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After the presentation, Sara had a quick meeting with the men while I took another trip to the bathroom to freshen up (really, just to give them time to talk about me). When I got back to the meeting room, they were gone, and it was just Sara and me again.
“Your proposal was very impressive, Indiana. We’re excited about the growth potential, too.” She leaned forward conspiratorially. “But I have to know, how did you find out your boss was going to steal your idea?”
“Long story. Point is, he’s the worst. And I don’t even have recourse because of another…small issue.”
“And what’s that?”
“He thinks I’m a guy. In my defense, it was his idea, not mine.”
She let out a startled laugh. “What would lead him to that conclusion?” She looked me up and down.
“My name.” I sighed. “I sort of called him out once in an email, and he addressed me as ‘Mr.’ when he responded. I work remotely, so we haven’t met in person. I should have fessed up right away, but there was a fire, and then a baby, and, oh god, the plane—” I stopped cold. My nerves had me chattering, and this potential client didn’t need more details. “The point is, I can’t tell you how hard it is to get respect in the tech world when you’re a woman. Actually, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you—you’ve probably experienced it in the sporting world. I imagine it’s just as bad, if not worse.”
“Do you know why I use initials in my name?” she asked.
I shrugged. “I could guess.”
“I do it for the same reason that J. K. Rowling, S. E. Hinton, and J.D. Robb did. The same reason George Sand, George Eliot, and the Brontë sisters changed their names. To combat the misogyny. When you’re the CEO of a sporting company, they expect, well, Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos. A guy who really wants to be a cowboy and shakes hands too tightly. Or”—she gestured at me—“Indiana Jones.”
I let out a breath and felt the tension leave my shoulders. “You really do get it.”
“I really do,” she said. “People can’t separate the persona from the product. We’re terrible at it, and it makes everything harder for people like us, people who areunexpected, in our industries.”
“I actually struggle with that a lot,” I said thoughtfully. “The identity shouldn’t affect the product. Who the artist is, their look, their backstory should have no bearing on the value of what they produce. But it does. And it’s frustrating because part of me agrees that, in some cases, it does matter, but I can’t figure outwhyit does. I, of all people, should know better.”
Sara nodded and put her chin in her hand.
In that moment, it felt like all pretense was gone, just the way I liked it. “You remember Marla Olmstead, that three-year-old painter who was supposed to be the next Pollack?” I asked.
“Refresh my memory,” Sara said and leaned back comfortably in her chair.
I was relaxed for the first time since I’d learned what Melvin had planned to do. “In the early aughts, Marla’s dad, who was an amateur painter, set her down in front of her own canvas to distract her. Or so the story goes. And she started making these amazing pieces of art. Like, huge abstract blobs that people loved. They said she was a reincarnation of Rembrandt, which made no sense since their styles were nothing alike, but whatever, and she had all these showings in New York. She—well, her family—made a ton of money. Then60 Minutescame along and tried to film her painting, and they couldn’t do it. The family said it was because she didn’t perform well under pressure.”
Sara laughed at that.
“But no matter what they tried, they couldn’t film her doing more than pushing paint into muddy puddles like all kids do. So the question is, should the early paintings belong in the Metropolitan Museum of Artbecausethey were painted by a three-year-old? Or should they not, because they may have been painted by her father? Does that make them not ‘good enough’now because he’s a dude in his forties who works the night shift at Frito Lay? And what if she did paint them, but as she got older, her work lost its appeal because it became less abstract? Does that detract from the value?”
She sat forward. “I remember when that scandal broke. Everyone loves it when someone pulls one over on the art community. They don’t get a lot of sympathy because they have millions to burn, so when they’re duped, it’s more amusing than sad. They have to take the word of critics as to what has value. But I see your point. Is the art good or bad? Why does the rest matter?”
“I hate that it does.” I groaned. “That’s how I got into this mess.”
“Maybe it’s because we crave ‘authenticity,’” Sara suggested. “Maybe we let some less polished things slide because of what we believe the artist has had to overcome, like James Frey’sA Million Little Piecesor J. T. LeRoy. Or a three-year-old who makes amazing blobs.”
“That’s actually a really good point,” I said. I took a long swallow of the mimosa. It was so freaking good. “If J. T. LeRoy isn’t a fifteen-year-old ‘lot lizard’ with AIDS but instead a woman in her thirties who couldn’t get published otherwise, it’s ‘inauthentic.’ But authenticity as a concept is problematic and kind of sucks.”
“It totally does,” she agreed. “But we’ll give a lot more to a fifteen-year-old sex worker with AIDS than we will a grown woman who went to college.”
“And then there’s me,” I said.
“If Melvin met you like this”—she gestured at me—“would he take you seriously?”
I snorted. “Hehasmet me like this, and before I could tell him the truth, he drank my coffee, then told me to run along while the big boys talked.”
She shook her head in exasperation. “How is it we basically live in the future and still have to deal with this shit?”
“Right?” I asked, leaning back. “He likes my work. Obviously, because he’s trying to take credit for it. He thinks I’m talented. But he only gave me the opportunity to create the pitch in the first place because he thinks I’m like James Bond. That I can ski down mountains with a severely shaken martini in one hand. That I readWaldenwhile I chop wood in the forest to live off the land.”
“Why would he think—”
