Cult Classic(63)

Either way, this would require more than spackle, more than our super nodding at the problem and never returning. There was only one person for this job—the same one who’d convinced himself that manual labor was an act of social revolution.

“Bonkers,” Zach said, admiring the craters. “It’s like you sat on it.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t.”

“But it looks like you did.”

“Can I give you fifty bucks to make it look like I didn’t?”

He knocked on the wall, putting his ear to it.

“I think you’re supposed to do that to the floor. If you want to hear a heartbeat.”

“This is plaster,” he said, as if the wall had tried to put one over on him. “If you don’t get the right brackets, it will rip out again. It’s a wall problem, not a shelf problem.”

Zach had to spend the rest of the day running errands that struck me as atrocious (someone had paid him to drive their car to the airport, park it, and come back to the city by subway), but he returned that evening, drill in hand. Meanwhile, I’d gone to a bourgeois décor store on my lunch break. I wanted adult shelves for an adult life. Shelves for people who refer to blankets as “throws.” I also had the idea that an upgrade might help when Boots saw what had happened. At the store, a salesgirl in a green apron waited for me to make a decision, tapping her fingers on the display as Vadis did. What research had concluded that all salespeople should appear on the verge of grilling? I sent Zach pictures.

He had warned me he might be late, that I was being squeezed in between more lucrative gigs, but he was right on time. He’d also showered and applied cologne. I felt for him because I knew none of this was for my benefit. I was a tran sitive property, a messenger meant to report on Zach’s busy schedule, on how well he was doing. If Zach ever actually saw Vadis for who she really was, not just as a woman to be conquered or convinced, he would know the way to earn her respect was to not shower at all. Or, better yet, not show up at all.

He would never debase himself by asking me direct questions about her. Instead, standing on my stepladder, eyes on the bubble in his level, he circled the topic of Vadis. We all had such different lives now, huh? Long time, no staff meetings. Long time, no free lunches. Say, while we’re on the subject: Did I find Vadis’s Instagram feed irritatingly curated? Had I ever asked myself who, exactly, was taking all these photos? It must bother her boyfriend to have to do it.

“She doesn’t have a boyfriend.”

“Oh, no?”

“No, Zach. She’s not a boyfriend person.”

“So every photo is taken by a different dude?!”

I did not want to get involved. Even if I did, I did not have a live feed of Vadis’s heart. Sensing a dead end, Zach moved on to an even hotter topic: Clive. Since there would be no conflating Zach’s criticism of Clive with unrequited desire, he poured all his pent-up Vadis frustration into trashing our former boss. The dilettante. The philistine. The God complex. That age-inappropriate hair.

“Jesus. What did Clive ever do to you but employ you?”

“What did Clive do to you? You’re my safe space on this matter. Why are you so loyal to him all of a sudden?”

“I’m not. Believe me, I’m not.”

“Well, it would take me too long to run you through the list of Clive Glenn offenses. I have a lot of grievances. But off the top of my head, he just hired some art company to hang photographs in his apartment after explicitly indicating that he would ask me to do it.”

“Explicit indication?”

“He practically sent me a check.”

“Was this at dinner? He was drunk.”

“Irrelevant. He’s a fucking turncoat.”

I would’ve thought Zach would be repulsed by the idea of doing manual labor for Clive. But he liked the idea that it would make Clive reflect on how his wealth had forced him to put his ill-gotten spoils in the hands of the proletariat. He liked the idea of Clive being at the mercy of his drill bits.

“I think you’re giving him too much credit.”

“It’s classic Clive,” Zach said with a snort. “Trust me, I know exactly how that guy works.”

I wanted to hug his waist. Or kick him off the stepladder. It wasn’t that everything Zach knew about Clive was wrong so much as it was more right than he could ever conceive. But why was I keeping Clive’s secrets for him? There was a time when loyalty to Clive was loyalty to myself. That’s how it was for Errol and Jin and “Barry” and all of Clive’s followers. It was the effect of his charisma, an effect he still had on Vadis. But for Zach and me, it was all a very long time ago.

“Zach,” I said, turning a screw between my fingers, “I have a thing to tell you.”

He removed a pencil from his mouth.

“Vadis does have a boyfriend?”

I could hear him swallow. I had a passing thought of the NDA. It covered any set of human ears, but I knew it was meant for journalists. Real journalists. I hadn’t been one of those in a long time and neither had Zach.

“No.”

“You’re pregnant?”

“No.”

“I’m pregnant?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“I’m gonna need you to come down first.”