“Casper, you were the Woz to my Jobs,” he said. Everyone laughed. Fine, this was a little hyperbolic, but the analogy, Mack felt, was a good one; he was the outward-facing visionary, like Steve Jobs, and Casper had been the genius who worked tirelessly behind the scenes to figure out the product. “And I don’t know what I’m going to do without you.” This, at least, was true. He hadn’t even begun to think about replacing Casper. “You’ve made TakeOff what it is today, and we wouldn’t be the innovative, forward-thinking company we are today if you hadn’t come along.”
Before he could say anything else, a voice—a female voice—piped up from the back of the room. “Could you be any more full of shit?” It was Isabel. Fuck, it was Isabel. Was she drunk? She had gulped that drink in front of him—who knew how many she’d already managed to down before he saw her. “Seriously, Mack. Why don’t you tell everyone here how you’ve been treating me?”
The only sound was the bartender shaking a drink, and as soon as he realized how quiet everything was, he stopped. Now the room was more silent than Mack would have thought possible.
“Nothing to say, huh?” Isabel’s voice was getting louder. “Why don’t you tell everyone how you won’t leave me alone? Or about the texts? Or the sexts.”
“That’s enough, Isabel.” It came out sharper than he intended. He was still standing on the chair. This is ridiculous, he thought. He wasn’t going to let her hijack this. Everyone was still silent; no one was looking directly at him, or at Isabel.
“Oh, fuck you,” she said. She was crying. “Fuck you.” And with that, she shoved her way through the crowd and ran out of the bar.
No one moved. What do I do, Mack thought. What the fuck do I do now. Before he could say or do anything, Casper came to the rescue. “I don’t know what that was,” he said, “but Mack, I just want to say thank you. You’re a true friend and a real leader. Hey, everyone, let’s give Mack a round of applause.” For a moment, no one made a sound, and Mack thought, Fuck-fuck-fuck, but then Casper started clapping, and then a few more people did, and soon enough, the whole room had erupted in cheers and applause. Mack hopped down off the chair and Casper slapped him on the back and leaned in to whisper to him, “Yo, that bitch is crazy.”
20
Battle Loyal
SABRINA HADN’T EVEN been planning on going to Casper’s thing, but then she’d gotten a message on Slack from Mack that said, See you at drinks? Important for all senior staff to be there! She was senior staff now. Despite everything she felt about Mack, this still gave her a satisfied little thrill. Dan would just have to deal. She texted him: Gotta go to a work thing tonight—can you be home early? Sorry last minute. She was shocked—pleasantly shocked—when he responded right away: Sure, no problem!
Thanks. Won’t be too late, she wrote back, trying not to think too much about how quickly and enthusiastically he’d responded. But that was how she found herself sipping a glass of sauvignon blanc in the back room at Flatiron Social at six thirty as the bar filled up with her coworkers. She’d walked over with Isabel, who seemed distracted—maybe it was their conversation in the park that morning? Or maybe it was something else; she wouldn’t say—and who immediately headed to the bar and ordered a whiskey on the rocks, drank it, and ordered a double. “Take it easy, champ,” Sabrina said, trying to keep her voice light, but Isabel just rolled her eyes and said, “Whatever,” and then she’d lost her in the crowd.
Sabrina just wanted to stay long enough for Mack to see her there and then head home. She got pulled into a conversation with Oliver Brandt and a couple other sales people, during which she stayed mostly silent, periodically craning her neck to see if Mack had shown up yet. She somehow missed his entrance, though, and didn’t see him until he was standing on a chair in the middle of the room.
She tuned out when Mack started talking, something about how Casper had been the Woz to his Jobs, which Sabrina took to be some kind of Steve Jobs reference that she didn’t quite understand the significance of, besides the fact that it seemed awfully presumptuous of Mack to be comparing himself to Steve Jobs, and she had started inching toward the door when she heard Isabel’s voice, a little high-pitched, slightly frantic, interrupt him. “Could you be any more full of shit?” she said. Oh no, Sabrina thought. She must be drunk already. What else could have possessed her to make this kind of scene? It was precisely the opposite of what Isabel had said she wanted to happen. She’d said she wanted everything to be quiet, not to make a fuss. She didn’t want Katya writing about what was going on, but she was willing to bring it up here? It made no sense.
As soon as Isabel ran out of the room, and Casper made his ridiculous speech that seemed to distract everyone from the fact that Isabel had accused Mack of sexual harassment in front of the entire company, she slipped out of the bar to see if she could catch Isabel. Mostly to ask, What the fuck were you thinking? But Isabel was already gone; there was no sign of her in front of the bar. Sabrina texted her: Where the hell are you? and waited a moment to see if Isabel would respond, but she didn’t. And so there was nothing left to do but go home.
She hadn’t thought that Isabel had something like that in her. This was probably the crux of the matter: that Isabel had done something more risky and brave than Sabrina would have thought possible, and there was a tiny, tiny part of her that was actually jealous. As she emerged from the subway back in Park Slope, her phone vibrated; Isabel had responded to her text. It was just an audio file. She fished around in her bag for her headphones and plugged them into her phone and pressed play. First she just heard a lot of background noise. Then she heard, “Could I get everyone’s attention?” and she realized, with a creeping sense of horror, that this was Mack’s voice, and that Isabel had recorded what had happened. She hit pause on her phone—she didn’t want to hear any more. She texted back, I can’t listen to this. Isabel responded immediately, please. I want this to get out there. But it can’t come from me.