The Herd(49)
“Okay.” Hana mashed her hands together. “Let’s go then.”
I stayed behind for a minute, collecting myself, then paused at the threshold between the sunroom and the library. I let my gaze soften until the women around me were just a beautiful blur. A phone rang; two Herders giggled loudly, their laughs like pretty sparklers.
My eyes focused again on a figure in the corner, near the coatroom—wide shoulders hunched, her neck drooping. Hana. I blinked and hurried over to her, tapped her arm. We stared at each other.
“I’m gonna go home,” she announced, with the same zoned-out drone you use at the end of the night, when you realize you’re too drunk and no longer having a good time.
“Okay.”
“I just…can’t be here right now.” She rifled through the coat rack, thrusting sleeves aside. “Do you want to come with me?”
She stared at the coats, not meeting my eyes, which I took to mean she didn’t want me to.
“I’m gonna stay. Make sure Mikki’s okay.”
She nodded and then pulled me into another hug. “Call me if you need anything.”
“I will,” I said. But I knew I wouldn’t.
I wandered home shortly after, past the Cultivation Thursday crew convening near the front desk. I glared at the women there: nodding, laughter, notes in pretty notebooks and forks scraping on creamy green plates. Things were falling apart, but to them, it was business as usual.
* * *
—
I slept late on Friday, then woke to a string of texts from Erin. My little chipmunk of a literary agent was eager for an update on my book proposal, eager for anything new on Eleanor. She didn’t know yet—nobody knew. Ninety-nine percent of the world thought Eleanor was waylaid by a family emergency, Erin and a handful of others thought she was genuinely missing, and just a few of us—one-third of one-billionth of the population—knew the bizarre truth. Thoughts of Chris came clanging back to the surface. My heart had just begun to scab over, now that I’d put seven hundred miles between myself and Michigan, the awful night when it all went wrong. Now the wound opened back up and mingled with how much I missed Eleanor: a shimmering ache radiating outward from my chest.
The Herd had a hushed, curious energy. By now—with Eleanor three days gone—everyone was keenly aware of her absence, and the Herd’s fresh Instagrams (still posted regularly by one of the member relations coordinators) had hundreds of comments clinging to the bottom, all vague and cheerful vows of support for Eleanor and her “family emergency.” Each made me feel something between faint and sick.
Hana’s eyes had that focused glint, her body stiffened with determination. She was putting the final touches on a press release before sending it to the Herd’s lawyer for approval. Yesterday’s paralysis, it turned out, hadn’t lasted long. Hana always behaved this way under pressure: She became maniacally efficient, a robot plowing through its tasks until she’d suddenly break down into tears that seemed like a surprise even to her. It freaked me out—the automaton eyes, her manic typing, as if Eleanor hadn’t just thrown a grenade into our lives.
I swung Hana’s screen my way and scanned: The press release was a soft, twirling spin on the truth, a carefully worded claim that due to “continuing family circumstances,” Eleanor was permanently stepping down from her posts at Gleam and the Herd, and asking everyone to respect her privacy during this difficult time.
“Family circumstances?” I repeated, pointing.
She shrugged. “It sounds better than ‘personal reasons’ but means the same thing. Isn’t everyone a member of their own family?”
I looked at her, astonished.
Mikki appeared and slid onto a seat at the communal table we’d commandeered. “I can’t believe you got so many people to agree to not talk about it.” She looked at me and clarified: “Daniel, Cameron, Ted, Eleanor’s parents—they’re all staying mum.”
“To be fair, I don’t think her folks are able to form coherent sentences right now.” Hana sighed. “But it’s true, they’re all signing NDAs. I think everyone saw the logic of keeping this quiet so they have an actual shot at grieving in peace. Can you imagine if it was on the news?” She held an imaginary mic under her chin, her voice bubbling up with a newscaster’s shocked emphasis: “Bizarre news is rocking the small but powerful world of commercial feminism today. Following an announcement that the Herd will be acquired by internet giant Titan, its founder has cleared out her bank account and run off…to Mexico!”
A stunned silence. “You do a really good newscaster,” I said finally.
“Have you been practicing that?” Mikki looked uncomfortable.
Hana rolled her eyes. “It’s my job to think about the worst-case scenario, okay? The Herd is still my client, and believe it or not, I still care about this place.”
“Aw.” I patted her hand. “This place cares about you too.”
“Glad somebody does.” She lifted her screen again. “Not to mention I have other clients. Whom I’ve been basically ignoring for a week.”
“I know what you mean. I missed a meeting with a super-important gallery owner.”
“Aw. For the collages?” Mikki nodded. I was screwed, too, but I couldn’t share why. I hadn’t replied to Erin. My hunch was that she’d try to convince me to keep pursuing Eleanor, to perhaps even travel to Mexico in defiance of Eleanor’s blow-off, a thought that made my stomach knot almost as badly as the idea of dusting off my notes from Michigan and writing Infopocalypse.