what about her contract?” Marlow said. “I thought she and Mike were doing the whole on-the-rocks thing this year.” She unlatched her barrette and massaged her scalp, ignoring Jacqueline’s puffed breath of protest.
“They didn’t even stage a hunt for her, supposedly,” Jacqueline said, adjusting the pearl comb at her temple. She sucked her cheeks in and glared at herself in the glass. “How shitty would that feel? It’s like they don’t even care she’s gone. I honestly think the network was glad to get the chance to sub in that new girl. Diversity and all.”
“Jacqueline.” Marlow spoke in a firm voice. This was something she had been trying to do more since she turned thirty-five—the age felt, to her, like a cosmic deadline for being strong and self-possessed. Complete. “Hunts aren’t real,” she said.
“They certainly are,” Jacqueline returned, in a tone that trumped hers effortlessly, and Marlow let it go. Jacqueline was an incorrigible know-it-all. It was what Marlow loved most about her. Her friend’s brazen authority always made her feel safe.
Jacqueline’s eyes flitted away for a moment. She nodded, but not at Marlow. Her device was telling her something. “Gotta get back out there,” she said. “Talk later.”
Alone in the bathroom, Marlow twiddled the twigs in the diffuser on the sink and closed her eyes. Find Ida Stanley, she intuited.
In her mind’s eye, California shrank and plummeted away, making Marlow’s stomach flip, like she was the falling thing. Her map shifted, streaking past hundreds of her neighbors’ symbols in a blur, and brought her down again in Denver. Ida’s symbol—the red stiletto that had always depressed Marlow—hovered over the city. There she was, proudly gone, in the state of—Marlow had to zoom out to remind herself what state Denver was in—Colorado. Marlow pictured Ida on a purple-flowered mountain. Sneezing.
The black gem at her wrist nicked her gently. I have a message from production, came the voice in her brain. I should return to an on-camera space. I have now been off camera five minutes. I have lost seventy-eight followers during this off-camera time.
Marlow watched herself blush with guilt in the mirror. It was as if the network knew what she was thinking about just then: what it would be like for her to leave, too.
I have lost eighty-nine followers during this off-camera time, the voice followed up.
Eighty-nine followers was nothing. Marlow averaged an audience of over twelve million. And that was why Ida could run, she thought, and get away with it, whereas she wouldn’t. Ida had, what—one, one-point-five million followers? Hardly a fan favorite, especially after she transitioned from the party-girl ensemble to a standard housewife arc. She didn’t even have a sponsor. Marlow, by contrast, was the most looked-at woman in the room, presented by a marquee partner: Hysteryl. Her followers—the people who observed every move she made—were spread across the rest of America and various races and age groups. What they had in common was that they were troubled. This was how the network marketed her: as the poster child for troubled, the Constellation star who got what they were going through. The network mined public data, looking for adults whose devices clocked too much crying or eating, for kids whose heartbeats surged to panicked levels during gym class. Meet Marlow, went the ad the network would beam straight to their devices. She knows just how you feel. The sad people, glad to be talked to, would opt right in and start watching her. They would see that she moved through her days with buoyant normalcy, and they would be reminded, every so often, that Hysteryl had made her this way. It was Jacqueline’s job to show America what they could buy to keep them happy. It was Marlow’s job to show them what to swallow.
She calmed herself at the sink, willed the redness to fade from her cheeks.
I should return to an on-camera space.
Marlow’s hair was bent and snarled where she had pulled out the bow. She dug the clasp back in, even tighter this time, and went back out to the party.
Orla
New York, New York2015
The red carpet Ingrid sent Orla to was at a terrible club on a terrible block. Bits of trash stuck to the filthy red carpet slapped down at its entrance. A bouncer stood at the doorway, staring straight ahead, as if trying to block out the Container Store directly to his right.
Orla scanned the ground and found her place, a square of sidewalk the size of a cereal box, marked with a laminated printout: ORLA CADDEN, LADY-ISH.COM. She elbowed her way in next to an anxious waif who wore a gown that plunged to her belly button. She was dressed, Orla knew, like she was hoping to be invited inside later. A chubby Hispanic guy in horn-rimmed glasses held his phone up to the waif, filming her as she said: “We’re here at the launch of Hilaria Dahl’s dog sweater line, and all the hottest celebrity animal lovers have tuned out for the occasion.”
“Turned out!” Horn-rimmed Glasses shrieked as if he had just caught fire.
Hilaria Dahl was a judge on a reality show that pitted cancer survivors against each other in baking contests. By the time she made her way to Orla, Hilaria had submitted to eighteen other interviews, and the corners of her mouth were caked with spit. She smacked her lips together. “I love Lady-ish!” she squealed, her long earrings jangling at either side of her jaw.
Orla nodded and stretched her face into a smile. “So, dog clothes! What inspired this project?”
Hilaria shifted in her heels. “Well, it’s really close to my heart.”
“What is?” Orla said.
“AIDS,” Hilaria answered.
“AIDS?” Orla looked to Hilaria’s publicist, a black-clad woman in a headset.
“Ten percent of the proceeds from the line benefits AIDS,” the publicist snapped.
“And I love animals,” Hilaria added. “I loved the idea of putting my name on something that would keep them warm, the way they keep us warm.”
Next to Orla, the waif was nodding fiercely, a hand pressed over her heart.
“We’re just targeting dogs right now,” Hilaria went on. “But I’m also really passionate about cats. So we’re looking to expand into the cat market as well.”
Orla couldn’t stop herself. “Couldn’t cats just wear the clothes you make now?”
Hilaria looked at her publicist. “I guess cats could wear the small ones, right?” she said uncertainly. “Like the alpaca cowl-neck?”
“Cats could wear the small ones,” the publicist confirmed, glaring.
“And every piece is one hundred percent vegan!” Hilaria shouted.
“Didn’t you just say something’s alpaca?” Orla said. “An alpaca is an animal. It’s kind of like a llama.”
“That’s all the time she has,”
