“So do I,” Jules says.
Cyrus pauses and tosses his head the way he sometimes does when he’s agitated. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” he says. “You’re asking me to change the vision and, most important, my boundaries, which I made perfectly clear before we ever embarked on this thing.”
Before any of us can speak, he’s stormed into the hallway and slammed the front door behind him.
“Shit,” Jules groans.
I take out my phone and start texting. Did you just walk out without me?
“What happened?” Gaby asks.
“We pushed too hard,” Jules says. “I knew this was going to be a touchy subject. We probably should have waited.”
He’s not texing me back. “Wait till when?” I ask. “Till we run out of money?”
“He was ambushed,” Jules says. “Hard to get him to come around if he feels we ganged up on him.”
“It was news to me too,” I say. I don’t say: And yet he just fucked off and left me here. I text: Did you just fuck off and leave me here?
“You should go find him,” Jules says.
I don’t want to run after him. “Are you guys serious about the subscriptions? We won’t need to raise funds?”
“That’s what it looks like,” Gaby says. “Look, I don’t want to get in between you all.”
“I guess that makes you D’Artagnan,” I say. Then I turn off my phone so I’m not waiting like a horny teenager for it to buzz, and fly out of there myself and take the biggest steps I can manage all the way to Utopia.
* * *
Ren and Destiny are dancing. We bought a record player a few weeks ago, and there are exactly six records, and one of them—the original Amy Winehouse album—has been playing on repeat. I hug Destiny and we slow-dance for a minute or so, and by the time the song ends, I’m feeling human again. I tell Ren about the subscriptions, and we start working out the back end. We make a sprint schedule, debate the various payment platforms, Shopify, PayPal, Google Pay, Apple Pay, and then we get right into building it, and by the time I look up from my screen, it’s morning and I have never been happier to see daybreak. But then I turn on my phone and there are no messages from Cyrus, and I’m right back into my lather, with that weird feeling in the pit of my stomach like I have a guilty secret even though I know I haven’t done anything wrong. Did we gang up on Cyrus? Did we stab his vision in the eye?
On the R train home, I veer between different emotions, all equally pathetic. I’m angry at Cyrus for storming off and not even looking over his shoulder once and asking me to join his rebellion, and I’m racking my brain to see if I’ve done anything wrong (No. No. Maybe. Maybe?), and then I’m worried about him, what if he accidentally hurt himself, like if he stood on the edge of the Brooklyn Bridge and then just tripped? Or stepped out on the road, half-hoping something would crash into him, and it’s a sixteen-wheeler delivering cabbage to Fairway?
When I open the door, it’s quiet and I think maybe he isn’t home, but there’s a bump in the comforter, and when I lift it up, there he is, wide-awake, his face like a piece of wood.
“Did you get any of my messages?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you call me back? Or text?”
“I thought we could talk once you got home.” He sits up and rolls his shoulders back, and suddenly, he’s eight feet tall even though I’m the one standing up.
“Let’s talk, then.”
He takes a deep breath. I would have to do yoga for seven or eight years to get that much air into my lungs. “I’m hurt by what happened last night.”
“What exactly happened?”
“You and Jules know what WAI is about—it’s not about making money. It’s about giving people a safe place, a community. We promised them that. For you to renege on that promise is unacceptable to me. And hurtful.”
“No one is asking you to give up your principles.”
“I refuse to be treated like a commodity.”
“No one is treating you like a commodity.”
We go on like this for what feels like a hundred years. Cyrus levels accusations at me, I deny them. He defends his vision, his beliefs. I ask why he’s the only one allowed to have visions and beliefs. He denies this. He tells me I’ve lost the plot. I tell him he’s lost the plot. This is all going to go away, I say, if we don’t find a way to raise money. And anyway, why was he willing to take money from Crazy Craig and not find a way to not take money from Crazy Craig?
Halfway through this sentence, I realize I am so hungry I’m starting to sweat. I make myself a peanut butter sandwich with the one remaining knife in the drawer. Then we are back to whatever it is we were doing, which has no name, except maybe “fucked if you do, fucked if you don’t.”
Finally, I apologize. “I’m sorry I hurt your feelings, Cyrus, I didn’t mean to.” I don’t know if I am sorry, I just know that I’m so tired my teeth hurt.
Immediately, Cyrus leans over to my side of the bed and puts his head in my lap. I can feel him crying, so I stroke his hair, the back of his neck. Eventually, we both fall asleep, and at some point in the middle of the day, I wake up with peanut butter on my tongue, and when I get up to brush my teeth, he cradles me and whispers he’s sorry too, for not calling me all night, and when he kisses me, I relax, absolved, and fall asleep again.
* * *
The next few weeks pass in a blur. Ren and I work around the clock to get the subscriptions going, and Jules and Gaby try to stretch the last of our money as far as it’ll go. Cyrus and I don’t get paid, so I’m back to asking my father for a loan, which means I have to go out to Merrick and suffer the humiliation of him silently handing over a check without asking me a single question.
Cyrus hasn’t said yes and he hasn’t said no. We’ve all just gone on as if nothing happened that night, and everyone is acting normal except Gaby, who avoids making eye contact with any of us when we’re at the office. Then, four weeks later, Cyrus calls us into the meeting room. “Thank you for all your hard work,” he says to Jules and me, as if we just walked in yesterday and started putting up shelves in the empty alcove. “I really appreciate it. Although I was disturbed by the manner in which you brought up the issue, I don’t dispute that we have to find a solution to our financial situation.”
I glance over at Jules, wondering where this is going.
“I’ve decided to accept your proposal about the subscriptions. But I have two conditions.” He pauses while we get out our laptops and take notes. “The first is that the contributions will be voluntary. In that people will contribute what they can every month and there will be no upper or lower limit. If someone wants to give us a penny, they can do that, and we will give them the same service we would if they gave us a hundred dollars a month.”
I wait for this news to land with Jules, who is shaking his head.
“They have to give something,” Cyrus continues. “But it can be a tiny amount.”
“How are we supposed to model that?” Jules says.
“Let me finish, and then you can state your objections,” Cyrus says. “Second, we don’t give people a set amount of free time on the platform, we give them one free ritual.” He shows us something on his screen. “As you can see, our attach rates are through the roof. So presumably, a person who has received a free ritual will want more.”
He leans back, takes a sip of his coffee. He has started drinking seven or eight cups a day, just black, no sugar, in an old-fashioned thermos he found in my parents’ garage.
“Thanks, Cyrus,” Gaby says. “I’ll go and crunch the numbers.”
“But what do you think?”
“I think it’s great!” I say before Jules can speak. “I love it.”
Jules nods. “It’s a really great way to solve the problem,” he says finally. Gaby agrees.
Cyrus is pleased with himself. “Isn’t it? We get the revenue, but we also get to keep the spirit of the whole thing, which is that it’s essentially a community.”