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Her hair is pulled up into a sloppy ponytail and she’s wearing simple jeans and a black tank top.

I glance down at her feet in dusty Converse sneakers and suddenly feel incredibly overdressed even though she’s the one who is out of place in this room.

“I assume you have a platform that improves the lives of working moms?” I say, gulping down the coffee that is set in front of me by a harried server.

“I do.” Her serious expression lights up.

“It’s like Airtable and Slack combined, but for the family business unit.

It’s a way to make sure dads are involved in the project management of the family.

I was inspired to do it because I see so many women, my sisters included, losing their minds over constantly giving their husbands the same simple instructions for the most basic things, like how to log into the pediatrician platform or what kind of Popsicles their kid likes. ”

“How many kids do you have?”

“None! I’m more of a childless cat lady.” She laughs. “I saw a hole in the market. I’m here for the networking, but keep that on the down-low. If they find out I don’t have kids, they might run me out with torches.”

“Your secret’s safe with me. I often prefer childless cat ladies.

The app sounds great,” I say, meaning it, although the last thing I want is another reason to be on my computer or my phone when I don’t have to be.

I don’t think I can stomach another “productivity platform” even if it’s life changing.

A woman sitting on my other side chimes in.

“It is great. And she deserves all the funding.” I turn to look at her.

She’s older than most of this crowd and stands out because she’s foregone the muted pastel dresses and onesies for a bright purple pantsuit.

Her salt-and-pepper curls have a single purple streak running down the middle. I love her a little bit at first sight.

She conspicuously looks at my name tag. I wonder how far we are from a future where no one needs to clock name badges anymore, but when AI will alert us through a little chip in our brains who we are about to talk to and whether they are worthy of our attention.

Ding, ding, this person is useless for both your social and business climbing. Move along.

Ding dong. This woman is an HR executive at a big firm looking to hire a content director. Turn on that charm. Talk about your personal development journey.

“You’re Rebecca Sommers’s friend,” the purple-suited woman says.

Our friendship, if you can still call it that, isn’t indicated anywhere on my badge and her shit-eating grin lets me know she likes catching people off guard with an excessive amount of information.

Maybe she already has the AI chip in her brain.

“I’m Lizzie,” I say instead of validating her claim.

“I know. I work with Rebecca. I’m Olivia Jackson.” A look passes between her and Katie, but I can’t tell what it means.

“What do you do with Rebecca?” I ask Olivia.

“A little of this. A little of that. I’m an advisor. Accountant. Friend.”

Is “friend” a job now? I don’t say it out loud.

“Olivia is everyone’s accountant,” Katie says. “And manager.”

“Not yours,” Olivia fires back jovially.

“Only because I can’t afford you yet, but you will be.

” Katie rolls her eyes and explains more to me.

“About a decade ago Olivia realized that influencers were going to be the future of both media and commerce. None of her old colleagues in LA believed her. So she quit and started her own thing. Now she specializes in accounting, management, and financial planning for influencers who are worth more than…What now, Olivia? What’s the total amount of money you manage? ”

“I don’t kiss and tell.” Olivia delivers that devious grin again.

Katie waves her hand in the air. “More than, like, a billion dollars. Anyway, she’s a baller.”

“How is an influencer accountant different than a regular accountant?” I ask, genuinely curious.

“Oh, it isn’t really. I just understand how the creator income streams work better than the average Joe Schmo who doesn’t get that when you’re a creator your entire life is your business.” Olivia leans in to explain to me.

“So they can write off everything?”

“Not everything, but a lot. They’re always creating content and always marketing.”

“And you work with Bex—I mean Rebecca.” I stammer to get the name right.

“I do. Have for years.”

“The Sommerses must have a complicated tax situation. They have so much going on.”

“Oh, I don’t work with Grayson Sommers,” Olivia says pointedly. “Just Rebecca.”

I think about my own relationship with our accountant, Joel Wasserstein, who has a small office in Alphabet City in Manhattan.

We only talk in February when it’s time to start getting all our expenses and forms in order and we’ve never actually communicated with Joel except by email.

He definitely wouldn’t know I was bringing a friend to a work conference.

I decide not to play it cool. “How do you know who I am?” But Olivia is not frazzled by the question.

“Rebecca’s one of my top clients. We talked about you coming.” She stops and it’s clear that’s all she wants to say about that.

Before I can follow up, a hidden stereo starts pumping out the eighties yacht-rock anthem “The Final Countdown” and the room goes entirely dark.

“What the hell is happening?” I blurt out. No one else is fazed.

“Good meeting you, Lizzie.” Olivia clasps a strong hand on my shoulder. “I’m sure we’ll be talking much more soon. Looking forward to it.” She turns to the stage with a laser focus.

A slim but well-muscled man with immovable hair fist pumps his way from the back doors of the ballroom.

He’s the first dude I’ve seen who isn’t working here, and the vibe in the space immediately shifts.

The man takes his time getting to the stage.

He’s got a square jaw and the bushy beard of someone who has watched too much Outlander with their wife.

“HEYA, MAMASSSSSSSS!” he shouts into the microphone.

“Is that Marsden?” I ask.

Katie rolls her eyes. “Doesn’t he look like a Marsden? When did people start naming their children the things you would normally call beagles anyway?”

“By the way,” I whisper to her before Marsden can start speaking, “do you know Rebecca Sommers? I’ve been looking for her. Have you seen her around this morning?”

Katie taps away at the computer for a second before answering. “Everyone knows her,” she says. “I haven’t seen her this morning. She’s probably getting ready for her big talk.”

Another woman, the henfluencer, chimes in. “I assumed she would be here since this Marsden guy is like her husband’s BFF since they were kids. Super tight.”

“Oh. Yeah. That makes sense,” I say because I can totally see Marsden hanging out with Grayson.

Their names alone demand it. This dude taking the stage with his perfectly coiffed Ken doll hair and his deep V-neck T-shirt revealing intensely trimmed chest hair and a well-oiled physique has the vibrating energy of a kitten.

It’s like he can’t decide whether to step up closer to the microphone or hurl his body onto the stage and do burpees. He chooses the mic and chants again.

“MOMS ARE THE BOMB!”

He seems to expect a call-and-response.

“MOMS ARE THE BOMB!!!!?”

A few women offer weak claps and half-hearted repetition.

“What does his app do again?” I ask Katie.

“Who knows. People love giving funding to white dudes who are on TV. I bet he doesn’t even know.”

The music finally fades, and Marsden has to say words that are not a cheer of some sort.

“So happy to be here with you lovely ladies today. I love women. I love my wife.”

“His wife is such an asshole,” Katie whispers.

“You ladies have been busy little bees. I’ve been told by my team that you all, that you mothers, control eighty-five percent of household purchases in the United States, that y’all got a spending power of something like $2.

4 trillion. I know a little something about that spending.

My wife is always racking up the charges on the credit card.

But you know what they say, happy wife, happy life. ”

The room stays mostly silent except for one table in the front that erupts in giggles and hoots.

Many of them stand to cheer on Marsden. There are at least fifteen women squeezed around a table that should only seat eight.

When they sit back down, I notice a couple are perched on the others’ laps.

They’re slightly different from many of the women here.

While everyone I’ve seen so far has looked like they’re ready to appear on high-definition television at a moment’s notice in a wardrobe that might cost half my monthly paycheck, these women have gone above and beyond the call of aesthetic duty.

This crew appears airlifted out of a 1950s sitcom, the kind I used to watch on Nick at Nite with my grandma when I slept over at her apartment as a kid.

Margaret Anderson, Donna Stone, Harriet Nelson, June Cleaver.

These women are all in dresses with fitted bodices that accentuate impossibly tiny waists.

Instead of the Pre-Raphaelite waves of many of the other conference attendees their hair is pulled up into intricate French twists or pinned into scarves that match the patterns of their dresses.