The Startup Wife(56)
“No, it already existed. We are just making them more effective and less lethal.”
“Less lethal?”
“It gives you an allergy to meat-based products. We genetically modified it so that you also become unable to eat dairy, honey, or eggs. But whereas some people react to an allergen by going into anaphylactic shock, the bite from this tick just makes it so that meat makes you very, very sick.”
“Sick as in cancer?”
“As in diarrhea.”
I’m not sure what to think. On the one hand, Rory is insane. On the other, his version of changing the world is way more radical than my version of changing the world. I’m having changing-the-world envy. Rory is looking right at my mouth instead of generally in the direction of my face, and I wonder if maybe he’s leaning in to kiss me, so I jerk my head back because God that would be weird, and thankfully, before either of us tries to register what’s going on, I get a text from Jules. Come to the meeting room now pls. I bolt up the stairs, but by the time I get there, the design review is over. Destiny, Gaby, and Jules are huddled together around the conference table looking wilted and gray.
“It’s okay,” Jules is saying. “We’ll figure it out.” I peer over his shoulder and see a drawing of the site that is unrecognizable.
“What’s that?” I ask, even though I already know.
“It’s the new design,” Destiny says.
“But people like it the way it is.”
“Cyrus does not like it the way it is, so we’re going to change it,” Jules says.
“On the basis of what?”
“On the basis of he’s the CEO,” Gaby says.
I want to say, Oh, fuck that, but I know Destiny and Jules have already gone through the arguments with him and that he’s won. “Look,” Destiny says, “why don’t we mock it up, do some A/B testing, see what people say.”
Jules agrees. “Good idea. The data will speak for itself.” He looks at me. “Everyone happy with that?”
I’m far from happy, but I don’t see that I have a choice. Gaby winks conspiratorially at me and I feel a little better.
I don’t go home for several days. I stay up all night and take naps in the sleep pods at Utopia. Ren and Destiny and I take turns playing DJ, and then the turntable breaks. We order the same thing from the diner every day, going old-school and picking it up ourselves. “Are you okay?” Cyrus asks, and I nod, tell him I’m just tired because the deadline is so tight, and he accepts that, doesn’t dig any further. I’m actually not tired, I feel rather refreshed. The sleep pods are quieter than the apartment, and I don’t have the feeling every time I go home that I should be there more often, like normal people, and keep food in my fridge. Last time I checked, there was half a bottle of sparkling water and half a lemon and half an avocado that had gone brown the week before. Cyrus and I live like wolves, but when we are at the office, it doesn’t matter; in fact, Cyrus’s desk is always spotless, and my code, I know, is uncluttered and elegant. Nothing like my bedside table, which is not a bedside table at all but a crate I once picked up on the sidewalk and on which I precariously balance a number of items, including a stash of cookies, an alarm clock, a bottle of water, birth control pills, and when it’s not under my pillow, my phone.
All this is about to change. Cyrus and I are closing on an apartment on the Lower East Side. It too contains an abundance of glass and steel and, underneath, the bones of an old building. There are two floors, multiple bathrooms, and a six-burner stove. We are going to cook meals, make our beds, and take our coffee cups to the sink. We are going to purchase furniture and flower vases. We are going to return the mugs we stole from the diner. I have visions of dinner parties, people laughing, their delighted faces reflected in our excellent choice of cutlery. And through it all, I see us, Cyrus and me, our lives entwined ever more, shrugging off the last two years and returning to the time when we had acres of things to talk about, things that weren’t related to fundraising and redesigning a website to which I have grown attached.
* * *
I can hear Mira in the baby’s room, cursing. “Oh, for the love of God, how is it possible for you to shit so much.”
She comes back, slides onto the sofa, pulls her top aside, and silences the baby. “She poops, I change her diaper, and then ten seconds later she poops again, and while I’m changing that, her pee comes out in a little arc and hits me right in the face.”
“We don’t put diapers on babies in Bangladesh,” our mother says.
Mira groans. Ammoo has been staying at her house every weekend for the last two months, making food and generally driving everyone crazy.
“Here,” Mira says, handing me the baby. “You burp her.”
I stand up and stroke Gitanjali’s back while doing a bouncy dance that just came to me the first time I held her. Her head smells so good. “I’m thinking we have heroin pods in our vaginas,” I say. “When the baby comes out, a little heroin gets sprinkled on top of their heads, and then all you want to do is sniff them instead of counting the number of times you have to wipe their butts.”
“Heroin-laced vagina! If only. My vagina feels like the Hulk stepped on it.”
“Yeah, but a baby came out of your vagina. Your vagina is magic.”