Sad Desk Salad (21 page)

Oh my god. The idea of an endless stream of insulting e-mails coming my way makes me nauseous yet again, and for a second it’s so bad I contemplate running to the bathroom. Now it’s not just BTCH on the warpath to humiliate and harass me—
Chat Skewer
has opened up my public embarrassment to the crowd.

I remind myself it’s really too soon to gauge how destructive this call for recordings is going to be, and the desire to hurl disappears. For one thing,
Chat Skewer
’s traffic is mediocre, so only a hundred or so people might actually read that post in the first place. Furthermore, I’m sure none of these “monsters” has any idea who I am, so their incentive for scouring the Internet to find evidence of my personal idiocy is fairly low. The wild card is the same wild card I have with BTCH—I don’t actually know what’s lurking out there in the untrammeled digital woods. It could be anything, and anyone with a serious vendetta could do real damage to my reputation.

While I’m pondering this I hear from Moira:

MoiraPoira (9:03:42):
I’m glad you’re back, because I need you to get cracking on your quota for the day. Molly’s already been posting away for several hours.

Alex182 (9:04:17):
I’m on it.

MoiraPoira (9:04:56):
Great. I’ve got an easy one for your first post today. Put up the clip of yourself from the
Today
show.

Alex182 (9:05:24):
You can’t be serious.

MoiraPoira (9:06:11):
Of course I’m serious! It’s fantastic press for the site!

Alex182 (9:06:24):
Don’t you think it’s a little self-aggrandizing?

MoiraPoira (9:07:02):
You say that like it’s a bad thing, love.

Alex182 (9:07:44):
I just don’t think the appearance went that well.

MoiraPoira (9:08:21):
Why would you think that? It was brilliant! I cheered in my living room when you gave it to that fearmongering slag. Her “think of the children” crap made me sick.

Alex182 (9:08:45):
I’m worried I sounded a little unhinged.

MoiraPoira (9:09:24):
I’ve said it before and I will likely say it again: Grow. A. Pair. Alex. You made an impression. People will remember Chick Habit, and probably remember you, after seeing that appearance. I wasn’t going to tell you about this, because I didn’t want it going to your head, but I got another call from Tyson Collins after your
Today
show appearance.

Alex182 (9:09:40):
And?

MoiraPoira (9:10:11):
And he raved about it. He said, and I quote, “That li’l girl’s got some spitfire in ’er.” You’ve got to get over wanting everyone to like you if you want to succeed in this business.

Alex182 (9:10:20):
OK.

MoiraPoira (9:10:37):
Good. Hop to it because I need it for the 9:30 slot.

Even though I’m gratified by Moira’s praise, I try to do moderate damage control with the post, making the wording as banal as possible. I know most of our readers can’t watch video at work, even during their lunch breaks, so as long as I keep the write-up vague, maybe they won’t know how intense the actual appearance was. I don’t even mention Rebecca West by name, though I do tag the post with her name and her mother’s and a lot of variations of the phrase “Rebecca West coke video.” I write just under two hundred words, mostly about how shiny Savannah Guthrie’s hair is in real life, and call the post “Chick Habit Makes It to the
Today
Show.” I file to Moira at 9:29, knowing that she won’t have time to send it back to me to make it more controversial or specific.

MoiraPoira (9:31:11):
You are such a wuss.

Alex182 (9:31:45):
Sorry.

MoiraPoira (9:32:18):
Too late now. On to the next. I don’t have anything for you this second so you’re going to have to find your own topic. I need the next post from you at 10:15, so get on it.

Alex182 (9:32:58):
Word.

I have just enough time to confront Tina before I scour the web for something new to write about. It seems like a small mistake—confusing Greenpoint for Fort Greene—but she’s always been so bizarrely secretive that it makes me suspicious. (Once I asked her if she had any siblings and she replied coolly, “I don’t see how that’s relevant.”) I used to think that she was so private as a reaction to working online—she was so public there that she needed to keep something for herself. But now her guardedness, combined with her warning about stepping off her beats, seems a whole lot more sinister.

Maybe it’s my hangover talking, or the lack of sleep is making me nutsy, but I’m really starting to think that she could have something to do with BTCH. She knows how upset I get when there’s controversy—maybe she thought a really disturbing hate blog would drive me to quit. It’s possible she thinks that if I weren’t around she could hog more scoops and get more bonus cash.

Alex182 (9:33:18):
Hey

TheSevAbides (9:33:24):
Hello

Alex182 (9:34:10):
I had a question for you about our hate blogger.

TheSevAbides (9:34:45):
Oh right—I had almost forgotten about all that junk.

Alex182 (9:35:19):
That’s weird. You seemed pretty upset about it just two days ago.

TheSevAbides (9:36:01):
Well, it’s been a busy week and I’ve had other things on my mind. In fact, I’m pretty busy now, so what’s your question?

Alex182 (9:36:42):
Well I had someone do some extra sleuthing for us, and he tracked down Breaking the Chick Habit’s IP address to somewhere in Fort Greene.

TheSevAbides (9:37:15):
Right, which is what I found, too.

Alex182 (9:37:48):
No, you said the hate blogger was in Greenpoint.

TheSevAbides (9:38:29):
No, I said Fort Greene.

I decide to pull the most passive-aggressive move in the Internet playbook: I look up our original conversation, copy Tina’s old IM, and send it to her.

Alex182 (9:39:11):
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 (9:39:22):
Does that ring any bells?

Tina’s IM goes idle for several minutes. Just when I’m ready to give up and start scrolling for a topic to post about she writes back.

TheSevAbides (9:43:02):
The two names sound a lot alike. So I made an honest mistake. What does this have to do with anything?

Alex182 (9:43:49):
Never mind. You’re right, it was probably just an “honest mistake.”

Without responding, Tina signs off of chat.

That wasn’t how I wanted that conversation to happen—but what did I expect? That Tina would just admit she had cooked up a dastardly scheme to drive me crazy and would beg for my forgiveness?

I’m racking my brain for something, anything, that would explain Tina’s location-based mix-up. Then in the overflowing junk room of my mind a thought surfaces: Didn’t Molly tell me she lived in Fort Greene when I saw her at the Cactus Inn?

Molly has even more of a motive than Tina—she’s been baldly hankering for our jobs since her first day at Chick Habit. If she were BTCH it would explain why she knew about the hate blog so early on. And furthermore, no one in this business is actually as nice as Molly is obviously pretending to be.

Then the paranoid voice in my head homes in on an explanation: Tina and Molly are somehow in this together.

Maybe it’s just the lack of sleep and the stress talking, but that would explain Tina’s mistake—though it doesn’t explain why she and Molly have formed some kind of deranged alliance. Maybe I’m all wrong about Tina, and Molly’s the one behind this cruel plot.

I decide to pump Rel for information. Rel’s temper is so flare-based it’s possible that she’s forgiven me for posting the Becky video by now.

Alex182 (9:50:11):
Hi

Wienerdog (9:50:23):
Yo.

Alex182 (9:51:02):
I’m sorry about the other day.

Wienerdog (9:51:34):
No big.

Alex182 (9:52:10):
Thanks for understanding.

Alex182 (9:52:15):
Hey, do you think Tina’s been acting weird lately?

Wienerdog (9:52:49):
No weirder than usual. Tina has always been one odd bitch.

Alex182 (9:53:01):
True. But I feel like she’s been extra shady lately.

Wienerdog (9:54:33):
I haven’t noticed anything, but I haven’t talked to her since we went to Coney Island.

Alex182 (9:55:10):
Word.

Alex182 (9:56:04):
What about Molly?

Wienerdog (9:56:36):
What about Moira’s special little princess?

Alex182 (9:57:06):
Have you noticed anything strange about her?

Wienerdog (9:57:44):
Is this a bad episode of Law and Order SVU? Why are you asking me all this shit?

Alex182 (9:58:13):
It’s a long story. I’ll explain later.

Wienerdog (9:58:42):
Whatever.

Rats. I can’t just accuse Molly of being the hate blogger without having a more damning piece of evidence than just the Fort Greene location—tens of thousands of people live in that neighborhood. How can I trust my logical powers at this point anyway? I’ve probably had ten hours of sleep in the last four days.

I decide to take a break from sleuthing by checking my e-mail. Perhaps BTCH has responded to my
Today
show appearance.

Et voilà:
Here she is.

From:
Breaking the Chick Habit

To:
[email protected]

Subject:
Today Show, Tomorrow’s Show

Hello, My Dear,

Apparently you’re really sweating about the information I’m planning to reveal about you tomorrow. I could tell from your leaky armpits on the Today show this morning. I truly relished your little performance, particularly the gif of you that’s making its way around the web. What, you haven’t seen it yet? Here’s an eyeful:

My canny hate blogger has made a gif of my mouth opening in an exaggerated fashion, after which she’s reddened my eyes and inserted foam around my mouth so that it looks like I’m rabid. As gifs go, I’m not that impressed.

Even after your bilious little performance, I’m still willing to strike the deal I made you yesterday: Take down the Rebecca West post and offer up a true apology. If you don’t get this done by 11 AM tomorrow, you will rue the day you ever heard the name Becky West. I’ll put on a little show that you’ll remember for a lifetime.

Kisses,

BTCH

Maybe I’ve toughened up in the past twenty-four hours, but I’m not as shaken by this missive as I was by the first one. And then I read the postscript: