“You agree with this, Asha?”
It hasn’t occurred to me before, asking the cat lady and the couple who wanted to get married beside Karl Marx’s grave to give us money. It doesn’t sound quite right, and I know that if I’m having trouble wrapping my head around it, so will Cyrus. But I can’t deny it’s a good idea. “It costs money to run the platform. We either raise venture funds or we get money from the people who use it.”
“It’s the principle,” Cyrus says.
“Could a part of it remain free?”
“We don’t think there should be two tiers,” Gaby says. “But we could offer three months free to new subscribers.”
Cyrus starts pacing up and down the room, his hands in his pockets, his face turned toward the window.
“I think we should consider it,” I say.
“So do I,” Jules says.
Cyrus pauses and tosses his head the way he sometimes does when he’s agitated. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” he says. “You’re asking me to change the vision and, most important, my boundaries, which I made perfectly clear before we ever embarked on this thing.”
Before any of us can speak, he’s stormed into the hallway and slammed the front door behind him.
“Shit,” Jules groans.
I take out my phone and start texting. Did you just walk out without me?
“What happened?” Gaby asks.
“We pushed too hard,” Jules says. “I knew this was going to be a touchy subject. We probably should have waited.”
He’s not texing me back. “Wait till when?” I ask. “Till we run out of money?”
“He was ambushed,” Jules says. “Hard to get him to come around if he feels we ganged up on him.”
“It was news to me too,” I say. I don’t say: And yet he just fucked off and left me here. I text: Did you just fuck off and leave me here?
“You should go find him,” Jules says.
I don’t want to run after him. “Are you guys serious about the subscriptions? We won’t need to raise funds?”
“That’s what it looks like,” Gaby says. “Look, I don’t want to get in between you all.”
“I guess that makes you D’Artagnan,” I say. Then I turn off my phone so I’m not waiting like a horny teenager for it to buzz, and fly out of there myself and take the biggest steps I can manage all the way to Utopia.
* * *
Ren and Destiny are dancing. We bought a record player a few weeks ago, and there are exactly six records, and one of them—the original Amy Winehouse album—has been playing on repeat. I hug Destiny and we slow-dance for a minute or so, and by the time the song ends, I’m feeling human again. I tell Ren about the subscriptions, and we start working out the back end. We make a sprint schedule, debate the various payment platforms, Shopify, PayPal, Google Pay, Apple Pay, and then we get right into building it, and by the time I look up from my screen, it’s morning and I have never been happier to see daybreak. But then I turn on my phone and there are no messages from Cyrus, and I’m right back into my lather, with that weird feeling in the pit of my stomach like I have a guilty secret even though I know I haven’t done anything wrong. Did we gang up on Cyrus? Did we stab his vision in the eye?
On the R train home, I veer between different emotions, all equally pathetic. I’m angry at Cyrus for storming off and not even looking over his shoulder once and asking me to join his rebellion, and I’m racking my brain to see if I’ve done anything wrong （No. No. Maybe. Maybe?）， and then I’m worried about him, what if he accidentally hurt himself, like if he stood on the edge of the Brooklyn Bridge and then just tripped? Or stepped out on the road, half-hoping something would crash into him, and it’s a sixteen-wheeler delivering cabbage to Fairway?
When I open the door, it’s quiet and I think maybe he isn’t home, but there’s a bump in the comforter, and when I lift it up, there he is, wide-awake, his face like a piece of wood.
“Did you get any of my messages?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you call me back? Or text?”
“I thought we could talk once you got home.” He sits up and rolls his shoulders back, and suddenly, he’s eight feet tall even though I’m the one standing up.
“Let’s talk, then.”
He takes a deep breath. I would have to do yoga for seven or eight years to get that much air into my lungs. “I’m hurt by what happened last night.”