“Excuse me, Miss, if you’ll just wait a second,” Donnell says.
Steve inspects the woman’s phone. He pops its back and notes the indicator is pink from water damage.
“You dropped this in the toilet,” says Steve.
“I did not,” says the woman.
Donnell tries again to push around the customer, who’s now berating Steve for claiming she purposely peed on her phone. She poses with the item between her legs and asks if Steve thinks she mistook it for a pregnancy test.
“I said you dropped it in the toilet,” says Steve. “I didn’t say you peed on it.”
Donnell feels a tap on his shoulder. He turns to face Jackie, but the person tapping is not his daughter. It’s a plainclothes detective who holds up a badge and asks for a moment of Donnell’s time.
“I’m sorry, but what’s this about?” says Donnell, still trying to angle around the urine mime and talk to Steve about shifts.
“I need you to come with me to the station to answer some questions.”
“Some questions?” says Donnell, now looking for Jackie. Steve’s trying to calm the urine mime by explaining that, while her warranty does not protect against water damage, he can probably get her a 10 percent discount on a brand new iPhone so long as she mails in the rebate.
“How about I pee on the rebate instead?”
“That would be your choice,” says Steve.
“We just have a few questions about your participation in the protest last week,” says the detective. “I’m sure it won’t take much time.”
“If you don’t mind,” says Donnell, “I just need to speak to my manager about a scheduling problem, and then I can answer whatever questions you have.”
He tries again to push up to the counter, but this time the detective squeezes his arm and anchors him in place.
“Mr. Sanders, I need you to come with me to the station.” A hint of annoyance has crept into his voice.
“I’m here with my daughter.”
“Which is why I suggest you come with me so I don’t have to arrest you.”
“Arrest me?” says Donnell, louder than intended. “I thought you said you had questions.”
“Sir, I’m asking politely.”
People are looking. Jackie steps out of line and moves toward Donnell.
“Dad?” she says.
“Mr. Sanders,” the detective says.
“Fuck your rebate,” says the urine mime. She throws her phone at the iPad display. Amid this distraction, Donnell tries to free himself from the detective’s grip. He finds his legs kicked from under him, face pressed into the un-vacuumed carpet, cuffs clasped around his wrist.
14.
In the photo, Ricky still sports the bedhead haircut he had in college—part Ross from Friends, part roadkill—a look he wisely ditched for a politician’s side part around the age of twenty-eight. Still, there’s something endearing about the old style, an innocence bestowed upon its owner. Wendy understands why this is the image that Lillian’s chosen.
Lillian leans over Wendy’s shoulder carrying the combined scents of spearmint, wasabi peas, and a perfume that should be called Hookah Bar. She chops at Wendy’s back like she’s ending a massage. She says, “Sucks to be this guy.” She walks away.
It occurs to Wendy that her boss is an insensitive bitch. Not that Wendy and Ricky were close, but now he’s dead, murdered, and here’s Wendy, days later, setting up a Facebook memorial page.
“We need to strike while the kettle is hot,” Lillian had relayed.
Wendy pictured a steaming mug of Earl Grey.
“When someone is murdered it’s an invitation for the press to go digging for skeletons, and your friend’s got a few of those fuckers. We need to remind the world that just because he liked to have a few drinks and snorts and rolls in the gay hay with some big-dicked heroes of the American underclass does not make this anything other than a heinous hate crime for which the responsible party or parties will pay.”
Wendy understands, sort of. Her job is now, in essence, prosecutor of #Occupy. Still, they could have let Greg handle this task, especially as Wendy’s already busy with tomorrow’s shoot, a last-minute effort that has her putting calls out to casting directors, scouting for a space that fits the vision she had in bed last night, and overseeing the shot list and storyboard drafts. Wendy’s job title is Director of Strategy and Content, a vague classification that means she has a hand in all the company’s doings, from concept to execution, and is subject to Lillian’s impromptu left turns and irrational wonts. None of which, she might add, compare to the outright folly of trying to pull off this shoot on two days’ notice. And now they want her to rebrand Ricky as well?
But Wendy understands. This is what she excels at: spin, counter-spin, creative solutions. And though turning Ricky into a martyr for the maligned one percent may be her toughest challenge yet, there is a part of Wendy that feels she owes it to Ricky, or if not to Ricky then to Michael. Because surely there’s something noble in protecting Ricky from the ruthless churn of the news cycle by presenting a clean-shaven and unimpeachably humane counter-Ricky, a heroic counter-Ricky, even if that counter-Ricky might have to be invented by Wendy herself.
She stands, yawns, and checks her neighbor’s monitor, amazed for the millionth time that these guys spend most of their waking hours staring at code. She used to think it looked boring, but now she sees the appeal of rote math and script mastery, of rearranging brackets until some desired result is achieved; never having to worry about the morality of one’s work; never having to read people’s thoughts or infer subtext or even interact at all with the various parties who call or email Wendy each day, pushing separate obscured agendas; never having to prioritize one task over another as their assignments are handed down in a line, then neatly ticked off like items on a grocery list.
She passes Lillian’s office on the way to the bathroom. The door is cracked. Lucas sits on the corner of the
