“It’s a person who comes to your house and stays up all night so you don’t have to.”
“What kind of person?”
“Whatever kind of person you want. You get to pick them.”
Mira gives me the side-eye. “How much does it cost?”
“Don’t worry about that, it’s on me and Cyrus.”
“Like the crib, the Bugaboo, the car seat, and the baby monitor that tells you everything except when you’re going to die?”
“？‘Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.’？”
“Ammoo, please. Seriously, Asha, you have to stop paying for everything.”
“Why? Why do I have to stop paying for everything?”
“Because you’re making everyone uncomfortable.”
Gitanjali has fallen asleep in my arms. I gaze at the little face poking up out of her swaddle. She has Ahmed’s wide forehead and Mira’s and my mouth, something I am extremely proud of. Right now there is a circular rough patch on her upper lip, a milk blister that gives her a small pout. Mira has banned us from the following things: commenting on Gitanjali’s beauty, the color pink, calling her a princess, informing her there’s a thing out there called Disney, or forecasting professions that require fewer than two graduate degrees.
“Well, I’m sorry if I’ve overdone it.”
“I don’t mean to be horrible,” Mira says. “It’s just that Ahmed’s parents wanted to get her a high chair, but I overheard them saying you would probably come over and say it was toxic or ugly.”
“Why would I say that?”
She shrugs. I can see she’s fighting tears, so I walk over and hand Gitanjali back to her, and she relaxes while the baby rustles and pecks at her shoulder, a current of needs passing back and forth between them like Morse code.
* * *
The testing on Cyrus’s redesign comes back, and the results are clear. People like the old version better than the proposed new version. I turn all this data into a presentation with slides, graphics, and pie charts. Then we go back into the meeting room and deliver the results. “In our opinion,” Destiny says, “while some of the color changes are an improvement”—I told her to say that, to give something so that Cyrus could feel like he’d made it better—“the rearranging of the primary features of the site have not been considered a value add by the people we surveyed.”
“How many people?” Cyrus asks. I’ve hardly seen him this week, but now, instead of congratulating me on all my work, he’s peering at the screen like he’s left his reading glasses at home.
Destiny checks something on her computer. “Three thousand and thirty-seven,” she says.
“That’s not a good sample size,” Cyrus says.
“I guess not,” Destiny agrees. “It’s less than point one percent of our user base.”
“It’s all we could do on short notice,” I say. “They represent the demographics of the broader community.”
“Can I see the raw data?”
I was prepared for this. I take out a thick folder and hand it to him.
“These replies are not decisive,” he says, flipping through the material. “They say they prefer the old one, but they don’t say why.”
I text Jules. Do something.
“Cyrus,” Jules says, “we’ve already told the community there are going to be new features. The redesign is going to add three weeks to the timeline, and that’s if Asha and Ren and the team work around the clock.”
I wait to see how Cyrus will respond. “Couldn’t you use the same codebase? You’re doing the wireframes again anyway, right?”
“It’s not the same part of the site,” I start.
“But you are, right?”
“I guess so.”
“Then it’s probably fine.” He flips through the questionnaire again. “Yeah, I don’t buy this. See, this woman says she doesn’t like it, but she also says she doesn’t actively dislike it. I don’t even know if we asked the right questions here.” He shows Destiny.
“Right,” she says. “I mean, it’s not completely clear. I guess we were just reading between the lines.”
“I think we need to be precise in our assumptions,” Cyrus announces. He catches my eye. “Look,” he says, reverting to negotiation, “why don’t we do a little more research. Let’s create a few options, and once we’ve got a new investor, we can get the green light from the board?”