by Andrea Bartz
Next to me, Mikki pulled a massive nubby cardigan from her backpack and swung it over her shoulders. She looked so cozy in her billowy pants and blanketlike sweater; I felt the squeeze of faux-leather leggings against my own waist.
“So this is the first time Eleanor and Katie have seen each other?” she asked. “Since she got back, I mean.”
“Yeah, first time.” Too bad—maybe if they’d seen each other sooner, somewhere private, Eleanor could have asked Katie the inevitable How’s your mom? without me cringing and blushing three feet away. It wasn’t Eleanor’s fault, it was kind of her to ask … well, that was the problem: The fault was all mine. I’m the older sister, the one with means and, as a freelance publicist, a flexible work schedule—the obvious candidate for moving back home. And yet I’d put it off, panicked at the prospect of having to spend all that time with Mom. I’d cried with relief and shame when Katie announced she would be the one to move to Michigan.
I cleared my throat. “I guess she needed a little time to get her bearings.”
“Well, and Eleanor’s become a bigger deal since Katie moved away. Maybe she felt intimidated.”
“Maybe.”
I’m the one who studied psychology, but Mikki (BA in visual arts) was a keen observer too. It’s what makes her such a good artist, most likely: She can people-watch, drawn in by the smallest details and spinning them into larger narratives. The gaudy engagement ring peeking out from a frayed jacket cuff. The gold-link watch, sagging on a skinny wrist. And yet she often misses things the rest of the world can’t shut up about: a meme that breaks the Internet, a major piece of news.
Eleanor and Mikki were roommates in the dorm freshman year—random roommates, and randomly just two doors down from me, because the Fates are kind like that sometimes. Eleanor and I met during move-in day, smiling at each other across a thrumming certainty that yes, we would be friends. Eleanor quickly grew close with Mikki, an arty yet unpretentious hipster from Asheville and the first in her family to attend college. Orientation week, when other freshmen were wandering the campus in massive frightened globs, we were already a trio.
A burst of high, chattering voices from the corner; a gaggle of women had come upon the pair they were looking for, hugs and exclamations all around. I recognized a few of them: They were starting a nonprofit to aid disaster relief efforts with phone-tree technology. Around them, other Herders flashed their chins in the group’s direction, moving like a school of fish.
“I can’t wait for the Fort Greene location to open,” Mikki said. “It’s such a zoo in here.”
“I miss being able to sit outside. You were the last one who could stand it.”
“I know—but I had the entire roof to myself. I was shivering and typing with fingerless gloves, some real Mr. Popper’s Penguins shit.” She mimed it, waggling her fingers. The closing of the Herd’s rooftop garden had felt like a small death. Winters always hit me hard, the frost seeping into my lungs and camping there as something like sorrow, a sweeping melancholia no pricy therapeutic lamp could counter. It’s one of the reasons I’d moved to L.A. after graduation. Though not the most pressing one—the incident I’d smashed into the tiniest corner of my mind.
Mikki pulled a vape pen from her backpack and took a hit.
“Didn’t Eleanor already yell at you for that?”
She smirked. “It’s CBD. I need constant calming. And c’mon, you know we can do whatever we want here.” Mikki’s favorite pastime is making me uncomfortable. “Hey, you staying for Monday Mocktails? It’s the bartender from Bamboo tonight.”
“That new tiki bar in SoHo?” I tilted my head. “I’m surprised Eleanor didn’t write it off as, like, cultural appropriation.”
“I guess when New York Mag devotes three pages to your cocktails, you get a free pass. I think they bill themselves as ‘Pacific kitsch’ or something.”
“Figures.” I drummed my nails on my computer. “I have a client meeting at four, so I’ll have to miss this one. You should ask Katie, though. It’d be good for her to start making friends here.”
“You shouldn’t worry about her.” She nodded toward the other rooms, toward Eleanor’s office, past the Gleam Room I’d ducked into this morning when no one was looking: UGLY CUNTS.
“She’s got friends in high places.”
“Hana!”
I was zooming toward the elevators, answering an email on my phone as I walked, when I heard the holler. I looked back and saw Eleanor leaning out of her office door, hinging at the waist so only her head and shoulders popped out, like someone in a goofy sitcom. She was forcing a smile, but her eyes gave her away.
I walked over. “What can I do for you?”
“Have a seat.” She leaned back, as if it were my job to begin the conversation. My phone lit up and I turned it over on my lap.
“So how’d it go with Katie?” I said brightly.
“She is such a rising star. It’s so cool to see.”
“I know, I’m so proud of her.”
She clasped her hands. “You know I love Katie.”
“I sense a ‘but.’ ”
“I’d love your opinion. If you have time.”
“Of course.” 3:36, my phone had read—if I didn’t get out of here soon, I’d be late for my meeting. Eleanor did this sometimes—snapping into professional mode even when it was just Mikki and me. It was necessary, the reason we could be both best friends and coworkers without anyone ripping anyone’s head off. But that didn’t make it less annoying.
Her eyes floated to the right, like she was choosing her words carefully. “I’m not entirely convinced she’s someone we’d normally take,” she finally said. “She’s brilliant, obviously. But she’s young.”
I dipped my chin. “Eleanor, your head member relations coordinator can barely purchase alcohol.”
“Okay, immature. We’re so selective here, and it’s really a … a discreet bunch. Katie can be a little rash on social media, an oversharer, I think sometimes she speaks without thinking.…”
I sighed. Eleanor wasn’t wrong, of course, but I wasn’t sure what she wanted from me.
“Hana, you know we have some extremely high-profile members here. And part of what they love about the Herd is that it’s private—it’s a haven where they’re out of the public eye.”
My eyes rolled before I could stop myself. “C’mon, Eleanor, you know Katie’s a sensitive, conscientious person. And anyway, I’m not the person you should be talking to. Katie’s twenty-seven; I’m not her keeper.”
“I understand, and I wasn’t implying that.” I knew Eleanor’s poker face well enough to recognize irritation swelling underneath the serene expression—irritation matching my own. “I just thought you might have some insight into how she’d be in this environment. Especially given all your work with A-list clients. I just want everyone to feel comfortable.” Her palms bobbed in front of her chest as she spoke, as if she were juggling invisible knives.
“Well, I appreciate that,” I lied. I began to gather my things, slipped my phone back into my purse. “I think Katie would be a wonderful addition to the Herd community and I hope, based on her own merits, you feel the same. Look, I am so sorry but I have a meeting on Fourteenth Street at four. Is there anything else you need? Anything for the event next week?”
“No, we’re fine there, thank you.”
We smiled at each other. Another point of contention: Eleanor had asked me to plan an event for the following Tuesday, essentially a press briefing around an exciting announcement, but she hadn’t told me what the damn announcement would be.
“Anyway, thanks for letting me grab you.” She swept a lock of hair off her cheek. “I love your dress, by the way.”
“Thanks!” I chirped, and I waited until I was almost at the elevators to let my smile drop into a scowl.
I gripped the knife tighter and squinted at the flesh before me, sitting in a puddle of pink-red juice. The recipe for stuffed chicken breasts hadn’t sounded too comp
licated, but now, in my small kitchen, I realized just how much detail was missing.
“How’s it going with the spinach?” I called.
“I think good?” Her voice curved into a question mark. “Hopefully this is small enough. The recipe just says ‘chopped fresh spinach.’ ”
I turned to inspect the recipe card on my kitchen island, keeping my hands up like a surgeon. “I think it needs to be finer.”
“You need to be finer,” she murmured. She squinted at the card. “You don’t think this looks like that?”
“I’m sure it’s fine. Want to start on the onions?”
I made a terrible head chef, but Katie kept on doggedly relying on me for kitchen management. For years, we’d both assumed we disliked cooking, likely because our mother hated it. When she’d come across a cooking show, she’d shake the remote at the screen and holler, “You’re watching somebody do a chore!”
But Katie had, unexpectedly, returned from Michigan with a new goal on her lips: She wanted to learn to cook. And I could see the obvious downsides of my nightly take-out habit. So here we were, in my fully equipped kitchen, hunching over a meal kit.
When the dish came out of the oven, though, we both stared in quiet horror.
“We’ve made a terrible mistake,” Katie whispered. Cheese and spinach had spilled out everywhere, burning in peaks and ridges, and the “stuffed” chicken breasts had curled closed like irritated clamshells.
I couldn’t help it—I let out a laugh, then stifled it into the dishtowel still clutched in my hand. Katie snickered, too, and then we were both laughing uncontrollably, doubling over in my kitchen. Cosmo wandered in, sat down just long enough to fling up a leg and groom himself, then padded out, prompting another wave of hysterics.
I swiped the instructions off the island, wiping my eyes to read it. “We were supposed to keep it shut with toothpicks!” I gasped between giggles.
“You skipped the chicken sutures?” she choked back, then composed herself. She let out one of those high, happy sighs people make to seal their laughter, as if already reminiscing about it. “I guess we won’t be getting board-certified in fowl surgery.”
I erupted into laughter again and she joined me, face red. I felt something in my ribs and froze the moment long enough to identify it, before it could slip away: It was the first time since she’d moved back that I’d seen Katie being Katie.
After we’d eaten the mess, Katie suggested we take a walk. She’d done this a few times, and I hadn’t quite figured out why: whether this was something she did in Michigan, carving up the loneliness with long, patient strolls, or whether she perhaps was trying to reorient herself to New York, a city that had changed so much in even the eleven months she’d been away. I liked our walks—they reminded me of afternoons in Kalamazoo spent exercising our doofy yellow lab. When I was in junior high and Katie in elementary school, we’d circled the neighborhood, Kobe bounding ahead as I confidently imparted to Katie everything she needed to know about popularity and makeup and boys and fashion, topics I barely understood myself.
We ventured out into the cold, our breath forming little clouds in the streetlamps’ glow. I directed us off of my street, lined with boutiques and cafés closing up for the night, and onto a residential one, where townhouses with tasteful holiday decorations unspooled down either side.
“Mom says hi,” Katie said, stashing her phone in her pocket. “I texted her a photo of tonight’s fowl play.”
I snorted. “It looked like something Mom would’ve made.”
“Only it tasted better.” We walked quietly on and I waited to see if she’d say more about Mom, blunder further into the tension. When she didn’t, I changed the topic: “So how was Mocktails?” We’d spent most of dinner discussing her interview. From what I could tell, Katie had no idea that Eleanor wasn’t sure Katie was Herd material.
“All anyone could talk about was the vandalism,” she said. “If they were trying to keep it a secret, they failed. Why didn’t they just have someone come in and cover it up right away?”
“I said the same thing. But Eleanor always insists on using her friend for repair jobs. And he can’t come until after hours.”
Katie tugged her cap down. “I’m just offended that I couldn’t re-contour my cheekbones at three in the afternoon. What kind of hellhole tears women from their Gleam Cream like Sophie’s Choice?” I gave her a shove and she stumbled to the side, grinning. “Seriously, though, I think she should leave it up. Call it art. Cunts are awesome—they birth tiny humans. You say tagging, I say tagline.”
“Eleanor hates that word. It’s not the first time some misogynist dude has come after her, but—I could tell it bugged her. She usually has a pretty thick skin.”
We exchanged an identical that sucks look: nose scrunched, lips downturned. We don’t share an iota of genetic material—myself a mélange of Middle Eastern, Eastern European, and South Asian, per an expensive DNA testing kit I’d ordered in college, and Katie an Aryan dream—but everyone comments on how alike our mannerisms are.
“ ‘Come after her’? What happened?”
I sighed. “There are idiots who crop up if you’re a public figure, especially a woman, especially a woman trying to fight the patriarchy by creating an empowering space for other women.” We turned right, past a jumble of trash bags and old office chairs, piled like a sculpture. “She doesn’t talk about it, the same way movie stars don’t talk about their stalkers. The worst thing you can do is give an attention-seeker attention. But she’s a huge deal. People are kind of obsessed with her. And she gets, you know. Death threats and stuff.”
“Really?” Katie turned to me, her eyes like two moons.
“Of course.” We’d reached a little community garden with a Christmas tree in the middle, studded with blue lights. I paused at the gate and she headed inside. “I mean, there are a lot of angry men in the world,” I added, following her in. “But Eleanor won’t let them scare her into shutting up.”
Katie didn’t reply; instead she marched up to the base of the tree and stared, her elfin face and big eyes washed in cobalt. “A lot,” she said softly.
“What?” I joined her, dead grass crunching under my feet.
“There are a lot of angry men.” She turned to me. “In the world.”
I tilted my head, watching her closely, and then a clang rang out behind us; Katie recoiled as if struck, and I turned to see the metal fence banging closed. We hurried back and found it hadn’t locked, had just swung in the wind. Katie stepped out onto the sidewalk as I tried to push the gate back open behind us.
“You okay?” I asked when we’d begun moving again.
“Of course. I’m just—Mikki said you guys don’t know how the tagger got in. And he didn’t, like, trash the place or anything, he just left that one message. It’s weird, right?”
“Super weird. But it’s not anything to stress about. Eleanor said today they’re going to beef up security. Cameras at the entrances and all that.”
She slipped off her beanie and tucked it into her pocket. “Oh, Mikki said to ask you why there wasn’t already a camera in the Gleam Room?”
I raised my eyebrows. “Would you want footage of you using the Gleam Room?”
“In the other rooms, then?”
I shrugged. “When we were designing the space, I pointed out that studies show that women are less productive and feel less comfortable in offices with security cameras. Especially with this kind of clientele—what if somebody hacked in and got footage of, like, Myla Robin spilling a pitaya bowl on herself?”
“What the hell is a pitaya bowl?”
“Oh, Katie. You’ve missed so much.” I patted her shoulder.
“They had to be studying coed workplaces, though, right? The researchers.” She stepped over a cigarette butt. “Even if the study was about women feeling, you know, under a microscope, I doubt it applies to the Herd. It’s one place where you’re free from the male gaze.”
“But I think
it’s conditioned—an automatic response to being watched all our lives,” I said. “Anyway, it wasn’t my hill to die on. I just thought it seemed relevant, and then later Eleanor decided that the only camera they were installing would be the one in the elevator.”
A motorcycle came tearing around the corner, and Katie jumped.
“You okay?” I slid my arm across her shoulders. “What is it—sensory overload after Kalamazoo?”
She turned to me slowly, then swung her head away. “I’m fine.”
We were almost back to my apartment, our footfalls synchronized, when Katie dug in her pocket and pulled out her phone. I took a couple more steps before I noticed she wasn’t next to me, then turned and saw her frozen on the sidewalk, brow furrowed.
“What’s up?” I called.
Her eyes slid over the screen a few more times before she looked up. “It’s nothing. Hey, I’m gonna—”
We both saw it, a yellow cab approaching with its roof light on. She stuck an arm out—confidently, I thought, like a seasoned New Yorker—and it wheezed to a stop.
“I’ll see you tomorrow!” she cried, pressing me into a quick hug and then scuttling into the back. I watched through the window to see if she’d wave, but her eyes were back on her cell.
My own phone buzzed as I reached my front door, and I pulled it out to see a text from Katie: “Left my laptop at your apt. Can you bring it to herd tomorrow?”
Katie was always forgetting her things. Not losing them, per se, because she always got them back—luck followed her like a scent. She texted again: “Sorry I took off so suddenly. xo”
I noticed all at once how cold my nose and fingertips had grown, and I fished for my keys in my purse.
“Hi, Hana!” the doorman called as I passed. “Slow down, you have a package!”
“Great, thanks!” I skidded to a stop at his desk. He’d mumbled when he introduced himself months ago, and I’d said “pardon?” twice but still couldn’t catch it, and now I can never ask. He has an unfair advantage; every time I pick up a delivery, he gets a glimpse of my name on the address label, the woman in 4C.