by Leigh Stein
“Can I get someone to help this speaker with her VIP satchel? Hey!” Delancey yelled at a staffer in black who was wearing wrist braces and carrying a velvet wingback chair, by herself, across the lobby.
It wasn’t a staff member. It was Maren. She set the chair down by the registration table and slung my bag over her own shoulder like a good boyfriend.
“Did you get a new job?” I asked.
“I’m performing manual labor for the rich and undernourished. It’s my cardio.” She blotted the sweat on her forehead with the back of a brace.
“You shouldn’t be lifting anything if you’re having a repetitive stress injury flare.”
“I lift from the legs,” Maren said. “C’mon, I’ll show you where your talk is. I got here early and it was a clusterfuck, so I started moving furniture.”
Maren was at her best when she could shine like a diamond against the rough of everyone else’s incompetence.
“Should there be a RichualCon?” she asked. “We’d do such a better job. Don’t you think? What even is this venue?”
“It’s the law school.”
“I know it’s the law school,” Maren said, leading me through a banquet room with Oriental rugs and oil paintings of fat bald white men in three-piece suits from olden times. “Does the ambiance scream ‘empower women’ to you?”
She pulled aside a heavy black curtain and showed me some kind of makeshift tech booth with wires running everywhere and, in one corner, a mirrored vanity table and coat rack.
“What’s your name?” Maren barked at the ambiguously gendered person sitting at the sound board.
“Topher.”
“Do you work here, Topher?”
“Yeah, I’m the tech.”
My phone buzzed. It was a text from Maren, who was standing inches away from me: Should we ask what their preferred pronouns are?
, I texted back.
“Topher,” Maren said, “I’m Maren and my pronouns are she and her. This is Devin. She is moderating the breakfast conversation. Is it cool if she leaves her bags back here?”
Topher gave a thumbs-up.
I made Maren take a selfie of us in the good light of the vanity mirror—her arms were longer. Good morning from #FoundressSummit17!!! I posted to Richual. Here with my business bestie before I interview the inspiring @ForRealAriannaTran about @s-wipe. So blessed to be here.
“Hey, can I talk to you about something?” Maren asked.
“Sure, what’s up?”
“This’ll only take two minutes.” She unwrapped her wrist braces. “I’m going to give you a real hug that’s not from a cyborg.”
Maren held me to her like a child, but it was hard to relax because it was too early in the morning for so much intimate touch. She smelled like black coffee and onion bagel and cool cucumber antiperspirant. Her core radiated heat. She spoke in a low, quiet voice.
“I just wanted to tell you how grateful I am that you’re my business partner and how proud I am of the work we’re doing. I feel like . . . do we even take the time to pause and reflect on how many women we’ve helped by giving them permission to put themselves first? Do we even make time to celebrate our achievement?”
“I don’t know. I thought we did?”
“Sometimes it feels like we’re just going from one crisis to another, so I wanted to just take this moment to say you’re doing a great job.”
“Maren, this is getting a little too romantic.”
I felt her big laugh in her heart chakra and then she let me go. My highlighter left a sparkly smear across the front of her dress.
“You’re important to me,” she said, her forehead wrinkled with concern. “That’s all. Richual is important to me. And not just me—but lots of other people, too. We’re counting on you.”
“Oh my god, do you have the BRCA gene?”
“No, I’m not sick. I’m not going anywhere. But you’re the face, Devin. You’ve always been the face. When people think of Richual, they think of your selfies. And that’s why I think you should be the one to read this.” She was holding a folded piece of paper.
“Read what?”
“Let me back up,” Maren said. “So I went over to Evan’s apartment last night.”
No. That wasn’t possible. I was texting him after my class and he said he was too tired to see anyone and I said, No problem I understand. I was so understanding. I gave him so much space. Why don’t you make some chamomile tea and take a couple drops of that cannabis tincture you got in Seattle? He couldn’t even tell me that she was there?
“Why?” I asked.
“Because it’s not fair,” Maren said. “Why should Richual have to put out a statement about Evan? Why can’t Evan speak for himself? Why are women always the ones burdened with the emotional labor?”
The reason we were in this position in the first place was because of women. Rachelle Tanaka was jealous of our valuation. Kimberly Hartsong was no one’s favorite bachelorette; she had a ridiculous bird phobia; her viewership numbers were pathetic. But now she’d reentered the conversation. Everyone felt sorry for her. This drama was taking away from what today was really supposed to be about—women’s empowerment.
“I got Evan to write this statement,” Maren said.
There is a lot of pain in this country right now and marginalized groups such as women are hurting worst of all. I have my own side of what happened, but rather than make excuses or apologize, I would rather decenter my own experience and make space for those who don’t have a voice because that’s something I believe in.
“What does this even mean?” I asked. I read it again: Marginalized groups such as women. Decenter my experience. I believe in. I recognized his handwriting, but those were Maren’s words.
“Before you even start the conversation with Arianna, you should read it,” she said. “It’s the elephant in the room. If you don’t acknowledge the accusations against Evan, they’re going to bulldoze you in the Q and A. He’s on the judges panel for the livestreamed pitch competition.”
“So?”
“So I overheard attendees complaining about it this morning, and asking Michelle to find a replacement. Women are really mad about it online.”
People were always comparing the internet to high school. But in high school, the mean girls just wanted to ruin your reputation in the short term. Online, people wanted to destroy your reputation for life, so you could never work again under your own brand.
“Do you want me to read it? I’ll read it.”
“That’s great. Why don’t I just go home and you can rearrange the furniture and run the sound booth and interview Arianna and read The Statement and show everyone how good you are at everything, better than anyone else, ever?”
“Don’t be pissed at me,” Maren said. “I didn’t do anything.”
Topher was staring at us. “Five minutes,” they said.
“You don’t even know Evan. You had one conversation with him and you think you understand what’s happening? There’s a lot you don’t know, Maren. A lot. Like the fact that we’ve been seeing each other. Did he tell you that?”
She blinked. The paper fell from her hand and stuck to a piece of black electrical tape on the floor. “Seeing each other in what way exactly?”
“You know.”
“No, Devin, actually I don’t.”
“He’s my boyfriend. I just didn’t know how to tell you.” I could tell how true this sounded by the crestfallen look on her face.
“You should have told me sooner.”
“When? At the office? Because that’s the only place I ever see you anymore?”
“Maybe you could have found some time to squeeze me in between your Botox and your brow-shaping appointments.”
I almost felt sorry for her. We both knew that the reason Foundress invited me to moderate the conv
ersation with Arianna was because of the way I looked. The time and money I spent on my appearance gave me an advantage. Maren would never admit this. It meant we weren’t equals.
“I don’t understand why you had to keep it a secret,” she said. “That’s all.”
“Just because I didn’t do something the way you would have wanted me to do it doesn’t mean I did it the wrong way, okay? And now I have to go.”
“This conversation isn’t over. We’re putting a pin in this.” She picked up the statement and pressed it into my hand.
I checked my makeup and strode toward the front of the banquet room, imagining summertime at the country house—Evan saying, Mom, I’m bringing someone—the two of us sharing a hammock, taking a photo of my bare feet next to his, posting it to Richual. Picking blueberries. Catching fireflies in our hands. Roleplaying sexy drowning victim/lifeguard by the pool. Four hundred women were seated at round tables in the audience, waiting to hear what I had to say. For once, I won. I told Maren something she didn’t already know.
* * *
...
Arianna was half-Vietnamese and half-Scandinavian and one-eighth Sephardic Jew. She was six foot two in heels and lost the baby weight in sixty days by going keto. I estimated her pants size at a 26 long. In 2015, her company was nearly destroyed by a scandal over whether or not the estrogen ingredient in her restorative eye serum was truly vegan since it was taken from the urine of pregnant horses, but they survived (the company, not the horses) by pivoting to wipes. None of this was in the official bio on the conference website; it’s extra research I did on my own on her social accounts and Wikipedia.
Arianna was no slouch. She was wearing a wool crepe sheath with flutter three-quarter sleeves in a shade of pink pearl and she found a way to perch in the wingback chair, smooth as a headless department store mannequin, without wrinkling her dress or revealing too much leg. I predicted she would be wearing a dress, so I went for a herringbone pantsuit.
Ready? I mouthed and she gave me a wink.
“How’s everybody doing this morning?” A few women put down the spoons from their overnight oats to clap. There was one loud whoop from the back of the room. “This is the moment we’ve all been waiting for. I know I have. I’m here this morning with Arianna Tran, foundress of S’Wipe, to talk about money and power.”
“Devin, I am seriously your biggest fan! Can I be on your shine squad?” From the way her head was angled, it was unclear whether this question was addressed to the audience or to me.
“This is actually the first time we’re meeting IRL,” I said. “And yes. You can.”
Arianna turned to me. “You know what I just realized?”
“What?”
“It’s kind of funny that we’re having this talk in a room where every oil painting on the wall is of a man.”
“I love that you just said that,” I said, smiling through my déjà vu. Did Maren tell her to say that?
“I hope I didn’t just jeopardize my speaking fee!”
Laughter rolled through the crowd.
“For those who are new to your work, maybe we could start by you telling everybody a little bit about your background.”
“Absolutely.” There were two male event photographers documenting every time we crossed or uncrossed our legs, switched the microphone from one hand to the other, brushed our hair from our shoulders. “To be honest, I grew up working-class in Cupertino. Both my parents worked, like, a lot. My dad is an anesthesiologist and my mom is an econ professor at Stanford. When I tell people I’m from Cupertino, they assume I grew up immersed in tech and startup culture, but I really had zero exposure. Everything I’ve built, I built it myself.”
“How did you get started in business?”
“All my friends in high school—their parents were buying them cars. I wanted a Jetta so bad, you guys! I also had asthma as a kid so I was always different, an outsider. Raise your hand if you’ve ever felt like you needed to look different or have different stuff or even breathe different to fit in. Don’t be shy! That’s all of us. I thought maybe having the right car would help me fit in. Because my parents worked so much, they instilled in me that work ethic. This was during the dot-com boom and I got a job doing sales after school and on the weekends for a box website and made twenty thousand dollars in commissions. I was only a junior.”
“Dropbox?”
“Pre-Dropbox. A website that sold boxes. Our company supplied boxes to other companies, but instead of ordering from a catalog you could order from our website.”
Arianna must have been way older than I thought. I couldn’t help scanning her face for what had been filled and lifted. We were losing our audience. The bubble burst before most of these women got their first periods.
“Let’s actually stay on that topic of money for a minute,” I said, checking my notes. “Now that your company has expanded from nontoxic makeup remover wipes to nontoxic baby wipes to a patented, uniquely biodegradable flushable wipe you call the ‘Number 1 for Number 2’ organic adult wipe on the market, can you tell us something you learned along the way about negotiation and closing the deal?”
Arianna set her mic in her lap and just stared at me, expressionless, like I’d said something borderline offensive and she wanted me to reflect on it.
I tried again. “Sorry, I mean I was just wondering if you had any negotiation tips for the women in the audience who are negotiating with suppliers or even, like, in an interview.”
She didn’t even blink. Should I not have said “flushable”? Should I not have said “women”? Should I have said “people”? “Women and people?” Women are people. All people are human beings. My pits were sweating, even though the room was cold. The fireplace behind us was a barren showpiece. All eyes—dark eyes and light eyes, lined eyes and nude eyes, and eyes framed by false lashes—were on me, begging me to make this moment with our elder less excruciatingly awkward. I remembered when Evan wanted 50 percent equity and how Maren had laughed like a cold dead fish and said, You must be shitting me, and Evan saying, Hey, this is a negotiation, and Maren saying, Last I checked you didn’t have the authority of a vagina, and Evan looking to me, all casual, saying, Are you sure this is the cunt you want to be going into business with? How I said, Yes, this is the cunt I choose, and he said, I just want you both to be sure. This is the easy part. It doesn’t get any easier from here. We gave him 20 percent and the third seat on our board.
Finally, Arianna picked her mic back up. “Don’t speak,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I said automatically.
“Stop apologizing, Devin,” she said, leaning in to squeeze one of my knees, before turning back to the adoring crowd. “This is a lesson for everybody. After you put out, you shut up. You put what you fucking want on the table, and then you sit quietly until they make their fucking counteroffer.”
I was afraid that if I said anything right then, I might start crying, so I put my mic in my lap and started a round of applause that, blessedly, everyone joined in on. Maren was standing at the back of the room near the doors, giving me a thumbs-up. I was overwhelmed at the amount of relief I felt seeing her there. She was still on my team. We were still a team.
“Wow, that was so powerful.” I took a deep breath. “Switching gears, maybe we can talk about what you’ve learned about balancing being a mom with being an entrepreneur.”
“I actually hate the word balance,” Arianna said. “I prefer blend.”
“Can you describe what that blend looks like?”
“I’m just speaking for myself, but for me, I have three kids. If you send me a Twitter DM, I might not have time to look at it until I’m pumping at the office. My assistant is at my house at six in the morning so we can do email while I hit the Peloton. The nanny has the day off on Sundays and for some reason it takes the kids forever to fall asleep—”
Maren was waving her
phone at me broadly, like a flag. Stop, I mouthed.
Look, she mouthed back, gesturing at her phone, looking at the screen and back at me. I shook my head. I was not delivering that statement, not now. No way.
“—when I’m putting them to bed, so maybe I’ll be cuddling with them and reviewing an audit of our market segmentation on my tablet or something. My work is my life and my life is my work. And my kids are all of that and more.”
“That’s incredible,” I said, shuffling through my notes for a good follow-up. My question on the postpartum body dysmorphia she chronicled on Instagram didn’t seem appropriate. I could have asked her about her next venture with breast wipes, but I thought I should save that one for the end.
“What is something that makes you hopeful?” I asked.
“This. Women. Women speaking up. Women getting loud. Women talking to each other. Women saying, This really happened to me. Women sharing space to talk about times they failed, but also about the times they succeeded . . . Are we at time?”
She was looking at me and I was looking at her and that’s when I saw, over Arianna’s shoulder, the crowd. They seemed to appear everywhere at once: women dressed in all black, standing at the back and sides of the room. They were all wearing white sheet masks. The masks were one size fits all. On some women, they sagged around the chin. On others, they didn’t quite reach the hairline. No one had a nose. At first, that was the creepiest part of all—the complete lack of noses. Just a white flap to ventilate the nostrils. A gash in the mask for a mouth. They looked like burn victims.
They began to disperse throughout the crowd, carrying brightly colored bundles under their arms. I searched for Maren, but she was gone.
“It appears we have some S’Wipe samples for everyone,” I started to say, even while Arianna was shaking her head at me, concerned. The women in masks weren’t wearing Foundress-branded T-shirts. They weren’t staff. I reached for my phone, but it wasn’t even on me—it was in the closet. I felt like I had forgotten how to breathe.
“Melissa? Is Melissa here?” I was still gripping my mic. “I don’t mean Melissa. I mean Michelle! Security? Sorry, you guys, I think there’s been some slight miscommunication in the programming—”