If You, Then Me

by Yvonne Woon

  He stood up straight when I mentioned her name and looked at me like I was important. “Right this way.”

  He led me through a series of dining rooms to a green door printed with the words By Invitation Only.

  The Warbler’s Room felt like a smoking parlor. Predictably, it was filled with men. Young men, old men, men in gray suits, men in blue suits, men in business casual, men putting on their coats, men rolling up their sleeves, men with beards, men with tans, men gesticulating with their knives, men talking too loudly, men ordering meat, men wiping their mouths with napkins, men wasting food, men ordering whiskey, men sipping beer and laughing, men spritzing lemon into their water, men paying me no attention, men looking me up and down, men glancing at me and murmuring, wondering what man had invited me there. Behind them all, a faded green mural of a bird in the forest graced the walls above the inset mahogany paneling.

  Mitzy Erst was sitting at a table in the corner, looking like a streak of neon in a baroque painting.

  Her eyes twinkled when she saw me, as though we were accomplices. “Well, if it isn’t the famous Xia Chan, tech newcomer and overnight celebrity.”

  I wanted to come off as confident and sophisticated, someone worthy of being seen with her, but was too nervous to act cool. “That’s me,” I said like an idiot.

  “You look shorter than I remember,” she said. She was sipping an amber drink with an orange peel spiraling down its side. “We’ll have to work on that.”

  I let out a confused laugh. “Work on it?”

  Mitzy gave me an amused look. “Almost everything can be worked on. For example, you look terrified, which makes you look shorter.”

  “This place is a little intimidating,” I admitted, cursing my face for betraying me. Did it have to constantly broadcast the exact emotion I was feeling to everyone around me?

  “You only have to be intimidated by the ones wearing lounge clothes,” she said, her voice low and conspiratorial. “All the suits are little men. It’s a pretty universal rule here. The fancier the clothes, the less power they have. It’s the ones in sneakers and sweatpants that you have to worry about. If you can get away with going to a business meeting in your pajamas—that’s real power.”

  I noticed then that the only men who were actually eating were the ones in sneakers and sweats. There were only a handful of them, but they stood out. They slouched in their chairs, laughed with abandon, and ordered second and third drinks while the men in suits sat stiffly as though they were being interviewed.

  “It’s amazing what you see when you really start looking,” Mitzy said with a wink.

  The waiter approached and took our order.

  “I’ll have the New York Strip,” Mitzy said.

  I scanned the menu but kept getting distracted by the prices, which were so high that I couldn’t fathom ordering any of it.

  “I . . . um—”

  “She’ll have the Porterhouse,” Mitzy said, taking my menu.

  “Always order steak when you can,” Mitzy said when the waiter was gone. “Especially if you’re eating with a man. It makes you look confident and decisive.”

  I nodded and decided not to tell her that I didn’t particularly like steak.

  “So we need to get you ready.”

  “Ready. Right.” I took a sip of water, not wanting to reveal that I didn’t know what I was getting ready for.

  “I’ve already gotten a dozen emails about you—”

  “About me? How?”

  “From the photo I posted. We don’t want to respond right away. It’s good to make people squirm a little to make sure they know it’s a seller’s market. But I wanted to touch base with you first to see how you’re feeling.”

  I wondered if I had missed some key piece of information, because I hadn’t the slightest clue what she was talking about. Frantically, I racked my brain, wondering if Mitzy had sent me an email that I’d accidentally deleted that mentioned whatever it was she was referring to.

  “So how are you feeling?” Mitzy repeated.

  “Um . . . good,” I said. “I’m feeling good. And excited?” I watched her face, trying to figure out if my answer was appropriate. “I’m feeling energized and ready to talk to people.”

  It was a whole lot of nothing, but it seemed to work because Mitzy beamed.

  “Good.”

  “So I’m going to set up a meeting with Vilbo. There’s an executive there who really wants to meet you. There’s a chance he’ll want to give you seed funding.”

  “I hope he isn’t one of the executives I met at the Foundry mixer,” I murmured. “My pitch there didn’t exactly go well.”

  “Even if he is, it doesn’t matter. You’ll be new by the time you meet him.”

  What did she mean by new?

  “Now what do you have for me?”

  A lump formed in my throat. Should I have prepared? Should I have brought something?

  “Your pitch. Your business plan. You know, your Wiser schtick. The thing you tell people to convince them that Wiser is the next best thing.”

  “I—I, um, you want me to tell it to you now?”

  Waiters arrived with our food: two huge slabs of meat glistening with butter, and a tray of sides.

  “How else are you going to practice?”

  The waiters lingered over us, setting out thick serrated knives on napkins and offering us freshly grated pepper for the potatoes. I wanted to wait until they were gone to do my pitch but they didn’t seem eager to leave and Mitzy was looking impatient.

  I cleared my throat. “Wiser is an artificial intelligence tool that analyzes public and private data—” I began, glancing up nervously while the waiters tonged slices of lemon onto a side plate, “and simulates an older version of the user to give that user advice.”

  Mitzy frowned. “Stop. I’m already bored. You’re explaining too much. You’re overthinking it.”

  The waiter asked if she wanted another drink, and she nodded and waved him away.

  “What did you say to me at the party?” she asked, slicing into her steak. Blood pooled around it. “You convinced me in just a few minutes that Wiser was going to change the world. Just say what you said then.”

  “That was sort of a happy accident.”

  “It wasn’t an accident. I stumbled around a lot of people that night and you were the only one I posted about.” She gestured to the room with her fork. “People around here want you to think that you’re lucky, that they found you, that they made you, but that’s the scam. That’s how they own you. What I saw at that party wasn’t an accident. It was your hard work and your genius. Don’t let anyone let you think otherwise.”

  I felt chastened and empowered by her speech. “I won’t.”

  “Good. Now sit up straight, act tall, and try not to say um when you talk. From now on, you have to be ready. This is Silicon Valley. You don’t just have coffee or lunch with people. Everything is a meeting. No one asks you to meet up for a quick bite unless they think you can give them something.”

  I wondered what she thought I could give her, since she was the one asking me to lunch. “Why are you helping me then?”

  “Because I think your product could change the world, and it wouldn’t be right for me to sit and watch you drop out of the Foundry without trying to help.”

  I wasn’t used to getting compliments, so when I received one, I didn’t know what to do. What could I possibly say that could make Mitzy understand that even if I never saw her again, she had already changed my life? I considered what Wiser would have me say. “When someone gives you a compliment, the best thing to do is say thank you,” Wiser liked to remind me. So that’s what I did.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  Mitzy smiled. “My pleasure.”

  “So do you have any other tips?”

  Mitzy swirled the ice cubes in her drink. “Only tell people exactly as much as they need to know. Always wear sunscreen. Retinol is your friend. Chemical exfoliation is better than physical
. You’re too young to need it now, but remember it for when you’re thirty. Speaking of which, we have to work on your look.”

  “What’s wrong with my look?”

  Mitzy hesitated, as though she was searching for the appropriate euphemism. “It’s a little dated. It’s mostly the turtleneck. But the pants, too.”

  “It’s classic,” I protested.

  “I get that you’re trying to look the part. I really do. But you don’t want magazines to describe you as a girl who dresses like old male CEOs. You want to be the girl who can’t be compared to anyone else.”

  I must have looked skeptical because she pointed at me with her fork. “Do you have anything to do this afternoon?”

  “Just an impossibly time-consuming maximum subarray coding assignment, a market analysis report, and fifty pages of reading on corporate finance.”

  Wiser had advised me to postpone meeting Mitzy until the following week, arguing that I needed to catch up on my schoolwork before taking social meetings, but I’d ignored her and turned her off. Though she wasn’t awake now, I wondered if she could detect the mild panic in my voice.

  “We can fix that,” Mitzy said, and pointed her phone camera at me. “Look tall,” she said and took a photo. “If you’re going to be late on your assignments, we have to raise your stock some way.”

  “Why would I be late on my assignments—” I began to ask, but she cut me off.

  “Besides, what we’re about to do matters more than class. Speaking of which, we need to talk about your online presence,” Mitzy said. “Or lack thereof.”

  “I’m constantly online.”

  “Liking your friends’ photos and lurking on coding forums is not what I mean. You’ve only posted a handful of photos on your account and most of them are of a microwave.”

  “I upgraded that microwave! I programmed it to cook an egg perfectly by voice activation.”

  “That’s all very quirky and niche, but your brand isn’t microwaves. It’s sleek and clean and futuristic. You need to convince everyone else that the future you’re imagining is a future they want. You’re a brand now. You need to sell yourself.”

  Could you be a brand when you were a timid misfit who spent most of her time talking to her phone?

  “That means posting at least once a day. Nothing incendiary—no politics, no opinions on current events, and definitely no complaining or bad-mouthing.”

  “Once a day?” I blurted out. “What would I even post?”

  “What does anyone post? Selfies, places you’ve eaten, outfits. You know, scenes from your everyday life.”

  “But my everyday life is boring. I eat at the same place every day. I wear the same outfit every day.”

  “First,” Mitzy said, “you need to stop eating that terrible cafeteria food. It’s like eating at an airport food court.”

  Though I didn’t dare admit it, the food at the Foundry was some of the best I’d ever eaten.

  “Second,” Mitzy continued, “you’ll soon be the owner of an entirely new wardrobe, so that solves the outfit problem. And finally, eighty percent of everything is boring. Whose life is interesting all the time?”

  “Yours.”

  “I spend most of my time making calls and following up. I don’t code anymore. I sold all my companies and now sit on their boards as a senior advisor, which means that I try to get funding. Do you know how incredibly boring that is?”

  “It doesn’t look boring.”

  “That’s because I only show the twenty percent that looks fun. And even that I have to spruce up. You and I, we’re in the business of making something out of nothing. That’s what the entire internet is, really. It’s an alternate world that we’re all communally conjuring together. Your life isn’t interesting? Make it interesting. That’s your job now.”

  She gave the waiter her credit card to pay for lunch, then busied herself with her phone. “Posted.”

  Everyone stole glances at us when we left the restaurant. They were looking at Mitzy, of course, not me, though if she noticed she didn’t let on. She walked like a celebrity: shoulders back, chin up, eyes fixed on the horizon as though she was already living in the future. Normally I felt self-conscious when I knew people were staring at me, but standing next to Mitzy, I felt like the best version of myself. I wanted to be seen. As we walked through the restaurant, I imagined us as explorers of a new and uncharted land: brown, drab, and lifeless. And there we were, the only two people in the world who were really alive. It felt right. We could remake it together.

  A gleaming red sports car chirped in the parking lot. To my surprise, Mitzy got into the driver’s seat.

  “This is your car?” I said, admiring the paint job, which looked like candy. I didn’t know why I was surprised. Of course Mitzy would drive the nicest car in the lot.

  But she was already on her phone. “We’re on our way,” she said to the person on the other end of the line.

  I slid into the passenger’s seat, marveling at how the leather felt cool against my skin despite baking in the sun all morning. She zipped out of the lot before I could buckle up, and I lurched forward, catching myself just before I hit the windshield.

  “Hold on,” she said to me with a smile. “The ride is just beginning.”

  Fifteen

  She sped through the winding roads that led us down into Palo Alto, blowing through stop signs and speeding through yellow lights. I gripped the side of my seat and tried not to look terrified.

  Her golden hair flitted out the window as she pulled down a residential street lined with trees and parked in front of a huge modern house that looked like an art gallery.

  “Is this where you live?” I asked.

  “Of course not. My house is much nicer,” Mitzy said with a wink. “This is the studio of Veronica DuChamp, image consultant to the rich and famous of Silicon Valley.”

  “Like a stylist?” I asked.

  “She’s much more than that. Just go in with an open mind, answer all her questions as honestly as possible, and don’t touch the dogs.”

  A woman greeted us at the front door. She had to be the same age as my mom but looked so hip that she seemed younger. She was dressed like an artist, a very wealthy one. She wore glasses with electric blue frames that matched her rings and a silk scarf knotted around her hair.

  “I’m Veronica,” she said, holding out her hand. It was smooth and cold.

  “Xia,” I said.

  Veronica looked me up and down. “Let’s get started.”

  She led us into her living room, where two fluffy white dogs ran in to greet her, their tags jingling.

  “Please sit,” Veronica said, motioning to a plush sofa.

  A young woman came in and brought us tea and little shell-shaped cookies that were so perfect they looked like they were part of the décor. I helped myself to one. All the while, Veronica watched me unabashedly, as if I were a new form of human that she’d never seen before. It made me self-conscious, and I put the cookie down, wondering if I had done something rude.

  “Do you like it?” she said of the cookie.

  “It’s really good.”

  “It’s called a madeleine. Have you heard of them?”

  I nodded even though I hadn’t, because I didn’t want to seem uncultured.

  Veronica’s eyes twinkled as though she knew I was fibbing, but she didn’t say anything. I glanced at Mitzy, but she was typing into her phone.

  “Tell me, where are you from?” Veronica said. She had a way of speaking that made me feel like whatever I said would be inadequate.

  “Central Massachusetts,” I said.

  “And you have siblings?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t come from a wealthy background,” she observed.

  I felt suddenly miserable. Was it that apparent? I took a mental inventory of my physical appearance and wondered which part had betrayed me. “I don’t.”

  “What’s your goal in coming here?”

  “You m
ean here in this house?”

  “To Silicon Valley. Why did you come here?”

  “I—I wanted to start a company.”

  “Of course, but why did you want to start your company here? You could have started it on the East Coast.”

  Her line of questioning made me nervous, not because they were hard questions but because the answers seemed so obvious. Who didn’t want to come to Silicon Valley to start their company? I worried that I was missing some key part of her question. “Because it’s the epicenter. It’s where everything is happening.”

  “So you like to be at the center of things.”

  “I guess? I mean, not really. I don’t like people looking at me a lot.”

  “People crave many different kinds of attention. Visual attention is just one. Is there another kind of attention you enjoy?”

  Veronica was staring at me as though she could see the thoughts forming in my head before I was able to articulate them. “No one’s ever really understood me. I’ve always been this invisible person, smart but otherwise two-dimensional. I don’t want everyone staring at me or anything, I just want them to look at the things I make and see me. I mean, really see me.”

  Veronica leaned forward with curiosity. “And what made you want to start a company?”

  I swallowed. “I came up with the idea when I realized that all the existing virtual assistants are just web scrapers. They don’t give personalized advice. I thought creating an AI that gave people answers based on their specific problems would be a useful tool—”

  “I’m not a reporter,” Veronica said, cutting me off. “I don’t want to hear your talking points. I’m here to extract the essence of you and put it on display, but I can only do that if I understand who you are, where you come from, and where you want to go.”

  I glanced at Mitzy, who raised an eyebrow, as if to say, I told you to answer honestly.

  “I did it for myself. My mom was never home, and I wanted someone to talk to, so I made Wiser.”

  Veronica waited for me to continue.

  “I wanted so badly to get out of Massachusetts. No one there understood me. I was just a weird person who was good with computers. Wiser was my escape.”