It was a fresh spring day when they walked in. A girl and a gay in business casual on a slow Friday afternoon.
“Hey there,” I said looking up from my book. “If you need anything, just give a shout. They nodded, and quickly got lost amongst the racks of clothing around the shop. I could track their progress by the sound of their conversation.
“Donovan’s releasing a book soon, did you hear?”
“I’m sure it will be another big event where we stress about selling enough tickets, spend too much to market the event, and come out as a loss.”
“I’m so sick of these last minute poorly planned things. Their team never gives us enough information.”
“I don’t know, I kind of like it. It’s a nice change of pace from everyone being in such a panic all the time. Have a Xanax, you know?”
“I looked up the presale page. Guess who the three co-authors are?”
“Three white males,” the two said in unison.
“You know, for someone so committed to ‘elevating different voices in the conversation, you’d think, well I don’t know,” the girl said trailing off. They’d made a loop through the store and each was approaching the counter with a second hand band T.
“That there’d be some degree of appetite to sit down with two other people that maybe shared a different social point of view to I don’t know, actually write a compelling, thought provoking book.” They both rolled their eyes.
“Something like that.”
I rang up the two as they continued to chat.
“You know the worst part of it is that it was only after they wrote it, they noticed that the optics of the people on stage wouldn’t look good,” one said with dramatic air quotes. “So they were trying to find a past female conference participant they could bring on stage to balance out the testosterone parade.”
“They wanted to bring a rando on stage with three male academics? That doesn’t seem like a better power balance.”
“You’re telling me.”
Caia Rose 