Serena Singh Flips the Script

by Sonya Lalli

  Serena hated this kitchen. So if she was in here, at least it meant she loved Sandeep.

  12

  Aisha. Advertising wiz. Arlington, VA.

  I swiped through her profile on Bumble BFF one final time as I walked the last block, forcing myself not to feel nervous or overexcited.

  This wasn’t going to be an awkward blind friend date. This was simply a prework coffee with another woman in the industry. And, if it so happened that she and I hit it off and became best friends, and had so much fun together and so many common interests that I never even thought about that selfish Natasha anymore, so be it. Right?

  Right.

  I was pleased that Aisha hadn’t wasted time with idle chitchat and had cut straight to the chase to ask me out for coffee. So only two days after matching, I found myself walking into the coffee shop in the ground floor of my office building, which Aisha had coincidentally suggested for our meeting.

  I paused briefly as I gripped the handle of the front door. That morning, I’d put in a little bit more effort than I usually did, dressing in my favorite boldly patterned skirt and a crisp white collared shirt, buttoned up to my throat. Eyeliner, lip gloss, and a good tinted moisturizer was my usual makeup routine, but today I’d even curled my lashes and worn contacts to mix it up.

  I was cool. I was fun. Who wouldn’t want to be friends with me, right?

  Right.

  Inside the coffee shop, I cast my eyes around, looking for the somewhat blurry image of Aisha I had in my head. There was the familiar (cute) barista behind the counter, an elderly couple near the front bay window reading the newspaper, and a teenage girl bent over a stack of paper. Studying for an exam by the looks of it.

  I worked my way farther into the shop, my eyes skirting the tables, when I heard a voice behind me.

  “Serena?”

  I turned, startled. I couldn’t place the voice.

  “Serena Singh?”

  I set my hand on my hip. The voice was definitely coming from the front, but from where?

  “Over here!”

  I followed a flash of color and movement off to the side. The teenage girl was vigorously waving at me with one hand and stuffing a pile of papers into a knapsack with her other.

  I took a step forward, eyeing her. “Aisha?”

  “Yes!” She nearly tripped moving toward me, extending a hand toward me.

  Hold on a moment. This was the Aisha I’d been texting with, the “advertising wiz” from Bumble? It couldn’t be. She looked so . . . young. Like, real young. Baby-Sitters Club young. Hannah Montana young. So young that I doubted she would have even understood any of those pop culture references.

  “It’s so great to meet you,” she said, shaking my hand.

  She had a firm grip, which I hadn’t expected, and I kicked myself for passing judgment. How many times had clients and even colleagues made comments because they I thought I was younger than I was? Company executives who asked me for coffee because they assumed I was the assistant, not the creative lead on the project about to knock their socks off.

  “Nice to meet you, too.” I smiled.

  The cute barista brought over my coffee just how I liked it, drip coffee with milk and two sugars. Aisha already had her chai, so we sat down, and I idly commented on the weather, the convenient choice of café she’d selected.

  She didn’t say much. Was she nervous? Even though I didn’t want to be, so was I. I’d never gone for coffee with a woman I’d met on the Internet in the hopes of becoming friends. I played with the corner of my napkin, ripping at its edges until I forced myself to push it away and look her in the eye.

  “I’ve never done this before,” I said, after neither of us had spoken for a while.

  She blushed. “Me neither.”

  It felt, oddly, like a first date. A platonic first date, mind you, and definitely not the most awkward one I’d been on. My first-ever Tinder date was at a restaurant not too far from where we were sitting now. He had been very handsome, pleasant, even sweet, but it would have helped if he spoke at least a few words of English or Punjabi. (In retrospect, his messages had seemed oddly formal, and I should have been able to tell he crafted them on Google Translate.)

  “So, you’re in advertising, too?” I asked.

  She beamed, nodding.

  I waited for her to continue, but she didn’t. When we were messaging, she never had replied to my message asking where she worked, and I half wondered if she was keeping her cards close to her chest because I was her competition.

  “Are you on the media buying side, or creative?” I asked, thinking of a more general question.

  “Uh . . .” She paused, spooning sugar into her chai. “Both.”

  “Both?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Both? I wasn’t aware that there were any agencies left these days that did both.

  “So you work at the Deborah Kim Boutique Agency, huh?” She must have seen me hesitate, because then she said, “I mean, you said this café was near your job. Isn’t the Boutique Agency in this building?”

  I nodded, weirded out by her choice of wording. Nobody in the business would use the full name of the agency like that.

  “Tell me everything. What’s your job like?”

  “My job?”

  “Yeah, like, you’re the creative director. Which character are you from Mad Men, do you think? Everyone wants to be Don Draper.”

  I was so taken aback I didn’t even know what to say. Of course everyone wanted to be Don Draper; that wasn’t what was weirding me out. It was that, suddenly, she wasn’t quiet at all; she couldn’t shut up.

  “Peggy? Joan? I can’t decide which one I like better. They are just so, like, feminist, but each in their own ways.” She paused briefly, coming up for air. “Do you have an assistant? What’s that like?”

  “Aisha . . .” I started, the wheels starting to turn in my head. Creakily at first, and then more quickly as my face heated up.

  “When I arrived,” I said, clearing my throat, “you called me Serena Singh . . .” I thought back to the Bumble app, to what it did and didn’t say in my profile. “How did you know my last name?”

  “I . . . I . . .” she stammered, a bead of sweat rolling down her forehead.

  “You . . .” I said, prompting her to finish her sentence, but she wouldn’t. And then the full realization finally came to me. She had cyber-stalked me. She had looked me up on the Internet and found out my name, what I did for a living, even that I worked right above this very coffee shop. I wanted to laugh. Although I had never looked up a potential date online before meeting him, Natasha used to. I hadn’t realized the same vetting process applied when it came to “dating” for friendship.

  I took a sip of my coffee to stall, and I snuck a glance at Aisha over my cup. Her too-big blazer was like a Halloween costume on her, and it wasn’t just me being ageist, thinking that she was rather youthful. She was straight up young.

  “Aisha,” I said softly, wondering if that was even her name. “You don’t work in advertising, do you . . . ?”

  She shook her head bashfully.

  “How old are you?”

  A single tear fell, pathetically, down her left cheek. “Almost eighteen.”

  “Almost eighteen,” I repeated, sighing. “That’s OK. Don’t cry.” I smiled. “Did you lie about your age to get on the app?” She shrugged, wiping her face with her sleeve, and I continued.

  “Did you lie about being in advertising to . . . have some common ground with me?” I shook my head. “You know. I get it. It’s hard making friends. But friends don’t need to have the same jobs, or even interests—”

  “I don’t want to be friends.”

  I stopped speaking, rather taken aback. Suddenly, the sob story of a girl was sitting up much straighter, her confidence transforming her into a
whole other woman.

  “I want to work for you.”

  “Huh?”

  “I came in two weeks ago to apply for an internship in person. Nobody—not you, not anyone—is replying to my e-mails. Nobody takes a college freshman seriously.” She tucked her hair behind her ears. “Anyway, I was getting turned away by reception when you came out into the lobby to talk on your phone. You were talking to somebody about Bumble BFF and . . .” she trailed off. She didn’t need to finish her sentence.

  She hadn’t only stalked me, but she’d downloaded the app, found me, and then befriended me, all to get a job? I swallowed hard, my ears burning. I felt humiliated.

  I’d been conned.

  I’d been . . . catfished.

  “I’m sorry,” I heard Aisha say. “But I didn’t know what else to do. I’m desperate. I know what I want . . . I want to work in advertising. For you, Serena. I saw that article about you online. You were one of the thirty-five under thirty-five up-and-comers in DC two years ago. You were the only woman of color on that list. Do you know that?”

  Of course I knew that. My old boss Iain had been equal parts jealous and pleased that my interview (and skin color) had painted his workplace to be capable, diverse.

  “I have no connections in the industry,” Aisha continued, pleading. “And agency placements are few and far between, and they always go to college seniors . . . Please? Could you please hire me?”

  “Look,” I said, unable to hide the irritation in my voice. “I didn’t have a single connection in the industry when I started, and I didn’t stalk somebody to get my first job.”

  “I’m sorry,” she repeated.

  “I know you are.”

  “I needed an angle to get my foot in the door, you know?”

  “Well, there are angles that don’t involve manipulating and lying to your prospective employer.”

  “You’re right. I’ll go . . .”

  I sighed, watching Aisha pack her things. She looked like a sad puppy, and even though she’d literally catfished me, I kind of wanted to throw her a bone.

  What if I’d had a mentor when I was her age, a woman like Deborah Kim to look up to? Even just to talk to.

  “Wait . . .” I said, as Aisha moved to stand up. She batted her eyelashes at me.

  Was I really going to do this?

  Advertising could be a demanding, sexist, cutthroat industry, and it was capable of chewing up and spitting out any young woman, no matter how sweet and smart and seemingly capable.

  I hated that I’d been duped, but I would also hate to see that happen to Aisha.

  “You can sit down,” I said, a little stiffly.

  Her eyes brightened as she fell back into her seat. “So you’ll give me an internship?”

  I laughed. Aisha had guts. Maybe this industry wouldn’t eat her alive.

  “No,” I said, glancing at my watch. “But, I have forty-five minutes, so I’d be happy to chat.”

  “That’d be great.” She blushed. “If you have any advice, anything at all, about how to get started . . .”

  “Well, my first piece of advice is don’t stalk your prospective employers.”

  Laughing, Aisha grabbed a pen and notebook from her bag. “I’ll write that one down . . .”

  13

  It’s your team, Serena. You run the show how you see fit.”

  “I know,” I said, even though it still felt odd to think that way.

  “And Deborah will back whatever decision you make. She’s very good about that.”

  I nodded as Tracy continued giving me advice, and I slid the coffee cup between my hands on the table. The break room door creaked open, and I looked up, startled, as I thought all of our other colleagues had left for the day. Ainsley stood in the doorway.

  She looked between me and Tracy, who had immediately stopped speaking when she appeared. “What are we talking about?”

  “None of your beeswax, Ainsley,” Tracy said playfully.

  “Gossiping, are we?”

  Tracy didn’t answer, eyeing me as she stood up. “Anyway, I should get going. Think about what I said, Serena.”

  I thanked her, and after she left the kitchen, Ainsley sat down in the now empty chair. “A human resources thing?”

  I nodded, unsure about how much to reveal. I trusted Ainsley, and she, too, managed her own department, but I didn’t want to be unprofessional by gossiping about one of our coworkers.

  One of our horrible coworkers.

  Ginger Spice was driving me up the fucking wall. The minute I’d stopped making an effort with her, she’d become even more rude and disrespectful, which put a nail in the coffin on any lingering feelings of my wanting to have a collegial relationship. I really wanted to tell her off, but the only problem was that she was very good at her job. She had great potential, learned quickly, always followed her briefs, and was even starting to develop a certain creative flair to her work, like a signature.

  The extent of her toxicity really hit home the day before when she was out sick. Without their ringleader, the other team members were actually super friendly with me, and it made me realize I needed to do something about the situation.

  I gulped. I needed to be a bawse.

  “It’s one of my team members,” I said to Ainsley, quietly. “I’m having some trouble connecting.”

  I was having trouble not throttling one of my team members was more like it.

  “Understood.” Ainsley nodded. “Did Tracy tell you to document everything?”

  I nodded. I’d gone to Tracy for some HR advice on how to have an open and honest discussion with Ginger about our work situation (AKA hell), and indeed she had recommended that I start writing everything down, and then use those notes to write Ginger a warning letter and put her on probation.

  Luckily, I’d been taking diligent notes on all of the Spice Girls—the good and the bad—but putting someone on probation felt so formal. So severe. And I wasn’t sure that I could do that to a bright young woman with so much potential. Could I?

  “Last time I fired someone,” I heard Ainsley say, “I gave him three warnings. He still didn’t get his act together, so . . .”

  I turned to her. “You had to fire someone?”

  “I’ve had to fire four people over the years.”

  “Four. Wow,” I said, rather horrified. I loved my new responsibilities as a manager, but I’d never had to be the “bad guy” before. I couldn’t even manage a conflict with my own flesh and blood, let alone someone I had to have a professional relationship with.

  It had been nearly a week since I’d seen Natasha, who had spent the rest of our family dinner scarfing down rotis and ignoring me. Punishing me. And I hadn’t heard from her at all except for a very surprising e-mail I’d initially mistook as spam. An Evite to her gender reveal party.

  She’d set the date. And she hadn’t even bothered to give me or our mother a heads-up.

  I used to call Mom every day because I felt guilty, and then I’d feel even worse after finally getting on the phone and realizing there wasn’t anything I wanted to say. Every single call, every single time we saw each other, I told myself, Serena, make more of an effort.

  Serena, be a better daughter!

  Why was it that, now, only after Natasha was being a total ass to her, I was finally motivated to make a change?

  Maybe Mom needed me in a way she didn’t before. Or maybe I was just telling myself that to make myself feel better.

  I’d called Mom immediately after the Evite went out, which had practically shocked her into silence. I suggested that Mom speak up to Natasha, but she’d only sighed and told me that it was her decision. My stomach had sunk, because her refusal to interfere meant Natasha was breaking her heart. And even though it felt mildly pleasing not to be the daughter in the doghouse, it didn’t feel all that gr
eat, because Natasha was breaking my heart, too.

  “What are you up to this evening?” I heard Ainsley ask. She had stood up and was putting away the coffee cups drying on the dish rack. I grabbed a tea towel and joined her, my heart racing.

  She was about to ask me out on a friend date. I could tell, and I was actually really excited about it. After my catfishing incident, I had decided to take a breather from Bumble BFF. If my experience meeting Aisha had taught me anything, it was that meeting one-on-one was a lot of pressure. I should have spent more time on the app getting to know her, asking her questions and getting a feel for possible chemistry, before up and agreeing to meet her in person. With a bit of time and effort, I could have figured out that she was a little con artist a lot earlier.

  But the thing was, I didn’t have a lot of time, and I didn’t want to be on my phone texting any more than I needed to. So instead, I’d gone back to the drawing board, researching some of the websites Becket had shown me. I decided that activity-based groups were my next route of attack. I’d signed up for a women-only book club on one website, and a group Tuscan cooking class through another, but those weren’t for a while yet.

  I’d come in early and worked hard all day, and I had enough leftovers in my fridge, so I didn’t need to cook. Tonight, I was absolutely free.

  “No plans,” I answered, wiping down a mug. “You?”

  Ainsley smiled, cocking her head to the side. “Me neither.”

  “So maybe we should finally have that drink,” I said, feeling bold.

  “Do you have time, Ms. Busy and Important Creative Director?”

  “Ha, very funny. But just as a heads-up, I don’t really drink alcohol.”

  “How about tea? There’s a cute café on Fourteenth called Kismet—”

  “Kismet,” I said, at the exact same time. I loved that café.

  My stomach somersaulted as we both returned to our cubes to grab our coats and purses. Ainsley and I were already work friends, but this was officially our first “date.”