Maren was calling me. I texted back: Meet me in beauty closet.
“Ask them to share the last post that made them mad, okay?”
“Fo sho,” Diana said.
“Oh hey.” Maren squeezed in. Her greasy hair was piled in a nest on top of her head. One brown strand hung down in back. There were purple moons under her eyes.
“You were just at Evan’s house, right?” Diana said.
“There’s a post I just added to the queue. Can you add the sponsor logo? But don’t publish it yet.”
“You mean right now?”
“Unless Khadijah has you working on something else.”
“Go,” I told Diana. “I’ll catch up with you later.”
The air was stale and claustrophobic. A bead of sweat ran down my low back. I had to pee but willed myself to hold it. As much as my body expanded in space, I reminded myself of the ways in which I remained its master.
“I’d love it if you could look at my post, too,” Maren said. “It’s almost like a manifesto of my value system. I haven’t written anything that long since college. I don’t know how you do it three times a day!” Eight times a day, I wanted to correct her but didn’t. “But I think if we don’t speak up with our voices, who will? It’s like that poem, ‘First they came for the Jews, and I didn’t know what to say . . . ’” She continued rambling as she took out her phone to look it up.
I had no idea when I would have another minute alone in a room with her.
“No, it’s ‘First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a socialist.’ Isn’t wifi incredible? Too often we take it for granted. You can look up Nazi stuff whenever you want, check your email, read the—”
“Maren, listen,” I said. “There’s something I have to tell you. I’m sorry to be telling you like this.” Don’t apologize, I thought. The script. The script. Stick to the script.
“Your face looks different,” Maren said, squinting. “Did you get your brows waxed?”
“It’s not that.”
“Don’t tell me,” she said. “I already know.”
“You do?”
“Devin texted me the article. And she doesn’t even know.” Maren was pulling on one eyelid and blinking.
“Doesn’t even know what?” You always put Maren and her feelings first. She’s a grown-up. She can handle it.
“Is there something in my eye?”
“I don’t think so.”
“There’s an eyelash or something. I can’t get it.”
Just say, “I’m pregnant.” Say, “Maternity leave.”
My phone buzzed. It was Devin: Do you know where Maren is? I lost her.
“We have to go meet Devin,” I said, letting myself off the hook. There would be another opportunity. This was not it.
“When’s the last time you ate something?” I asked her. I grabbed a bottle of aloe vera water from the shelf and two packs of organic multivitamin gummies, the closest thing there was in the closet to actual food.
Devin was facedown on the massage chair while Sharona, our South African in-house masseuse, dug the ball of an elbow into her left trapezius. Katelyn sat at Devin’s desk, as engrossed in her laptop as if she were Rami Malek hacking a bank.
“Read it again,” Devin said.
“Richual supports—no, Richual stands behind board member . . .”
“I’m not cosigning that,” Maren said.
“It’s not a contract,” Devin said. “It’s a statement.”
“Let me write it then.”
“You can’t do everything, Maren!”
“Mommy and Daddy are fighting,” Katelyn muttered to herself, without taking her eyes off the screen.
“We’re not fighting,” Maren said. “I just don’t think we should give Evan a ‘get out of jail free’ card. How does that look for our brand? Self-care for all victims except, like, the ones whose abuser we know personally?”
“Harder,” Devin said to Sharona. “What about Ivanka? Was she not the victim of your tweet? Did you ever think about her feelings? She’s a mom of three!”
“Did you wear your MAGA hat when you went to the polls, Devin?”
Maren sounded like one of the women on Slack. Having an audience only made her meaner. No one had the power to make her apologize.
Devin said nothing.
“I think,” I said, “that maybe one of the positive takeaways from this is that the tweet wasn’t all bad, because we got ten thousand new users from it. Because being angry takes a toll on your mental health. And Richual offers an antidote to that.”
“Khadijah gets me,” Maren said, shooting a pack of gummies into her mouth.
“What I’m hearing from everyone,” Katelyn said, “is that we need to control the message about Evan and get ahead of the narrative.”
Too late, I thought. In the background, without me, the conversation continued on Slack, on Twitter, on Richual itself. The virus was already spreading.
“Evan should apologize,” Maren said. “That’s how we spin it. Evan should be the one worrying about the wording of his statement. He can defend himself. Or whatever. He can use Katelyn if he wants to.”
“Borrow Katelyn,” I suggested.
“What?”
“You said ‘use,’ but I think you meant ‘borrow.’”
“Stop,” Devin said to Sharona, holding up an arm as pale as a wishbone. When she lifted her head from the face rest, her cheeks were damp and splotchy. “Maren, these women are lying.”
“How do you know?”
“Why are they saying this now? Evan is helping us raise our series B and they come out with this now?”
“You think this story about Evan is going to keep us from closing the round?” I asked.
“Fuck,” Maren said, rubbing her eye again. “But that’s insane. That’s . . . victim blaming.”
“Is it?” Katelyn asked. “I’ll google it.”
“Devin is blaming the victims for not coming forward sooner.”
“No,” Devin said, standing up. She looked Maren in the eye. “You’re not listening to me. I’m blaming them for making up that they’re victims in the first place. Evan didn’t do anything with them that they didn’t want to do.”