Maya didn’t know people actually stayed at the office until it got dark. She’d assumed they were just kind of slow at packing their stuff up, or maybe they stayed ten minutes after to make her feel like an inferior employee—not that she cared. Maya was always out of the office at six o’clock exactly. She packed her belongings at lunch, had all her docs closed by 5:55, and started pushing away from her desk at 5:59:30. But today she’d been handed a particularly agonizing assignment from someone in the Clarke Stein LA office, someone who clearly didn’t care about the time difference between the coasts.
There was a huge art gallery opening downtown that night, and a deal to have all the gift bags stuffed with CS’s fall perfume had fallen through after Clarke’s connect at the gallery had quit her job. Now it was Maya’s responsibility to contact a list of people linked to the opening to see if they could work the perfume back into the bags. Maya tapped her acrylics, recently filed into a coffin shape and shellacked bold orange, impatiently against her desk. She decided to be ambitious and started by calling Edie Thatcher, the artist heading the opening. Though she was definitely having a moment, Edie was still in the early stages of her career, and Maya suspected the number listed on her site was probably just her personal one. In her most authoritative voice, Maya tried to convince Edie that hawking Clarke Stein perfume was totally in line with her goal of destigmatizing female bowel movements.
“I just feel like the work you’re doing is trying to elevate bowel movements to the same level of sacredness and femininity as any other female beauty or hygiene ritual, right?” Maya asked, straining to recall language from the freshman year art-theory class that had put her off art—visual or otherwise—for life.
“Mmm.”
“So, like, the juxtaposition of the perfume and your installation sort of highlights that, right?”
“Mmm.”
“And, on another level, the perfume sort of accuses the viewer, the same way your art does, of trying to mythicize or, uh, cover up something natural, you know, the way a perfume might cover up an unpleasant odor? The kind we believe women aren’t capable of producing . . . ?” Maya was glad no one was close enough to overhear this.
There was a long pause on the other end, and Maya imagined Edie scribbling furiously in her Moleskine with a purple Le Pen or something, stroking some kind of wiry hanging plant with her free hand.
Finally, Edie sighed. “Listen, honey, you seem great, and probably too smart for your industry,” she said, her voice thick with vocal fry. “But I’m not really in the mood to be your consumerist puppet today. Find some other opening.”
The next hour and a half proceeded similarly: ultra-busy, fake-aloof art people scoffing at Maya’s requests, then hanging up. Maya wondered whether the asshole who called her from the West Coast had confused her for some way-more-capable PR rep, oblivious to the fact that she had just started her job a month and a half ago. She sighed and looked at the clock, then shot a quick text to Francesca, the girl she’d been talking to. Maya had tentatively agreed to see her tonight, but it was 8:35 now, and Maya wasn’t confident that she would finish any time soon. A part of her was relieved though—things had been getting too consistent between them, and this canceled dinner was a perfect way to start her ghosting routine.
Maya chewed the inside of her lip as she dialed another number. She spun in her office chair as the phone rang, taking in the lofted SoHo space she’d always wished was her apartment. The bare concrete floors, sparsely adorned white walls, and naked pipes looked creepy at night, and by now, almost nine on a Friday, pretty much everyone was gone. Though, if she squinted, she could see a figure at the far end of the office, and she knew immediately it was one of the other PR assistants, a super anal girl named Tatiana. It was then Maya realized that she probably had been confused for someone else—hyper-capable, super-employee Tatiana DuBois. They were the only two Black girls in the office, and Maya had gotten bored of her coworkers’ post-mix-up apologies in week one.
“Hello?”
Maya snapped to attention. “Hello? Hi! Is this Esther Neptune? Of Neptune Experiences?”
“Yes,” a voice droned impatiently on the other end. “Who is this?”
“Maya West, from Clarke Stein?”
“I’m sorry—were we meant to be expecting a call from you?”
At this point, Maya figured lying would get her farther than telling the truth.
“Yes, actually. I’m calling about the—” Maya snatched a sheet up from her desk. “Edie Thatcher ‘A Woman’s Movement’ gallery opening tonight? I just wanted to confirm that you have enough perfume samples for your gift bags. An assistant called from your office earlier today and said you might need another delivery.”
“Uh—” She heard the sound of shuffling papers. “Hold on a second. Let me put you on with one of our interns.”
It took Maya all of five minutes to bully the high-strung NYU freshman into thinking she’d forgotten to put the perfumes in the gift bags for the opening. She hung up triumphantly, then looked at the clock, rolling her head back in annoyance when she saw the time. It was 9:30, and the first time her work life had adversely impacted her social life. When Maya turned her phone off airplane mode, a flurry of texts poped onto her screen. Ugh—they were from the girls from last week, in the group chat the annoying one, Gabbie, had forced them to set up.
Delali
Delali
Delali
Delali
Attached was a picture of a card that looked like a wedding invitation. Maya was too scared to enlarge the picture. She scrolled through the rest of the texts.
Gabbie
Delali
Maya
Gabbie
Gabbie
Gabbie
Maya, suppressing a gag at the sight of the sunglasses emoji, locked her phone and turned to her desk. As far as she was concerned, whatever was going on in the group text was Delali and Gabbie’s problem, not hers. Nothing weird had happened to her since Saturday, and she was starting to wonder whether she’d even had anything to do with the phone thing or if the other two had just done it themselves. She slid out of her black Manolo sandals and into a pair of slightly decomposed Adidas, and stood. Her jean miniskirt and white faux-leather cami didn’t work as well without the shoes, but the idea of hobbling down the subway stairs in heels practically made her sweat. She was bending over her desk to log out of Windows when she heard someone approach.
“Every time I see you, you’re on your way out of the office!” Tatiana chirped.
Maya turned to face her, crossing her arms. Tatiana was, well, the worst. Maya hated the way she stayed late even on the slowest days, always somehow made progress on projects between Friday and Monday, and was constantly kissing their superiors’ asses. She couldn’t believe that she’d ever felt otherwise, but there had been a time when she thought she and Tatiana would actually be friends.
Back in the summer, their boss Lacey had sent all the junior PR girls to Eataly’s rooftop bar with her personal assistant, Moses, and her company card, clearly uninterested in the HR-required welcome event. Maya had scanned the room and beelined to Tatiana, and they spent the whole night together, sharing stories about their summers and roasting their coworkers’ Mary-Kate and Ashley cosplay outfits. The following Monday, Maya showed up to work excited, her boring job now gleaming with possibility, but Tatiana had been cold. Now, the only thing Maya felt when she saw Tatiana was annoyance that a girl so practical and competitive was also so pretty and glamorously dressed. Their failed friendship was one of many disappointments of the job, just under Maya’s realization that in New York, she wouldn’t be taken seriously in fashion until she started wearing those Margiela boots that segregated your toes. So never. Tatiana somehow managed to look hot and well-versed in fashion theory at the same time. Today she wore a silky, black wrap dress over a pair of straight-leg jeans and a pair of metallic pink sandals. Maya hadn’t seen dark wash look that cool since high school.
“Well, I’m not sure if you noticed,” Maya said, straining to keep her voice even, “but it’s almost nine thirty on a Friday.”
“Oh, I noticed.” Tatiana smiled. Her glossy brown eyes reflected a reading of Maya so thorough and sure, she felt like she was standing naked in the middle of the Clarke Stein offices. “I’m just waiting for Lacey—we’re grabbing dinner.” Maya did her best to hide her surprise. Lacey, CS’s head of marketing, was a bona fide industry celeb who rarely deigned to speak to the PR girls, let alone socialize with them. But if she were to dignify one of them, Maya wasn’t surprised it was Tatiana.
“Well, I’m gonna head out,” Maya said, reaching for her bag. Ugh, she thought. Why had she chosen her battered Goyard tote today of all days? She tried to hide it as she turned toward the door, but it was impossible to miss. “Have fun at dinner, or whatever.”
“Will do,” Tatiana said, breaking into a smile so big it could almost pass for genuine. “Oh, and cute sneakers!”
Maya huffed out of the office—she hated when she didn’t get the last word—and stormed toward the subway. Her phone vibrated and she glanced at it—it was the girls from the other night again. Now the annoying one was freaking out, too.
Gabbie
Gabbie
Delali
Delali
Maya clicked her phone off as she approached Prince and Crosby, then stopped in the middle of the block. There had been construction on the face of an apartment building right outside her office since she’d started, and the guys who worked there were the grossest construction worker caricatures Maya had ever encountered. At all hours of the day, no matter what shift—rain, shine, lunch, morning coffee—there were construction workers hanging from ladders and yelling obscenities at the girls who passed. Maya had never made the walk alone—the CS girls usually linked up in solidarity. She looked down at the minuscule skirt she was wearing. Fuck. She felt herself begin to sweat and shiver at the same time. She could hear the tinkering of the night-shift guys, and she was frozen, planted on the cement and unable to round the corner.
As the clink! clink! of their tools wormed its way into her brain, Maya started to feel a strange prickle on her skin—it was tight and dry, as if she’d taken a shower but neglected to lotion. The sensation built for what felt like an eternity, her skin growing tighter and tighter, as if shrinking over her body. Then Maya felt a pop and a sort of release. Almost like her skin had snapped open. Maya looked around as she regained her senses. She looked down to see that her body was no longer hers—the long slender legs, the Naomi Campbell complexion, the hard-won abs, all gone. Instead she had the legs of a man, short and thick, her skin off-white and covered in dark curly hairs. Her stomach felt loose. Her hands were the size of her original head. Maya screamed—a long, loud baritone sound that must have turned heads. By the time she’d finished, her own legs had reappeared. So had her hands and stomach and everything else. Maya looked around to see if anyone had noticed, but there was no one. She pulled out her phone, shaking, and ran to Tompkins Square Park as fast as her Pilates-toned legs could carry her.