Sad Desk Salad (11 page)

But then I reach a slide called “Strategic Rationale: acquisition creates substantial value for shareholders” that I can understand. It’s about how Omnitown can purchase Collins Media’s stable of websites, and its implications make me want to yack up that coffee: “A combination is expected to generate annualized adjusted EBITDA benefits of at least 33 percent, primarily through a targeted 10–20 percent reduction in headcount.”

I feel my stomach plummet. If the sale of Collins Media goes through, our staff is going to be reduced by as much as 20 percent. Moira’s recent page view pressure now makes a whole lot more sense: If I don’t get my traffic stats up as quickly as possible, my head will be the first one on the chopping block.

I hear the water go off in the bathroom and quickly shut the binder before I get to the end of the report. I know I shouldn’t have even started reading the thing—it’s proprietary information—but still, how could Peter be working on this deal? He knows that if it goes through I might lose my job. Does he think his work is somehow more important than mine is, just because he makes more money? How can he be singing in the shower right now when he knows that this is happening? Suddenly I feel a whole lot less guilty about being an absent girlfriend this week.

I chug the rest of my coffee and hustle over to power up my laptop. I don’t want Moira to be pissed at me for being late again, especially now that my employment status is even more precarious than I thought it was. Luckily, when I get online Moira’s not even there yet. I start looking through my RSS feed for something to post on.

I’m scrolling through last night’s stories when Peter emerges with a towel wrapped around his slim waist. I can’t even look at him directly, even though out of the corner of my eye I can see him smiling. Fuck him for looking so cheerful right now!

Moira comes online as I hear the sound of drawers closing and opening and then the distinct scrape of Peter’s wing-tip shoes against our hardwood floors. He comes back into the living room before she IMs me.

“What’s on your mind?” Peter asks, straightening his tie with one hand while he holds the incriminating report in the other.

“Nothing’s on my mind.” I stand to hug him. I don’t want him to know anything is amiss just yet—if I don’t show him some affection before he leaves he’ll know something’s off. “Just sleepy.”

“All right. I gotta take off. Seven thirty meeting. But let’s talk tonight, for real.”

“Okay, see you tonight.”

I turn back to my computer and listen as the door closes behind him. I don’t want to look at him longer than I have to because I’m so churned up. I’m feeling so low at this point that I can’t help but navigate back to Breaking the Chick Habit before Moira sends me my marching orders. It’s been updated since I checked it yesterday. The latest post has the headline “Alex Lyons Cares About the Important Issues,” and the text beneath it is a complete reproduction of the post I did about the meowing Siamese trapped in the jar. I’m both relieved that this is as mean as the site’s gotten today and also, weirdly, a critical reader. The dig seems slightly beneath BTCH. Her insults usually cut closer to the bone.

Finally, an IM from Moira pops onto my screen.

MoiraPoira (6:40:14):
Glad to see you’re on early today.

Alex182 (6:40:43):
Sorry again about yesterday.

MoiraPoira (6:41:02):
Let’s not dwell on it.

Alex182 (6:42:42):
Any word from the lawyer yet?

MoiraPoira (6:43:56):
He hasn’t given me solid approval yet, but it’s looking good. He says he’ll let me know sometime this morning.

Alex182 (6:44:12):
Word.

MoiraPoira (6:45:21):
Pickings are slim today, but there’s yet another study debunking the link between autism and vaccines. That’s always good for a commenter brawl.

Alex182 (6:46:45):
Sure thing.

Moira sends me the link to the study, and I write 312 words about how parents who don’t vaccinate their children—especially if they’re doing it because anti-vaccine bobblehead Jenny McCarthy told them to—should probably be sterilized. “If you’re letting a washed-up, fake-titted former MTV hostess give you medical advice, you don’t deserve to have children,” I write.

This is even more aggressive than I usually am, but I’m strangely emboldened by the hate blogger. If she’s going to rag on me for writing about kittens, for God’s sake, I’ll give her something to
really
complain about. Plus being provocative gets me comments, and comments get me page views.

I also see this as self-training for posting the Rebecca video. If I can handle this small controversy, maybe the bigger one won’t be so bad. I resolve not to read any of the comments on this post—or any post I write for the rest of the morning. I’m not letting anything break my stride. It’s a free country, I tell myself. I should be allowed to state my opinion without being attacked by the judgment police every goddamn second.

I file to Moira.

MoiraPoira (7:41:16):
The first lady is about to be on the telly. Why don’t you check that out on your beloved Today show.

Alex182 (7:41:38):
kk

I have a moment of Zen watching Michelle Obama gracefully answer Savannah Guthrie’s questions. She’s wearing a black-and-white patterned dress with bold geometric shapes and a fuchsia belt. I bliss out on her bright voice without really paying that much attention to what she’s saying. Child obesity something something. I know I’m going to have to rewind this portion if I’m going to write about it, but for this minute I am enjoying Michelle’s ultimate composure. I could use some of that myself today. In the midst of this calm, I get an IM from Tina.

TheSevAbides (8:23:29):
So I had time to look into our hate blogger’s identity.

Alex182 (8:23:49):
And??

TheSevAbides (8:24:15):
As I suspected, our hater registered the site to a dummy company—Breaking the Chick Habit LLC—with only a PO box attached.

Alex182 (8:24:50):
Bummer.

TheSevAbides (8:25:13):
But I was able to see that her IP address is from Greenpoint, so at least we know she’s local.

Alex182 (8:27:34):
I have this suspicion that our hate blogger is someone I know.

TheSevAbides (8:27:55):
How’s that?

Alex182 (8:28:12):
She’s been writing mainly about me lately, and she posted this thing from my hometown newspaper from when I was a kid. There’s no way she would have been able to find that unless she knew me.

TheSevAbides (8:29:32):
Hmm, I don’t know about all that. Maybe the hate blogger just figured out where you were from through clever Googling and maybe the newspaper recently digitized their archives. I mean, how do you explain how she got the photo of me from high school?

Alex182 (8:30:23):
I guess.

Now Tina’s just making me feel like a paranoid loon. Maybe the sleepless night and all the stress of this job have turned me into exactly that. Still, I wish I could get back to the closeness I felt toward her on Monday night (we sang on the subway together!). It’s supposed to be us against them, isn’t it? Maybe she’d feel just as worked up as I do if she knew that some of us might be about to lose our jobs. Not that I’m in the mood to share that with her.

Alex182 (8:31:24):
Whatever, I need to get back to posting.

I rewatch the clip of the First Lady so that I can accurately transcribe some of what she’s saying and eke out an angle, but as I’m watching I notice that Savannah Guthrie cannot stop giggling dorkily at everything MObama says. “I think that our parents have a right to expect that their kids will not be served pizza and Cheetos at every lunch,” Michelle says, to which Savannah guffaws. Then Michelle says something about fresh produce at schools, and Savannah, absurdly, giggles. I clip together every chuckle and gasp into one big Savannah Guthrie laughing supercut, and post that with the title “Savannah Guthrie Takes Michelle Obama Super Seriously.” I file this to Moira at around nine forty-five.

MoiraPoira (9:46:22):
You’re on a roll today. I love your vigour!

Alex182 (9:47:24):
Thanks!

MoiraPoira (9:47:59):
I guess you took my advice to grow a pair. This is good to know, because I just got word back from our lawyer.

Alex182 (9:48:34):
And???

MoiraPoira (9:49:12):
You’re clear to post the video. He says it’s fair use. You just need to be sure to word the post and the headline in a vague enough way so that we don’t sound like we’re asserting the video’s of Rebecca—we’re just alleging it. I still want you to contact Rebecca and Darleen for comment, of course.

Alex182 (9:50:03):
OK. How long should I give them to respond before I publish it?

MoiraPoira (9:51:23):
Reach out to them now and then start writing the post. Send it to me when you’re done with it so that I can go over it with the lawyer. We’ll include their responses if they do get back to you quickly, but even if they don’t we’re publishing that sucker at 1 PM. I’ve already loaded the video into our player.

Alex182 (9:53:02):
Gotcha. Wow.

My early morning ferocity is slightly diminished by the prospect of actually confronting the intense Darleen West about her daughter’s drug-addled antics. But something inside me has shifted today, and I know I have to publish the video. I could be unemployed by the end of the quarter. My mom will be crestfallen if I lose this job.

I go to the Darleen4Senate website and locate the “Contact Me” tab. The site’s layout is clean and bright, with flashy blue lettering and Darleen’s tight smile adorning the front page. I click on an envelope icon. She’s got it rigged up so the page announces, “You’ve got mail!” as soon as I hover over the envelope. I quickly type an e-mail:

To:
[email protected]

From:
[email protected]

Subject:
Looking for Comment: Video of your daughter Rebecca

Dear Darleen:

I’m a writer for a website for women called Chick Habit. We’ve received a video that we believe is of your daughter Rebecca. It shows her snorting cocaine and taking her shirt off. You can watch the video here: https://www.chickhabit.net/rebeccawestvideo.

We have not yet released this link, but we plan to this afternoon.

Given your status as a celebrity parenting expert and political hopeful, how do you respond to the existence of this video? I am on deadline so I need your reply as soon as possible.

Best,

Alex Lyons

Associate Editor, Chick Habit

I can reach Rebecca through Facebook. I waste no time crafting a similar, but shorter, missive to her:

Dear Rebecca,

I work at a website called Chick Habit. We received a video that we believe is of you:

https://www.chickhabit.net/rebeccawestvideo

What would your mom think of this behavior?

This link is still private but will be made public this afternoon. I need your response ASAP.

—Alex Lyons, associate editor

Hitting send on that Facebook message causes adrenaline to surge into my fingertips. I start writing the post with shaking hands:

Omaha über-mom Darleen West has made millions of dollars from her image as the ideal parent, and now she’s trying to parlay that image into tangible power: She’s running for state senate in Nebraska. In her bestseller
How to Raise a Genius, Times Four
, the mom of fraternal quadruplets Raina, Rachel, Renata, and Rebecca told the world that her take-no-prisoners parenting method is the key to her children’s success. And successful they are: All four girls attend top-tier universities and Rebecca, the apple of her mother’s eye, even invented a new kind of robot while she was still in high school. “Rebecca’s drive is what I admire most about her,” Darleen writes on her website The Genius Method.