Page 23 of The Photograph

Why are you STILL messaging me with this bullshit?

Dots appear and disappear.

Still hiding in the closet and lying to people, Alex?

Asshole.I’m not responding to any more of his crap.

The houses and bushes whip past outside the window, an announcement echoing over the PA system.Concentrate.You’ve got no ideas for work today and they’ll roast you. I flip the texting app closed and start looking at the company announcements and making notes about the implications that I can alert my supervisor to.

Sunlight is filtering over the half-filled rows of white desks that spread out right across the large open-plan space when I sink into my seat in the office. A Slack message from my supervisor, Marie, is already blinking at me asking for a news update, so I tidy up the rough draft I made on the train and send it off to her. There are no fires to put out this morning as far as I can tell.

But before I can take a breath, Marie asks me what I’m working on and for a list of interesting companies by 11 a.m. So I drop her a line saying I was thinking of looking at tech businesses today, making a map of the market and the main players and she sends me a starry-eyed emoji.Phew.I pick up my phone and turn it over in my hand. Would Des mind if I asked? Stress was rolling off him in waves last night.Be bold, Alex!

Hey Des, thanks for last night! I’ve a favor to ask. Can you give me the names of twenty businesses in the tech space that are interesting right now and why?

The typing icon starts immediately on my screen.

Hello my gorgeous Alex. What’s this for?

Gorgeous?I press my hand to my chest. Perhaps I redeemed myself by making dinner.

I’m supposed to be researching growing companies and developments in the space. Threats, technology, that kind of thing.

A one-word response appears:

Lunch?

My heart clenches. He wants to meet me? Running my finger inside my shirt collar, I stare out over the now-full desks, every person here doing the same job as me. God, I would love to get out of this place at lunchtime. Usually, I shovel a store-bought sandwich down my throat while I type. I send him three heart-eyed emojis back, and within moments he shoots back with a winky emoji:

I can talk you through a number of areas and developments.

I type back:

You’re a lifesaver.

Dots start and stop again, then:

Hmmm. Would this be an oral resuscitation or something else?

God, he isfilthy. How do I respond tothat? And how much of my flailing would he ultimately withstand? I text him a few laughing faces and turn my phone over on my desk blowing out a long breath. He is going to kill me.

Getting up out of my chair, I head to the office kitchen and make myself a coffee that I didn’t have time to buy on the way in. When I settle back in my seat, I flip through my photographs from this morning. One of them, a tight close-up with my thumb in my boxers and just the beginning of the shape of something farther down, is cool. I load it up into the app on my phone and start messing around with it, making it black and white anddoing some cropping. Then I upload it into Grindr and send it to Des.

I drop another Slack message to my supervisor saying that, after a bit of preliminary research, I’m going to need more time to draw some first thoughts together—will it be okay if I write up an initial run-through of ideas by the end of the day? She gives me a thumbs-up in return. This job is actually so easy in some ways: I’m a small cog in a very big wheel.

After a bit of a trawl, I pull down several documents about developments in the tech industry and a map of the market. Two annual reports from companies that are making headlines pop up in my search results and I open them up and begin reading. After about an hour of wading through loads of financial bullshit, one thing is obvious: The numbers are appalling.Thisis why tech is an investment nightmare: It’s impossible to tell whether they’ve got anything real or who’s going to win in a space.

Some of the data from venture capital firms looks interesting, though, and I’m deep into number crunching when Mei, our Chinese analyst, appears at my desk and plonks her ass down next to my screen.

“Whatcha working on?”

A guy walks past my desk at the end of the row and leers at her. “Liking the pants today, Mei,” he says, making a cupping motion with his hands before turning around to walk backward and shooting at her with two fingers.

Her eyebrows rise up into her hairline, and I shake my head. Jesus, these assholes. Mei is the only person I trust in this pit of vipers. I don’t know how I’ve moved from the jocks at college to the jocks in an investment bank, but all the guys here all talk in loud, overconfident voices while fiddling with the cuffs of their striped shirts. They’d steal any ideas sooner than turn round to impress people higher up the line. I lean forward.

“Tech,” I say quietly.

Her eyes widen. “A bit of a dangerous strategy, no?”

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