Earnings Season #11
Amina nods, cautiously. “Okay,” she concedes, “walk me through that.”
“I don’t know . . . that whole idea of subspace, you know?”
“Sure, yeah. Psychological surrender, emotional release. Like, through intense BDSM or power play. You sort of trip a wire,
and fall into yourself, and out of yourself?”
Lili gives a little nod. “I’ve tested it out before, with other people. Not explicitly, but . . . trying to get there, letting
them rough me up, encouraging them to do so. But it never—it never got me anywhere. I never actually felt safe enough to let
go, to let them do what they wanted to me. To be honest about it. Felt too risky to find out that they might be interested
only in hurting me, rather than pushing me? I don’t know, there is a distinction there. There is a distinction there, and it’s
important. If you push someone, you have to catch them,” she adds, soft; feels destabilized from so many words. “Slapping
me around a bit isn’t the point. It’s . . . you can get somewhere inside of yourself, I think, with the right person. If you
don’t trust that, you don’t get anywhere.”
“So, you trust him?”
She nods. “Sexually? Yeah, I do. This time, with the bruises—it’s like the rough sex both failed, and succeeded, past what
I’ve ever experienced? Like, the promise of what subspace could give me? I don’t know, it’s the pain you’re both seeking out,
the pain you’re running away from . . .” She trails off, veering too close, too much, too vulnerable. “Anyway, he’s different,
too, than what you’d expect. He’s not American Psycho, he’s not hurting me just to hurt me.
I’m asking for it. If you knew him, it’s clear that he—he has some depth that’s rare, a sense of feeling that’s honestly a bit staggering.
I feel good, having sex with him.” I feel safe, she thinks.
“It’s a bit unexpected, coming from a man like him.
Like he knows how to attune to people. To me, I guess. You
know?”
Amina’s frown deepens, furrow between her brows serious. “No, Lili—I don’t know. I’ve never even really met him—it’s like you keep him sealed out of your life, completely separate from us—”
Lili grips the porcelain sink, on edge. “One step at a time,” she warns.
Her friend sighs, heavily. Lili—with relief—detects surrender in the sound. “It’s not that I don’t get rough sex, or enjoy
it sometimes,” Amina concedes. “I mean, what self-respecting person hasn’t been choked out a bit—”
Lili snorts. “Nice, classy,” she mutters.
“All I’m saying is maybe tell him to ease up next time, yeah?”
“Right,” Lili concedes, turning back to rummage through her makeup bag again.
Amina’s eyes narrow in the mirror’s reflection. “You do talk about this, don’t you? This is consensual, right?”
Lili makes an aghast sound. “Jesus, Ami—yes, obviously!” she replies. “I consent, I’m very consenting—if anything, I’m the
one pushing our edges, honestly. Now, come on, stop mothering me, or I’ll think you and Jamie have gone completely vanilla.”
“Don’t try and deflect, you’re horrible at it.”
Lili sighs. “Please, just trust me?” she asks; she’s shared as much as she’s willing to, and it’s more than she’s ever been
comfortable with. “I know how to take care of myself, I really do—and this is good, I promise. A little rough, but it’s . . .
good for me. It’s what I want.”
Amina holds her gaze for a long moment. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
She exhales a heavy gust of air. “Fuck, fine,” she relents. Lili’s chest lightens, buoyant. “Okay, yeah, I trust you. Fuck—don’t make me end up being stupid about this, okay?”
“Lili!” She turns, looking back over her shoulder at the barn, where she’d just stopped in to say goodbye to the remaining farm staff who hadn’t left for the city yet. Eileen is running after her, gravel crunching underfoot. “Glad I caught you! You headed back into the city?”
Lili nods, smiling; full with the brightness of this week, but also bursting with anticipation to be back in New York; to
be back with Aleksandr. “Yeah, catching the train at ten.”
“Cool, this won’t take long. Look, you did a great job this week, everyone noticed it.”
“Oh—wow, okay. That’s kind, thank you.”
“I mean it, you were wonderful. You have knowledge, a strong background, real passion—you were a standout in every workshop,
all our instructors mentioned it—plus, you have the actual vision and strategy chops that this type of business is often sorely
lacking.”
Lili gives an easy laugh, warmed by the praise. “I’ll make sure I come to you if I’m ever feeling down, Eileen. You already
pay me, not sure you need to give me the ego boost, too.”
“Well, we’d love to keep paying you. We’d like you to come on full-time, salaried.”
Lili freezes. “What?” she breathes.
“You’re an exceptional member of the team, and we need someone dedicated to lead expansion and strategic ops, we can’t keep
having people double hat it. We understand you’d need to stay part-time until you finish your degree, and you’d report to
me, but you’d have a good amount of room to grow. You understand the fundraising landscape, you have the right knowledge and
instincts, but you also understand what success in scaling this business means, without compromising core values. You’d still
be doing fieldwork, but you’d be seeing us—hopefully—expand to about a dozen more locations across the city in the next few
years, with a lot more integration into downtown spaces, huge visibility in partnership with the municipality. It’s going
to be a pivotal year for us, and we want you with us.”
“Are you—are you sure?”
Eileen laughs, affectionate. “Of course, we’re sure. We’ve been thinking about this for a while. This week was essentially
a formality.”
“But I didn’t realize we were hiring for the core team? For anything beyond hourly, part-time?”
“We aren’t. Well, not right now—we’re only offering this to you. We know you have a lot of options, and we can’t pay what an investment bank or tech might, but we can definitely beat a UN entry-level salary,” she says, winking.
“But this summer—back in June, I dropped all those shifts on you at such a short notice—”
Eileen waves away her protest. “You’d never done that before. Emergencies happen, a graduate degree is stressful. Just don’t
let it happen again.”
Her heart is thudding loud enough to drown out the farm’s birdsong; is this really happening? “Can I—could I think about it?”
“Absolutely. Just let us know in the next two weeks or so, we’d like to kick off August with onboarding. Earlier would be
great if you can swing it, it’ll give us time to plan, make sure we earmark funding accordingly.”
“Right. Yeah, of course—will do.”
Eileen smiles. “You did great, Lil,” she says, hugging her quick. “Really great. Call me if you have questions—salary, benefits,
that sort of thing. We’re set on having you, we’ll make it work.”
And despite the shock of it—the sheer disbelief, the sense that this must be a joke, this can’t be happening; she doesn’t
even know if this would work, if it’d be viable—Lili feels a smile break across her face: the possibility that futures lie around corners she hasn’t
thought to look; that she can hope for things, and they might happen.
Lili and her friends get back into Manhattan near noon. They head over to Jamie’s place on Perry Street, where Amina uses
her spare keys to sneak them into his town house; he drove into the city earlier, crack of dawn with the commuters, and he’s
still at work. It’s a beautiful summer day, the onset of Leo season: People drink Aperol spritzes at sidewalk cafés, and Lili
feels the secret of the job offer—uncertain, precious; she wants to hold it close a little longer, until she has to be realistic,
weigh options, consider futures—like a sun inside her, buried but bursting. In the kitchen, Amina starts prepping the grocery
list for the birthday dinner, while Jackie rifles through the alcohol cupboard. Opening up the bay windows to let fresh air
in, Lili lingers for a moment, inhaling.
She feels full; she feels happy.
Late in the afternoon, she’s running to Citarella for last-minute ingredients—Guanciale, not bacon, okay, little vegan? Amina warned her—when she gets the text.
Jane Remnick (3:43 p.m.) Hi Lili. Nice to chat the other day. I know today is usually a rough date for you. I wanted to check-in. I found
this in our old files I mentioned. Thought it nice to share today, in memory.
Cold seizes her. Her fingers shake as she taps on the image, pushing it full-size on her screen.
It’s by the ocean. Monterey, fresh air, coast cypress, fleece jackets, sunshine off the waves. Her father’s sunglasses are
pushed up into his hair, with Lili on his shoulders, all of five or six years old, a big grin, messy hair in the wind, her
mother reaching up to hold her hand, the bright shine of her eyes as she looks at Lili, angling the camera to take the photo
of the three of them.
Impromptu, tilted frame, radiant with joy and salt air.
Lili stares until the screen goes dark.
And her first coherent thought is, Of course.
Standing on the corner—flash of streetlights changing, crowd of tourists, NYU students, West Village dog walkers—the simple
inevitability is clear.
Of course, something would ruin this: the build of brightness, the growing comfort of having joy in her life, the steadily
growing ease of waking up happy.
Sudden, sharp—a hot, acidic shock of guilt and shame hits.
Because of course, too, it would be her who ruined it: her, forgetting the anniversary of her parents’ death, in the blur
of summer, in the blur of pretending she deserved things she’d only break.
Traffic blares around her, burn of tears, as Lili taps through her phone—squeezing her eyes shut, the thud of her heart as
she accidentally sees the picture again—fast through her contacts: Jackie, Amina, James—no, no, no—and she goes into her recent
calls.
“Lili,” he answers, a familiar low register, with sounds of the office, the warmth of his voice holding her name. “How are
you?”
“I—” A sob breaks in her throat. The street is loud around her, indifferent.