The last time Leila and I went more than three days without talking, it was because I’d accidentally ratted to Baba about one of her tattoos. She had claimed the cluster of stars surrounding her lower back was made with Magic Marker. To her credit, I knew what I was doing.
It’s been five days. Five. My calls have all gone straight to voicemail. My texts have been left on read. She’s even muted me on Instagram. Leila has always told me I’m stubborn, but what she’s doing is next level. And yes, I haven’t exactly apologized. For fighting with her in public, for stealing the spotlight on a day when we were meant to be celebrating her success. But what am I supposed to say? Leila, you don’t get it. I’ve started a secret career as a political beauty columnist under a nondescript alias, and it’s getting a ton of traction, so I’ve started to pen my memoir? That’s not an option. Even I can hear how out of touch it sounds.
One plus to this entire debacle is that Leila has been hiding out at Willow’s (thank God I can still see her Instagram stories), so I’ve had the entire apartment to myself. Usually that amount of space would mean lighting a few candles, pulling out my favorite vibrator from Unbound, and queuing up a little massage porn. Unfortunately for me, I’m still in the midst of my internet spiral. So, instead, “no parents, no rules” looks a little less like Sex and the City and a little more like googling myself over and over without having to shield the computer screen from prying eyes.
By the time Friday rolls around, I’ve begun seeing my life for what it is: sad. Cooking dinners for one has proved nearly impossible (I always make too much), I have no one to help me fold the couch back up in the morning (Leila usually does it for me), and I’ve watched so many consecutive seasons of Love Island that my brain has begun to decay.
There’s no doubt about it: I’m plain old lonely, and there’s no Instagram poll in the world that can make me feel like I’m surrounded by friends or loved ones. I consider reconnecting with NYU friends but quickly remember how annoying their alternative diets and proclivity for reciting Kerouac prose can be. I give my parents a call in Dubai, but the time difference gets in the way and our schedules refuse to line up. Suddenly, it occurs to me that my only true friend left in the world is Saffron. And are we even friends IRL? If I were to lose Vinyl—to get laid off, to quit—would we even stay in touch? The thought of reducing my connection to Saffron to just a single follow button on Twitter takes me to a dark, dark place.
To avoid allowing my eternal dread to descend into a prolonged anxiety attack, I spend more time at the office and take over initiatives that give me a false sense of control. For example, I spend the entirety of Wednesday alphabetizing the beauty closet. Then Saffron walks in and is like, “Girl, how much Adderall did you take?”
But I can’t stop and think—if I do, I’ll start to panic about losing Leila, and there’s no point in allowing my brain to walk down those stairs and linger in the basement. After all, she can’t avoid her apartment forever. Her name is on the damn lease.
On Friday morning, I’m in the middle of color coding the archive room, where we store every single Vinyl Print edition ever produced—it’s basically my Mecca—when Loretta texts me that she’s coming in. This takes me by surprise: For the past couple weeks, a Friday appearance from Loretta has been about as likely as getting cast as the next Bachelorette. I run over to my desk to make sure I look consumed in her schedule upon arrival.
“Morning, sweet pea! Give me five then meet me inside,” Loretta calls to me as she struts by, entering the padlock code to get past the frosted door.
I hold my breath until she’s safely inside then run to the bathroom to clean up. My plaid pleated trousers are looking a bit wrinkled, and my baby hairs appear as if they’re attempting to contact extraterrestrials, but other than that, I can work with what I’ve got. I splash a little cold water on my face, count to ten, then return to her office.
“Take a seat, Noora,” Loretta says to me as I enter. She’s got an earpiece in that makes her look like a cast member in the latest Men in Black revival. I suppress the urge to giggle.
“Everything okay?”
She nods and points to the ear, indicating that she’s on the phone. I sit quietly, my legs crossing and uncrossing beneath the table, staring straight ahead at a pile of coffee-table books. Loretta nods emphatically, as if the recipient can see her, and lets out a forced laugh or two. I resist the urge to roll my eyes. Instead, focus on the thin folds of tightened skin around her temples, the bleached hairs above her upper lip.
“Ciao!” she coos, her tongue dripping with snake charm. But the second she hangs up the phone, her tone shifts. She removes her earpiece and looks up at me, her face stoic, before peering around the room, as if we’re being watched. I feel a lump forming in the back of my throat.
“This C. Bates business has gotten out of hand,” she says, shifting back and forth uncomfortably in her seat.
At the sound of C. Bates’s name, every muscle in my body stiffens. I intentionally attempt to relax my face, as to not give me away.
“There’s absolutely no trace of this person on the dark web. I even hired a private investigator, and as it turns out, there’s no New York residence associated with the name. Very suspicious.”
A private investigator? I’m toast. I am a piece of very burnt, inedible, radioactive toast.
“It’s obviously an alias, which means I’m turning up squat,” she says. “Bates must have some sort of personal connection to Jade. Either that, or a grudge against me. I’m not sure which is worse.”
“Um,” I stutter, trying to sound casual. “Both?”
Shut up, Noora, you bumbling idiot. Shut. Up.
“Nevertheless, I’ve contracted an expert to do a little bit more digging into the IP address and location of Bates’s emails,” Loretta continues, completely ignoring my comment. For once, her self-involved oblivion works in my favor. “Obviously, this is off the record and must be conducted off hours. And I’ll need you to stay late tonight and oversee the mission. I’d do it myself, but I can’t be liable.”
Wait. What? And I can?
“Loretta, I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” I stammer, avoiding her gaze.
But when I look back up, our gazes lock, and I see her. Like, really see her. The crease marks indented on her forehead, purple veins weaving their way through the tapestry of her hands, which are shaking under the table. Her nail varnish is chipped, and there’s a small coffee stain below the lapel of her shirt.
She hunches over and places a hand on my tightly clasped grip. I’m surprised by the sweatiness of her palm. I always assumed Loretta ran ice cold.
“Please, Noora,” she whispers. “I’m scared.”
She looks away from me then, blinking back tears—not alligator tears, not saline drops, but real, mortal, saltwater tears. And she squeezes my hand as if we aren’t assistant and boss, reader and editor, admirer and legend. We’re just two people, having a bad day.
Damn. Loretta’s humanity is really making it harder to hate her.
“Okay,” I hear myself say. “Okay. I’ll do it.”
The color immediately rushes back into Loretta’s cheeks, and she springs back into action, pulling her body away from mine.
“Fabulous!” she exclaims. “Then you can let yourself out. And lock the door behind you.”
I stand up, a little bit woozy, surprised by the disappointment clouding my frontal cortex. What was I expecting? A thank-you?
“Oh, and darling?” she says, right before I walk out. I look back over my shoulder, my pulse quickening. “Do be careful. I can’t have this traced back to me.”
I nod then make my way to my desk. But the second I sit down, the weight of my words crash into me like the skaters at Washington Square Park.
Noora. You fucking idiot. What have you done?
If Loretta tracks the IP address, she’ll be able to trace the story back to my computer. I cannot let that happen. No, I need to thwart her plan by actively working against this contract hire.
***
The day stretches on with little to do without an issue to work on. Loretta stays squarely put in her office, only leaving to take smoke breaks. When she does, she brings Beth or Daniel with her. She’s eerily paranoid. Either that, or afraid of being alone for too long. I mean, who knows the next time Jade might jump out of nowhere and launch another full-on attack?
By the way, there are rumors circulating that Jade passed SPP’s internal investigation. But she’s still being dragged on Twitter, being called a “lifeless hack” and “Japanese Kylie Jenner.” The hate out there is so brutal, I don’t know how she’s showing up to work every day—but she is. She’s been keeping her head held high and her nylon joggers hanging low. I can tell her team respects her tenfold for it. The rest of the staff is just waiting for her to retaliate.
The majority of Vinyl heads out around 5:30 p.m., partially because they have so little to work on, and partially because they know no one is watching. It’s like shoplifting a single piece of candy or a cigarette lighter—the action is meaningless, but you do it to challenge the system and gain a cheap thrill in the process. Even if you have nowhere to be and nothing to smoke.
Loretta waits until everyone else leaves the office. She pokes her head out from behind the door then looks both ways, like a bandit.
“Hey, doll,” she whispers to me. “All clear?”
I nod. Daylight savings was last week and now the entirety of New York blacks out around 4:00 p.m., filling the halls with a dementor-like darkness that activates this awfully bright fluorescent lighting. Being alone in the office in the winter is creepy and yet nostalgic. It feels like camping by a dimly lit fire or searching for the bathroom in the middle of the night while holding a single candlestick.
Loretta runs out of the office like a scared teenager who’s been caught going to third base in the back of her Mustang by her overprotective dad. I’m left alone in the dark, waiting for this mystery tech wizard to appear.
I think about the tactics I can use to keep them away from my IP address. Maybe I’ll offer them a glass of water and sprinkle enough CBD oil in it to immediately put them to sleep. I could trip them as they walk toward Loretta’s office and then call 911 and claim it was an accident. Perhaps I’ll just lock them out of Loretta’s office and claim it was a misunderstanding? And then there’s always subtle seduction to take your mind off super sleuthing.
I hear a rustle in the darkness then the sound of someone accidentally walking into a desk followed by a suspicious, “Oh shit.” The dark figure moves like a shadow from one end of the office to the other until he emerges into my desk light and is standing right in front of me.
“Long time no see,” Cal says. “Well, I actually can’t see you. It’s hella dark in here.”
Of course, Loretta’s secret agent is Cal. She probably doesn’t know anyone else who can properly navigate a computer.
We haven’t spoken since the night of Vinyl Sleighs. Not that he hasn’t been reaching out, I’ve just been ignoring his texts. There’s just so much I can’t tell him. So much I wish I could say. But doing so—explaining the so-called war, whose side I’m on—would be so much harder than just keeping it to myself and dying from the loneliness of it all. Confronting Cal would mean confronting myself, and to be perfectly honest, I’m not sure what I want. To some extent, Leila was right. Don’t tell her I said that.
But how am I going to explain why I’ve been ghosting him?
“So you’re Loretta’s lackey, huh?” I admire his all-black ensemble. “Welcome to the club!”
He lets out a small laugh, and I immediately shush him. No one can know we’re here, not even the custodians. Instead, I grab his hand and swiftly escort him into Loretta’s lockbox. When I reach the padlock, I have to gesture to get him to look away from the combination. After typing in the code, we enter the lair and I lead him to the safe beneath her desk.
“These safety measures are intense,” he whispers as I begin typing the crypto key into the pad. “What is this, a U.S. naval base?”
“You can never be too careful. There are also, like, three security cameras and a tape recorder in here, but I disabled them before you arrived. Loretta doesn’t want this on the record. I’m sure you can understand why.”
The lock clicks into place, and the safe door opens. I reach inside and grab Loretta’s work laptop and hand it to Cal. He glances down at it then pulls a pair of gloves out of his pocket—the kind used for science experiments. Once he’s squeezed each of his fingers into the latex, he cautiously takes the computer off my hands.
“I don’t want this to trace back to me,” he explains. “Like you said, you can never be too careful.”
“So Loretta wants you to get access to as much information as you can on this ‘C. Bates’ and leave it in an unidentifiable, password-protected folder on her desktop.” My bottom lip begins to quiver as I relay the paper note’s instructions. “Of course, I understand if that’s impossible and super outside of your job description.”
Cal gives me a cocky smile. His teeth are so white.
“I studied software engineering, remember?” he says. “Don’t worry, this will be a piece of cake.”
I clench my fist down hard, burrowing my nails into my skin. When I reopen my hand, there are tiny little indents in my palm beginning to bleed. I take a seat on the couch and begin scrolling through my phone, checking NoorYorkCity’s engagement, while Cal pops a squat on Loretta’s desk and begins plugging away at her keyboard. Somehow, sitting in the darkness under the glow of the laptop screen feels oddly romantic. I glance over to look at Cal, but he’s laser-focused on his mission. The second I turn away, I can feel his gaze on me, hot, like a klieg light.
I try to savor these last few moments together before he finds out the truth and inevitably turns on me. Not to mention turns me in.
“So how’s your start-up coming along?” I ask, both making conversation and attempting to take his focus off the work. I’m great at multitasking.
“Okay.” He hesitates for a second, before continuing. “We just wrapped up our series-A funding, but it’s been a difficult round. Honestly, it’s been hard convincing a bunch of rich old white dudes to invest in a cannabis delivery company run by a Black guy. But we’ve made a little venture capitalist noise, so I guess we’ll see.”
I nod then realize he probably can’t see my head move in the dark. Duh.
“Why go into cannabis at all? Why not invest in something that’s a little bit safer?” I offer.
That gets Cal’s attention. He breathes heavily, stops whatever it is he’s doing, and looks up at me. His shadow looms large behind him.
“Well, it’s complicated,” he says. “Did you know CBD is a twenty-five-billion-dollar industry?”
“Yeah.” I actually read about it in an article that Saffron published on Vinyl.
“And do you know the percentage of cannabis business owners that are Black?”
“No, I don’t.” I’m ashamed to admit it.
“Four point three percent. Let that sink in. You don’t think it’s a little upsetting, considering Black people still face harsher drug sentencing and mass incarceration for marijuana usage and traffic than any other community?”
I stir in silence. He’s 100 percent right. I’d never considered that before.
“It’s completely fucked up.”
“Right, so that’s why I’m getting into the industry,” he explains. “No matter how hard it is to break in as a Black man. The community deserves better.”
I look over at him hunched over Loretta’s desk. Are his eyes watering, or is that just a glare coming off the screen’s reflection?
I want to run over to him and give him a hug. To hold him. To tell him I’m here for him. But I know that wouldn’t be fair, because I’m not ready to be honest with him. So, instead, I sit still and try to find the right words.
“I understand,” I finally say.
“You don’t, but that’s okay. My older brother was locked up for three years just because he was caught carrying.”
“I’m so sorry, Cal.”
“It’s okay, Little Light. It’s just the way the world spins. And I’m not alone in this. I’ve got friends. I have people who are helping me.”
Too often, I get caught up thinking about my family’s trauma—Islamophobia, the Muslim ban, xenophobic remarks—that I forget to confront my own privilege. Sure, I’ve worried about my parents’ phone line being tapped, but I rarely feel anxiety passing a cop car, at least not in Brooklyn. The truth is, I can sympathize with Cal’s experience as much as I like, but I’ll never empathize with him. He’s right—I’ll never actually understand. But I can give him the space and support he needs. Not as his girlfriend or anything. But as a friend. As a human being.
“I’ve got it!”
Cal breaks me out of my aside. I immediately shush him. I’m afraid he’s woken up all of South Street Seaport.
“Got what?” I whisper.
“The IP address! I cracked the code easily. Strange, it says the signal is coming from a laptop on this floor.”
Oh my God. I completely forgot: I brought my personal laptop in today to sneak in some blog maintenance between meetings.
I’m so, so dead.
“You don’t think it’s someone on Digital, do you?” Cal asks. “Maybe Jade herself is moonlighting as C. Bates? You know, to protect the integrity of the work while her character is under so much scrutiny. Kind of a genius play, if you ask me.”
I dig back into my palms but find the marks have already rendered my hands numb. I switch to anxiously itching my inner elbows.
“I don’t think it’s her, Cal.”
“But think about it, it makes sense. SPP just finished investigating her, Twitter hates her, Loretta is clearly out to get her, so in order to get Vinyl Digital a little good press, she concocts a scheme to mask her identity so she can—”
“It’s me.”
Cal’s eyes shift from my face to Loretta’s laptop, then back to me. His eyes narrow, like he’s trying to focus on one image in his head at a time.
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s me, Cal. I’m C. Bates.”