Jessica Winter - Break in Case of Emergency

whatDaisyknew: WHAT DID I MISS

jenski1848: I just took down the Travis Paddock advertisement per Karina and Leora’s request. It never happened.

Daisy Kilroyed over the cubicle wall, watching as Jen pulled on her coat.

“They know that’s not how the Internet works, right?” Daisy asked Jen’s desk surface.

Jen silently buttoned her coat.

“And that you can’t treat a board member like that?” Daisy asked.

Jen swung her tote bag over her shoulder.

“Did Karina get dumped?” Daisy asked. “She looks like somebody who just got dumped.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Jen could make out Jules the social-media intern’s head rotating 90 degrees right, one ear trained on Daisy like a motion-sensor camera.

“She has the puffy eyes and shell-shocked comportment of a textbook dumpee,” Daisy said.

“I’ll be back in an hour or so,” Jen said.

“The smell of the dump site still clings to her, though she may have crawled from its wreckage hours ago,” Daisy said. “Evidence remains. A candy wrapper stuck to her shoe. A foam packing peanut clinging tenderly to her hair.”

“I have an appointment with Judy Smith,” Jen added, invoking the code Daisy and Jen used whenever they had to leave the office and didn’t wish to explain why they were leaving.

Jen returned to the library, heading straight for the nearest open cubby in the computer cluster. She forwarded the PDF to a newly made account, which she opened under a user name borrowed from the top item on the library’s nearby “New and Hot Titles!” kiosk. She attached the PDF to a new message and began to type.

FROM: DanBrownsTheLostSymbol@yahoo.com

TO: info@dopenhauer; tips@nastygramladyparts

How does a certain much-publicized foundation and its infinity streams of family money “work tirelessly to empower women, here at home and in the developing world,” according to its mission statement? Well, one way to do that is to spend thousands of dollars on advertorials for some rich white American guy’s snake-oil pyramid scheme. Screenshots attached. Enjoy!

She hit send. She logged out of the two accounts, cleared the browser, emptied the cache, and switched off the computer.

She folded her hands on the desk. She was comfortably seated in a still pocket of time, no turbulence, 70 degrees Fahrenheit, pH balance of seven. She had no idea when this pocket of time would expire.

As Jen reached the bottom of the steps to the library, the corkscrew of dizziness spun her around again, and she vomited into a conveniently positioned trash basket. She did so almost casually, as if she were tossing an empty soda can. She fished a camouflaging stick of gum out of her tote bag as sparks of light trailed around the cold stone embankments of her peripheral vision.

Karina slouched against the empty filing cabinets, one thumb hooked jauntily in a belt loop. “You guys are stretched pretty thin today, huh?” she asked Jen and Daisy’s backs. “A lot of meetings, I hear?” The arc of her voice placed the word meetings between quotation marks.

Jen turned around to face Karina. Daisy did not. “Yes, always busy after a holiday break,” Jen said.

“See, the problem is, if both of you are out and about, who is minding the shop?” Karina asked. “This is such a critical time in the growth and development of LIFt. Think of it, if you need to, like a newborn — helpless and hungry and a little messy, even — no fault of her own — and in need of constant attention.”

“Yes, absolutely,” Jen said. “I think we’re still getting back into the post-holiday groove and catching up with lots of stuff that got postponed until after the New Year. Right, Daisy?” she asked, raising her voice slightly to ensure that Daisy could hear through her headphones.

Daisy took off her headphones but did not turn around. “I went to see Avatar, ” she said to her monitor.

Karina shrugged merrily. “Can’t argue with a woman’s priorities!” she said.

“We’ll be more vigilant in the future,” Jen said.

“All right, ladies, let’s get right back on track tomorrow, okay?” She punched the air in a spirit of convivial competition, a gesture somewhere between a clubby chuck on the shoulder and a right jab.

“And by the way, fabulous bouquet, Daisy,” Karina added over her shoulder as she walked away. “You girls happen to know if Daisy has a secret suitor out there somewhere?” Karina asked the cubicle maze of indeterminately occupied assistants and interns as she passed by, not pausing for an answer.

“Oh, yeah, these came for you while you were out,” Daisy said to Jen, passing an enormous crystal vase of flowers over the cubicle wall: hellebores, vanda orchids, hydrangeas, baby roses. The note affixed to the vase was from Dakota, conveying Mrs. Flossie Durbin’s praise and thanks for her finished portrait.

Mrs. Durbin wanted you to know that her portrait will hang in her newly redecorated and restored study — a place of meditation and reflection, where it will remind her always to aspire to be a better version of herself. P.S. Don’t forget to look for Mrs. Durbin’s latest blog post — should be up by the time you receive this!

“Have you looked for Mrs. Durbin’s latest blog post?” Daisy asked over the wall.

“Read it to me,” Jen said, caressing her index finger over one of the hydrangeas.

“The coolly expert technical proficiency is warmed by a sunny presentation, an antidote to trying times,” Daisy recited. “The portraits risk being unfashionable, which is exactly what makes them à la mode. Recommend.”

Jen dipped her face into the bouquet, nuzzling it with closed eyes. “Daisy,” she said into the petals, “I never really got here, but I am leaving now.”

Nastygram Ladyparts had their editorial up the next morning.

Terrible Rich-Person Scheme Remains Terrible

Human alimony-collection agency Leeza Infanzia has lately been looking for fresh new orifices that can stash her Mobro 4000 barges full of cash. She seems to have found her ideal landfill in the form of the Leora Infinitas Foundation, a hallucinatory potluck where the fusion menu of philanthropic contributions has ranged from Nigerian educational grants for Cameroonian supermodels to domain space for the half-transcribed Klonopin fantasias of miscellaneous second-string Brides of Finance. Lately, it seems, Leeza has been stacking surplus bills in the shape of a pyramid scheme: One of her minions posted — and just as quickly deleted — a breathless advertorial for a board member’s company, something called BodMod Nutritionals™ (screenshots below), which we assume is the kind of ashes-and-gelatin “miracle weight-loss supplement” you might spot amid the cocaine and syringes at the margins of a Soloflex shoot. Nice that the report’s writer (who is also Leeza’s “executive director”) took a fancy Caribbean holiday to provide gripping on-the-scene reportage on BodMod, when all she really had to do was stay up for the 4:10 a.m. infomercial slot between the ad for the wearable towel and the ad for the spray-on toupee…

Ruby Stevens-Meisel’s response appeared in DOPENHAUER a day later.

What is charity? In simplest terms, it is the act of helping those in need. It is not necessarily unreasonable to imagine that an inspiring portrait of good health and a globe-trotting entrepreneurial lifestyle might be an act of helping others to imagine themselves beyond themselves. We could call it a gift of possibility, a gift of motivation. Or we might imagine the odds that the adventurers themselves were in need of charity — perhaps the formidable Travis Paddock, the Healthy Huntsman, had somehow become the hunted, financially or emotionally or spiritually? Perhaps his enthralled observer was herself in thrall to some unseen crisis of health or judgment or vocation? Or a crisis of love, of devotion? This is pure speculation, of course — and if charity begins at home, so privacy needs to be preserved there as well. And perhaps the one who needs our charity the most right now is Leora Infinitas herself: Our gift to her can be the benefit of the doubt.