Fashionistas (5 page)

M
arguerite Tourneau Holland Beckett Velazquez Constantine Thomas calls me into her office for a talk. Since Christine, Kate and Allison have already gone before me, I’m expecting the summons and don’t leave for lunch until it comes. Then I walk down the hall to a small office that shares a wall with the elevator shaft. You can hear the lifts going by.

This is not Eleanor Zorn’s old office. Eleanor had a large corner suite with a comfortable sitting area and wide windows that overlook both Sixth Avenue and Forty-ninth Street. She had bright spots of sunlight in the mornings and the iridescent glow of Radio City Music Hall in the evenings. Marguerite has none of that. Her office is so tiny, it can barely accommodate a desk and chair. There is no place for a couch or a coffee table, and for the moment visitors have to sit on a plastic folding chair that is missing its fourth leg.

Marguerite has a window, but it’s the sort you find in nineteenth-century French adventure novels, the type that reminds you of the world outside but doesn’t let you see it. All you can see are brown panels from the building across the
street, and the view itself hangs on the wall like a piece of modern art.

This is further evidence of Jane’s vehement dislike.

Although this meeting has been advertised as an informal chat, I’ve brought half my file cabinet with me and several old issues of the magazine. I don’t know what to expect and I want to be prepared.

“Bonjour,”
she says, holding an antique watering can. She’s in the middle of watering her plants. This is only the afternoon of her second day, but she has already imprinted herself on the little office with African violets and flowering geraniums and wandering pathos, and her imprint has the comfortable aura of perpetuity. Her window ledge looks like it has always been a greenhouse.

“Hello,” I say, sitting down. The plastic chair wobbles under my weight, and I grab on to the desk for stability. I notice then that she has several magazines opened to articles of mine. My one stab at journalism, fifteen hundred words on the care and presentation of teeth, is on top.

Marguerite follows my gaze. “Yes, I was just reviewing some of your work. This one here is
très magnifique. La Fashionista
needs more informative pieces like this, don’t you think?”

“More pieces like that one wouldn’t hurt,” I say cautiously. Jane only asks your opinion in order to pick it apart and I expect this behavior from all my employers.

“Excellent,” she says, sprinkling water on the last plant, a thriving azalea, before taking a seat. “Why don’t you draw up for me a list of ideas of useful articles that you think might be right for
Fashionista
and I’ll see what I can do.”

Although I relish the idea of writing practical, useful articles instead of celebrity fluff, I refuse to have my head turned. I know a campaign promise when I hear one. “All right.”

She smiles. “You’ve been here how long?”

“Five years.”

“And you started as Jane’s assistant?”

“Yes, for two years.”

Marguerite raises her eyebrows. “Two years! How did you put up with that ha— I mean, two years, what a long time to be someone’s assistant. I know mine never stay above fourteen months. Onward and upward, you know.” She considers me for a moment. “You and Jane must be
très
compatible.”

I shrug.
Compatible
is the wrong word to explain my and Jane’s relationship but there is no right word. With Jane, things can’t be described; they can only be experienced.

“
Bien.
I hope we’ll get along just as well. I plan to be here for quite a while.” She turns to her window for a moment. “I’ve been in Sydney for so many years that I’d forgotten how energizing this city is.”

“How many years were you there?” I ask, to make small talk, to learn more about her, to enjoy the novelty of pleasant conversation with a superior.

Her answers are long and I stay in her office for twenty more minutes. When I leave, she reminds me to type up a list of article ideas and I assure her that I haven’t forgotten.

Marguerite is friendly and approachable, and although I can find no cracks in her sincerity, I’m not convinced. Her efforts to get to know the staff seem genuine, but there’s enough here to make me suspicious. Marguerite seems too much like a soldier gathering information behind enemy lines, and I realize that Jane’s behavior might actually be in keeping with the situation. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you.

W
e get the memo first thing on Wednesday morning. Marguerite has been in the building for less than forty-eight hours and already Jane is taking the offensive. Already she is cutting trips short and sending out directives.

“What do you think this means?” I say, leaning against the thumbtack wall that separates me from Allison. It’s the first time I’ve ever stuck my head over the partition to make conversation, and she looks up in surprise.

“What’s that?” she asks.

“It’s a memo from Jane.”

“I haven’t even glanced at it yet.” Curious now, she reaches into her overflowing in-box, removes the top layer and reads the memo aloud. “Please note herewith that
Fashionista
’s editor in chief Jane McNeill will be using her full given name of Jane Carolyn-Ann McNeill on all official and unofficial
Fashionista
documents. Thank you for your compliance in this matter.”

“She had Jackie send it out to every media outlet in the city.”

Allison smiles. “Someone, although I won’t name names—and, yes, I do mean
names
—is feeling threatened.” Because she thinks that I’m wavering, she lowers her voice and says, “The time to strike is now. We’ll never have such an excellent opportunity again. Think about it.” Then she straightens her shoulders and returns to the morning paper, the picture of innocence.

I sit down at my desk and try to focus on the piece I’m working on. It’s an article about engagement rings for the wedding issue, which is fast approaching. Harry Winston, always willing to have their diamonds shot on either the red carpet of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion or the pink burlap of a
Fashionista
layout, has turned oddly shy. When we requested pictures of several stars’ engagement rings, they wrote back with descriptions only. The result is an awkward feature that reads like an anthropological study. Scientists are reasonably sure that Madonna’s Edwardian ring resembles this one pictured here. Jennifer Aniston’s ring with 4.5-carat emerald-cut diamonds may have looked like this ring from Tiffany’s. It’s as though these rings are dinosaurs and we’re piecing together the historical record from their bones.

I’m trying to make the description of Anne Heche’s ring seem like something more than pure speculation when Dot calls my name. She is standing at the entrance to her office with a pile of magazines in her arms. “Your Next Meeting— Eleven O’clock,” she says, before disappearing behind a closed door.

I sigh, bored with conjecture, and reread Jane’s memo. Although it’s a long way from agreeing to sponsor a highly visible and controversial gallery exhibit, changing her name is a prime example of irrational behavior. For the first time, I think that their plan might work. Their plan might prevail, evil might be deposed and
Fashionista
might one day be a happy place to work.

Allison is right. I am wavering.

M
aya orders a cosmopolitan tumbled. The bartender stares at her uncomprehendingly until she scoffs and says, “In a tumbler. I’d like a cosmopolitan in a tumbler.” He gives her another look before walking away to put vodka, Cointreau and cranberry juice into a cocktail shaker. “And no sugar on the rim,” she calls after him. “In my ongoing quest to identify, isolate and eliminate the elements in my life that are no longer working for me, I’ve recently settled on white, unrefined sugar,” she says, cutting a sliver of brie and putting it on a cracker. “I’m slowly letting carbs back into my life.”

The bartender places the tumbled cosmo down on a napkin in front of Maya, puts a gin and tonic in my general vicinity and disappears. We are in the bar at the Paramount hotel. We always seek shelter here when bad things happen to Maya. Cosmopolitans are her comfort food.

The last time we stepped foot in the dark, low-ceilinged room was scarcely a month ago. Maya, whose agent, Marcia, was moving to a new agency and not taking her with her, had been in serious need of comfort.

“Yes, those are actual tears of frustration that you often hear about but rarely see,” she had said then, pathetically handing me her dear-Maya letter.

But it wasn’t just dear Maya. “Who’s Dylan?” I ask, although I have a suspicion. I have a reasonable idea what happened. Marcia, in her haste to dump old, unproductive clients, had been remiss in tailoring her form letter. The part where it assures its reader that it has been a pleasure working with her was suppose to assure Maya, not someone named Dylan. “Can you believe that?” she says, her voice a sad whine. Her head dropped forward, depositing amber curls onto the bar. “I wasn’t even given the dignity of my own letter.”

“At least you know you’re not the only one she dumped,” I pointed out.

“That’s true,” she said, not prepared to laugh but no longer teetering on the edge of tears.

Although I’m not that good at comfort, I recognize success and continued in the same vein. “And it turns what should be an out-and-out tragedy into an absurdist comedy.”

“It is a tragedy,” she said, finishing her cosmopolitan in three gulps. This is why she hates martini glasses; she can’t take gulps without spilling cranberry juice all over her Donna Karan blouses. “I’m back to square one. I’m standing exactly where I stood eighteen months ago, only I’m eighteen months older.”

Thirty loomed large in Maya’s mind. The landmark birthday wouldn’t have been a problem if she still had an agent. But the marker was rapidly approaching—she only had fifteen days left to find new representation. It seemed unlikely that she would and so she has tensed her shoulders in expectation of a heavy blow. This is the sort of thing that happens when you set objectives for yourself and try to achieve things. Goals are the real enemy.

Despite all my hard work, tears welled up in Maya’s eyes and she backslid into heaving sobs. I understood her sorrow. For a little while, she had stood apart from all the other magazine freelancers with manuscripts under their arms. For a
little while, she’d been distinguishable. Now she was tossed back into the chorus line, where we all look alike.

I ordered another round of drinks, handed her some tissues and began muttering platitudes about things happening for a reason. I thought she’d had too much vodka to notice that I suddenly sounded like a greeting card, but she wasn’t that drunk. She wasn’t too drunk at all and she refused to let me offer mass-produced comfort, although that is what I do best. So I started slinging mud. It’s the last defense of the helpless. “You’re really better off. She was an awful agent.”

Maya balled the tissues in her fist. This was not what she wanted to hear. “She was a good agent.”

“And how many books did she manage to sell for you?”

Now I’ve just thoughtlessly reminded her of her failure not just to keep an agent but to make a sale as well. Fresh tears began falling, and although she started the sentence with something resembling composure, by the end her words were scarcely more than a whimper. “Marcia got my work read and rejected. I can’t ask for…more…than…th-that.”

“Pooh,” I said, dismissive of her logic. You can and should always ask for more, especially when you’ve set goals for yourself. “You’ll find another agent and she’ll be better than Marcia. Just you wait. The next one won’t call you Dylan.”

She realized the truth of this. It is extremely unlikely that the next agent—if there is a next agent—will also have a client named Dylan. “But what if I never find another one?”

I told her not to be silly, and after several more attempts at lifting her spirits with upbeat and optimistic inanities, I realized she wanted to wallow. I realized she wanted to cast herself into the thick swamp of disconsolation and loll there in the mud. I had no right to deny her its soothing coolness, and threw myself in alongside. They tell you that finding an agent is harder than finding a publisher, but Maya knows that’s not true. As hard as getting an agent is, snagging a publisher is many times more difficult. And you can’t do it from the back row of the chorus line.

We are here now because Maya broke up with her boyfriend.

“It’s over,” she said when I picked up the phone. No hello, no how are you, just it’s over. Thank God.

“What about the ring?” I asked.

“I don’t give a fuck about the ring.”

“How does it feel?”

“Awful.”

“Wanna get a drink?”

“Be there in fifteen.”

It was the middle of the day, but I didn’t care. I’m nobody’s assistant and operate under the supposition that I should work when I want to. I often sneak away during periods of downtime to go shopping or see a movie in the theater next door. All I have to do to lull suspicion is keep my computer on, leave my jacket hanging in the corner and light a candle.

I’m almost done with my gin and tonic when the bartender reappears to ask if we want another round. This is the great thing about the Paramount. They never let you finish a drink.

“I just have to accept the fact that it isn’t going to happen,” she says, after the bartender has left. “I love him and I’ll miss him but I can’t keep doing this. I don’t know why he bought that stupid ring but he clearly never had any intention of giving it to me.” A tear slides down her cheek. Not being wanted always hurts.

The ring is a two-carat diamond that Maya found five months ago in one of Roger’s kitchen drawers. For two weeks she was giddy and impatient and excited. For two weeks she lived life with an excess of energy. For two whole week she expected every single moment to pop. But nothing happened. Five months later, it’s clear to her that nothing is ever going to happen. The engagement ring is Roger’s pistol on the wall and Maya is tired of waiting for the third act.

I didn’t like Roger Childe from the very beginning. He
introduced himself to me as an entrepreneur, and the contempt I felt was swift and complete. “Entrepreneur” is a term magazine writers ascribe to you; you don’t ascribe it to yourself, especially not when you’re the president of a Jersey City dot-com that your father bankrolled.

He had other pretensions—name-dropping A-list players, wearing monogrammed sweaters, using the word
cinema
in mixed company—but Maya didn’t mind. All she noticed were his handsome face and his lovely compliments and his coordinated J. Crew separates.

But it wasn’t just his mail-order-catalog perfection that put me off, although having both the Barn Jacket and the Fisherman Cable Knit didn’t help. He had a prep-school patina, which lent him an air of entitlement that seemed entirely out of place in the early twenty-first century. He knew all the right people and went to all the right places and could buy all the right things and his life would no doubt follow all the right formulas.

Maya was dazzled by his confidence. Before she lost her agent, she’d seen Roger and herself as a top-one-hundred power couple in the making. She’d change the way a generation thought with her books, he’d change the way a generation behaved with his software, and
New York
magazine would spotlight them in a glossy cover shoot that made her look beautiful and edgy.

“A month ago it was no big deal that he hadn’t asked me to marry him,” she says, “but I’m thirty now and can’t live my life like a carefree twenty-something. I’ve drawn up terms of reference.”

“Terms of reference?” Three gin and tonics have slightly muddled my brain, but I’m reasonably sure I’ve never heard the term “terms of reference” before.

She reaches into her leather backpack and withdraws a sheet of white paper. It’s crumpled and creased and she runs her hands over it several times, trying to flatten it. The corners still curl up.

“Today,” she announces in almost sententious tones, “is the first day of the rest of my life. Here is a year-by-year breakdown of what I hope to accomplish in my fourth decade of existence.”

But the breakdown really isn’t year by year. It’s more month by month and in some severe cases day by day. The first term of reference— “have talk with Roger to see where this is all going”—has minutes attached.

“He was very evasive,” she says, when I ask how the talk went. “I just wanted to know if he thought there was a point to all this. I mean, I didn’t need the ring right there and then, only a word or two of encouragement. But he kept hemming and hawing and saying things like ‘We’ll see,’ as though I’m a car he’s not sure he wants to buy.”

He is weighing the pros and cons of marrying Maya. He is looking at all the available information and trying to decide if she’ll be a credit to him. Will his name gain luster in association with hers? He doesn’t know yet. Maya’s an incomplete stock report.

This is the level of calculation Roger works on, the sort you read about in Edith Wharton novels and don’t believe exists anymore. He is like a great sculpture. He can make things that are hard—like his heart—seem soft. But all you have to do is get close enough to realize the truth. All you have to do is touch him to discover differently.

“It was a mistake from the beginning,” I say, pushing the crinkled proof of her insanity to the side. I don’t want anything to do with her terms or her references. The answer to one thwarted goal is not forty more. It’s like trying to cure a hangover with Jell-O shots. “Rule number one—never date a man named Childe.”

“I know, I know,” she says, putting her head down on the bar. “It’s just asking for trouble, isn’t it?”

I agree that it is and order another round.