He walked out to look for Isabel. She wasn’t at her desk.
“Hey, have you seen Isabel?” The woman who worked directly under Isabel, Sabrina, was older—if he had to guess, he’d say thirty-two or so—and always seemed slightly nervous, like she was afraid that she was in the wrong place. She looked up at him and shook her head.
Mack went back into his office and texted her: where r u. A few minutes later, her response: not feeling well, went home for the day.
14
Primary Sources
KATYA WAS SMOKING alone when she saw Sabrina hurry out the front door of the building and turn to walk in the other direction. She stubbed out her cigarette and ran after her. “Hey.” She tapped Sabrina on the shoulder. Sabrina turned around and searched Katya’s face as though trying to remember who she was. “Oh! Hey. You’re Dan’s coworker. Sorry, remind me of your name again?”
“Katya.”
“Right. Hi. I’m just running out to grab some lunch—what’s up?” It was two o’clock, when most people were coming back from lunch.
“Mind if I walk with you?”
Sabrina glanced over Katya’s shoulder. “Yeah, sure.” They headed toward Sixth Avenue in silence. Sabrina looked tired, Katya thought, but that might have been because she wasn’t wearing any makeup. “So…what’s going on?”
“Do you have time for a quick chat?” Katya hadn’t really thought through what she was hoping to achieve with this conversation with Sabrina, but she wanted to take advantage of catching her off guard.
“Um…not really. I need to get back to the office.”
“I’ll be quick. Like twenty minutes.”
Sabrina hesitated. “Okay. I was just going to get a salad but if you want to sit with me for a few minutes, I guess that’s fine.” They passed a place called Only Salad. “I don’t like that one,” Sabrina said, without further elaboration. Katya never frequented these choose-your-own-ingredients salad places that existed on every block of downtown and midtown Manhattan. They were overpriced, for one thing, but also so predictable. The people who frequented them seemed like robot salad hordes, streaming in and out of temples of rabbit food. She and Sabrina kept walking and finally reached a place that looked almost identical, except this one was called Chop’t. “You’ve been here, right?” Sabrina asked, and Katya shook her head. Sabrina looked surprised. “Huh! Okay. Well, I usually go for the kale Caesar with chicken, but if you want something a little more substantial—wait, you’re not a vegetarian, are you?”
“Oh—I’m not eating. I’ve been snacking all day.”
Sabrina nodded knowingly. “These snack rooms, they’re crazy, right?” She laughed. “Though you’ve probably never worked anywhere that doesn’t have a million snacks, I bet.” Katya smiled and didn’t say anything.
As Sabrina ordered, Katya checked her phone. There was a Slack message from Dan: where’d you go? Need a smoke! She put her phone back in her pocket. When they got to the register, Katya took out her wallet. “Here, this is on me.”
“What? No, no, no.” Sabrina had her credit card out and was in the midst of handing it to the cashier. “Don’t take her card. Use this.” The cashier, a wide-faced woman with her hair pulled back into a ponytail so tight it seemed to be stretching her face, had a name tag that said LETICIA. “Leticia, really, take my card.”
Leticia took Sabrina’s credit card wordlessly and swiped it. “Declined.” She held it up to her face. “Sabrina.”
“Can you try it again? That card should be fine…” Leticia swiped the card again and this time Katya could hear a discordant beep when she did.
“Declined.” She held the card out as though she might flick it in Sabrina’s face and glanced behind them. There wasn’t anyone else in line, but Leticia acted like she had expended the allotted amount of time and energy on the two of them and was now eager to move on. “You got anything else? We take cash.”
“Goddamn it,” Sabrina said softly. She took the card back from Leticia and put it in her wallet. She turned to Katya. “Sorry. This is so embarrassing. I actually don’t have any cash on me. Would you mind…” Katya took out the American Express Corporate card that TechScene gave its reporters and handed it to Leticia. She swiped it and gave Katya the receipt.
“See, you should always come to lunch with a friend,” Leticia said, grinning at Sabrina, who looked like she wanted to both punch Leticia in the face and burst into tears.
Katya and Sabrina made their way to a table in the middle of the room. Katya glanced around the nearly empty restaurant. There was a guy in khakis and a plaid button-down shirt sitting by himself at a table, a half-eaten salad in front of him, scrolling through his phone, and two women at a table near the window, both in yoga pants. The situation at the cash register had happened so quickly, Katya hadn’t really processed it yet, but now that they were sitting down and Sabrina had taken the lid off her plastic bowl and was picking at the kale in front of her, Katya realized that, yes, it was pretty fucking weird that Sabrina’s card had been declined. In the moment that Sabrina opened her wallet to put her card back, Katya saw at least four or five other credit cards in her wallet too. Strange that she wouldn’t try to use any of those, but maybe she was just embarrassed that the one card had been declined so she didn’t want to try with the others?
“Thanks for buying me lunch.” Sabrina didn’t quite meet Katya’s eyes as she said this. “I guess it’s good I ran into you. I’ll have to call the credit card company, I don’t know why that would have happened.”
“It’s fine, really. Not a problem. I was planning on buying you lunch anyway.”