Whisper Network

by Chandler Baker

  She rubbed her eyes, no longer caring whether she left black smudges at the corners. When she was just out of law school, working at a firm, she would have known precisely how long she’d been reviewing the form 8-K for filing. Law firms forced their attorneys to measure their time in six-minute increments. But that was well over a decade and two offices ago. Now Sloane still sometimes found herself silently keeping a running log of her time:

  .1 hours, eating pho

  .2 hours, texting with Derek and Abigail

  .1 hours, reading trash tabloid websites

  4.5 hours, revising press release exhibits and data table exhibits to SEC filings

  Her phone vibrated on her computer stand. It was Derek. She picked up on the second buzz.

  “She lives!” Sloane loved the sound of her husband’s voice. She pictured him, leaning over the island in their kitchen, his copper hair a bit too long around the ears, a threadbare Nirvana T-shirt—the same one he’d been wearing the day they met and which she still liked to steal at least once a week to wear to bed—stretched over his shoulders.

  She had four missed calls. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m the worst. Have you considered getting a new wife?”

  Years ago, Derek had imposed a rule that Sloane not be allowed to apologize for doing her job anymore. But she figured the rule was hers to break.

  “No worries,” he said, in his easy manner. Not that his job wasn’t stressful. Derek was a middle-school teacher and preteen boys were a nightmare. But it was a different kind of stress and theirs never needed to compete. “Just calling to check on you. Oh, I sent in Abigail’s forms for the walkathon next week and turned in the check for her piano recital, so you can cross those two items off your list.”

  “You know how I love to cross,” she said, scanning a line in the filing that she’d already tried to read three times. She’d forgotten about the forms entirely. “Thank you.”

  There was a short silence, just enough space for them both to recall that they’d argued last night. The longer they were married, the easier it was to push “pause” on an intense disagreement and pick it up at a later time—preferably one that wasn’t past Sloane’s bedtime. But there it was again. Like a little shared bruise that she’d only just remembered how she’d gotten.

  “How is she?” asked Sloane at the same time that Derek said, “She seems fine. I’ve been watching her since she got home.”

  The fight had been about Abigail. It was always about Abigail these days. She could almost hear Derek in her head telling her, It wasn’t a fight, it was a disagreement. Fine, but Sloane liked hyperbole and, when it came to her daughter, she felt entitled to it.

  It began a couple of months ago. Abigail had grown sulky. She stopped playing with her dolls. Sloane had asked her rather innocuously to please clean them up and Abigail had yelled that—and Sloane was paraphrasing here—perhaps everyone would be happier if Abigail were dead.

  Derek thought Sloane was overreacting. He taught seventh grade English, which, if you asked him, meant that he had the market cornered on early childhood development expertise. But Sloane had the market cornered on Abigail. She took her to a psychologist, who assured her a “death and dying” phase was a perfectly normal part of childhood development. “I told you, Sloane. Perfectly normal,” Derek had repeated on the way home as if he, too, had a doctorate in psychology.

  But then a few days later, Sloane spotted the text messages popping up on the screen of Abigail’s phone. Slut. Bitch. Cunt. Each one felt like a bullet to the chest. Nobody told her this before she became a mother. That suddenly your diligently built-up immunity toward all these things, like name-calling and popularity contests, would up and leave the second someone took aim at your child.

  She had shaken Abigail’s phone in Derek’s face and screamed, “Is this normal? Is this peeeerfectly normal, Derek?”

  Of course, that hadn’t been fair to Derek, the dad who knew the names of all Abigail’s classmates and brought donuts for the homeroom teachers. When he read those messages, he’d been so terrifyingly dad-like, it had actually been a bit of a turn on.

  Sloane wanted to sue the school district for what had happened. Remedial action. Adequate protection. Legal consequences, if they weren’t going to take her seriously. But the school district was also Derek’s employer, which meant that he wanted her to “play nice.” He’d used those words specifically.

  They’d presented a united front at the meeting and Sloane let Derek take point just as he’d asked. Insisted, really. It had not felt great.

  Over the phone, she heard him scratch the roughness of his chin. Sloane typed through the pause because she couldn’t afford not to. “Sloane, I’m sorry, I—”

  At the sound of a soft knock at the door, she twisted her chair around. Ardie leaned on the doorframe, her black blazer and pants more wrinkled than usual.

  “Derek, I’m sorry, but I have to go.” She heard him sigh and felt a wave of guilt. “Love you.”

  “Don’t work too hard,” he said before hanging up and Sloane knew that he really did mean it in an altruistic, please-don’t-have-a-mental-breakdown type way, the way he often confiscated her laptop after eleven because he’d read that ambient blue light was bad for her sleep.

  Sloane moved her phone to the other side of her keyboard. “Have you been standing there long?”

  Ardie invited herself in and rested her hands on the back of Sloane’s guest chair. “Long enough to see that you need to go home.” She passed Sloane a brown accordion folder. “Here are the tax appeals for the Waco factory site. Sorry, another thing for you to review, I know. But if it makes you feel better, I haven’t even started reviewing the tax models for the subscription box acquisition.”

  Sloane dropped the folder onto her desk. Thunk. She had been meaning to talk to Ardie for a couple of weeks now, ever since it had become clear that the tiny little secret she was keeping from her friend—it was nothing—was becoming more of a lasting issue. But, well, today truly wasn’t the day for opening up a can of worms. Of course, this did sound vaguely like an excuse, but it wasn’t. More of a strategy.

  “I heard Sales took the rest of the day off to mourn Bankole’s passing, can you believe that?” Sloane said instead.

  Ardie widened her eyes dramatically. “Listen, Sloane, you mustn’t make light. Those twentysomethings’ feelings are valid.” She pressed her palms together as if in meditation. “They can’t be expected to work and feel things at the same time. Lead with empathy, okay?”

  One of the best things about Ardie was that she could be just a little bit mean exactly when Sloane needed her to be. Sloane’s most closely held tenet was that women could not be real friends unless they were willing to talk shit together. It was the closest thing she knew to a blood pact that didn’t involve knives.

  “I, like, so, so sincerely apologize.” Sloane rested her palm over her heart and gave her best pouty frown, or at least she hoped she did. She’d just recently started a Botox regimen—she was ever-so-slightly on the other side of forty, after all—and she wasn’t entirely sure what her face looked like at any given moment anymore. “If they were smart, they’d be trying to figure out who the next CEO’s going to be.”

  “If they were smart they’d be worrying about the price of their stock options.”

  “Do you think they’ll bring in an outsider?” Sloane asked.

  “Your guess is as good as mine, but my bet? Bringing in someone new would take too long. Anyway,” she sighed, “Michael’s daycare charges a dollar for every minute I’m late to pick him up, which means I’m already going to owe…” She glanced at her watch. “One gajillion dollars.”

  “I thought we paid you to be good at math.”

  “Oh, you do. That’s an accurate figure, I assure you—”

  They stopped short.

  In the doorway, Katherine had her sweater folded over one arm. She glanced between the two of them. “Sloane, if it’s all right with you, I thought I might
step out for the night.”

  She made a demure motion to tuck a lock of hair behind her ear. Odd, Sloane thought, because Katherine’s hair was far too short to be tucked anywhere. It was like reaching for a phantom limb.

  Despite all of her righteous indignation, Sloane had nearly forgotten about Katherine. She hadn’t known what to do with her on her first day. Katherine was pretty in the way that meant Sloane had to remind herself to like her. The older she got, the more she found herself wanting to dislike young, pretty women. It was a terrible impulse, but one that Sloane curbed diligently.

  Sloane gave an exhausted smile. “Oh, yes, please, go home, report back tomorrow and remind me what homes are like. Are they nice? Do they have beds? Down pillows? Is that where people keep their paj—?” She stopped. She’d seen something, a long shadow in the hall. She stood up on her bare feet and tiptoed closer to the doorway to peer around Katherine. “Is someone lurking behind you?” she asked.

  Ames poked his head in and cleared his throat. “No, no, just me.” He waved at Ardie and nodded toward Sloane. “I promised Katherine I’d take her out for a drink, welcome her to the office, pick her brain about her experience, that sort of thing.”

  Promised. The word rang in Sloane’s brain. It sounded so paternal coming from Ames.

  Sloane knew she should have been saying something. Her mind was moving slowly. So much had happened today. Desmond had died today. Less than twelve hours earlier, in fact. His body might hardly be cold and yet now Ames was taking this new woman—Katherine—out for drinks. That couldn’t be right, could it? But they were standing there looking at her, waiting, and yes, she had heard Ames correctly. She was sure of it. Ames was taking Katherine out for drinks. Tonight.

  The memory surfaced unbidden.

  A quiet warning Sloane received from her mentor, Elizabeth Moretti, back at Jaxon Brockwell the day she’d announced she was taking the job at Truviv. Over the two years she spent at Jaxon, Elizabeth had pulled her aside exactly twice with that look on her face, the appraising one with the subtext that read, “I am older than you, I am wiser, and I have seen things.” That day, she looked at Sloane and said: Watch out for Ames Garrett, and she had left it at that.

  Right. Well, fat amount of good it had done her, as Sloane had confidently shaken Ames’s hand on day one at Truviv, and six months later, they were screwing.

  Now Ames was watching her. Ardie was watching her. And Katherine was looking back and forth between all of them, as if still trying to puzzle it through. Sloane stared at her desk. Calls she needed to return. Emails she needed to write. She pinched her eyes shut, a sign that she was about to do something colossally stupid.

  “Great idea,” she said. “I’ll grab my purse.”

  Ames and Katherine stared at her. It wasn’t as if she’d said she was going to join the circus, for fuck’s sake.

  Ames looked amused. “I thought you were buried?”

  “The hole will still be here when I return.” She, too, could enjoy temporary amnesia.

  Ames’s head bobbed slowly. “Great,” he said. “We’ll meet you at the elevator, then.” He slapped the doorframe twice on his way past, as he and Katherine walked out.

  Ardie spun on Sloane. “Are you sure about this?”

  Sloane looked up at the ceiling, palms turned up. “No, of course I’m not sure about this, Ardie.”

  “Then do you want to tell me why—?”

  “You know exactly why.”

  Ardie crossed her arms and raised her eyebrow expectantly.

  “I don’t know,” said Sloane, exasperated. She pointed at the door and lowered her voice. “I guess maybe I’d like to prevent the slaughter of the sacrificial lamb this time. You might have seen her scampering about. Five-five-ish. Pixie cut. Doll face. Happy?” She scooped up her purse and slung it over her right shoulder. “It’s one drink.” She held up a finger to Ardie’s skeptical face.

  “One,” Ardie conceded. “And I’m going to call karma and put in a good word.”

  Sloane closed her eyes, exhausted. She felt the phantom creases wanting to burrow into the bridge of her nose. She knew that if she asked, even hinted, Ardie would go with her, daycare pickup or no. Sloane was lucky that way.

  “Coming from you,” she said, “that would mean a lot.” She clasped her friend’s wrist for a split second, wanting to linger. They still kept a half-drunk bottle of gin in the file cabinet from the last time they’d had to save a woman from Ames Garrett. Only last time, that woman had been Sloane.

  Truviv Instant Messenger

  21/04—4:31 PM

  Recipient: Sloane Glover

  Sender: [Blocked]

  Slut.

  Bitch.

  Cunt.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  20-MAR

  How few words we said to each other in the elevator. We’d step in, smelling freshly of shampoo and mouthwash. The smooth heave against our feet, pulling us up into the air, couriering us to our floors. Each time the doors opened, a small portal into another world appeared.

  We got proficient at sorting each other by our respective floors before the button was even pushed. Marketing? Welcome to the eighth floor graveyard of former cheerleaders in limbo as they decided whether to attend grad school. Sales account lead on twelve? We could spot her fresh manicure tapping at her phone screen, the designer purse hooked over one shoulder broadcasting that she must be having a really good year. We might quietly ask a Product Development Coordinator where she got the new glasses. Or give space to the woman in the black suit who entered behind us and resolutely pressed the button for fifteen.

  But what did we really know about each other? We were separated by steel and scaffolding. Our universes seemed disconnected, occasionally bumping up against each other because of proximity alone. Or so we thought.

  We needed only to have knocked at the door to one another’s worlds to find out how our histories knitted themselves together, weaving shared threads into a noose of our own making.

  This was very nearly what happened when Rosalita and Crystal, the new girl, stood outside a fifteenth floor office. With alarm, Crystal hissed, “There’s someone in there.” She jerked back from the door as though it had burned her. Rosalita let out a slow breath that did nothing to conceal her annoyance, which was the point.

  It was nine-thirty at night. Together, Rosalita and Crystal had been working through the darkened floors, vacuuming and emptying out trash cans, wiping down countertops, and replacing toilet paper. The office windows were flat black holes staring out into space. Inside, the automatic hall lights illuminated the square of office space in which the pair of women worked. After they moved on, the lights would flicker off.

  The lights used to bother Rosalita. They made her feel like she was in a spotlight, being observed. Even worse, sometimes a set of lights would flicker on at the end of a corridor and she would freeze, heart beating fast, waiting for someone to appear. When no one did, she still had to finish her round, but never without checking over her shoulder every few minutes.

  “Moths,” her supervisor once told her. That had been years ago, when Rosalita first began cleaning, a few months after her uncle had driven her and her sister in a sweaty van up from the Valley. At some point, she let other worries replace the lights.

  “It’s fine,” Rosalita told Crystal, placing neat check marks on the paper attached to the clipboard, noting the offices they’d completed. At the shift meeting, she’d been glad to be assigned again to her usual floors. One of the executives had died and soon there’d be the business of cleaning out his office. Rosalita wanted no part of that.

  “Should I knock?” Crystal asked.

  Rosalita swished past Crystal, rapped twice on the open door, and, without waiting for an answer, took efficient steps into the occupied fifteenth-floor office. She snapped up the trash and recycling bins, carrying them back into the hallway.

  This was how the new girl would be taught.

  Rosalita had learned that
the secret to being invisible wasn’t to tiptoe around the perimeters. That only drew attention and made everyone else uneasy in the process. No, the secret to invisibility was speed and purpose. Those qualities allowed others to relax and go about their jobs as if you weren’t even there.

  Rosalita emptied the bins into the rolling dumpster. She replaced the plastic lining and reentered the office. The blonde woman looked up from her computer screen. “How’s your night going?” she asked Rosalita amicably.

  Rosalita replaced the cans in the corner and brushed off her gloved hands.

  She recognized this springy, blonde woman. Sloane Glover, the woman’s name appeared on the silver plate outside her door. She reminded Rosalita of a talk show host, polished and sparkly. She was the exact right type of white woman to cause an international media firestorm if she ever went missing.

  “Fine, miss,” Rosalita answered. “And you?”

  The woman sighed and tilted back in her chair. “How do you say ‘shitty’ in Spanish?”

  Rosalita snorted a harsh laugh, the kind born from common misery.

  Abruptly Sloane lifted her head. “Sorry. God.” She shook her head and pushed her fingers into her temples. She didn’t seem so springy or sparkly today. Her eyes, Rosalita noticed, were red. Not work, but a shopping website occupied her screen. “I—didn’t mean. I’m such an idiot. That was such a rude thing to say. To assume, I mean.” Sloane looked Rosalita directly in the eyes. “It’s been a long night. Not an excuse.” She held up a hand as if to stop someone from striking her.

  Rosalita waited patiently until the Sloane woman was done. She had a lot of words and they all seemed to need to come out at once. “De mierda,” Rosalita said.

  “What?”

  “Shitty. De mierda.” Rosalita frowned, considering. “Or … no vale mierda. De pura mierda. Take your pick.” She shrugged. If Rosalita should have been offended over Sloane’s assumption, she didn’t know why. She had dark, wavy hair and bronze skin. She spoke with a thick accent. And besides, she’d lived in Guanajuato until she was twelve. Sure, there were times when Rosalita did not like to be asked to speak Spanish—mostly when the request came from men (a fetish). But otherwise, she didn’t get so offended, like some of the younger girls. It took too much energy.