Elevator Pitch. Linwood Barclay
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she said. Arla was furious.
Barbara said something she wished she hadn’t. “Maybe you’d have been happier if I’d given you up for adoption and you’d been raised by strangers.”
“You’re the stranger,” Arla shot back. “Always have been.”
And then Arla had gone in for the kill. “I have this friend who’s getting married, and she says her mother’s driving her crazy, wanting to be involved in every single detail about the wedding, and my friend’s like, God, I can’t take it anymore, and I said to her, hey, at least she’s interested.”
So there was every reason to feel unsettled about meeting with Arla this morning. What was Barbara to blame for now? What repressed maternal memory—or lack thereof—had Arla gone over with her therapist this week?
She’d said she had news.
Jesus, maybe it’s about her father.
So far as Barbara knew, Arla had abandoned her idea of heading out west to look for him. Maybe she’d changed her mind.
Arla still was not here—being habitually late to meetings with her was, Barbara figured, a minor act of vengeance—so Barbara scrolled through her Twitter feed. Barbara was almost never without the phone in her hand. The advent of technology had made it nearly impossible for Barbara to be alone with her own thoughts. If she wasn’t writing, or reading, or having a conversation with someone, she was on the phone.
She followed political leaders and countless pundits and various media outlets and even bulletins from the NYPD. And no one had to know that she also followed someone who tweeted, every single day, cute puppy pics.
So shoot me.
She continued to scroll, caught a glimpse of something, then thumbed her way back up the feed. It was a post from the NYPD.
There’d been an elevator accident in an apartment building up on York Avenue. The story was just breaking and details were few.
“Fuck,” she whispered.
“I take it you’re not talking to me.”
Barbara looked up to find Arla standing there.
“Oh, hey, hi,” she said, slipping out of the booth to give her daughter a hug. No matter how angry Arla might be with her, she’d still allow her mother to do that. And Arla would slip her arms around Barbara in return, even if she didn’t pull her in for the big squeeze.
“You look good,” Barbara said as they slipped into the booth, sitting across from each other.
And it was true. The thing was, Arla always looked good. She was tall and slender, with straight black hair that hung below her shoulders. She wore a black, clingy dress with a broad, black, patent leather belt. A lank of hair hung over one eye and she brushed it back, tucking it behind her ear.
“Thanks,” Arla said. “Have you ordered?”
“Only coffee. I was going to get an omelette. What do you want?”
“Coffee’s good.”
“Go on, have something. I’m buying.”
Arla shook her head. “That’s okay.”
The waiter came. Just because Arla didn’t want to eat wasn’t going to stop Barbara. She ordered two coffees and an omelette for herself.
“So how’s it going?” Arla asked.
“Fine,” Barbara said, then frowned. She told her daughter, briefly, about the incident the day before involving the young woman who’d interned at Manhattan Today. Even as she told Arla the story, she wondered why. Was she hoping to garner some advance sympathy, maybe ward off the latest grievance Arla wanted to air?
“That’s awful,” Arla said with what seemed genuine concern. “Are her parents down here yet?”
“Probably,” Barbara said. “And now,” she said, raising her phone, “there’s another one.”
“Another elevator thing?”
Barbara nodded.
“I get totally creeped out in them,” Arla said. “It’s not that I think they’re going to crash or anything. It’s just, when that door closes, there’s no place you can go, and if you’re trapped in there with someone weird, you can’t wait to get to your floor.” She shook her head. “Two in two days. They say things come in threes.”
Barbara smiled. “I think that’s celebrity deaths. So,” she said slowly, “what’s your news?”
Arla inhaled deeply through her nose. The arrival of her coffee gave her a moment to exhale and prepare for what looked to Barbara like a major announcement. She took a packet of Splenda, ripped it open, and sprinkled half of it into the cup.
Pregnant, Barbara was thinking. History repeating itself.
“So …” Arla said. “I got a job.”
Barbara blinked. “You have a job. So this is a new job?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, that’s good. Congrats. You didn’t like what you were doing?”
“No, it was okay. And I learned a lot of stuff there that I can do at the new place.”
“So where are you moving to?”
“Okay, so, you know at the job I had, I was doing all this survey stuff. Analytics, interpreting data, all that kind of thing.”
“Right. What marketing is all about.”
“No one makes a decision these days without looking at all the data. No one in business goes with just their gut.”
“Gut feelings are all I’ve ever had,” Barbara said. “I don’t understand any of this stuff you’re talking about.”
“It’s the way the world’s going,” Arla said. “I mean, even if you’re sure your own instincts are right, no one wants to make a move without data to support it.”
“And let me guess,” Barbara said. “Sometimes the data tells you what the people want, so that’s what you give them, even if, in your heart, that’s not what you want to do.”
Arla shrugged. “Pretty much. You find out what the people are hankering for and deliver it.” She shook her head. “God, who uses a word like ‘hankering’ anymore?”
Barbara chuckled.
Arla continued. “Anyway, you want to know if your message is getting out there, and if it is, if it’s reaching the target audience. All that stuff. It’s pretty fascinating. The company I just left, we were doing a lot of work for the entertainment industry. What movies people like and why, data from advance screenings. Funny thing is, even when you have a movie you think will be a hit, it can go out there and sink like a stone.”
“Sure,” Barbara said.
“But I was thinking, what if I could take those kinds of skills and apply them in a way that would have some more meaning? You know, instead of finding a way to make some airhead pop star even more popular, what if you could expose people to issues that matter, and make them care?”
“That actually sounds like a good thing,” Barbara said. “So who are you going to work for? Planned Parenthood? The ACLU? Save the Whales?”
“Not one of them,” Arla said. “But still, a place where I can do some good.”
“So, tell me,” her mother said.
“You promise you won’t get mad.”
Barbara sat back on the bench. Oh, no, she thought. She’s gone to the dark side. She’s working for Facebook.
The