Some mornings when Alice woke she still thought she was employed.
In the weeks after she had been fired (“walked to the door”) from Tangerine, the sun would creep over her face as she lay in bed and Alice would open her eyes and reach for her phone. Checking the weather, the news, her work email, before recalling with a lurch she no longer had a job. No more staff meetings, syncs with Larry, or weekly security checks that she used to dread; now her phone served mostly as a receptacle for store promotional emails, which, given the recent and total elimination of her income, she deleted en masse.
Amazingly, given that it’d been a long-standing fear of hers, there were many downsides she’d never considered to getting fired. Yes, the act itself was humiliating, the loss of income terrible (and what was she going to do about rent, and loans, and oh my God); but there were also the other parts, the pits of depression it left in your soul. As her savings evaporated so did her good habits. Her diet had gone to hell: nearly every afternoon she would make instant ramen—mixing in an egg and scallions if she had them, to increase the dish’s nutritional value—and then allow herself unlimited sips of the oily soup, only for a hot, dirty feeling to linger in her stomach after. And yet by the end of the night she would again be dreaming of noodles, and the next day open another pack. Since its initial download she had not signed on to the Spanish learning app she’d paid forty-nine dollars for “unlimited” access to; she was also not bathing much.
At least the apartment was clean. The stripes of mold underneath the shower grout, the scary rust behind the toilet, the black stains around the lip of the kitchen sink: Alice attacked each with vigor. One afternoon, after a bowl of udon she’d made from powdered stock, she decided to go after the calcified rust on the bathroom fixtures with a pair of Bobbi Brown tweezers she’d found in the garbage. She was nearly done, making her final revolutions around the right tap, her unwashed hair heavy with grease against her scalp, when Cheri appeared. Surprised, as she’d thought her cousin was out, Alice slipped and jabbed her hand.
“Are you okay?” Cheri asked.
“Yes.” Alice looked at her palm. Where the metal had bit, her flesh was already pulsing; there were red specks coming to the surface, and she was curious if blood would eventually break through.
“Did you get fired?”
“Yes,” Alice repeated dully, still watching her hand. It was a relief, actually, to say it. Should she say it more? Post it on Tangerine?
“Are those my tweezers?”
“Uh-huh.” Then, slightly defensive, because she’d found them in Cheri’s garbage, which she’d searched only to see if Cheri had eaten her Ritter Marzipan (verdict: possibly innocent), Alice asked, “Did you still want them?”
“No. I got a new pair. I don’t like those so much. I meant to throw them out.” Cheri slowly moved forward and raised a hand, as if demonstrating friendly intentions to a skittish animal. “You know, I have some savings. I’m sure we’ll get through this. I just mean you can count on me and everything. Oh come on, Alice, don’t be a baby, please don’t cry.” But once she began Alice found she couldn’t stop: she cried and cried and cried. She cried because she had ruined everything and yet still her life was better than many others and so she shouldn’t be crying; she cried because she knew she had triumphed and yet still she was lonely and humiliated. She cried until she thought she had lost interest in crying forever, she couldn’t do it anymore, the act had lost all meaning, and then she cried some more.
And then the next morning the call came, and Alice went back to work.
The space was smaller, less grand and hip than she’d expected. The first floor of a commercial building in San Jose, the second and third floors filled with psychiatrists and lawyers. Often when Alice arrived the small lot would already be filled, forcing her to park on the street.
“We’re going to have to move,” Sean said as she entered, keeping pace with her as she walked. Alice was late, having scheduled a dental cleaning as soon as she received confirmation of health insurance. Arriving to work, she had struggled to parallel park between a Tesla and an oversize Infiniti, as nearby construction workers observed with a mix of anticipation and horror. “I think that this is going to be a very successful company, very soon.”
Alice picked up a discarded energy bar wrapper. “Yeah?”
When Sean had first called, asking if she’d come interview, Alice had slapped her leg, in case it was either a nightmare or a dream. She’d never thought she would work at a start-up, liking the stability of a large corporation, but then Tangerine hadn’t been so stable in the end, had it? As she sat on the floor of her room, her stomach upset from a new super-spicy brand of ramen, she’d listened to Sean describe the open positions at his company. After they hung up, Alice ran her hand underneath her bed, in an area she was certain she’d searched earlier, and found the missing Ritter bar. She ate half and then showered for the first time in a week.
As Alice reached her chair, Sean abruptly veered off, back to the office he shared with Johan, who sat starchily at his desk. The building’s owner had banned visits from Johan’s Saint Bernard; photos of Tintin, his brown-and-white face cocked to the camera, sat adjacent to framed portraits of Johan’s children. Through the glass, Alice could see Sean pacing, motioning to Johan. Suddenly he stopped.
“Hey!” he said, rushing to the doorway. “Hey, Alice. Get over here.”
“What?” Alice returned. She wasn’t used to speaking to her bosses so casually, though admittedly she did not find Sean a formidable authority figure.
“Hurry!” Sean said. Which could signal an emergency ranging from a technical meltdown to a celebrity breakup. When Alice reached his office, he pushed her inside and shut the door. “Look.”
He pointed to the TV. Julia was on, speaking live.
She looked good. Rested and calm, with great hair. Tangerine had just reported record earnings, and now she was on CNBC for the victory lap, discussing the results and Tangerine’s newly announced international expansion.
“You haven’t been in these places before,” the interviewer was saying. “Pakistan. Parts of the Middle East. Because as we understand, your employee base has expressed some concerns over human rights and surveillance.”
“Correct,” Julia said as the camera drew back to a wide angle. Her navy dress, which came down to the floor, had a slit that showed a sleek line of tanned leg.
“She said she just came back from vacation,” Sean muttered. “Turks and Caicos, veerrrrrry relaxing.”
“Shh,” Alice said.
“So what’s changed in your strategy?” the interviewer asked. Andrew Waller, typically smug from the brief snippets Alice had seen of him before, though he seemed almost ingratiating now. His face had the concentration of someone listening carefully, trying hard not to make a mistake.
“Well, I wouldn’t say changed,” Julia said, “so much as evolved. And as a company, we’re always evolving. The same as people. We believe that what we do here at Tangerine—developing tools for humans to communicate and share—is fundamentally good. But the truth is, there’s bad stuff going on all over the world, including right here in the United States. So we started to ask ourselves: Are we saying that in these places—Iran, for example—we’re simply not going to participate? Are we saying we’re going to cut off large swaths of the human population, just because they live under a different system of government, some of which local citizens may have had no part in selecting?”
“And what about those employees who’ve historically had problems with such positions?”
Julia smiled. There was a new hardness to her, like with an expensive jewel, that hadn’t been there before. “We respect all opinions. That said, there are many places to work.”
Andrew blinked. “It’s quite a change. Earlier, it had been posited that it was Pierre who wanted to expand—and that it was you who held him back.”
“Funny. I hadn’t heard that.”
He tried again: “Pierre recently started an aerospace company, did he not? Outer Horizon? Is that its name?”
“Outer Horizon is a private concern, unrelated to Tangerine.”
“Still, CEO of two companies at the same time . . . that’s a lot, for any person. No matter how exceptional. There have been rumors Pierre may step down from Tangerine, upon which you’d be the natural candidate to replace him. Any comment?”
“No,” Julia said, and then they cut away.
Sean muted the TV. Alice stood, heart thudding.
Johan appeared next to her. “It’s a good move. Expanding, especially as their existing ad business has reached a saturation point.”
“Uh.” Alice tried to think of a useful response. Johan made her nervous. They rarely spoke, and she still didn’t know if he recalled she’d once fixed his phones.
Johan scratched his head. “You came from Tangerine too, right?”
“Yes.”
“Well. I can see why you left. Why you had to run from that vile woman.”
Suddenly Alice was furious. As if Johan would ever call Pierre vile! Or himself, because certainly he and Sean had been part of it, had taken Tangerine’s money and now that they were far away they could preach how they wanted. She started to speak, her throat emitting a strangled noise, and Sean poked her hard in her ribs. “You know, I really—” Alice began.
“Let’s go eat,” Sean said, nearly dragging her out.
They walked a quarter mile to India Dreams, which served a well-frequented buffet lunch from its corner in a strip mall. The proprietor recognized them as recent regulars, extending his hand to indicate that they could pick any seat.
“So she’s out,” Sean said, after they’d found a table outside. The owner’s wife was already moving away, having deposited a plastic basket of naan.
Alice reached for the bread. “She must have made an agreement with Leah. You know. A deal, or whatever.”
“A deal? What do you think this is? Some mafia movie?”
Alice huffed, irritated by the insinuation that she was being dramatic. “I’m trying to be logical. We were there. She was caught. Now she’s back at work. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
Sean shaped a tiny mound of rice with his spoon. “The fact that she’s out there, walking around. It doesn’t seem right.”
“We don’t know everything the FBI is doing. You remember what Leah said, that it’s ongoing.” Leah had reminded them of this just last week, after they’d signed yet another set of national security letters prohibiting them from speaking about Julia. She’d looked amused to learn that Alice and Sean were working together, though she still had not replied with available dates for Alice’s proposed group lunch. “Maybe she had to give up all her money.”
“You think money is what matters to Julia?”
“It’s a big deal if you don’t have it.”
“At Julia’s level, you don’t care about that. It’s the other stuff you think about.”
“Well I wouldn’t know, would I? So then what do you care about?”
“Status. You know, never having to wait, everyone kissing your ass. Thousands of worker bees at your command.” Sean looked wistful; the start-up had only twelve employees so far, and none were particularly deferential. All except Alice were already millionaires from the original FreeTalk sale to Tangerine, and had known Sean and Johan for years.
“Well, maybe that goes away. Like with Bernie Madoff. I’m sure that guy’s suffering.”
“You saw Julia just now. Did you see any suffering? Whose idea do you think it was to expand to Egypt and Iran? Julia’s worth way more to the U.S. government in charge of Tangerine than sitting in prison or anywhere else.” Using a napkin, Sean ripped the last piece of naan and placed half on Alice’s plate. “I don’t know. I’d like to see something. Something more. I don’t think it’s quite fair that this should be the end for her.”
“But this isn’t the end of anything,” Alice said.
After lunch, Alice walked back to the office alone. Sean had left first, shouting into his headset about the latest round of financing—there was so much to starting a company Alice had never thought of, and she realized Sean had done all this before, with FreeTalk.
She reached into her pocket. India Dreams kept a glass bowl of candied fennel seeds by the register, which Alice liked to obsessively eat in a repeating pattern of green, pink, and white. She deposited one in her mouth and, realizing she’d forgotten to mark its color, took out her phone to check it on her tongue. Green.
The phone vibrated in her hand. Alice saw the sender’s name on the message and stopped. She stared at the locked screen as she stood on the sidewalk, cars whizzing past her, and then she forced herself to shove her phone into her pocket and walk on.
Ten minutes later, she was at the office. Instead of going inside Alice walked around to the back of the building, to a small patch of concrete Sean had requisitioned as an outdoor meeting area. Around a garbage can were three plastic folding chairs, left over from the last tenants.
Using the back of her sleeve, Alice wiped the dirt and cigarette ash from one of the seats. She took out her phone and then, at last, allowed herself to read:
From: Julia@Tangerine
To: AliceLu1984@gmail.com
Alice,
I was sorry to hear about your separation from Tangerine, which I only learned of when I returned. Truly unfortunate, given your numerous talents. The individual responsible for the employment action has been counseled.
I enjoyed our conversation at the roundtable and know that you are a bright young woman with an even brighter future. Please know if you ever wish to return to the company, my door is open. I look forward to speaking soon.
Best,
Julia
After she’d read the message, and read it again, Alice set her phone on the ground. Despite her efforts a smile crept onto her face; it stretched and tugged until she finally gave in and laughed.
She leaned back into the chair. An arm’s length away was a window, and through it she could see into the office: her new coworkers at their desks; Sean pacing near the front, still on the phone. The clock on the far wall read five minutes before the end of the hour. Why go in early? She settled against her seat and closed her eyes, letting the sun wash her face as she dreamed.