Chapter 10: New Year's Eve

By New Year's Eve the story had four million readers, and the second one about it was better.

Mitch had sent the reporter's editor the recording of Trent, with a note.

The new headline was Brother of Fired Creator Admits He Told Sponsor She Didn't Exist.

Callow & Co had posted one sentence of its own: We stand behind Willa Whiting and the work she made.

Marge read it aloud at breakfast with her mouth full of toast.

"That's a man who writes his own press releases," she said. "You can tell by the lack of adjectives."

At nine that night she made me put on the green dress.

"I am not spending the turn of the year in my kitchen watching you stare at your phone," she said.

"It's a bar."

"It's a bar with people in it. Go."

The bar was a long narrow place on Gay Street with a tin ceiling and two hundred people in it.

Marge wore her good cardigan and a pair of earrings I had never seen, and she walked in first.

Mitch was waiting by the far wall in a dark jacket with no tie.

When he saw me, he stopped talking mid-sentence to the man beside him.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi."

"That's a good dress."

"It's Marge's idea."

"Marge has good ideas," he said, and Marge raised her glass at him from across the room.

We found a corner of the bar to stand at.

It was crowded in a way that made the whole room lean in.

A group of college kids pushed past with a tray of shots, and the crowd shoved sideways, and I was pressed into the bar.