Little Pink Slips (2 page)

appalling than appealing. The ankle boots? Phoebe's orange alert sang

in her ears. Pumps with thick ankle straps? They'd make her legs look like stumps. Maybe the kitten heels.
Elle
insists—again—that pink was spring's newest neutral. They would do.

Under a chair she spied an unopened box, the crisp white logo an

island of dignity in the middle of funereal ebony. Inside, the sling

backs' toes narrowed to a sexy point. The lizard soles, which no one but the wearer would even see, glistened like sexy snakes. "
You need to convince people you are special,"
her horoscope had warned. These shoes had her name all over them.

Now, the clothes. Magnolia cursed herself for not having researched

her size at Saks. Six, she guessed, eyeing her behind. For princely occa

sions every woman was supposed to trot out a Chanel jacket, but there

were few here without buckles and pockets run amok. Only one jacket

looked acceptable—dove gray tweed with silver threads, a few discreet

buttons rimmed with rhinestones, C's linked in the silk lining. Like

intrepid pom-pom girls, they were everywhere, those C's. She grabbed

the jacket and sprinted to evening gowns. Magnolia considered the red chiffon, but it was too bare for a bra. While ogling her nipples, the

testosterone club that ran Scary would declare such a dress in poor taste.

She settled on a demure black cocktail dress. Maybe she'd be invited to

a Catholic charity dinner.

Arms filled, Magnolia headed to the ad hoc try-on area. Women in

all manner of undress were madly pulling clothes on and off, quickly

discarding selections that retailed for thousands. They seemed grate

ful for the males in the room—gay guys shopping for their sisters had

opinions you could respect. As she was trying to decide if the dress

actually looked like something from the Ann Taylor Loft 60 percent

off rack, she saw them. The publishers.

Four of Scary's hotshots were stripped to their bras and thongs, zip

ping one another up and lobbing compliments. Darlene Knudson,
Lady'
s publisher, towered above the publisher of
Elegance,
Charlotte Stone, a perfect lady trying valiantly to outsell
Vogue
. Charlotte waved over Magnolia. Like every editor, Magnolia deeply distrusted

most publishers, believing they would sell you down the river for a

Depends ad. Charlotte, however, was reputed to be decent.

"Magnolia! Honey! Did you see the trenches they just brought out?

They're only $75!"

On size-zero Charlotte, the belted green coat looked soigné. "Check

out the lining," she urged. The name Coco was knit into the fabric.

They really did have the branding thing going on. Magnolia guessed

that the lumpy coat might give her all the grace of a gorilla, but

grabbed the last one without a try-on. She dragged her purchases to

the cash register. It took another fifteen minutes to check out.

"Thirty-nine hundred," said the Chanel girl, without looking up.

Magnolia took another look at the handbag. If you added a chain, it

could double for her lunch box from fourth grade. Was she really going

to spend almost four thousand dollars on purchases she wasn't even

sure she liked? If she'd ever wear these clothes, she wished she could

accessorize with a disclaimer that read, "Do not judge the wearer, who

may look deeply shallow, but is truly a person you'd want to know."

"Are you paying or not?" a woman behind her shouted. Magnolia

whipped out her credit card. She lugged her bags to the street, hoping the hotel doorman could flag a taxi. It was 8:45. Magnolia was

famished, thirsty, and needed to get to the office for a nine o'clock

meeting.

Finally, she slid into a cab. As it turned right past the old Plaza

Hotel, Darlene, Charlotte, and the other Scary publishers—each on

her cell phone—passed her in a company limo. The light changed.

Magnolia looked at her watch, a Cartier tank she'd indulged herself

with in honor of getting her job. She realized now she'd certainly be

late for her meeting.

   She might have the title. She might be the youngest woman to ever edit a magazine as huge as
Lady.
But Magnolia Gold felt, not for the first time, as if she were a big, fat fake. Any minute now, she'd be

exposed as the cubic zirconia she truly believed she was.

C h a p t e r 2

The Grunt Work and the Glory

"Ah, the couture shopper,"
Sasha Dobbs greeted Magnolia as she entered her office on lower Fifth Avenue. "The sale—all

it's cracked up to be?"

"Bought a lot, sweat a lot," Magnolia replied to her assistant. She

glanced at her watch. Five after nine.

"Not to worry. The meeting's pushed to four because Little Jock

broke his arm in an equestrian event yesterday. Or so they say."

Jock didn't strike Magnolia as a Mr. Mom who'd hang out at a

child's bedside, even if it was his first son after five tries in three mar

riages. More likely than not, he was enjoying the happy ending of a

very late night, probably with someone cute and young and not his

wife. But it was a gift to Magnolia just the same. She'd have the better

part of the day to rehearse for the meeting.

Sasha handed her the morning's messages. Three were from publi

cists, one from her friend Abbey, and another from Natalie Simon, the town's current alpha dog editor, who headed up
Dazzle.
She'd hired Magnolia for her first job, as her secretary, a title you were still allowed to use twelve years ago at
Glamour.

"Okay if Cam pops in?" Sasha asked.

"Two secs, Sash." As Magnolia scanned her e-mail, Sasha arranged

a fresh bouquet of peonies. Twice a week, Sasha stopped at the corner

grocer and managed to discover flowers that looked as if they came from

Takashimaya. Nonetheless, Magnolia made a mental note, when salary

renegotiations came up, to ask for a weekly stipend to order fresh flow

ers every week from a real florist—ideally, that guru of design known

for supersimple, superexpensive monochromatic bouquets.

She'd be useless without Sasha. When Magnolia's previous assis

tant, the plummy-voiced Fiona, had failed to return from a vacation,

Magnolia seriously considered hiring the Oberlin grad who was

temping for her. Then she got a peek at her pierced tongue. The next

day Sasha showed up, dressed in a slim black suit by Theory. Sasha

had limited experience beyond Teach for America, but she clinched

the deal with her thank-you.

Magnolia never hired anyone who didn't send a follow-up note; to

not thank a potential boss for her time, and make a case for how per

fect you were for the job, was just plain dumb. Sasha's note was liter

ate and hand-delivered on creamy, engraved Smythson of Bond Street

stationery.

Sasha had begun six months ago at $41,000 and had earned every

penny twice over. Speak to the folks in New Delhi about fixing

Magnolia's BlackBerry. Check. Book tickets to L.A. and make sure

Magnolia gets a window seat. Check. Order from Cupcake Café for

office party. Check. For the tenth time explain to Darlene's assistant

that she can't put an appointment on Magnolia's calendar to call on a

client without clearing it. Check. None of these chores required the

double major in film studies and philosophy Sasha had earned at

Wesleyan, but she was so efficient she always had plenty of time left

over for writing the magazine movie column.

"Okay. Ready for Cam," Magnolia said, leaving the rest of her e-mail

for later.

"No problem," Sasha said. Magnolia despised that expression. Yet

if she complained about it to Sasha, she knew she risked getting as

steely a warning from Human Resources as if she'd asked her assis

tant if she'd tattooed her private parts.

   Cameron Dane, the magazine's managing editor, excelled at the extreme sport of keeping
Lady
on time and on budget. When Cam told her to hurry, because a page needed to ship, Magnolia did. When

they were at risk of overspending—last month, it was obscene sums on messengers—Cameron blew the whistle. Just as important, if
Lady
hadn't eaten up as much money as Scary allowed, he'd figure out

where to use it or lose it, rule number one of corporate budgets.

Straight, six foot two, and in his early thirties, Cameron was one of

the industry's less typical managing editors. If he hadn't been an aspir

ing novelist in need of health insurance, he'd never have been in the

job. As usual, he was wearing Levis, and his shaggy blond hair hung

over his collar. He placed his large mug of coffee on her desk.

Forty minutes later, after the two of them worked through his list

of emergencies—including hiring a coach for the new lifestyle editor,

who had impeccable taste but whose organizational instincts were a

weapon of mass destruction—Cam was ready to leave. But not before

he reminded her: "Time to write your editor's letter."

"It's written in my head," Magnolia said as Cam walked out the

door. Her eyes followed him. If I weren't his boss, if he didn't have a girlfriend, if he weren't five years younger, and if he showed the
least
glimmer of interest—Magnolia thought—there's a guy I'd like be

with naked. And so on. But she couldn't allow herself the luxury of a

fly-by fantasy. She had to wrap her head around her work, not her sex

life, which was currently on pause.

She'd get to the editor's letter. First she needed to look at the three

baskets on the antique pine table she called her desk. Magnolia swore

by her supremely low-tech system. The basket on the left was the out

box—currently empty, a glaring reminder of all she had yet to do.

The middle basket she considered a black hole for items she could

postpone, hopefully for eternity. The overflowing basket on the right

contained whatever she needed to read.

Each upcoming issue's priorities were in a different-colored folder.

September, which they were working on now, was purple. Title options

were in a brown folder, waiting for Magnolia to choose or rewrite. All

the financial stuff was in green, naturally. A blue folder labeled READ swelled with manuscripts and story pitches that hadn't been bought

or assigned and maybe never would be. It stayed on the bottom of

the basket. If Magnolia waited until the weekend to get to READ, it

wouldn't stop up the plumbing—providing Sasha hadn't deposited

any time-sensitive material there ("The White House requests the

honor of your presence. . . ."). Magnolia's most important folder was

red, signifying a rush.

The folder she inevitably dove into first, however, was pink: invita

tions. Today's offerings were meager. Another osteoporosis luncheon—

worthy, but Magnolia had hosted one herself two months ago. A

screening for a movie geared to adolescent males—even Sasha wouldn't

want it, although she might go to the club opening, a category of event

Magnolia stopped attending when the cocktails became undrinkable.

Red Bull, OJ, and rum?

Magnolia turned to her computer screen to begin "But I Di

gress . . . ," her editor's letter. What in God's name would she write

about this month? To plug something in the issue, she only had space

for a few paragraphs, but she needed to lead with deep thoughts. It

was worse than composing haiku.

   
This month,
Lady
introduces two new columns,
she started to write. Bor-ing. Maybe she should focus on the section about child care?
Can there be a bigger guilt machine for working mothers than the job of finding quality child care?
Better.
But this is real life. Mary Poppins isn't landing on your roof.
. . ."

   Sasha buzzed again. "Ruthie's ready to show film." Magnolia

hated the interruption, but if she didn't pick photos for the September

issue, the art department couldn't design. She walked down the hall to

the large room filled with cutting-edge computers and girls in clothes

from Club Monaco. The only designer who felt compelled to dress up

was Fredericka von Trapp, the art director—today in head-to-toe Jil

Sander. She was huddled over a light box with Ruthie Kim, the fashion

director.

"You can't see her dress." Fredericka complained, tucking a lock of

platinum blond hair behind one ear. "Vy did you have the photogra

pher come in so close? She's got pores like craters." Fredericka hadn't lived in Germany for twenty years, but her accent was as strong as

Marlene Dietrich's.

"Because she's breathtaking," Ruthie said.

"Try bulimic. Remind me vy ve booked this model?"

"Amber bailed. Look right here. She's gorgeous. Gorgeous."

Ruthie adored every photo from every shoot she'd ever supervised.

Thirty minutes flew as the three of them picked nine photos.

Back to her office. Another three sentences on the letter. The phone,

this time Scary's attorney.

"You can't say that." He was ranting about a celebrity profile. "Does

the word 'libel' mean nothing to you?"

   "We have the quote on tape from a writer for
The Wall Street Journal.
" Magnolia loved sparring with the lawyers, who tried to suck the blood out of any story.

Truth was, Magnolia Gold loved everything about being a magazine

editor. Publishing disease-of-the-week articles that saved people's lives.

Rooting out gifted writers from small-town newspapers. Turning flac

cid manuscripts into vigorous prose. Giving people jobs, tickets to Broad

way shows, and invitations to press junkets, which whisked them off

to resorts in Bali that their salaries would never allow. Knowing which

button to push, thus motivating an employee to produce her best effort

and shimmer with pride.

Okay, to be fair, Magnolia also liked her perks, and not just the free

flu shot. Company retreats at Canyon Ranch, where the surprise speaker

might easily be a randy former president. The vacation, five weeks of

it—although she got hot and cold running FedEx's and faxes wherever

she traveled, even to Cambodia. Knowing that her friends from Fargo

watched her on TV.

Magnolia liked it all. Being an editor in chief was the ultimate job

for the editor of the high school newspaper, especially one with ques

tionable grammar. There was never a morning when she didn't want

to go to work. Her staff, she suspected, prayed she'd take the occasional

sick day, but Magnolia had the constitution of a mule, and feared that

if she took off, just to play, she'd be struck with a legitimate, lingering

illness. Her open secret was that she relished the grunt work as much as the glory. When the digits on her computer suggested, "Go home,

kid," she had to force herself to leave.

Magnolia Gold felt born to be a magazine editor. When she was

growing up in Fargo, magazines had given her a window into a world

where people watched indie movies, wore clothes paraded on red car

pets, and referred to Donatella Versace as if she were their college

roommate. Now, working on a magazine required every talent God

granted her, and overlooked those He forgot, like the ability to pass

trigonometry. At the end of it all, a product existed that she could see and women liked. It didn't even bother her that most of
Lady'
s loyalists read it on the toilet. Hey, they were busy.

So was Magnolia. Every morning, there was more to do than she

could ever complete in a day. That was fine, because inside her lurked

a procrastinator hanging around in flannel pajamas, and she had to

suppress her at all costs. Magnolia was no good at knitting or parallel

parking, but she almost always knew what women wanted to read

before they themselves did. Editors who grew up anywhere cooler