I’ve only just booted up my computer to check through morning emails when Don materializes beside my desk, frazzled as always. He never fails to remind me of a suburban dad who gets roped into coaching his son’s peewee soccer league every year. I’m pretty sure he’s in his midthirties, but he’s nearly bald already. Not sure if the job has anything to do with that.
Don sits on the plastic stool I bought from Target just for him. （Before, he would kneel by my chair, which always made me feel like he was about to propose.） On a winded exhale, he says, “I need you to do that thing where you make the data beautiful.”
My lips purse into a smirk. “What data?”
“Just shot you an email. Last-minute meeting with the big boss in twenty minutes.” He shakes his head. “She loves the way you make numbers look.”
By she, Don means our chief financial officer, Tracy Garcia—an absolute bad bitch and my personal barometer for success.
“After that,” Don says, “can you help Fari do a sensitivity test for subscription price increases on that fashion mag?”
“Frame?” I raise a single brow.
“Yeah, that one.”
For a seven-year employee, you might expect Don to have long memorized the names of all the magazines in our portfolio, but he cares too much about the profit-leverage effect and debt restructuring to let anything else live in his head rent-free.
I click my ballpoint pen against the desk and say, “You got it.”
“Thank you, Casey.” Then his face changes, and he adds more quietly, “This afternoon, we’ll talk about Bite the Hand, okay? Just block thirty minutes”—he winces, eyes blinking closed—“actually, block fifteen. But we’ll talk. I promise.”
The smile I give him is genuine, because Don is an all-rounder. Great first boss, great human being. I hear a lot of first-boss horror stories—especially in the finance world—but even though we’re probably all a little overworked, I’ve never regretted accepting this position.
He leaves, and I make his data （a three-year comparison of ad sales for Garden Girl） beautiful. Colors, conditionally highlighted cells, pie charts, pick-your-own-poison drop-down lists. After I send off the edited report, I wheel over to Fari’s desk and show her how to model a sensitivity test. We make nerdy Excel jokes that would send a right-brained person to therapy and put in emoji qualifiers beside all the variables. Sad face for 20 percent increase. Throw-up face for 30 percent. Sunglasses guy for negative 5, even though there’s no way that’s happening.
By the time I’m back at my own cubicle an hour and a half later, there’s a message from Brijesh blinking in the bottom right corner of my screen.
Come down to thirty-seven. Dustin needs a Nashville native to taste test his healthed-up hot chicken. It’s criminally good, but you be the judge.
Oh baby. Ten A.M. hot chicken? That is … exactly what I didn’t know I needed right now. He sent the message fifteen minutes ago. I toss up a prayer I’m not too late.
“You’re still a vegetarian, right, Fari?”
“Last I checked.”
“Cool. I’m going on a walk.”
I grab my phone and badge and head for the elevators. On my way, I pass the executive concierge, Benny.
Benny has only two moods: over-the-moon incandescently happy （usually following a successful night’s drag performance） or churlish and malcontent （usually following several days in a row he hasn’t gotten to perform）。 Right now, he’s on the desk phone, eyes closed, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose. So, the latter. I bet he’s on the phone with our COO’s ex-wife. She calls several times a week, demanding Benny put her through to her ex-husband. （Benny has been explicitly told never to do so.）
He catches my eye and covers the mouthpiece of the phone. “Later, can you remind me why women deserve rights?” he whispers.
I wink at him and jab my thumb at the button to call the elevator. Once I’m inside, my mind drifts back to the man from this morning.
What was he doing up here on ninety-eight? Who was he here to see? I didn’t catch a glimpse of where he was headed after he left me behind, fighting a smile, but he looked more comfortable strolling into the C-suite than I did after I’d worked up here for half a year. It took me a while to adjust, working so closely with the company’s head honchos. I still don’t even use the bathroom on this floor if I’m sensing gastrointestinal turbulence.
My phone vibrates again.
Miriam: How you doing, lovebug?
Casey: Fine.
Miriam: Liar.
Casey: I promise. It just wasn’t meant to be.
For a minute I think she’s done, and then, this:
Miriam: You know you’re allowed to like what you’re good at, right? I for one am great at finding the perfect vein for butterfly IVs. I am the best vein finder in the whole peds wing and damn proud of it.
I know she’s right. And I do like what I’m good at. The problem is I’m not sure my family likes what I’m good at.
Dad: Songwriter, quasi-famous musician.
Stepdad: Florist who does Bachelor Nation weddings.
Mom: Concert and fashion photographer.
That disconnect is part of the reason I haven’t been home in so long. I love my dad and stepdad so much, but in an unexpected twist on the parental disappointment trope, sometimes I feel like I’ve let them down. Here I am, in the throes of an industry ripe with designers, stylists, photographers, recipe developers, writers. And what do I decide on? The very career my mother was running away from when she fled London twenty-five years ago.
Casey: Can I still hate whoever got the job?
Miriam: Oh yeah girl. Enemy no. 1.
It takes me a while to get all the way down to thirty-seven, and then I have to wait even longer to get buzzed into the cooking studio, since I don’t have security clearance. By the time I walk in, I’m worried all the healthed-up hot chicken has been spoken for. I walk past the industrial refrigerator, my nose and taste buds tingling from the pungent scent of garlic and spice.
“Can you blow steam away while I snap this shot by the window?” a recipe developer says to the cooking studio manager. She garnishes a plate of what looks like chickpea curry with a smattering of handpicked cilantro leaves.
My eyes search for Dustin in the recipe dev bay, the same spot I always find Brijesh whenever he invites me downstairs to taste something he’s planning to present to the Food Baby editors. But neither Dustin nor Brijesh is there, and the bay is covered in remnants of Middle Eastern cooking.
I frown. Did I really miss Dustin’s recipe test by that much?
“Case!” a voice calls out from the far side of the studio. I track the sound, my head swiveling.
“Oh. Fuck,” I whisper.
Dustin isn’t testing this recipe for Food Baby consideration. He must have gotten it approved months ago. Because now he’s recording at the film bay.
I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been allowed in here, and it’s never been on a film day.
I blink, frozen in place.
Brijesh is standing on one side of the counter, Dustin beside him, aproned up. The videography crew and all their gear are on the other side, sleek and ominous. It’s intimidating, how much gear they’ve got. In my head, I pictured a dinky little camera on a tripod like all my favorite vloggers use.