by Kate Myles
Doug rushes to his office, dialing Erik. “I offered to let Maryn audit me,” Doug tells him. “I was helping you with suggested apps for the users, okay? That’s the story.”
His call waiting beeps. “Shit,” he says. No interruptions. Not now. He and Erik need to plan. Doug almost doesn’t look at who is on the other line. But he does. It’s like a gift from God that he looks and sees Stan’s name.
Doug tells Erik he’ll call him back and answers Stan’s call. “Stan, what the hell?”
Stan’s voice is hushed and intense. “This is all my fault,” he says. “I had an affair. She blames you.”
“Tell her I didn’t make you do that!”
“It’s too late,” says Stan. “I can’t really talk, but I feel terrible.”
Doug waits for him to say more. He doesn’t. “That’s it?” Doug says. “You feel bad?”
He hears Stan sigh into the phone. Doug holds his breath. Stan has more to say—he knows it. “This didn’t come from me, okay?” says Stan.
“Okay.”
“They’re recording Erik right now. They’re taping your conversation.”
Doug hears a tone. It’s high pitched and piercing, and it drowns out the sound of him pounding his fist on his keyboard. He catches only pieces of Stan’s next words about Erik using the Dr. Maryn Store to blackmail people. Catfishing. Sting operations. The details don’t matter. Doug is the only one who matters.
“Are the police involved?” Doug asks.
“Not yet.”
Doug sails up PCH. There’s no traffic tonight, just speed and cliffs and darkening ocean. He calls his lawyer. He calls two of his friendliest board members. He explains that Dr. Maryn’s tech consultant has had a breakdown of some sort. The guy is an alcoholic, spouting lies and nonsense. They need to separate themselves, defend themselves.
He pulls into his garage, next to Emily’s car, and sits. He listens to the silence. He doesn’t want to go inside. Emily must know by now. He waits for her to burst into the garage.
But she doesn’t come up.
He enters his home. The lights are warm and dimmed. There’s jazz on the speakers downstairs. It’s like he’s entered a parallel world. Traveled back in time. Emily is in the kitchen. He can hear her. He starts down the stairs and watches from the middle step as she moves from dishwasher to cabinet and back again, putting away silverware and cereal bowls. Her yoga pants are folded under her waist, giving her a taut overhang of pregnant-belly midriff.
“Hey,” she says. “Are you hungry?”
She thinks this is just another day.
“I could eat.”
He moves to a stool. She takes last night’s poached salmon and zucchini spirals out of the refrigerator and arranges them on a plate. He takes a bite and shivers. Emily. He has a wife. He has a family unit. “Hey,” he says and grabs her hand across the counter. He makes her stand still for just a moment. “I love you,” he says.
The last thing he wants to do right now is tell her about Dr. Maryn.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
EMILY
I gasped. I lay my elbows on the breakfast bar and held my forehead in my hands. “Oh my God,” I said. I repeated it over and over. Doug ran around the counter and touched my back.
“Is the baby okay?”
I slapped his arm away. “Maryn is my life! She’s my friend!”
“I need you to talk to her,” he said.
“And say what? I’m sorry my husband hacked you?”
“I didn’t!” Doug opened his mouth wide in horror, in an exaggeration of innocence. “Erik messed up,” he said. “I’m handling it. It’s my word against his.”
That fucking optimism of his, it was relentless, completely unsuited to the situation. He picked up a zucchini spiral with his fingers and popped it into his mouth. “You know, I think Erik’s an alcoholic?”
“What are you, twelve?” The baby jerked inside me. I felt acid rising, coating my esophagus. I opened the cabinet and took out a family-size package of Tums. “She’s going to have you arrested,” I said.
“She hasn’t gone to the police yet.”
“How do you know?”
“Stan told me.”
“Don’t talk to Stan!” I screamed. “You fucking moron! Don’t talk to anybody!” All this time, I’d assumed my husband was operating with some baseline of competence. But his carelessness was a disease. It infected everything.
I wondered if there was any way to salvage Dr. Maryn for myself. I’d have to leave him, disavow him, play the victim. If only she’d come to me first. “Oh my God,” I moaned again. I doubled over as I realized what it meant, that she’d left me out. She didn’t trust me.
Doug gripped my arm. “Stop it,” he said. “This is damage control. You talk to her, then you shore up your other clients.”
I pulled away. “She humiliated you. It’s going to be on television.”
“Nope.” He reached for his fork and stabbed off a piece of salmon. “First, I didn’t sign anything allowing them to film me or my office. Second, I made the whole thing sound boring.”
“Are you seriously that naive?”
“I’ll get an injunction.” He shoveled the salmon in his mouth and breathed hard through his nose as he chewed. “There was one point I offered to do an audit. I was bluffing, but I think I’ll look good there if it ends up on the air. I’ll come off as strong.”
This rich prick, so sure of himself. All he’d ever had to do in life was show up. “How did you get to be so successful?” I asked.
“Enough,” he said and held up his hand. “I’m your husband.”
I’d have to call Maryn soon with the news I was divorcing him. I’d have to leave him that night. Even then it might not be enough to convince her. Doug threw his fork at the wall behind me. I watched it bounce to the floor near my foot.
“Jesus, Emily, you’re gonna choose some midwestern quack over your family?”
“You don’t know what I’m thinking,” I said. I put a hand under my belly. My life was about to explode. I had to proceed logically, carefully. “Am I financially liable for any of this?”
“No,” he said. “My lawyer said you’ll need your own lawyer, though.”
I’d stayed out of the swindle. Not knowing the details was supposed to protect me. His end of the bargain was to not fuck it all up.
“How did you pay him?” I asked.
Doug winced. “Pay him?”
“Erik. Did Beyond the Brand write him checks? How did it work?” He wouldn’t look at me. He picked at his zucchini with his fingers.
Dr. Maryn, her customers, and God knew who else were going to sue. We were facing financial ruin. And yet Doug was standing there, so calm, eating with his fingers. Someone had paid him for all that data, I realized. I wondered how much money he was hiding.
“We need to set up a trust for the baby,” I said.
He shook his head. “This isn’t the time.”
I raised my head and spoke in a firm voice. “I don’t think you’re in a position to argue right now.”
His movements were quick, speeding around the counter and pushing his face next to mine. He grinned like a drunken frat boy. “You’re threatening me? Don’t go claiming innocent spouse all of a sudden. You were there when I made the deal with Erik.”
“What are you talking about?”
“At Shutters,” he said. “You were at the table with us.”
“No. I got up and left.”
“You think Erik will testify to that?”
I should have recorded the whole conversation at Shutters, taped myself leaving. But that was back in the beginning, when I’d trusted him—when I’d loved him. I could feel my tears rising.
“You’re gonna cry now?” he said. “Emily, keep it together.”
“You’re a fucking asshole.”
He shrugged. I could leave him. I could stay. Either way, he was going to be the end of me.
I wish you were dead.
/> What if he were? He’d be out of my life. He’d be punished. Plus, Dr. Maryn would never air video of herself browbeating a dead guy. She might not even sue. And there was hidden money. Of course there was.
I wished I’d thought ahead, wished I’d known that I was supposed to have spent my marriage preparing for this moment.
I moved into the kitchen. I was restless, ready to get started on something. On what, I wasn’t yet sure. All I knew was that I was powerless. That had to change. I looked toward the office. Doug’s laptop was open on the desk. It was password protected. I could install a camera, a pinhole one in the recessed lighting. I could log his keystrokes.
I needed time.
“Doug,” I said. I made my voice gentle. “If I help you, we have to work together. You have to protect me.”
He looked at me a long time and nodded, softening. I let him slide up next to me. I let him put his hand on my belly. “I’ll protect you both.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHLOE
Chloe is late to work the day after Dr. Maryn ambushed Doug. It made her think, the big scene. She has something to say. She’s been rehearsing her speech all morning.
When she gets in, the office feels eerie, abandoned, even though the open workspace is full of people. No one looks her way. No one talks to each other. And the reception desk is empty, which is weird. Jo-Ann always finds someone to cover for Chloe.
Chloe looks down the hall. The window above Doug’s office is dark. He’s not in yet. She sits at her desk and conjures an image of him in her mind. He was so brave yesterday, dealing with Dr. Maryn. She touches her lips. She can practically feel the heat of his skin next to hers. It scares her sometimes, what she can do with her imagination.
Her phone rings. It’s him. She’s summoned him for real this time. She digs her phone from her purse and looks at the display. It’s not Doug.
It’s her grandfather. She holds her phone to her chest until the ringing stops.
Her mother must be dead. Or dying. Her grandfather only calls when her mother is dying. Chloe tries to remember what her mother looks like, but the only things she can recall are the sounds of rage and weeping. A red bubble appears next to her voice mail icon. She presses the callback option. Her grandfather’s hello is scratchy. Chloe pictures him in the small, porchless house she grew up in even though he and her grandma moved to an apartment years ago.
“Hi, Simon,” says Chloe.
“The cops called,” says her grandfather. His tone is accusing, like this is somehow Chloe’s fault.
“And?”
“Your mom was in the hospital.”
Chloe breathes out. “Was.” Whatever happened, it’s over and done with.
“Did she fall?” Chloe asks.
“Something like that. It’s a shame. I had her coming to meetings with me and everything.”
Chloe is exhausted suddenly. Her insides feel grimy.
“You don’t need to call me about this,” she says.
“You all right, Chloe?”
Chloe slumps in her chair. “No,” she says. She waits. He doesn’t speak for a bit.
“Well, you take care of yourself,” he finally says.
She hangs up and touches her collarbone, trying to get back to imagining Doug. But it’s like her brain has been hijacked by images of this mother she hasn’t seen in years, sprawled on a sidewalk or heaped unnaturally across a bottom stair.
Jo-Ann comes from the direction of Doug’s office, wearing an expression of hard worry. She stops and looks through the outgoing mail on the counter above Chloe’s desk.
“I’m sorry I was late,” says Chloe.
“What?” Jo-Ann looks down at her, like she’s just noticing her.
“Traffic was really bad,” says Chloe.
Jo-Ann shakes her head at Chloe, but not like she’s mad. It’s more like Chloe is an irritant. “It’s fine,” she says and starts in the direction of her office.
The elevator chimes. Chloe sits up. She has so much she wants to say. Doug knows she’s deep, that she’s smart. She wants to help. She rehearses her speech under her breath.
The elevator doors open to reveal Tom, the bald recruiter. “Talking to yourself?” he asks. She slouches back down.
“So you bombed at the party, huh?” says Tom.
Chloe shrugs. “It wasn’t the right scene.”
“Well, at least you’re not a criminal,” he says, keeping his eyes on her face, waiting for a reaction. Chloe looks down. Tom rocks forward on the balls of his feet. He seems satisfied. “Nothing like a scandal to keep things interesting,” he says as he walks toward the bullpen.
Chloe stays focused on what she wants to tell Doug. She’s thought a lot about The Dr. Maryn Show in the last twenty-four hours, how it’s exploitative. When he finally does arrive, ten minutes later, she says, “Hi!” He nods at her.
That’s it, the nod. That’s all she’s ever going to get from him ever again. She stares at his back as he stops in the kitchen doorway and talks in a low voice with Eva, the PR woman in the pleated pants.
There’s stuff going on here. It’s almost exciting. Doug finishes up with Eva and starts toward his office.
“Doug,” Chloe says. “I have to tell you something.”
He stops. He turns his face to hers. His eyes are bloodshot.
“I was thinking about The Dr. Maryn Show,” she says. “So many people who go on TV there are unemployed and, like, poor, right? I mean, there’s no more work in the factory or wherever, and society doesn’t need their labor anymore. But the world, it’s not done with them. These folks have been moved to the scrap heap for people like Dr. Maryn to pick over. Because they still have value, you know? Not their work, no. But their stories, their misery, are still worth something. And Dr. Maryn is monetizing it. She’s actually selling pain!”
Doug’s eyes never move from her face as she speaks. But it’s like he’s not even looking at her.
“Anyway,” Chloe says, “I think what you did isn’t any worse than what Dr. Maryn does every day.”
He blinks. “I can’t do this right now,” he says. He walks away.
Talk to me! she wants to scream. If only he would push back, tell her she’s too flighty or impulsive, that her comments are stupid. She fights the urge to rush him, to push him into the wall. She hurries back through the open office area, through the accounting-department cubicles, to the single-stall bathroom in the rear of the office.
She slams the door with her back and slides to the floor and runs her palm down her body to the front of her jutting hip bone. Doug always loved touching her there. She lets out a series of sobs and touches her other hip. Then she quiets. She thinks she hears someone. She listens. But it’s only the low hum of the air shaft above. No one is there. No one is watching her. Chloe is alone. Totally and utterly alone. She panics a moment, wondering if she’s even real, and opens her mouth into a soundless scream.
Someone knocks, finally. “Chloe?” Jo-Ann calls through the door. “Are you in there?”
“Just a second,” says Chloe, grateful for Jo-Ann. She stands and splashes cold water on her cheeks. She opens the bathroom door.
“What is the matter?” asks Jo-Ann.
“I’m sorry,” says Chloe. “Do I look like I’ve been crying?”
Jo-Ann recoils. “You should go home.”
“Are you mad at me?”
“Why would I be mad at you?”
Jo-Ann has been so nice to her. And Chloe has no one. “Can I tell you something? You have to promise not to tell anyone, though.”
Jo-Ann’s expression hardens.
“You know Doug, right?” says Chloe.
“You mean the president of our company?” Jo-Ann’s voice is deep and direct.
“Well, you know Doug and I have been dating. I mean, I don’t know if you’d call it dating, but—”
Jo-Ann puts a hand up. “I’m going to stop you right there,” she says.
“But I—”
“Go home. I’ll give you an extra sick day.”
Chloe pulls out of the building’s underground lot and makes a right, toward the freeway. There are two signs for the 10. East will take her home. West will take her to the ocean, to PCH. Why shouldn’t Chloe drive up the coast? It’s not like Doug owns the Pacific. The sun is kinder in Malibu. She has a right to go wherever she wants.
Still, it feels forbidden, this highway, approaching this neighborhood. The traffic slows as she nears Doug’s house, a tower of white stucco. The windows look like arrow slits. The traffic stops. She pulls out her phone and takes a picture of the houses past Doug’s place: a wall of skinny Tudors and Cape Cods, all blocking the ocean view. She posts on Instagram. She adds a caption. The rich think they own the Pacific.
A car horn sounds off behind Chloe, long and blaring. She checks her rearview mirror. The honker is a white guy with a mane of gray hair. He’s driving an Audi. She gives him the finger and speeds to the next cluster of stopped cars.
Doug’s wife is rude and entitled like that. Thoughts of Emily come back; they always come back, like the intermittent whine of a trapped mosquito. Emily insulted Chloe’s purse. Chloe closes her eyes and voices her retort. “Well, I think your purse is ugly.” No. Too blunt. “Well, you’re a fucking bitch!” No. Too childish. She looks up Emily’s Instagram again. It’s still set to private.
The driver in the Audi pulls to Chloe’s right. He motions for her to roll down her passenger window. She stares straight ahead.
“Get off your phone!” he yells.
“Fuck you!” she screams back and shakes her middle finger at him. He cuts in front of her. She lowers her window and sticks her head out. “Suck a dick!”
The traffic again comes to a standstill. The guy is right in front of her. What the hell does he care if she looks down at her phone? These people. These people who don’t know how to mind their own business. Chloe opens her car door. She marches to the driver’s side of the Audi. She knocks on his window.
“Congratulations. You moved twenty feet, asshole.”
She raises her hand, ready to smack his car. The man’s expression turns resolute and warning. He shouts through the glass, “You want to start something?”