She’d been asked to speak to a room full of producers today, the PGA president said, because of her standout work as a founding member of Genders United, the new organization formed to fight sexual harassment and women’s economic inequality in the wake of “Sexual Assault and the Casting Couch,” the Hollywood Reporter exposé of Jerry Silver. Phoebe rubbed her temples. She tried to see the freedom fighter being described in this introduction, but there was only this woman on the dais, who’d worn a pale pink jumpsuit to deliver a speech to a room full of (still) mostly men and who smiled apologetically at the conference chair every time she was praised.

The presentation room broke into applause. Phoebe clapped politely. Her tablemates had their chairs turned to face the stage, so Phoebe could watch Holly walk to the podium without being watched herself. Holly was several inches shorter than her, even in those gold heels. She probably wore her hair long like that believing it would give her some height, but the overall effect was to make her look like a life-size doll.

“Thank you, I’m so happy to be here,” Holly said in a voice that sounded disconcertingly rough, like cotton candy with bits of gravel stuck in it. She cleared her throat and took a sip of water. “We’re all here today because we care about this industry. We care about creating professional opportunities for women.”

Phoebe scanned the exits, some corner of the room from which Ted might be watching, and she pictured, to her surprise, not the mogul in the headlines but the boy she’d known in college. She checked behind her, as if Ted might be standing at the door, waiting for Phoebe to ditch this conference and come with him to the movies. Dorm meetings, dances, networking—they were all a bore, didn’t he always say so? Wasn’t he always stealing her away to show her his next big idea? But no. He wasn’t here. Why would he be? It was only his wife up there on the stage, and he probably had much more important things to do.

Holly went on to recite a list of statistics—the number of cis and trans women who’d directed films in the last year, the number of assistant directors, cinematographers, production designers, and so on who were women or transgender, the percentage of graduates from the top ten film schools last year who were female or nonbinary. The man on Phoebe’s left skimmed email on his phone. The man on her right pushed eggs around his plate with a fork.