“Why didn’t you ask in the first place?” I say.
The taxi swerves again and this time it’s me sliding over to his side.
“I guess it didn’t occur to me. That’s shitty, I’m sorry.”
By the time we roll up to the address, I’m in a foul mood. “I’m going to get a coffee,” I say, and disappear for an hour. When I get back, he’s in full Cyrus mode, talking Rubik’s cubes around the poor interviewer. The guy can’t get a word in edgewise, but instead of being offended, he is rapt, listening to Cyrus riffing on everything from climate change to online privacy. Lately, I’ve realized that because of the popularity of the platform, and because of what it is—a replacement for religion—people are looking to Cyrus for answers to the questions they ask themselves all the time. And the most we can hope for is that Cyrus will tell them he doesn’t have the answers, only his own opinions, which they should take as the thoughts of one man with a limited understanding of what is beyond the horizon.
We all think a little press will help us get our funding back on track—unsurprisingly, neither the khaki triplets nor the trampoline assassin came through. Rupert is getting nervous, calling Gaby every week and demanding to know how much money we have in the bank. He’s suggested we make cuts, maybe take a few of the devs off the team, but Cyrus has refused to fire anyone. “Asha and I will hold our salaries,” he volunteers. “Jules too.”
Jules, Cyrus, and I meet every morning to figure a way out. We call it Bad News, Good News.
Jules begins by writing the bad news on the whiteboard. A list of investors who have said no.
“Rupert sent me a new list for outreach,” Jules says. “I’ve drafted all the emails—Cyrus, you just have to review and press send.”
Cyrus reads through the list. “How evil are these people?”
“Just your average evil funds.”
“Rupert says these guys are all tier three.”
“What happened to tier two?” I ask.
“They rejected us. I’ve made a word cloud of the reasons.” Jules turns his computer to me. The word VERTICAL is the biggest, followed by UNUSUAL and then RISK.
“They didn’t give us money because we were too vertical?”
“Our business didn’t fit into any of their verticals.”
“What were their verticals?”
Jules runs down the list. “Fintech, agritech, real estate, cloud, and gaming.”
“I have some good news,” I announce. I always have the good news. The good news is that the community continues to grow. Every day there are new people joining the platform. They chat, share photographs, form little groups, call one another family. Recently, there was a cat funeral, and the cat’s mother, someone by the name of Rose, live-streamed it to two hundred thousand other cat lovers. “In fact,” I said, “the Cat Lovers are the biggest group.”
Cyrus rolls his eyes. “No surprise there.”
“Also on the good-news front,” Jules says, tapping a pen against the side of the table, “I’m seeing someone, and I need you not to judge.”
Cyrus and I both sit up and say, “YOU’RE SEEING SOMEONE?” at the same time.
Jules clears his throat. “It’s Gaby,” he says.
“Gaby?” I ask. “But we’ve been making fun of him for months.”
“You’ve been making fun. I’ve been secretly dating. And now we’re moving in together.”
“You’re moving in together?”
“Stop repeating everything,” Jules laughs.
“Let’s go out and celebrate,” I say. Then I wonder aloud, “But does Gaby have to come?”
“Seriously, you guys cannot be assholes about this. That’s why I didn’t tell you.”
Cyrus walks over to Jules and hugs him. “This is really great, my friend. Don’t mind us. We’re just—you know, Three Musketeers and all that.”
“First of all, we never called ourselves that. And second, as you constantly remind us, Asha, there were four musketeers.”
“Why do they always call them the Three Musketeers, then?” Cyrus asks.
“Because D’Artagnan was the narrator, and he joined last.”
We think about finding a restaurant, but by the time we clock out for the night, it’s late and we end up at the diner. Gaby and Jules sit together on one side of the booth and Cyrus and I sit on the other side. I go between feelings of tender warmth toward Gaby, the way he pours water into Jules’s glass and asks if he wants to share the Cobb salad, to something I guess must be jealousy, because Cyrus is right, even if we didn’t call ourselves the Musketeers, we were a gang, and it’s possible the gang will never be the same. I’m a terrible person for thinking this, not least because I was the one who got between Jules and Cyrus in the first place. How annoying that must have been for Jules. And I can’t believe we didn’t see it, Cyrus and I, our best friend falling in love right before our eyes. Anyway, I tell myself, Jules deserves someone of his own, someone who will go to every Hamptons weekend with him and tell his brother to go fuck himself. Cyrus has his hand on my knee, and from the way he’s going around in circles, I can tell he’s thinking all the same things I am.