Chapter 1: Purgatorio

A little learning is a dangerous thing ;

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring :

There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,

And drinking largely sobers us again.

Alexander Pope

The eruption of concrete, glass, and steel cascading in from the far wall was followed, instantaneously, by its ear splitting announcement. For one split second, Eliza’s brain registered that she was watching an explosion. Her flinch came too late. Then, the avalanche of sound drowned out everything else, leaving her ears ringing. When her eyes fluttered open, everything was dust and darkness. Ghosts of sounds broke through her ringing ears: screaming, staccato cracks and pops. Had that been a bomb? Who would bomb a laboratory? The knowledge was there; she just couldn’t accept it. Now, people were going to die. Maybe, some were dead already. Things had been so much simpler before all of this, back when she was at her job.

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“Marketing is everything, and everything is marketing.”

Eliza Latimer’s eyes traced the stenciled oxblood letters on the gray wall in front of her. She sighed. This was a morning routine that she had been following since she had gradually realized that this was not a temporary job. It was not a “just for now” job while she found her way in the world. Staring at the sign and imagining that it said, “abandon hope all ye who enter here,” felt dramatic, but it was her moment. She got to be in her own head, and she could use her brain for her own thoughts, and they were going to be what they were going to be. Eliza closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to imagine how this job would, could, or maybe even might segue into something greater. The very idea of being promoted was empty. Any recommendations her superiors might give would only really be good for more of the same. Dedication here would only lead to a life even further from where she wanted to be. In what world did this have a good ending for her? For all of her creativity and flare for imagination in undergrad, she failed at answering this question.

Then, her eyes opened, and she looked into the room where she would spend the next nine hours minus lunch break and closed her eyes again. An English major, with great faith in the written word, Eliza felt that this place was not her destiny, if such a thing even existed. But, the sentence in front of her meant something. And, she knew it. It wasn’t an inscription on infernal gates. This was purgatory. Nothing mattered, and you didn’t get to leave.

“Uh, are you going in, or are you in some kind of a trance, Dorothy?” asked a voice from behind her.

Markus Alwyn, the head of Eliza’s department, dramatically spilled himself against the wall as if Eliza and her tiny bag were taking up three times as much hallway space as they were.

“Earth to Eliza,” he said with a scoff and then turned, as if just remembering something, “Oh, right, so Alessandro is coming by today. I need you on point.” He stopped after that and took a deep breath. “They’re potentially choosing me to go on the Green Canyon leadership trip.” Markus searched for appropriate words. “If you can stay focused, it would mean that… that you could potentially have a… friend… in the upper echelons of this company.”

“Is there anything that I’ve been doing that hasn’t been up to snuff for you?”

Markus stared at Eliza.

“Mr. Neroni doesn’t talk to anyone here. The man is a corporate heir from another country. Will I be at my desk? Will I be doing my work? Yes. Provided I don’t stand up and start shrieking about the latest worker’s strikes that have been going on in Brazil-”

“I know you feel strongly about worker’s rights, but so help me god, Eliza, if you start in on that antifa crap…”

“Again, Boss, Alessandro barely knows that *you* work for him. The man is a billionaire. *I* couldn’t do anything to cost you anything.”

“Don’t,” said her boss. “Just don’t.”

Eliza contemplated asking what verb and object he might need to end his sentence and even thought about suggesting a few, but she didn’t. She lowered her eyes and waited to be able to go to her desk under the flickering fluorescent lights.

With her too many-eth sigh of the morning, Eliza turned her computer on, sat down at her desk, and set down her bag and her travel mug. She could already tell it was going to be a rough day, but in a very, very small, dark corner of her mind, the idea of seeing Alessandro Neroni brightened her thoughts ever so slightly. The owner of the Monte Salute Corporation was a breathtakingly beautiful man which was just a bonus to being able to watch all of her bosses get combatively nervous, though he was exactly the sort of capitalist that Eliza reviled. But, her liberal sensibilities could let it slide because what else was he going to be? If she’d been a man and grown up in the lap of luxury, she wondered if she’d have been any better a person. The fact that she was physically attracted to him shamed her in ways that she would never have articulated.

“Who do you think that they’re going to replace him with?” asked Greg DiAngelo as he sat down at the computer adjacent.

“Who? Markus?”

“No, Hank Drogan.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t follow basketball,” replied Eliza, busying herself with unnecessary tasks so that Greg would leave her alone.

“Dude, don’t pretend that you don’t know that he plays football. Everyone knows that. My five year-old niece knows that, and her mom doesn’t even watch football. Anyway, yes, Markus. Why in the heck would I ask you a question about sports? You look like you were the head of mathletes.”

“Probably, Kasey. She’s been after that promotion for a while. They don’t seem to hire externally.”

“Who do you think they’ll get to fill Kasey’s job?”

“I don’t know. It won’t be me.”

“I mean, I know it won’t be you,” said Greg. He eyed Eliza a bit more closely, “But out of curiosity, why do you think it won’t be you as opposed to anyone else around here? You can’t accuse this place of having a glass ceiling. I mean, yeah, a lot of upper management is men, but-”

“All of upper management is men,” interrupted Eliza.

“What about that hot brunette that’s always following Alessandro around?”

“His assistant? I mean, sure, she makes more than you or me or even Markus, but what do you think her job description is?”

“She’s got a seat at the table.”

“Taking notes about what the men are doing.”

“Okay, well, I’m not even talking about upper management. Kasey is upwardly mobile here. I mean, I’ve known re-” He stopped himself. “I’ve known developmentally disabled people who are way more interesting to talk to than you, but you’ve been here for a while. You do decent copy. You’re, like, *never* late. You don’t take days off. You’re just boring enough that I could see them promoting you.”

Eliza’s gaze was drawn to Markus’ office, where she could see the clean-shaven, muscular man talking to someone on speaker phone as he paced the floor with a foam basketball and eyed a small net hung from the private bathroom door. The man’s entire persona bothered Eliza on a level that could have been molecular.

“My degree is in English, not business, not PR, and certainly not marketing,” replied Eliza, flatly.

“Sorry, m’Lady! I forgot you was a poet, dabblin’ in that Jane Austen and an’ such. Quoth something to me. Brighten’ me day, oh m’Lady!” Eliza smirked despite herself. Encouraged by this, her coworker continued, “Please, Lady Elizabeth, bestow upon us peasantry some twinklin’ words of wisdom.”

Eliza didn’t dignify any of it, not even to remind him for the millionth time that her name was, simply, Eliza.

They worked on in silence at their projects. Eliza tried not to think about how the Monte Salute Corporation was irresponsibly genetically modifying crops to withstand more and more toxic pesticides, how Alessandro Neroni had made shrewd enough investments to turn himself into a billionaire, and how this company had made contributions to Luther Spade, the vilest politician alive.

Hours passed.

Eliza had stalled in the middle of writing some copy that would adorn a green and brown FAQ page that euphemized the Monte Salute Corporation’s bioengineering platform. Her brain had drifted from saying something about genetic modification being responsible for many of the amenities that contemporary civilization enjoyed. It made a pit stop thinking about how apples were originally inedible, no matter what contemporary Christians thought about the Garden of Eden. Then, Eliza’s thoughts trickled into a more primal place. Cavemen. Brutality. She imagined that she had been part of a worker’s revolution that had allowed her to, in full view of the office, eat meat for the first time since high school. Because she felt a special kinship to animals, Eliza had stopped eating them years ago. This was different. Anger made her cuspids ache. She wanted to bite something, tear at it. The meat in question was Markus.

It was disturbing to her how much she loathed the man, but in those deep, dark corners of her brain, she couldn’t help but feel like there was no outcome for him that was too bad. “Eat the rich,” felt appropriate. Maybe, he wasn’t rich, but – and she admitted that it was an odd thing to think – he was richer than her, and he had absolutely no scruples at all.

“Don’t look now, but the landed gentry just showed up,” whispered Greg.

Eliza played it cool and tried to continue writing. Every other person in the office, particularly those with corporate aspirations, were darting eyes, leaning over desks, or turning completely around to view Alessandro Neroni as he sashayed into the office. Eliza refused to allow herself to descend to this level. Markus had already made his way past the desk cluster where the copywriters sat and was part of the fawning throng that all but cheered as the man who essentially controlled their fates entered.

When Eliza finally turned around, Markus caught the movement out of the corner of his eye and used the opportunity to give his subordinate a glare. Because there was the man of the hour: Alessandro Neroni, thirty years-old and already a billionaire. Sure, he’d been born on third base, but he had managed to claw his way from millionaire status to the next order of magnitude, one hostile corporate takeover after another. The man before her, in a tailored suit that probably cost more than a semester of her college education, gazed around the room as if the presence of walls and a floor bored him. Even his assistant, for all of the bookish glasses and well-fitted skirt suit, had a superior look. Mr. Neroni’s assistant was someone who would have given Eliza a superior smirk if she noticed her at all. Eliza, in her Brooklyn apartment with roommates, in her simple black skirt and flats, in her college debt, in her sometimes-self-sometimes-not-sabotaged relationships, in her utter and complete lack of the gloriousness that swelled around these Manhattanites. For just a moment, Eliza let her Marxist sensibilities smolder while trying to comprehend how anyone could be lucky enough to exist in those circles. What kind of women did someone like Alessandro Neroni date? Surely, he dated someone. Supermodels, she thought. Maybe, movie stars.

And just like that, her disgust returned to her, and it brought its best friend: disgust for herself, her envy.

She returned to work, trying to force herself to concentrate on anything but the charade that was taking place around her. The entourage that surrounded Alessandro threatened to upset her bag and desk as they pushed past the copywriting station toward Markus’ bosses’ offices. The owner of the Monte Salute Corporation paused briefly as he passed Eliza, looking down at the young woman who was diligently typing away, pretending to be unfazed by his presence. She stopped. She swallowed. When she looked up, she saw that he was smirking at her and staring at the patches on her bag. It was a simple courier bag that she used to carry necessities for living in a large city. There were some pins and patches that she felt young enough and angry enough to sport. Most of them were not political. Most. There was an enormous Bad Religion crossbuster patch that, she felt, stood out a great deal more than the others. The man let out a sniff that almost seemed like a laugh and continued on, his personal assistant talking for him to the mob of bosses and their bosses.

Greg looked over at Eliza and gave her both thumbs up. Eliza shook her head and rolled her eyes.

“He *noticed* you!”

“He noticed the crossbuster patch. If he has any idea how anticorporate all that stuff is and actually cares enough to do anything about it, he’ll have one of his assistants’ assistants talk to Markus and have him fire me. Neroni? Italian – he’s probably Catholic and so offended right now that one of his underlings would even have the temerity to think for herself. If anything comes of it, I’m probably toast.”

“Yeah,” said Greg, “but *he’ll* be the one who tells them to give you your walking papers.”