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  None of this bothered Sloane. It was the way the world worked. Her acceptance of the system was another reason she’d got the consulting contract instead of someone else. There were noted trend forecasters on the scene—not many, maybe two—who were as accomplished as she was and neither of them would have made it through a Monday morning in New York without a hysterectomy. Anneke was a Dutch forecaster in her late sixties who wrote everything by hand, and Chantelle, a former boss of hers in Paris, considered candles “office lighting” and categorically refused to use e-mail subject lines.

  Sloane, however, was that rare thing in the business: creative, but dependable. She met deadlines—occasionally, even budgets. She showed life insurance companies the same level of engagement as the manufacturers of lingerie. This was something else her father had taught her: there will be days you’ll feel more inspired than others, but inspiration will always come if you show up for the job. (The work requires working was another of his favorites.)

  Sloane watched the Mammothers come in through the revolving doors, scrolling through the final words of whatever they were reading—cursory glances, and then longer, startled ones when they noticed the lone figure on the couch. She smiled; the passersby too, but shyly, probably spending their elevator rides wondering if it had been Sloane that they saw. Unusual for the industry, Sloane didn’t do anything outlandish with her appearance to make herself more memorable. No eclectic highlights, no signature eyewear. She had her uniform, she had her insights, that was all.

  None too keen on passing the time with the fashion glossies on the glass table in front of her celebrating baby bumps and celebrity breakups, she turned her attention to the lobby’s plants. Americans didn’t know why they’d become so obsessed with cacti—they just accepted the fact that drought-resistant plants were the new must-haves for office and home design in the mindless way they’d once accepted ferns, but really, what was going on was a socially sanctioned apathy toward the planet’s overheating. It was apocalyptic acclimatization, by way of indoor plants.

  “Sloane!” She heard Daxter’s groomed tenor before she saw him, and suddenly, there he was: ageless complexion, trademark navy suit.

  “You made it! You look wonderful!” he lied. “You haven’t been waiting long?” He drew her up from the sofa and kissed her on both cheeks. “Your flight was fine? How’s the apartment?” he asked, cupping her left elbow.

  “I love it,” Sloane said honestly, despite the vaguely cavalier grip he still had on her arm. “It’s perfect. Thank you.”

  “And the car?” He marched her toward the elevators while nodding jauntily at each employee he passed. “It’s great, right?”

  “She’s incredibly attentive.”

  “Have you tried the coffee?” He punched the elevator’s Up arrow. “The M-Cars make a killer coffee. We were thinking of going into the single-serve capsule game. Remind me to ask you about that. I can’t tell if those capsule-y things are here to stay or not. Ah! It’s here.”

  They moved into the elevator, the people behind them hanging back, preferring not to ride up with the CEO and his featured guest.

  Dax leaned against the elevator wall and took what there was of her to take in. Sloane had aged, she knew this, but not in too terrible a way. She’d gotten a little thinner. Maybe a little taller. She looked a little wan.

  As for Dax, he looked powerful and wealthy, but he pulled it off with the forceful approachability of the super rich. He seemed a little intense though. She didn’t remember him coming off so manic.

  “How’s your husband? Ugh, France. I’m so sorry about all of that. All of your people were . . . okay?”

  She assured him that they were, if crippling anxiety post-repeated-terrorism qualified as “okay.” And she let him get away with “husband.”

  “So I just can’t tell you how excited we are to have you here,” Dax continued, his arms arched in a stretch. “This conference is gonna be the big one. I just really feel like focusing on the childless is gonna be something really killer.”

  Sloane blanched at his choice of words, but tried not to read into it. “Positive framing,” that’s what good old Stuart called it, her British therapist. Frame things in a positive light until you have reason not to.

  “Or to support them, rather,” Sloane tried. “The childless. But we want to uplift them more than accuse them, right?”

  “Support them. Absolutely. You just do your thing.” Dax shrugged as if she’d suggested ramen instead of sushi for lunch, a superior idea. “We’ll just let it flow. It’ll be so great for them, much different from what they’re all used to.”

  “Oh really?” Sloane asked, alert now. “Why?”

  “Oh, you know,” Dax said. “More . . . loose. More French. It’s pretty great, right? Nobody else has done this, to my knowledge. Had a trend forecaster in-house? Or for this long, at least. Or have you . . .”

  Sloane smiled wryly. They both knew she wasn’t going to kiss and tell about the nature of the relationships she’d had with companies before.

  “Well, anyway,” Dax acquiesced, unfolding his arms. “There’s a breakfast meet and greet—that was in the brief, right? You eat?

  “Well, in any case,” he continued, not waiting for her answer, “the kids are so excited.” It came back to her then, a snippet of conversation they’d had the last time she’d seen him. How he’d referred to his employees as “his kids.” She wondered if they’d have to rebrand that definer now that the summer summit’s focus was . . . anti-kid.

  “I’m so glad to hear that,” Sloane said. “I’m excited, too.”

  “Then shall we?” Dax asked, sweeping his arm open to the floor that had just been revealed.

  Sloane gave him a future-focused answer: “We shall.”

  • • •

  Sloane had consulted in the open-spaced playground offices upon which Mammoth’s were modeled, but she’d never worked full-time in one before. Her first impression upon spying the designer beer pong table in the corner of the lounge room near the elevators, the breakfast spread flanked by white subway tiles, a self-serve keg of kombucha on tap, was that she would not survive this. Plus, the space was scent-branded: a mixture of lemongrass and citrus was wafting in from aroma diffusers in the ceiling that initially sharpened her senses before also awakening her to the fact that she was going to smell like a Thai restaurant for the next six months.

  “How long have you been in this location?” Sloane asked as Dax escorted her down the hallway to wherever they were going next.

  “Two years?” he answered. “Three? Everyone should be in the presentation room.”

  On the way there, Sloane looked at the magazine covers and advertisements that decked the walls like golden records, testaments to the things the young company had achieved. The first ergonomic touch phone, shaped like an S; technological surveillance for the elderly (“We’re watching you, Grandma!”). Crowdsourced music players; sodium ion–charged glucose monitors for diabetic dogs. Everything framed atop the mantle of progress. And it was progressive. A company able to be groundbreaking in both entertainment and health? She’d never worked for such a multifaceted company. Most of her clients excelled in one thing, monopolized one thing. Mammoth had it all.

  The presentation room turned out to be a glorified food court spanning the fourth and fifth floors. The cavernous space was filled with bistro tables placed in varying degrees of proximity to a massive screen. One wall was flanked by a buffet area and small kitchen, the other by a dramatic open staircase that emptied directly into the room.

  There was a miniature food truck in the corner of the room, where the “kids” appeared to be lining up for lattes and bacon cheddar pretzels. Servers decked out in candy striper outfits were circulating among the public with green smoothies in beaker glasses and mini breakfast bars Sloane assumed were made with chia seeds and other fibrous threads.

&
nbsp; Sloane was flattered that he—that someone—had gone to such efforts for her inaugural meeting with the Mammothers, but it was also possible that the breakfast bar was like this all the time.

  “Those are all conflict free, b.t.w.,” Dax said, indicating the food items circulating on trays. “Or so I’m told. Okay!” he said, a bit louder. “Let’s take center stage!”

  Sloane followed him to an elevated structure that might very well have been constructed for that morning’s purpose and looked out over the garden of bodies populating the room. There had to be at least a hundred and fifty people there, probably more. “Just the head creatives, and other folks,” Dax had specified, as they made their way to the mike.

  Creatives, then, all of whom looked like kids too young to have their own. She tried to hold a smile while Dax checked the mike. It wasn’t the most comfortable assignment, jazzing people up to never reproduce.

  “We launched fitness trackers but can’t wire a mike . . . no, here we go, it’s on. Hey, crew! Guten Morgen, as they say! So”—Dax aimed a beaming smile in her direction—“the big day is finally upon us. France has sent us help!” The laughs were earnest, vibrant. “Now, we all know who we’ve got here, but I’m gonna do this just the same, because she crossed an entire ocean to get here.” He removed a folded piece of paper from his blazer, but then made a show of putting it back. “Hell, I know her well enough to go off the book. Sloane Jacobsen is one of the most important trend forecasters in the real world. She got her start in beauty forecasting at Aurora in Paris, and at the age of only what—like, twenty?”

  (Twenty-two, but she stayed mum.)

  “—where she completely upended the corporate behemoth’s approach to color. Orange lipsticks, mint nail polishes . . . the kinds of products we take for granted now were actually thanks to her. Then she had”—the printed bio reappeared for just a moment before fluttering away—“She joined MirrorWall, the notorious forecasting firm in Paris where, during a panel presentation on optimism at Nestlé, she convinced a bunch of pre-Y2Kers that consumers were going to want color in their waters, so if you’ve ever enjoyed a BrightWater, that too is thanks to her. Or maybe you like handpicked ingredients in your cocktails? Try the fall of 2001, when Sloane told an entire room of Kraft executives why September Eleventhers would seek solace in literal and figurative roots. I, personally, credit her with calling the entire ‘Locavore’ movement and I’ve done so in print. She does food, she does fashion, but my God, does she do tech.” He turned toward her, proudly, and she beamed back gratitude. “Time and time again, I’ve seen Sloane go beyond the data to track what people are going to want from their devices that they’re not getting now. She’s got a remarkable ability to marry the human with the electronic—the very first time I met her was a hot second after her now legendary prediction about the swipe. And she’s certainly been the only one to refuse my offer three times! Which is why I’m extra stoked that she finally agreed to help us with the ReProduction conference.” (More laughter, including hers.)

  “As some of you know, or are about to,” Dax continued, shifting his weight onstage, “Sloane has been a figurehead of the antibreeding movement for some time. While I can’t say that I went in for that”—Sloane managed a closed grin; Dax had one kid. Two?—“as the environment continues to . . . fluctuate, and the economy to . . . hiccup, nonbreeders are going to be a hugely influential market. Hell, they already are. I’d like to think we’re choosing to honor the next iteration of creative independence rather than make any judgment calls on those who do, or don’t, have kids.

  “Regardless,” Dax finished, speaking louder into the mike to quiet a group of people who were clapping for some reason, “as a prominently vocal child-free woman herself, Sloane is going to be instrumental in helping guide each of our department teams toward the ReProduction presentations. I want these to be really out-there, forward-thinking products, and I just know she’s going to give you the guidance and inspiration to make these presentations more groundbreaking than they’ve ever been before. So, friends!” he shouted, about to pass the microphone to her, “Can we hear it for our newest member, Sloane?!”

  During the informal meet-and-greet session that followed, Sloane met a verbal identity consultant named Greta. A geographic viralist named Chaz. She met an entire host of people named after different apple strains: Cortland, Pippin, Lodi. She met three staffers clad entirely in long johns. She met a social media manager with a “You are here” tattoo arrow pointing toward her heart.

  Regardless of what their getups suggested about their character, everyone seemed truly enthused to meet her. Enthused, and a little scared. It was a delicate thing, socializing with a trend forecaster. At any time, the oracle could pivot: declare blond highlights outdated or higher education finished, and fundamentally alter the foundation of your life.

  Sloane found the touch-and-go interactions with the different staffers challenging. She didn’t do well in the scan-and-swipe social economy, a place where you were discarded if you weren’t bright and quick. As she was shuttled from one sharp person to the next, she found solace in considering that this was just her first morning of six months of mornings to come. She would have time to get to know people. Understand the nuances of the things they left unsaid.

  “Did you forecast platform sandals?” a woman was suddenly asking to her right. Sloane looked down at the Frankenstein sandals the girl was wearing with dark socks. A pleated silk skirt fell below her knees.

  “Platform shoes? No,” Sloane said, searching for a way to sound polite. “They were flat last year, I mean, footwear, so it makes sense. You know—jeans: skinny; jeans: wide.”

  “So wait, is trend forecasting just about opposites, then? I’m in PR here but I’m, like, obsessed with tracking trends.”

  Sloane smiled at the woman’s naked optimism. The sea levels were rising, the NRA was basically president, but there were still new shoes.

  “You can usually rely on opposites to show you where things are heading,” Sloane accorded. “What flows in, flows out.”

  “I knew it.” The girl nodded. “That’s so totally what I thought.”

  “Okay, we’ve probably exposed you enough here.” Dax swooped in, his hand on her right arm. “Let me introduce you to my assistant Deidre, she’ll show you to your office. Let’s have you get settled in a bit before the meetings start.”

  The meet and greet had been a whirlpool. Her head was awash with clothes and skin and names. That’s why it was so steadying to see the homely woman waiting for them in a corner with an actual clipboard. Something about the woman’s calm demeanor made Sloane want to close her eyes and succumb to the weird thoughts and visions that were always bobbing away inside of her—actual grass carpets, circular doors. Deidre’s rounded shoulders, the gray roots at her hairline, a quieter welcome home.

  6

  With the ten minutes she had before her first meeting with the beauty division, Sloane set out to make her office more conducive to creative thought.

  She’d brought colorful trinkets with her that facilitated the kind of dreamy, free-range thinking that sometimes constituted her work. There was a miniature Peruvian llama her father had brought back from a contract he’d had in Lima, its body covered in bright patterns and white fur; a circular vase of wooden colored pencils; and a framed picture of a bread loaf that she’d keep hidden inside her desk. The bread image was by far the strangest thing she’d brought across the Atlantic. Although no one had ever asked her about it, she’d always planned to answer, “It reminds me of a famous saying” if they did. The truth was, it was a greeting card she’d purchased for her sister years ago but never sent. The inside did indeed include a quote, in this case, a Portuguese one that translated to: Infants come already bearing bread. Bread being health, being nourishment, being happiness. Sloane’s attachment to it had nothing to do with children. No, it was much more perverse than that. Sloane had purchased
that card on the occasion of her sister’s first child’s birth, and she’d penned both a congratulations and an apology in it, but had run out of room for both, and then realized that a new mother probably didn’t want to be congratulated and apologized to in the same card, and in the end, she’d overnighted a patterned sleep sack from the nicest children’s shop in all of the 6th arrondissement and sent a note that simply said, Congratulations. Which was just as well. It was irresponsible to apologize for something you didn’t have words for.

  Next to her desk lamp, a leopard cone shell she’d found in Oahu to remind herself that magic still existed. A nighttime image of the Ferris wheel that lit up the Tuileries garden every summer went by her phone. She should have included lightbulb dimmers in her bag of goodies because the overheads were harsh.

  A call on her work line startled her from her office improvements.

  “Hello?” she asked unsurely, her body out of practice with the ergonomic demands of an office phone.

  “Ms. Jacobsen, hello there. Sorry to bother, it’s Deidre again. I forgot to mention that I left you some literature on our enrichment programs. Not that anyone expects you to take part in them, I just . . . wanted you to be aware? And also, I have your mother on hold. Line one?”

  “My mom?” Sloane asked.

  “Yes, your mother. Should I tell her to call back?”

  Sloane’s heart tightened. Margaret didn’t like calling Sloane’s cell phone, because she assumed that she would screen it. It had been a long time since she’d actually heard her mother’s voice.

  “Mom?” Sloane said, nervous, when Deidre put the call through. “Is everything all right?”

  “All right?” Margaret asked, her tone suddenly defensive. “Why? Oh, no, I’m just calling because, hello! And also for dinner. I was wondering if you had any food issues.”