But we kept going west, all the way to the highway. I paused as we neared the stoplight. “Come on!” she said, and crossed the street over to the water. My old fear about being left to wait forever in some abandoned warehouse landed on my shoulder and hissed into my ear, even though this was Libby leading me—Libby, who had my back! (Supposedly, the fear whispered.) I shivered in my oversize sweater, the night air chilly for late September as it cut through the loops of fabric. I knew this had been too easy. We approached the river. I half expected Libby to turn and—a friendly smile still on her face but with her eyes changed into little, hard coals—tell me to climb up over the railing and jump in so they could see if I floated, or so I could be transformed by the toxic waste in the Hudson into some radioactive superwoman who actually had something to offer this club.
“Jillian,” someone said behind me. Caroline sat on a bench, looking down into a leather portfolio, her hair in a bun, her feet in black heels. To anyone passing by at this evening hour, going for a run or walking their dog, she’d look just like some chic, go-get- ’em businesswoman doing work by the water. She gave a small nod to Libby, who nodded back with the devoted intensity of someone who was longing to be asked to clip Caroline’s toenails.
Caroline raised an eyebrow, and Libby startled. “Oh, right!” she said, then grabbed my bag and walked off with it, strolling down the riverside path without a backward glance, though clearly the effort it took her not to turn around was more than Orpheus had expended with Eurydice. Well, there went my phone. And—shit—the camera.
“Hi!” Caroline said with a perky yet professional smile as she patted the bench next to her. “Come sit, and let’s chat.” She looked down at a page of paper in her leather portfolio, and I followed her eyes to see a one-sheet with my name on it, like a résumé. Caroline moved it out of my eyesight before I could read it, then clasped her hands. “I’m curious to know, where do you see yourself in five years?”
Oh God, this was a de facto job interview. While I was happy enough to interview other people (I was a journalist after all), I’d always hated being the subject myself. But a Nevertheless woman would be confident. I would not stumble over my words! As Caroline looked at me with bland encouragement, I switched on a smile.
“Great question. Ideally working on my third novel and starting a family with a supportive husband.” Impulsively, I added, “How about you?”
Her mouth opened in a little O of surprise. “Me?”
“Yeah, I mean, you’re an interesting and cool person. So I was just curious.” It couldn’t hurt to brownnose a bit. Caroline presented herself as giving and well-adjusted, but I was willing to bet that, underneath the exterior, her ego panted, longing to be petted.
“Jillian,” she said, and distractedly touched the strand of pearls at her throat. “That’s sweet. No one’s ever asked about me during this part of things before.” She sat back. “My five-year plan,” she said with no hesitation, “is to build Women Who Lead into a powerhouse network providing vital support to female candidates across the country, to see our first female president take the oath of office—” She paused for just a moment, swallowing hard, then moved on. “I’ll have my first child with my husband in three years, and in five years’ time, will be pregnant with child number two.”
“Cool—”
“Also, I’ll have adopted a dog—preferably a goldendoodle rescued from a puppy mill.”
“That’s—”
“Additionally, Derek and I will have invested in a mountain cabin outside the city for when we need an escape, so that our children will get to experience the great outdoors as well as the structure of city living.”
I waited a second to make sure that she was finished. “Wow. That’s a little more thorough than mine.”
“Oh, if you’d like to have a clearer vision for yourself, I recommend spending time each year on January first drawing up a detailed list of your life goals. I’ve done it ever since I turned thirteen. But back to you!”
She put me through a few more paces, asking me about what I would bring to them, how they could help me personally and professionally, questions that I answered with varying degrees of comfort. Each time, Caroline moved on efficiently, not allowing any awkward pauses to hang in the air, until she saw something on my one-sheet that made her stop short. “It says here that you bartend?”
Dammit, I’d hoped that wouldn’t enter into the equation, not because I was ashamed of it, but because Nevertheless didn’t seem like they were actively recruiting members of the service industry. God, had someone followed me all the way to the bar too? I would’ve noticed if a glorious Amazon had ordered a drink, and the usual crowd of old men would have noticed too, but maybe someone had watched me through the windows.
“Yeah, a few nights a week,” I said, searching for an explanation that would still make me appear to be one of the elite. Maybe I could pretend that it was research for the novel—one of the main characters was an alcoholic, so I needed to study his natural habitat! But before I could offer any caveats, Caroline spoke again.
“I see,” she said. Then her face broke into an expression of approval. “That’s so very Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez!”
“. . . Thank you, yes,” I said. “That’s what I’m going for.”
She sat forward again and reopened the leather portfolio, pulling out a stapled document and a pen. “Anyways, Margot has spoken very highly of you”—She had? Embarrassingly, I thrilled to this news—“and I’ve found talking to you to be an interesting albeit unpredictable experience. Plus we don’t have
