Nine Women, One Dress(50)
“It says Christie’s behind us!” she said, alarmed.
“So?”
“So it will raise suspicion!”
“I’m quitting anyway. What’s the difference?”
She looked at me like I was a total moron. “Obviously Sheldra is going to want you to do some spying before you leave—you know, some internal espionage,” she said, without humor.
“Who are you, Edwina Snowden?” I said, laughing at my own joke. “I can’t spy for you!” Of course I meant I actually couldn’t spy, because I had no way of getting into the building, but I wouldn’t have spied on Sotheby’s even if I could have.
I had begun to Instagram the pic when she grabbed my phone away from me. “I’m serious, Sophie!”
I got serious too. Somehow the fact that I’d been lying made me even more self-righteous.
“Listen, Thea, it’s one thing for me to leave Sotheby’s but quite another to screw them over in the process. If Sheldra doesn’t want me for my style and my knowledge, then I’m out.”
“Then I guess you’re out,” Thea said as she placed her still-full shot glass back on the bar and stormed off. I laughed at my ambiguous principles. I guess it was one thing to quit a fake job but quite another to be the kind of girl who would fake-screw my employer. In a strange way it felt good to hold on to my values, convoluted as they may be.
The man beside me hijacked Thea’s shot and raised it to toast. “To you!”
I clicked his glass and we drank. “Why are we drinking to me?” I asked upon recovering from the burn.
“I don’t often see that kind of integrity in young people. I’m impressed.”
I thanked him as he ordered us another round.
“Was she a good friend?” he asked curiously.
“Not really,” I said, playing with the rim of my glass. “She wasn’t really my type—a snob, and for no reason. She was a slush-fund baby.”
“You mean a trust-fund baby?”
“No, a slush-fund baby—her father paid for her entire education by stealing from his company’s petty cash.”
He laughed spontaneously from his gut. Hmmm, I’m cool and funny.
“I wish I was in the art game. I would snatch you right up.”
“What do you do?” I asked, more out of courtesy than because I cared.
“I own a marketing company, DrinkTheKoolAid.com,” he said, as if I should have heard of it. My face must have given me away. “Drink is made up of a group of influencers. We bring ideas to the mainstream consciousness through social media. It’s like reality television for the three-second attention span.”
I laughed. “That’s actually what I do!”
He asked me to explain, so I went on to describe the road that led me to the seat at the bar next to him. Everything from my very first aligram to borrowing the little black dress from Bloomingdale’s in a last-ditch effort to keep up appearances. As I told the story I realized how much I had enjoyed the whole trip. Not the lying, but the creativity involved in getting the right photo, choosing the right caption, and the instant and constant gratification of the likes and new followers. I was good at it. It was actually what kept me from sinking into a depression through all the rejections of my unsuccessful job search. He ate it all up and promised me that if I came to work for him, I could hashtag my way to a crib of my own in no time.
“You put on a good show,” he said. “Right down to your red-bottomed shoes.”
I kept that one lie to myself: my red soles were courtesy of a very resourceful shoemaker on 82nd and Third and not, as my #IHeartLouboutin pre-party post would lead my followers to believe, the genuine article.
As far as the finest little black dresses were concerned, he promised me that designers would be dropping them at my doorstep in the hope of the right tweet or the right photo. He wanted me to help him co-opt an entire generation—my generation—of doe-eyed followers. Who was I to say no? In the past that was an honor bestowed on cultural icons like Andy Warhol and Oprah, but now it seems that I, Sophie Stiner, am cool enough to lead the way.
Go ahead and tag me! @SophieStiner @DrinkTheKoolAid #dreamjob #cool
CHAPTER 30
Snowbound Bound
By Natalie, the Beard
I was so nervous that when we settled into the limo I began biting my nails, and I wasn’t even a nail-biter. I wanted to chicken out, call the whole thing off, but one look at Albert and Tomás and I realized that this road trip was no longer entirely about me. In fact, from the way they were looking at each other I calculated my relevance to be at about 10 percent. This was confirmed by Tomás’s enthusiastic announcement of our first scheduled stop: a quick lunch at Miss Florence Diner, just outside Northampton, Massachusetts. Before I could say anything, or even ask if it was on the way, Albert blurted out with equal enthusiasm, “Oh my god, I’ve never been to Northampton!”
But a stop meant more time to work myself up into a nervous wreck. My face must have indicated as much, because Tomás spoke as if I had protested out loud.
“Natalie, he’s never been there!”
I wouldn’t have cared, really, I was happy for them and their sparks that were flying around me, but I am a rip-the-Band-Aid-off-quickly kind of girl and this would take forever. I tried to think of it from their point of view: Northampton isn’t just any cute town. It’s the LGBTQ capital of the Northeast, a place that promised acceptance and solidarity and something for Tomás and Albert to bond over. Unless I was willing to get into a whole conversation about my heterosexual privilege, I would need to just smile and acquiesce. Besides, we would probably be hungry by then.