Ashley
always looks like her hair’s a little wet, like she got out of the
shower in Paterson, New Jersey 15 minutes ago and somehow now she’s
here, in this venerable Midtown office building distantly overlooking
the East River. She wears jeans and jogging sneakers and form-fitting
shirts. She had to have been a field hockey player.
She
leans across the conference-room table and types a number from a
printed-out email, which contains a message advising the reader to
consider the environment before printing this email, into the Polycom
speakerphone. Everyone is here. Everyone is watching.
“You have entered an invalid access code,” the voice intones again. This happens all the time.
“Fuck,” Ashley mutters. She checks the number and tries again.
“You have entered an—”
“Dammit. This happens all the time.”
Outside
the window, sixteen floors down and across the street, Occupy Wall
Street protesters are clamoring in front of the world headquarters of a
very important pharmaceutical manufacturer, this agency’s biggest
client. Police form a loose periphery on horseback and on foot.
“You have en—”
“Dammit, dammit, dammit,” she says, and tries again.
This time it works.