Followers. Megan Angelo
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Orla said. “I just called the salad place, and they told me what she got. It was just a standard Cobb with edamame, if you think about it.”
“Not that.” Floss took a swallow of whiskey and set the bottle on the edge of the roof. “The first time you wrote about Sage,” she said, “she was just the daughter of some studio executive. She was nobody.”
“Right, but then she started to act,” Orla protested. “She got the Some Like It Hot remake pretty much right away—”
“No.” Floss shook her head hard. A segment of her fake hair was starting to come loose, its sticky root sagging into view. “No, she did not get it right away. First she was in that photo, when all those models went to one of those dumb strip mall places where you drink and paint the same paintings. They Instagrammed it, and you did that post identifying everyone in the picture.”
Orla had forgotten that that was how it started.
“That, just that, was enough to get her a publicist,” Floss went on. “And the publicist got someone to send her those boots, the white leather ones with the rainbow laces. And she wore them, so the boot people sent the pictures to bloggers. You remember getting those pictures?”
Orla nodded. The post she had turned them into was headlined “Sage Sterling’s Boots: Trippy Or Trippin’?” “I don’t think we should say ‘trippin’,’” Orla had protested to Ingrid, before she hit Publish. “I think that’s like a black thing? And we shouldn’t appropriate it? It might seem racist?” Ingrid had overruled her. “You’re the one being racist, trust me,” she had said.
“So then you did a post about her boot style, with photos of all the boots she’d ever worn.” Floss smeared the gloss off her mouth with her palm and wiped it on the back of a cream-colored chair cushion. “You called her a boot icon. A couple months later, the boot people named a style after her, which you covered, which made the boots sell out. So some fashion line invited her to curate—” here, Floss raised her fingers and made air quotes that punctured the air so forcefully, Orla winced on its behalf “—a whole line of boots for them. That got her to Fashion Week. She was supposed to sit in the second row, but her publicist brought sheets of paper with her name printed on them and stole the seats of front-row girls who didn’t show up. That was smart. I liked that move.”
It had grown dark. A floodlight tacked up over the sliding doors went on. It was too bright for the small space, meant to shine over someone’s endless suburban backyard. It might have made Orla homesick, if she wasn’t busy wondering whether the Ukrainian man could now see up her skirt as she leaned over the rim of the building, into the night. She felt thirsty and picked up the whiskey, found it didn’t help.
“You put her in a roundup of Fashion Week It Girls,” Floss went on. “A reader asked you who she was, so you did a post with, like, facts about her. Remember?”
“9 INSANE Facts About Sage Sterling.” Never ten facts—readers hated the number ten. It was too perfect, too choreographed. Suspect.
“And you found that old photo of her with the kid from that boy band, the one who’s hot now,” Floss went on.
“Yeah,” Orla said. “I thought they dated in high school.”
“Wasn’t true,” Floss said, “but it didn’t matter. You wrote it, and then you corrected yourself, but someone had already put it in their Wikipedia pages. I bet you it’s still there now. And the publicists were into it, so they went with it. They made them date.” Floss hugged herself and shivered. It was August, warm enough to be out on a roof near the water, but not warm enough to do it in just shapewear. “And then you really wrote,” she said.
Orla remembered. “Sage and Finn—Uh, We Mean SINN—Step Out Together for the First Time.” “Every Sinn-gle Thing Sage Wore On Tour With Finn’s New Band.” “Sinn Has a Sexy Hawaiian Veterans Day—Pics, Right This Way!”
“And then, Jesus Christ,” Floss said. “She got that haircut, the grandma haircut with the platinum and the curlers.”
“Erm, Marilyn Monroe WHO? Come See Sage Sterling’s New ’Do.” Ingrid had added the “erm” after Orla left the office for the day.
“That’s when she got Some Like It Hot,” Floss said bitterly. She pointed at Orla. “After you said she looked like Marilyn Monroe. She looked like a goddamn Golden Girl!”
Floss sounded so upset that Orla almost apologized. Instead, she reminded Floss that the movie was made by the studio Sage’s dad ran, that she probably would have gotten the part even if he was the only one who knew who she was. “Besides,” she added, feeling suddenly defensive of Sage, patron saint of her disposable income, “are you trying to tell me you’re jealous? She got addicted to heroin and died.”
Floss waved it away. “She got sloppy. I’m not like that.”
Orla stared at her. She thought about going downstairs and into her room, about putting the flimsy fake wall between her and this strange, scheming girl. She thought about telling her super, Manny, about the weirdo in the penthouse, watching young women on his deck when he should have been home with his kid in Delaware.
“This is the part,” Floss said patiently, “where you ask what’s in it for you.”
Orla shook her head. “What could possibly be in it for me?” she asked. “Also, no offense, but you’re a little old to start trying to be famous. I mean, you’re, what...?”
“I’m twenty-eight,” Floss said. “Just like you, right?”
Orla straightened herself with what she hoped seemed like authority, with the air of someone who had put Sage Sterling on the map. “And you’re just now getting into dog apparel parties,” she said.
Floss smoothed her hair away from her face, flicked it over her shoulder. “At least I’m not working at them.”
The line was cruel, but Floss made it sound like a joke they’d had for years. And that was what got Orla—Orla, who had told herself on the day she moved to New York that the hollow way she felt would subside once the cable got hooked up, and who had gone on feeling empty every day for six years.
She said, “What’s in it for me?”
“If we do this right,” Floss answered, “whatever you need. I’m sure you don’t want to blog forever. I’m sure you have, what? A book? So you need an agent. If you help me, if I get as big as I think I can, they’ll want to talk to you just because you’re standing next to me.”
Orla thought of her laptop sitting closed and cool, untouched in the dark of her room. She told herself that as soon as she finished this drink, she would go downstairs and write a thousand words without the TV on. “I don’t need your help with my book,” she said. “I can get an agent on my own.”
Floss laughed. “Oh, really?” she said. “Are you sure? You better be sure. You better be sure that you’re in, like, the top five writers in New York City, and that you know all the people they know, and that those people like you better, and that those people are the right ones to begin with. Because look, Orla.” Floss placed her hands on either side of Orla’s head and pointed it at the building next to theirs, the one that blocked the sky from the rest of the roof. “It’s 10:45 on a Monday night, and everybody in that building has their lights on. You see? They’re all still up. Just like we’re still up. What do you think they’re doing?” She aimed Orla’s head, roughly, at another building beneath them, a low-rise in pinkish-gray brick. “More lights,” she said. “How about them?”
Orla saw a girl in her sports bra bent over her computer, drumming her fingers on her chin.
“I’ve done the math,” Floss said. “I’ve done the actual math. There are eight million people here, and all of them want something as bad as I want what I want, as bad