“What do you think of Julia Lerner?” Alice asked.
It was late Saturday morning, and she and Cheri were in the apartment having breakfast: Alice dipping her Chinese doughnut in the soy milk she’d purchased fresh yesterday, while Cheri peeled back the lid on her second Scandinavian yogurt. As she watched her cousin eat, Alice reminded herself that Cheri didn’t deliberately consume her food to be annoying; that over Cheri’s years of cohabitation with a string of high-net-worth admirers she’d grown removed from the payment of necessities such as rent or car insurance. Each month, when Alice calculated and wrote down Cheri’s share of the utilities, Cheri would receive the sticky note in wonder: “So interesting,” she’d remark. “Crazy how the electricity costs so much in winter.”
“Julia Lerner?” Cheri repeated as she scooped a mouthful of vanilla coconut, Alice’s favorite. The yogurts came in a four-pack that also contained blueberry, strawberry, and banana; as per habit, Alice ate the flavors she disliked first, saving the best for last, which was usually when Cheri swooped.
“Yeah, you know who that is?” Alice ripped off another piece of doughnut.
“Yes. I do read. A ton of articles.” Cheri scraped the edges of the cup. “The Tangerine exec, right? I mean, I don’t know that much about her. I didn’t read her book.”
“She doesn’t have a book.”
“Oh. I mean, her TED talk.”
“She doesn’t have a TED talk. At least I don’t think,” Alice said, as if she weren’t sure, though she was. When she’d first realized User 555’s identity, Alice had backed away from the laptop, hands apart as if in surrender; she’d intended to stop there, to delete all her reports and searches, but had somehow entered a Julia Lerner internet rat hole instead, one in which endless material was available on her quarry. Julia Lerner on the glass ceiling. Julia Lerner on women and power. Julia Lerner on holiday entertaining, double standards, marriage and house chores. And, as of the last weeks, Julia Lerner on motherhood.
It was something in Julia’s manner, Alice had thought just earlier this morning, as she’d scanned yet another piece—one in which she was assured she would simply not believe What Julia Lerner Has To Say About THIS!, in which the THIS! was revealed to be a speech titled “Balancing Personal Ambition with Corporate Objectives,” given at Duke’s commencement—a self-aware, performative quality, which Alice instinctively disliked. After finishing the article, Alice had scrolled to the comments:
Remember she only got where she is because she fucked Pierre Roy
This feminazi discriminates against all men! I see a coming male purge, and then a revolt! Shareholders will not stand, especially when she doesn’t deliver!
Anyone else think she’s a crazy fucking cunt?
As she read, Alice’s disgust had been undermined by a shallow, guilty pleasure; she knew that as a thirty-five-year-old Chinese American woman with moderate if vague ambitions she should actually be cheering the self-promotional activities of Julia Lerner. After all, didn’t that ubiquitous argument apply: that the men were awful, too? As if it were acceptable for Pierre to threaten to take Tangerine private (it was just idle conjecture, Pierre said, though you know if he wanted he totally could); as if he didn’t bear equal or greater responsibility for God Mode, and a world where it was acceptable for a thirty-four-year-old to be worth billions and purchase entire neighborhoods in Palo Alto.
“Are these from your mom?” Cheri held up a pack of pineapple cakes, which June had pressed upon Alice along with fried noodle leftovers last Sunday.
“Yes.”
Cheri turned over the pack, studying the foreign kcal nutritional data before setting it down with a sigh. “Your mom is so cute.” An esteem Alice knew was reciprocated by June. It’d been June who suggested Alice call her cousin, after learning of Jimmy’s desertion. Cheri was living at home, June said, she had just broken up with her boyfriend, he would not propose, and she would not stand for it! That June framed Cheri’s predicament in such favorable terms was not lost on Alice; the boyfriend, a thirty-eight-year-old CEO of a payments-processing unicorn, was considered one of the better-looking bachelors in the Valley. Prior to him, Cheri had dated the CFO of one of his competitors, and before him a richly compensated Israeli engineering VP at Google. “She needs to settle,” Jimmy had once commented. “Stop aiming for the top guys. She’s just going to get older and then have to drop her standards even lower. It’s the basic yield curve.”
Alice made a surreptitious inspection of Cheri. Her cousin was bare-faced, and dressed in leggings and a cropped tee. She had that appearance of certain mixed-race Asians, where from specific angles they just looked like a slightly exotic, extremely attractive Caucasian person. In the sun, her hair was near blond, and her eyes were a mix of hazel and flecks of green, which brought to mind the admiring discussions their Chinese relatives would have over Cheri’s features, fussing over her enormous eyes and high nose bridge; a written transcript of these conversations might read to an unfamiliar audience as a meeting of white supremacists.
“I do think it’s cool, you know, that she’s a woman,” Cheri said. “I mean, it’s hard, right?”
“You think that because she’s female, she should get extra credit,” Alice said. “That we should go easier on her.”
“Well yeah,” Cheri said automatically as she turned to the fridge, where Alice knew—just knew!—she was going to go for the expensive dark chocolate mousse. “Don’t you?”
“I don’t know.”
“You know she just had a baby.” Cheri was still holding open the fridge door, oblivious to the cold draining out.
“Yes. Everyone knows.”
Cheri shut the fridge without taking anything. She lifted an ankle to the counter and stretched, effortlessly touching her head to her toes. “You think she’s kind of a fake,” she remarked as she rose.
“Maybe. Or that she’s a bitch.” Saying the word out loud felt strange; Alice wasn’t used to it. In college, she’d admired girls who could shout it as an endearment: Heyyyyy, bitch!
“Everyone’s a bitch. At least she’s a good person.”
“Why do you think that? Because she says so?”
Cheri switched legs. “Why think something terrible about someone when you can believe the best?”
“Because people aren’t nice,” Alice said, voice breaking. “They aren’t nice at all.”
“Oh, Alice.” Cheri slid her leg off the counter and, before Alice could escape, had already come around and trapped her in a hug. After a second, Alice placed an arm stiffly around Cheri’s back; she then broke the embrace and began to clear the counter of dishes.
“Let me do mine,” Cheri said, snatching up her empty yogurt cup and spoon. She dropped the spoon into the sink with a clang and threw the cup toward the recycling bin—it bounced off the side and rolled underneath the shoe rack, where Alice eventually retrieved it.
MONTHLY BUDGET
Seated at her desk, the pen spinning between her fingers, Alice stared at the numbers until they blurred. Here, on this sheet, were the monthly obligations she risked by continuing her obsession with one of the most important executives in her company.
Alice was aware that on the topic of “corporate responsibility” she held a particularly flimsy claim; she had never even considered the ethics of any company she worked for, instead opting to prioritize attributes such as salary, free meals, and proximity to the 280. It was her parents’ contention that a company’s dissemination of authoritarian propaganda, its right to monetize user data, were subjects for white people to worry about—specifically, white people with funded retirements and paid-off mortgages. Who’d never had to weigh each decision on that internal scale of financial levy: how much in gas and parking to drive to San Francisco in traffic, was ordering water okay on a “coffee” date, did you really have to press 20 percent tip just for getting a muffin when they tilted at you that little screen? White people, white Americans, June said, were to be admired: they adopted children from all over, and when had you ever seen a Japanese person with a Rwandan baby or vice versa? Yes, there were some bad ones, but the good examples were what made the country so admirable.
But Chinese people, immigrants: their job was to survive.
Alice logged back in to God Mode. After a brief deliberation, she printed Logan’s messages with Chloe Kirkpatrick. This, she promised herself, would be the last time she used the tool.
Her email chimed. Alice ignored it. Having made the decision about God Mode, she now felt at peace; she considered painting her nails and browsed Gap online for pajamas. She added two pairs of loose cotton pants to her cart and opened Tangerine Mail.
And then, seconds later, began to panic.
To: Alice Lu
From: Nicole Wallace
Subject: Invite: Roundtable with Julia Lerner
Dear Alice,
I am pleased to inform you that you have been personally selected to join the next roundtable with Julia Lerner. As you may know, Julia conducts very few of these intimate ten-person roundtables throughout the year, and personally invites only those employees she believes to be rising talents within Tangerine.
While the roundtables are invite-only, there is high demand for the slots. If you cannot make it, please let me know as soon as possible so that another woman might have the opportunity.
Best regards,
Nicole Wallace
Executive Assistant to Julia Lerner