Since their last conversation in his office a couple weeks ago—the one where Casper had quit—Mack hadn’t exactly been avoiding Casper, but he also hadn’t been going out of his way to talk to him. He was wrestling with what his exact emotions were about Casper’s departure. On the one hand, he knew that this was normal for companies. When people left, they hopefully carried some of your company’s DNA with them to their new workplace, so you were constantly pollinating other businesses, and eventually you had this big network of people who had formerly worked for you. That was the charitable view. The less generous way of looking at it, and this was the way (despite his best efforts) that Mack had been thinking about Casper leaving, was that it wasn’t fair that people you had grown attached to, whom you had confided in, whom you had grown the company alongside, whom you had groomed, just got to leave! Without even thinking about how it might affect you or being remotely grateful for everything you had done for them!
Still, he was throwing Casper a good-bye party that night at Flatiron Social, because that was what you did. And he wasn’t going to act bitter or say anything harsh about Casper to anyone. Besides Jason, of course. But to everyone else, he was going to seem completely gracious and magnanimous: Of course he was sad to see Casper go, but of course it was a great opportunity for him, and of course he was welcome back at TakeOff anytime. The first was true, the second was debatable, and the third was a complete lie. There was no way Mack would let someone back who had betrayed him like that. Right before a new product launch! It was so typical of people in his generation. He hated to say it, but sometimes he nodded along when he read an article about “entitled millennials.” No one had any goddamn loyalty anymore.
“Thanks, Casper. That means a lot. You ready for tonight?”
“Yeah,” Casper said. “I mean, I think so. I’ve never had a good-bye party thrown for me.”
“This was your first real job. I always forget that.”
“Yeah. I mean, I had internships. I mean…I’m only twenty-three. I gotta thank you again for taking a chance on me. Letting me lead a team. That meant a lot.”
“Well, thank you.” They were both quiet. Casper nodded and stuck out his hand. Mack shook it and felt slightly mollified. Maybe his toast to Casper at drinks tonight wouldn’t be quite as undermining as he had secretly been planning.
At six thirty, the office had been slowly emptying for the last half hour or so, and now he counted only about ten people left on the floor. Normally he would be peeved that people were leaving this early, but it was nice how it seemed like nearly everyone was going to Casper’s good-bye. It meant that he had a strong team, that he had really built something. He pinged Jason on Slack: walk over to Flatiron w/me?
Jason responded with the thumbs-up emoji and almost instantly materialized at the door to Mack’s office. “Thought you’d never ask, boss. Let’s mosey.” As they were waiting for the elevator, Mack’s phone vibrated with a notification from Twitter that he had been mentioned in a tweet. He opened the Twitter app and found himself on the account of a Twitter user called @invisibletechman. The tweet said: Hearing that there are some founders who need to learn to keep it in their pants. @mackmcallister you know anything about this?
“The fuck?” Mack said. He showed Jason the tweet. “Who is this person? And why the hell are they at-ing me on this tweet?”
Jason glanced at it. “Who knows, man. Probably just some jealous idiot. I’d ignore it.” The elevator came and they got on. Mack didn’t respond. It was all well and good for Jason to say ignore it, but he wasn’t the one being tweeted at about sleeping around! “How many followers does he have, anyway?” Jason asked.
Mack clicked through to @invisibletechman’s profile page. “Like two thousand.”
Jason looked surprised. “Huh. That’s more than I thought he would.”
The doors to the lobby opened and they walked out. “That’s hardly reassuring.”
“Sorry.” Jason grinned. “But look, there are worse things to be accused of. So you have sex. Big deal! Is that a crime? Not the last time I checked.”
“It’s just…I dunno.” Mack shook his head. There was something weird about the tweet. It didn’t exactly say that he was sleeping around; it said he couldn’t keep it in his pants. Which was a little too close for comfort considering certain Snapchats he used to send. But Jason didn’t need to know that. Nobody needed to know that. And nobody did know that. He was vaguely comforted by the idea that if Isabel had, God forbid, told anyone that they used to exchange nudes at work, she would be just as implicated as he was. There were no innocent parties here.
“Let’s just go to the bar, get some drinks, say some nice shit about Casper, and forget about dumb anonymous Twitter accounts saying dumb anonymous shit. Okay?”
“Yeah, okay.” The company had rented out the back room of the bar, and as they made their way there, Mack glanced at his phone again. A couple of people whose names he didn’t recognize had responded to @invisibletechman’s tweet—one with a , one with the comment Some? lol. He put his phone in his pocket. There was no point in worrying about this now. Hopefully it would just go away.
The back room was packed. He spotted Casper in the corner talking to a couple of his look-alikes. He made a mental note to gently remind Casper about the nonsolicitation clause in his contract—he wasn’t allowed to hire anyone from TakeOff for a year, and Mack would be watching carefully to make sure that he didn’t. He had a feeling that the people on Casper’s team were dying to continue working for him; everyone seemed to love him. Jason had disappeared into the crowd, so Mack made his way to the bar and ordered a drink. It was open bar until nine, which seemed more than generous, but as he sipped his whiskey on the rocks he hoped that people were leaving the bartender tips. He took out a five-dollar bill and left it on the bar.
He glanced around the room. He hadn’t been sure if Isabel would have the nerve to show up, but there she was, chatting away with Chelsea, one of the girls on Casper’s team, who was also wearing the Casper uniform. Could Isabel possibly be connected to the tweet? There was no way, he decided quickly. For one thing, Isabel wasn’t conniving enough to orchestrate something like that—despite being the Engagement Hero, she personally wasn’t very active on social media, except for Instagram. And Snapchat. But…still. Maybe he’d ask her. He walked over to where she was standing.
“Hi, Isabel. Hi, Chelsea,” he said.