Fashionistas (2 page)

T
he Monday afternoon meeting is an extremely dull affair. Fifty people gather around a large conference table with coffee cups in hand to talk about prints and photographers and shoots and stylists and schedules and all the other mind-numbing minutiae that go into a successful layout. Only seven or eight people are actually needed for these conversations, but we all have to go and suffer. We all have to drag our overworked carcasses to the conference room and listen to the photo department argue over which photo of Cate Blanchett best represents her curly phase.

We rarely discuss anything copy-related and when we do, it’s just to establish if an article is in and, if it’s not in, when it can be expected. One Monday a month—usually the second, but sometimes the third—there is extended debate about who’s going to appear as a contributor. The contributor’s page is that page after the editor’s note that you skip over on your way to the letters. Readers barely glance at it if they even look at it at all. Still, finding the right balance of people is a delicate science and we discuss the ingredients of
the contributor’s page as if preparing a soufflé (a soupçon less stylist, a dash of writer). When Jane isn’t at meetings, I’m usually hard-pressed to keep my eyes open.

I’m trying to keep my eyes open now when the conference room door opens. A striking woman in a classic black dress enters carrying a Chanel bag. She has an Audrey Hepburn thing going, with her long cigarette holder, her string of pearls and her tall, thin frame, and she’s standing inside the doorway, as though she hasn’t decided if she wants to stay, as though she might just flag down a cab and leave. There are no cabs in the conference room.

The managing editor stops berating the staff for not filling out green sheets and looks up. She sees the smoke swirling around the conference room and starts coughing pointedly. Smoking is allowed but only in one’s office with the door closed.

“Am I late?” the woman says, having decided she might as well stay.

Lydia coughs again and then shakes her head. “No, of course not.” She smiles in the obsequious way we all do when Jane is present. But this is not Jane, so the smile seems out of place and toadyish. “We were just going over some preliminary information while waiting for you.”

The woman smiles and puffs on the cigarette through six inches of plastic before sitting down to the right of Lydia. “Excellent.”

Christine leans in. “That’s the woman who was burning incense this morning,” she whispers in my ear.

“How do you know?” I ask.

“I followed the scent. I think she’s the new editorial director.”

This is news. “What happened to Eleanor?”

“She was fired in Paris last week. I don’t know the details.”

“Eleanor was sitting in Jane’s seat during the Anna Sui show,” says Delia, the editorial assistant for the events pages. She’s sitting behind us, on a bench that lines the conference
room’s east wall, and she leans forward to speak quietly in our ears. “Jane was forced to sit in the last row and, as soon as the show was over, she fired Eleanor right then and there. Eleanor insisted that it was all a misunderstanding—someone showed her to that seat—but Jane didn’t believe a word of it. As it turns out, the publisher was at the show sitting next to an old acquaintance who just happened to be perfect for the job. He hired her on the spot.”

I stare at Delia, amazed by the details she’s managed to track down in a few hours. “How do you know all this?”

Delia shrugs and rests her head against the wall. “I hear things.”

Before I respond to Delia, Lydia coughs again. The new editorial director shifts the cigarette from her right hand to her left. She will let no cough pass unavenged.

“I’d like to introduce a new member of our staff,” Lydia says with little enthusiasm. “She comes to us from Sydney, where she served as editor in chief for Australian
Vogue
for six years. Say hello to Marguerite Tourneau Holland Beckett Velazquez Constantine Thomas.”

There is a quiet murmur of people mumbling and saying hello.

“No,” I say very quietly in Christine’s ear.

She smiles. “Yes.”

“No,” I say again, more insistent. She can’t be for real. Nobody drags a laundry list of names behind them.

“I think she’s on her fifth husband.”

“But still….”

“She loved them all.”

“Can you see that on the masthead? It’ll take up three lines. She’s an editor, for God’s sake. She must know how to cut for fit.”

Christine smiles but doesn’t say a thing. She’s watching the drama unfold with unprecedented interest. Everyone around the table is now alert, not just the photography department.

“Thank you, Linda, for that—” she pauses here to find an
adjective but after a long search abandons the endeavor “—introduction. So kind of you. Well,” she says, blowing smoke once more in Lydia’s face before turning her attention to the people around the table, “I’m very happy to be here. I’ve long been an admirer of
Fashionista
and look forward to working with the team that puts together such a fine magazine.”

We are not used to being told by editorial directors that we put together a fine magazine and some of us actually titter at the novelty.

“Now, I want to get to know everyone around this table,” she assures us with a convincing amount of sincerity, “but since time is of the essence, why don’t we start with each of you telling me your name and what you do at
Fashionista.
”

Despite the fact that we perform this sort of ritual with alarming regularity—every time someone new starts or a person from Human Resources comes down to “say hi”—it’s still one of my least favorite activities. I hate having to say, “Vig Morgan, associate editor,” and I hate hearing everyone else say it as well. There is something vaguely embarrassing about identifying yourself like you’re a Von Trapp child stepping out of line at the sound of a dog whistle.

David Rodrigues from the art department goes first, and instead of just nodding vaguely like the people from Human Resources do, Marguerite asks him a question. She asks him about the shirt he is wearing, a brown cotton tee with a curious logo. David tells her that it’s his own design. Our new editorial director says something about him being the next William Morris and orders one for herself. She continues around the table in the same vein, getting a feel for each staff member and paying at least one compliment. She asks Christine about her cooking classes. She tells me that she’s thinking of getting her teeth whitened thanks to my article.

Marguerite Tourneau Holland Beckett Velazquez Constantine Thomas is winning and it works. We are won.

The afternoon meeting lasts until three-thirty, but nobody minds except Lydia. Lydia has watched the proceedings get
away from her like a little girl who’s lost her kite to a strong gust of wind. There is an odd, helpless look on her face. She tries several times to regain control—she still has the string and is holding on tight—but Marguerite, with her seemingly endless cigarette, just blows smoke at her with indifference.

In the end, there is little talk of photo shoots. Lydia has no idea where matters stand for most of November’s layouts and she now has to do things the hard way. She now has to visit each editor with her mock-up and her map and talk one-on-one in order to sort it all out.

But nobody cares. Lydia is a nice enough managing editor and she gets the job done, but she never goes to bat for you. She’s not one of those managers who goes to the boss and stands up for “her people.” She’s a kowtowing minion. She’s a yes gal with a limited vocabulary. When you work three nights straight until two in the morning because Jane decides at six o’clock that she hates the whole issue, don’t expect anything. Don’t expect a raise. Don’t expect comp time. Don’t expect a dashed-off, handwritten note saying thank you. Don’t expect Lydia to remind your editor in chief that six o’clock isn’t the time to start tearing up layouts. Just don’t expect a thing.

A
llison is a series of loosely connected stories that travel through the thin thumbtack wall that separates my cubicle from hers. Her tales are so disjointed that sometimes she seems less a person than a device, like the Illustrated Man in the Ray Bradbury book whose only function is to provide a narrative arc.

Because we work for the same magazine, Allison and I see each other regularly, across the conference table, outside the bathroom, but we never get beyond polite nods and blank, meaningless smiles. I know so much about her life—the men who don’t call the next morning, the awful women whom her father dates, the vacations that fall through, the recurring yeast infection that the doctors can’t figure out—that I can barely look her in the eye. These are things I shouldn’t know. These are things that I’d play close to my chest, that I wouldn’t talk about at work, that I’d leave the office and find a pay phone on the street to discuss. I’m always painfully aware that the flimsy wall between us is like a scrim and if
you shine the light on it from the right direction it disappears completely.

I’m surprised, then, when Allison sticks her small blond head over the barrier and says, “Vig, can we take a meeting?”

This request is so out of left field that it takes me a few seconds to process it. Even though she has addressed me directly, even though she has used my name, I assume at first that she’s talking to someone else. There must be another Vig present. I look up, expecting to see this other Vig standing beside me, but I’m alone in my cubicle. I stop typing.

“Can you spare a few?” she asks, her head tilted in a friendly angle. “This shouldn’t take too long.”

Since I have overheard almost every conversation she has had for the past two years, I know this isn’t true. Everything Allison does takes too long. The abrupt, expedient nanoconference that the senior editors rely on to keep things moving along smoothly doesn’t exist in Allison’s universe. She is vulnerable to long digressions and often finds herself a million miles away from her point. Instead of beaming herself back to the beginning, she painstakingly retraces her steps. I don’t know how the people on the other end of the line deal with it, but sometimes I have to get out of my seat and take a walk to the water cooler just to get away.

Although I have a mountain of work to get through before six, I’m too curious to say no. Allison’s interest in me is unprecedented, and I can’t take the chance that it will happen again. There are very few things I enter into thinking “once in a lifetime,” but I think that now as I stand up.

“All right,” I say, looking up at her expectantly.

“Not here. Do you mind if we…?” She gestures with her head.

I’m not used to her showing any sort of discretion and for a moment I fear that she’s going to fire me. But this moment is fleeting and I toss away the thought. Allison is an associate
editor just like I am; she doesn’t have that sort of power. In fact, she has no power at all.

Since I don’t mind, I follow her down the hall. The
Fashionista
offices are dark and dreary and the only natural light can be found in private offices behind closed doors. We walk past Reception and through to the advertising side. I’ve never been over here before and I am instantly struck by how nice everything is. The surfaces are shiny and the lighting is soft and not quite fluorescent. We make several twists and turns and arrive at a swinging door that says Ladies’ Room. Allison enters a code and opens the door. We are in the executive washroom, which has three pristine stalls and a small carpeted lounge area with a black leather couch. Sitting on the couch are Kate Anderson from Accessories and Sarah Cohen from Photo. I am thoroughly disconcerted by the couch, the carpet and the company. Although not so very far from home, I feel like I’ve stumbled down the rabbit hole.

“Hi,” I say, puzzled and a little bit uncomfortable, as though I am sitting at the wrong table in the lunchroom. I’m years past this and resolve to shake it off. I look at Allison for an explanation. She in turn nods at Sarah and Kate, who both jump to their feet.

“Thanks for coming,” says Sarah, putting her hands on my shoulders and pushing me down onto the couch. I reluctantly take a seat.

“Why am I here?”

“You’re the linchpin,” says Kate.

“The linchpin?” I repeat.

“Yes, the linchpin,” agrees Allison.

“The linchpin?” I say again.

“The pin that linches it,” explains Sarah.

I examine all three with curiosity. “What pin am I linching?”

“Our plan,” says Allison.

“Your plan?” I ask.

“Our plan,” Allison says with satisfaction.

“But which plan?” I’m forced to ask, as if she has so many different plans that I can’t keep them all straight.

“Our ingenious plan to take down Jane McNeill.”