The Herd(9)

I erupted into laughter again and she joined me, face red. I felt something in my ribs and froze the moment long enough to identify it, before it could slip away: It was the first time since she’d moved back that I’d seen Katie being Katie.



* * *



—

After we’d eaten the mess, Katie suggested we take a walk. She’d done this a few times, and I hadn’t quite figured out why: whether this was something she did in Michigan, carving up the loneliness with long, patient strolls, or whether she perhaps was trying to reorient herself to New York, a city that had changed so much in even the eleven months she’d been away. I liked our walks—they reminded me of afternoons in Kalamazoo spent exercising our doofy yellow lab. When I was in junior high and Katie in elementary school, we’d circled the neighborhood, Kobe bounding ahead as I confidently imparted to Katie everything she needed to know about popularity and makeup and boys and fashion, topics I barely understood myself.

We ventured out into the cold, our breath forming little clouds in the streetlamps’ glow. I directed us off of my street, lined with boutiques and cafés closing up for the night, and onto a residential one, where townhouses with tasteful holiday decorations unspooled down either side.

“Mom says hi,” Katie said, stashing her phone in her pocket. “I texted her a photo of tonight’s fowl play.”

I snorted. “It looked like something Mom would’ve made.”

“Only it tasted better.” We walked quietly on and I waited to see if she’d say more about Mom, blunder further into the tension. When she didn’t, I changed the topic: “So how was Mocktails?” We’d spent most of dinner discussing her interview. From what I could tell, Katie had no idea that Eleanor wasn’t sure Katie was Herd material.

“All anyone could talk about was the vandalism,” she said. “If they were trying to keep it a secret, they failed. Why didn’t they just have someone come in and cover it up right away?”

“I said the same thing. But Eleanor always insists on using her friend for repair jobs. And he can’t come until after hours.”

Katie tugged her cap down. “I’m just offended that I couldn’t re-contour my cheekbones at three in the afternoon. What kind of hellhole tears women from their Gleam Cream like Sophie’s Choice?” I gave her a shove and she stumbled to the side, grinning. “Seriously, though, I think she should leave it up. Call it art. Cunts are awesome—they birth tiny humans. You say tagging, I say tagline.”

“Eleanor hates that word. It’s not the first time some misogynist dude has come after her, but—I could tell it bugged her. She usually has a pretty thick skin.”

We exchanged an identical that sucks look: nose scrunched, lips downturned. We don’t share an iota of genetic material—myself a mélange of Middle Eastern, Eastern European, and South Asian, per an expensive DNA testing kit I’d ordered in college, and Katie an Aryan dream—but everyone comments on how alike our mannerisms are.

“?‘Come after her’? What happened?”

I sighed. “There are idiots who crop up if you’re a public figure, especially a woman, especially a woman trying to fight the patriarchy by creating an empowering space for other women.” We turned right, past a jumble of trash bags and old office chairs, piled like a sculpture. “She doesn’t talk about it, the same way movie stars don’t talk about their stalkers. The worst thing you can do is give an attention-seeker attention. But she’s a huge deal. People are kind of obsessed with her. And she gets, you know. Death threats and stuff.”

“Really?” Katie turned to me, her eyes like two moons.

“Of course.” We’d reached a little community garden with a Christmas tree in the middle, studded with blue lights. I paused at the gate and she headed inside. “I mean, there are a lot of angry men in the world,” I added, following her in. “But Eleanor won’t let them scare her into shutting up.”

Katie didn’t reply; instead she marched up to the base of the tree and stared, her elfin face and big eyes washed in cobalt. “A lot,” she said softly.

“What?” I joined her, dead grass crunching under my feet.

“There are a lot of angry men.” She turned to me. “In the world.”

I tilted my head, watching her closely, and then a clang rang out behind us; Katie recoiled as if struck, and I turned to see the metal fence banging closed. We hurried back and found it hadn’t locked, had just swung in the wind. Katie stepped out onto the sidewalk as I tried to push the gate back open behind us.

“You okay?” I asked when we’d begun moving again.

“Of course. I’m just—Mikki said you guys don’t know how the tagger got in. And he didn’t, like, trash the place or anything, he just left that one message. It’s weird, right?”

“Super weird. But it’s not anything to stress about. Eleanor said today they’re going to beef up security. Cameras at the entrances and all that.”

She slipped off her beanie and tucked it into her pocket. “Oh, Mikki said to ask you why there wasn’t already a camera in the Gleam Room?”

I raised my eyebrows. “Would you want footage of you using the Gleam Room?”

“In the other rooms, then?”