The Assistants(33)

She’d lost me when she picked up her laptop.

“Look.” Wendi snapped her fingers to direct my attention to the screen. “Here’s where people can submit their student-loan-debt statements. And here’s where you or Emily, or anyone, can submit monetary contributions to the site’s account. And here’s where you click to send people their e-checks. That’s pretty much it, very simple.”

“So it’s like a charity?” I asked.

“It’s not a charity.” Wendi reached into the cooler and pulled out another can of red, white, and blue Budweiser. “I like to think of it as a program to aid in the redistribution of wealth. Robert’s wealth.”

She let that statement float for a few seconds. “For example. I don’t have student-loan debt, but I do my boss’s expenses. So if I join the network, I can fudge his expense reports just like you and Emily have been doing, but now you can put those funds toward another network member’s debt.”

“So it’s an expense account scheme,” I said. “Plain and simple. That’s the brilliant idea you’re pitching?”

Wendi set her laptop down onto the floor, then put her boots up on the milk crate that served as her coffee table. “It’s not a scheme,” she said. “Think about the potential here, Tina. We’re not only the ninety-nine percent, we’re the assistants to the one percent. There’s power in that.”

I looked around Wendi’s cruddy basement apartment. At the cardboard-box bookshelves and repurposed lamps. The cracked claw-foot bathtub that served as a planter for what may or may not have been marijuana.

I had to ask: “Are you proposing this as a way to get rich?”

Wendi squealed with laughter like a poltergeist. “No. I don’t want to become rich, because then I would have to despise myself. I’m proposing this to make Robert a little less rich, but not enough that he notices.”

I considered this for a moment. To be honest, there was a Robin Hood–esque element to Wendi’s idea that I found tempting. My college self would have jumped at it. Actually, that’s a lie. My college self would have listened attentively with owl eyes while the more active activists at the Women’s Center jumped at this idea. But philosophically I would have totally been on board.

While I was lost in this thought, Wendi tossed me another beer and I reflexively ducked out of its way, letting it drop to the floor.

“Sorry,” I said. “Habit.” I picked up the beer, opened it without thinking, and it exploded all over the two of us. “Sorry again,” I said, but Wendi hadn’t even flinched.

“So this program,” I said, thinking back to the dream boards currently being constructed in my kitchen. “It would allow me to prevent people from using the money for anything but student-loan debt. Right?”

Wendi nodded gravely. “Not everyone’s so honest as you.”

“You think I’m honest?”

“I think you’re okay, Tina,” she said. And from Wendi Chan that was saying a lot.

—

I RETURNED HOME to find Emily pouting, knees to chest on the kitchen floor, which itself now looked like a haywire linoleum dream board, a sea of discarded, half-crumpled cutouts of luxury goods mottled by smears of glittering paste. Ginger was nowhere to be found.

“You came back!” Emily jumped up and ran to me for a hug. “I was afraid you’d gone for good.”

I kept my arms at my sides but allowed her embrace.

“Fine,” I said into the skin of her bare shoulder, which smelled like a gardenia—all she was wearing was a lace nightie. “I’m back in. But only if we do this my way.”

And my way meant no dream boards, no spending sprees that would land me in a cell.

“Whatever you want.” Emily squeezed me tighter. “I’m just so glad you’re home.”

“We’re going to use a computer program,” I said.

“I love that.”

“I said computer program. We’re going to use a computer program to pay off Ginger’s debt. And I’m in charge of it.”

I would control the money. Me and only me. Because if I couldn’t stop Emily and Ginger from going ahead with this, I could at least keep them on a leash.

Emily released me and went to the fridge to search for, most likely, a fresh bottle of Asti Spumante.

“Did you hear me?” I said. “I’m going to be in charge. And for f*ck’s sake, don’t tell anyone else! And make sure Ginger doesn’t either.”

“Okay, okay,” Emily said. “I’m just happy you’re back.”





14




THE NEXT DAY, back at work, it was all I could do to keep from throwing myself down on Robert’s $1,200 wingtips and beg for forgiveness. The brief respite I’d felt, the sense that I’d made it to the other side of this mess, had been given over to acute guilt and shame. To make things worse, it was the day of Robert’s weekly editorial meeting with his managing editors—for which I was called upon to do the most important task I had all week.

This recurring meeting was the fifteen minutes or so Robert spent deciding Titan’s “message of the week,” which would then be pounded away at through his various media outlets, resonating throughout the country. (Remember: Even if you haven’t heard of Robert, he has influenced you. If you exist in the modern world, he owns all or a portion of the media you consume.) This fact—that one man could have so much influence—enraged many people. To me, all it meant was that it was ten a.m. on a Tuesday.