The Circle

asked.
    Francis moved quickly away from Mae, and then hid his bottle behind his back. Annie
     laughed.
    “Francis, what are you so squirrelly about?”
    “Sorry. I thought you said something else.”
    “Whoa. Guilty conscience! I saw Mae here punch you in the arm and I made a joke. But
     are you trying to confess something? What have you been planning, Francis Garbanzo?”
    “Garaventa.”
    “Yes. I know your name.”
    “Francis,” Annie said, dropping herself clumsily between them, “I need to ask you
     something, as your esteemed colleague but also as your friend. Can I do that?”
    “Sure.”
    “Good. Can I have some alone time with Mae? I need to kiss her on the mouth.”
    Francis laughed, then stopped, noticing that neither Mae nor Annie was laughing. Scared
     and confused, and visibly intimidated by Annie, he was soon walking down the steps,
     and across the lawn, dodging revelers. Halfway across the green he stopped, turned
     back and looked up, as if making sure Annie intended to replace him as Mae’s companion
     that night. His fears confirmed, he walked under the awning of the Dark Ages. He tried
     to open the door, but couldn’t. He pulled and pushed, but it would not budge. Knowing
     they were watching, he made his way around the corner and out of view.
    “He’s in security, he says,” Mae said.
    “That’s what he told you? Francis Garaventa?”
    “I guess he shouldn’t have.”
    “Well, it’s not like he’s in se
cur
ity-security. He’s not Mossad. But did I interrupt something you definitely shouldn’t
     be doing on your first night here you idiot?”
    “You didn’t interrupt anything.”
    “I think I
did
.”
    “No. Not really.”
    “I did. I know this.”
    Annie located the bottle at Mae’s feet. “I thought we ran out of everything hours
     ago.”
    “There was some wine in the waterfall—by the Industrial Revolution.”
    “Oh, right. People hide things there.”
    “I just heard myself say, ‘There was some wine in the waterfall by the Industrial
     Revolution.’ ”
    Annie looked across the campus. “I know. Shit. I know.”
    At home, after the shuttle, after a jello shot someone gave her onboard, after listening
     to the shuttle driver talk wistfully about his family, his twins, his wife, who had
     gout, Mae couldn’t sleep. She lay on her cheap futon, in her tiny room, in the railroad
     apartment she shared with two near-strangers, both of them flight attendants and rarely
     seen. Her apartment was on the second floor of a former motel and it was humble, uncleanable,
     smelling of the desperation and bad cooking of its former residents. It was a sad
     place, especially after a day at the Circle, where all was made with care and love
     and the gift of a good eye. In her wretched low bed, Mae slept for a few hours, woke
     up, recounted the day and the night, thought of Annie and Francis, and Denise and
     Josiah, and the fireman’s pole, and the
Enola Gay
, and the waterfall, and the tiki torches, all of these things the stuff of vacations
     and dreams and impossible to maintain, but then she knew—and this is what was keeping
     her up, her head careening with something like a toddler’s joy—that she would be going
     back to that place, the place where all these things happened. She was welcome there,
     employed there.
    She got to work early. When she arrived, though, at eight, she realized she hadn’t
     been given a desk, at least not a real desk, and so she had nowhere to go. She waited
     an hour, under a sign that said L ET ’ S D O T HIS . L ET ’ S D O A LL OF T HIS , until Renata arrived andbrought her to the second floor of the Renaissance, into a large room, the size of
     a basketball court, where there were about twenty desks, all different, all shaped
     from blond wood into desktops of organic shapes. They were separated by dividers of
     glass, and arranged in groups of five, like petals on a flower. None were occupied.
    “You’re the first here,” Renata said, “but you won’t be alone for long. Each new Customer
     Experience area tends to fill pretty quickly. And you’re not far from all the more
     senior people.” And here she swept her arm around, indicating about a dozen offices
     surrounding the open space. The occupants of each were visible through the glass walls,
     each of the supervisors somewhere between twenty-six and thirty-two, starting their
     day, seeming relaxed, competent, wise.
    “The designers really like glass,