Just Haven't Met You Yet(4)

“Hope?” I try. Suki stares at my chin unblinking. “Style tips? Um, a smile?” I crouch down a little lower. My glute muscles have gotten so much stronger in the four years I’ve been working here. “Hope?” Damn it, I think I said hope already.

Straight out of university, I worked for a music magazine. I’d have to wait backstage after gigs to try and bag interviews with bands. I learned how to thrust myself forward, find just the right question for musicians who had little time for me. I only lasted nine months before my editor tired of my “retro taste in music” and replaced me with a nineteen-year-old synth metal fan, but it was long enough to learn how to think on my feet and to swallow my nerves. Yet here, regardless of competence, something about Suki renders most of us incapable of forming intelligent sentences.

“We send them away with stuff, Laura. Suck them in with dreams, grab them with targeted ads, and send them away with stuff! Our followers might not have perfect lives, but they can have a new luxury mattress, a stylish holiday, the exact bronze light fitting that Kylie Minogue has in her Melbourne kitchen-cum-diner. With our help, they can buy a fragment of perfection.”

I nod, holding my chin between thumb and forefinger, attempting to look as though I’m studiously digesting Suki’s wisdom. Personally, I feel the world could do with a little less stuff, but no one’s going to pay me to peddle my “reuse, recycle” philosophy in this room. I have a staff job here, which, as a journalist, is almost impossible to come by. So, I count myself lucky and try to keep my head and my eyeline down.

“And so, we find ourselves with a problem.” Suki turns her attention back to the room and resumes pacing slowly as she talks. “In the current climate, no one wants to buy stuff. People are learning they can live with less. They can work less, earn less, buy less, do less, travel less—talk more, read more, enjoy the little things, the free things. Do they need another handbag, another outfit, another upgrade to their phone? Do they need sushi delivered at eleven p.m., Jazzercise classes, and BB cream for the cellulite no one ever sees? Do they, Laura?”

“Quite,” I say, nodding solemnly. Ha! I can’t be wrong if I say quite.

An invisible fishhook pulls at the edge of Suki’s lip before she whips her face back around to face the room.

“So, where does that leave us, as purveyors of stuff?” Suki slaps the wall, rounding off her oratory frenzy. “What do people want when life gets tough?”

Her eyes dart back to me.

“Um, sex?”

Everyone laughs. I have sex on the brain today. I blame the hot fireman and feisty redhead.

“Love,” Suki corrects me. “Love is what makes people feel good when the world outside feels bleak. Our How Did You Meet? and proposal pages are consistently the most clicked-on sections of the site. If we can lure in the numbers with love, we might just be able to keep the product partnerships paying all our wages.”

Suki takes a pen from the table and starts scribbling on the white board behind her, the pen squeaking like a mouse being garroted. She writes, Love = Views, Views = Sales, Sales = Jobs.

“We need clicks. We need content that warms people’s hearts.” Her voice takes on a somber tone. “The reality is, if site traffic is down again this month, we won’t be able to sustain a team of this size.” Murmurs of concern circle the room; people glance at one another nervously. We already lost three colleagues in January. Suki’s face softens, her eyes full of compassion as she holds out her hands to the room. “And you know you are all like family to me.”

Her ability to flit from tyrannical to faux maternal in the space of a sentence is disturbing.

“So, what unmissable content have you got for me— Vanya?” Suki releases me from standing with a finger click, and my glute muscles sing in relief. Now it’s Vanya’s turn, and I know for a fact she was out on a Tinder date until three a.m. last night and that she has a killer hangover to show for it. Vee and I rent a place together near Queen’s Park. I put in a good word for her here last year after the literary journal she worked for went under. There are only a few people I could embrace into both my home and my work life, but Vee is definitely one of them.

“Well, I had a couple of article ideas.” Beads of sweat dot Vanya’s upper lip, and her usually smooth black bob has sprung into frizz on one side. Suki clicks her fingers, indicating she should fire off her ideas. “Bed linen to save your marriage.” Suki shakes her head. “Kitchen appliances you didn’t know you needed.” Silence. “Working-from-home wardrobes of the rich and famous.” Suki grimaces. Vanya’s voice gets thinner; she pulls her arms up into her sleeves as though trying to hide inside her top. “Top ten lipstick shades to make your face look younger, happier . . . wiser?”

“Thank you, Vanya,” Suki says in her “quiet, disappointed” voice. “Byron? Do you have anything substantial to share?”

“Well—I, er—I have a story that could work for Laura’s How Did You Meet? segment,” Byron says, pressing his gray mustache between thumb and forefinger as he stands up. “An elderly couple who met at a funeral home. They were both burying their other halves, and it’s a funny story because—”

“There is nothing sexy about funeral homes, Byron—let’s keep things young and lively, yes. No one likes reading about old people.” Suki claps her hands.