Whisper Network

by Chandler Baker

  Sloane smiled gratefully. “De mierda, indeed. Thanks.” Impulsively, Sloane’s eyes flitted back to her screen and then, remembering, to Rosalita. Her smile faltered. “I’m sorry,” she apologized for the second time in fewer than five minutes.

  Rosalita knew she’d been dismissed. She didn’t hold it against Sloane, who looked as if she should have gone home hours ago.

  Returning to the hall, she ticked the box next to Sloane Glover’s office on her clipboard. “Go get a bottled water for Mrs. Glover from the fridge,” she told Crystal. “I’ll take care of the next one.” Crystal obeyed. She was young and possibly pregnant, Rosalita guessed, though she had been hiding it well beneath the baggy, company-issued polo.

  Rosalita pushed the supply cart, slowly, methodically over the carpet. What she knew with the certainty of someone who’d seen it too many times before was that, tonight, Sloane Glover was drunk.

  Ardie Valdez

  So … how did it go? What did you learn? What’s her story?

  Grace Stanton

  How did what go? What are we talking about? Who?

  Ardie Valdez

  Sloane had drinks with Ames and Katherine last night. Katherine is that woman that sat in on the meeting yesterday. She’s new, apparently. Started in the office yesterday. Ames hired her without talking to Sloane. Classic.

  Grace Stanton

  Sorry, out of the loop. Drinks … with Ames? Really?

  Sloane Glover

  Sorry! Sorry! I’m here. Just now getting to the office. Anyway … Yes, drinks with Ames. Uneventful. Was on his best behavior. Katherine. Is. Pedigree. Think: Westminster dog show. Harvard Law. Associate at Frost Klein. Hails from Boston. (Hence the shoes?) Not a lot of “Southern warmth” if you know what I mean. May take some time to thaw. Fuck though, I’m drowning. Thank Tina Fey she’s smart.

  Ardie Valdez

  Hey, what are all the secretaries doing gathered around Beatrice’s screen? Something about a spreadsheet. Does someone have a big Excel project going on?

  Grace Stanton

  I don’t know, but I heard the first-years talking about a spreadsheet yesterday. Something about sleazy businessmen in Dallas. Forgot to tell you. Does anyone have a Clif Bar? I’m starving.

  Ardie Valdez

  No, sorry. I have SunChips in my desk, though. Help yourself.

  CHAPTER SIX

  21-MAR

  We were always looking for the perfect man. Even those of us who were not signed up for the traditional, heteronormative experience were nevertheless fascinated with the anthropological, unicorn-like search for one. Married or single, we were either searching for him or trying to mold him from one we already had. This perfect specimen would consist of the following essential attributes:

  He shared his food and always ordered dessert. When we recommended a book, he bought it without needing a friend to second our suggestion first. He knew how to pack a diaper bag without being told. He was a Southern gentleman with a mother from the East Coast who fostered his quietly progressive sensibilities. He said “I love you” after 2.5 months. He didn’t get drunk. He knew how to do taxes. He never questioned our feminist ideals when we refused to squish bugs or change oil. He didn’t sit down to put on his shoes. He had enough money for retirement. He wished vehemently for male-hormonal birth control. He had a slight unease with the concept of women’s shaved vaginas, but not enough to take a stance one way or another. He thought Mindy Kaling was funny. He liked throw pillows. He didn’t care if we made more money than him. He liked women his own age.

  We were reasonable and irrational, cynical and naïve, but always, always on the hunt.

  Of course, this story isn’t about perfect men, but Ardie Valdez unfortunately didn’t know that yet when, the day after Desmond’s untimely death, Ardie’s phone lit up: a notification from her dating app.

  Jesus, the thing still startled her. Her phone spent so much time vibrating she wished she had saved the money on that post-divorce sex toy and waited for her phone to buzz.

  Ardie looked at her screen:

  You’re on fire. You’ve got 1 new message.

  There was even a “fire” icon next to the text, as if the app seemed precisely designed to remind Ardie she was too old to be dating. It was an emoji world now, and Ardie was just living in it.

  Ardie had started at Truviv eighteen months before Sloane. Same skeptical, not easily impressed Ardie, but with much better clothes. Sloane liked to tell people that if it weren’t for Sloane’s ripped pencil skirt and Ardie’s emergency sewing kit, they might never have become friends. But Ardie knew that wasn’t true. Sloane was actually very good at picking friends and Ardie discovered shortly thereafter that Sloane always kept an emergency sewing kit in her own desk drawer anyway. Ardie had never told her that she knew.

  Life was much brighter then, she’d admit that much. Full of possibilities and silly anecdotes. Before she became this new Ardie, a forty-two-year-old divorcée.

  Last year, in the pickup line at Starbucks, Ardie finally worked up the courage to tell Sloane she was leaving her husband, Tony. Another woman has been sleeping with my husband, she’d said, in her typically sardonic fashion. So I guess he’s hers now.

  Sloane had flown into a fury on her behalf. All: How could Tony do this? What about Michael? What about the house?

  Ardie had just turned to her, handed her a vanilla latte, and said one word: “Don’t.”

  The subtext was clear: no, not you, don’t you start.

  Things were delicate between them for a brief while after that.

  She’d known for years about Sloane and Ames. She wasn’t like Sloane. Best friend was a person, not a tier, for Ardie. She didn’t have a high school best friend, a college best friend, a law school best friend, a preschool mom best friend, and a work best friend, which was Ardie’s assigned moniker when Sloane spoke to her other best friends. And so with one syllable—“don’t”—Ardie had told her only best friend that, no, she had to stop, no, they would not talk about it, no, she wouldn’t be allowed to commiserate over the miserable human being Ardie’s husband turned out to be.

  Because, as they both knew, Sloane had been the other woman too. With another man, sure, but what did that matter? That was a category. A tier, in fact. And there was guilt by association.

  It was amazing how, even now, even in the privacy of her own head, Ardie glossed over her role in the story. The secret that was buried so deep that it registered only the smallest spike in her pulse as she skipped through the memory. A blank space. A lie.

  But what did it matter now? They were over it. Gin under the bridge, as it were. In fact, six weeks ago, Sloane insisted Ardie sign up for Match.com and Ardie, as was typical, indulged her. She’d even let Sloane type up Ardie’s profile one night after work and, in the morning, Sloane presented it to her as if she were unveiling a new car in the driveway. “Derek told me I was being too pushy.” Sloane had been talking too fast, describing how she’d filled out the profile next to her husband in bed. “But what does he know? He’s such a man.” (And what did men know about matchmaking, by the way? For us, it was an Olympic sport, while they hoarded single friends like they were stockpiling them for the apocalypse.)

  Ardie didn’t have the heart to tell Sloane that no one used Match.com anymore and she’d been using three dating apps regularly at that point. But she appreciated Sloane’s intrusion into her new—it still felt new, even fourteen months after the divorce—dating life much more than she let on. It was good to get a friend’s opinion.

  Ardie made room for her phone on her desk. The thumbnail of the man who emailed looked promising. Her heart crept toward her throat. She liked this part. It was like opening up a little present.

  Hello. My name is Colby. I am a simple guy. I like fishing and only own jeans, but I swear I have a job. I sell granite, stone, and other sorts of residential remodeling supplies. It sounds super boring so you know that I can’t be making that part up. On the weekends, I take
my dog walking around White Rock Lake and I’m enjoying some different shows on Netflix. I’ve been married once. No kids, unfortunately.

  Let me know if you would like to meet up.

  Best, Colby

  P.S.: W/E, FFA

  Ardie read the email twice through. She wasn’t usually drawn to “country guys,” but she appreciated Colby’s straightforward tone. And couldn’t she picture herself learning to fish? Wouldn’t Michael love that?

  She didn’t know what the post-script meant. These days, online dating was practically its own language. She typed the first acronym into her search bar. W/E.

  The answer came swiftly: well-endowed.

  Ardie let her head droop. So close, Colby, so close. The sense of disappointment was all too acute. Much as she and Sloane liked to make fun of millennials, online dating taught Ardie that younger people had an odd kind of resilience: impervious to some things, but completely open and vulnerable to virtually everything else.

  She entered the second acronym into her browser anyway. FFA.

  Fat Female Admirer.

  Ardie pressed her lips together. She looked down at the curl of skin escaping over the waist of her slacks and then, for reference, at her own profile picture.

  She wasn’t bothered by the idea that she was fat. She was bothered that she didn’t know it, as if her own body might have snuck up and changed without her noticing because she was, on the whole, alone, with nobody to track those types of changes aside from her. And what didn’t seem fair, what felt horribly cruel, was that Ardie had already gone through every agonizing dating ritual in her twenties, whittled her way down through the pile of men that came and went. She had selected her person and he had selected her and that was supposed to mean she would never again have to worry about the rightness or wrongness of things like being fat, because for someone, for that one person, they were okay. She was okay. Until she wasn’t.

  Ardie closed her eyes. Tried to shut it out. But the thoughts were already there, filtering in like mist through a window screen.

  She missed her husband. Or she missed being married. She wasn’t sure she knew the difference anymore. Ardie missed talking to him while he took a shower. She missed watching television together. She missed regaling the only person in the world who cared as much as she did with a painstakingly detailed account of all the small, funny, and amazing things Michael had done that day. She missed waking up in the middle of the night beside a lump in her bed.

  She just missed.

  * * *

  The office kitchen had a stylish finish, recently remodeled with matte green walls and stone backsplashes, sleek stainless-steel appliances Ardie wouldn’t have splurged for in her own home. As a company, Truviv had a bit of a psychological complex. It was, by local accounts, a cool company, but one that would have been cooler in, say, Austin or Portland. It had a lovely but not ostentatious gym with a healthy assortment of group classes. It was a sports apparel brand, after all. It cultivated a quiet sense of health and refinement by disallowing smoking outside the building (smokers had to go up to one of the balconies—there was an image to uphold) and encouraging men to wear the signature dry-fit dress shirts under their suits. Sporty, but dignified, in Dallas, where no one had ever gone gaga for the foosball-table-and-cereal-bar craze of open-concept tech companies.

  Ardie chose a ceramic mug from the cabinets. Last year, the company had also upgraded to Keurig machines, so she selected a pod that promised a pecan aroma and clamped it in. (Oh, how we loved free things like K-Cups and hand sanitizers and thanked god for purses in which to stuff them.) At home, Michael loved to operate the Keurig. He would be four in a couple of weeks and she’d been “pinning” images of superhero birthday parties and wondering if she was the sort of mom who made fake cities out of cardboard boxes. Her ex-husband’s new wife, Braylee, was exactly that kind of person.

  What kind of a name was Braylee, anyway? She wasn’t even that young. Thirty-nine. As the scorned wife, Ardie felt entitled to mock her ex-husband’s dumb bunny of a new wife. But Braylee worked in private equity and she wasn’t young or dumb, which made it all the more irritating.

  Braylee would be at the birthday party.

  Ardie had been maintaining a vague sense of hope she’d find a date to Michael’s party before the day arrived. A date! To her son’s birthday!

  As the Keurig groaned to life, Ardie saw Katherine coming into the kitchen. She had impeccable posture. Was impeccable posture a prerequisite to choosing a pixie cut? Ardie used her polite office smile and waved. “How are you settling in?”

  The blue-white light of the refrigerator illuminated Katherine’s cheeks and nose.

  “Oh, um, fine. Thanks.” Katherine reached in and selected a Coke Zero. “It’s different, I guess,” she said.

  “I’m sure.” Ardie could hardly think back to a time that she hadn’t worked at Truviv. Even in law school, she’d known she wanted to make the switch from a firm to in-house as quickly as possible. Billable hours weren’t for her. “Change can be good,” she said. “If only for the TexMex.”

  “Maybe.”

  “So, do you have any kids?” Ardie asked. People could be total curmudgeons at work, but get them talking about their children and they’d become suddenly human.

  Katherine began opening drawers in the kitchen, searching for what, Ardie had no idea. She paused. “Are you allowed to ask me that?”

  “I … think so, yes.”

  “Oh, then no. I don’t.” Katherine found a paper napkin, wrapped it around her aluminum can, and hip-checked the drawer back into place. “I’m not married, either.” The faintest hint of a smile.

  Ardie cleared her throat. “Me neither,” she said. “So I guess that leaves only religion and sexual orientation to cover, then?”

  Katherine squinted her eyes shut and gave a delicate laugh, then pushed her thumbs to her head. “Ow. Sorry.” She shook her head as though embarrassed.

  The door opened behind her, followed by the sound of men’s shoes, a hiss-swish against tile, punctuated every few steps by the light tap of a heel.

  “Ladies.” Ames breezed past Ardie, heading for the family-sized jug of animal crackers on the far counter. Ardie was prone to noticing the most trivially human aspects of Ames Garrett. Like the tufts of gray hair sprouting on the backs of his hands. Or the fold of loose skin between his jaw and neck.

  “How’d you like Savor? Cool place, right?” he asked Katherine, tilting his head back to pop one of the tiger, elephant, or lion cookies into his open mouth. “Ardie,” he said by way of acknowledgment. “I actually know the owner.” He chewed, looking again at Katherine.

  “Yes, thanks for arranging it,” Katherine replied. “It was nice of you to take the time.”

  The noise of Ames chewing was too loud between the three of them.

  “I don’t know any of the cool places yet,” she finished with a deferential nod. Sloane was right, of course. Katherine wasn’t naturally warm or bubbly. She seemed like a woman trying to be taken seriously. This was a problem distinct to pretty, young women, Ardie had found, this carving out of a place outside of their good looks, while still wanting to take advantage of them.

  “Stick with me, kid.” A starburst of wrinkles spread congenially from the corners of Ames’s eyes. “Feel free to stop by my office this afternoon. We can discuss next steps. We can even talk about that acquisition team you wanted to join, how about that?” Then—“Your coffee’s finished,” he said to Ardie, grabbing a Coke from the fridge. He hiss-swished again past her, pausing for a fraction of a second. “Only believe the nice things this one tells you about me, Katherine.” And his laugh, it lingered for a split second after the door closed behind him.

  Ardie glanced back at the coffee maker, using her considerable expertise in the art of looking unfazed. Ames left invisible pricks on the surface of Ardie’s skin and a vacuum of silence in his wake. “Well,” she said, making the conscious effort to fill it and regain the sense of equilibr
ium. “If you need anything, don’t hesitate.”

  Ardie turned to leave, trailing a ribbon of steam from her coffee cup behind her. As she was reaching the door, Katherine stopped her.

  “Actually, Advil?” Katherine asked. “Sorry, I think I have a bit of a migraine coming on. I get them occasionally. Do you … happen to know if there are any painkillers around here?”

  Ardie softened. She used to get migraines as a teenager. Nightmarish experiences. She could hardly function. Though was it possible, now that she thought about it, that there was more than the one drink last night? Sloane hadn’t texted her when she got back to the office and Ardie had fallen asleep before she remembered to check.

  Sloane had promised it would be only one.

  She studied Katherine.

  “The cabinet on the top left.” She pointed and Katherine pressed her fingers to her forehead and took a deep, relieved breath.

  Ardie watched her for a moment, a pained expression as she twisted the childproof top off a bottle of Advil. “Katherine,” she said, having the sudden, pressing urge to lay claim to her before Ames did. “I’m having a birthday party for my four-year-old next weekend. Sloane and Grace will be there. Do you want to come?”

  Deposition Transcript

  26-APR

  Ms. Sharpe:

  Please state your name.

  Respondent 2:

  Adriana Valdez.

  Ms. Sharpe: