The Herd(15)

As I bobbed a ball of feathers in Cosmo’s face, I thought back to that moment in 2012, when I’d flown in from L.A. to help out with Gleam’s launch. The three of us had huddled in Mikki’s Greenpoint apartment, the one she lives in still: a rent-controlled one-bedroom in a crumbling prewar building, all its hard angles softened by dozens of coats of cheap white paint. How our fingers hovered over our laptops, the press release and website and social media announcements all cued up and copyedited and practically vibrating inside. Once Eleanor gave us the signal, Gleam would be real. Eleanor’s very first company, a beauty brand that would change all of our lives. We lifted our chins and looked at one another, eyes sparkling—too young to feel any doubts marbling the excitement. To think about everything that might go wrong. That already had.

Go, Eleanor whispered. Our hands swooped. Gleam was alive, it was out there. A thrilling second, two. Then Eleanor spoke again, her voice thick with awe: It’s done.

For a moment, we beamed. Then Mikki hit Play on a Skrillex song, tinny on her computer’s speakers, and soon we were all on our feet, dancing in her living room, the world our shimmery, pearl-filled oyster.





CHAPTER 5





Katie


WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 3:32 P.M.

Pain—the kind of deep hurt that wafts into your whole body, sets your teeth on edge, makes everything tremble and fold in around the source of it.

“And five…and four…keep your hips square, don’t let that right hip pop! And three…keep going…”

I’m no mathematician, but we’d completed about fourteen heel-raises since the perky instructor called out five. Stephanie, the beautiful yogini, was just ahead of me, moving like a dancer, and next to me Mikki was glistening prettily, her wild hair gathered in a silver scrunchie. I looked back down at my mat and sweat funneled off the end of my nose, two drops, three.

The Herd offered Workout Wednesdays, something I hadn’t known about since Hana never went. (Thursdays also had a designated event, Cultivation Thursdays, when women gathered at lunchtime to share updates on their passion projects and side hustles. Are the first four letters of that always purple too? I’d cracked, the first time Hana mentioned it.)

I still hadn’t been offered a membership at the Herd. Not that it bothered me or anything.

Mikki had invited me here when she heard that Sabine, her favorite krav-maga-barre-fusion instructor, was leading this week’s class. I’d gleaned that I’d need to choose an exercise to fit in at the Herd, the way board-game players claim a color: Eleanor was a runner. Hana did Reformer Pilates in a eucalyptus-scented studio. And Mikki had signed on for this hellaciousness.

“I know you can get lower! The only one holding you back is you!” Sabine called. Mentally, I wove a complex tapestry of obscenities as we completed another set of microscopic push-ups. And then it was over. I collapsed onto my back and lay there, sweat puddling in my eyes, blood beating through my ears.

“You all right?” Mikki appeared above me, dabbing a towel along her slightly damp hairline. “I felt dead after my first time too.”

“I think that was outlawed by the Geneva conventions.” My chest heaved. “I’m being waterboarded by my own sweat.”

I followed her back out the door marked MOVE and into the bathroom. A small line of women stood waiting for the two shower stalls at the end. A few had stripped and were hanging out in towels; one had wrapped hers around her waist, casually topless. Mikki had completed the class in an improbable kelly-green unitard that hit mid-thigh, and now she rolled the top down, a towel dangling over her small breasts like a scarf.

Back at Harvard, Mikki had been the outrageous one, grinning mischievously as she sloshed Captain Morgan into my Diet Coke. She was free-spirited and kooky, crowing about her sexual exploits and cheerfully explaining lewd terms to me as I sat on the floor, saucer-eyed. (I was so disappointed to learn I don’t enjoy eating pussy—I mean, I love oysters is a Mikki quote still tattooed on my cerebrum.) She’d drummed up my first fake ID and she never shaved her legs or underarms, which had struck high school me as incredibly cool and daring. She’d of course mellowed since then—now she had that carefree artist vibe, the kind that made you insecure in your own uptightness. Everything she did had a certain effortlessness, someone serenely and unself-consciously dancing in the forest in a mumblecore movie.

Now as she fluffed at the nape of her neck, I saw that her armpit was smooth and hairless. This made me sad for some reason. Like The Man had won.

“I do see the appeal of learning self-defense,” I said, patting a towel across my collarbone. “I took a one-day seminar in college, but obviously none of it stuck. I’d have to be like, ‘Hold still, sir—if you’re holding the knife there, I need to use this hand to push it away while my knee goes here….’?” I acted it out, the awkward shuffling.

“Yeah, you really have to just do it over and over until it’s second nature. That’s why I like it: It makes me feel like I don’t have to take any shit. If someone tried to mess with me, I wouldn’t need to think—my body would just act.”

Hana had mentioned once that Mikki had been abused as a kid—her drunk dad had knocked around his wife and children whenever he was in a mood. Mikki never discussed it; she talked as if her life began as soon as she got out of North Carolina. It made her extra-impressive now, this badass artist thriving in NYC.