The Glitch_A Novel

by Elisabeth Cohen

  He’s not circumcised. I like that. I like the moment when the penis swells and comes uncapped. It appeals to my interest in tracking progress through measurable results.

  We have sex every day we’re together—why not? If you like something, you should carve out time, or, as I say, copying Beyoncé, put a ring on it, though by ring I mean a Conch alarm reminder. I have it on my personal calendar, purple shaded block, a skinny twelve minutes. I am not saying you need a lot of time. We’re efficient. That twelve minutes includes getting redressed and touching up my lipstick. It’s a nice release that helps me regain focus. I don’t see the point of spending any longer.

  “All our days are like this. It’s not easy,” Rafe muttered. “You think it’s not easy for you? It’s not easy for any of us.” I started to formulate a response. I should validate his frustration and the drawbacks of our situation before moving into a positive reframe and forward-thinking action steps, but I was too tired to flesh out the framework. So instead I lay on my side, my back to him, breathing quietly in the dark.

  I felt his body graze mine, and I rolled toward him, feeling tiredness, trying to evaluate a Rafael career retrenchment, hearing Enrique’s voice, and knowing that in a few hours I needed to be able to add some insight to a discussion of our acquisition strategy. The currents braided and crossed and I dreamed of Melissa, riding in a speedboat, laughing as the spray curved up into the pleasant air. I woke three minutes before my alarm went off, clicked off the alarm, scooped up my phone, peed in a special quiet way I have developed, took both robes off the hook on the back of the bathroom door and piled them over my pajamas, and went onto the dark balcony to call into my meeting, the phone cupped to my ear. I breathed the carbonated night beach air, gave some sharp commentary on a proposed acquisition, delivered a couple of lapidary one-liners, corrected someone’s numbers on the fly from memory, and, greatest triumph of all, when it was over, when I trod back into the bedroom and dropped the robes on the floor and slipped back into bed under the duvet (Rafe moaning as he rolled over), I fell instantly back into a deep and satisfying sleep.

  * * *

  —

  When I was offered the job at Conch, I hesitated about accepting it. It was an unusual and prime opportunity to helm a startup in the wearables space, but I had always been happy in operating roles and believed that was where my strengths lay. Rafe was the one who had urged me to look for an opportunity to jump to CEO. He said I was too talented and would always regret it if I didn’t, and while I wouldn’t have put it so baldly, even to myself, I knew he was right. We joked that I needed a chance to inflict my vision on a company.

  When Brad Barsh, Conch’s chairman, called to tell me I’d gotten the job, it was a dusky evening and Rafe and I were both at home. I’d stepped outside to take the call. To channel my excitement and keep my voice cool and controlled, I did ballet moves while Brad and I finalized the details. I gripped the patio table as a barre. Développé (I could still hear the way my ballet teacher said it). Tendu. I felt the same full-body itchiness I’d felt anticipating recitals; I’d assumed then it was from the sequins, but perhaps not.

  When I told Rafe the news, he seemed genuinely thrilled. He jumped up from the sofa and kissed me. I hadn’t expected that, and I was startled, gratified, and embarrassed all at once. He opened a bottle of prosecco. He carried it out into the garden, where he poured two glasses. He handed me one. We clinked. I sipped. The prosecco smelled a little like peaches and tasted like cool radio static.

  “It doesn’t feel as momentous as I was expecting,” I admitted.

  “Conch is huge. Their valuation could break a billion.”

  “It’s so not there yet.”

  “You’ll get it there.”

  I sipped. I was thinking, yes, I will. This thought pleased me. I looked down into my glass—it was already empty. “It’ll mean more travel. And longer hours.” I held my glass out for him to refill.

  “How is it possible for you to work longer hours?”

  “I’ll have to be more disciplined…get up earlier. Less time on frivolous pursuits. Work smarter and harder.”

  Rafe moaned and covered his face with his hand.

  “Hey, you were the one who urged me to do this. I have a lot to do to get up to speed.” I combed my hair back with my fingers and rested my head on my hands, elbows propped on the table. I looked up at the magnolia tree. Pink petals lay like snow on the patio. It was spring; I had just noticed.

  “You look very pretty,” Rafe said. “Success suits you.”

  I smiled and felt suddenly a little shy. “Does it bother you, me getting a job like this? Do you wish it were you?”

  He shook his head.

  “I’d understand if you felt a little envious.” It’s important to give someone an opening to share difficult truths.

  He gave me a squinty shrug and emptied the bottle into his glass—a full tip, glug, and fizz. He held the bottle upside down. One last drip. “Maybe now you can be happy.”

  The words vibrated my cheekbones and set off a warm surge of shame. I was happy. I was ashamed it wasn’t obvious. I felt so lucky and joyous to be able to do the work I do. “What do you mean, happy? Do I not seem happy? I’m hitting the cover off the ball where happiness is concerned. I’m knocking happiness out of the park.”

  I still remember the way he looked at me then. It wasn’t just that he wasn’t buying it. His face conveyed that it was a silly thing to have said, and that he thought, any moment, I would come around to this view too. His eyes stayed on me, humorously condescending, prolonged, as if he had faith that in a moment or two I would, so we could be amused together. I felt like I had missed something that other people had figured out. Other people could talk about their feelings, but when I tried to do it, it never went well. I used to write down things in my planner like, “Practice being relaxed and relatable,” and then one day someone happened to see that note and I realized you can’t write stuff like that down, even if that truly is a personal goal. So now I write down other things and think that.

  * * *

  —

  The next day was our last in Cap Ferrat before I flew on to give the keynote at a thought leadership conference in Barcelona. I got up early to exercise and get on top of my inbox and at six had breakfast on the veranda of the hotel with Rafael. We were on deliberately good behavior with each other, a little formal, solicitous, attentive. Croissants on square white plates were set before us, and we tore them delicately and slathered raspberry jam over the white croissant flesh. I watched with satisfaction as my hungry husband finished in four bites. The kids eat so painfully slowly that I could answer twelve emails in the time it takes Nova to take one bite of our housekeeper’s Peruvian chicken. Their childhood is fleeting, but when I eat with them or sit beside them on international flights it seems like they will be children for many geologic ages yet to come, that time does not affect them the way it does me, that they are like stones being carved by rivers while I am a flash of salmon on a summer day. I sipped my coffee slowly, or slowly for me, rationing it, because despite the ostentatiously “excellent” service at the hotel, the intrusive bowing and scraping, the frequency with which the hotel staff found it possible to address me by my name, and insert it into sentences in which it did not naturally belong, I had learned from previous mornings with a tiny empty coffee cup how strangely impossible it was to get more.

  “There’s nothing like trying new cheeses at eight in the morning,” Rafe remarked. He was off to tour a fromagerie in a cave inland. As an equity fund manager who stripped and resold assets from his portfolio companies, he was very interested in means of production. “You remember that cheese is basically solidified fungus.”

  I nodded. My thoughts alighted on what it would be like to lick shower grout, my tongue between the tiles. Our shower is very clean, at home, so it’s more for the texture, I think, than the taste. Perhaps I am deficient in some vitamin. More and more I have these intrusive thoughts, off-mes
sage. I just nodded. It would have been impolite to bring up. It reminded me to take my vitamins. I take a daily men’s multivitamin. Why would I take vitamins for women? Because I want less of what’s important, fewer nutrients and minerals? I refuse to conspire in my own oppression.

  A pale pink rosebud drooped in a vase on our table. It sagged to one side, and I tried to adjust it so it didn’t.

  “There,” I said triumphantly, and then it sagged again. I tried to pretend it didn’t bother me by making a little “ha” sound, as if the rosebud and I were in cahoots. But I could tell he knew it annoyed me; that’s one of the problems of marriage, the ability to read the truth off each other’s face. It obviates all the effort you make to hide how you really feel. I changed tactics. “I’d scrap the flowers, if this were my restaurant,” I told him. “With this view, it wouldn’t negatively impact the dining experience at all.” I smiled cheerfully at Rafe, who dragged a piece of croissant shell through the last of his jam. “I’m thinking not just about the savings from no longer needing to purchase rosebuds,” I explained, extricating raspberry seeds from between my teeth with the power of suction, “but even more significantly, the labor costs to source and trim them.”

  “Pretty though,” Rafe said, chewing, giving the impression he had not been listening, a mode that he also adopts when I raise concerns about whether our five-year goals are ambitious enough (his alternative strategy is to immediately jump into a shower, if one is available). He touched my fingers as he lifted the vase away from me and put it back in the center of the table.

  As instructed, Melissa kept the children close by. On an ellipse of grass beside the hotel Nova chased a yellow inflatable ball while the beefy man in a linen suit Melissa had hired pretended to read a newspaper. I watched them from the window as I worked. Melissa, wearing Blazer in the baby carrier, was chasing Nova. Blazer’s little bare legs kicked the air with joy. Nova was squealing. Ecstasy flooded her face as Melissa gained on her. She dropped to the grass, exhausted and ready to be caught. Watching Nova frolic, and seeing the man carelessly fold up his newspaper and follow them as they went inside for their snack, I began to feel a little silly. It was a lovely day and trouble of any form seemed very far away. Enrique had been friendly, if a little starstruck, Nova was evidently no worse for the wear, Melissa was so completely and competently professional—wasn’t it on me, then, to let the knot in my stomach untangle? We are our own fiercest critic and worst enemy.

  * * *

  —

  The weather was as beautiful as ever, but I’d had enough of leisure and working remotely and was looking forward to moving on. Once I check something off I don’t look back—but that morning I had an uneasy feeling that I couldn’t file away. I worked in the living room of our suite at an ornate and not very ergonomic desk, my back to the window and my eyes drifting from the screen to the cream-and-yellow striped wallpaper. It was an impressive, attractive room, though as I’ve said, my style preference is for clean, unfussy lines and no distractions. I made and drank some green tea, and then I called down and placed a lunch order for later: rye crisps and a filet of sole with lemon. I spent a few productive and fulfilling hours reviewing spreadsheets for a possible acquisition.

  My Conch buzzed in a suggestion pattern, to let me know it would be an optimal time for a physical movement break. “Avoid blood clots and increase productivity by taking a moment to stand and stretch,” my Conch prompted. I took its advice, which is especially valuable for me considering my unusual health history, and I amplified it by doing yoga poses while rehearsing my speech for the Barcelona conference. In warrior pose, I spoke authoritatively to the bathroom mirror on the topic of “Using Reversals to Create Momentum/Leading from a Mind-set of Passionate Curiosity.” I fleshed out a version of a stock speech I’d given many times.

  I got hungry and opened a tin of Vienna sausages that I keep in my luggage. Rafe thinks they are repulsive. They are, but they are cheap and portable and protein-packed, and they remind me of long car rides when I was a child, and my mother handing them back as snacks. I fished one of the little fingerlike sausages out of the jar and sucked on it while I read slowly. The taste of wet salty meat, like a cold damp hot dog, was comforting. It dissolved in my mouth. Sometimes disgusting things are also the best things. I left the sausage tin out on my desk and completed my most urgent tasks but found it difficult to concentrate on events and tasks further out on my calendar.

  My Conch buzzed, alerting me to a new message from Cullen, Conch’s founder. Had an amazing idea for a new potential collaboration, he wrote. Gonna revolutionize Conch and take us light-years beyond SportConch.

  woot, I messaged back.

  Heading toward even more agile, transparent, boundary-less, and truly seamless artificial intelligence, Cullen messaged. Connected with great project.

  double woot! I wrote. When you’re ready, I’d love a demo.

  I did a call with my assistant, Willow. The familiarity of her voice was comforting but she seemed so far away. I felt unsettled. Occasionally I looked out the window to see if I could get another glimpse of my children.

  At one in the afternoon the bellman rapped on the door. Lunch, finally. I sighed at being interrupted, saw him through the peephole, and then went to the dresser to fish around for some money to tip him with. I prepped the tip, slid the locks, and opened the door, all the rigmarole of hotel life. He had no trolley and no tray of food. I looked longingly down the hall, realizing that I was sick with hunger.

  “Madame, a note,” he said. I thanked him and glanced automatically to his name badge, “Jules,” before I handed him a few euros, closed the door, opened the flap of the envelope, and unfolded the cream-colored stationery with our hotel’s crest embossed at the top. The note was handwritten in inky blue.

  “It was such a pleasure to meet you, and here is a gift for you.” Gift? The note was unsigned. I turned over the paper, which was blank on the reverse, and looked into the envelope unhopefully. At the bottom was a key.

  I took it out. Not a particularly nice key. It was square at the top, aluminum, with ridges running down its blade and symmetrical notching along both edges. Not a house key, or a key to a suitcase lock—a vehicle key.

  I fingered it, tapped it on the dresser, and went back to work, but the key nagged at me. What was it for? It seemed symbolic. But of what?

  I called down to the front desk. “Someone has brought me a message,” I explained. “Was something else included? Who took the message?”

  “Madame, I have no record of a message to you. What was the room number?”

  I told them. “It was, yes, ah, Jules,” I said, with a little flourish as I said it. It’s always a good idea to notice and recall the names of the people who serve you. Once on a TV reality show I saw Richard Branson pose as a taxi driver to see how prospective employees treated him. I thought this was so smart and I’ve kept it in mind ever since. You never know, the man bringing you your lunch might be Richard Branson. “Ask him.”

  I waited for him to trip all over himself apologizing.

  “The bellman must have misspoke, madame,” he said frostily. “Jules does not work until Tuesday. Perhaps he did not state his name clearly.”

  Perhaps. That must be it.

  “I must be mistaken,” I said slowly. “Thank you.” I put down the phone. I sighed and pried out another Vienna sausage and gnawed on it contemplatively. It gave way immediately under my teeth. Then I went into the bathroom and mixed my nasal rinse, which I always do when I am agitated, to clear my sinuses. Ever since I ascended to the so-called C-suite (it’s a metaphor, there’s no such thing at Conch), I have had terrible sinus problems. I filled the squeeze bottle with the saline nasal rinse, positioned the injector just under my nostril, squeezed the bottle, and let the water course through my sinuses and stream out my opposite nostril. It is a weird, unpleasant feeling, not unlike waterboarding yourself, and sometimes it creates a searing pain in the back of the head, but when it was ove
r, when all the gross stuff at the back of the sinuses had drained and washed out, there was, once again, a clear spot in the center of my head and a feeling regained of peace and certainty.

  Part 2

  BARCELONA

  Chapter 3

  “Good afternoon,” I said. I was standing at the center of a stage, in a golden pool of light, with a lavalier mike clipped to my boatneck sweater. I wore pants, sleekly shaped to me, a little tight for sitting but perfect for standing upright onstage, and heels, which tipped me forward so the spotlight warmed my cheeks and collarbone. I basked in the light, clasped my hands, and smiled.

  Below me, off the lip of the stage, the audience stirred. Each face carried an expectant expression, lips parted. The air smelled like many people cheek by jowl, the high altitudes of auditoria, the tang of LED lights, like coated paper and coffee and the conference hotel’s rosemary-mint shampoo interpreted by hundreds of scalps. Sound rose from the audience like a radio station not quite coming in, like the hiss of a creature under the carpet.

  The light onstage softened and spread, and the audience, sensing progress, began to clap. As people, they were barely visible to me in the warm dark. In the first rows I could make out attentive white teeth, faces framed by negative spaces of hair that faded into the darkness around them. The faces were archetypal, ageless, like the masks of a Greek chorus, though this thought leadership conference’s target demographic was entrepreneurial women in mid and peak career. As my eyes adjusted and the aisle lights dimmed, I could make out hair—brown, black, blonde, reddish, curled, ponytailed, loose—and faces, lit by a common gleam. They were too smeary at this distance to have expressions, they were mostly flesh tones and the scrawled proofreading marks of features, but I sensed a hum of anticipation, of receptivity, of lipsticks being holstered, airy gossamer scarves coiled, phones quieted, attention directed forward, upward, to me.