The Herd

by Andrea Bartz

  Mikki squared her shoulders. “Hana, I swear to God, if you don’t tell us what the hell this announcement is all about—”

  “Titan is acquiring the Herd.” I took in their blank stares and sighed. “It’s huge news. Unprecedented. The world’s largest technology company is buying the Herd.”

  Two seconds, three. Katie frowned. “Wait, what? Eleanor’s giving up the company?”

  “No, she’s retaining control. But it’ll mean we can grow and expand in mind-blowing ways. We can—”

  “Hana, stop.” Mikki flung out her palm. “We don’t know where Eleanor is. This isn’t—this doesn’t matter at all.”

  “I’m just trying to think. It does matter to her, I know it does.” I chewed on my lip. “She said that with filing laws, we need to announce today in order to have enough trading days before the end of the year. It’s already down to the wire, and she’s very concerned about bad press.” UGLY CUNTS, the graffiti I’d miraculously kept hidden from the news vultures. “She won’t be happy if the New York Times’ headline is, like, ‘Herd Cancels Buzzed-About Event Minutes Before It Starts.’ ”

  “You know what also won’t look good?” Katie snapped. “ ‘Herd Founder Goes MIA; Organization Holds Event Anyway.’ ” Mikki nodded and pointed at her, jabbing her hand in agreement.

  They stared at me, two kids begging their mom to make it all okay. Eleanor wouldn’t miss this for the world. But…but Eleanor had to be okay. I took a deep breath and pulled myself together, an inward sweep.

  “I’m sure Eleanor’s fine,” I said, my voice a tick lower. It was what everyone wanted—reassurance it’d all work out somehow. “But you’re right. We can’t make the announcement until we know where she is.”

  Joanna Chen was calling me again. She wouldn’t be happy.

  “Okay. I need to cancel the interview. And recall the press release, which is scheduled to go out in twenty minutes. And make an announcement to everyone who came out tonight. Oh, lord.” A headache materialized, a little spear behind my right eyeball.

  “Can we help?” Mikki asked, and Katie nodded eagerly.

  Ugh, if only. “Thanks, but I’ve got this. Maybe you guys could see if the events coordinator heard from her. It’s the bald guy in a suit.” They marched off and I followed. In the dining room, Joanna looked annoyed, and I snapped into professional mode.

  I delivered the bad news to her first, apologizing profusely as the blood drained from her face. Then I was a squirrel paralyzed in the middle of the street as I jerked toward my laptop to recall the press release and the podium to disappoint the jumpy masses here. Finally I took off for the front of the room, fumbling with the microphone until Ted came to the rescue, and blurted it out, my composure fraying: “Eleanor sincerely apologizes but due to a family emergency, we’re postponing this evening’s announcement. A press alert will not be issued at eight p.m., but I promise to keep you personally apprised once we have more information.” Confusion and annoyance ruffled through the crowd. Mikki and Katie were watching me from the corner of the room, their faces a dead giveaway that something was wrong. I smiled. “Again, we’re so sorry, but we have the space until ten so please enjoy the food and drinks until then. Thank you.”

  I bolted for the elevators, bleating apologies at those who tried to stop me, and skidded into the conference room I’d reserved for Eleanor and Joanna’s interview. Ignoring my jolting phone, I tapped away at my laptop, until—7:58, with two whole minutes to spare, I sat back. The press release wouldn’t be sent out.

  I glanced at my phone. “Ted and events manager know nothing,” Mikki had texted. “Still no word from E?”

  I was beginning to text her back when another message came through, this one from Eleanor’s husband: “Just got home. Eleanor’s not here.”

  Shit. I rubbed a knuckle against the bridge of my nose, tears for the first time prickling my eyes. If she wasn’t home…where the hell was she?

  I started to reply, then saw he was typing again. His text appeared and I had to read it several times before it had meaning.

  My insides turned to ice and my hands began to shake.

  Daniel said: “Something’s wrong. She hasn’t been home at all.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Katie

  TUESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 7:55 P.M.

  At first I’d thought everyone was overreacting, the way they did with the Gleam Room graffiti: imagining menace in something childish and at least a little hilarious. But now that we’d collated our data points—Eleanor’s cryptic texts, her missed beauty appointment, the fact that no one, not even her husband, had heard from her—I was beginning to worry too. This wasn’t like Eleanor. She allayed stress, never caused it. She’d seemed normal at Mocktails last night, hadn’t she? Relaxed and charming as ever.

  I’d almost skipped Mocktails—I’d almost headed home in defeat. My stomach clenched at the memory now…had I somehow endangered Eleanor, summoned one of her haters back into her life? Monday afternoon, I was alone in a booth at a diner in my neighborhood, one with cracked, greasy menus and cracked, greasy tabletops and pots of bad coffee burbling behind the counter. I’d chosen it because I wanted to meet my interview subject in public, for obvious reasons, but that meant choosing somewhere I knew no Herder would see me.

  But Carl Berkowski, the surprisingly affable-seeming man who’d led the charge behind Berkowski v. The Herd, Inc. (and who was almost certainly a member of the Antiherd), hadn’t shown. Around 3:30, I’d checked my phone for the fourth time in as many minutes; after a half hour of waiting and no response to emails and texts, I decided to throw in the towel.

  This was supposed to be my first real interview since Erin had talked her way into my living room, since I’d blurted out Eleanor’s name like I was screaming a password, Open Sesame, a way out of the mess I’d made. I was relieved to pour my efforts into something other than Infopocalypse, but Hana’s out-of-left-field warning to not even think about writing about the Herd…it had me shook.

  But I couldn’t stop now. I’d promised Erin a progress report by midweek, once the Herd’s big announcement was splashed across front pages all over the world, wide web and otherwise. I’d figured I’d have some yarns to show her by then, some interesting backstory and colorful characters. Like this men’s rights dude, Carl. Of course his name was Carl.

  But Carl had stood me up, freed up my Monday. I’d slapped down my laptop’s screen and signaled for the check. I got on the C train daydreaming about the Herd’s airy beauty. My second Monday Mocktails was spectacular; the bartender was from the Elm Grove, known for their creative use of tinctures and fermented teas and drinking vinegars, and at one point I’d looked out at the crowd, all these cool women being kind to one another, and I thought: No wonder you wish you could be a part of this, Carl.

  * * *

  —

  And now Eleanor was…gone. My brain kept bumping up against it, a Roomba stuck in a corner. Half the crowd had dispersed after Hana’s disturbingly poised announcement. Ted, confused, had stopped by with his gear in a little rolly bag to tell us he was heading out.

  “She’s okay, though, right?” he kept asking, and Mikki and I nodded blankly. Now she and I were hiding in a corner, with me blocking her from the room lest anyone approach her with questions. This bothered me, which was fully absurd. That Mikki was a celebrity and I was a face in a crowd.

  A text from Hana: “Where are you guys?” As if now that one person was unaccounted for, she was eager to keep track of her other kiddos, a mom at the pool doing a desperate headcount. Then another: “Meet me back in the hallway.”

  We watched as Hana clattered toward us, heels higher than ever, ankles confident on their stilts, chest and core and muscly shoulders all sculpted into defiance.

  “I think we should go over to her apartment,” she announced.

  “Is she there?” Mikki call
ed, her voice birdlike with hope.

  Hana shook her head. “Daniel’s there now. He said it doesn’t look like she’s been home all day. The last time he’s sure he saw her was yesterday morning.”

  “What?” I leaned back against the wall. “Where has he been?”

  “He said he worked late yesterday. Spent the night in his office.” Three sets of eyebrows spiked in unison.

  “So he’s fucking somebody else.” Mikki said it flatly, like someone reading off a lame fortune cookie.

  “Who knows. But if he doesn’t even know what he’s looking for at the apartment, we should get there.”

  “Should we call the cops?” I asked, fiddling with a purse strap.

  “Daniel said he was about to. We can call on the way too. I just feel like we need to go. Right now.”

  “What about the…the event?” Mikki’s voice was small, high up in her skull.

  Hana stared like she’d spoken in Dutch. “What?”

  “All this.” She gestured toward the dining room. “We just leave?”

  Hana shrugged. “Aurelia’s here somewhere. If someone has a problem with us checking on our friend, they can go fuck themselves.”

  Hana rarely cursed—it sounded wrong, like a parent using slang. Mikki and I nodded weakly.

  “Daniel doesn’t know we’re coming,” Hana said. “Let’s head out.”

  * * *

  —

  Our driver trundled down Seventh Avenue, jamming at the brakes as if every car in front of him were a surprise, and Hana, normally patient, kept letting out frustrated sighs. After a few minutes she gasped and looked around wildly, then called Aurelia and asked her to grab a tote bag Hana had left behind the bar.

  “There’s a bunch of folders inside, right?” she asked, then exhaled. “Good. Just bring it tomorrow.”

  Hana hung up and then called Eleanor’s parents in Beverly, Massachusetts, who had no idea why Hana was calling or where Eleanor might be. She called 911 while Mikki and I listened uncomfortably; the dispatcher said they’d review this afternoon’s ambulance and arrest (!) records before sending detectives to Eleanor’s address. Outside the window, street signs slowly counted us down: Sixteenth Street, Fifteenth, Fourteenth. Fear was fanning out inside of me, working outward from my gut.

  “Do you still think Eleanor is okay?” Mikki asked.

  “She has to be. She has to be.” Hana hung her head. “Eleanor is somewhere. We just don’t know where yet.”

  The driver jerked to a stop and turned on his hazards, and we listened to their metronomic clacking: tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock. Together, we gazed out at Eleanor and Daniel’s townhouse. The curtains were drawn across the bay window, with a strip of yellow light leaking through. They’d bought the place shortly before their wedding, and while it probably looked charming on normal evenings, tonight it was all angles and peaks, a haunted house.

  Hana rang the doorbell, which echoed inside, and then we stood, listening as car horns and engines and distant bass lines made the air around us quiver. A hand appeared in the bay window and ripped the curtain aside. Mikki jumped.

  Daniel cupped his hands over his brow and leaned into the window, squinting, and Hana waved. The front door swung open, moving ominously. The city soundtrack seemed to crescendo as Daniel stood before us, all six-foot-three of him, his thick black hair and tailored suit and boyish face all equally rumpled.

  He caught the door with one foot and stepped forward with the other, and instinctively I reared back—but it was to unfurl his wingspan to Hana, curling her into a hug. She stepped past him and Mikki and I hugged him in turn, a receiving line. The realization that I knew almost nothing about this guy resurfaced like something bobbing up from the bottom of a lake.

  We stood in the vestibule, mirrored closet doors everywhere and the walls around them painted in stripes of gold and white. One closet door faced a floor mirror, so there were a million versions of the four of us, unbuttoning coats and yanking off gloves as Daniel lurched around, hanging things up. The silvery mirror world, the endless identical lines of us shooting out in every direction, sent a shiver up my scalp. Maybe Eleanor’s lost in here, my brain shot out.

  “So you don’t have any updates,” Hana prompted, leading us into the living room and sitting. “You haven’t heard from Eleanor.”

  He shook his head. His brown eyes looked glassy. “Not a thing. I didn’t hear from her once today, but I didn’t think that was weird. I hadn’t contacted her either, so.”

  “Is it normal for you guys to go a whole night and day without talking?” I asked. This was my area of expertise, not Hana’s, I reminded myself—no matter how in-charge she seemed. I was the beat reporter here, trained in the subtle art of whittling away bullshit to get to the crystalline truth underneath.

  He nodded. “Pretty normal. I mean, we text at some point most days, but I knew she was busy getting ready for her big event tonight, and she knew I was…busy too. With work.” His eyes darted back and forth between us, too fast.

  “Where were you?” I said, at the exact same time Hana prompted: “What made you think she didn’t come home?” He looked overwhelmed, and Hana repeated herself.

  He focused on her. “Eleanor’s predictable. She leaves her dishes from breakfast in the sink and then loads them into the dishwasher after work. She made oatmeal yesterday and didn’t eat much of it—I commented on it before I left for work. When I got home a little while ago, the oatmeal was still sitting out.” He pointed to the open kitchen, and again the question blared like something on a marquee: Where were you?

  “And she’d picked out an outfit for the event,” he went on. “But it’s still in her closet.” He gestured toward the staircase that led upstairs—directly into their big sunny bedroom, and beyond it, the study.

  “Daniel, where were you last night?” Mikki leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. “You can tell us the truth.”

  He blushed. “I told you, I slept in my office.”

  “Bullshit.” Mikki crossed her arms. “We all know that’s code for having an affair.”

  “It’s not like that!” Daniel looked like he might cry. “I would never—I love Eleanor.”

  “The cops are on their way, right?” Mikki went on. “We’re going to tell them. They’ll ask where you were.”

  “No, she…it was her idea.”

  “What?” Hana’s face was frozen in alarm.

  “It’s…” His body language changed; he’d made a decision. “Fine, I’ll show you. Hang on.” He stood and galloped up the stairs, his footsteps echoing. After a second, I rose and sprinted after him. Hana and Mikki followed.

  He crouched in the study, long legs bent at an absurd angle, and fumbled to fit a key in the bottom drawer of Eleanor’s desk. Finally he yanked the drawer out noisily, fished around in it, and then held out a sheet of yellow paper, an edge ruffled where it’d been ripped from a notebook.

  “Here,” he said. “It’s all in here.”

  I darted over and snatched it from him, and Mikki and Hana crowded around my shoulders, reading. It was Eleanor’s loopy handwriting, instantly recognizable:

  RULES:

  24-hour warning before dates

  Ask permission before spending night no contact until 3pm following day

  No one we both know

  Transparency re: married/experimenting only

  NEVER discuss EG/Gleam/Herd

  Sex only/no emotional affair

  SAFE SEX/regular testing

  Biweekly check-ins/prioritize HONESTY

  Signed: Eleanor Walsh 10/25/19

  Daniel Kim 10/25/19

  “Jesus Christ,” Hana said.

  Mikki looked up, shaking her head. “You two had an open marriage?”

  “It was her
idea.” He clutched his hands to his stomach and hunched over like he might throw up. “It was the first time I even met up with anyone else.”

  Mikki crossed her arms. “You guys have only been married, like, six months.”

  “And she’s the love of my life. That’s why I had to say yes. She said that…something about the wedding, the permanence. I guess it made her feel trapped. The thought that we’d spend the next sixty years with only each other…and you know how she dated a few women. She was really hung up on not ever…doing that again.” His cheeks reddened again and he cleared his throat, coughed. Hana and I exchanged a puzzled glance, but Mikki nodded.

  “She never seriously dated a woman,” Hana said, like she could prove him wrong.

  “Well, no.” He ran a hand over his hair, leaving it with new crazy tufts. “But this is…this is sex.”

  “She was involved with a couple once,” Mikki offered, nodding our way. “For a month or two. I remember that.”

  No one had explicitly told me this, but it all jibed with my image of uber-progressive Eleanor. “So you went straight to seeing other people?” I crossed my arms. “Why not go to sex parties together? Or have a threesome?”

  “Katie, stop—we’re getting off-track.” Hana gave her head a horselike shake. “This contract. You both signed it. So she’s been sleeping with other people, and so have you?”

  “Last night was the first time for me,” Daniel said again. I shot Hana a look: Do we believe him?

  “And you don’t know who she was seeing?” I said.

  Daniel shook his head. “She wasn’t doing it that often. Three times since we signed this.”

  It was so very Eleanor to have drawn up a tidy contract. “You’re going to have to think long and hard about exactly when she had these hookups, and what you know about who she was with,” I said. Also on-brand: covering her tracks with the neatness of a cat.