fuck, still a cliché.
Katya: k
Dan: don’t “k” me
Katya: sorry
Dan: are you upset about the other night?
Katya: not upset. Just feel like it probably shouldn’t happen again.
Dan: :(
Katya: i have a ton of work to do so i’m gonna close slack for a little bit
Dan: k. see what i did there?
Katy
a: good one
She closed Slack and squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. The way Dan was acting was officially Not Good. He wasn’t supposed to actually like her! Or want this to be a thing! He was like, what, fifteen years older than she was? It wasn’t that she had never been with older guys, but if she was going to have an affair with an older man, it wouldn’t be with a depressed Park Slope dad of two whose life was so boring that he was trying to hook up with one of his reporters, who was ambivalent about him at best. Definitely not going to be that guy.
In the meantime, she had to assume that she wasn’t going to be the only reporter trying to figure out what the hell @invisibletechman was talking about. It had been only twelve minutes since his tweet, but there were undoubtedly people already planning on writing posts that didn’t even really say anything but just speculated about what it could be. There would be levels of depth to the various posts; there would be one that was just an embed of the tweet with a headline like “What Went Down at the TakeOff Party the Other Night?” Or, if the reporter wanted to play it a little safer, something like “Anonymous Twitter Account Alleges That ‘Sh*t Went Down’ at Recent TakeOff Party.” That post would go up within minutes, Katya was sure of it. Then there would be another post in an hour or so from someone who’d gotten a statement from TakeOff, probably an official denial. It was possible this post would also have a quote from someone who worked at TakeOff. And each of the stories would get tweeted and retweeted and so it would go, on and on, until everyone forgot about the story and moved on to something else. But this was her job, to get into that scrum at some point, to somehow come up with the quote or the angle that no one else had found.
She was just about to send Isabel a text when an email came into her inbox. The sender was Mack McAllister. “Whoa,” she whispered. She clicked it open. It said:
This isn’t really Mack McAllister, but I wanted to get your attention. You should probably listen to this and then judge for yourself what went down the other night at the TakeOff party.
Attached was an audio file. Now that she looked at the email header, she saw that the address was actually [email protected]. Someone had just made Mack McAllister the name that showed up. She was slightly wary about clicking on an audio file from an unknown sender, especially one who admitted that he (or she) wasn’t the person the email had purportedly been from, but she put on her headphones and clicked anyway.
She heard a man talking, but she was having trouble figuring out exactly what he was saying because there was a lot of background noise. She turned up the volume and heard a voice that was unmistakably Mack’s saying, “Casper, you were the was to my jobs.” Huh? She went back a few seconds and listened again. “Casper, you were the Woz to my Jobs.” Oh. So now Mack was comparing himself to Steve Jobs? These guys were unbelievable. “And I don’t know what I’m going to do without you. You’ve made TakeOff what it is today, and we wouldn’t be the innovative, forward-thinking company we are without you.”
So far, so boring, Katya thought. Could Mack be any more generic if he tried? Then a voice—a female voice—that came through much more clearly. This person was either holding the phone doing the recording or was standing very close to it. “Could you be any more full of shit? Seriously, Mack. Why don’t you tell everyone here how you’ve been treating me?” Then there was dead silence. All the noise of people talking among themselves that hadn’t really stopped when Mack was speaking had now stopped completely. Katya realized it was Isabel’s voice. “Nothing to say, huh? Why don’t you tell everyone how you won’t leave me alone? Or about the texts? Or the sexts.”
Then Mack’s voice came back. It was easier to hear him, now that there wasn’t anyone else talking. “That’s enough, Isabel,” he said. He sounded pissed but also, maybe, nervous.
Isabel’s voice again: “Oh, fuck you.” It sounded like she was crying. “Fuck you.” Then there was some muffled noise and the recording stopped.
Holy shit, Katya thought. Holy shit holy shit holy shit. She needed to listen again. She went back to the beginning of the recording and clicked play. Mack’s voice again. Isabel’s voice. The silence. Mack. Isabel. Crying.
The logical thing to do, of course, was to post the recording. This was explosive. This was the scoop to end all scoops, and whoever this [email protected] was, he (or she) had chosen her. There was no reason to send something like this to a reporter if you didn’t want it disseminated, right? And yet, there was always the chance that this was some kind of elaborate hoax. You could never be too skeptical. She would need to contact Isabel and Mack and verify that the recording was real. She also wanted to know where it had come from. Thanks for sending this, she wrote back to [email protected]. Where did you get this? Can you verify authenticity? Who are you? Thanks, Katya. Then she messaged Dan on Slack: Check out what just landed in my inbox, she wrote, and uploaded the file.
Three minutes later he messaged her back: holy. fucking. shit.
22
Fallout Shelter
AS SOON AS Isabel had run out of Flatiron Social, Mack just kept going like nothing had happened. He was surprised, and annoyed, and embarrassed about it, but also just a little impressed that Isabel had done it. She had more balls than he’d thought. And so far, three days later, no one at TakeOff had said anything about it—even though he could sense that there was a different, not altogether positive, charge in the air. It was like nothing had happened and yet everything had changed.
Jason’s advice had been not to fire her, that firing her was only going to antagonize her more. Instead, he should either wait for her to quit or fire her if she stopped showing up for work, because then he could say he was firing her for that reason instead of for her outburst. “This is just a blip,” Jason assured him. “In fact, this is probably good, because it makes things reach their logical conclusion faster than they would have. We don’t want this to drag on and on, but she kind of put us in a terrible situation, and now she’s done us a huge favor.”
Mack nodded. “I shouldn’t contact her, right?” Jason laughed and didn’t even respond. But even if Mack did contact her, he wasn’t sure what he would say to her. What he wanted to say was something to the effect of I can’t believe I was actually attracted to you, I wish I had never met you. Isabel had become a distraction, one that was starting to permeate too many aspects of his life. He wanted the distraction gone.
Which was when Jason pinged him with a link to a tweet from the @invisibletechman account, saying something about stuff that had “gone down” at their drinks the other night. Again? Why was this guy totally on his ass? There were always going to be people—or anonymous Twitter accounts—who were going to try to bring good people down. That was just a fact of life. It just sucked that right now the focus had to be on him and his company. That was the thing about people like this. He would be willing to bet hundreds—actually, make that thousands—of dollars that not only did this person not work in tech, but whoever was tweeting from this account had never started anything on his own. He’d never known what it was like to pull an all-nighter because you had a new release you had to ship the next morning or what it was like to have dozens of people relying on you for their livelihoods. It was a shit-ton of responsibility! And sure, it was easy to sit there and be critical and think you knew everything about everything if you had never actually done anything.
Let’s get ahead of this, Jason wrote on Slack. Mack was about to respond when his phone rang. It was an unfamiliar number. “Mack McAllister,” he said as he looked at Twitter on one computer monitor and read TechScene on the other.
“Hello, Mack, this is Katya Pasternack, from TechScene,” said the female voice on the other end of the line. She had a faint accent that Mack couldn’t quite place.
“Hey, Katya, I was just looking at your website,” he said.
“What a coincidence,” she said. “So I’m calling because, I don’t know if you’ve seen it, the invisibletechman tweet? Saying t
hat something had gone down at a TakeOff event on Friday night?”
Oh, for fuck’s sake, he thought. How was TechScene already on the case? The tweet had literally just gone up like fifteen minutes ago.
“Okay.” He sent Jason a message on Slack: on phone w Katya from TechScene—she’s asking about the tweet. To Katya, he said, “What about it?” Stall, stall, stall.
Jason replied right away: Don’t tell her anything.
Roger that, he responded to Jason.
“Can you tell me what happened the other night?” she said.
“It was a private TakeOff drinks event,” he said. “Beyond that I can’t really comment.”
“So you’re confirming that there was a TakeOff event on Friday night.” Oh, fuck, he thought.
“You know what, Katya, I’m going to have to have you talk to our PR department. How did you get my cell number, anyway?”
“I’d rather not say,” she said.
“Okay. I’m going to hang up now. If you have additional questions, you can direct them to our PR team.” He ended the call without waiting for her response.
Jason materialized in the doorway. “How’d that go?” Mack shook his head. “Not well?”
“Not well,” Mack said. “I managed to confirm that we had an event the other night.”
“Huh.” Jason contemplated this. “Maybe that’s not so bad.”
“Explain.”
“Well…like I was saying before, we want to get ahead of this. Or at least, get our version of the story out there.”
“Which is what? She hasn’t even written the damn story yet and I already feel like this is all over. Everything is over.”
Jason shook his head vigorously. “No, no, no!” he said. “That is the wrong attitude. This is just the battle. We are going to fight a war. There is no fucking way that bitch is going to ruin everything you’ve built with some bullshit accusation.”
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