Reputation(4)

This makes everyone else in the line inspect me just as thoroughly—including an almost-as-skinny, hawk-nosed mom who was a row behind me at Flywheel. Good. I swish to the office in a cloud of smugness, wondering if this moment is Facebook-worthy. It certainly reaffirms that all of my renewed efforts in my appearance and fitness, which I’ve redoubled since moving here, are paying off.

But as soon as I reach my office floor, my mood dampens. Kit Manning-Strasser’s office, the first room I pass on the way to mine, is still dark. She isn’t back from Philly yet? Late night with the Hawsers, maybe? That seems unlikely—in the pictures I’ve seen of the extremely wealthy couple, they look like the type who have already picked out their funeral plots. I wonder if my name ever came up over the course of their lovely evening out together—oh, you know, just the woman who groomed the Hawsers in the first place? The woman who nurtured a relationship, listening for hours as Lucy Hawser talked about her sick corgi and her girlhood years of riding dressage, practically falling asleep as Robert Hawser told her, time and time again, about the round of golf he’d had with Warren Buffett? That lady—remember her, people? Because guess what: She’s not the same woman who took you out to dinner. We are very, very different.

Kit is more senior than you are, and that’s why she gets to go on this trip, my boss, George, explained to me last week. And while it’s true I’ve only been working in Aldrich’s giving department for six months—my husband, kids, and I moved to Pennsylvania from Maryland about a year ago because my husband’s company was offered great tax breaks here—I don’t like coming in second.

I sit down at my desk, open my e-mail, and scour my messages for updates on the Hawsers. There’s nothing—not from Kit, not from George. There are plenty of last-minute details about the Aldrich University Giving Gala, which is happening tomorrow at the Natural History Museum. Is the guest list finalized? Are the speeches ready? Has the planner updated me on the final details? Yes, yes, yes—I’ve always been excellent at throwing a party.

All that done, I open Facebook and sign into my account. The post of me, my daughter, Amelia, and my son, Connor, standing at the overlook of Mount Washington, the city of Pittsburgh glittering beneath us, has garnered quite a response: Beautiful, says my high school boyfriend, Brock, who married a woman who got a big ass after having three kids. Your kids could be models! writes an old friend from Maryland; poor thing went through a nasty divorce last year. I consider writing a response saying that I couldn’t care less if my children grow up to be classically beautiful—it’s their accomplishments, hopes, and dreams that fuel my fire. I also wish a few more of the moms from school had weighed in. Perhaps they think the post is too boastful? Or they find it inappropriate that I’ve let my nine-year-old daughter wear lip gloss and just a touch of mascara? Or I’m being paranoid. They’re busy. That’s all.

I click around to see if there’s any dirt on anyone I know—a girl’s night out that got messy; an inflammatory political argument between family members, all played out in comments. I see pictures of someone’s new house (smaller than mine), someone’s new baby (uglier than mine were), and a vacation photo of one of my sorority sisters and her husband (I’ve been on bigger yachts, and I have a better body). All is right with the world.

My phone buzzes, and I reach for it, figuring it’s my husband texting to check in. He’s on a flight back from somewhere—Denver? St. Louis?—trying to find another angel investor as kindly and generous as the first anonymous individual who’d poured tons of money into his business years ago. I suspect he’ll be successful, eventually; his business is great and innovative, and rich people sometimes just need a little cajoling.

Except the text isn’t from my husband. Instead, it’s from an unlisted number. When I open it, it says, simply, Get ready.

I can just make out my ghostlike reflection in the phone’s screen. I wait for a follow-up text of explanation. Nothing comes.

I look out the window. The sky is flat and gray. The air seems oddly still. The message gives me a chill. It feels like a warning. An explosion. A mass killing. A plague of locusts. I tap the phone icon on my phone, tempted to call my kids’ school to check if everything’s okay.

Then, as if in answer, my monitor goes dark. My head snaps up in surprise and then annoyance, because I can hear that winding-down sound of the hard drive shutting off. What the hell? Outside my office, I hear my assistant, Betsy, make a similarly startled sound. I stand just as she’s rolling back her chair and peering under her desk to look at the power strip on the floor. Her monitor is dark, too.

I wander into the hallway. Everyone is staring in bewilderment at their monitors.

“A power outage?” Jeremy, one of our grant writers, says.

“But our lights are still on,” Amanda, Kit’s assistant, says, pointing upward.

Betsy’s screen snaps to neon yellow, and she lets out a little yelp. I hurry back into my office. My screen is also yellow, and no matter how many keys I press, I cannot restore it to factory settings. Even turning the computer on and off does nothing—it’s as though someone has taken over our power grid. I glance out the window, down onto the Aldrich quad. Terrorists? Aliens? All I see are students walking sleepily to class.

The flashing on the screen stops, and a message pops up. You can’t hide, hypocrites, it reads in old-school eight-bit font, the type that used to blare across arcade screens. Below this is a freakish, pixelated drawing of a screaming face with hollowed-out eyes.