Weird, Dan typed back.
She asked them what, specifically, Isabel had said the other night. She was trying to get them to reveal the contents of Isabel’s speech in some kind of meaningful way, but then again, their denials about what had happened were useful as well. She wasn’t exactly sure yet how she was going to play this with Isabel. Should she reveal that she had this recording? She wanted to tell her Jason’s version of events, because it deviated so wildly from what seemed to have actually happened that maybe Isabel would get so angry that she would say something incendiary. It would all make for a better story in the end.
As they were talking, she wondered: Was it possible that this was what Jason and Mack actually believed? Could it be that their version of events, which was so clearly at odds with reality—she had the tape! what more could you ask for!—had become their truth? But how delusional would you have to be to construct this version of truth?
And if this was their version of this truth, then how could she possibly believe anything else they were saying? She decided to try to catch them in as many lies and half-truths as possible—not to challenge them directly as they were speaking, but collect them all like a nice Christmas stocking of lies.
“So what did she say, exactly?” she asked. To Dan, she typed: asking him exactly what Isabel said. They still don’t know i have the recording.
Good idea, he typed back. Get him to make as many dumb statements as you can. Do they think we’re idiots? Katya typed back: .
“I don’t really remember every word she said,” Jason said. “Something to the effect of ‘Mack sucks and I’m outta here.’”
Katya had to suppress a laugh. Mack sucks and I’m outta here? Who was he kidding with this? She wrote this down in her Google Doc and next to it wrote: TOTAL BULLSHIT. To Jason, all she said was “Hm.” It was a “hm” that was meant to telegraph I know you’re full of shit, and I’m going to give you one more chance to suddenly remember something, but really, I think you’re full of shit. She let the “hm” hang in the air for a few more long, awkward moments. Still, no one said anything. When you were interviewing someone, you were supposed to get comfortable with pauses, because most people weren’t, and they’d just do your job for you by filling up the pause. Jason wasn’t taking the bait, though. So finally, she said: “So she didn’t say anything about, like, sexting or anything like that?”
There was another pause. Bingo, she thought. She had revealed just enough to let them know that she actually did know more than she was letting on.
“No, nothing like that,” Jason said. To Dan, she typed, My eyes are rolling so far back in my head that I might go blind.
Hahaha, he wrote back. You got this.
When she asked Jason if Isabel still worked at TakeOff, she thought his response was interesting: “We’re currently discussing her employment status.” If Mack really had nothing to hide—or nothing to fear—wouldn’t they have fired Isabel by now? It didn’t make any sense to keep someone on who was as much trouble as Isabel allegedly was. She decided to scare them a little bit more.
“Got it. So none of this has anything to do with the fact that Isabel and Mack had a relationship, is what you’re saying.”
Jason asked if he could put her on hold. Oh, they know they are truly fucked, she thought. Got ’em, she typed to Dan. They can’t get out of this.
You are a fucking champ, he wrote back. I’m going to have to insist on taking you to drinks after this.
Ugh. She didn’t really want to get drinks with Dan—hadn’t she made that clear? Hahaha, she typed. Let’s see how the rest of this conversation goes. I’m on hold now because now they know I know that Mack and Isabel were actually a thing.
God, you’re good, he wrote.
Jason’s voice came back on the phone. “Katya? Hey, sorry about that. Yeah, so, listen—Mack and Isabel had a brief, adult, consensual relationship that ended amicably. That’s all I can say about that.”
“I see,” Katya said. Should she call them out more? Or was this enough? “All right. Is there anything else you’d like to add about what happened or about Isabel?” Jason said no, there wasn’t anything else he wanted to add, and that if there were specific things in her story that he or someone else at TakeOff should respond to, could she give them a call? Of course, she told them.
Well, that was interesting, Katya wrote to Dan.
You’re off? he wrote. Want to chat IRL, talk about next steps?
Not really, Katya thought. She knew what the next steps were: call Isabel and get her version of events, and try to get the person who had sent her the recording to tell her who he or she was. And—actually, she had another idea of who to call right now.
Gonna make a couple more calls, she typed back to Dan.
She texted Teddy Rosen. Got a sec to chat? she wrote. Have a qq for you.
He responded right away: Always have time for you. What’s up?
Calling now, she wrote.
“Katya!” he said when he picked up the phone. “How the hell have you been? Did Victor tell you we had a good chat the other day? I like where he and Nilay are going with their new thing.” Victor has a new thing? It had been, like, three days since they’d spoken, and already he had a new thing that he had met with Teddy about? Or—and this was more troubling in retrospect—maybe he had been at work for a while on a new thing that she hadn’t known about. She racked her brain—had Victor mentioned something and she’d just forgotten about it? He had been spending a lot of time with Nilay again since they’d patched things up. She certainly didn’t want to let Teddy know that they’d gotten in a fight. Or broken up. Or…whatever had happened. She still wasn’t sure.
“It’s cool, right?” she said. “Really proud of him.”