Chapter 40
PITTSBURGH
JUNE 17, 2022, 8:49 A.M.
AGE: 36
BY THE TIME WE PULLED INTO PITTSBURGH, I HAD A BETTER SENSE OF the life that awaited me. My phone reception had gone in and out over the course of the journey, and thanks to the Internet, I’d been able to more or less piece together where things stood in this new and final universe.
Geeta was here but not here. More specifically, she was at the Clinton Hills Correctional Facility for Women. A Washington Post article with the headline “Geeta Brara: From Silicon Valley Darling to Disgraced CEO” had filled me in. Now I knew more than I wanted to. My most recent actions had altered the cosmic equation, and so had hers.
Desiree had been right about one thing: Geeta had tried to interfere with my optimization. She hadn’t wanted me to cross over, but for reasons that I could only imagine were good. Now Geeta was paying the price for messing with the all-mighty Memo.
According to the newspaper coverage, Geeta had been pressured by investors to fudge her company’s numbers and to give the impression that she had contracts with some of the biggest firms in the country when, in fact, the contracts had yet to be signed. She lied about having 100 percent penetration in the Luxembourg market. She lied about having a deal with the American Psychiatric Association. She lied about having a PhD from Stanford.
Silicon Valley was bloated with grifters, but my best friend was the one who was going to take the fall for the outsized expectations of an entire industry. To make matters worse, her affair with the late Levi Fischer was all over the tabloids for the world to see.
Matt filed for divorce, and his close friends gave an interview to a gossip rag stating that he was “shocked” and “heartbroken.” Matt blamed a covert influence campaign from a shady consortium of illuminati for his ex-wife’s crimes. In this one instance, he wasn’t wrong.
A Reddit board was devoted to Geeta Brara Halloween costumes (clip-on baby bangs, monochromatic earth-toned ensembles, and Gen-Zen branded water bottles). Some pundits wondered why a woman should have to be the fall gal when so many men behaved even more badly. Others felt that hers was just the first of a wave of similar cases that would bring equality and justice for all.
Geeta was held up as a symbol of the hypocrisy of wellness and hustle culture. But what Geeta had to go through was anything but symbolic. She’d pleaded guilty to one count of fraud, and her company filed for bankruptcy. She no longer had Levi to distract her or Matt to indulge her every whim. Suddenly, she was a single mother of baby twins and had huge fines to pay. It seemed she was midway through serving what had been described in the press as an “unusually lenient” four-month sentence at a state prison located less than an hour from our alma mater.
I walked from the station back to my building, my heart heavy as I pictured Geeta locked in a cell.
Pittsburgh was eerily quiet at this time of day. Fog hung over the rolling hills. I thought about Geeta’s twins. Luna and Maya were too young to understand what was going on, but they’d know that their mother wasn’t with them. What would happen when they got older and learned about her crimes? I’d have to talk to Matt, get to New York, and work extra hard to help get them through this difficult period, if Geeta still wanted me to be the girls’ guide mother, that is. Who knew anything anymore?
I passed by a day care center and a mom-and-pop hardware store, then an empty bodega with a note in the window that looked like it was composed in a rush: “To our loyal customers: After 25 years in Pittsburgh, we’re moving to California to live near our grandchildren.” That seemed as good a reason as any. Something compelled me to press my forehead against the plate glass. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I marveled at the tin ceiling and the black-and-white hexagonal floor tiles. The shop was too charming a space to sit empty for long, I thought with a swell of hopefulness. And then I kept walking.
Soon enough, I was back at my apartment complex. I got into the elevator, rode up to the seventh floor and put my key into the door. It didn’t work. I tried to wiggle it, but it didn’t fit. I tried again. No dice. Was I locked out? Was this a repeat of what happened on Spruce Street, a function of the many disjunctions I had unleashed? I knocked furiously on the door. “Hal!” I cried out. “Hal?”
I was relieved when I saw his sleepy face. But he wasn’t at my door. He was coming out of Brie’s apartment. Behind him came a bed-headed Brie, followed by her dog, who gave a yapping bark.
“Is everything okay?” Brie draped her arm over her head and stood there in slinky silk shorts and a camisole. “We’ve never really had a chance to talk. I’m Brie.”
“Nice to, uh, meet you,” I said. “Jenny.”
“I know, obviously,” she said, looking at Hal.
Her awkward body language seemed to indicate that I was a random woman who happened to live in the compound but wasn’t a part of their lives. I was part of Hal’s past, now a neighbor they tried their best to avoid. An odd feeling washed over me.
“I’m so sorry for bothering you,” I said, feeling the blood drain from my cheeks. “I got confused. Late night.”
“Are you all right, Jen?” Hal asked. “You look like you’re coming down from some awful kind of trip. No judgment but—”
“I’m just, you know, adjusting to our new reality,” I said.
“If you need your key, the doorman keeps extras,” Brie said.
“Right.” I was unable to move my feet. It was dawning on me what had happened: Our paths kept crossing—when she saw me in the city after my doctor’s appointment, and then again at the party in San Francisco. We were somehow destined to be in each other’s worlds. Now we had been cosmically swapped—a karmic punishment from the Consortium that turned out to be a gift I never knew I needed.
Ten minutes later, my spare key obtained from the doorman, I opened the door to Hal’s and my old apartment—now my apartment. I saw the same half dozen hooks still hung on the wall by the buzzer, and in the kitchen, the same butcher block island and the same beautiful oven.
The biggest difference was the sleeping bag smack dab in the middle of the living room floor. I recognized the ombré hair poking out of the top.
Sophie propped herself up on an elbow. She looked at me, her eyes widening. “Where have you been?” she asked.
“Santa Fe,” I replied. “Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, too. I was doing some... soul searching.”
“Okaaaaaay,” she said. “You have been acting very peculiar lately.”
“I know. I am figuring things out. Finally. What are you doing here?”
“You gave me a key. Duh.” Sophie watched me nod. “You told me to come if I ever felt like I was in danger. And Roger has been calling me a lot. I was worried he’d come to my place like he did the last time.”
I felt a flutter of happiness. Sophie wasn’t back together with Roger. And I, in some small way, had summoned her here, on my floor, where she was free to pick herself up and launch herself toward her dreams whenever she was ready.
“Why are you smiling like that?” Sophie asked.
“Sorry,” I said, forcing my face into a more sober expression. “Your hair is sticking up like a chicken,” I lied.
“Like you’re one to talk. That dress is something. And you look like Courtney Love after a rager.”
“Impressive retro reference,” I said.
Sophie smoothed her amazing hair and went on, “I didn’t want to sleep in your bed because you left me that weird message about being on your way home. I tried calling but I couldn’t reach you.”
My shoulders hitched up closer to my ears as I tried to think of what to tell her. “Sorry, the phone reception was terrible.”
She stared at me. “It’s 2022, not the Stone Age.”
“It’s been a long, strange trip,” I said.
“Evidently.” She did that thing where she half-rolled her eyes and half-smiled.
“Can I ask you something?” I said, and tried to figure out a way to say what I was wondering about without giving too much away. “When was the last time you saw Alice?”
Sophie laughed. “You mean after she shut down the foundation to become a venture capitalist-slash-life coach? Never. Why do you ask?”
“Oh, I was just wondering,” I said, relief flooding through me. We’d moved on from Alice, Sophie and I.
“Why are you asking?” Sophie pressed.
“I thought I saw her on my way over here,” I lied.
“Well that would be weird. Considering that according to Instagram she is in Bali,” Sophie said. “Okay, as much as I want to take a picture of you in this state, I’ll let you shower first.”
“Thanks, Soph.” I could only imagine how disgusting I looked. I hadn’t dared to glance at my reflection since a rest stop in St. Louis, when I’d seen a horrific mophead staring back at me in the mirror. I set my bag down on top of a chair and headed toward the kitchen.
I found a glass in the cabinet above the sink. I was midway through filling it when I noticed the bowl that Geeta had given me for my wedding present sitting on the counter. The last time I’d seen it had been in Alex’s and my apartment.
The bowl was so delicate and beautiful, like the oatmeal lace cookies that my grandmother and I used to bake together when I was a little girl. Disjunctions, but the good kind. There was a postcard inside. I turned off the tap and picked it up. It was postmarked from Clinton Hills, New York. The message was to the point, written in Geeta’s scrawl:
Find me.