Edwin’s office is as impersonal as it is large. He has a phenomenal view of the city through floor-to-ceiling windows, and a whole lot of square footage, but no photos or mementos of any kind. His desk is bare, and his bookshelves mostly are, too, though he has a bar in the corner that’s fully stocked. “I moonlight as a mixologist,” he says.
I sit down on a white leather sectional, which has the same feminine flair as the jet. I’ve been a little on edge all day, but now it’s intensified a hundredfold because I’m actually doing it. I’m willing to take the sizable risk for a potentially monumental reward. I’m going to say yes, with one condition.
Edwin’s half sprawling, his part of the sectional perpendicular to mine, deep in his frost-colored Corpse Reviver. He asks again if he can make me anything, it’s so sad to drink alone. Not now, I’ve got to stay sharp.
He’s willing to blur his edges, though, unless he drinks so much alcohol normally that the cocktail won’t even affect him. Or he’s that confident about my answer. Or that unconcerned.
I can barely breathe, not knowing if this is just a clever negotiating strategy on his part. I’m completely out of my depth.
He hands me the contract. “Let me know if you have any questions.” He studies his phone as I read it through. Well, more like skim it. The thing is enormous. I can’t make him wait while I scrutinize every line. His time is valuable. “It’s pretty simple. No stock options or revenue sharing. But it’s a pretty generous salary for right out of school. Most of the pages are about confidentiality and proprietary interests. We don’t want you jumping to Fox News and telling them our trade secrets.” He smiles.
The pages are full of consequences if I breach the contract. This must be what a noncompete clause looks like. I’ve heard the term, but I’ve never actually seen any sort of contract before.
I never thought I’d be offered $180K for an entry-level job, and that’s just for the first year. There are raises, incentives, and bonuses built in, based on performance, if I’m able to meet certain benchmarks, if I can do what Edwin thinks I can.
“Three years,” I say, trying not to do a cartoonish gulp.
“Yep. It’s standard.”
Locked in for an eighth of my life to date. This could be three years of abject humiliation. Or worse.
The flip side is, INN would be locked in too. Regardless of performance, even if they decided to sack me, I’d be guaranteed a minimum of $600K over the next three years. What that kind of money could buy in Tulip . . .
Not that I’m ever going to live there again, but still. Yes, I want to make an impact on the world and have a mission, but I’m an American. I can’t deny the allure of cold hard cash.
I continue reading. “I’d have to pitch and produce news stories?”
“Everyone on the team does that. This is boilerplate stuff, Cheyenne. It’s to cover all the bases, ours and yours.”
I assume he’s telling the truth, but I have no way to know. I can’t exactly ask to see the contracts of other people at the network. Can I?
Chase would know how to play hardball if someone really wants you. But I chose not to call him when I had the chance, and I don’t think I could do it now.
I don’t think I want to.
If Chase tells me to stall and do my homework, which he almost definitely will, then it gives me more time to think. But it gives Edwin more time to think too. He might talk to his staff and find out that they’re less than thrilled to work alongside a woman with my internet footprint.
I can’t risk this. I want it too much.
“If all goes well,” Edwin says, “and you’re the hit I think you’ll be, then you get yourself a high-powered agent and you fight me for what you’re worth. And if you don’t like it here, we’ll part ways. You can stick anything out for a few years, right?”
That’s exactly what Dad said to me in the bathroom.
My heart drops. I’ve been surveilled before, and the last thing I want is to go back there, voluntarily.
I’m being paranoid. It’s a holdover from the trolls. “Sticking it out” is a common expression. Edwin can obviously see my hesitation, and he’s trying to reassure me. In a few years, if I want to, I walk.
Why does “three years” sound like so much more than “a few”?
“I feel like I should have a lawyer look this over,” I say.
“Understandable. You have a lawyer?” I shake my head. “You can borrow one of mine.”
I’m not sure if he’s kidding. He takes another sip of his icy drink and returns his eyes to his phone. “I can give you twenty-four hours to review it.”
Is that standard, too, or a high-pressure negotiating tactic? Is he allowed to rescind during those twenty-four hours?
I can feel the shift from when we first spoke on the plane, when I was about to stalk off and he had to woo me back. He has the power now, and he knows it. He sold me.
“It’s a good deal,” Edwin says.
“I believe you.” I really don’t think he’s trying to screw me. He whisked me away from Palo Alto this morning and introduced me to his staff as the next big thing. He’s clearly invested in developing my potential.
Still, you don’t just sign your life away without having a lawyer look things over. But I don’t know how I would find a lawyer experienced in these sorts of contracts on this short of notice, and if I could, it might not be someone whose advice can be trusted. It would be someone who has no stake in me. Not like Edwin, who wants to link our fortunes.
“I can understand your hesitation, given your past experiences. But what happened to you, that’s what happens to everyone who goes viral. There’s more negative than there is positive. That’s what holds people’s interest—their own worst natures.”
“So the goal is for me to get reamed online?”
“No. The goal is for you to get viewers, and for me to get advertisers, and in the process, we change the direction of this country. You’re how I get millennial males to eat their brussels sprouts.”
I wish I could smile, but I’m suddenly paralyzed. “I’m scared, Edwin.”
“Last time, you didn’t get the upside. This time, trust me, there’s going to be a lot of upside. This time around, they’re all going to wish they were you.”
“The past is going to come back up. All the awful things people said about me will get recycled. Not to mention the pictures.”
“Your first report will be on cyberbullying, and you won’t be the whole story, don’t worry, but we’ll incorporate what happened to you. It humanizes you right from the start, and it lets us get out in front. Then when people attack you, they’ll have proven your point. They’ll be cliché.”
“You think that’ll deter them?”
He laughs. “Of course not. But it’s all part of the plan. This isn’t checkers; it’s chess. Trust me, Cheyenne. I’m focused on the long game.”
I do trust him, and I want this mission. I want to prove myself worthy of it, and to prove all my classmates wrong, the ones who’ve underestimated me, and all the trolls who insist on the binary, you’re left or you’re right, you’re entirely pure or you’re a slut and an opportunist. I want to try to make the world better—more informed and inclusive and kinder. That desire is greater than my fear.
“There’s something you need to know,” I say. “A clause of my own.”
He puts his phone down beside him, but not his drink. He looks intrigued.
“My father has terminal cancer, and he has for a long time. I delayed Stanford for a year because the doctors said he didn’t have much time left, but then I found this clinical trial, this experimental drug, and it worked. So I went to school for two years, and then the drug stopped working. I took a year off to be with him. I found another clinical trial, and that’s been working ever since.” I get that feeling in my chest and throat, the superstitious one that makes me want to find some wood in this steel-and-glass office and knock as hard as I can. “But if it stops working, then I have to be let out of my contract.”
“To be his nurse?”
“No, to be his daughter,” I say sharply.
Part of that sharpness is the realization that I’m not actually choosing to spend as much time as possible with him. If that was my main aim, I’d be back there right now. Instead, I’m about to take a demanding job in NYC for the next three years. I’ve been visiting him once a month, and I was planning to keep that up for the rest of my—well, his—life. Will I be able to do that if I take this job?
Maybe I can get him to move to New York to live with me. On almost $200K a year, I might be able to afford a two-bedroom.
There’s no way. He belongs in Tulip in a way that I don’t, despite all the affection I have for the place. Tulip should be a model for the rest of the country. But I don’t fit there, and I didn’t really fit in Palo Alto either. Will I belong in New York?
Edwin is watching me carefully, calibrating. It’s the first wrench I’ve thrown into his plan.
“I’ll call my lawyer,” he says finally.
That was easier than I expected, so I might as well push it. “I have to fly back and see him regularly. So I need to be guaranteed one weekend off every month.”
“After that, we’re good to go? No more changes?”
“Nothing.”
“And you’ll sign tonight?”
“Yes.”
His smile is huge. How many teeth does that man have? “You’ve got yourself a deal.” I burst into astonished laughter. “You’re going to have that drink now, right? I’m thinking . . . Bee’s Knees. You like gin? You like froth?”
I laugh again, a girlish tinkling sound of such delight that I wouldn’t have recognized it as mine. I haven’t laughed like that since childhood, maybe, or at least since before my father’s diagnosis.
As soon as we’ve had our drink, I need to call Dad. And Chase. I have to break the news that we’re about to become a long-distance couple. No, bicoastal. That’s a much better way to put it.
He’ll have to understand. No woman—no person—could turn this down, especially now that I’m getting my Montana clause. Maybe I could have pushed for two weekends a month to have time in both Tulip and Palo Alto, but at some point, Edwin was going to push back. Anyway, it’s too late now. The lawyers are hard at work, and Edwin is already mixing drinks.
Chase gets ambition. I’ll just call him and explain. No, I’ll tell him in person later. It’s three hours earlier in Palo Alto, and Edwin’s private jet is going to take me back tonight.
But first things first. I really need that drink.