The Circle

preferred Mae to drive—that Annie would put her bare feet up or out
     the window, and would riff on the passing scenery, and would speculate, for hours,
     on what went on in the bedroom of their coaches, a married couple with matching, almost
     military, haircuts. Mae laughed at everything Annie said, and it kept Mae’s mind off
     the meets, where she, unlike Annie, had to win, or at least do well, to justify the
     subsidy the college had provided her. They would invariably arrive minutes before
     the meet, with Annie having forgotten what race she was meant to run, or whether she
     really wanted to run at all.
    And so how was this possible, that this scattershot and ridiculous person, who still
     carried a piece of her childhood blanket around in her pocket, had risen so quickly
     and high through the Circle? Now she was part of the forty most crucial minds at the
     company—the Gang of 40—privy to its most secret plans and data. That she could push
     through the hiring of Mae without breaking a sweat? That she could set it all up within
     weeks of Mae finally swallowing all pride and making the ask? It was a testament to
     Annie’s inner will, some mysterious and core sense of destiny. Outwardly, Annie showed
     no signs of garish ambition, but Mae was sure that there was something within Annie
     that insisted upon this, that she would have been here, in this position, no matter
     where she’d come from. If she’d grown up in the Siberian tundra, born blind to shepherds,
     she still would have arrived here, now.
    “Thanks Annie,” she heard herself say.
    They’d walked past a few conference rooms and lounges and werepassing through the company’s new gallery, where a half-dozen Basquiats hung, just
     acquired from a near-broke museum in Miami.
    “Whatever,” Annie said. “And I’m sorry you’re in Customer Experience. I know that
     sounds shitty, but I will have you know that about half the company’s senior people
     started there. Do you believe me?”
    “I do.”
    “Good, because it’s true.”
    They left the gallery and entered the second-floor cafeteria—“The Glass Eatery, I
     know it’s such a terrible name,” Annie said—designed such that diners ate at nine
     different levels, all of the floors and walls glass. At first glance, it looked like
     a hundred people were eating in mid-air.
    They moved through the Borrow Room, where anything from bicycles to telescopes to
     hang gliders were loaned, for free, to anyone on staff, and onto the aquarium, a project
     championed by one of the founders. They stood before a display, as tall as themselves,
     where jellyfish, ghostly and slow, rose and fell with no apparent pattern or reason.
    “I’ll be watching you,” Annie said, “and every time you do something great I’ll be
     making sure everyone knows about it so you won’t have to stay there too long. People
     move up here pretty reliably, and as you know we hire almost exclusively from within.
     So just do well and keep your head down and you’ll be shocked at how quickly you’ll
     be out of Customer Experience and into something juicy.”
    Mae looked into Annie’s eyes, bright in the aquarium light. “Don’t worry. I’m happy
     to be anywhere here.”
    “Better to be at the bottom of a ladder you want to climb than inthe middle of some ladder you don’t, right? Some shitty-ass ladder made of shit?”
    Mae laughed. It was the shock of hearing such filth coming from such a sweet face.
     “Did you always curse this much? I don’t remember that part of you.”
    “I do it when I’m tired, which is pretty much always.”
    “You used to be such a sweet girl.”
    “Sorry. I’m fucking sorry Mae! Jesus fucking Christ, Mae! Okay. Let’s see more stuff.
     The kennel!”
    “Are we working at all today?” Mae asked.
    “Working? This
is
working. This is what you’re tasked with doing the first day: getting to know the
     place, the people, getting acclimated. You know how when you put new wood floors into
     your house—”
    “No, I don’t.”
    “Well, when you do, you first have to let them sit there for ten days, to get the
     wood acclimated. Then you do the installation.”
    “So in this analogy, I’m the wood?”
    “You are the wood.”
    “And then I’ll be installed.”
    “Yes, we will then install you. We’ll hammer you with ten thousands tiny nails. You’ll
     love it.”
    They visited the kennel, a brainchild of Annie, whose dog, Dr. Kinsmann, had just