Whisper Network

by Chandler Baker

  “Actually,” Ames interrupted. Sloane’s toes contracted reflexively. “I think we should be looking at McDonald’s. They had a similar situation. Two CEOs dying in two years. The first one was sudden. And Imation. Those are the two examples I’d go with, Kunal.”

  Sloane absorbed a spike of frustration. She’d used all the potential reactions by this point in her career. Her favorite was a polite: “Interesting, that sounds a lot like what I just said” in her best Southern accent. But to this she said simply, “Great idea, Ames.”

  Ames rubbed his palms together, satisfied. “All right, we all have our marching orders. My office door is always open if you need me.”

  They stood to go. Sloane clicked the pen closed. Ink stains peppered the inside of her right middle finger. Ardie and Grace, who had been seated side-by-side across from her, skirted the room to pass by on their way out. “Sorry,” Ardie leaned in and whispered while shaking her head slowly.

  Grace pressed her lips together and caught Sloane’s hand for a quick squeeze. Sloane noticed a damp stain on the front of Grace’s silk blouse that she knew, without thinking, wouldn’t come out. It was useless to wear any kind of silk while breastfeeding. She’d have to tell Grace.

  “Katherine.” Ames held up a finger, talking to the new woman, who still lingered while everyone else had filtered his or her way out. “You can wait in here one moment. I just need to go pull the draft announcement from my desk for Sloane.” He looked at Sloane. “You don’t mind stopping by my office, do you?”

  * * *

  Ames’s office door was not actually, as he’d said, always open. Neither literally nor figuratively. Sloane had followed him as he walked two steps in front of her along the narrow corridor.

  He opened the door to his office and together they stepped inside The Shrine—a gallery wall of Ames with famous athletes. Truviv, Inc., was the world’s foremost athletic apparel brand, sponsoring all the country’s biggest athletes. There he was playing golf with Tiger Woods. Now, here he sat courtside with an injured Kevin Durant. Then—look!—another candid photo playing catch with Justin Verlander and his wife, Kate Upton. If Ames realized that the men and women memorialized on his wall might only be his friends because Truviv wrote a large portion of their sponsorship checks, he didn’t care. Either way, Sloane considered The Shrine the semi–socially acceptable equivalent of a dick pic.

  “So,” he said, turning to lean on his desk. He was a middle-aged man who wore a charcoal suit well and managed to look better with age. At least this was what Sloane objectively knew to be true, though she herself had a hard time recognizing his good looks anymore. They’d become just another fact about Ames that she didn’t quite believe. “Desmond’s gone.” He stuck his thumbs deep into his eye sockets and kneaded his eyes. “That was something I didn’t see coming.”

  “I’m … yes, I’m so sorry.” Sloane allowed herself to drift farther in past the threshold. Since hearing the news, it was the first time she’d mentally framed the CEO’s death around condolences. It was terrible. He had children, two she thought, each only a little bit older than Abigail. She planned to process his passing tonight with her husband, Derek, over a glass of wine—the finest chardonnay their refrigerator had to offer. She would remember Desmond for his lively, attentive face as he sat in the first chair on the left side of the conference table, listening as she gave quarterly presentations to the company’s executives.

  “Remember how he always called you Miss Sloane?” Ames folded his arms. His shoulders shook with a quiet, good-natured laugh. “Like you were a preschool teacher?”

  The memory triggered a faint smile. “Yes, god. It didn’t actually bother me. Coming from him.”

  “He liked you.” Ames pushed his weight off the desk and went around to the other side, where he began typing on the keyboard without committing to sitting down. She waited for a few moments, unsure of how much attention was required for whatever he was doing behind the computer.

  “I’m sorry to change the subject, but who was that woman?” Sloane asked. “Katherine, was it?”

  He slid open a drawer, shook out a couple Hot Tamales—an oral fixation to curb his smoking habit—and popped them in his mouth. “That was Katherine Bell. I’ll introduce you. Slipped my mind with everything going on. One second, please.” He struck a few more keys and then looked up at Sloane again.

  She had the idea that Ames sometimes had a touch of selective amnesia about their early years at the firm. Other times, it was the only thing he seemed to remember about her at all. Today, he was clearly in the mood to pretend history didn’t exist. “She’s our new hire,” he said. “Lots of corporate experience. She’ll be working in your section. I think you’re going to find her to be a really valuable asset.”

  Sloane cocked her ear toward Ames, as though she’d misheard him. “My section?” She repeated it as a question.

  “That’s right.”

  “And you didn’t think to consult me about hiring someone new for my section?” Her voice sounded too high-pitched. Shrill, he might call it. “I’m SVP of that section.”

  It had been years since Ames had pulled something like this on her—years! And Sloane nearly undid all of them, all those months upon months of keeping her cool, of dealing with Ames and his Grade-A bullshit, with a sudden outburst of unadulterated anger.

  Ames stooped to look at his computer screen again. “And I’m the General Counsel,” he said. “Should we swap resumes?”

  Sloane could already feel herself going over this conversation tonight in the mirror while brushing her teeth, wishing it had gone differently.

  “Where is Katherine’s office?” She changed tacks.

  “I figured you could take care of all that. After all”—he flashed a disarming smile and his chin dimpled—“you are Senior Vice President.”

  “Right.” She took a deep breath and compartmentalized. It wasn’t as though they could leave an attorney, even one Sloane hadn’t asked for, idling in the conference room forever. She rested her legal pad on her forearm and added Find Katherine an office to the list of action items, right at the top. What an inauspicious day to begin. And hadn’t she looked young, her skin so well hydrated? The word “ingénue” had come to mind, though that was ridiculous. She had to be at least thirty, older than Sloane was when she started here.

  Sloane turned to leave, forgetting for a moment the reason she’d come in the first place.

  “Sloane. The draft.” Ames had finally made a decision to sit and was clicking through something she couldn’t see because his screen was tilted. He nodded toward the legal pad on his desk. “I took a first stab. I want to see it before it goes out.”

  Sloane walked back to his desk. A pair of scissors lay open atop the legal pad. Their silver blades left a violent X against the yellow pages. She felt lack of sleep and stacks of unopened bills and anger. Her fingers lingered over the cool metal. Sometimes when Sloane stood in very high places, she worried an urge to jump would seize her and she’d find herself tumbling off the side of a building. We all understood this feeling, how with just a twitch of fingers, Sloane—or any one of us—could snatch up the scissors and snip the artery in Ames’s neck.

  She pulled the legal pad, her fingertips sticking to the pages with faint perspiration. “I’ll have this back to you in an hour,” she said, a false note creeping into her voice as she escaped Ames Garrett’s office, not for the first time.

  Deposition Transcript

  26-APR

  Ms. Sharpe:

  State your name, please.

  Respondent 1:

  Sloane Glover.

  Ms. Sharpe:

  What is your occupation, Ms. Glover?

  Respondent 1:

  I work at Truviv as a lawyer. My formal title is Senior Vice President of North American Legal Affairs.

  Ms. Sharpe:

  How long have you worked at Truviv?

  Respondent 1:

  About thirteen years.

&nb
sp; Ms. Sharpe:

  That’s a respectable length of time. Longer than most people stay at their jobs, I imagine. What has kept you at Truviv for so many years?

  Respondent 1:

  I hold a highly coveted position. In-house jobs, especially ones that pay well, are hard to come by. Truviv is a household name. Many people would have killed—sorry, I didn’t mean—there were lots of people who would want my job.

  Ms. Sharpe:

  And how did you come to know Ames Garrett?

  Respondent 1:

  Ames was part of the group I interviewed with before making the move over from Jaxon Brockwell, so I suppose we first met then.

  Ms. Sharpe:

  Did you work closely with Mr. Garrett?

  Respondent 1:

  Not until we worked on a divestiture of an affiliate brand, I guess. He had been with the company about five years at that point, I believe. He was coordinating the diligence materials to be sent to opposing counsel and I was assisting him.

  Ms. Sharpe:

  And how would you characterize your relationship back then?

  Respondent 1:

  It was fine.

  Ms. Sharpe:

  What do you mean by “fine,” Ms. Glover?

  Respondent 1:

  I thought Ames was smart and ambitious. He taught me a lot about running a sales process. We got along.

  Ms. Sharpe:

  I see. And when did your affair begin?

  CHAPTER THREE

  20-MAR

  We read Lean In. Take it from us; the book was all but mandatory in our city’s female professional set. If our friends needed advice it was our honor bound duty to tell them earnestly, wisely, imploringly, Friend, what you need to do is lean in.

  So we read it, all two hundred and forty pages of it, while we got our highlights done or listened to the audiobook as we drove the turnpike in our Land Rovers. We needed someone to tell us what we were doing wrong and how to fix it. To remind us that we weren’t making enough money or rising up the ranks quickly enough or busting enough balls. We fantasized about our careers, we attended women’s networking events, we looked for career risks we could take. We followed the recipe and set the timer for eighteen months and figured by then, the glass ceiling would have shattered under the weight of all the world’s leaning women.

  When exactly did we realize it wasn’t working? Was it the election? Before then? It’s hard to register differences in the status quo. Like trying to measure slight drops in temperature without a thermometer. But Ms. Sandberg was right about something. We had to lean in.

  It was the only way to hear the whispers.

  * * *

  Every three minutes, an automatic air freshener sprayed citrus-scented disinfectant, startling Grace back into her surroundings. In a public restroom. On the toilet. Scrolling mindlessly through her Instagram feed. Her underwear a sling between her ankles.

  This was what new motherhood had reduced her to. It was the lack of sleep. Everyone promised it would pass. That someday soon she would start to feel like her old self again.

  She wished her old self would hurry the fuck up.

  The door to the restroom swung open and two pairs of heels entered.

  Grace might have announced herself by unfurling a wad of toilet paper or standing up so that the automatic flush triggered, but before she could move, one pair of heels stopped in front of the mirror and said, “Danielle forwarded me that spreadsheet thingy. God, who knew there were so many sleazy guys in Dallas?”

  Grace looked warily up from her phone. Squinted. Tilted her head to make out the shoes standing at the mirror: pink, pretty, but not terribly fancy. Steve Madden, maybe.

  The young woman in the pink heels must be doing some midday facial maintenance at the mirror. The other girl, in leather heels, entered one of the stalls and slid the lock into place. “You should have told me. I got it, like, three days ago.”

  Grace was having trouble placing the voice. (Our voices were hardly more than an artifice. We were living in the days of vocal fry and verbal upticks. And we hated ourselves for it.) Talking in the restroom combined two activities that had no business taking place within the same moment, but Grace remembered being younger, when it was a symbol of closeness to traipse into a single bathroom together, chatting and taking turns squatting over a disgusting toilet seat. She felt a faint throb of longing for those days.

  “The crazy thing is,” Leather Heels continued, “one of the guys on there is my dad’s best friend.”

  At the sink, Pink Heels said, “Whoa.” Grace heard the snap of a compact. “And he was never, you know, creepy with you?”

  Grace felt conscious of her own bow-tied Ferragamos, which she was sure could be seen below the stalls if either of the girls cared to look. Should she pick them up? Or was that going a step too far?

  She couldn’t decide what to do to, and so she did nothing.

  “No, he’s always been really nice. A normal version of nice, I’m pretty sure. My family had dinner with him last month.”

  “Can you imagine if it was your dad, though?” Pink Heels asked. “Because, that’s the thing. They are. Somebody’s dads, I mean. Think of getting this in your inbox and you see your dad’s name and ‘asked me to put a finger in his ass’ next to it. Could you ever look at him the same again?” Grace thought Pink Heels was the legal intern, a first year law student, spending a couple days a week working at Truviv. Not from one of the better schools, if she remembered. Was her name Olivia? Sophia? One of those.

  “Okay, excuse you,” said Leather Heels. “Mark Souls is an honorable man. And that’s not an image I need.” Right, that voice belonged to Alexandra Souls, one of the young transactional attorneys Sloane had hired last year. Grace liked Alexandra. And Alexandra and Olivia-or-Sophia were friends from college, weren’t they?

  The interesting thing was: Grace hadn’t heard anyone talk about anything but Bankole dying today. Maybe these girls were too young or too far down the ladder to care.

  Or maybe they just thought this was bigger news.

  They really should check beneath the stalls.

  “Do you think that one is even true? The thing about the … ass?” asked Olivia-Sophia, sounding more titillated than scandalized.

  Alexandra just laughed.

  The points of Olivia-Sophia’s shoes turned to face the stalls. “Did you add anyone’s name?” she asked.

  Grace heard the toilet flush. “No … I—no…” Alexandra was saying. The response felt like a loaded gun. The hinges squeaked as Alexandra exited the stall. “You?”

  But then Alexandra must have washed her hands, because the faucet was blasting over their voices. Then the air dryer.

  Grace kneaded her temple. She was trying to put the pieces together. There was a spreadsheet that Alexandra and Olivia-Sophia had received. And it must contain a list of sorts. A list of sleazy men, they’d said. And they were passing it between themselves. Discussing it. (Grace was catching up, but a number of us had already seen this list. Adding to it, too. We were using dummy email addresses, fake usernames, and blind copy like they were going out of style faster than full-body rompers and split sleeves.)

  The sink suddenly shut off.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Alexandra was saying. “That guy obviously did something to piss someone off. So, I’m sure he deserves it. They should all lose their jobs.”

  Grace flinched. What about due process, she thought, though she instantly felt like a law school goody-two-shoes, which she supposed she had actually been.

  Alexandra and Olivia-Sophia were leaving and Grace couldn’t hear the rest of their exchange, only the murmur of voices sliced off by the closing door behind them, leaving Grace with only a sense of unease to keep her company.

  Though, on second thought, perhaps she’d had that already.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  20-MAR

  None of us had time. For anything, it seemed. If time was currency, we were all going broke. Somet
imes, we’d see a book hit the New York Times bestseller list with a promising title like I Know How She Does It or Overwhelmed. For a few weeks, we’d pass it between us, trying to use the advice like a trendy new diet plan. But for all of us, there were—how do the pundits put it?—institutional roadblocks.

  First, we were working with less time than the men in our office. That was just a fact. Thirty minutes to blow-dry our hair in the morning. Ten minutes to straighten and curl it. Fifteen for makeup. Three minutes for jewelry. Sixteen minutes to pick out an outfit. Forty-five minutes of cardio in the evening, followed by the occasional fifteen minutes of abdominal work. If you think we’re making this up, we suggest a quick search through the staff profile pictures on the company website to see what we mean.

  There were economies of scale, too. Time was a finite resource, so who should get the most of it? Those of us who were moms had the most compelling argument: consider the children! But what about the rest? We sat in our offices listening to the tick of our biological clocks as they counted out every missed date, missed chance encounter, missed opportunity to meet someone with whom we might actually want to become a mother. And then—the bait-and-switch. If we did become wives and mothers, the value on our time increased as the amount plummeted.

  These were not fixed cost deductions. Maybe we’d decide to forgo the Christmas card photos of tartan-clad children and not have kids at all. But too often that felt like a choice for career, and career only. A tacit decision to forfeit our free time at the door, please and thank you. Someone should teach a graduate course on the intricacies of our time. We wonder if, perhaps, Shonda Rhimes is available?

  Sloane had been staring at her computer screen for too long. Outside, the sun had gone down. The Dallas skyline—its glittering orb and glowing suspension bridges—gradually gave way to the gaudy electronic billboard, spanning cement-to-sky, of the city’s Omni Hotel.