“I see,” said Greer blandly.
“I want to be able to come in and do something real, wherever I work. Something that I’m really energized about.” Zee’s voice was getting a little thin and choked. “My parents love being judges. They wake up in the morning and they’re like, ‘Rah rah, the sun is shining, let’s go to our chambers, darling.’ And look how excited you are about starting your job. I want that feeling too,” said Zee. “I figure there are a lot of things to do at your foundation, and my parents would approve, because it would actually be a normal job with a paycheck. I could just run around and do whatever Faith Frank needed. I could mill her tea leaves or something; isn’t that a thing? And maybe every once in a while she would impart some amazing piece of older-woman wisdom, and tell us stories from the past, and I’d happen to be in the room and get to hear it.
“And also, wouldn’t it be a blast if you and I worked at the same place? Because you know how friends drift apart after college. Their lives become so different, and they don’t have a lot to talk about anymore. We could keep that from happening to us.”
Greer took a sip of beer and tried to keep her voice light and unalarmed as she said, “So what did you write in the letter?”
“Oh, you know, I explained to her who I am and why I want to be part of what she’s doing. I did the best I could. I warned her of my minimal writing skills. I reminded her that she met me the same night she met you. In the ladies’ room at our college. And then I gave her the Zee Eisenstat saga. The abridged version, don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried,” Greer said. The feeling of the night had shifted sharply, and Zee apparently didn’t even understand why. She was just sitting there in her usual, steady Zee way, looking at Greer, waiting for encouragement. Instead, Greer wanted Zee’s letter to disappear, which of course it wouldn’t, and she knew she would dutifully give it to Faith. Greer toyed with it now and leaned it against her beer bottle. The envelope was opaque, so she couldn’t see what Zee had written. “She’s your closest friend, Greer,” Faith would say after she’d read it. “What do you think, should I bring her aboard?” And Greer would say, “Absolutely.”
The letter, slanted against brown glass, seemed to emit its own light. Greer lifted her bottle, and the letter dropped onto the surface of the bar as if it had been felled.
“So,” Zee said, “what time do you have to be at work tomorrow?”
FIVE
The light fixtures at the Loci Foundation had been outfitted with special energy-saving coils that were still in beta, and were not quite bright enough for the tasks at hand, causing everyone who worked there to strain a little too hard, as though squinting over a medieval manuscript. Greer didn’t mind. The pale, nearly celery-colored light over her cubicle up on the twenty-sixth floor burned with its low, unusual hue while she stayed extravagantly and almost piously late, though it took her too long to realize that her eagerness and effort might seem a little extreme. She worked with enthusiasm, but almost immediately she figured out the parameters of the job, and she understood that what she would be doing at Loci wasn’t going to be intensely interesting. Faith had warned her of this during the interview, but it had seemed impossible. And the work wasn’t boring, exactly—that was too harsh a description—because Greer was still in love with the idea of work. The term “the work world” seemed accurate, the office environment like its own planet made up of conference rooms and spring water dispensers and paper recycling bins. But the tasks of this job were mild, repetitive, and seemed removed from the large, grand venture of helping women. She could easily have been working in corporate party-planning, she thought at some point late in her first morning there.
At her desk Greer was either on the phone or on the computer, hunting down yeses or maybes from potential speakers or their assistants or reps, and setting up travel plans, learning the abbreviations for the world’s airports, some of which made no sense. Why was Newark EWR instead of, say, NWR, or even NWK? And why did Rome have to be the unmemorable FCO? Cory’s brother, Alby, would probably know; this was the sort of information he liked to gather.
During lunch break on Monday, someone passed around a takeout menu and whoever wanted food circled their choice, and cash was collected. Takeout on that day was from a Middle Eastern place, so Greer looked down the vegetarian column and ordered a falafel wrap. She thought that maybe they would all sit around together with their food, talking about the foundation and their desires and aspirations, but instead everyone just took their lunch back to their own cubicles, so Greer did too, eating in self-conscious aloneness at the space that she’d outfitted like a dorm room, with photos of Cory and Zee, and a good supply of ComSell Nutricle protein bars—the half-decent Raspberry Explosion, the sand-dry Double Vanilla—that her parents had off-loaded to her. Cory texted Greer during that first day, asking for photos. She sent him pictures of the elevator and the little kitchen, and a long shot taken across the entire floor, which included the backs of various people’s heads. “Also, send anecdotes from your life,” he said. “Remember, I work in consulting, so I’m pretty bored.” But so far she felt removed from anything of significance. She had the sense that soon, much too soon, she would want to do more here. Other people at Loci were clearly already doing a great deal more. While she and the other booker, a shaved-headed gay man named Tad Lamonica, were left out of the daily meetings, she often glanced over into the glassed-in conference room. Faith could be seen sitting at the head of the table. Also in the room were the three researchers, Marcella Boxman, a sexy twenty-three-year-old polyglot; Helen Brand, stylish, thirty-five, a former union organizer and the only African-American on Faith’s team; and Ben Prochnauer, good-looking, resolute-jawed, five years out of Stanford and most recently part of an antihunger startup; as well as Bonnie Dempster and Evelyn Pangborn, who were firmly old-guard second-wavers, both in their sixties. Bonnie was a lesbian who still wore what used to be called, rudely, a Jewfro, and candelabra-like earrings that she made herself out of scrap metal. Evelyn was patrician and wry and dressed in a good wool suit. Both of them had been with Faith since the start of Bloomer.
On the third day, in the middle of the meeting, Greer heard raised voices coming from the conference room. She looked over and could see an arm gesticulating behind the glass. It was Faith’s arm, recognizable even from across the floor. And there was Faith’s voice, too, though it had a strain to it. Greer heard her say, “No, actually that is not what I meant. Let’s start again. Marcella, go.” This was followed by Marcella Boxman’s voice going, speaking carefully, as if to disguise fear. Then there was another remark from a still-irritated Faith, and then someone else cautiously defended Marcella, until finally the meeting was flowing the way Faith wanted it to. And Faith, mollified, could finally be heard saying, “Nailed it!” and everyone laughed a little too hard in relief.
When the greenish glass door finally slid open with its shush sound, they all looked merry and satisfied, even Marcella. In fact, Faith had her arm around Marcella, as if reassuring her that everything was fine, the bad moment had passed, and it didn’t matter anymore.