Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
Click. There I was, face-planting into the river, mouth open in a scream.
Click. Yeti and I, in a mountain meadow selfie, our tongues out like fools.
Click. Me, sweat-soaked after a hike, mascara streaking down my face like I’d auditioned for the raccoon role in a woodland creature musical.
The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, their flat, artificial glow draining all the color from the LuxeLife conference room as I sank lower in my chair. The sterile white walls felt suffocating after a day of endless mountain horizons.
“What exactly were you trying to convey here?” Victoria pointed at the screen where I hung upside down from my safety harness, hair a vertical waterfall of tangles.
“Um...”
I sat and watched as Marcus scrolled through my content from the past few days, each new image flashing on the massive screen like evidence at a trial. Every click felt like another jury member holding up a little sign that read, “GUILTY.”
“And this sequence?” Marcus paused on a candid shot of Noah from behind, bending over to tie his hiking boot. Click. Another shot of Noah bending over to collect muffin wraps. Click. Another, Noah, bent over to shoo a caterpillar before it got smushed on the trail.
“How exactly do these align with our luxury brand messaging?”
“I was going for authenticity?”
Even Parker closed his eyes and bowed his head.
I glanced over at my phone, plugged in to the conference room’s AV equipment so it could download the past week’s content and recharge. I briefly considered snatching it back and running out of the room.
“Authenticity.” Victoria spat the word like a rotten huckleberry. “Looks like a completely uncontrolled narrative to me.”
“After that whole sordid osprey episode, your numbers have flatlined.” Marcus opened a series of charts and graphs. “Which means booking rates haven’t budged.” The line on the screen looked like the heartbeat of a corpse, which is basically what my career was about to be.
Marcus leaned over toward Victoria. “If we don’t see a boost soon, the board is going to …”
“Be very disappointed that you couldn’t deliver what I promised them, Samantha,” Victoria finished.
Maya cleared her throat. “If I may ...” She stood, commanding the room’s attention. “Mother Nature isn’t something we can control. These experiences? They’re unpredictable by definition.”
“I can verify that,” I added.
Maya turned toward the head of the table.
“Victoria, you said you wanted authentic Colorado experiences. The authentic Colorado is unexpected adventure. The authentic Colorado is the thrill of the unknown.” Her voice grew stronger with each word, confidence building like a river approaching a rapid.
I sat back and watched Maya work her magic, feeling a surge of hope as Marcus and Victoria hung on her every word.
“Look at these engagement numbers.” Maya pointed to the screen. “Sure, the total views have stabilized, but Sam’s authentic moments are generating three times the interaction of her standard luxury posts. Look at the comment counts.”
“It’s true,” said Parker. “Sam flipping over in the kayak is one of our most viewed livestreams ever. And the part where her pants got snagged on a branch is now a meme.”
“It is?” I asked.
“And this helps our brand how?” Victoria arched her perfectly sculpted eyebrows.
“Because it makes luxury adventure accessible,” Maya said, her passion infectious.
“Not everyone wants to see another perfect person doing a perfect yoga pose on a perfect mountaintop. They want to see someone real trying something new, maybe failing, but getting back up and trying again. And again. And again.”
Maya’s gaze swept across the room, landing finally on me.
“Real adventure isn’t perfect,” she said as she settled back into her chair.
“It’s messy and challenging, and sometimes you end up hanging on for dear life on the back of a flatulent horse.
But that’s what makes it authentic. That’s what makes it into the memory of a lifetime. ”
It was the perfect moment for a slow clap. But when no one else moved, I discreetly sat back down and slipped my hands under the table.
Marcus leaned forward, pressing his elbows against the polished wood. “The posts may be popular, but how does that translate to sales? Are booking inquiries up?” he asked. “Revenues per room?”
“Well,” Maya hesitated, her confidence wavering. “I mean, not yet, but …”
“What about the Adventure Center business?” asked Victoria, “Are they seeing any revenue boost?”
“The demographics aren’t exactly ...” Maya trailed off, her professional facade cracking. “These things take time …”
“Time we don’t have,” said Marcus.
Victoria leaned back in her chair. “So what you’re basically telling me is that there are a bunch of people out there watching Sam make a fool of herself, but none of those people are spending money at my resort.”
The silence stretched longer than a horseback ride to hell and back. Maya and Parker both turned to me with identical expressions of desperate hope, like I might suddenly pull a magical solution out of thin air. But the only things in the surrounding air were the smell of horse and wet dog fur.
I swiveled my chair toward Victoria. “You are a luxury brand,” I said. “You offer curated perfection to perfection-minded guests.”
“Yes,” said Victoria. “And the sky is blue and water is wet.”
“Are you suggesting curated perfection is a problem, Samantha?” Marcus raised an eyebrow.
“No, curated perfection isn’t the problem. The problem is you’re asking for curated authenticity. But curated authenticity doesn’t exist.”
Marcus started to respond, but Victoria cut him off with a wave of her hand. “You know what, Marcus? She’s right.”
“She is?” Marcus looked confused. As did everyone else.
Victoria’s expression shifted to something more calculated, more dangerous. “Curated authenticity doesn’t exist. But it should.” Victoria tapped her manicured nails against the table, the rhythmic click-click-click like the timer on a bomb. “See, Marcus? I told you we shouldn’t fire her just yet.”
Parker and I exchanged a nervous look. I hadn’t realized how precarious my situation really was. I’d been too distracted by a certain grumpy mountain man to pay attention to what I was supposed to be paying attention to — my job.
“Samantha is right. Authenticity is too unpredictable,” said Victoria. “We can’t risk the LuxeLife reputation on whatever Mother Nature decides to throw at our exquisitely curated guest experiences.”
At that moment, an artificial room deodorizer pumped the chemical equivalent of pine throughout the room. After inhaling real pine forest the past few days, the fake smell made me want to throw up.
“So, what do we do?” asked Marcus. “Just give up?”
“I never give up,” said Victoria. “I adapt.”
“Adapt how?” asked Maya.
“We pivot to Samantha’s idea. Effective immediately.”
“My idea?” I asked. “Which was what, exactly?”
Victoria waved me off with her manicured hand. “Don’t be shy, Samantha. You don’t give yourself enough credit. You know the folly of trying to tame the wilderness better than anybody.”
She had a point.
“Okay, people, let’s ideate on Samantha’s curated authenticity concept.” Victoria’s voice took on the enthusiastic edge of someone who’d just discovered a new tax loophole. “This is transformative thinking, Samantha. Well done. Paradigm-shifting.”
“What’s a paradigm?” I whispered to Parker.
“We’ll do a mind-mapping exercise,” Victoria commanded. “Marcus. Curated authenticity. Go.” She gestured at him like a conductor cueing an orchestra section playing the “March of Doom.”
Marcus seemed to know what a paradigm was because he didn’t miss a beat. “Instead of whitewater rafting, we build a lazy river behind the infinity pool.”
My growing sense of fear at what I’d accidentally unleashed started to build. The rushing river that had tossed me like a rag doll was terrifying, yes, but also exhilarating and real. Was Marcus actually proposing that a glorified bathtub with strategically placed bubble jets would replace it?
“Excellent, Marcus.” Victoria tapped her chin with a pointed nail. “We’ll put up a barbed wire fence to keep all the real wild animals off the property and put in some more of those stuffed dead ones for people to take selfies with. We can dress them up in LuxeLife branded hats and scarves too.”
My growing fear turned to growing horror.
“Maya, you go now.” Victoria leveled Maya with a pointed stare.
“Well, I guess ... for people who don’t want to do horseback riding, we could do e-bike tours? Still outdoors, but more ... controlled?”
“I love the electrification of the outdoor experience,” Victoria said. “We’ll tear down some trees and put in paved bike paths everywhere. Well done, Maya. Well done.” She pointed at Parker next. “You. Asian man-child. What do you have for me? Curated authenticity. Go.”
“You could put in a virtual reality arcade,” said Parker. “They have these hyper-realistic fishing simulation games, hook sensitivity, weather variations, everything.”
“We’ll have to workshop that one.” Finally, Victoria turned to me. “Samantha, your turn. Dazzle me with your curated authenticity vision.”
With each suggestion, the real Colorado I’d experienced with Noah seemed to dissolve like froth bubbles in a piping hot latte.
The mountains, the storms, the wildlife, all replaced with sanitized copies that wouldn’t dare inconvenience a paying guest with something as unpredictable as actual nature.
“Well, Samantha?”
Across the table, Marcus shook his head, giving Victoria one of those “I told you so” looks. I could see him drafting the contract termination papers in his head.