Now Faith appeared like some foil-headed Martian, talking calmly about staying on at the foundation under the aegis of ShraderCapital, which had had no problem pretending it was overseeing a nonexistent charity on another continent. “Maybe it’s not moral to keep working for ShraderCapital,” Greer said, actually lifting her chin slightly higher.
“You really think this is just about them?” said Faith. “Don’t you think I’ve had to make compromises before? My whole working life has been about compromise. Even back at Bloomer. I didn’t have access to real money until Loci, so I’d never seen it on a big scale. But it happens. All the people who work for good causes will tell you this. For every dollar that’s donated to women’s health in the developing world, for instance, ten cents is pocketed by some corrupt person, and another ten cents no one has any idea what happens to it. Everyone knows, when they start out, that the donation is really only eighty cents. But everyone calls it a dollar because it’s what’s done.”
“And that’s acceptable to you?”
Faith took a second. “I always weigh it,” she said. “Like with Ecuador. I’m ashamed of what happened. But those young women are free and presumably out of danger. I have to weigh that too, don’t I? That’s what it’s about, this life. The weighing.”
Greer hadn’t known this about Faith, and she hadn’t known that Faith was considered gullible. Because despite working for her, she had never asked Faith much about herself. She hadn’t thought she was allowed; she hadn’t thought it was her place. She hadn’t plaintively asked her, “What’s it about, this life?” To which Faith would’ve answered, “The weighing.”
“I still sort of can’t believe you’re okay with staying at Loci, given what they did upstairs,” said Greer.
“Well, I’m seventy-one years old and I take Fosamax for bone density—or lack of it—and I have a stiff neck half the time despite my addiction to cheap Chinese massages, or maybe because of it. I may need to scale back, but I’m not going to start over. The reason I asked you to give that speech is that I was exhausted. I need to be protective of myself, not run around like I used to do when I was your age.” Quickly, Faith added, “But that’s not the only reason I asked you. You deserved it. You needed something big. Something real, that would remind you of why you wanted to work here to begin with.” She paused. “And you came through.” Greer felt a familiar prickle of gratification that could arise so easily in the presence of Faith Frank. “But I am genuinely sorry you went up onstage in LA, now that I know the circumstances,” Faith said.
“You say you can’t go anywhere new, but there might be a better situation,” said Greer.
Faith tipped her head down slightly, and her scalp was revealed in a series of crazy, broken pink lightning bolts. The foils made the faintest sound, like tinsel. “No,” she said. “I told you, there isn’t. And even if there is, I’m not going to start looking. It’s my choice,” she added. “And I get to decide.” She said this with equal emphasis on each word, as if reciting a line from something, but Greer had no idea what.
“Well, I have to believe in what I’m doing,” Greer said.
“And I hope you’ll keep believing. Now that you’ve told me what you’ve learned, you can help me keep a tighter leash on them upstairs. I could use a partner in that.” Faith paused, looking at her fully. “Will you be that?”
Greer had the unrelated thought that if there were a fire in this salon right now, Faith Frank would have to run out into the street with all the other women, and everyone would see her looking like this, and they would all be so confused. Faith Frank, famous, glamorous feminist, is apparently as gray-haired and fragile and bony as anyone, and as mortal, and as compromised.
Faith’s assistant Deena Mayhew appeared then, coming around the bend into the screened-off area. “Here you are,” she said. “You almost done?”
Faith, suddenly cool and regular, as if she and Greer had been discussing nothing of consequence, squinted at the timer. “I can’t read that without my reading glasses, sadly. Greer, can you?”
“Seventeen minutes,” Greer said dully.
“Okay, good,” said Deena. “Then we get you back to the office, Faith, and Bonnie preps you for the taping.”
Right, Greer remembered, Faith was going on Screengrab later.
“There are several talking points from the pre-interview,” said Deena. “And it’s such great exposure at this moment, because of the mentor program.” She smiled at Greer and added, “I’m still hearing such good things about LA.”
Greer looked across at Faith. “You’re talking about Ecuador later on Screengrab?”
“Possibly. Among other topics.”
“I brought the bullet points if you want to have a look,” said Deena. Then, again to Greer, “Sorry, but can I just borrow her for a minute? Tight quarters! Give us a few, then we’ll all head back to the office.”
Greer stepped to the side, allowing Deena to move closer to Faith, and together the two of them looked over a file, Faith squinting and murmuring, and Deena gesturing with animation. Greer stayed back, leaning against the counter where combs hung in a bottle of blue water, suspended and preserved like specimens. She imagined picking up the heavy jar with both hands and hurling it at the wall.
When it was time for Faith to get rinsed and shampooed and dried, Greer stood stiffly while Deena spoke into her phone, letting the voice-recognition function spit out its errors that would need to be manually corrected. “Look at this,” Deena said to Greer, holding up her phone and showing her a comical mistake. “The phrase I actually said was ‘fat shaming,’ which was translated as ‘Fetch, Amy!’” Finally Faith returned to them, exquisite. Her hair gleamed, her boots made her tall, and the three of them strode out through the Jeremy Ingersoll Salon, past the row of other clients, all rich, all women, though none in need of a VIP screen.
Women, women, women, all of them sitting patiently in their vulnerability and vanity, sitting there as women did. Because even though you might care about the plight of women in the world, you still wanted to look like yourself, as Faith had said.
Out on the street two people walking together immediately recognized her, and Faith smiled at them as she always did. She hadn’t changed. Apparently it had always been about the weighing.
* * *
? ? ?
The office was buzzy when they returned, and Faith went on ahead while Greer hung back. She couldn’t sit down at her desk; she couldn’t go into the kitchen and get coffee and chat with people. There was nothing for her to do or say now. She just lurked. Ben, seeing her, came over and said, “Hey, where’d you go? I heard you were meeting with Faith outside the office. Planning a surprise party for me, I guess.”
“I don’t even know your birthday,” she said. This was true. She didn’t know his birthday, though they had worked together for more than four years. Surely she had known it at some point; there must have been cupcakes every year, or at least some years. But Ben hadn’t resonated in such a way that she needed to know, or thought to know, the day of his birth.
“You seem weird,” he said, but she didn’t reply. Up ahead, Faith was heading into her office. Greer followed, and behind her she could hear Ben say to one of the new staff, “Is something up? Do you know what’s going on?”
Greer sleepwalked to Faith’s door and knocked on the frame, though the door was never closed; the office was like a patient’s room in a hospital. If you needed access, you could have it. Already there was a cluster of people in the office. Faith, Iffat, Kara, Bonnie, Evelyn, Deena, and a young assistant named Casey, a recent hire. Greer in the doorway, her voice strangled, said, “Faith, can I talk to you?” Faith looked up and nodded and lifted her arm and waved her fingers to bring Greer over. Then everyone politely dispersed, going elsewhere in the large room to continue their conversations about whatever summit or mini-summit or idea for a speaker needed to be discussed.
“You’re really going on TV and discussing the mentor program?” she quietly asked Faith at the desk.