Jessica Winter - Break in Case of Emergency

Paulo’s working-class artist’s uniform — the overalls, the boots, the grooming — was not summer camp, Jen decided, nor was it a costume or a smoke screen. It wasn’t even a disavowal of his inheritance. It instead bespoke a rich man who could work with his hands and knew the language of tools and machinery, who had not allowed wealth to insulate him from the mechanical or chemical world. Like Meg in The Dress, Paulo appeared more aristocratic in his proletariat garb because the uniform was a choice made possible by privilege, and by the confidence borne of privilege.

Meg’s wedding — Chapelle Expiatoire, Hôtel de Crillon, Prada bridesmaid’s dress that Jen had sometimes worn around the house during her enforced sabbatical — was the end of summer camp. Pam’s wedding would be the end of summer camp.

Meeting your best friends in college was dangerous, if only because college was the great leveler. Everyone in college lives like a college student. Nobody necessarily knows who’s on financial aid and who’s not and how much. Nobody would ever ask such things. The stratifications are hidden so well as to be forgotten. Marriage and childbearing and the ceremonies attendant upon them also commemorated the reemergence of those stratifications for those who’d ignored or discounted them.

Sometimes all Jen wanted was a record of accounts. A ledger. A schedule of incomings and outgoings. Receipts. She wanted to know what her and Jim’s combined salary would be as expressed as a percentage of Meg and Marc’s total income (salary + bonus if applicable + income from inter vivos trust + return on investments + incidental monetizable gifts from family). She wanted to know the difference between the gross and the net. She wanted to know how many months (years?) she and Jim would have to work to earn the money that Meg and Marc spent in a month. She wanted to attach a number to what Meg would define as a “splurge,” and then calculate her own definition of a “splurge” as a percentage of a Meg splurge, and then calculate the respective impacts of their splurges on their respective monthly outgoings. She wanted to know how much Meg’s wedding and apartment and apartment renovation had cost and how much Pam’s wedding and apartment and apartment renovation would cost, every last line item, and the source of funds for each line item, and if the source was interest or a dividend, she wanted to know the source of that interest or dividend.

She wanted to know, once and for all, how the math broke down on what Baz Angler would call real life.

Meg, Pam, and Jen used to know everything about Meg, Pam, and Jen. The three of them used to know each day the other bled. They used to know — it was possible they still remembered — the exact anatomical proportions and halitosis risk factors of each of the other’s pantheon of sexual partners. Two of them had once assisted in the removal of the third’s sanitary product, temporarily misplaced inside her body cavity during finals week. And yet the statement of accounts was full of clean pages, bright and blank as the faces awaiting entry to the Garden of Earthly Delights. The statement of accounts was in a ledger kept in an unlocked drawer in the secret-seeming room. If you were already in the room, you had no cause to ask to see it.

Jen hadn’t looked at her phone in hours.

Karina — LIFt

Tuesday, Jan 5 2:35 PM

To: Jen — LIFt

Subject: WHERE ARE YOU?

Priority: High!

And where is Daisy?!? You’ve both been gone forEVER — we have an emergency here!

Karina generally took a minimalist approach to her toilette, but today telltale streaks of foundation and concealer swiped around her eyes and mascara mottled under her pinkish lower lashes. The tip of Karina’s nose burned bright red, as if the inflammation had singed the concealer. She smiled at Jen with her teeth bared, unusually. Jen’s mind automatically mapped a large-scale portrait of Karina, ready to be added to the walls of Break in Case of Emergency.

“My allergies are kicking in ridiculously early this year,” Karina said, sniffling. “The nerve, huh?” She touched the back of one finger to her nose.

“Oh, man, that’s tough,” Jen said. “I’m so sorry I was gone so long; I had back-to-back meetings, and then—”

“It’s just one order of business,” Karina interrupted, “but it is quite urgent — we are going to have to take that Travis Paddock introduction down.”

“Pardon?”

Karina cocked her head to one side and shrugged. “Yeah, afraid so.”

“I don’t understand.”

Karina made the face Jen had seen before: bottom lip pulling away from clenched teeth, bugged-out sidelong glance appealing to a sympathetic invisible authority. “What can I say?” Karina asked. “One of those things.”

“Hmm, well, we’ve already shared it with all of LIFt’s followers on social media, all the BodMod, um, affiliates have already been linking to the introduction and quoting from it—”

“It’s a — a pyramid scheme.” Karina flinched at the phrase, as if she were trying to fling her mouth off her face. Her eyes shone. “BodMod Nutritionals is a pyramid scheme. Mr. Paddock is”—Karina rubbed her nose again—“not the knight on a white steed that you and I thought he was.”

You and I

“But—”

“Live and learn, right? Let’s not be afraid to admit our mistakes, and learn from them.”

Our mistakes

“Of course, but we can’t just take it down,” Jen said.

Karina’s face tightened; the faint swelling around her eyes and nose made it more difficult for her to keep a poker face. “Look, nobody’s more pained by this than I am,” Karina said. “I mean, I hate to see all our work—”

Our work

“—go down the drain. But it’s for the best. Let’s not give this guy’s sleazy little scheme any more oxygen, and we can just move on.”

“Travis is still on the board, right?”

Though sitting still at her desk, Karina seemed breathless.

“We are taking it down,” Karina said evenly.

“But he’s still a board member — right? — and anyway, that’s not how the Internet works.” Jen’s mouth set itself in a hooting formation, as if she could suck the words back from the air.

Karina’s nose was now red from bridge to tip. “Oh, is that so?” she said. “How does the Internet work? Educate this old-timer.”

“I don’t mean to be condescending, but it lives in cache forever. The train has left the station.”

“Be that as it may,” Karina said, “let’s get the train back into the station. Thanks.” Karina turned back to her computer.

“We can’t, ” Jen said.

“Leora made this request herself,” Karina said, too quickly. “She asked that we take it down.” Karina’s eyes darted around before regaining steady, angry eye contact with Jen.

Her eyes flashed

“And last I checked,” Karina said, “this is Leora’s foundation, not mine, not yours.” Karina turned back to her computer again and began composing an email, or pretended to. “That’s all, thanks.” She drawled the thanks ironically as she typed.

Jen walked back to her cubicle, where Daisy was unsnapping her puffer coat.

whatDaisyknew: I GOT BORED SO I WENT TO SEE AVATAR HOPE THAT’S OK

jenski1848: Good work today, D.

Jen logged out of her computer and logged back in under the generic logon that LIFt interns used. She opened Karina’s Travis Paddock summary in a browser, took screenshots, and exported the entire file as a PDF, then attached the file as a draft in a disused Hotmail account that she had opened under Franny’s name years ago. She wiped the browser history, cleared the cache, and logged back in as herself.