Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
“Hello? Hello? Can you hear us?” Maya shouted toward the gigantic black screen on the wall, then pressed a button on and off again, for the hundredth time. “How about now?”
Recessed lighting cast a muted glow over the polished mahogany table, where a silver speakerphone sat like a metallic spaceship. Maya fiddled with more settings on a control pad. I wouldn’t have been surprised if somewhere, rockets launched into space.
After a swift smack of the remote control on the table, the massive wall-mounted screen flickered to life, splitting into three empty rectangles.
“Can you hear me now?” called a disembodied voice from one of the voids.
In another, a close-up of someone’s nostrils appeared. The third remained stubbornly dark. Like a black hole consuming the universe.
“Hello? Is anyone there?” Marcus’s voice crackled from the speakerphone, though his face was nowhere to be seen.
“We can hear you, Marcus, but we can’t see you.” Maya leaned forward and yelled into the box.
A harsh static blared from the speakerphone as a fourth square appeared, showing Victoria’s face frozen in an unflattering mid-blink, her mouth open mid-word, one that looked like it rhymed with “luck.” Eventually, her lips started moving, but no sound emerged.
“Victoria, you need to unmute yourself,” Marcus shouted, as if the increased volume of his voice could somehow solve a mute button problem.
After another fifteen minutes of technological incompetence, a couple of IT guys intervened and our Zoom call got underway.
“Finally,” said Victoria, smoothing her perfectly coiffed hair as if the technical difficulties had somehow physically mussed it. “Shall we begin?”
Maya cleared her throat. “While we have everyone here, I just want to mention how awesome Sam’s content has been performing. I think she’s really outdone herself.”
I gave her a quick smile of gratitude. It was nice knowing at least someone had my back.
“Her shots of the grotto bar alone generated more buzz than our entire spring campaign. And don’t even get me started on her Instagram stories from the spa tour,” Maya continued. “We’ve already had three booking inquiries just this morning.”
“Only three?” asked Marcus.
“The engagement metrics are off the charts,” said Parker, finally appearing in the fourth square of the Zoom grid. Make that two people who had my back. “We’re seeing a 42% increase in profile visits and a 28% boost in saved posts.”
“Yes,” said Victoria, leaning toward her camera until her face filled her entire square on the giant monitor, like a goddess looking down from the heavens to pick out the next victim for her lightning bolt tossing practice.
“Our marketing team ran some preliminary analytics on the initial content, and I must say that I’m incredibly . ..”
Maya and I leaned forward in our chairs, both holding our breath.
I’m incredibly pleased?
I’m incredibly impressed?
I’m incredibly ecstatic?
“I’m incredibly disappointed,” Victoria finished.
Maya and I both deflated faster than a balloon arch at a porcupine gender reveal.
“The numbers are good, sure,” said Victoria, her giant-sized manicured fingers waving across the screen. “But they’re just numbers.”
Marcus shared his screen; the conference room monitor now filled with spreadsheets and charts. “We ran the user comments through our generative AI tools, then compiled comparative analytics with our other properties around the globe.”
More charts and figures appeared. Engagement rates. Click-throughs. Sentiment analysis scores.
“I haven’t been this confused since trigonometry,” I whispered to Maya, who muted our phone so Marcus wouldn’t hear us.
“Look at this heat map.” He circled his cursor over a bright red blob that could have been user engagement data or possibly a weather radar showing an approaching hurricane.
“The engagement pattern is identical to our Maldives resort launch. And these sentiment clusters?” He switched to a word cloud where “stunning,” “luxury,” and “goals” floated in various sizes.
“They mirror our Tuscany property almost exactly.
I started nodding my head. Then realized everyone else was shaking their heads. So I did that instead.
“And that’s ... a bad thing?” I asked genuinely confused. I glanced at Maya, who was furiously scribbling notes, her knuckles white around her pen.
“The metrics are strong,” Marcus continued, pulling up another chart. “But there’s nothing that says ‘Colorado.’ Nothing that makes Aster Park unique. It could be any luxury resort anywhere in the world. Paris. Stockholm. Hong Kong.”
Victoria’s voice cut through the speakers.
“Look, Samantha, the bottom line is there isn’t enough of that local flavor we talked about.
I can get my nethers waxed with locally sourced beeswax in Ipanema.
I can get my naked body rubbed on a massage table in Bora Bora.
” Victoria froze on her screen again, falling silent.
Either she was having technical difficulties … or still thinking about Bora Bora.
“Are we still talking about resort properties?” I whispered.
Maya nodded tentatively. “I think so.”
Victoria snapped back to life on the screen, picking up where she left off. “I can get hibiscus-scented spring water shot up my ass while sitting on a bidet in the South of France.”
I was pretty sure I hadn’t posted any content involving water shooting up anyone’s ass, but nodded along and smiled, anyway.
Victoria leaned into the camera again, her pores like moon craters on the oversized monitor. “It was your idea to focus on authenticity, Samantha, remember?”
“Look, Samantha,” said Marcus. “We didn’t fly you out to Colorado to do the same thing everyone else does. We need you to capture the soul of the place. We need differentiation.”
I opened my mouth to defend myself, to refocus on how well the engagement numbers were trending, but the words died in my throat. They were right. My posts were beautiful, polished, technically flawless.
And completely interchangeable with every other high-end resort ever featured on social media. I could have taken the exact same photos anywhere with a pretty mountain view. I’d captured the luxury but missed the location. The polish, but not the place.
I’d done exactly what they’d asked for in our initial briefing, focusing on the amenities and experiences that justified the eye-watering room rates, but somehow I’d missed the point entirely.
Victoria’s face still loomed large on the screen. “You promised authenticity, Samantha.”
“You’re right,” I admitted. “I did.”
Maya hit mute. “This coming from a woman who insisted we rip out ancient hand-carved beams and stone fireplaces to install champagne bars.”
“And where decapitated elk heads wore scarves and beanies,” I added.
“Samantha.” Victoria’s voice grabbed my attention back by the nape of its neck. “I thought you were going to show everyone what makes Colorado special. Instead, you’ve given us run-of-the-mill … luxury porn.”
“Luxury porn?” Scrolling back through my pictures, I realized she was right. I’d captured nothing uniquely Colorado. The amenities could exist anywhere in the world, just with different views out the windows. “I can fix this,” I said, looking directly into the camera.
Maya mouthed the word, “How?”
I mouthed, “I have no idea.”
“You realize you two are on video and we can see you, right?” Marcus frowned.
“I have an idea,” said Parker from his video square. “I’ll share my screen.”
Marcus’s charts and graphs disappeared and Parker’s desktop took their place, a chaotic landscape of editing software, a Minecraft game, and thirty-seven open browser tabs of Pokemon card auctions on eBay.
“I’ve been tracking everything related to Sam’s trip. Including where she’s tagged.” Parker double-clicked. The giant monitor switched to a screenshot of a new post.
A picture of a grumpy mountain man who looked very familiar.
And VERY irritating.
To my complete and utter horror, the picture I took of Noah and Yeti now filled the conference room wall. It was the candid shot I’d snapped at the airport when I thought I might need evidence for a future police investigation into my own disappearance.
“Wait a second,” I said. “I didn’t upload that.
That’s not my post. I swear I didn’t post that.
” Frantic, I searched every face on screen for validation, but nobody was looking at me.
They were all looking at Noah, transfixed by his windswept hair, piercing blue eyes, and the half-smile playing at the corner of his mouth as Yeti drooled beside him.
It was hard to tell through the speakerphone’s distortion, but I was pretty sure I heard Victoria whistle.
“I didn’t post that ...” I repeated weakly.
“No, you’re right, it’s not your post, Sam,” Parker confirmed. “But you’re tagged in it.”
“What? How?” Then I saw the username above Noah’s photograph. My jaw dropped.
IT. WAS. MY. MOTHER.
If someone had handed me a genie-filled lamp in that moment, my first wish would have been to wish I was adopted.
“Now that’s what I’m talking about,” Victoria purred, leaning so close to her camera that her face threatened to burst through the screen. “Can’t get any more authentic than that.”
“Wait,” Marcus interrupted. “Are those numbers right?”
“Yup,” Parker highlighted the statistics and zoomed in for a close-up. “And the post only went up this morning. The numbers are still climbing.” He scrolled through the comments while the rest of us processed what we were seeing.
“OMG who is this mountain man? ”
“That dog is literally a wolf and I’m here for it! ”
“Finally some REAL Colorado content! Not another lame fancy spa treatment shot that no one can afford!”
I stared at Noah’s giant image on screen. Mom had captioned it, “Mountain Man and Wolf-Dog,” tagging my personal account along with every single one of my business hashtags, effectively hijacking my professional brand to broadcast her shameless matchmaking agenda to the world.
“Wait, scroll back up,” Victoria commanded. “What was that one about authentic content?”
Parker obliged, and there it was — another comment on Mom’s post.
“This is what AUTHENTIC Colorado looks like! Not those fake marketing posts!”
My cheeks burned as I sank deeper into my chair, which suddenly felt less like a luxury office accessory and more like a witness stand.
The contrast between my carefully curated resort photos and this candid shot of Noah, his authentic ruggedness, that barely there smile, Yeti looking wolf-like instead of a planted prop, was painfully obvious.
Marcus’s marketing brain was visibly recalculating. “Those numbers are higher than all of Samantha’s other posts.”
Wonderful. My own mother was better at my job than I was. And she still had an AOL email address and shared the same phone with Dad.
“That’s EXACTLY what I need,” said Victoria. As the rest of us stared at her, Victoria sat up straight and cleared her throat. “What I meant was, that’s exactly what Samantha needs.” All eyes shifted from Victoria to me.
“What I need?”
“Yes, you, Sam,” said Victoria. “He is exactly what YOU need. What this campaign needs. Luxury and authenticity. You said it yourself. And what better way to achieve both those objectives than you and Noah working together?”
Everyone began talking over each other all at once. “Me and Noah together?” I asked through the bedlam.
“Yes, yes,” said Marcus, throwing more charts and graphs on the screen. “The potential for crossover synergies is inspired.”
“Look at these demographics,” added Parker, moving his cursor over a pie chart on the screen share. “We’re hitting both the adventure-seeking millennials and the luxury-loving boomers. It’s cross-generational appeal.”
“Urban sophistication meets mountain expertise.” Marcus smiled for the first time since the Zoom call started. “I like it. I like it a lot.”
“Well, I LOVE it.” It was clear from the look in her eyes that when Victoria said, “I love it,” what she meant was, you better find a way to make this work or else.
For the next several minutes, Victoria, Marcus, and Parker brainstormed strategies and workshopped logistics while I tried to contain a full-blown panic attack. Mixed with a mental breakdown. Topped with an emotional outburst.
Obviously, there was no way such a crazy idea would ever work. Noah and I working together? It was preposterous. Ludicrous. An impossibility. Noah hated me. I mean, he couldn’t stand me so much that he stranded me at the airport.
Not to mention the fact that I also hated him.
“Aren’t you all forgetting one thing?” I raised my hand tentatively, like a student who didn’t want to be called on, but felt obligated to point out that the classroom was on fire and we were all about to die.
The excited energy on screen sputtered to a halt.
“Noah hates me,” I pointed out. “There’s no way he would ever agree to this.”
Victoria smiled. Slowly, she shook her head. “Samantha. Dear sweet, Samantha. That’s ridiculous. Noah doesn’t hate you.” She stared into the camera. “Noah hates me. Not that it matters who Noah hates. Because we have all the leverage. Isn’t that right, Maya?”
Maya stared down at the table. Her shoulders slumped, but she nodded.
“He’ll play ball,” said Marcus, his smile carrying all the warmth of a collections telemarketer. “If he wants to save his job and the jobs of his friends.”
“Sam’s right,” said Maya, her voice strained. “There’s no way Noah would agree to this.”
“Just make him an offer he can’t refuse,” said Victoria.
“What is this, a Godfather movie?” I waited for Marcus to suggest putting one of the severed elk heads in Noah’s bed.
“Honestly, Maya, Samantha, I don’t care how you get him to do it, just get it done. What could possibly go wrong?”