She wanted to scream or break something. Preferably Dan’s face, she thought. What an asshole! She squeezed her eyes shut. Do not cry, she thought. Do. Not. Cry. She wanted to take the rest of the day off, but she was annoyed that Dan had suggested it, and she also didn’t want to go back inside to get the rest of her things. When she opened her eyes, Sabrina was standing in front of her with a smug look on her face. “Lovers’ quarrel?” she said. Her tone was cold. Triumphant.
Katya felt herself blushing. “Hardly. Your husband is an ass,” she said. “I don’t know what he told you, but he’s not my lover.’ He never was. He won’t leave me alone, though.”
“I’m supposed to believe that?” Sabrina said. “Come on, Katya.”
“Believe what you want to believe,” Katya said. “But I’m telling you the truth.” She almost felt sorry for Sabrina, who seemed to think she was finally going to get her big, dramatic showdown. But of course a woman like Sabrina would think her husband was so irresistible that he could have his pick of lovers. (Who said lover, anyway?) As though Katya would want that.
Sabrina’s face crumpled. “Ugh,” she said. “So much for my brave confrontation of the other woman. I can’t even get that right.” She sighed and stared up at the sky. “Can I bum one of those?” She pointed to Katya’s cigarette.
“Uh, yeah, sure,” Katya said. She took the pack out of her back pocket and handed one to Sabrina. “Need a light?” Sabrina nodded. She handed Sabrina her lighter. It took her a couple of tries, but she finally managed to light it.
“Sorry,” Sabrina said. “I just…I had this fantasy about confronting you about Dan, so when I saw you two fighting out here and then he stormed back inside—I don’t even think he saw me—I thought, Aha, I got them! It seemed perfect.”
“Confronting me about Dan?” Katya said. “How—I mean, why did you need to confront me about Dan?”
“I saw a couple of texts,” Sabrina said. “He was trying to get you to come meet him for a drink, and, look, when you’ve been with someone for more than ten years and you have two kids—there aren’t a lot of late-night texts to other women about getting drinks.” She took a long drag on her cigarette. “Though I guess, now that I think about it, you’re right, he was the one trying to get you to go out.”
“Yeah. Exactly,” Katya said. “He’s my boss, you know. It’s not, like, the most straightforward thing to just say no to him. I mean, he’s probably the person you should be confronting. Not me.”
Sabrina nodded. “I know.” She seemed, suddenly, miserable. She took another drag on the cigarette, and coughed. “Damn,” she said. “I haven’t had one of these in ages. They’re so delicious and gross.”
“That is a perfect description of a cigarette,” Katya said. “Where are you headed? I can walk you.” Even if she wasn’t going to take the whole rest of the day off, she could at least take a break from work.
“I was actually on my way to Isabel’s apartment,” Sabrina said. “She’s kind of freaking out, as I’m sure you can imagine.”
“Oof,” Katya said. “Yeah. I can imagine.” Suddenly, she had an idea. “Hey…this might be weird, but would it be okay if I came with you to Isabel’s? I wouldn’t mind just having, like, a normal conversation with her about what’s been going on.”
Sabrina tilted her head at her. “I don’t know if that’s such a great plan,” she said. “You know, Isabel’s a lot more sensitive than people think. She’s taking all of this pretty hard. I know it was just a story to you, but this is, like, her life. She’s saying stuff about how she’ll never get another job, her life is over, that kind of thing. She’s not in a good place. You’re probably the last person she wants to see right now, to be honest.”
Katya nodded. “Yeah,” she said quietly. “I can see that.” She stubbed her cigarette out against the wall of the building and dropped it on the ground. “But…maybe just text her and ask? Tell her it’s not for a story or anything. I just want to talk. Completely off the record.”
Sabrina was quiet for a moment. “Okay.” She took out her phone and sent a text. “Let’s give it a couple minutes. But if she doesn’t respond, then I’m just gonna go.” Katya nodded. But they didn’t have to wait long—within thirty seconds, Sabrina’s phone had vibrated. She looked at it and seemed surprised. “She says sure. Okay, let’s go.”
27
Three’s Company
WHY HAD SHE agreed to let Katya come along to Isabel’s? For that matter, why was she even going to Isabel’s? Sabrina needed to be working on making her life less complicated. Neither of these decisions was going to help her do that. She glanced over at Katya, sitting next to her in the backseat of the Uber they were taking to Isabel’s apartment in Williamsburg. It was only four thirty in the afternoon, but the sun was starting to go down, and as they went over the Williamsburg Bridge, the light glinted off the shiny tall buildings next to the East River, giving the whole neighborhood a warm, dusky glow. Even when she was of the age when one was supposed to go to Williamsburg often, Sabrina hadn’t come to Williamsburg very much, and she certainly didn’t come to Williamsburg these days. But as the driver eased his Honda Civic off the bridge and into the streets, she noticed how even the older, shorter buildings she vaguely remembered had been torn down to make way for structures of glass and steel. They seemed to be telegraphing that New York was nothing if not a molting snake, regularly shedding its old skin to reveal a new body underneath—except that the new body usually looked nothing like the old one. She recalled a night sometime in the middle of the previous decade—before marriage, Park Slope, kids—when she and Dan had gone to a rooftop party somewhere around here, probably in one of the buildings that didn’t exist anymore, and stayed out until the sun was coming up. It felt like a different person had gone to that party. Every now and then as they sped through the neighborhood she’d get a glimpse of something—a deli, a coffee shop, a bar—that looked vaguely, vaguely familiar. Maybe she had stopped at that deli for a Gatorade and a bacon, egg, and cheese after that rooftop party—or maybe not. Geographic nostalgia for somewhere you had only faint memories of was such a mind-fuck.
The driver pulled into the circular driveway of one of the shiny buildings by the river—this one was called Williamsburg Montage—and they got out of the car. Katya and Sabrina were both silent for a moment as they gazed up at the building. It had to be at least thirty stories high. “I live pretty close to here,” Katya said. These were the first words she’d uttered since they got in the Uber. “In Greenpoint. But I’ve never been to this building. I always wondered who lived here.”
“Isabel, apparently,” Sabrina said. She was also momentarily quieted by the building’s luxury. She could see the doorman from out here. It didn’t seem fair that she would never get to live in a building like this one. Not that she wanted to live in a luxury building in Williamsburg, but it was thoroughly out of her reach now. They gave their names to the doorman and took the elevator to the seventeenth floor. Sabrina noted the elevator buttons for the pool and the yoga/meditation room and the fitness center. This wasn’t an apartment building—this was a hotel.
She knocked on the door of Isabel’s apartment. “Come in, it’s open,” she heard Isabel call out. She opened the door. Isabel lived in a studio that was around the size of Sabrina and Dan’s apartment minus their bedroom. Everything was brand-new: the stainless-steel appliances, the ash-gray hardwood floors, the furniture that looked like it had all come straight from the CB2 catalog. Isabel had a gallery wall of photos and prints above the couch, where she was lying, her head propped up on a pillow facing Sabrina as she walked in, Katya trailing a little bit behind her.
“Hey,” Sabrina said. She and Isabel hugged. “Katya’s here too.” Katya waved. Isabel waved back.
“Sit, you two,” Isabel said. She gestured to the pink velvet armchair across from the sofa and sat up. “Here, someone can sit next to me.” She patted the space next to her. Sabrina sat. Katya sat in the armchair. “Than
ks for coming over,” she said. She reached for a mug that was sitting on her coffee table and took a sip. Sabrina glanced out the window, which looked out on the Williamsburg Bridge.
“No problem,” Sabrina said, even if she wasn’t sure she actually believed that. “Great view, by the way.” How did Isabel afford this apartment? She couldn’t be making that much more than Sabrina—whenever you started somewhere as an assistant and worked your way up, your salary was never exactly what it should be. Then again, Isabel didn’t have two kids and a shopping addiction.
“Thanks. Yeah, I love this place. Who knows how much longer I’ll be able to stay in it, though.” The three of them were silent for a moment. “Do you know what you’re gonna do yet?” she asked Sabrina.
“Do?” Sabrina said. “In what sense?”
“Like, are you gonna stay at TakeOff after all this?”
“Oh,” Sabrina said. “I don’t know. I mean, shit, I’d love to quit with you in solidarity, but…God. You know, if I was your age, I totally would. I would totally quit, and take a stand, and tell everyone to just fuck right off.”
“Yeah!” Isabel said. She sat up straighter on the couch and grinned. “That’s the spirit.”
“I can’t, though,” Sabrina said quietly. “My life is just…more complicated right now. I wish I still had only myself to think about. But…I never told you this, Isabel, because it didn’t seem appropriate since you were, like, my boss, but now that you’re not—I’m in a lot of debt. I really fucked up and just, like, started buying stuff online and it got completely out of control, and I basically don’t have any credit cards I can even use anymore, and Dan just found out and he’s so pissed at me…It’s not the best time for me to quit.” She cringed, wondering how Isabel was going to take this confession.
“No, I get it,” Isabel said. She sounded like she actually did. “I understand. Just like…knowing that you would quit, that’s what matters to me.”
Sabrina reached over and took Isabel’s hand and squeezed it. “You’re a good person,” she said. “No matter what happens, remember that.”
“There are a lot of people right now who don’t think so,” she said. She glanced at Katya. “You’ve seen the shit that people are saying about me, right? It’s like…bad. There’s a thread on a men’s rights subreddit about me that has, like, over twelve hundred comments. And I had to just delete Twitter from my phone because I was getting so many notifications, mostly from guys who are telling me I’m a slut, I deserve to be raped, Andrew is a cuck, whatever that means…” She trailed off. “People are so fucked up.”
Katya nodded. She looked uncomfortable. She hadn’t said anything since they walked into Isabel’s apartment. I wonder what’s going through her head right now, Sabrina thought. She was so inscrutable. Was she mentally cataloging everything in the apartment, everything they were saying, to use it against them later? Or had she truly come in peace? “I have seen it, yes,” Katya finally said. “And…I’m sorry.” Everyone was quiet again. “Look, Isabel…I don’t regret writing the story. I don’t. I think it’s important for people to know about Mack. But I guess…I just wasn’t totally expecting everything to play out the way it did. And if I’d known that people were going to be so horrible to you…”
“You would’ve done what?” Isabel asked. “I don’t think there’s actually anything you should have done differently. That’s the sad part.”
The three of them were silent for a moment. Then Katya glanced at Sabrina. “You know that Twitter account invisibletechman?”
“Yeah,” Isabel said. “They were the ones who tweeted my recording. Which I still don’t know how they even got.”
“Well, they got it because I sent it to them,” Katya said.
“Huh?” Isabel said. “Why would you do that?”
“Well…I didn’t know I was sending it to them,” Katya said. “I thought I was sending it to my editor. To Dan.” She paused to let this sink in. “I thought I was sending it to Dan,” she repeated.
“Wait,” Isabel said. “Dan sent it to invisibletechman? Why would he do that?”
“No,” Sabrina said. She was putting something together that she didn’t love. At all. “Dan was invisibletechman.” She watched Isabel’s eyes widen as she processed all of this. “And I was the one who sent you the recording, Katya, because Isabel asked me to.” Isabel nodded. Sabrina felt sick. “My husband is…” She couldn’t even finish the sentence.
Katya nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “He said he was giving a voice to marginalized people in tech by creating the account.” She rolled her eyes.
“God, that is so gross,” Sabrina said. “I guess being married to someone Korean makes you qualified to pretend to be a black person on Twitter.”
“Oh, he was very emphatic that invisibletechman never actually said he was a black person,” Katya said.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Sabrina said. “I’m…I mean, I know I had nothing to do with it, but I feel like I need to apologize for my husband’s ridiculous actions.”
“It’s okay,” Isabel said. “We don’t have to hold ourselves responsible for the dumb shit men do.”
“I’d drink to that,” Sabrina said.
“Do you want a drink?” Isabel said. “I can open a bottle of wine.”
“Sure,” Sabrina and Katya said simultaneously. Isabel hopped up from the couch and went to the fridge and took out a bottle of white wine. Sabrina noticed there was little else in the refrigerator—just what looked like a takeout container, a bottle of kombucha, and another bottle of wine.
“I wish I had champagne,” she said, setting the bottle down on the counter. “It feels like we should be celebrating, in a weird way.” She took three wineglasses out of the cabinet and opened the bottle. She poured glasses for all of them and handed one each to Katya and Sabrina. “Well, cheers, ladies,” she said. “To doing our own shit.”
“To doing our own shit,” Katya and Sabrina said. The three of them clinked glasses. As Sabrina took a sip of the wine, she looked out the window. The sky was a dusky orange-red; in the distance, the Williamsburg Bridge was illuminated. And she knew—more clearly than she had ever known anything—exactly what she was going to do.
Acknowledgments
As a journalist, I found that there were moments during the writing of this book that I panicked, believing that I wasn’t allowed to be writing fiction, much less getting it published. Fortunately, I have many people in my life who are experts at encouragement, starting with my one-of-a-kind agent, Alia Hanna Habib, and her colleagues Leslie Falk and Susan Hobson at McCormick Literary, who have been Startup fans from day one. Of course, Startup would not be what it is without the enthusiasm and guidance of my wonderful editor, Reagan Arthur, and the whole team at Little, Brown: Matt Carlini, Katharine Myers, Julie Ertl, Lauren Passell, Craig Young, Pamela Brown, Jayne Yaffe Kemp, and Kaitlyn Boudah. Copyeditor Tracy Roe’s sharp eyes saved me from many mortifying mistakes and allowed email (no hyphen) to stand, and designer Lauren Harms came up with a jacket that makes me hope people judge this book by it. And Kassie Evashevski and Jason Richman at UTA are the best people in Hollywood to have in your corner.
I never would have finished if not for my two-person writing group with Kate Spencer, who was both a cheerleader and an astute reader over the year and a half I was working on Startup. I’m also grateful to Laura Dave and Alex Balk, who read early versions of the manuscript and offered invaluable comments; to genius twentysomethings Katie Heaney and Arianna Rebolini, who went above and beyond in making sure that I didn’t completely embarrass myself by saying Snapchat when I meant Instagram and vice versa; and Danielle Nussbaum, who paid me the highest compliment possible when she told me she read the manuscript in less than twenty-four hours. And huge thanks to Elizabeth Olson for being my on-call design expert and who saved us all from a potential kerning disaster.
Thanks to friends Emily Fleischaker, Marc Kushner, Chris Barley, and Chrysanthe Tenentes for giving
me places to write in Santa Fe and New York, and thanks to my friends who were working on books at the same time who were always available to commiserate: Anya Yurchyshyn, Saeed Jones, Isaac Fitzgerald, Emily Gould, and Anne Helen Petersen.
Thanks to the founders and employees who generously offered their insights into startup life: Caroline McCarthy, Matt Weiler, Peter Bell, Nick Gray, Su Sanni, Ally Millar, Matt Lieber, Jason Klein, Soraya Darabi, Daniel Hoffer (who filled me in on life as a venture capitalist), and of course the incomparable Melanie Altarescu. This is a work of fiction, but their experiences and perspectives helped ensure my characters’ world felt authentic.
Countless friends have been so supportive and excited for me over the past many months. You know who you are, and you are greatly appreciated and loved. Same goes for my brilliant colleagues at BuzzFeed, many of whom have become friends during my five years there. You inspire me daily, and you manage to both keep me young and make me feel old. (In a good way.)
I’m so lucky to have a family that I not only love, but also actually like: Roberta Steinberg, Avishai Shafrir, Michael Shafrir, Alyson Luck, Sam Shafrir, Karen Vladeck, Steve Vladeck, and Maddie Vladeck. Thank you for being family and friends, and for being there always.
Before I moved to L.A., someone said to me, “You’re going to go out there and marry a screenwriter and live happily ever after.” That person was close: I married a TV writer and podcaster, and I’m so thankful to have his love, support, and creativity in my life. I love you, Matt Mira, and thank you for never letting me give up.
About the Author
DOREE SHAFRIR is a senior culture writer at BuzzFeed News. She has written for New York, Slate, The Awl, Rolling Stone, Wired, and other publications. A former resident of Brooklyn, she now lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Matt Mira, a comedy writer and podcaster, and their dog, Beau.
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