The Atmospherians by Alex McElroy (digital ebook reader txt) 📕

I shivered, icy with pride. “No higher calling,” I said.

“We don’t intend to exploit you.”

“I’m just trying to understand—I’ll be in the ads for the app?”

“It’s far more than an app,” said María.

“We will compensate you competitively for the emotional toll. Physical, too. We’ll get you an on-site counselor—and a masseuse. Have you even seen anyone since the incident?”

“There wasn’t any time,” I said. “Or money.”

“Soon there won’t be much you can’t afford,” Roger said.

“The offer includes lifetime housing at the DAM campus,” María said.

“We think you would benefit greatly from the amenities offered by on-campus living.”

“Do I get my own room?” I asked.

“Room?” María said. “Sasha: You’ve earned far more than a room.”

“You get your own furnished apartment.”

“More of a penthouse.”

“Your cabin days are over,” he said.

The employees typed merrily on their laptops. Perhaps everything was okay. Perhaps this truly was a great opportunity. I had no reason to punish myself. María was right: I deserved to feel better. “Tell me what I do to be happy like them,” I said, nodding at the employees.

“You stay here,” said Roger. “You inhale the air. That’s what DAM does for the soul.”

The world he promised—the safety, the stardom, the second chance—seduced me more easily than I like to admit.

thirty-three

THAT EVENING, I ate dinner with María and her family. Her husband was a thick, lotion-scented white dude with a balding man’s buzz cut and veiny eyes. He worked as a freelance graphic designer, parented their two young children during the day. For dinner, he made seared salmon and roasted asparagus—drier and more elastic than the food Dyson prepared, though I didn’t complain. I ate how I ate around Dyson: hastily mashing the food together, flinging it down my throat. I finished before anyone else started.

“Would you like more?” asked María.

I was too embarrassed to say yes. “It was just so delicious,” I said.

The husband spoke: “María tells me you were in some kind of cult before coming here.”

She shot him a look.

“She told you?” I asked.

“No secrets at DAM.” He folded his hands over his heart. “Not a single secret on-site. We always say what we feel—even when it’s offensive or hurtful.” He gnawed the tines of his fork, trying, for reasons beyond me, to stoke some simmering fight between himself and María.

“Maybe let’s not when there’s company, honey,” she said.

“There’s been a misunderstanding,” I said.

“Cult was shorthand,” she said. “A harmless joke.”

“It sounded pretty serious to me,” said the husband.

She gave me an eye-widening look: What can you do about husbands?

“I wasn’t in a cult,” I said to him. “I was its leader. I wielded all the power.”

“Prime position,” said the husband, laughing.

“But my co-leader and I had different visions of how to move forward. You know how it is with cults.”

The husband laughed again, as did María, though hers was a laugh of discomfort. He launched into the story of their lives—a story of personal disappointment disguised as triumph, a story, I gathered, he’d been trying to tell all evening. “We used to be in Rhode Island,” he said. “We had a great life there. Thought things couldn’t get better. I bet that’s what you’re feeling. You must have had a great setup at your… cult.”

I flashed a wincing smile.

“We had a three-bedroom Tudor, schools lined up for the sprouts; I was working at RISD. A dream life. The job I’d always wanted. I thought: Leave our friends and family? Never. I’m an East Coaster. My blood’s a hundred percent Atlantic Ocean. I never thought I’d move west. But I can’t tell you how…” His voice cracked. “I can’t tell you how much better life has become. There were so many things I thought were normal. I thought: That’s life. That’s how it is. But that’s not true. It can be better. I didn’t realize that until María took over and moved us to DAM. I didn’t want to. Nope. Not one bit. But I am so so grateful we’re…” Snot bubbled out of his nose as he wept.

María mouthed an apology.

I excused myself for the bathroom. Dyson had left me a voicemail. I listened to it to buy time away from the husband’s breakdown. Things have gotten interesting, Dyson said. Nerves rattled his voice. I wish you were here to help settle things down.

“Fuck. You,” I whispered to my phone. I felt squeezed by his call and by dinner—I hadn’t been alone since I’d landed at DAM. María’s family grinned at me when I returned to the table. I told them I needed some rest. At the door, María apologized for her husband, but I assured her he wasn’t the issue. “We’ve all had husbands,” I said, flustered and eager to leave.

“When were you married?” she asked.

I kissed her cheeks good night. Behind her, the husband waved, his eyes red.

My apartment was identical to María’s: cathedral ceilinged, walls blemish-less. A marble island in its open kitchen fed into an airy dining room. Bland canvasses the color of seaweed hung above the couches and chairs and the bed. In the center of one was the word Grow. In another: Inspire. A third and fourth: It Happens. They produced a light, draining sensation at the base of my skull that made me want to lie down. I stretched out in bed with my arms and legs extended in the shape of an X.

The next morning, I pampered myself beneath a lather of bubbles in my apartment’s whirlpool tub. I conditioned using a product that smelled of rosemary and mint. It had been months since I’d opened a dresser to find something other than athleisure, T-shirts, and jeans. But DAM had stocked my closet, and I put on the simplest outfit I could find: a breezy blue wrap and tights to hide the hair on my legs. I wore a touch of foundation and lipstick, mascara. It reminded me of life