19
JULIA
Julia was tired.
She was always tired, but it just seemed so pathetic to complain, to talk of how fatigued you were. Men never said they were tired, which made sense, because compared to women they did f**k-all. But right now, alone in her office, the weekly sales call booming on speaker behind her, Julia could admit she was that most American of all states: exhausted.
She’d just returned from London and Amsterdam, where she’d spent five days. Normally after such a trip Julia would go directly home from the airport – she hated how she felt after a red-eye, so shriveled and used – and wash off her makeup and slather herself with creams. Her maternity leave and Aaron’s arrival, however, had both served as reminders of that most indispensable of corporate drudgeries, face time: t
