Jessica Winter - Break in Case of Emergency

For Jen, the act of hitting send on the incriminating message should have broken the trance of reckless spiteful petty impulse — the trance of self-pity — that had created the message in the first place. And yet in the days and weeks that followed, Jen had remained safely inside the still pocket of time that had formed around her the instant that DanBrownsTheLostSymbol had logged off his local library computer terminal.

Part of the sustained calm may have been attributed to the neurochemical effects of the recent withdrawal of Sermoxal and equally sudden reintroduction of Animexa, the combination of which manufactured a soundproofing foam around Jen’s central-nervous-system neurotransmitters and added a metallic sheen to her self-presentation as subtly but surely as it dilated her pupils.

Part of the sustained calm may have been attributed to the radio silence of the media at large — no other sites or publications picked up on the substance of Nastygram Ladyparts ’s umbrage or DOPENHAUER ’s muted disappointment — and of the LIFt executive braintrust, who remained hunkered down in the semi-isolated southern corridor in Leora’s increasingly normalized absence. Jen and Daisy went nearly a week without sustaining a silent Karina ambush, nearly a week without serving as the audience for one of Sunny’s impromptu rounds of jollity, which were always edged with Sunny’s indignation at a perceived lack of jolly reciprocation — although Jen did recognize, even in her post-Sermoxal and High Animexa period of stainless-steel serenity, that the radio silence in itself could be cause for alarm.

And part of the sustained calm was induced by mere distraction: Following the publication of Mrs. Durbin’s “Recommend,” Jen’s inbox had absorbed a steadily rising tide of requests for commissions via her website.

Re: Contact Jen!

Can you paint my baby in a kind of late-Renoir style? He’s kind of rosy and lumpy like a late Renoir, like a living, drooling, pooping rejection of Impressionism (jpg attached).

Re: Contact Jen!

My boyfriend and I are pre-engaged and we’re trying to take a “whimsical,” “irreverent” approach to this whole wedding-industrial-complex thing. So we were thinking: Instead of doing the usual boring engagement-photo session, wouldn’t it be awesome to have our portraits painted instead? We liked how you paint people to look PSYCHO because PSYCHO is how we feel when we think about all the wedding planning and mother-in-law managing we’ll have to do over the next 14 months LOL!

Re: Contact Jen!

Do you do pet portraits? I would like you to paint my greyhound, Camelot. He is a happy soul, but he lacks the artistry to externalize it. However, I do not wish to anthropomorphize him.

“Jen?”

Jen looked up from a photograph of Camelot lounging in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles to see Jules the social-media intern standing in front of her.

“I’m sorry to bother you, but we were all just wondering — is there anything we can do? To help out?”

Jules was wearing a baby-pink woolen dickey over a herringbone sixties-style woolen minidress. Pinned to her dickey was a gigantic brooch made of multicolored semiprecious stones in the shape of a peacock.

“Help?” Jen asked.

“We just got the impression that morale is kind of low around here, and nobody’s really talking about how they’re feeling,” Jules said.

Jen kept staring at the peacock. The peacock’s tail feathers contained yet concealed the image of a ballerina, slender arms raised over her head, each delicate hand cupping one of the peacock’s eye-spots.

“And you know, maybe there’s something we all can do,” Jules said. “Or we can all just make a time to talk to one another, clear the air.”

“I’m sorry, Jules,” Jen said, clearing her throat primly, “but I’m not sure what we’re talking about.”

“The gossip online about — this — us,” Jules said. “The rumors. Just the vibe. ”

“There’s going to be a party,” Daisy said over the cubicle wall. “A morale-boosting party. Or a benefit or something. At Leora’s apartment. Sunny was talking about having a gift suite, but they ramped it back to party favors.”

Jen smiled at Jules. “Hey, a party!” Jen said.

“Do you guys want to see?” Daisy asked. Without waiting for an answer, she rose and walked toward Leora’s ad-hoc dressing room — slash — Petra’s breast-milk-pumping room, Jen and Jules following uncertainly after her.

Daisy opened the door just as Petra was hastily exiting, her head ducked in bashful exasperation, clutching to her chest the anonymous black handbag with miscellaneous tubes and clamps popping out of its unzipped top. Behind the door stood Leora, Donna, Karina, and Sunny around a conference table covered in a bewilderingly colorful array of handicrafts, accessories, and artfully packaged baked goods. One chair was stacked with pinhole cameras constructed from recycled sari cloth and vintage fashion magazines. Another chair almost spilled over with handwoven wallets, purses, and a single lopsided tote from a Guatemalan weavers’ collective that had recently received a LIFt grant.

Leora and Donna barely looked up at the intruders as Karina dug one hand around a clattering box full of hand-blown glass statement rings. Sunny strode toward the newcomers, fists pumping at her sides with aerobic enthusiasm, wearing an electrocuted smile.

“Thank God you guys are here,” Sunny exclaimed. “I have no idea how we’re going to narrow all this down to four or five party favors, so you have to help us.”

“So, we’re throwing a party!” Jen said inanely. “That’s really cool!”

“Hells yeah!” Sunny said, waggling a beaded-and-feathered keychain to the side of her face as if it were an earring. “Because why should all the great parties happen during the holiday season? When people really need a pick-me-up in the dead of freakin’-frackin’ winter —am I right or am I right? I know it’s what I need — what a week we’ve had.”

“Come closer, ladies, please,” Leora said, staring at a potted white orchid. “We were just talking about how we launched the site, but we never celebrated it.”

“Which creates a paradox,” Donna said. “If we don’t celebrate our launch, have we truly launched?”

“And we need some counterprogramming to combat all that trash on the Internet,” Sunny said.

Donna made a moist disgusted sound with which her bangles agreed. “Don’t even oxygenate it, Sunny,” she said. “Let it wither and die of inattention. Make choices about the kinds of influences you let into your life.”

“So true,” Sunny said.

“It’s just static,” Karina said. “All you have to do is change the channel.”

“Which is precisely what Jules and her team are out there doing every day,” Leora said, still staring at the orchid.

“It’s like a secret cave of treasures in here,” Jules said.

“Is that orchid — a cake ?” Leora asked, stepping closer to the pot and brushing the Guatemalan tote bag with her hip.

“These are treasures, Jen,” Donna said to Jules, fingering a color-block cashmere scarf, “but it’s all about message. By choosing these gifts for our invitees, what message are we sending about LIFt’s mission, about our grantees?”

“I’m Jules,” Jules said.

“I’m going into insulin shock just looking at this orchid,” Leora said.

“The things that we find beautiful reflect our values,” said Karina, fluffing her hair over the scarf she’d arranged in an intricate knot. “They aren’t just a, you know, material thing.”