Fashionistas (3 page)

Y
ou know Jane McNeill. She is a familiar type—tough but good. She might have an abrupt manner, but she knows her job and sells magazines. You’ll learn a lot from her, kid.

Don’t believe it. There is nothing good about her. Her temper is short, and her patience is like a shot of smooth whiskey—gone in one gulp. Kindness is an affliction that weak people suffer, and if you take a week off after your mother dies, she’ll roll her eyes in front of everyone, as if your personal indulgence is a great inconvenience to her. She delights in humiliating you in front of the entire staff, and when you actually know the answer to an out-of-left-field question about, say, hemlines in the fifties, and can form an intelligent response, she will reach deep into her bag of tricks until she finds something you know nothing about—like what Martha Washington wore to George’s inauguration. Meetings are tense and awful and you always feel as though you’re arguing a case in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on a topic you know nothing about—quick, list three reasons for the silkworm strike in Upper Volta. (This is a trick ques
tion; silkworms aren’t unionized.) She is an anxiety-dream factory and you’re the well-oiled cog that keeps it running smoothly.

Jane is rarely in New York, but her presence is logarithmic and can be measured like an earthquake. When she comes into the office two days in a row, the devastation is a hundred thousand times worse than if she had just dropped by for one. Small villages crumble, and your self-esteem, already compromised at several stress points thanks to shoddy workmanship, disappears completely in a cloud of dust.

You suffer her abuse for two endless years before finally getting the promotion that the managing editor had been dangling in front of you like a carrot on a stick for more than eighteen months. (“If you can just hold on a little longer, Vig…. An assistant editorship at
Fashionista
goes a long way.”) It’s only when you are about to smash your computer with a hatchet and walk away from the rubble that Jane calls you into her office to inform you of the good news. You are still at the magazine and you are still subjected to the slings and arrows of her outrageous temper, but you are no longer on the front line. There is another detail-oriented self-starter at your desk and it’s now her job to absorb the blows. She’s being paid to be your shield. You are so glad not to be her—and so ashamed at the relief you feel—that you avert your eyes whenever you pass the desk.

Jane does sell magazines, but that has to do more with the susceptibility of the public than the freshness of her ideas. Every year, at her insistence, we run an article on the classic style of Jackie O or the effortless grace of Grace Kelly as if these things haven’t ever been done. But they have. You’ve seen all the pictures before, only alongside better-written text.

The secret to Jane’s success is aligning herself with up-and-coming magazines that are already on the rise and then taking credit for their inevitable increased sales. She’s done it before at
Face
and
Voyager,
and she will do it again when the
next big thing appears on the horizon. She has a genius for self-promotion and a sort of ruthless glamour that appeals to the publishers of glossies.

You’re not the only one who is counting the days.

T
he bathroom on
Fashionista
’s editorial side isn’t the sort of place where I go to sit down and get comfortable. It’s a busy spot with lots of drive-thru traffic and little privacy. The stall doors are cut low, and you can see the foreheads of your co-workers as they zip up their jeans. If you want a moment alone, your best bet is the elevators. Sometimes you get one to yourself for all twenty-two floors.

Allison, Sarah and Kate seem quite at home here. While I watch the door, waiting for strange executives to enter, they slide onto the counters and fluff their hair in the unflattering mirrors.

“Now is the time,” says Sarah.

“Now is the time?” I ask, struck by how much I don’t know. I don’t know why now is the time, I don’t know how I can be a linchpin and I don’t know what plan they’ve devised to bring down Jane.

Allison nods and avails herself of one of the myriad hair-care products that litter the counter. She leans forward, sweeps her hair over her head and spritzes. Today she is wearing gray
linen pants and a white sleeveless blouse. The outfit should look elegant and svelte, but on Allison it looks like something she threw on because everything else was in the wash. Brushing the bangs out of her eyes, she says, “Now is the time to strike.”

I take my eyes off the door. We’ve been in here for ten minutes and it hasn’t opened once. I’m beginning to believe it never will. “All right,” I say.

“We have a window of opportunity,” explains Kate.

“A window?” I watch Allison flip her head over again and give her hair another spritz. When she rights herself, she looks exactly the same, only redder.

“A small window,” clarifies Sarah, just in case I assumed the window was wide and spacious.

“There’s no way Marguerite Tourneau is going to last long as editorial director,” says Allison, putting the hairspray down, the last spritz having done its job. “You just know Jane is going to oust her within two months.”

Sarah rolls her eyes. “Two months? Ha! I give her a week.”

“Longer than a week,” says Kate. “More like a month.”

“A whole month?” Sarah is doubtful.

“It must take at least that long to get her hiring papers through Human Resources,” Kate explains, logically. “You can’t fire someone before you’ve officially hired them.”

This reasoning satisfies the three of them and they turn to look at me. I’m sitting on the couch, my back against its supple leather, minding my own business. Linchpin, ingenious plan, small window, time to strike—I’ve been paying attention. I don’t know why but I have.

They are staring at me with hungry, expectant looks in their eyes. “What?”

“Will you help?” they say in unison, like they’re a cheerleading squad.

“I don’t know. What’s the plan?”

Allison looks at the other two. Kate conveys no with her eyebrows. Sarah backs her up with a less discreet shake of the
head. Allison sighs. “We can’t tell you the plan until you agree to help.”

I never go blindly into situations. Awful things always happen. “I can’t agree to help until you tell me the plan.”

My immutable will irritates them and they glare at one another, speaking whole sentences with their eyelash flutters. I’m tempted to excuse myself, to give them a moment alone in order to have this discussion in private, but I’m too comfortable and I stay firmly affixed to the couch. I have no doubt of the outcome. They can flap their eyebrows all they want, but sooner or later they will tell me the plan. They have to. I’m the linchpin.

A
llison Harper is an unlikely beauty editor. Her ordinary appearance doesn’t match anyone’s image of glamour. She tries, though, wearing the right strappy sandals (Jimmy Choo) and the right pants (Emanuel Ungaro) and the right lipstick (Lip Glass by MAC), but something about the finished product refuses to pull together in the right way. Even though the elements are there, even though on a mannequin the look would be impeccable, something about her humanity throws everything off.

At thirty-two, Allison is three years older than I am. In recent months her usually upbeat disposition has taken on a particularly dour bent. She was passed over again for a senior editor position—they head-hunted from another top glossy—and she’s starting to realize things. She’s starting to realize that her future might not work out after all and that despite a pair of fine eyes, she’s not an Elizabeth Bennett. Allison Harper isn’t the heroine of her own story. She is, instead, a secondary character, a Charlotte who will trade her
dreams for compromises that may or may not work out. That past life regression conceit that might have led her to assume she was Cleopatra is fading. She’s starting to realize she was nobody, a nameless slave whose existence passed unrecorded.

It’s an awful, uncomfortable thing to watch and I take the long way to the bathroom to avoid her cubicle. On late nights when the offices are almost deserted, I hear her on the phone with her best friend relating the day’s trespasses. There is a mystified quality in her voice as she explains how she wasn’t assigned the Girl Talk feature (“So tell me about your beauty regimen: Is it eyeliner mascara or mascara eyeliner?”) or even the Style Wise Man interview (“If you had to choose between leather and suede, which would you pick and why?”). In angry tones she tells Greta that she was given yet another advertorial piece that will be yoked together from industry press releases. This is not what she went to Columbia for.

Allison blames Jane for her career’s inertia, which is a reasonably accurate assessment. Jane doesn’t make decisions based on skill and merit like other working professionals. She hires beautiful editors who can’t write and fires ugly ones who can. She chooses her assistants as if selecting a fashion accessory, and we are all a matched set: tall, thin, straight chin-length brown hair.

The magazine is run like a seventeenth-century French court. You don’t speak unless spoken to. You avert your eyes in Jane’s presence. Her need for subservience is almost pathological, and if it weren’t against OSHA rules (see under “repetitive stress injuries”), she would no doubt have us genuflect. Her interest in
Fashionista
will last only as long as its growing readership does and the second there is a dip in sales, she will be gone. She will be off this leaky ship, and the magazine will start the long slide into insolvency. Witness the now defunct
Voyager
and the struggling
Faces.
Investing in good people and laying the groundwork for years of successful
magazine publishing is not part of her plan. After Jane the deluge.

It is little surprise that the peasants are revolting.

I
’m the linchpin for two reasons: Jane respects me and Alex owes me a favor.

“No, he doesn’t,” I say.

“Yes, he does,” Allison contradicts.

“No, he doesn’t,” I say again. As a lowly associate editor, I’m little help to anyone, even myself.

“Yes, he does. Last May’s makeover issue,” an unseen Sarah calls out from one of the stalls.

“Last May’s makeover issue?” I’m trying to remember some fleeting interaction with Alex Keller but nothing comes to mind. Nothing comes to mind because we’ve never interacted.

A toilet flushes and Sarah emerges, zipping up her ankle-length capris. “Last May’s makeover issue,” she says definitively, turning on the taps to wash her hands.

The May issue featured a special make-over-your-life section, which ran alongside the regular assortment of bashes and balls, but Keller stayed in his corner and I stayed in mine. “He doesn’t owe me a favor.”

“Carla Hayden,” Kate says, and looks at me expectantly.

“Carla Hayden?” The name sounds vaguely familiar but I don’t know why. She could be a famous actress, a Tinseltown hairstylist or a new
Fashionista
employee. Names inhabit a small, rarely used portion of my brain.

“Carla Hayden,” says Sarah with a nod. She dries her hands on a paper towel, tosses it into the trash and throws herself onto the couch next to me. I’m accosted by her perfume, a flowery confection that smells expensive.

“Short, a little pudgy, dishwater-brown hair,” adds Allison, as if these details are the sort that will jog my memory.

As far as I’m concerned this describes half the world. I stare at them blankly.

“She was a May makeover,” Kate says.

Sarah turns to me with a frustrated sigh. “You put her in a Chloe bias-cut dress and gave her blond highlights.”

“Oh, the Chloe,” I say, recognition striking at last. It’s their fault that it took me so long. If they’d had the presence of mind to bring the May issue with them, we could have sorted this out five minutes ago. “Her name was Carla Hayden?”

“Carla Hayden Keller,” says Allison.

“Carla Hayden Keller?” I repeat.

“Carla Hayden Keller,” Kate nods.

“You mean he’s married?” I try to imagine the sort of woman who would wed a bad-tempered, wart-faced troll. Short, pudgy and dishwater-brown didn’t seem the type.

“She’s his sister,” corrects Sarah with a laugh. “She dropped her last name to throw Jane off the scent.”

“His sister?” Keller never gave the slightest indication that he had siblings, so we didn’t factor any into his life story. It seems bad-mannered—and typical—of him to start throwing them around now. “I didn’t know he had a sister,” I say, cross. We should have known about a sister.

“He has two,” Kate declares.

“The bastard,” I say, trying to make sense of this develop
ment, which was at odds with what we already knew about him. Sisters should have been a civilizing force on the young Alex. “They must be older. They must be older and domineering and mean like Cinderella’s stepsisters.”

Sarah shakes her head. “They’re younger.”

“Damn.” I don’t know how such an awful man can have younger sisters. It just doesn’t seem possible.

“So you get why he owes you a favor?” asks Kate.

I do twenty to thirty makeovers a year. Nobody has ever treated it like a favor. “No.”

“You changed her life,” Sarah says.

This is precisely the sort of silly nonsense we propagate in our magazine but it’s not true. Your happiness doesn’t really depend on the type of eyelash curler you buy. “I changed her hair.”

“Two days after leaving here with her blond highlights and Chloe dress, Carla Hayden Keller got a job as a host of
Generation Y
on the Metro channel. At a Metro function, she met renowned corporate financier Alistair Concoran, who fell instantly in love with her. They got married two months later, bought a house in Westchester and are even now expecting their first child,” Allison says with a wide smile.

“So you see,” says Kate, “Alex Keller owes you one.”