The Last Grapefruit La Croix

Here’s the short version: a company shut down, and every one of its 50 employees got either a job or a severance package, except for one: me.  I tend not to write about things that happen to me. What is there to write about? I just told you the story in 23 words. I prefer to write about slippery things that feel like fish or birds, things that you need a net and some cunning to catch. A story about something that simply happened? That feels so very bovine. You can put a bolt through its skull but there’s no hunt.  But still I want to write about this. In its very solidity, its refusal to fly, there is something that stirs me. My mind lingers on glass-walled conference rooms, the orange cardboard packaging of boxed dinners, the repetition of certain phrases. It reminds me of this game I played as a kid. We called it Moss, for some reason, but you probably called it something else. It’s hide-and-go-seek in the dark, basically. You feel around, grab at someone’s ankle, slam your chin into a coffee table. The parents didn’t like us playing it. But the thrill of finding your way through the dark!

***

The company in question was an “activity discovery concierge,” an app that helped young people in cities find brunch restaurants and silent disco dance parties. I was the head of content for our Seattle market, even though I had never been to the city. I was an expert at conjuring things I had never experienced: hole-in-the-wall dim sum spots serving braised fish lips and lily bulb soup, or secret Swedish happy hours where cold smoked herring could be chased with bracing shots of aquavit.  We occupied the second floor of a historic San Francisco building on Market Street. Looking out the windows, we could see homeless people, bike lanes, birds picking at discarded takeout boxes. Once, a dismembered body was found in a suitcase a block away and the street was closed for hours. For safety reasons, the company covered the cost of employees’ Uber rides home from work after 9pm. But our benefits weren’t all so practical. While we had no 401K, we were granted $100 per month of “fun” credit for the beer pairing dinners, cocktail events, and Beyoncé dance classes featured on the app. We weren’t required to wear the company t-shirt to these events — it was emblazoned with the words “Eat, Drink, Play” — but most of us did anyway. Our HQ was adorned, like every start-up, in the mid-century modern style. A wood-paneled wall in the entryway displayed our logo in etched steel. To the left, a collection of oak-hued Eames chairs surrounded a low coffee table on shaggy white carpet. In the very center of the office were two mustard-colored woolen love seats with backs that extended high enough to completely conceal their occupants. They were positioned facing one another, creating a private enclosure we referred to as “The Pod.”  The Pod felt less like a place of work than a high school friend’s basement. Heather would kick off her shoes, Angel edited his Tinder profile, Anish and Amir spoke to each other in Hindi and snickered. We slouched, we sang, we drank beer, we spilled tea. Nadav worked in The Pod sometimes too. He’d sit like a davening Jew over his Macbook, his back so erect it never touched the seat cushion.  Nadav was our co-founder and CEO. His facial topography was extreme, with a nadir between the eyebrows before the steep and sudden eruption of his nose. Big noses make some people look bumbling, but Nadav’s gave him a sense of severity. Everything about him was purposeful and composed: he wore his hair close-clipped, and always the same uniform of chinos, desert boots, and a pressed button-down. He could be stern; his favorite way to silence the room was to rap his wedding ring against a metal stool.  He always performed the wedding ring ritual at the start of our weekly all-hands. The purpose of the meeting was to receive Nadav’s teachings and be disabused of any insurgent notions that might have taken hold about the health of the company. Each week, Nadav delivered a variation on the same rousing speech about our unstoppable momentum. “Millions of young people, living in cities across the globe, and what do they all have in common?” he’d ask. If it was your first time hearing the pitch, you might guess the answer was something like unpaid student loans or undiagnosed HPV. But no. “Young people from Portland to Pittsburgh are asking themselves the same question,” Nadav continued. “What should we do tonight?”  The problem of young, single millennials wondering where to spend their money had reached epic proportions, and we were just the company to help them solve it. It was jarring to hear a product that recommended fancy restaurants described in such noble terms, but Nadav meant every word. He once compared it to his wife’s work as a doctor: “In the ER, Rachel helps only one person at a time. But we have the potential to impact millions of people at a time.”  ***

As with any political figure, Nadav’s constituents were divided into naysayers and yeasayers. For most of my tenure, I was a yeasayer. Sure, Nadav could be insufferable, especially when he was talking about the product’s potential. But you can’t really fault a founder for believing in his own company. As a leader, I respected him. He didn’t take any bullshit. When I first started, he pounced on me at the slightest hint of mediocrity. “The photo you chose for that activity,” he said once, referring to a piece of content that was going to live on the homepage for a day, “it doesn’t meet our quality standards.” With Nadav, you always had to strive for excellence.  Some of his demands were petty, but other times, they elicited from me the kind of effort that isn’t possible unless you’re a little afraid. He once asked me to give a presentation to the whole company about a product redesign. I tried to get out of it, telling him that it was already a crazy week, and I had just come down with a sore throat. I joked that if my condition didn’t improve, I might need to use a ventriloquist for the presentation, hoping he’d catch the hint. “Ha!” he said. “Good luck!” I ended up connecting our product to the ancient Greek notion of kairos. The Greeks had two words for time: chronos, which is time that passes, and kairos, which is a moment that must be seized. The ceaseless ticking of the clock is chronos. The second you decide to go in for a kiss is kairos. Our product, I suggested, was about maximizing kairos. The personalized, geo-targeted recommendations allowed users to find the perfect activity for a particular moment.  Bullshit? Maybe. But I was determined to make it the finest, most well-formed bullshit I could muster. And lo, the hard work paid off: everyone fucking loved it. Coworkers approached me for weeks afterward, asking me to elaborate on the concept. Even Nadav sung my praises. At the kitchen table the next Monday, he told me that he and his wife discussed kairos all weekend. “I was surprised,” he told me, “that someone could show me a new way to think about my own company.” But he wasn’t going to let me bask in it. A month later, he and the other two co-founders walked out of a board meeting. Joel beelined straight towards me. “I thought you’d be pleased to hear,” he said, “that Nadav just presented your concept of kairos to the entire board.” Every time Nadav passed my desk that week, I tried to catch his eye, hoping he’d stop and tell me about the board meeting. He never did.  It wasn’t Nadav’s style to lavish praise, but that didn’t mean he was cold or heartless. Actually, he was uncommonly empathetic to our lowliest employees, our contractors and curators. When Erin felt slighted that her newer and younger counterpart was promoted, Nadav met with her after dinner for two hours. Think about that: a CEO devoting his undivided attention to an entry level employee’s concerns about office politics.  I once confided in Nadav that I was worried about the performance of one of my direct reports. She worked hard, she was eager to please, and she was obsessed with the company. The only problem was that I didn’t think was a good fit for the role she was in. I braced myself for Nadav to tell me that I had to fire her. Instead, he stood up for her. “Here’s a person who’s extremely passionate about our product, that’s an asset to us. We need to find a way to make better use of her talents.” No employee was too junior to merit Nadav’s time. When you had him in conversation, you felt he understood your subtlest point, that whether or not he agreed with you, he took you seriously. He listened to your ideas with no agenda other than to understand, consulting with a moral compass always honed true north.  ***

That summer, the mood in the office was tense. The founders were working on raising a series C round, and it was taking a long time to close. At first, Nadav gave us florid updates on their progress: “Our sales are doubling every 10 weeks. We’re in an excellent position to raise money. We have the luxury to choose a deal that makes sense for us in the long run.”  But the growth was coming through methods that weren’t sustainable. Sales were high, but only because we offered deep discounts. We were a marketplace for luxury experiences, but users only seemed interested at pedestrian prices. To convince more desirable merchants to join our platform, we sometimes fronted them the sales revenue, confident that we’d recoup the loss. When an event didn’t sell, we sent employees to pose as real users. It was meant as an interim solution to prevent merchants from guessing that we couldn’t move their inventory, but the scheme persisted for months. As a result, each of us attended more beer flights and pasta tasting menus than most people do in a lifetime.  After a few months of this, Nadav’s fundraising updates became more terse. Some weeks, he was busy meeting with investors and didn’t show up to our all-hands at all. Joel or Sanjay ran the meeting, and you could tell they felt awkward without Nadav there.  Meanwhile, the office was in a holding pattern. There were changes needed across the company — big infrastructure investments we’d been putting off, strategic decisions to be made about the product, better internal tools to develop. But nothing real could happen until we closed the round. We heard “after fundraising” so often that it became a kind of refrain.  Finally, Nadav came to the all-hands with big news: he had been approached about a strategic acquisition. That was never the end game he had in mind, he assured us. But this particular acquirer understood our vision and was uniquely situated to extend it. The opportunity was too good to pass up.  When we found out who it was, we agreed. The “acquirer,” as Nadav always referred to it — we only knew who it was from gossip — was one of the handful of tech companies that even your grandmother is familiar with. I couldn’t help but feel excited. As much as I struggled to see the value in our product, the acquirer apparently did, and that was worth something. Also worth something, if the deal went through: my stock options.  The possible acquisition lifted the lethargy that had taken hold of the office, but the good mood was soon dampened by an unfortunate casualty. A few weeks after the announcement, all the contractors were fired. There were around 10 of them, and as tends to be the case in start-ups, they were contractors only in name, indistinguishable from full-time employees. I still gave Nadav the benefit of the doubt, so I sent him an email asking him to explain the decision. His response: It was solely for the benefit of our contractors… Instead of waiting until we knew an exact timeline, which might leave our hardworking contractors in a tough spot, we decided to do the tough thing for us, which was to proactively let our contractors wind down. I’m happy to say that I’ve personally served as a reference for several of our contractors, who are now in — or close to accepting — exciting new positions. It’s all squarely in response to the great feedback we’ve gotten in the past: to afford our teammates as much support and time as we can to set them up for future success. I showed the email to my husband Aaron, who was skeptical. “I don’t trust anything Nadav says,” he told me. “It sounds like they needed to cut costs.” Maybe Aaron, who has been through two acquisitions before, was prescient. Or maybe Nadav’s story was completely genuine. I still don’t know. But when the last grapefruit La Croix vanished from the beverage cooler, and no new one came to replace it on Monday, it felt like evidence for Aaron’s view on the situation.  ***

Tuesday. Nadav calls a meeting after lunch. All-hands were always on Fridays, so it has to be something important.  “For a long time, I’ve wondered what this conversation would feel like,” he begins. “I never expected it to feel like this.” He tells us that “the acquirer” called him a few days earlier and summarily pulled out of the deal. No negotiation, no explanation.  This is, to put it mildly, very bad. Once we had a signed term sheet from the acquirer, Nadav explains, we ended negotiations with all our backup options. Our investors had been keeping us afloat until the deal closed, but now that it’s off the table, there isn’t enough money to start the fundraising process all over again.  “I do have some good news,” Nadav says. He tells us that in our situation, most startups would simply shut down, leaving everyone out of a job. But the work we’d done together was too important for him to let it die that easily. Over the weekend, he reached out to everyone in the Valley he’d ever done a favor for. He sent hundreds of emails trying to find someone to rescue our company.  Plenty of the people he reached out to were interested. Some were interested in our product but not our people, others in just our engineering or business development teams. “But no matter how desperate our position, there is one thing I refuse to compromise on,” Nadav recounts. “And that’s our people. If someone wants to acquire us, they take all of us or none of us.” Even in such trying times, Nadav remains clear eyed about what matters. “You are the ones who created our amazing product, and I value each and every one of your contributions,” he says. “That’s why I said no to a lot of otherwise attractive offers. Even if it means sacrificing what we’ve built.”  By the end of the weekend, he pulled off a miracle: “There was one company — a company that’s doing incredibly well, growing very fast, and needs people to scale up its operations — that saw this as a great opportunity. They saw great overlap between their needs and our expertise, and they’re willing to move quickly. That company is Pegasus.” A collective sigh of letdown. Pegasus is an on-demand food delivery company. It’s nowhere near as exciting as the original acquirer.  “We will all be transitioning into new roles at Pegasus,” Nadav says. “For now, our first priority is to shut down the product as quickly and as gracefully as possible.” Nadav stops speaking for a long, long time. He sits alone on the stool at the front of the room, crying. Finally, he says, “I did the best I could for you guys. But I never imagined it would end this way. I think the world will be a sadder place without us in it.”  Meeting adjourned.  Wednesday.  A group of us are taking a long, beer-soaked lunch at a brewery on the other side of town (we’re not sure what else to do) when I get an email from Bethany:  “You’ll be interviewing at Pegasus at 9am tomorrow.” Bethany and Sanjay have made themselves available in the conference room all day. When I get back to the office, I pay them a visit. With whom will I be interviewing? For what role? Is it a casual conversation to learn more about my interests and aptitude, or really an interview?  “I’m sorry,” Sanjay tells me, “We know about as much as you do.”  Thursday.  The interview is with Cory, Pegasus’ head of operations. He notices the bike that I arrive on, and we bond over our shared love for the outdoors. We have a good rapport; the interview goes well.  The following Tuesday. At first, Pegasus spoke to five or more of us per day, but soon the pace of interviews slows. Those who have not yet interviewed start to get worried. There is talk: maybe they aren’t really taking everyone?  On Tuesday afternoon, Reid sends a reassuring email to the team. It’s logistically challenging for Pegasus to find the time to interview 50 new employees while still running their enormously successful company, he writes. He thanks us for our patience.  Wednesday. Nadav calls another all-hands for Wednesday afternoon.  “I’m sorry to have to say this,” he begins, “but after reviewing their needs and our teams’ backgrounds, Pegasus is unable to make offers to everyone. We didn’t want to put anyone in a role where they would not be set up for success.”  “Pegasus was able to extend 20 offers. For the 30 of you who did not receive offers, I will do everything in my power to help you find your next role. In a half hour, we’ll send you a calendar invite to one of two meetings where you’ll find out which group you’re in.” “I know this isn’t the way any of us imagined this would end. I’m proud of the work we’ve all done here, and you should be too. I want us to enjoy the end of our time together, so I got a bunch of alcohol. You’ll find it all on the back table. Celebrate yourselves — you deserve it.” Nadav buying the office alcohol: there was something awkward about it. He had always been removed from the office drinking culture — he rarely joined our happy hours, and when he did, he never got drunk. If he felt personally responsible for the way things turned out, getting the office hammered at 2pm on a weekday was an odd way of showing it.  I nurse a beer as we all mull about the office, waiting for our meeting invitations. I secretly hope that I don’t get an offer. Pegasus sounds boring. But guilt-motivated networking from three well-connected founders? That actually sounds pretty good.  Too bad: I’m invited to the smaller meeting. Reid is standing at the head of the conference room table. He knows the past week has been a whirlwind — and trust him, he says, when the original deal fell through, he was as disappointed as any of us. But during the past few days, he’s had the opportunity to meet with the Pegasus team, and he’s actually gotten excited. Pegasus isn’t just a food delivery company, he now sees. It is transforming the accessibility of cities, building the infrastructure to connect people and seamlessly move local goods.  “You know,” he says, “it’s not that different from what we were doing.”  I can see our new tagline now, someone jokes: We know we told you to go out. But why not order in? The Pegasus executive team is coming by the office tonight at 6pm, we learn. They’re going to meet with each of us, one by one, to present our offers. Luka, the CEO, is a great guy, and Reid thinks we’ll all get along with him. “Just be yourself,” Reid says. “You’ll already have an offer letter in your hand, so don’t be afraid to ask questions.” We exit the conference room to find our comrades who didn’t get offers approaching Nadav’s alcohol station with renewed vigor. By 4pm, there is beer pong. By 5pm, shots. No one seems particularly motivated to head out to one of the nearby bars. There is plenty to drink right here, in the office we won’t be occupying for much longer. I mostly abstain, save for a sip here and there of other people’s drinks.  Just before 6pm, Reid and Sanjay ask to speak with me. We have to walk to the little alcove at the other end of the hall for some quiet, since the office has become complete pandemonium.  “The Pegasus executive team is in the conference room,” Reid tells me. “You’re going to meet with them first.” He hands me my offer letter. I scan down to the number: more than I’m making now, but less than I had hoped.  “Is it cool if I negotiate?” I ask. “Of course,” Sanjay says. “You’ll have an opportunity to meet one-on-one with your manager about that later this week.” I head back to the conference room, where I find six executives seated around the glass table — CEO, CTO, head of HR, head lawyer, I don’t know who else — and an empty chair at the head for me. The occasional screech can be heard on the other side of the wall, from one of the 30 employees these executives declined to hire. I, too, feel slightly buzzed, which loosens me up just enough to want to build some rapport with Luka. After warming up with a few basic questions about the role, I address him directly: “When we first heard about this acquisition last week, most of us thought of Pegasus as just another food delivery company. But over the past few days, I’ve learned so much more and I’m truly excited to join the team. Reid was explaining earlier today how you’re all about re-imagining urban infrastructure. Tell me more.” He does. I thank them for their time. I leave.  Later that evening, I get an email from Reid. It’s addressed to everyone who got offers. He wants us all in the office by 9am the next morning, because Pegasus didn’t end up meeting with everyone that night after all. I ask Reid if I need to come in, since I already had my meeting.  “I think it’s important that you’re there,” he writes back. “A lot of people have been skeptical about Pegasus, and your positive attitude is helpful for the rest of the office. Plus, there will be time for you to meet one-on-one with your future manager.” Thursday The 20 of us arrive on time. I ask Dimitri how things went after I left last night.  “You didn’t hear?” he says. “They met with Daron after you, but then they just left suddenly. Apparently they weren’t happy about all the drunk people who didn’t get offers still being here.” The Pegasus team arrives around 9:30 and we gather for a presentation from Luka, who I am coming to see as Nadav’s polar opposite. Luka is German, but Nadav is the one who embodies all the German stereotypes: composed, severe, and with a machine-like consistency. Luka is a shameless douche who seems delighted to find himself at the helm of an ascendant start-up.  After Luka’s presentation, I learn that I’ll be meeting with Cory, who interviewed me, and Trish, the head of HR, to discuss my offer. In the hours before that meeting, I solicit Amir to help me research salary ranges and practice negotiating. We settle on a number that’s $15k over the initial offer and review the reasons why it’s justified.  At 1pm, Cory and Trish welcome me into the small conference room. I’m nervous, but I make my case. Trish speaks first:  “What you’ve accomplished is impressive, and I can see that while our offer was a bump, it’s a bump from a base that was well below market. If we were able to reach within 5k of what you asked for, would that be amenable to you?” “I could definitely work with that.” “I need to run this by Luka, but I’ll send you an updated offer letter by the end of the day. We need it signed by tomorrow noon. I look forward to working together.”  I find Amir and high-five him. I text Aaron: I did it! I text my sister: let’s go shopping! That night, I meet her in Union Square, then we bike back to her place for dinner.  “Why don’t we order from Pegasus?” I say. “To celebrate.”  After a long wait, a bike courier arrives with tepid pozole and enchiladas. In the middle of eating, my phone rings. “Hello, Leah? This is Trish. Do you have a minute?” “Sure,” I say, walking down the hall into my sister’s bedroom.

“I need to inform you that Pegasus is rescinding your offer.”  “What?” “I’ll be honest with you. The reason why is that when you met with the executive team on Wednesday night, they thought you seemed inebriated. And when I discussed your salary request with Luka, he said, ‘well, she’s just not worth it.’” “That doesn’t make any sense. Maybe I was a little flustered, given the situation, but…” “The decision is irreversible. I’m sorry.” In an instant I lurch from elation to humiliation. It fills me with shame to imagine that my nervousness had registered as inebriation. I think back to the meeting: did I say something inappropriate? Laugh wildly? Perhaps my face was flushed?  I text Aaron. He’s in Vancouver for work and doesn’t respond right away. I text Dimitri. He’s just taken a lot of edibles and expresses a sense of outrage on my behalf, but informs me that he’s “way too high” to be of much help. I text Nadav. I can’t reach anyone, so I pace in my sister’s bedroom alone. A half hour later, Nadav calls. “Sanjay is on the line too,” he says. I open my mouth to speak but instead release a spate of hiccupped sobs. The crying is especially unfortunate because the last thing I want from Nadav is to be comforted. I want him to tell me how this could have happened. Nadav’s the one with the well-honed moral compass, the one who refused to entertain acquisition offers from companies that weren’t interested in his people, the one who knows I’d never walk into a room full of executives and make a fool of myself.  Instead, he says, “You’re young. This isn’t the end of your career.” (For the record, I’m seven months younger than him.) He tells me to put a meeting on his calendar for first thing in the morning, “to discuss what we can learn from this.”  Friday Nadav is running late for our meeting, and while I’m waiting for him, I find Reid. He and Sanjay were the last ones to see me before my fateful meeting with the Pegasus executives, and I ask him if he thought I seemed drunk. “Be honest,” I demand. “I can take it.”  “You were totally normal.”  Unsatisfied, I ask Amir. “Why are you even asking me that?” he says. “Of course you weren’t drunk. The people you negotiated with were in that meeting too, remember? If they thought you were drunk, would they have agreed to a higher salary the next day?”  Nadav finally arrives with Sanjay in tow, and leads us into the big conference room. I feel an unsettling intimacy between the three of us, knowing that they heard me sobbing my brains out on the phone 12 hours earlier. I cling to my morning-after composure like a shield.  “Why don’t you start by telling us exactly what you remember happening in that room,” Nadav says. “I asked a few questions about the role, the company,” I say. “And I thanked them. That’s it.” “That’s all that happened? You’re 100% sure?” “Yes, I’m sure. At worst, I was a little nervous and buzzed from the beer I had earlier. I definitely wasn’t drunk.”  “Neither Sanjay or I was in the room, so all we have to go on is what we heard from Pegasus. When you were done with your meeting, they were clearly unhappy with how it went.” “The only unusual thing about the meeting was hearing everyone else enjoying the drinks you bought for them. Maybe that colored their impression of me.” “It’s important to take responsibility for our actions. We can all learn something from this.”  “Maybe the lesson for you is that buying alcohol for a bunch of people who just lost their jobs isn’t the best way to make a good impression on important guests you invite to the office.” “It’s everyone’s personal choice how much they drink. I don’t think that you’re entirely blame-free here.” “I was trying so hard to find something to blame myself for that I didn’t sleep last night. But I can’t think of anything I did that warrants this response.” “Perhaps there is a lesson about taking these kinds of situations more seriously.” It dawns on me that this meeting isn’t so much to help me as to ensure that I don’t derail the deal or pollute the minds of my colleagues. Sure enough, the next question Nadav asks is how I plan to share my situation with others.  “I’m not going to shit talk Pegasus,” I say. “I genuinely hope you all have a great experience there, but after the way they’ve treated me, I wouldn’t work there even if they gave me my offer back.”  “I don’t want you to walk out of here feeling that way,” Nadav says. “That’s not right.” I tell him not to worry about it. That I’m fine with just taking my severance and moving on.  “I’m sorry, there won’t be any severance for you.” “Wait — so everyone else gets severance but me?” “There’s no money left. We’re literally selling the furniture.” I get up to leave, but Nadav turns to me. “There’s something else I want to say to you,” he says, as Sanjay walks out the door.  “Despite what anyone else says,” he begins, “I still think that you are partially responsible for what happened.”  I say nothing. Nadav continues speaking. “I’m about to tell you something that I’ve never told anyone. Not my parents, not Sanjay, not even my wife. And I want you to promise me you won’t tell anyone.” “I promise.” “When I was your age…” it did not begin, but may well have. I won’t repeat the details of Nadav’s story, except to say that it was about the dire consequences of a gaffe he made early in his career — and how he recovered from it to achieve his current position. He offered me the tale as if it were a gift. I would have preferred severance instead.   ***

There was nothing I could do, so I did nothing. I sat quietly that afternoon as Nadav gave his final, emotional address. He told us he was certain that we would all go on to do great things. That he himself was looking forward to spending the next good chunk of his life at Pegasus.  It didn’t take me long to find another job. Nadav made good on his promise to serve as a reference. As for other promises, he wasn’t so reliable: after three months at Pegasus, he moved on to better things. Six months out, less than half the team that joined Pegasus remained. This past spring, the CEO of my new company was looking for feedback on his fundraising deck from seasoned entrepreneurs. He asked for an introduction to Nadav, so I arranged for the three of us to meet at a café in Hayes Valley. I listened quietly as the two of them swapped career narratives.  “My first company was acquired by Hooli,” Nadav began. “My next one, by Pegasus. Now I’m the EIR at Raviga, preparing for a new venture.”

The way Nadav told it, it sounded like such a smooth trajectory. Millions of investor dollars were spent, 30 careers were put on hold, and millennials still wake up wondering what to do tonight: a Silicon Valley success story. Sometimes — when I’m talking about it with Aaron, usually — I can generate real rage about what happened. In these moments, I want to drag Nadav through my side of the story, to scruff him and stick his face in it the way you do a dog who takes a shit on the carpet. I want him to see that he’s worse than Luka, who at least didn’t pretend to have my back. But when I examine my rage, as I’m doing now, it falls apart in my hands. Nadav should have given me severance, sure, but there really was no money left. He should have stood up for me, but I can see now that his legacy depended upon him kowtowing to a mercurial imp. Perhaps his culpability can be found earlier in the story; perhaps he was blinded by his unwavering belief in a frivolous product. But that’s true of most CEOs. If Nadav cannot be made into a satisfactory villain, who can? The fickle CEO of Pegasus? The company that failed to acquire us? The young, single millennials wondering where to spend their money when Market Street is full of homeless people and the occasional dismembered body? Radical transparency as aesthetic and ethical ideal? The cruelty of the market? Mid-Century modern furniture, desert boots, grapefruit La Croix?  Why must there be an object for the blame — does it land on me otherwise? Did I write this story to exonerate myself? How can I be blamed, given that I acted reasonably and according to convention? Am I perhaps to be blamed because I acted reasonably and according to conventions? If this story is a game of Moss, it’s a long one and a lonely one. I’m “it,” but my would-be victims are nowhere to be found, leaving me to wander in the dark.