The mansion was steel and glass and light, a box of electricity set high in the hills of Los Altos. From the passenger seat of Cheri’s Audi, Alice watched the brake lights of the car in front, a Tesla with a custom green paint job, wink on and off; every twenty seconds or so the car would lurch forward as the inhabitants of another vehicle alighted and went in. It was only when they drew closer that Alice could make out details of some of the guests: a man with blond hair, dressed in loose shorts with a dangling drawstring, clasping the hand of a woman in a red bandage dress. “Yes!” the woman was shouting. “Fucking awesome!”
Oh God, Alice thought. Please let me get through this.
It was ten days earlier that Alice had hit upon her idea: how she might resolve the issue of Julia and God Mode, all while conveniently transferring the moral burden to another person to boot. To wait and see was no longer viable, after her meeting with Tara; Alice had to assume Julia knew who she was, and at least attempt to protect herself. That Alice’s plan had certain flaws, some major gaping assumptions, was outweighed by the fact that any alternate route she’d considered was even worse—and all involved the Tangerine employee whistleblower hotline in some fashion, a corporate tool of which the last known users had found themselves either fired or sued by the company or both. That same day, Alice had walked the quarter mile to Building Eight for lunch. There was a burrito purveyor there with two thousand Yelp reviews that for twenty years had been based out of Oakland until Pierre paid the owner to move. She asked for a to-go box, and after she returned home from work set her bait on the kitchen counter.
Cheri came out of her room minutes later. “The smell,” she said. “It’s driving me craaaazy.” She immediately went to the food.
“Hey,” Cheri said, once half the carne asada was gone, “did you want some? This isn’t your dinner, right?”
“No. I’m fine.” Alice needed the whole burrito to keep Cheri sated and at her most cooperative. Though on the drive home the car had filled with the most delicious scent; she had cursed herself then for not getting two.
“How’s it going?” Cheri asked. There was a drop of avocado on her chin, which to Alice’s dismay was almost adorable, as if Cheri were the fun-loving mother in a commercial.
“I was wondering. If I could come with you to a party.”
Cheri gasped. “A party?”
“Yeah. If you could manage it.” Alice fingered the box. “Spare a plus-one.”
“A plus-one,” Cheri repeated in wonder. “Any party?”
Better to just say it: even when she was a kid, Alice had never been the type to peel off a bandage slowly. “A Smash Bash.”
Cheri dropped the burrito. “My God, I feel like I’m dreaming. A Smash Bash—I didn’t even go to the last one! Alice, are you okay?”
Smash Bashes were the impossibly embarrassing name for the bacchanals regularly thrown by the venture capitalist Barry Levine at his ultramodernist mansion; the parties were a poorly held secret within the higher echelons of the tech community, though Alice had come into her knowledge not through some social back channel but rather via Cheri, after she’d returned home one evening from yet another event. Still drunk, Cheri had kicked off her heels and then, sprawled on the couch, begun to narrate to a rapt Alice the ecosystem of Silicon Valley parties. At the top were the private gatherings, like the “Billionaire Huddles” organized by Fort Capital. These were difficult to score invites to if you were not currently a billionaire or sleeping with one, and sometimes, as Cheri hinted, the scrutiny incited by a mostly sober small-group atmosphere was not conducive to certain dating goals, if you know what I mean. In Cheri’s rant, she’d described the Smash Bashes as occupying a middle tier; there were a lot of prime candidates for sure, but also a bunch of model types and old dudes, a drag on both supply and demand. But the food was great, the house spectacular if modern design was your thing and still, like, a really expensive house if not. And there was always the chance you could corner the lonely rider of some rising unicorn—the guest list, Cheri said, was usually excellent.
And more important, for Alice’s purposes: Sean Dara was known to be a regular attendee.
“A Smash Bash,” Cheri said again. Her gaze slipped, and Alice was afraid: that her roommate might laugh, or say no, she couldn’t possibly bring her. Instead Cheri chuckled and got ready to cram the rest of the burrito into her mouth. “Oh yeah,” she said. “This will be fun.”
They were only a few cars away now. Close up the house looked respectable, a little Southern California inspired, though Alice had never actually seen a mansion in Los Angeles. With its angular boxiness and lights flooded through glass she thought it resembled an Apple store.
“I’m so excited,” Cheri said. “You never want to come to these things. A Smash Bash! Wow!”
Alice grunted. She was itchy and constrained, in a black skirt and tight top, both closet rejects of Cheri’s. Alice had originally planned on wearing jeans and a loose blouse before Cheri came into her room.
“You can’t,” Cheri had said, assessing her up and down, “wear that.”
“What’s wrong with this?” Alice was a little hurt about the top, which had small lace insets on the sleeves. It was one of the prettier items in her closet, which her mother would describe as suh bu duh—too precious to use.
“You look like a sister wife,” Cheri said, demolishing in a single second one of Alice’s favorite wardrobe items. “You have to wear something like this.” Gesturing to herself. She was encased in a fitted gold dress with long sleeves, the V of the neckline landing a few inches above her navel.
“No.”
“Come on,” Cheri wheedled. “You have to at least make an effort. Do you know the kinds of people at these parties? Otherwise they might think you’re a journalist.”
The green Tesla in front of them had ejected its passengers; next it would be their turn. Cheri opened the door and had already bounded out by the time Alice unbuckled her seat belt. “Cheri Lu,” she announced to a sleepy-looking security guard. “I’m on the list. I brought a friend, hope that’s okay.”
“Oh yeah?” the guard said, as Alice nervously rounded the corner of the car. The valet hovered, waiting to give Cheri the ticket; after a moment, Alice took it from him instead. The guard cast an unimpressed eye at Alice and then scanned Cheri’s ID. “Bag.”
“Sure.” Cheri passed over her clutch, a slim contraption made from two conch shells that had been purchased for her from the Amanpuri gift shop in Thailand. The guard sifted through its contents, pressed a sticker over the phone’s camera, and handed it back.
“I need to see your bag, too,” he told Alice.
“I don’t have one.”
“Where’s your phone?”
“In my pocket,” Alice said, removing it from her skirt. The pockets were the garment’s best feature.
The guard gaped at the side of her skirt in surprise, as if she’d revealed it to be a wizard’s cloak. “Anything else in there?” he asked, stickering her camera.
She removed the remaining items. A few receipts of Cheri’s, one of her Tangerine business cards, the valet ticket, a mint lip balm.
He waved them in.
Inside, the house was both sterile and palatial, with white marble walls and light fixtures resembling constellations. They passed a huddle of Asian girls near the entrance, rail thin with winged eyeliner—the sort that lamented their high metabolisms and said things like “Please don’t call me cute!” all while working to accentuate this very cuteness, throwing kawaii signs and marveling at how much food they’d ordered. The girls glanced at Alice and then their eyes passed to Cheri, surveying her as they might an apex predator.
They passed to another room, where a fit, near-elderly man in a tight shirt reclined on a couch, bracketed by two very young, very good-looking men with weary faces. A buffet of fried chicken was set up in a corner, and Alice’s stomach growled. She yanked on Cheri’s hand to pull her to the table, and then stopped.
It was Julia. Julia Lerner was at this party. She’d just entered the room from the other side and was in conversation with a man Alice thought vaguely familiar; Julia laughed and then looked over at the men on the couches.
Ignoring Cheri’s protests, Alice pulled her back toward the front, away from Julia; when Cheri resisted, Alice panicked and let go of her hand and ran into what she thought was the bathroom but turned out to be the nanny’s quarters, of a size and lavishness exceeding her entire apartment. She darted right, upon which she did discover a bathroom; she shut the door and then sat on the toilet lid, flicking on the light.
Fluorescence rained from above. Alice pressed her head into her hands and concentrated on breathing. She was being overdramatic, she reasoned. After all, Julia hadn’t seen her. And even if she had, there was no guarantee Julia would recognize her, especially in the environs of a Smash Bash.
After another minute Alice rose and washed her hands, pausing to sniff at the Diptyque candle. Instead of hiding from Julia, she should actually be following her, she then thought. A Smash Bash wasn’t exactly on brand for Supermom COO, so why was she here?
Alice returned to where she’d left Cheri, only to find both her and Julia vanished. A growing hysteria in her chest, Alice walked through room after room, scanning for not only Cheri, but also: Sean Dara.
Alice wasn’t sure what had initially brought Sean to mind to assist with Julia. It wasn’t like they were friends, or even acquaintances, and in their last interaction he’d been kind of a dick. What she did know, however, was that for a person to help he needed to possess both a great dislike of Julia and a good deal of “fuck-you money,” and while it might be feasible to locate the former, the combination of both did not exist in her social sphere. Sean was the only “important” person Alice had ever heard say anything negative about Julia—before asking Cheri to take her to the Smash Bash, Alice had first tried Sean’s Tangerine email, which bounced back, and then his FreeTalk ID, which did the same. His tweets were months apart and mentioned only the Warriors, and he did not respond to the burner account she’d created: @SeanDara can you please check your DMs, I promise I am not a scammer.
Alice passed into a room that contained a dark purple love seat and a round glass table, on which macarons were arranged in a concentric rainbow. An obese man was on the love seat, a girl with lavender hair straddling him and lapping at his face, and Alice considered the possibility that Sean might not even be at this party, that the Wired profile in which his attendance at such gatherings had been so teasingly detailed (“There is enough collective hair gel to pose a fire hazard; Sean orders his fourth Japanese whiskey and speculates on whether it’d be better to date someone hot or someone famous”) might have been his swan song. She left this room and entered the next, where against the wall there was a photo booth, in front of which a curly-haired man was holding court, speaking of crypto. Alice was edging closer—she had a hopeful fascination with get-rich-quick schemes, though she was too much of a fiscal coward to enact any—when she sighted Sean.
Far left, in a white chair pressed into a corner. He was unshaven and wore a faded green shirt. Next to him, her head against his armpit, was a blonde in a silver dress.
Alice’s relief at seeing him overwhelmed her anxiety. She hurried over. “I need to talk to you.”
Sean blinked at her. “Hey. Yeah, no thanks.”
The blonde’s face was a mix of curiosity and triumph. Alice ordered herself to stand firm, to tamp down the shame and press forward. “No, I need to talk to you about work.”
“You’ve got the wrong Indian.”
“You’re half-Indian,” the blonde corrected, smacking him on the shoulder. “And you barely look it.”
There was a moment of silence as Sean regarded his companion with an inscrutable heavy-lidded look. He returned to Alice. “Who cares. I don’t have a job.”
“You’re Sean Dara, right? We used to work together.”
He peered at her. His eyes were the same color as Cheri’s, light brown with green. He shook his head. “Don’t remember.”
Alice forced herself to address the blonde. “Could you please give us a few minutes?” The girl sat up and looked at Sean. “I’m just going to talk to him,” Alice said. “It’ll be really quick and then you can come back.”
“Jesus,” Sean muttered. He exhaled, as if this were an everyday nuisance, a stream of female acolytes competing for his attention. The blonde rose, removing her phone from her clutch.
“I used to work for you,” Alice said once the girl was out of hearing. She debated sitting on the floor, as her feet were sore from her sandals, but didn’t want to lose her height advantage. “I worked in the FreeTalk group for half a year.”
“After the acquisition?”
“Yes.”
“Figures.” Which Alice took to mean she was clearly a stooge, a keyboard monkey, someone who’d never be found at a hot early-stage start-up but rather only in some large, unimaginative corporation.
“I worked on the classifiers project. I presented to you?”
Sean studied his fingers in the light. “I have blocked every memory of my time there.”
“Okay. So you don’t remember me.”
He sneered. “Absolutely not.”
She hit him, quickly, across the face.
“Ow!” Sean shouted, and Alice turned to check if anyone had seen. The blonde was looking up from her phone, but appeared to have missed the actual strike—the group of crypto-worshippers blocked her view, and there was an overall loud din in the room.
Sean pushed himself up. “What the fuck was that?”
“Listen to me,” Alice hissed. Her heart was racing and she was both impressed and frightened that she had hit him. “I still work at Tangerine, okay? I want to talk to you about something there.”
“Are you fucking insane? I’ve already told you I don’t work there! Go to someone else for your promotion bitching.”
Alice made another scan to ensure no one else was near. The blonde was back to her phone, the Bitcoin dude’s crowd even larger now. She turned to Sean. “It’s about Julia Lerner.”
His face betrayed a flicker of interest. “What’s your name?”
“Alice.” She dug into her pocket and removed her business card.
He pinched it from her with two fingers and then, without looking, stuffed it underneath the seat. “No comment on Julia.”
“You don’t even want to hear?”
“No.”
“It has to do with God Mode.”
“God Mode.” His eyes lifted again. “Huh.”
“Do you know what that is?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” Alice lowered her voice. “She’s using it to hurt people.”
“What else is God Mode for?” Sean said. He leaned forward, as if to continue, but then reconsidered: “I have no comment on that, either.”
“She’s going to ruin FreeTalk,” Alice said, more desperately now. Even in her worst-case scenarios, she had not imagined Sean would be so difficult; had assumed his interest would naturally materialize after he heard of Julia’s involvement.
“FreeTalk used to be my baby,” Sean said. His eyes rolled and Alice wondered if he was high. Was this what high people looked like? She was embarrassingly uninitiated with drugs. “It was my baby, those days we worked, just me and Johan. Do you have a baby?”
“No.”
“Well. Okay then. People say it was a mistake to sell . . . I don’t know. Because if we hadn’t, Tangerine would have just launched a copycat, crushed us anyway. I mean . . . would I have been as happy then? I guess it’s a possibility. Everything’s a possibility, you know?”
There was a distinct overlap, Alice was realizing, between wealthy-founder blather and plain drunk talk; the problem was she didn’t know how to manage either. Even in college, when she’d held back the hair of weeping pukers, she’d never known what to do—was she supposed to say all would be well? That it was going to be fine, they’d definitely pass Commutative Algebra? Or just wait out the crying? “If FreeTalk’s your baby, then you should care about it. Don’t you want to know what’s happening? What about your early users, all those people who depend on your product for privacy?”
“Any FreeTalk user with a few working brain cells should have known the game was up as soon as we sold.”
“That’s not what you said.” She’d been there. Sean and Johan together for her first team update, Sean excitedly pacing, speaking of the revolution. “You said you had earned people’s trust and that you were going to keep it.”
“Oh fuck, I keep forgetting you were actually there.” Sean rubbed his palms against his thighs. “Well, things change. You think it’s about more, but really it just comes down to the people. A few people, making all the decisions. None of them you. The day I left was the day I deleted my account.” He sighed, and there was a stretch of quiet before he lifted his head and glared. “I don’t know what you’re doing, Alice whatever-the-fuck. But if I were you, I’d delete your account, too.”
And with that, it was as if the air had been let out of his body; he flopped onto the cushions and closed his eyes, and Alice knew then that she’d failed.
In despair, Alice began to wander. It had been a mistake not to drive: she’d been lazy, let Cheri lead. She tried to return to a room she’d passed earlier, from which there’d been the most delicious scent of roasting potatoes, but couldn’t find it. She left the house and went into the backyard, where large white tents were set up, like at a fancy wedding. In the nearest she found platters of food on heated chargers, and she took a plate and filled it with lamb kebab and moussaka. Aside from the occasional model or model-adjacent who would wander in and then—seeing the food and Alice—promptly exit, she was the only person inside the tent.
After eating, Alice felt more energized. She tried to call Cheri but reached her voicemail. Cheri barely answered when the phone was ringing in her hand, so it was impossible to expect that she’d be responsive here, in the midst of so many high-value targets. No doubt she had already attached herself to some young CEO, and then the guy would want her to move in with him, and then Alice would be alone again, which would be cool, oh, except for the issue of rent, and then she might be fired . . .
Alice decided to drink. She moved to another tent, this one with five or six guests crowded around a bar. She ordered a mojito, the only cocktail she could think of, and then drifted to a table with tall glass jars filled with candy. She was reaching for the cola-shaped gummies when there was a tap on her back.
“I love your skirt,” the girl said. She was a few inches shorter than Alice, with dark hair to her waist and eyes eclipsed by silver shadow. “Where’d you get it?”
“I don’t know.” Surprised by the girl’s friendliness and wanting to reciprocate, Alice impulsively offered: “Do you want me to check? I can go to the bathroom.”
“Ohmygod you are so nice. I’m Jane, by the way. No, I can look.” Alice, not understanding, turned back to the table as Jane reached for her waist and twisted the label toward her.
“Ahh!” Alice yelped.
“Cushnie,” Jane said. “Nice. Are you eating?” She gestured with her chin. “You shouldn’t. They’re like those milk tea pearls, too many calories.”
“Oh.” Alice set down the scoop.
“Are you rolling?”
“What’s rolling?”
“Wow! You don’t know! You really don’t know!”
“No.” Alice ordinarily would have been annoyed, but Jane seemed so guileless, so openly happy in her mood; a welcome contrast from Sean’s glowering.
“Here.” Jane reached into a glass vase containing dozens of miniature brown envelopes. She removed one and tapped from it a pill. “Wait. Better split, if you haven’t before.” She bit off half, stuck it back in the envelope, and dropped it into the jar. The other half she held toward Alice: “Go ahead.”
Alice hesitated. But Jane was friendly and her night a bust; she was overcome with the feeling that possibly she had wasted her life, that she had stayed home because socializing was inconvenient or she didn’t want to wear makeup or because she was frightened of some undefined humiliation, but then the years went by and what had you done? What had you achieved but a dead feeling after you’d spent hours watching videos of people in love or fighting on the internet?
Within thirty minutes Alice began to feel light, airy. The world was not cruel but rather like a person with a mean face: not bad at all once you get to “know” them. She was still with Jane and had the urge to touch random partygoers: to hug a wondrously pretty girl in a lace top, to pet the silken baldness of a man’s head. Which she did, and by the time he turned, Alice was already gone. Was this what life was? It wasn’t so bad. You could be impulsive, you could touch, people forgave, and the rooms continued . . .
Alice tripped and fell on the floor. This was a situation, like many this evening, where normally she would have been embarrassed—but now it was fine, it was ordinary, who cared? Thank you, Barry Levine! She laughed and was pretty sure she’d done so out loud. She couldn’t see Jane any longer but that was okay; she was comfortable where she lay and the lights were bright and she didn’t have that empty-parking-garage feeling of imminent assault.
And then Jane was back. “Oh God,” she said.
“Hi, hi.” A mild discomfort was beginning to impinge on her pleasure—her teeth hurt, Alice realized. She was also thirsty. “I was looking for you.”
“For how long? It’s been like two hours!”
Alice frowned. Really? She knew she did not currently possess the best idea of time—was it three mojitos she’d downed? But two hours seemed awfully long.
“You’re having fun, aren’t you?” Jane asked.
“Yesh,” said Alice, as another surge of affection went through, toward this stranger who was taking such good care of her.
“You sure you’re okay? You know you’re on the floor.”
“Yeah. But uh, if you’re gonna go . . .” The thought lost itself and then looped and returned. “Could you go back to that tent? And get me some of those gummies?”
“What gummies?”
“You know, the cola ones. The ones you said would make me fat.” Though at the moment she didn’t care about that. The silk skirt from Cheri, which she’d earlier thought so constricting, was now—after she’d undone half the zipper—so comfortable and light . . . Alice thought she was rather like a goddess, floating about in it. Clothes were better on fatter people!
“Alice! What the hell are you talking about!”
The voice was sharp, not soft and feathery like Jane’s. Alice placed a hand over her eyes, as if shielding herself from a glare, and squinted. The person was familiar, in a spiky sort of way. She was like a gorgeous white version of herself, and then Alice realized it was Cheri.
“Mary. Cherry. I mean Cheri. Hiya.”
“Oh God, help me,” Cheri said to some guy who had either just appeared or been there the whole time, some fuzzy white person with fuzzier hair. “She’s my cousin, she’s totally drugged out, help me get her to a car.”
“She doesn’t look so good,” the guy said, not moving.
“No no.” Alice waved Cheri away. “Don’t bother with me, I’m having fun . . .”
“No you’re not, you’re in a freaking ecstasy hole.”
“You know, she sleeps in her makeup,” Alice said, directing a serious look to the man. “She announces her farts after she’s done them.”
“Ugh! Alice!”
“I don’t want to ruin your date, this could be your dream life, I mean this guy could get your dream—” Alice suddenly found her breathing constricted. Cheri’s hand was over her mouth.
“She seems fucked up,” the guy said.
“She’s actually a very lovely person.” Cheri was patting around Alice’s legs, putting things into her pockets. “Just help me get her into a car, all right?”
“No,” Alice said, “I don’t need a car, go have fun—”
She blacked out.