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In the den, Sally saw that Max had added a large folding picnic table, the kind people use when they’re hosting a backyard barbecue, and one folding chair. On the table were two Apple laptops. One of the laptops had a small external LED lighting rig attached to it.

“Okay,” Max began, “Here’s the deal.” He pointed at one of the laptops. “I’ve got this computer talking to that one via Zoom.” He pointed at the second machine, the one sitting in front of the folding chair. “That computer will be connected to Amy via some podcasting software we’ll connect to when the time comes.”

He went on.

During the podcast, every time Amy asked a question, Max would type the response he expected Sally to give, which she would read using the Zoom chat window.

“I’ve got the Zoom window perfectly positioned on the screen so that as you read from it, it will still look like you’re speaking to the camera. So, whatever you do, don’t fiddle around with it.”

“Got it,” Sally said, feeling her nervousness increase.

“I’ll be sitting over here,” Max said, indicating a leather club chair that had no chance of being seen by the webcam of the laptop Sally would be using. “Questions?”

Sally thought a moment.

“No,” she said. “It seems pretty straightforward.”

“Good. We got about fifteen minutes left. Wine?”

Sally nodded and then Max left. While he was gone, Sally sat down in front of the laptop. The webcam’s preview window was open and she could see herself on the screen. She smiled because she looked rather good. The lighting thingamajig Max had installed filled in the shadows on her face and really brought out the color of her eyes as well.

“Hey, can I have this when we’re done?” she asked when Max returned with two glasses of white wine. She pointed at the lighting device. “I want to use it at home for meetings at work.”

Handing Sally her glass, Max shrugged.

“Take it,” he said.

He sat down in the club chair. Sally turned to face him.

“So, I wanted to ask you something,” she declared after sipping the wine, which was very good.

“Shoot.”

“I follow Jillian Ashley on Twitter…”

Max raised his glass to her.

“And Jillian thanks you for that,” he said.

“Anyway, how do you—a man—make her seem so like a real woman? I mean, I was so convinced that an actual woman writes her tweets.”

Max scoffed.

“It’s really not that hard. All I have to do is use a lot of OMGs and LOLs and stupid fucking heart-eyes emojis and, boom, everyone assumes you have a vagina.”

Sally’s mouth dropped open.

“Fuck you, that is so not true!”

But Max just looked at her for a moment and then picked up his iPhone. He tapped the screen a few times and then held the device out to her. Sally took it from him.

The screen showed their most recent text exchange, from this morning, when they were ironing out the details for her coming to his house to do the podcast. Sally’s indignant anger from a moment ago turned into embarrassment when she realized that every single message of hers to him included at least one OMG or LOL—sometimes both, sometimes multiple instances—and that when she replied to his text telling her he’d buy her dinner after the podcast, she had done so with two—two!—heart-eyes emojis.

“Fuck you,” she muttered, handing the phone back, just as an alarm on the phone started chiming.

Max got up, gathered his laptop and returned to the club chair.

“Show time in three minutes,” he said, and suddenly Sally had to take a couple of deep breaths.