came to Orla, torn from the script of people more famous than Floss.
“You know what I think you should do at the end?” Orla said. “Say that you don’t have a deal with them. The brow gel people. Say, like, ‘I swear, they’re not even paying me to say this.’”
“Why?” Floss jammed the wand back into its bottle and stretched her eyes in the mirror.
“Because then people will think that other brands do pay you,” Orla said. “To talk about their stuff.”
That was at seven thirty in the morning. As Floss mulled the idea, Orla showered, then went to work. She was at her desk when Floss posted the video, at 8:45 a.m. “I’m not getting any money for this, either, you guys,” Floss sang dutifully. At 9:03 a.m., Orla sent the video to Ingrid, who popped her head out of her office thirty seconds later. Her lips were coral. Lady-ish had recently taken a firm stance on coral being the new red.
“Orla,” Ingrid called, “why do I care this girl’s doing her eyebrows?”
“It’s Floss Natuzzi,” Orla said. “She’s big on Insta? Plus, you know that hundred-dollar brow gel, from that Korean beauty line that doesn’t write anything on their packaging? It looks from the video like she might be one of the first stars here they sent it to.”
It did look like that, because, just before stepping onto the elevator at home, Orla had run back to the apartment, scraped the lettering from an old Maybelline tube, and pressed it into Floss’s hand.
“Fine,” Ingrid said, and slid her door shut.
At 9:27 a.m., Orla published the post: “Sooo What Does The World’s Most Expensive Brow Gel Actually Do? One Instagram It Girl Finds Out.” Then she cupped her phone in her hands and swiped to Floss’s Twitter account. As Floss, Orla tweeted the link to the post, tagging Lady-ish. She waited.
Two minutes later, Orla got an email from Ingrid: Floss tweeted our post! What a SWEETHEART. RT from Lady-ish, pls. That was the thing about Ingrid: every semifamous person disgusted her right up until the second they threw her a bone.
Orla used her computer to log into the Lady-ish account and retweeted the missive she had written as Floss. She quickly silenced her phone, muffling the incoming notifications of Floss’s new followers. It was 9:30 on the nose.
That night, when Orla got home, Floss was waiting for her at the door. So was a crate of cream-flavored vodka, a pallet of whispery diet chips, and a dozen forty-dollar lipsticks, arranged like chocolates inside a black box.
“This one came by messenger,” Floss said. “And he asked me for a selfie.”
The more she tweeted, the less they spent. Orla found herself living almost entirely off Floss’s loot. Their apartment filled up with the sort of things Orla never would have chosen for herself—gluten-free freezer meals with a pop star’s face on the box, shoes downy with calf hair, purses pimpled with ostrich flesh—but she ate them and wore them eagerly, because they were free and they were proof: she and Floss were succeeding. The doorman never grinned at them anymore; “Package,” he said wearily, over and over, rising from his stool when he saw one of them coming. Orla sometimes slipped him bags of free cookies or chips, removing the hopeful notes from entry-level PR girls. Almost invariably, the girls were named Alyssa.
Orla didn’t have time, most nights, to work on writing her book. As soon as she walked in the door, Floss would hand her a bowl of Apple Jacks for dinner. They would sit cross-legged on the parquet, a laptop between them, and work. Before long, Floss would be begged to attend all sorts of events, dozens a week—but in the meantime, she had found a way to hack into several publicists’ email accounts, to keep track of what invites were going around. She forwarded the invites to an address she made up for her imaginary publicist, Pat White. “Gender-neutral and forgettable,” she said of the name. As Pat, Orla RSVP’d Floss to events she hadn’t been asked to, saying she would be there, plus one. Floss made Orla swear she’d never tell anyone about the scheme. “I could get in trouble,” she said. But Orla knew that wasn’t it. Hacking required intelligence, and intelligence was off-brand.
Orla was in charge of writing about Floss on Lady-ish, and of breaking down the shipping cardboard the free things came in, and of maintaining Floss’s Twitter account. She changed the password on it