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I repress the temptation to remind her that the early alarm, too, could have been prevented. We are scheduled to meet the Tripps at the tour bus at six thirty outside their hotel. Carey, who clearly has no sense of Los Angeles geography, booked us at the Motel 6 in Hollywood, which is about eight miles away from the Ritz-Carlton on Olympic. On an average LA weekday, this translates to an hour-long drive.
“You’re acting like we aren’t going to be in a vehicle for seven hours today anyway,” she says.
“No, I’m acting like an additional hour of sleep would be preferable to an hour in a car.”
“Come on. It wasn’t that bad.”
I give her an incredulous lift of one eyebrow.
“Seriously, it was clean and the bed was relatively comfortable, considering the price.” She reaches out to straighten a framed black-and-white print of some iconic Hollywood landmark. “It’s just a little drab and predictable. Nothing some different colors and updated furniture couldn’t fix. They could make the simplicity feel like it’s intentional. Wouldn’t take much money, either.”
She scribbles something down in her notebook before turning her attention to me, studying me in playful exasperation. “Again with the suit.”
“Have you ever heard the phrase ‘Dress for the job you want, not the job you have’?”
“Have you ever heard the word ‘highfalutin’?”
I laugh. “People actually say that?”
Ignoring me, she rolls her dilapidated suitcase toward a wall of vending machines, tucks her notebook away, and starts searching through her purse. “I’m familiar with the phrase,” she answers, finally, “but it seems like something people only say to girls.”
I follow and pick a wayward piece of lint from my sleeve. “My sister says more men should follow the advice women get.”
Whatever she’d planned to say next seems to stall in her mouth. She studies me again, open wallet in hand, but this time her eyes don’t stray from my face. “What does that mean?”
I shift a bit under the press of her attention, inexplicably unnerved. “Probably that women are always being told to behave in a way that makes everything more harmonious, productive, accessible. They’re told how to do everything from how to dress to how to smile. Men are never told to make things easier for people, but maybe they should be.”
She’s still staring. “Who are you?”’
“Who am I?”
“Why are you here?” she asks. “Why do you even have this job? Why didn’t you quit the second Robyn told you we had to go on tour? Actually, why didn’t you quit the first time Rusty asked you to get his coffee or clean his golf balls?”
I wince and press a hand to my stomach. “There’s something about that phrasing that really doesn’t work for me right now.”
She ignores this.
I watch as she carefully coaxes a handful of crinkly dollar bills into one of the vending machines. Her movements are stiff and unnatural, and I’m on the verge of offering to help her when the machine finally takes the cash. I glance away as she presses the button for a granola bar.
“Seriously, though,” she prompts, “why are you here?”
For a moment, I briefly consider telling her the truth and then decide evasion is easier. “That’s a long story.”
“We’ve got,” she starts, looking down at her phone, “eleven minutes until our Lyft is here.”
“It’s also a depressing story.”
“I live for other people’s drama.” Depositing the bar inside her bag for later, she grins up at me.
I blink away, looking across the lobby to the reception desk, where one employee is on her phone and her male counterpart is asleep in his chair. I don’t relish the idea of telling Carey about all of this. It’s not that I worry it makes me look bad, but I worry it will make her pity me, and few things are more emasculating than pity. “My last job—the only job I’d had in the four years since I finished my master’s—was at Rooney, Lipton, and Squire.”
Carey’s eyes narrow and then go wide in recognition. Blue-green. Neither blue nor green, but a pretty blend of the two. “Wait. What? Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
Thankfully, her expression isn’t pity, it’s fire. “Isn’t that the firm that funneled all that money into—”
“The very one.” I reach up, scratch my chin, feeling uneasy in that nauseated way I always do when I remember that the four years of endless workdays and stress-induced sleepless nights were essentially supporting a completely corrupt company. “So, I really need to build my experience and contacts here. I can’t just bolt.” I reconsider. “Or, I suppose I could, but then I might have a hard time finding something else. Rusty promised me an engineering role. Ted promised me an engineering role. I’ve been Rusty’s de facto assistant so far, but if I can just hold on until season two starts shooting, I think I might actually like what we’re doing here. Plus, I admit I’m thrilled that no one here seems to be breaking the law.”
