by Bec Linder
“I’ll be happy to give you a good reference, of course,” he said.
That was the final straw. I stood up, blood boiling in my veins, and said, “You know what? Screw you. I don’t need one. Have fun with your pathetic little life.”
Maybe that was petty, but I didn’t care. I was so angry I could hardly see straight, and I tripped on the stairs as I made my way back to my cubicle.
God. What was I going to do?
I had bills to pay, and absolutely zero leads on a new job.
My computer was still turned on at my desk, with my most recent revisions pulled up on the screen, glowing brightly, mocking me. I sat in my chair and stared at the screen without seeing anything.
It looked like it was time to go freelance.
“How’d it go?” Tom asked, breaking my reverie.
“I got fired,” I said. The words felt strange in my mouth. I tried again. “Potato Head fired me.”
There was a long pause. “What?”
I looked up and saw my own shock reflected in Tom’s face. “He told me I’m not a team player,” I said.
“He’s delusional,” Tom said. “He can’t have—did he really fire you?”
“I’m supposed to remove all my things by the end of the day,” I said. “So yes.”
“That’s not—he can’t do that,” Tom said.
“I’m afraid he can,” I said. “He’s the boss.”
Tom blew out a slow lungful of air. “Shit. What are you going to do?”
Well. That was the question.
* * *
First, I decided, I was going to get drunk.
That was pretty easy to accomplish. I left the building, hauling the cardboard box with all of my things in it—my stapler, my granola bars, the pictures of the Bahamas I’d tacked to my cubicle wall—and headed for the bar down the block where we always went for happy hour. Well: where I used to go with my former co-workers. There would be no more happy hours for me.
The bar was almost empty at that time of day, which was a small mercy. I didn’t want to interact with anyone. I ordered a beer and sat at one end of the bar, my box on the stool beside me, and planned my next move.
I needed a job, but more than that, I needed a plan. I had spent the last year just going through the motions, some twilight creature who ate and worked and exercised but didn’t really live.
I thought maybe I was ready, now, to be alive again.
The problem was how best to go about resurrecting myself.
I ordered a second beer, and dug a notebook and pen from my box. I turned to a blank page and wrote SADIE’S LIFE PLAN at the top, and underlined it with a thick, dark line. I was a big fan of lists. There was usually so much stuff bouncing around in my head that the only way to keep track of it all was to write it down.
My top priority, of course, was getting a job. Find interesting work, I wrote, and underlined interesting. God, I’d turned into such a princess. There were more important things in life than having a rewarding, interesting job. Like not getting evicted. But this was my LIFE PLAN. I might as well go all out.
Go on a date. At least that would get Regan off my back.
Adopt a pet.
Stay out all night dancing. I hadn’t done that in ages.
I hesitated, and then wrote, Clean out the apartment.
And, Maybe move.
I crossed that one out. Not yet.
My life plan was turning out to be surprisingly boring. When had I become a boring person? I used to be fun. Be more fun, I wrote.
Too vague. What did fun even entail? Getting really drunk and sleeping with people I barely knew? That was what I had done during college, at least. I was probably too old for that now. Or not too old, really. Just too sad.
Don’t mourn. Be happy.
Disgusted with myself, I tossed everything back in the box and put on my coat. If I was going to be a maudlin sad sack, I might as well do it at home.
I started looking for jobs that evening. There were a lot of positions available—I did, after all, live in New York—but none of them seemed very appealing. It was mostly the sort of boring corporate work that I’d been doing for the last five years, and I was sick of it. I wanted room to be creative, not just march in lockstep with the company paradigm.
Interesting work, my ass. Who was I kidding? I needed to put on my big girl panties and find something that would pay my bills.
Grimly, I opened my resume and started tailoring it for the least distasteful job.
I thought about what Carter had said, about all the people he knew who were desperate for a good designer. I hated accepting handouts, but I really didn’t think my spirit could survive another five years of some horrible office job.
Anyway, it wasn’t really a handout, I told myself. It was just networking. I was appropriately utilizing my social connections.
I would apply for five jobs, I decided. Just to make sure I was covering all my bases. And I would talk to Carter, and see what he had in mind.
I put it off for two days. I stayed in my apartment like some sort of cave-dwelling gnome and fooled around with my portfolio until I got sick of my own procrastination and buckled down. I applied for three jobs, made another pot of coffee, painted my toenails, watched some online videos of baby goats, and then admitted to myself that I was avoiding making the phone call out of sheer, stubborn pride, and dialed Carter’s number.
He picked up on the third ring. “Sadie, what a pleasant surprise,” he said.
I grinned. “I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic, so I’ll just assume that you’re delighted to hear from me,” I said. “Are you busy? I don’t really care, you shouldn’t have answered if you are. So you remember what we talked about the other night, about freelancing?”
He huffed out a soft breath of air. Amused, I decided. “I’m never too busy to talk to you,” he said. “So you’ve decided to go rogue?”
“Well, sort of,” I said. “The thing is, I got fired.”
He was quiet for a moment. “You haven’t spoken to Regan yet, I take it.”
“No,” I admitted. “And don’t you tell her, either. I’ll call her.”
“You have two days, and then I’m spilling the beans,” he said. “I know she fusses, but she deserves to hear it from you. Lecture over. So, you need a job.”
I nodded, and then remembered that he couldn’t see me and said, “Yeah. I’ve sent out a few applications, but…”
“But,” he prompted.
“But none of the jobs sound all that interesting,” I said, and sighed. “I’m so spoiled, right? I feel ridiculous, acting like I deserve interesting employment. But, you know. I’m tired of working for the man.”
“How do you feel about working for a man?” he asked. “I told you I know people who need good designers. I’ve got a friend who’s running a clean water start-up, and I’d be happy to put you in touch with him, if you’re interested.”
“Clean water, huh?” I asked. “I’m intrigued. Tell me more.”
“His name’s Elliott,” Carter said. “He’s terrific. We grew up together. He’s one of my closest friends. I think you’ll like him. He’s a little… what’s the term? Crunchy.”
“Crunchy,” I repeated. “Like—wait a minute, are you telling me this guy’s a hippie?”
Carter laughed. “That’s what I’m telling you.”
A rich hippie. Oh God, what if he had white boy dreads? I wouldn’t be able to take him seriously at all. “What kind of work would he need me to do?”
“General branding, I imagine. Web design, that sort of thing,” Carter said. “I’m not entirely sure. We haven’t discussed it in depth. He’s only been back in New York for a few months. He was in Uganda for almost a year, and he came back in October to launch his company.”
Well, working for a clean water hippie would be immeasurably better than working for some amoral corporate behemoth. “Sure,” I said. “I’m game. Give me his number and I’ll call him tomorrow
.”
“Great,” Carter said. “I’ll text you his number as soon as we’re done. He’ll be thrilled. The company’s very new, so he’s looking for good people to help him grow it. I’m not sure he’ll have a full-time position to offer you, but it will be steady contract work, at the very least.”
“That’s fine with me,” I said. “I’m sure I can rustle up some more freelance work.”
“I’ll be sure to let you know if I hear about anything else,” Carter said. “And don’t make that face. This is how the world operates, Sadie. It’s not a meritocracy. It’s about who you know. I know you hate it. I hate it, too, but there it is.”
“If you can’t beat them, join them, I guess,” I said.
“You and Elliott are going to get along great,” he said. “I should probably be worried. Put the two of you in a room together, and you’ll be overthrowing the capitalist bourgeois within six months.”
“That means you’ll be out of work and probably laboring away in a gulag somewhere,” I told him.
“That’s a risk I’m willing to take,” he said. “And now I have a meeting to attend, and you have a couple of phone calls to make.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll call Regan right away,” I said. “This afternoon. Definitely.”
“I know where you live, Bayliss,” he said, and hung up.
I rolled my eyes.
Shit. He hadn’t told me Elliott’s last name.
THREE
Elliott
I looked up from my laptop, eyes dry and aching, and glanced at my phone. No wonder my head was pounding: it was almost 9:00 in the morning, and I’d been at the office since the previous afternoon.
And had accomplished essentially nothing. Nice going, Sloane. What a productive all-nighter this had been.
I had what was colloquially referred to as “a problem.”
Or, as my father would call it, “an opportunity.”
Well. My father and I had somewhat different ideas about certain fundamental aspects of life.
Part of the reason he wasn’t currently speaking to me.
On cue, our last conversation re-played itself in full Technicolor glory, complete with visuals of the disappointment writ large on my father’s face. You’re a dilettante, Elliott. A dabbler. I funded all of those trips abroad because I hoped they would help you realize how important it is to make something of yourself.
The implication, of course, being that I had not and never would serve as a useful cog in the industrial machine. That was what mattered to my father: money, and then more money, and pay no mind to anyone you stepped on during your climb to the top.
Anyone who couldn’t rise to the top of the heap didn’t belong there. Social Darwinism at its finest.
His words stung so much because they were, in part, true. I had dropped out of Harvard and spent most of my twenties backpacking around the world. I had abdicated from my expected position as heir to my father’s empire. And I had failed, at the advanced age of thirty-four, to settle down with an acceptable woman and start producing the next generation of Sloanes. My father had even picked out the perfect woman for me—well-mannered, biddable—and still I insisted on, as he put it, maintaining my foolish charade of independence.
But I hadn’t just been backpacking. I spent those years working with NGOs, first as a volunteer and then in various official capacities. I had been in Uganda for most of the last year, working on sanitation outreach with Médecins Sans Frontières. I hadn’t simply been gazing at my own navel.
Annoyed with myself, I shoved my laptop away and stood up, moving to stare out the window onto the street below. Even my silent excuses sounded weak to me. Whiny. You’re trying to expunge your white guilt, my father had said, sneering, and he was right. All of my motives were, at heart, selfish.
My father knew me too well. He knew precisely what to say, what barb to launch that would strike home and fill me with doubt.
I realized that I had clenched both hands into fists, and forced them to relax. I was a man, now, not a cowering boy, afraid of my own shadow. My father had no power over me.
Other than monetarily.
And there was the rub: he had cut me off. My personal accounts held enough money for a year of expenses, but after that—well. I would make something of myself, grow a profitable business, and finally be truly independent; or I would go crawling back to the paternal fold, dutifully accept my corporate role, and abandon every dream of creating a meaningful change in the world.
Either way, my father would win.
No son of his would be allowed to languish in obscurity.
Hence, my problem: I had an idea, but no product, and no capital with which to hire the people I needed to turn said idea into a reality. I knew venture capitalists aplenty, but they all wanted something more concrete than what I had. They wanted diagrams, research, bar charts.
I needed money to get the things that I needed to have in order to get money.
The universe had a sick sense of humor.
To get funding without a solid product spec, I would have to sell myself. I needed to convince potential investors that both I and my business were worth the risk. I would have to be charming and persuasive without coming off as too slick: a charismatic, upstanding guy with a worthwhile product.
And that was my problem: I was neither charming nor persuasive, and any attempt to sell myself would be roughly as successful as an eight-year-old trying to pick up a supermodel.
He’s reserved, my mother always said. The strong and silent type. Still waters run deep, you know.
The boy’s shy, my father declared, and packed me off for elocution lessons.
Shyness was an unacceptable trait in a Sloane. I was no longer the awkward, tongue-tied adolescent I had once been, and practice and maturity had eased the worst of my social anxiety, but I would never have the easy manner that came so naturally to some people. Like Carter.
I sighed, and leaned my head against the window. My father had spent my entire life wishing that I were more like Carter Sutton. And, to be honest, I often wished for the same thing. Carter was everything I could never be: charismatic, successful, content with his lot in life. He had a lovely wife, an adorable child, a beautiful home, and a seemingly charmed existence.
I had—what? An empty office, a dwindling bank account, a hollow shell of a life.
All because I was determined to prove my father wrong.
I had a job waiting for me with MSF. I could already be back in East Africa, doing the work I loved. But some part of me—some weak, terrified part of me—was still the young boy desperate for his father’s approval.
I would never get it, of course. That ship had long since sailed.
And yet. Here I was.
My office phone rang, interrupting my reverie. I turned around and stared at it. As far as I knew, there were only three people who had that number, and they would have called my cell instead.
I took the few steps to the desk and snatched up the receiver. “Hello?”
“I’m calling for Elliott Sloane,” a voice said.
I raised my eyebrows. “This is he.”
“Mr. Sloane, great,” the man said. “Do you have a few minutes? Let me ask you a question: have you thought about life insurance recently?”
“Life insurance,” I repeated, incredulous.
“That’s right,” the man said. “Estate planning is a vital part of your full financial package. It’s important to provide for your heirs if, God forbid, something were to happen for you. You wouldn’t want to leave your loved ones alone and afraid, would you?”
“Don’t call this number again,” I said, and slammed the received back into its cradle.
Telemarketers. Unbelievable. You could move to the Empty Quarter, cancel your phone service, and reject every aspect of modern life, and they would still find you.
The phone rang again, and I cursed a blue streak before I realized that it was my cell phone and not the office line. Someone who act
ually knew me, then.
I picked up. “This is Elliott.”
“Answering your own phone? Surely a businessman of your caliber can afford to hire a secretary.”
I sighed. “Hello, Carter.”
“Long night? I thought we talked about the all-nighters.” He sounded amused, and well-rested. I despised him. “I have good news for you.”
I sat down in my chair and slouched down, head tipped back against the seat, staring up at the ceiling. “Don’t keep me in suspense.”
“I found a graphic designer for you,” he said. “Assuming you’re still looking for one.”
“I’m still looking,” I said. “Tell me more.” I had grappled for some time with the necessity of hiring a graphic designer. Part of me thought it was an unnecessary expense, but I knew that I needed to present the company well in order to attract investors. At this point, I didn’t even have a website.
“She’s Regan’s friend,” he said. “And I know what you’re about to say, but you’re wrong. I’ve seen her work. She’s good.”
“Then I can’t afford her,” I said.
Carter sighed. “She just lost her job, so I’m sure you can. I wish you would let me give you some seed money. I believe in what you’re doing, and you know the money is nothing to me. A drop in the bucket.”
“Exactly,” I said. “That’s why I won’t accept.” I had no desire to be Carter’s charity project. If I started accepting handouts, my father would never believe that I had been successful on my own merits.
“You’re incredibly pig-headed,” Carter said. “That’s not a compliment.”
“Glad to know you care,” I said. My office line started ringing again, and I said, “I have to swear at another telemarketer. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Come over for dinner this weekend,” he said. “Regan wants to fuss at you a little.”
“Roger that,” I said, and hung up.
I picked up the land-line receiver with my other hand and said, “Sloane.”
“Mr. Sloane, I’d like to talk to you about life insurance!” a voice said.
