“I’m not saying it’s you, it’s just that you have to face reality, which is that no one is going to bet on Asha running the show.”
I agree. “Yeah, Jules, just do that ‘See you on the golf course’ thing and get the money, and we can worry about our souls later.”
Cyrus isn’t going for that. “We’re worrying about our souls now, remember?”
“I don’t mean it that way. I just mean let me out of the whole pitching thing. Cyrus, you and Jules do it.”
“I’m the Researcher,” Cyrus says.
“You’re the one who lends credibility to the framework,” Jules says to me. “Without you, I’m just a guy with a crazy idea.”
“A white guy with a crazy idea,” Destiny says.
I nod. “I’m with her.”
I’ve set Jules off. “Shit, Asha get off your high horse and work with me, will you? Maybe try not to look so sarcastic next time someone asks about your engineering chops.”
“Oh, so now you just want me to roll over when people assume I’m the window dressing?”
“It’s just a game we have to play. Anyway, you could try practicing a little.”
He’s right. I totally crashed out with Lady Blow-dry. “Okay, you got me. I’ll be rehearsing my speech in front of the mirror from now on.”
“I’ll be your mirror,” Cyrus says.
“You, my friend, are in the doghouse. Talk about sipping cocktails while watching the house burn down.”
* * *
Destiny buys me a consolation drink called a raspberry shrub, which tastes like raspberries that have been sitting around in the back of the refrigerator. I secretly wish Destiny had crashed out too, so we could moan about how terrible it is that the patriarchy makes the world go round, but I can’t kill her mood now.
“Tell me how you did it.”
“I told them I was at the cutting edge of the post-MeToo moment and that at some point, the culture was going to decide we needed better safeguarding tools, and men would be too ashamed to say no. It’s the women we have to convince first, then there’s a tipping point and it will become universal. I have graphs to back it all up.”
“Maybe we need more graphs. But to prove what, that people are all feeling like they need a little non-God god around?”
“They probably don’t do surveys for that.”
“No. But maybe something related, like whether religion is seeing a resurgence—I’ll get Jules to look into it.” I wish I’d talked to Destiny before showing up here, and now I’m leaving with zero business cards and my hair smelling like a Mars bar. We part with Jules and Destiny on the sidewalk, and Cyrus and I make our way to Penn Station.
* * *
Cyrus falls asleep on the train while I keep cycling through the evening in my mind. I think about the parade of suits I just met, and the fact that from now on they are going to be my audience, the people I have to sell to, and this makes me sad and annoyed at myself. I start to feel a tickle of longing for Dr. Stein and her transplanted eyes. At least she bothered to be disappointed when I sold out. I had dragged a reluctant Cyrus along with me based on the notion that we were going to change something, yet what I saw tonight was more of the same, the same people with the same power to look straight through me as if I haven’t spent my short life making myself uninvisible. “Fuck you, Frank,” I whisper under my breath.
We get to the station and I nudge Cyrus awake. Our bikes are parked there, but I’m so tired I call us a cab, and soon we’re unlocking the back door and throwing ourselves into bed.
* * *
Cyrus and I have maintained an Anglo-Bengali wall. At Utopia, I’m all about work, algorithms, funding, and building the platform. Every night, on the train ride home, through St. Albans, Lynbrook, and Baldwin, I dissect the day, remembering the lines of code I’ve written, the bug fixes, the tense conversations with Jules about money, and when I get to Merrick, I get on my bike and relive my childhood by speeding down Hewlett Avenue and turning in to my parents’ driveway, and by the time I take the side door to the basement and jump into bed with Cyrus, we are all about the other things, books we are reading, the terrible state of the world, and sex, daily, necessary, like an insulin injection to maintain all of what is good and alive.
Still, minor irritations pop up. It bothers me that Cyrus is not more troubled by the fact that we live with my parents or that I had to get my dad to underwrite our credit extension. I want to say something to him, but it makes it harder that he doesn’t have parents.