This Story Might Save Your Life(54)
He nodded, meeting my eyes through the mirror. “My sister is looking for a job.”
Enter Mallory.
* * *
HOW TO DESCRIBE Mallory. Mallory is sensible. She’s quiet, and beautiful, and detail-oriented. Her wife, Quinn, makes delicious cupcakes. And for reasons unbeknownst to me, she was willing to move four hundred miles in order to take this job. At first I worried I’d overreached. What if it didn’t work out?
But it did. The mood lifted with a fourth person in the room. Xander began to uncoil, one spring at a time, and as a result Benny and I did too. Admin became—if not pleasant, then almost pleasant? Xander smiled more often, took meetings across town. He even let me get a puppy. A perfect squishy-faced beagle mutt I immediately fell head over tails in love with. Benny rescued his brother so as to have a furry companion in his new home, and we named both of them after Happy Days characters. They had a playdate every time we recorded, Richie and Potsie tumbling around like drunken old men, chewing everything in sight.
“They’re just like you,” Benny said one day when Potsie collapsed mid-step into a nap.
I kissed Potsie’s nose. “I’ve always felt a kinship to puppies.”
Were Mallory and the pups the answer to all of our problems? No. But I think back on these months with wistful nostalgia, in part because they coincided with our excitement surrounding the Big Deal.
In May, we started talks for a major distribution deal—one-week exclusives to all-new content before going wide to other platforms. The potential windfall was mind-boggling, life-changing, and completely unwarranted. In no way did we deserve it, but did we want it? Yes. Thing is, these were just “talks.” Negotiations were slow, and there were no guarantees. And so, to amp up our “wow” factor, Benny and I agreed to write a memoir. Various agents and editors had floated the idea since our tour, and we’d always politely declined. What could we possibly say that hadn’t already been said? A book delineating our “inspirational path to success” was overkill.
I think it perfectly encapsulates our hopeful mindset this past spring that our answer changed. “Sure,” we said. “Why not?”
In my head, it would be a romantic, speedy affair. Sign the publishing contract one day, make a flashy announcement, sign the distribution deal the next. Boom, security for life. Soon all of our problems would disappear.
* * *
“DID YOU SEE this email?” Benny said in July when we were catching up on admin after recording one afternoon.
I glanced over at Mallory. True to form, she was wearing a tank top and joggers, platinum-blond hair pulled back into a tight ponytail. Headphones on, she appeared lost in thought, likely still troubleshooting audio glitches from that day’s recording. Xander was out of the office. Another meeting with the lawyers. “Which one?” I asked.
He turned his laptop around to show me. The heading read: “WARNING: TOXIC INGREDIENTS IN SHAKE AWAKE PRODUCTS.” It was addressed to both of us. I rolled my chair over and we read the email side by side.
To Everyone at TSMSYL,
PLEASE NOTE: the Shake Awake products you’ve been advertising are making people sick. Their protein powder is NOT safe to eat in its current form. Regular use will result in toxin poisoning: FEVER, NAUSEA, LIVER FAILURE, AND MORE. Please DO NOT CONSUME, and please STOP endorsing this product.
Sincerely,
A Concerned Citizen
Benny and I exchanged frowns. Shake Awake was an all-day-energy breakfast shake start-up we’d recently gifted with ad space. Usually, because our CPM (cost per thousand listens) is pricey, we end up partnering with larger, more established corporations, but when TSMSYL became financially secure, Xander proposed we begin donating the occasional mid-roll ad to fledgling companies in need of assistance. After years of gambling on equity investments, he knew intimately how hard it was for new businesses to get off the ground. These thirty-second or one-minute plugs were a simple way to give back, now that we had a platform.
A surprisingly generous suggestion, I thought. Benny agreed, and so we went along with it whenever a reasonable opportunity arose. Last time, it was a start-up making wearable air purifiers. Before that, a company selling full-color night-vision goggles. Both products that could theoretically save a life. As for Shake Awake, the partnership arose because of my sleep disorder. Who better than a person with narcolepsy to promote an all-day-energy drink?
“Scam or real?” I asked.
“No idea.” Benny pulled up a browser and searched “Shake Awake protein powder toxin poisoning.” No results came up. Next try: “Shake Awake illness.” Again, nothing. I tested a few combinations of my own and reached the same outcome. There were no articles. There hadn’t been a recall.
“Have you tried their shakes?” I asked.
He shook his head. I hadn’t either, apart from the initial taste test. They weren’t gross; they just weren’t my thing. I preferred to eat my breakfast rather than drink it.
“Scam, I guess.” I turned to Benny. We were, I realized then, sitting very close.
“Hey,” he said.
I looked at him as if for the first time. We’d been so busy the past few months. While our memoir pitch had generated a flurry of excited interest from the major imprints, culminating in a generous pre-empt, we hadn’t yet finalized the contract and thus couldn’t make any announcements. Negotiations with Apex Plus were dragging on. Xander’s coils were tightening again. And Benny and I never saw each other outside recording days. I’d begged him to move to Mount Washington, and yet somehow we were still operating on opposite sides of a one-sided mirror. I knew he was in there and he knew I was in there but we couldn’t see each other. Suddenly, I was desperate to break through the facade.