Wes was quiet for a long moment.
"Okay," he said.
"You say okay a lot."
"I'm going to try saying it less and meaning it more."
Anil almost smiled. He didn't, quite. He was not ready to give that away either.
"For the record," he said, as Wes stood up, "this doesn't make us even. It doesn't make us friends. It makes us two people who work at the same place and are going to stand in the same room on Friday. We'll see what happens after that."
"That's fair."
"I know it's fair," said Anil. "I'm a copywriter. I choose my words."
* * *
Fergus came to Margot's office on Thursday, which nobody had expected, least of all Fergus.
He was twenty-four. He had a mustache he was trying out that was not, so far, working, and he stood in the doorway twisting the lanyard of his ID badge around one finger until the tip went white.
"I started it," he said. "The chant. I know I said I didn't. Everybody knows I did. Bettina told me there's a history of the instant camera as an intimate medium and that I'd stomped on it, and then she gave me a book. A whole book. With footnotes." He swallowed. "I posted the picture, too. The circled one. I took it down Sunday. I thought it was funny. It was funny in my head. And then I thought about—if it were me in there. With people outside. Yelling at me what to do." He stopped twisting the lanyard. "I'm really sorry, Margot. I wanted to say it to your face because saying it in a message felt like—like doing the same thing again, kind of. From a distance."
Margot looked at him for a while. She thought of all the young people she'd seen do something careless at a party and spend the next ten years being known for it. She thought that the best thing that could happen to Fergus was to be forgiven a little less than he hoped, and remembered a little less than he feared.
"Thank you," she said. "That took nerve. I accept the apology. I'm still annoyed."
"That's fair."
"Everybody keeps saying that to me this week."
"Is it working?"