Everything had happened so fast that I only had time to react, like Tom Cruise but taller, basically invincible, my wrist braces my shield against the women standing between me and the fireplace where Devin stood trembling, repeating the names of every important person she knew into a microphone, hoping someone else could fix what went so wrong. My feet crunched over granola crumbs and slipped on goop from fallen face masks. The newly nude-faced protestors reached into their backpacks for scarves and handkerchiefs, to hide their refreshed complexions.
“Hey hey! Ho ho! Believe victims or you’ve got to go! Hey hey! Ho ho!”
All the conference attendees had their phones out, documenting that they were, like, actually there. Even the women rushing toward the exits ran backward in order to take some video for their Instagram story. One of the event photographers was standing on the buffet table, straddling a platter of mini croissants, so he could get an aerial view of the chaos.
They were protesting Devin as if she were some major corporation that had profited from the transatlantic slave trade. They were protesting against a system of violence and oppression. But Devin wasn’t systemic. She and I were just two women who had started a company together—from scratch. We had leaned in. This was America. Everyone was supposed to be on our side.
“Devin, we have to go now,” I told her, taking the mic from her and setting it on the chair. Two security guards from the law school were escorting Arianna out. So sorry, she mouthed. Yikes! This was our problem, not hers.
“I looked for you!” Devin cried. “I looked for you and you weren’t there.” I had never seen her so small, like a child separated from her mother at a carnival.
“I was here the whole time,” I said.
“What do they want from me? I’ll read the statement if you think I should read the statement.”
I grabbed her hand and pulled her toward a fire exit at the back of the banquet room.
“No crying,” I said. “Not until we’re in the cab.”
Does your friend seem on edge around her partner?
Is she giving up activities that once seemed important to her?
Is she physically isolated from her friends?
Is she lying to you?
“Do you have any booze?” I asked, searching her kitchen cabinets, but finding only tapioca flour, teff flour, chia seeds, Medjool dates, mung beans, and three dozen individual servings of unsweetened organic applesauce.
“Check the wine fridge,” Devin said.
Of course. The wine fridge.
I selected a discreetly labeled bottle of pinot noir that, if I had to guess, cost more than eleven dollars. At Evan’s apartment the night before, he had offered me a drink and I had refused on principle. The principle of not taking anything from him that wasn’t a sacrifice. I’m surprised. I thought you drank, he said. Not anymore, I told him. I could almost see the new me when I said it. Then I stood at his marble kitchen island like a sentry, dictating what he should write in his statement. After I left, I was sure he’d immediately destroyed the pictures I traded in exchange, lighting them on fire with a match on his wraparound terrace, telling himself he was a victim of blackmail, not a perpetrator of sexual violence.
If he laid one finger on Devin, I would kill him. Not literally, because I knew enough about mass incarceration to not want to go there, but I would ruin his life somehow, using the internet, until he rued the day he met me.
“It’s nine in the morning,” Devin said, when I handed her a glass.
“It’s ten fifteen.”
Devin’s apartment had the spacious dimensions of a yoga studio, with bamboo floors and windowsill succulents, an altar to Lakshmi and Mary-Kate Olsen, and more props than furniture. I sat on a meditation cushion, hunched over bent knees in my tight dress.
“How did they even get the towels from my office?” She was lying on the couch, looking as pale and fragile as a peeled banana.
“You know as much as I do,” I said, raising the bottle. “Cheers. To women supporting other women.”
Devin swirled the pinot in her glass and sniffed. I took a swig directly from the bottle and scrolled through the FoundressSummit17 hashtag on Twitter.
@FoundressSummit are you providing refunds for those of us who didn’t sign up to attend a protest this morning?
@FoundressSummit how was that prof development???
@FoundressSummit I flew in from Charlotte just to have the opportunity to meet @ForRealAriannaTran and I’m soooooo disappointed. Can I get an e-intro?
Everyone’s talking about Devin Avery’s misogyny but is anyone talking about how @FoundressSummit doesn’t allow nursing infants? Journos, DM me for my story.
Due to a scheduling conflict, @VerifiablyEvanWiley will not be able to participate in today’s Pitch Pageant. All other programming is ON, as planned.
“Where’s my phone?”
“In your bag,” I said.
“My bag is in the green room.”
“Shit.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, taking off her blazer and turning it into a tent to cover her entire face and chest.
“I’ll send an intern.”
“It’s better this way. This way I don’t have to know.”
It was mind-blowing to me that she could just opt out from the live feed of reactions to the shitshow we’d both lived through. There was a nine-second video of Devin’s facial expressions—puzzled, pissed, pained, panicked—as she watched the protestors, with twelve hundred retweets already. Nothing I ever did in the nonprofit space ever went so viral. In the attention economy, thoughtful solutions had so little value. What you did wrong was more engaging than what you did right. While she lay corpselike on the couch, her phone a limb lost on the battlefield, Devin was reaching the pinnacle of internet fame. Her face had become a meme.
Tell your friend you’re concerned about her. Say, what’s up with you lately? I never see you anymore. Say, I love you.
Say, I’ll always be here for you.
Listen.
Make sure she knows it’s not her fault.
I put my phone screen down on the coffee table and sat next to Devin’s legs. Now I couldn’t look at her body without thinking of him, where he had touched her, how he might have violated her.
“Help me understand,” I finally said.
“Understand what.”
“What it’s like being Evan’s girlfriend.”