“Oh—sure, yes, of course.” She saw Isabel across the room, deep in conversation with someone who had his back to her. She put her headphones on her desk and followed Jason into Mack’s office.
Sabrina had been hoping that everything that happened with Katya—from the moment she met her at Andrew Shepard’s party to the weird, uncomfortable lunch—would just quietly go away, that Katya would forget about the photo she saw or else decide that it didn’t matter. Because Dan seemed more interested in what was going on at work lately. Usually he barely asked her anything about her job, as though its very existence was beneath him, and certainly talking about it was not worth his time. But even just last night he had casually asked how things were going at work, and when she had replied, “The usual,” he had looked at her for a few seconds and tilted his head and seemed like he was about to ask her something else, but he didn’t. Then his phone vibrated and he sighed and started tapping away at it, and then Amelia had wandered into their bedroom and announced that she couldn’t sleep, so Sabrina had to go sit with her and read The Ugly Duckling—Amelia’s choice—twice and try not to wake up Owen, who was sound asleep in the same room. As she read the story, which was really a depressing and not-great-message story when you thought about it, she resolved to quietly remove the book from the shelf. She was supposed to be raising an empowered little girl, not someone who thought that people would be mean to you if you were ugly and the only important thing in life was to become a beautiful swan. Besides, Amelia was beautiful, she really was—she had a cherubic round face and bright green eyes—and the last thing Sabrina needed was Amelia worrying that she wasn’t pretty. Or thinking that it mattered. Because…of course it mattered, but Amelia had more than enough time to figure that out.
Even though she could see Mack’s office from her desk, she’d never actually been in it, and it somehow felt brighter inside than she’d thought it would. There was a blond wood table that was his desk, on top of which he had his laptop and another monitor, but no photos or any personal paraphernalia save for the framed slogan—DO GOOD WORK, AND THE WORK WILL HELP THE GOOD—that all the TakeOff employees got when they started. No one had ever said, explicitly, that you had to have this on your desk. But everyone did. There was a turquoise velvet couch, the only burst of color in the space, and a clear acrylic chair that she was now sitting in. She was all too conscious of having her back to the rest of the office—undoubtedly, everyone had seen her come in. What were they thinking? Why was she in his office? Was she about to get fired? Had Isabel seen her come in?
And now he was asking her if she was happy here. “Oh yes, of course,” she said. “I’ve never been happier, in fact.” She hoped her smile was convincing. Or at least convincing enough. She couldn’t remember, in her previous jobs, there being such an obsession with happiness. No one at the eco-crafting magazine had cared whether she was happy; everyone seemed resigned to the idea that happiness was elusive, ephemeral, and, in any case, not suited to a life in New York City. But now, in front of her twenty-eight-year-old boss, she realized that he had only known a world in which his own happiness was of prime importance. “I love it here.” She smiled and made eye contact with Mack.
“Good,” he said. He glanced up at Jason. “You’ve been doing a great job, and we’ve been thinking we’d like to give you more responsibility, something that’s more of a strategy role. I don’t know yet what the title will be but I wanted to gauge your level of interest.”
“Um, yes, of course.” Strategy role? So she wouldn’t have to sit there retweeting all day. She would be freed from the tyranny of the TweetDeck. She would be able to tell her husband that what she did had value. “Of course.” She repeated it because she needed to believe it herself.
“Wonderful.” Mack smiled and stuck out his hand. Sabrina stood up and shook it. “We’ll talk more very soon. And could you send Isabel in when you leave?”
“Oh—sure,” she said. “And thanks. I’m excited.”
Mack watched as Sabrina walked up to Isabel, who was still talking to Oliver Brandt. Sabrina said something to Oliver, who nodded and left the two of them, and then she said something to Isabel, and—did Isabel roll her eyes? He couldn’t tell. Sabrina walked back to her desk and then Isabel was standing in the doorway of his office. “Sabrina said you wanted to see me.” She looked Mack straight in the eye. “What’s going on?”
Jason responded before Mack could say anything. “Yeah, come on in, Isabel. Do you mind shutting the door?” Isabel shut it but stayed standing in front of it. “Have a seat,” Mack said and gestured to the chair in front of him. Isabel stared at him a moment too long, and finally sat down.
“So we’ve decided to promote Sabrina to a more strategic role,” Mack said.
Isabel’s face was blank. “What does that mean, exactly.”
“We’re still figuring out specifics, but we think for now it makes sense for her to report to me.” Mack hadn’t actually thought about this until just that second, but as soon as he said it, he knew it was the right move; Isabel scowled.
“That’s crazy,” she said. “Sabrina…she’s, like, still learning stuff.”
“We’ve been pretty impressed with her work so far,” Jason said. “We think she has a lot of potential.”
“Oh, come on,” Isabel said. “Did you guys even know her name two weeks ago?”
“That’s inappropriate,” Mack said. There was silence. “I’ll also need you to write me a memo about your team. If you’re going to continue to have direct reports, I need to have more of a vision from you about what that means and how your role could shift.”
“Wait, what? Why is my role shifting?”