“Congratulations. You still have jobs here,” Paula had said to Cat and Bess the morning they’d returned to the office after their release. “Right now your jobs are to go out and be the faces of RAGE. I’ll let you know if that changes.”
So they spent the rest of their summer showing up at factories filled with child slaves in Cambodia; they made appearances at the headquarters of Gap, Nike, Apple, and even Walmart to meet with executives about their living-wage efforts, factory conditions, and sustainability efforts. They opened stores and approved beauty products, doing each other’s hair and makeup on live television as they chatted idly about what their favorite new brands contained, hosting behind-the-scenes B-roll at deeply vetted pharmaceutical labs, all the while providing the internet black hole with constant new images of themselves, sometimes five outfits a day, for perusal, assessment, commentary. The eight weeks between their arrest and tonight’s event had gone by in an instant.
Occasionally when she was trying to fall asleep at night, Cat tried to calculate the number of dollars people were making on her name. The Cat Economy. She’d stopped counting once she multiplied the image licensing fees beyond $10 million.
She started running every day when she woke up, both to cleave any leftover meat off her bones—seeing pictures of her own body everywhere left her reeling with insecurities—and to burn the anxiety out of her mind. If she was tired enough to sit still by the time Raphael and June arrived to do her hair and makeup, she’d be able to make it through the day, to complete the labor of rotating her polished alabaster skin toward whatever lens was watching. You’re changing the world, she told herself. You’re forcing even Walmart to care about buying living-wage wholesale. You’re the impetus for the first real beauty regulatory bill in Congress. You’re someone. You’re important.
Bess stepped into her new position with an addict’s gusto, reveling in the new clothes that showed up on her doorstep by the trunkful, considering the appearances and events merely the cost of doing business. She spent her downtime smoking pot and itemizing her growing collection of stuff in CoopDoc spreadsheets.
Each night was the same. They hopped into the Suburban after events, cut each other out of their clothes, and wiped their faces clean before retiring alone to their apartments where they’d scroll through Photogram, too exhausted from a full day of socializing to speak to anyone. Cat particularly loved a meme that pasted her unsmiling photos over pictures of puppies and kittens with the caption “ur not good enuf.” Bess loved fan comments that displayed the same affinity for cataloging that she’d been born with, and spent her downtime happily confirming the tiniest details about her outfits—the color of her nail polish, the brand of her belt.
They’d briefly tried to make friends in this new world but discovered that anything and everything they said managed to get quoted the following day, often incorrectly, online. There was no one to trust except the people they paid. Other celebrities either ignored them completely—famous for eight weeks certainly wasn’t famous enough for most—or simpered with a condescending excitement that served only to point out the novelty of their existence.
Their new lives affected everyone around them. Bess’s sister Ella, the hard-partying film and television agent, had stepped in to negotiate their appearance fees and strong-armed several CEOs into meeting with the two girls. She was the one who had ensured Cooper would pay for the Suburban, the driver, the clothes, and the fees for their new entourage; she was the one who landed Walmart. Last week, Ella had hired two freelancers to keep up with the appearance requests and contract minutiae.
Cat emailed her mother once a week with an update about what she’d accomplished; Anais always wrote back right away, with “Ik zie U graag, Katteke,” but not much more. I love you, little kitten. She didn’t understand.
The October issue was due on newsstands in under two weeks and expectations were high. Cat and Bess were only vaguely aware of the contents, now that their days consisted solely of changing clothes and trying to keep up with their own insane schedules. Cat had done her best to update her CoopDocs for Lou with detailed notes and instructions. She prayed that Dotty for It, Judy and the Technicolor Housecoat, Tea Party All Night: A Celebration of Suri Cruise, and Gone Yachting (A Gowanus Story) had been shot correctly, but no one shared proofs with her anymore. She’d have to wait for newsstands to see if they’d worked.
As the Childlike Publicist motioned her toward the next step-and-repeat, Cat wondered what Hutton was doing right now.
She’d texted him exactly six days ago, her bruised ego finally and wholly faded in direct inverse proportion to her overwhelming loneliness. Hi, she’d written, late at night, alone again in her apartment, a little mew across the chasm built between them since her arrest seven weeks earlier. He’d texted back immediately. Hi. Can I call you?
She responded by calling him, her heart cracking when she heard his voice. They both fell over apologizing; him for putting her in jail, her for ignoring him for so long. You were right, she’d told him. It was worth it. The September issue proved that. Hutton allowed long silences to go between their words, the spaces knitting a new intimacy, before he finally admitted he’d knowingly pushed her into it; but that he was still crazy about her, and he was more sorry than he’d ever been; could she forgive him? I already have, she’d replied.
Since then they’d spoken on the phone every single night when Cat got home but hadn’t yet seen each other again in person. Cat said she wasn’t ready. Hutton had accepted her explanation without question. That’s fine, he’d said. I’ll wait. And he did; he waited patiently, getting to know her a little bit better every night over the telephone.
He’d been promoted to a unit in the Major Case Division and moved down to One Police Plaza, the NYPD headquarters in the financial district, to work with the senior team, whose members were continuing to investigate the sources of funding behind Bedford Organics. He was probably there right now, Cat thought, going over casework. She pictured him sitting behind his desk in his rumpled clothes, a pen in his long fingers, sorting stacks of paper. Her cheeks started to burn from smiling, and she suddenly very much wanted to be out of the spotlight.
She walked away from the step-and-repeat and ducked behind it into a white VIP tent, looking around for Bess’s blonde curls. The tent was full of fragile women in expensive dresses looking pained, but none were Bess.
The Childlike Publicist appeared with a tall cane that collapsed into a chair, an object popular in nursing homes and backstage at fashion shows. Cat sank into it gratefully and wrote a quick text to Hutton; whatcha doing later, it said. No reply.
“There’s just two more shots! We can be soso quick with those,” the publicist squealed, her baby voice coming out in a rolling vocal fry.