The afternoon of the speech at the mentorship summit in LA was dipped in heat, despite the fact that it was early December. LA was heat and smog and noise, but none of that was felt or talked about inside the cultural center, which was its own self-contained ecosystem. Heat and smog and noise had been replaced by a subtle veil of scent and an ineffable sensation of cool. Also, the event was lacking long, wearying lines, because all the bathrooms, including men’s rooms, had been opened up. Women powered easily through. “Have I died and gone to heaven?” one woman asked another at the hand dryers, which seemed to whirr more pleasingly than usual.
Drinks and canapés were circulating in the lobby; slender Bellinis and gemological tuna tartare slicked with yuzu gelée. There was a discreet manicure station here, where women sat with fingers spread; here and there, other women openly nursed infants and no one looked askance. The feminist psychic held sway in a corner. The women here were wealthy and progressive, believed in equality, gave money to left or center-left candidates, and bought tickets to events like this one to see the roster of speakers, including the female film actors and directors. The audience was well-dressed; it was a sea of soft pastel and the occasional basic black, because even though this was California, New York roots ran deep. Clavicles were exposed, understated jewelry on display, and the conversation took place in voices of concern, interrupted by a couple of familiar shrieks that you might hear in a restaurant when there’s a large group of women at a table. Everyone here knew that shriek, which signaled the happiness of women spending time together.
Greer Kadetsky and Lupe Izurieta stood together watching the scene. They had flown there from New York, the morning after Lupe had arrived from Ecuador. Lupe, pretty, early twenties, in a yellow dress, was exhausted from the long trip and overwhelmed by the number of people in attendance. Greer said, “Do you want something to eat?” pleased to be able to use the high school Spanish that she had studied back in Macopee, and took her over to one of the runway-long buffet tables, but the food must have looked so strange to this young woman from Ecuador—it looked strange to Greer too. High-end, fussy food.
“No,” said Lupe in the world’s softest voice, which reminded Greer of her own voice back at the beginning of everything. It wasn’t that she was loud now, but she was different.
A tech guy found them and said, “It’s time to get you both miked. We’re starting in fifteen.” Backstage in the greenroom before the talk, the tech guy brought out some equipment and said, “Who wants to go first?”
Greer tried to explain to Lupe what would happen. Before she could finish what she was saying, the tech guy had reached a hand inside the collar of Lupe’s dress to clip on a microphone, which made her tense and gasp. “It’s okay,” Greer said, though she knew it wasn’t, for Lupe, but he had moved too fast. Then his hand withdrew, and Lupe breathed out in relief. She was the most frightened person Greer had ever met, and she had sat in silence throughout the flight from New York to LA. Presumably she’d also sat that way during the very long flight from Quito to New York, her first airplane trip ever.
“Are you okay?” Greer asked her now.
“I am well,” Lupe said, but she didn’t look well.
Greer didn’t feel very well herself. She hadn’t wanted to give this speech at all. When Faith had offered it to her in October, she’d thought she was kidding. “Come into my office,” Faith had said. Greer had entered the white space and taken in the walls that had been breaded bit by bit with photos of girls and women.
“Greer,” said Faith. “It’s your time.” Faith told her that she wanted her to travel to LA to appear onstage with one of the young women from Ecuador, in order to introduce her, and write her speech for her, and then also write and deliver the keynote mentorship speech herself.
“I can’t do that,” Greer said, shocked.
“Why not?”
“I don’t give speeches. I write them for other people. Or I used to, anyway. Short ones.”
“Anyone who ever gave a speech,” said Faith, “was once someone who didn’t. You’re what now, twenty-five?”
“Twenty-six.”
“Well. It’s definitely time.”
Greer wondered why Faith was giving her this gig. She remembered something Faith had said to the team once, early on: “Men give women the power that they themselves don’t want.” She’d meant power to run the home, to deal with the children and their friends and teachers, to make all decisions about the domestic realm. So maybe Faith, like one of those men, was giving Greer something she didn’t particularly want. Maybe Faith had no interest in giving this speech, and so that was why she was giving it to Greer—passing the power on to her in order to get rid of it. Greer saw, at that moment, Faith glance toward her minimalist desk clock, like a therapist nearing the end of the hour. Greer had overstayed her welcome. Why hadn’t she just said yes?
“Okay, great, it’s a deal,” Greer said with forced liveliness. “Shoot me now,” she added, putting her finger to the side of her head and trying to laugh.
The bad moment had fled. All you ever had to do to make a bad moment flee was acquiesce. This was true everywhere in life, even though so much of Loci’s focus was supposedly on not acquiescing. She stood to leave, and Faith looked up at her and said, “It’ll be a good thing, I promise.”
The dozen or so times Greer had come into that office over the years, unrelated to work, had been because Faith had seen that something was wrong and had called her in; or else because Greer had felt welcome. Faith had encouraged her to come in and talk whenever she wanted. After originally telling Faith about her Cory problems, Greer had returned to her office months later, after a weekend up in Macopee during which Cory had broken up with her. “I love you and I’ll always love you,” he’d said stiffly, like someone in a school play, “and I really don’t want to hurt you. But I just can’t do this anymore.”
Faith comforted her in the aftermath and told her that the best thing you could do in a hard moment in your life was work. “Work can help,” she’d said. “Especially when you’re suffering. Keep writing those speeches for those women, Greer; keep imagining their lives, what they go through. You’ll find yourself going outside yourself and into them. It’ll provide perspective.And any time you want to talk to me, let me know.”
That was three and a half years earlier. Over time, in their broken-up state, Greer and Cory spoke far less frequently, and now she was only in touch with him on the occasions when she went home to visit her parents in Macopee. As each year since their breakup passed and they moved farther away from each other, she was able to see, objectively, that Cory had turned into a tall, skinny grown man who lived in his mother’s house with a plastic-covered sofa and video games and a turtle. The sensation she experienced each time she saw him there—him!—living like this and turning into this new and different person, was as strong as a flare-up of a chronic illness.
Since the breakup, Greer had had occasional relationships and hookups that were mostly decent, and once or twice excruciating. She sometimes met someone for after-work drinks at the kind of bar where everyone was young and worked for progressive startups, or for culture websites with names like Topsoil. By age twenty-six Greer had finally developed a lasting look. The blue streak in her hair had been rinsed away a few years earlier, replaced by highlights, but her eager, sometimes sexy nerdiness remained, and it had become fully stylish. Chunky eyeglasses were in. She wore those glasses, and often a short skirt and bright tights and little black boots, whether to show up at work or attend a Loci event or go out for drinks in a cluster at night.