Dan: we haven’t talked at all
Katya: idk what to say to that. I’m just trying to act normal and not make other ppl think something’s up btwn us
Dan: i get that but…i guess i just miss you
I’m literally right here! she typed, and then deleted it. How can you miss me, I’m right here, she typed, and then deleted that. Don’t be silly, she typed. That, too, got deleted. Fuck, she thought. The way Dan was acting…it was starting to feel like he did not think of the other night as just a onetime fluke that had happened because Katya was feeling really fucking vulnerable and—selfishly?—knew that he’d be there for her. Wasn’t it supposed to go without saying that nothing else was going to happen between them? He was married! Wait, she thought. I am a cliché! I’m the young woman hooking up with her boss. She corrected her internal monologue. I’m the young woman who kissed her boss one night when she was drunk and sad. Fuck, still a cliché.
Katya: k
Dan: don’t “k” me
Katya: sorry
Dan: are you upset about the other night?
Katya: not upset. Just feel like it probably shouldn’t happen again.
Dan: :(
Katya: i have a ton of work to do so i’m gonna close slack for a little bit
Dan: k. see what i did there?
Katya: good one
She closed Slack and squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. The way Dan was acting was officially Not Good. He wasn’t supposed to actually like her! Or want this to be a thing! He was like, what, fifteen years older than she was? It wasn’t that she had never been with older guys, but if she was going to have an affair with an older man, it wouldn’t be with a depressed Park Slope dad of two whose life was so boring that he was trying to hook up with one of his reporters, who was ambivalent about him at best. Definitely not going to be that guy.
In the meantime, she had to assume that she wasn’t going to be the only reporter trying to figure out what the hell @invisibletechman was talking about. It had been only twelve minutes since his tweet, but there were undoubtedly people already planning on writing posts that didn’t even really say anything but just speculated about what it could be. There would be levels of depth to the various posts; there would be one that was just an embed of the tweet with a headline like “What Went Down at the TakeOff Party the Other Night?” Or, if the reporter wanted to play it a little safer, something like “Anonymous Twitter Account Alleges That ‘Sh*t Went Down’ at Recent TakeOff Party.” That post would go up within minutes, Katya was sure of it. Then there would be another post in an hour or so from someone who’d gotten a statement from TakeOff, probably an official denial. It was possible this post would also have a quote from someone who worked at TakeOff. And each of the stories would get tweeted and retweeted and so it would go, on and on, until everyone forgot about the story and moved on to something else. But this was her job, to get into that scrum at some point, to somehow come up with the quote or the angle that no one else had found.
She was just about to send Isabel a text when an email came into her inbox. The sender was Mack McAllister. “Whoa,” she whispered. She clicked it open. It said:
This isn’t really Mack McAllister, but I wanted to get your attention. You should probably listen to this and then judge for yourself what went down the other night at the TakeOff party.
Attached was an audio file. Now that she looked at the email header, she saw that the address was actually [email protected]. Someone had just made Mack McAllister the name that showed up. She was slightly wary about clicking on an audio file from an unknown sender, especially one who admitted that he (or she) wasn’t the person the email had purportedly been from, but she put on her headphones and clicked anyway.
She heard a man talking, but she was having trouble figuring out exactly what he was saying because there was a lot of background noise. She turned up the volume and heard a voice that was unmistakably Mack’s saying, “Casper, you were the was to my jobs.” Huh? She went back a few seconds and listened again. “Casper, you were the Woz to my Jobs.” Oh. So now Mack was comparing himself to Steve Jobs? These guys were unbelievable. “And I don’t know what I’m going to do without you. You’ve made TakeOff what it is today, and we wouldn’t be the innovative, forward-thinking company we are without you.”
So far, so boring, Katya thought. Could Mack be any more generic if he tried? Then a voice—a female voice—that came through much more clearly. This person was either holding the phone doing the recording or was standing very close to it. “Could you be any more full of shit? Seriously, Mack. Why don’t you tell everyone here how you’ve been treating me?” Then there was dead silence. All the noise of people talking among themselves that hadn’t really stopped when Mack was speaking had now stopped completely. Katya realized it was Isabel’s voice. “Nothing to say, huh? Why don’t you tell everyone how you won’t leave me alone? Or about the texts? Or the sexts.”
Then Mack’s voice came back. It was easier to hear him, now that there wasn’t anyone else talking. “That’s enough, Isabel,” he said. He sounded pissed but also, maybe, nervous.
Isabel’s voice again: “Oh, fuck you.” It sounded like she was crying. “Fuck you.” Then there was some muffled noise and the recording stopped.