Little Pink Slips (20 page)

ing, Bebe swinging on a trapeze, Bebe flying a plane.

   Magnolia had already seen the presentation, created by Darlene's marketing director. What connection it had to the lives of
Bebe'
s readers she'd yet to determine.

   The PowerPoint concluded with a shot of the cover accompanied by Marvin Gaye singing, "What's Going On." "You can see that
Bebe
captures the spirit of a bold woman, the kind everyone wants to

become," Darlene intoned. "The kind of buyer Glamazon has in

mind for Consuelo, its new fragrance, and its skin-care line." Darlene

looked pleased. As she began to unroll the heart of her sales pitch,

however, there was a persistent knock. "Enter," Consuelo said. The receptionist stuck in her head.

"Excuse me, Ms. Everett, but there's a woman here who insists on

seeing you and she won't tell me—"

Bebe shouldered her way past the young receptionist and walked

toward the round glass table where everyone was seated. "Damn grid

lock," she said, as she threw off a sleeveless black coat that appeared

to be made of monkey fur. She deposited the garment on the edge of

Consuelo's pristine desk.

"Bebe, I'd like you to meet Consuelo Everett," Darlene said.

"Hey, Connie," Bebe said, offering the executive her hand and a

grin. "So what do you think of my magazine?"

"Well, Bebe, we were just getting acquainted with it," Consuelo

answered, leaning forward with her elbows on the table, her long,

French manicured fingers crossed over one another, which gave Mag

nolia a close-up of Consuelo's hunky, canary diamond solitaire. "You

couldn't have arrived at a more auspicious time."

"Suspicious?" Bebe asked. "Of what?"

"Auspicious, Bebe," Consuelo said. "I was wondering why you

believe Glamazon belongs in your magazine."

"Come again?" Bebe asked.

   "Our products, Consuelo parfum, Glamazon exfoliators, and agedefying eye enhancers—how do we know the
Bebe r
eader will embrace them?" Consuelo asked evenly.

Bebe stared at Consuelo as if she'd just noticed she had a large

mole on her nose.

Darlene jumped in. "I can answer that. We know our reader's an

upscale shopper—she buys more department store brands than drug

store, she's young, she's sophisticated, and she has a significant dispos

able income, $76,000. She's Glamazon all the way."

What rot, Magnolia thought. We know nothing. We don't even

have final numbers on how well the first issue sold. The readers could

all shop with food stamps.

   "I appreciate that, Darlene," Consuelo said, "but—"

   Bebe woke up. "When you buy
Bebe y
ou're buying me, the complete Bebe Blake experience," she asserted with conviction. "I stand for independence. And don't your cosmetics?" As she leaned toward

Consuelo, the woman leaned back ever so slightly.

"Well, I wouldn't put it that way," said one of the matching

daughters.

Bebe and Darlene began talking over each other in increasingly

shrill tones. Magnolia tried to follow both conversations at once, but it

was as if they'd switched to Zulu. All she could pick out were the

occasional buzz words like "must buy" and, from Bebe, "dog doo."

Then she heard her name spoken.

   "Magnolia, would
Lady'
s reader have purchased Glamazon?" Consuelo asked. "From what I hear, those subscribers have been sent the

magazine." All eyes turned to her.

   "Glamazon's new," Magnolia answered, "so I can't quote you hard facts, but we know the
Lady r
eader always regarded high-end cosmetics as an affordable indulgence she felt she deserved. I can compare to, say, Chanel. The
Lady
reader couldn't, frankly, afford the clothes or the bags, but she was a huge consumer of Chanel No. 5, the

lipsticks, and the nail polish. I'm positive the analogy would extend to

Glamazon."

Consuelo looked satisfied. Darlene, Magnolia thought, looked

relieved. Bebe looked radioactive.

"Chanel #5 is for tight asses," Bebe said, scowling. "Wouldn't wear

it to a pig roast."

Magnolia saw Darlene roll her eyes, although she was sure Con

suelo and her daughters did not. They were fixated on Bebe. Darlene

shot up.

"Isn't she hilarious, our Bebe?" Darlene said to Consuelo. "That's

what we love about her, complete and unbridled candor. I'm going to

be following up by phone this afternoon." Darlene looked at her

watch. "Two forty-five? We've eaten up way too much of your time.
Muchos, muchos gracias.
" With that, Darlene herded Bebe out of the room, and Magnolia followed.

Riding to the office, Magnolia decided not to pierce the silence

with in-person thanks to Bebe for her birthday gift. Darlene stared

out one window, and Bebe, the other. Magnolia began to imagine the amusing recap of the meeting she'd be able to give Cam. Then it

dawned on her—a bad meeting was not necessarily good news, espe

cially not for her. No one talked for the rest of the ride.

"Damage control, damage control." Magnolia muttered as she

rang Jock's office after she returned. If she got to him immediately,

she could offer him her own carefully crafted summary—witty but

damning—of how Bebe had blown the ad sales call and how she,

Magnolia Gold, had tried to save the day. Score: Magnolia, 15; Bebe,

love.

"Any chance of getting a little time with the man?" she asked

Elvira, Jock's gatekeeper. "Fifteen minutes?"

"And the purpose of the meeting is?" Elvira asked, reflected power

oozing through the phone line.

Manipulation? Retaliation? Garden-variety ass-saving? "Just a

Bebe update," Magnolia answered.

"He's got a heavy schedule for the next week, and then there's a

trip to Shanghai," Elvira replied. Magnolia could hear her making

blowing sounds as if she were drying her nails. "How about a week

from Friday at three-forty? Oops—he'll be off to Key Largo." The

season had arrived for the Sun God to go south on weekends.

"The following Monday?" Elvira suggested. "Ten-twenty?"

   By then the Glamazon decision would have been announced—not to
Bebe'
s advantage, on that Magnolia would bet Biggie's best bone— and her vigorous self-defense would be moot. "Elvira, please call me if

there's a cancellation," Magnolia said, knowing it would never happen.

"Even better, ask him if he couldn't squeeze me in, okay?" So much

for having showered Elvira with cosmetics she'd asked Phoebe to

assemble for her birthday last summer. She may as well have given the

grab bag of Bobbi Brown and Lancôme products—Elvira's favorites—

to the night maid.

Magnolia proceeded to Plan B and called in Sasha. "Do a drive-by

outside Jock's office," she instructed.

"Got it," her assistant answered. "I'll be back in five minutes."

Glass walls throughout Scary extended to Jock's vast, leathery do

main. While Magnolia knew better than to walk by his office herself, an innocent stroll from Sasha—an invisible assistant—would never

be noticed.

"He's in there with Darlene and Bebe," Sasha reported back, call

ing Magnolia from her cubicle ten minutes later. "Bebe was smoking

one of his cigars, and all three of them were whooping it up."

"Thanks, kiddo," Magnolia said, careful not to reveal an iota of

emotion. "Just as I thought." Rats, rats, rats, Magnolia thought. De

spite the frost in the taxi less than a half hour ago, apparently Bebe

and Darlene had decided to mount a unified defense.

Magnolia began to pace. Given the diminutive proportion of her

new office, three steps equaled one good pace, and she found herself

racewalking straight to Sasha's desk across the hall. Upon seeing her, Sasha quickly closed her
Post, w
hich reminded Magnolia that in her Hugh Grant afterglow, she'd neglected to even open her morning

paper. She could read it now. Anything for a distraction. As "Mind if I

borrow your paper?" slipped out of her mouth, though, Sasha dumped

the tabloid in her trash can and finished it off with the remains of a

Diet Coke.

   "Aren't we being a little hostile?" Magnolia asked. "What'd the
Post
do to you?"

"Nothing in it today," Sasha answered, and offered a high-pitched

giggle.

   "Sasha, there's always something in the
Post
"—a body ID'd in a Brooklyn dumpster, a rat caught lounging in a Dunkin' Donuts—

something." Magnolia watched Sasha turn to tidying papers on her

already neat desk.

"Give me that paper, Sasha," Magnolia insisted.

"You don't want to see it."

"God will punish you, Sasha Dobbs," Magnolia said, walking

toward the elevator. "You are going to get the worst acne."

Five minutes later Magnolia had returned from the newsstand

downstairs. She opened the Hershey bar she'd bought along with the

paper, settled herself at her desk, and flipped to the business pages

that announced industry news. Nothing. Maybe it was an item about

Harry. Had he catapulted into a photo-worthy relationship? She turned to Page Six, which today was on page fourteen. There was a

tragic-looking Julia Roberts photographed with five Bergdorf's

bags—being elected to the Worst Dressed list could inspire the most

secure woman to shop—and an item declaring that a certain adorable

Hollywood couple was still together, in case you were up nights stress

ing over whether their marriage could be saved.

   Then she spotted it. "
Just asking,
" the three lines began, "
which glittering editor is no longer solid gold? A certain English-accented, topof-another-masthead lovely may soon be replacing the tarnished blossom taking orders from Hollywood's lovable loudmouth.
"

   Magnolia dropped her candy bar, leaving a skid mark on her white

cashmere V-neck.

Her first impulse was to call Mike McCourt and let him know

he'd obviously been bamboozled by "a certain English-accented"

editor. But what if he hadn't been? Manhattan was littered with UK

roadkill who snatched New York jobs when their Fleet Street careers

stalled. In their West Village tea shops, they privately laughed at

American executives awed by inglorious northern England accents.

Harry must be friendly with every one of those ex-pats, Magnolia

realized. What if, together, he and an ambitious Keira Knightley clone had crafted the tale and passed it on to the
Post
? Magnolia picked up the phone to call Harry's office and sound off. She dialed

his number. One ring. Two.

   What
was
she doing? Thank God, he hadn't picked up. Harry might be a hothead, but even if he did have something to do with

this, what exactly was she going to say to him? Magnolia slammed

down the receiver just as she heard the recording of his painstak

ingly acquired, well-modulated BBC English announcing, "Good

afternoon." Magnolia had no idea whether Harry's studio's land

line—his cell seemed too intimate at this stage of their extinct rela

tionship—had caller ID or whether he would hunt her down later with
^*
69.

Talk about damage control. Someone's got to gag me before I com

mit both social and professional suicide, Magnolia thought. I can't be

trusted. Her next impulse was to phone Abbey, until she remembered that she'd flown to Los Angeles, where a number of Third Street bou

tiques were salivating at the prospect of buying her jewelry.

Deep breaths, she told herself. Deep breaths. Big news usually

blindsides people—nobody gets telegrams, she reminded herself.

Maybe the item is a scare tactic or someone's idea of a joke.

For the remainder of the afternoon—and the rest of the short

workweek, because Thursday was Thanksgiving—Magnolia forced

herself to polish an issue's worth of sentences to a gloss, even ghost

write Bebe's editor's letter on how to bond with a cat, to be run with a

portrait of Bebe and Hell. Yet all the while she was looking over her

shoulder, trying to pretend people weren't gossiping about her. Was the

item planted by Darlene? Bebe? Elizabeth at Jock's behest? Possibilities

ran through her mind like an Andrew Lloyd Webber ballad—graphic,

tragic, ultimately so relentless it made her want to howl—but she

proudly refrained from leaving drama-queen messages for Abbey. You

can handle this, Magnolia chanted. You're thirty-eight!

   On Wednesday, in honor of the holiday weekend, Scary closed at noon. At
Lady,
this wouldn't have stopped Magnolia from working until eight, when—every year—she and Abbey would pull out their

fox trapper hats; pile on parkas, mittens, and tired Pashminas; and

spend hours on Eighty-first Street and Central Park West, watching

their favorite balloons come alive for Macy's Thanksgiving Day

parade. But today she decided to go home early. After stopping to

buy the olives, cheese, cornbread, and pie that Cameron had care

fully specified for his Thanksgiving dinner—friends knew better

than to ask Magnolia to cook or bake—Magnolia lit a fire and

turned on her television.

As she channel-surfed, Bebe suddenly appeared. The show was

live—she'd seen Bebe in the identical orange mohair tunic that

morning, wondering if she'd intentionally tried to impersonate the