“Yeah, cheer up, Cy,” I soothe. “It’s just money.”
“You’re right,” Cyrus says. “We’re not actually rich. And we said we were going to make sure that didn’t happen.”
This makes him feel better, and we all agree, since we are not actually rich, we can put off figuring out what to do if that ever happens.
Cyrus is mollified. He makes a speech. He tells us how much he loves what we’re building together. He admits to being wrong before, when he was skeptical, when he was half in, half out. He is so lucky to be here, with me and with Jules, expanding our family in the best possible way.
It is a typical Cyrus moment. At first he shies away from something, and then he drives himself deep into it and it’s hard to imagine he was ever doing anything else.
And yet. And yet. I feel the thing is running away from us. I don’t want to complain to Cyrus, because I’m worried he’s going to think I’m jealous. A woman sent us a photo the other day with I LOVE CYRUS JONES written across her breasts. Cyrus glanced at it, said, “Let’s hope that’s not permanent ink,” and moved on to something else. But I stared and stared. Her breasts were not just slightly better than mine, they were better in every possible way. First of all, they were bigger, which meant they were inherently better. But they also seemed perkier on top of being bigger, which made it all so much worse, and her nipples seemed ludicrously well proportioned, like a perfect dinner setting for two. She smiled at the camera, her hands holding up her T-shirt, with the sort of smile only a woman with those breasts could possibly possess: light, smug, 100 percent confident that the person who was looking at her would have major trouble ever erasing the image of her tits from their mind.
And there is more. Although Cyrus is impervious to the boob flasher, I can tell he’s enjoying the rest of it. The fan mail in various digital and analog forms, the numbers going up every day, the way the people who apply for jobs talk about the privilege of working for him, just being in a room with him. Even Rupert takes a different tone now, the tone of a person talking to another person who has real power in the world.
None of us has ever had real power. Jules has been smacked down by his family for as long as he can remember; Cyrus hasn’t even had a family. As for me, even though I’ve never thought of myself as a symbol, I can’t help but feel like every little success is a small fuck-you to all the people who glanced ugly at my mother in her sari in Walmart, or mispronounced my name even though it was only four letters long, or said something casually racist and then said, “But I don’t mean you.” I feel like I’m coming for all those people, and that fills me with a kind of satisfaction I didn’t even know I needed. I understand my sister a little more now, how she always insists that everything means something bigger than it seems. But instead of getting angry, I’m doing something about it. I’m knocking the air right out of the argument, me and my algorithmic genius.
Jules, Cyrus, and I try talking about other things, but our conversation always circles back to WAI. “Remember,” Jules says, “when you wanted to call it the Infinite Wisdom?”
Cyrus denies it. “I never wanted to call it that.”
“I wanted to call it Why the Fuck Not?” I say.
“Well, why the fuck didn’t you say anything?”
I’ve had two gin-egars, so I decide to tell the truth. “Because somewhere inside my little immigrant heart, I’m not interested in telling the truth. I just aim to please.”
Jules shuffles over to me and squeezes all the air out of my lungs. “You’re safe here,” he says. And I believe him.
It doesn’t take long after that—just enough time for our fermented rhubarb chia puddings to arrive, and for Jules to start humming Money money money, must be funny, in a rich man’s world—for me to banish my doubts and feel like we’ve returned to old times, old times being last year when Jules and I were standing in front of Li Ann trying to explain why on earth we belonged in her little oasis of magic.
* * *
These days Jules is looking like he goes to the dry cleaner instead of swishing things around in the laundry basket and pulling out whatever smells the least bad. He shows up in blazers and ties, and when he sits down, his socks announce themselves in flashes of color and bright patterns. And he sings all the time, not just in front of Cyrus and me but in the hallways and before we start meetings and in line for Rory’s latest vegan shake. Is he in love? I wonder, but then I would’ve known, and anyway, when would he have had time to fall in love? He’s always here, locked away in a corner with Cyrus or Gaby. He hasn’t said so, but I can tell he’s feeling a little tortured about the Cyrus worship, too. And while Cyrus is crafting handwritten notes to his fans, Jules and Gaby and I have to keep things moving. Thousands of people sign up on the platform every day, and we’re busy hiring, troubleshooting, debugging, and monitoring the community. So far it’s buzzing along like a raucous Asian wedding, but I have this feeling of dread that something terrible will happen and everyone will start hating each other—not unlike a wedding, late at night when the guests have gone home and the mother of the bride discovers the caterers have made off with the leftover biryani.