The Herd

by Andrea Bartz

  Goosebumps rippled up my arms and neck. This felt personal—for as long as I’d known Eleanor, her hatred for that particular profanity had bordered on maniacal. A few months back, one of her favorite contributors to the Gleam On blog had pitched an essay on “reclaiming the C-word,” and Eleanor had dismissed it with unprecedented vehemence.

  “You should’ve told me,” I said. “Did everyone at the San Francisco Herd see it?”

  She shook her head. “We were lucky—the head member relations coordinator went in early and spotted it before they opened. She sent photos and called me right away. It was on fabric wallpaper, so I had her rip it down before they even opened. The police weren’t happy about that, but…I mean, I am.” Eleanor tugged at the sleeve of her sweater.

  “And in Fort Greene?”

  “The lead contractor found it this morning. He sent me photos and then just painted over it.”

  “Okay.” I looked back at the screen. “So what does this have to do with your phone?”

  She pointed at her laptop. “That’s an email from Joanna. My friend at The Gaze.”

  “This is making less and less sense, the more you tell me. What’s going on?”

  “Okay. Whoever stole my phone found these photos on it and sent them all to The Gaze. Anonymously, of course—they have all those secure drop boxes set up. Anyway, The Gaze is planning to run them, and my friend Joanna gave me a heads-up as, like, a courtesy.” She slipped a gray pillow in front of her stomach. “She was trying to call me all day because she didn’t want a paper trail of her snitching on her employer. Really wish I had my phone.”

  It clicked: She’d called me because she needed her publicist. “Got it. Well, we can talk about ways to mitigate the damage, but I don’t think this is going to be a big story. We can write a statement for your blog and put it on the Herd’s site: ‘This proves that, now more than ever, women need spaces like only we can provide, you know you’re doing it right when you’re pissing people off,’ that kind of thing.” I shrugged. “People might sort of love it. That discrimination lawsuit just made those men look whiny and pathetic. Gave us a huge surge in applications.”

  She shook her head. “I need it not to run.”

  I let out a surprised laugh. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “The Herd can’t have bad press right now,” Eleanor said. “The big announcement next week? This just looks too bad. It shows we can’t keep criminals out of our coworking spaces, for one thing.” She futzed with the clasp of her earring. “And also, just associating us with the C-word. In bubble letters. The timing could not be more terrible.”

  “Sweetie, there’s never a great time for a hit piece.” I crossed my ankles. “This announcement—you’re supposed to fill me in by Friday so I have time to prep the press release. I think you’re gonna have to tell me early.”

  “I can’t. Legally, I can’t tell anyone.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I mean, I won’t tell anyone you told me today. I’m a freaking publicist, I’m a vault of sellable secrets.”

  “Let’s just stay focused on how we can kill this story.” Eleanor’s eyes were pleading. “Joanna said it’s scheduled to go live at eleven.”

  I chewed my lip. “Was it a contractor who did it in Fort Greene? Who even has access to the site?”

  “It’s a construction site—anyone can access it.” She composed herself. “The police are investigating; I’m not asking you to crack the case. The Gaze article is the immediate issue here.”

  I nodded, thinking. “Tell me about the announcement. Off the record. I think I know how to make this go away.”

  Eleanor stared at the floor for a moment, then sighed. “Titan Industries is acquiring the Herd.” She smiled. “It’s an industry first. It’ll be huge for the company—for all of us. The biggest technology company in the world is buying us out but still letting us run the company. Oh, the resources we’ll have access to, and the ways we’ll be able to expand globally…” She trailed off and looked at me expectantly.

  I blinked at her. “Wow. When did you decide this?”

  “They first approached me in the spring.”

  Why didn’t you tell me? formed in my throat, and I swallowed it. “Does Mikki know?”

  “No one does.” She flapped her hand. “Legality.”

  I looked away, nodded slowly. “Well, we can use this. It’s big.”

  “Unprecedented. Front-page-of-the-Times big.”

  “Front page of the Business section,” I corrected her. I pushed the laptop back across the coffee table. “We’re gonna give The Gaze an exclusive on Tuesday’s announcement. They’ll break the news the moment the event begins. They might want a twenty-four-hour exclusive, which everyone else in the media will hate. Other journalists might refuse to come.”

  She nodded. “That’s fine. I just can’t let the Herd take a beating before Tuesday’s announcement.”

  “And I have carte blanche to barter with anything I can? Exclusive interviews, maybe future Q&A’s, even personal photos? Eleanor, before she was a star?”

  This was a litmus test—even I had barely seen any childhood photos of her, and I’d been to her parents’ house countless times. She scrunched her nose. “Yes. But don’t lead with that.”

  “Obviously. Okay, I need the number of your friend there.” I pulled my phone out of my purse. “And I’m charging you time and a half now.”

  * * *

  —

  Such is the curse of crisis PR: If you’re good at your job, no one knows you intervened. I’m like a goalie, unsung unless I really screw up. It took every persuasion technique in the book to convince Joanna, a nervous-sounding woman with a bell-like voice, to bring my offer to her editor, but then she agreed, as I knew she would, and at 10:43 p.m. Monday evening, I put the deal in writing.

  “There you go,” I called to Cosmo, who was splayed indecently on the rug near my feet. “All taken care of.” I reached for his furry haunches and he flopped like a fish.

  The Gaze interview would go well, because all interviews with Eleanor went well. She was the kind of client publicists dreamed about: eloquent, beautiful, speaking in tight sound bites and giving every camera the just-right pose and smile. Only a handful of us saw how it exhausted her sometimes, how her face dimmed like an extinguished candle once her back was turned. We understood it, sympathized—what woman, dabbing a layer of pleasantness onto every interaction and sprinkling exclamation points into emails to remain eminently palatable, wouldn’t? But I didn’t envy Eleanor this part of the job.

  Cosmo arched himself into a crescent shape, stretching his velvety legs, and I stood to find a cat toy to dangle his way. I had to admit: convincing Joanna, calmly listening and mirroring like a skilled hostage negotiator as I nudged the conversation onto its track…it was a rush. And Eleanor’s big announcement next week—the media would eat it up. I did wonder how the Herd community would react. Resources were great, but there was something cozy about being privately owned.

  As I bobbed a ball of feathers in Cosmo’s face, I thought back to that moment in 2012, when I’d flown in from L.A. to help out with Gleam’s launch. The three of us had huddled in Mikki’s Greenpoint apartment, the one she lives in still: a rent-controlled one-bedroom in a crumbling prewar building, all its hard angles softened by dozens of coats of cheap white paint. How our fingers hovered over our laptops, the press release and website and social media announcements all cued up and copyedited and practically vibrating inside. Once Eleanor gave us the signal, Gleam would be real. Eleanor’s very first company, a beauty brand that would change all of our lives. We lifted our chins and looked at one another, eyes sparkling—too young to feel any doubts marbling the excitement. To think about everything that might go wrong. That already had.

  Go, Eleanor whispered. Our hands swooped. Gleam was alive, it was out there. A thrilling second,
two. Then Eleanor spoke again, her voice thick with awe: It’s done.

  For a moment, we beamed. Then Mikki hit Play on a Skrillex song, tinny on her computer’s speakers, and soon we were all on our feet, dancing in her living room, the world our shimmery, pearl-filled oyster.

  CHAPTER 5

  Katie

  WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 3:32 P.M.

  Pain—the kind of deep hurt that wafts into your whole body, sets your teeth on edge, makes everything tremble and fold in around the source of it.

  “And five…and four…keep your hips square, don’t let that right hip pop! And three…keep going…”

  I’m no mathematician, but we’d completed about fourteen heel-raises since the perky instructor called out five. Stephanie, the beautiful yogini, was just ahead of me, moving like a dancer, and next to me Mikki was glistening prettily, her wild hair gathered in a silver scrunchie. I looked back down at my mat and sweat funneled off the end of my nose, two drops, three.

  The Herd offered Workout Wednesdays, something I hadn’t known about since Hana never went. (Thursdays also had a designated event, Cultivation Thursdays, when women gathered at lunchtime to share updates on their passion projects and side hustles. Are the first four letters of that always purple too? I’d cracked, the first time Hana mentioned it.)

  I still hadn’t been offered a membership at the Herd. Not that it bothered me or anything.

  Mikki had invited me here when she heard that Sabine, her favorite krav-maga-barre-fusion instructor, was leading this week’s class. I’d gleaned that I’d need to choose an exercise to fit in at the Herd, the way board-game players claim a color: Eleanor was a runner. Hana did Reformer Pilates in a eucalyptus-scented studio. And Mikki had signed on for this hellaciousness.

  “I know you can get lower! The only one holding you back is you!” Sabine called. Mentally, I wove a complex tapestry of obscenities as we completed another set of microscopic push-ups. And then it was over. I collapsed onto my back and lay there, sweat puddling in my eyes, blood beating through my ears.

  “You all right?” Mikki appeared above me, dabbing a towel along her slightly damp hairline. “I felt dead after my first time too.”

  “I think that was outlawed by the Geneva conventions.” My chest heaved. “I’m being waterboarded by my own sweat.”

  I followed her back out the door marked MOVE and into the bathroom. A small line of women stood waiting for the two shower stalls at the end. A few had stripped and were hanging out in towels; one had wrapped hers around her waist, casually topless. Mikki had completed the class in an improbable kelly-green unitard that hit mid-thigh, and now she rolled the top down, a towel dangling over her small breasts like a scarf.

  Back at Harvard, Mikki had been the outrageous one, grinning mischievously as she sloshed Captain Morgan into my Diet Coke. She was free-spirited and kooky, crowing about her sexual exploits and cheerfully explaining lewd terms to me as I sat on the floor, saucer-eyed. (I was so disappointed to learn I don’t enjoy eating pussy—I mean, I love oysters is a Mikki quote still tattooed on my cerebrum.) She’d drummed up my first fake ID and she never shaved her legs or underarms, which had struck high school me as incredibly cool and daring. She’d of course mellowed since then—now she had that carefree artist vibe, the kind that made you insecure in your own uptightness. Everything she did had a certain effortlessness, someone serenely and unself-consciously dancing in the forest in a mumblecore movie.

  Now as she fluffed at the nape of her neck, I saw that her armpit was smooth and hairless. This made me sad for some reason. Like The Man had won.

  “I do see the appeal of learning self-defense,” I said, patting a towel across my collarbone. “I took a one-day seminar in college, but obviously none of it stuck. I’d have to be like, ‘Hold still, sir—if you’re holding the knife there, I need to use this hand to push it away while my knee goes here….’ ” I acted it out, the awkward shuffling.

  “Yeah, you really have to just do it over and over until it’s second nature. That’s why I like it: It makes me feel like I don’t have to take any shit. If someone tried to mess with me, I wouldn’t need to think—my body would just act.”

  Hana had mentioned once that Mikki had been abused as a kid—her drunk dad had knocked around his wife and children whenever he was in a mood. Mikki never discussed it; she talked as if her life began as soon as she got out of North Carolina. It made her extra-impressive now, this badass artist thriving in NYC.

  “Anyway. What are you working on today?” Mikki leaned into the mirror and picked out an eye booger.

  “Just sending out about four thousand emails,” I replied. I’d crept in on Tuesday, still cruising with my temporary guest pass, nervous that Eleanor and Hana and everyone would take one look at me and shout, “Traitor! Banned for life! Booooo!” à la the osteoporotic old woman in The Princess Bride. But somehow, improbably, everyone had treated me normally, continuing on without knowledge that I harbored secret hopes of writing about them. If anything, on Tuesday Hana and Eleanor seemed to have sort of forgotten about me—distracted, blustering by without looking up much—but the relief far outweighed the vague rinse of feeling left out. “What about you?”

  “I’m talking to a gallery in Bushwick about doing a show,” she replied. “Only collages, no sculptures. So I’m working on an artist’s statement today. Actually, would you be willing to look at it later? I’m not much of a writer.”

  “Of course! And I’d love to see your collages sometime. When I left you were still mostly doing those metal sculptures.”

  “Yeah, soldering. But I think the collages are my best work, to be honest. Each one has a lot of meaning for me. I’ve been doing these large-scale works and then taking photos of them and working those into my collages.”

  “Large-scale? Like, slinging paint onto huge canvases?”

  “Sort of. And then I cut the photos into these weird, intricate shapes with an X-Acto knife. I really hope I get the show. It’s frustrating: I’ve worked so hard, but people only know me for boring graphic design shit.” She looked away. “Nobody takes my actual art seriously and that’s all I want to do.”

  I was about to reply, surprised by the sudden candor, when a woman moving toward an open shower slipped in a puddle, her arms flailing. Mikki lunged forward and caught the woman’s forearm in both hands as her own towel crumpled to the floor.

  The woman righted herself and burst out laughing. “You just saved my life,” she said, giving Mikki a half-hug, perky little exposed boobs and all. The woman hopped into the shower, and Mikki gathered up her things, grinning.

  She caught my eye and cocked her head toward the Gleam Room. “That’s the thing about these ugly cunts,” she said. “When you fall, we’ll catch you.”

  * * *

  —

  For a coworking space, the Herd didn’t make working easy—the communal tables were too high, the individual workstations too low, more fun than functional. I drained my coffee and set it on the little marble table I’d pulled up to my knees. It was my fifth day of working at the Herd, my first Friday. I’d thought maybe it would be emptier today, freelancers tapping out for the weekend early, but it was more packed than ever, the sound level higher, giggles and squawks boinging off the snake plants and salt lamps.

  And it was dark out; frost fringed the windows, which were now hazy mirrors. On Fridays the Herd closed at five. Eleanor said this was to ensure a healthy work-life balance for employees, which made negative sense when the Herd was open on weekends, albeit with limited hours and a skeleton crew.

  “I’m gonna get moving,” Hana announced. “You staying here until close?” She looked especially pretty today, with her dark curls pulled into a pile and careful eyeliner framing her umber eyes. People are always commenting on her striking features. Meanwhile, the guy I lost my virginity to in college once told me, You kind of loo
k like a ferret…but, like, a cute ferret. Not even a hot ferret. I continued to hook up with him for an additional three weeks.

  “I don’t know.” I brought my hand to my crown and cracked my neck. “The Wi-Fi’s still being dodgy. I’ve been trying to send these photos for, like, an hour.”

  She squinted at my screen. “It only seems to stop working when you’re on the network. They’re resetting the router tonight.”

  “I know, I’m Wi-Fi Kryptonite.” I closed my laptop. “We’re on for tomorrow, right?”

  “Of course.” It was an annual tradition: We’d start under the massive snowflake improbably suspended above Fifth Avenue and then make our way past other showstopping decorations. I’d made up my mind that I’d broach the topic of the book with her then. Research was going well—I was in touch with the plaintiff behind the discrimination lawsuit and he seemed sufficiently unaware of my disdain for him, and I’d joined some online fan forums that’d bought into the whole Herd cult of personality. And in a stroke of luck, Eleanor had scheduled a glitzy and mysterious event for Tuesday, with reporters and influencers and B to B+ celebrities spangling the guest list, all with the promise of a big surprise announcement. Whatever the announcement was, it was sure to bring a flurry of new attention to Eleanor. Mentioning my book pitch to Hana—softly, carefully, This is just a little idea I had; it’d be done so lovingly and totally with her approval—felt like a natural next step, a gate I could hop over on the way to unicorns and rainbows and people in the publishing world not hating me.

  “All right, I’m making moves.” Hana grabbed her purse and gave me a half-hug goodbye. I tapped at my computer, prepared to shut it down—at long last, the damn photos had uploaded. Aurelia, the Herd’s member relations coordinator, breezed through, flicking off lights, and I promised I’d be out as soon as I finished one thing and bade Eleanor goodbye. Aurelia had darkened the other rooms—the library and the sunroom, as I now knew they were called—and it wasn’t until her elevator door thudded closed that I realized how expansive and eerie the Herd was at night.