With her smooth brown skin, bootcamp-toned arms, curly black hair, and mischievous smile, Aisha would look great in front of a camera; but her expertise lies on the other side of the lens. She’s shorter than me, but fit and mighty from her thrice-weekly kickboxing classes, which I know about because it’s the only time her phone’s unresponsive. As the photographer and Photoshop expert at Sweet Nothings, she’s in high demand, helping our clients slap a Vaseline filter over their online images. That sounds unskilled, when nothing could be further from the truth. Aisha turns profile pics into seamless works of art, covering her tracks so well no one can tell she’s cast a spell. Although we’ve spoken on the phone a few times, this is our first in-person conversation, and meeting her has already made the trip worth it, I decide.

“We could’ve been famous,” I lament.

We clink our four-dollar punch flasks together, purchased with drink tickets Clifford provided. They were given to us by a man in a hockey uniform at the door, whom Clifford has apparently hired as some kind of mascot for the midafternoon soirée. The hockey player’s jersey has the Sweet Nothings logo on it, complete with hearts and a cupid arrow. Weirder still: The guy is wearing a mask.

A hockey mask. Inside a bar.

“Sweet Nothings!!” the dude shouts every couple of minutes, for reasons unknown. Is it to amp up the crowd? Is it a team-building exercise? Who can say? Maybe Clifford pays him per shout.

“What is the deal with Clifford’s memos?” I groan in my best Seinfeld voice. “Did you see today’s paranoid freak-out? My favorite part was the caveat at the beginning.”

“The WARNING,” Aisha sputters with a laugh.

“That it, quote, ‘wouldn’t be an easy memo to read.’ ”

“We’ve got news for you, Cliffy. None of them are easy to read.”

“What was he even talking about? It was more cryptic than usual.”

“Oh, oh, oh.” She leans toward me to faux-whisper: “I was the subtweet of that memo.”

I’m giddy. “No.”

“Oh, yes. Clifford wants to train me as a double-agent.”

“How . . . what . . .” I stammer.

“Because I also work for his ex-wife’s company. The original company.”

“You’re the ‘double-dipper,’ ” I piece together.

We both make “ew” faces at his word choice.

“He offered to ‘read me in’ for top-level clearance at Sweet Nothings. He wants me to look through his ideas file, and then he wants my detailed analysis of whether our concepts are better or worse than Leanne’s.”

“And now he’s worried Leanne has asked you to do the same, and you could conceivably be a triple agent?”

“Probably? Your guess is as good as mine.”

“How did that whole thing between Clifford and Leanne . . . occur?”