Little Pink Slips (25 page)

weeks later, every venue from Mulberry to Madison was filled with

mistletoe madness. The Estée Lauder gang, for example, invited the

town's top editors in chief and beauty editors to a discreet cocktail

party at the 21 Club. Glamazon staged a disco night around the pool at

Soho House. And Scary threw an official no-executive-left-behind lunch at Daniel, which was decked out with trimmings fit for
Dr. Zhivago.
Between courses, Daniel Boulud himself greeted the guests to make sure the food was perfect. It was. Lunch ended with gifts—

enameled cuff links for the gentlemen, fur shrugs for the ladies.

Presents flowed through the season. Magnolia gave and Magnolia

got. For the staff, she decided on long, kiwi green gloves which Ruthie Kim ordered at a discount, though Magnolia footed the bill. She

debated whether or not to stretch for the splurge. She wasn't the edi

tor in chief anymore, and maybe her colleagues wouldn't expect

it. But history and ego convinced her to go the distance; she didn't

want to appear stingy, considering what she raked in from PR firms,

grateful contributors, and the more senior staff members. While this

year she didn't accumulate as much swag as in previous seasons,

she adored the satin evening bag with its Swarovski crystal clasp, the

cashmere hoodie and sweatpants, and best of all, a mad bomber hat

from Cameron.

The presents were exhilarating, but the fake fun wasn't. By

today—an afternoon on the final week of work before Christmas—

Magnolia was as limp as the last piece of tinsel in the package. Natalie had invited her to
Dazzle'
s ho-ho-hoedown. Magnolia sat at her desk and realized that she didn't have a thing to wear—anything

party-worthy in her closet was, by now, at the cleaners or had been

on view again and again, and she hadn't gone shopping in at least

two months.

Briefly she considered if, for her, that could be as credible a sign of

depression as a sudden change in appetite. No problem. The fashion

department could surely help, at least with the clothing challenge.

Remembering a plum velvet suit she knew had just been returned

from a photo shoot, she walked into the fashion closet.

As Magnolia began foraging in the racks, she heard a husky male

voice at the far end of the crammed room. "What the hell are you

doing?" it said.

"C'mon, babe," Bebe answered him, loud and clear. "I'm talking

fun. Have another glass of Pinot Noir. I took you for a grown-up."

"No, thanks," he said. Magnolia heard a tussle. "No," he shouted.

"Get away . . . not my type."

"Sweetheart, you're too young for a type." Bebe laughed loudly.

"I can teach you a few things. You'll thank me for this later. And

haven't I been good to you?"

"Yes, but—"

"Agree, cute butt." Magnolia stuck her head through the racks just as Bebe started to

unbuckle his belt. With the grace of a Bond girl, she pushed Bebe and

Polo apart, shrieking, "Bebe, do the terms 'statutory rape' and 'jail

bait' mean nothing to you?"

Bebe looked up, startled. Her beady eyes barely blinked.

"Paws off, Bebe," Magnolia said, having no idea where her convic

tion was coming from. "And you, boy, out!" Polo bolted.

"Calm down, you little buzz kill," Bebe cackled at Magnolia. "I am

educating this kid. Don't get your tit in a ringer. And what's with the
CSI Investigates
bit anyway? Why are you snooping?"

"I didn't think I had to put on a HazMat suit to walk into our fash

ion closet," Magnolia said, staying close to Bebe and talking in a

hushed tone. "Why I'm here is irrelevant. What part of 'normal' don't

you understand?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Bebe said, walking away. "I've always found

'normal' was highly subjective and sadly overrated. Get out of my face,

Mag-knowl-ya. You're trying to turn a PG13 short into an X-rated

miniseries. Go party and forget this happened."

   "Your secret is safe with me," Magnolia said to Bebe's back.
You sleazy child molester,
she said to herself.

   "And me." Magnolia spun around. Wide-eyed, her assistant, Sasha,

had watched the whole thing.

C h a p t e r 2 5

Fattened Up for the Kill

"Suing?" Magnolia asked.
"Did you say they're suing?" It was odd for the phone to ring at 6:15 A.M., and even odder for an early

morning caller to be Natalie.

"Magnolia," Natalie said, "you stayed too long in the sticks. Stop

sounding like you're calling a hog."

"Natalie, I'm usually hitting my snooze button about now," Mag

nolia pleaded. "Can you just give me the net-net?"

   "Let me spell it out. A little spook told our friends at the
Post
a story about Bebe coming on to Nathaniel Fine in the fashion closet."

Magnolia woke up fast. This was huge. "Back up!" Magnolia said.

"Someone tipped off my friends the Fines, and Nathaniel's dad is a

$1,000-an-hour litigator," Natalie said. "Put together the pieces.

We're screwed. It's on page three, and God knows where else it will

end up." Just when Magnolia was going to speak, Natalie started

again, yelling so loud Magnolia had to hold the receiver away from

her ear. "I see what you must have been thinking. Bebe's reputation gets trashed. The company pulls out of her magazine.
Lady
rises from the dead."

"Whoa," Magnolia yelled back. "Are you accusing me? Of the

leak? That's absurd, Natalie. You are so off." Twenty seconds passed before Natalie said "You'd swear you know

nothing about this?"

"I didn't say that." Magnolia paused. "I saw it all." Magnolia won

dered if she was a moron to have admitted this, but Nathaniel would

most likely report it eventually. "But call a newspaper? What possible good could come of that? I
like
Nathaniel. And he's just a kid." Why was she squirmy and defensive? Damn Natalie for having that effect on her.

"Listen, I said nothing. To anyone." Abbey, she decided, didn't count.

"Oops, hold on." Magnolia waited while Natalie took another call.

"Can't talk, Cookie," Natalie said as she clicked back on. "Jock and

Elizabeth conference call."

Natalie called her Cookie—she must be calming down, Magnolia

hoped, as she began surfing the net and TV to see what play this was

getting. So far, nothing on the morning shows, though the blogs were

banging the item as if the United States had invaded St. Barth's. She

threw a coat over her nightgown and ran to the newsstand.

   BEBE PLAYS WITH FINE BOY TOY headlined a story accompanied by Nathaniel's water-polo team photo, and either the
Post
had digitally enhanced his crotch or their intern had a future on male greeting

cards. Magnolia raced back to her apartment, threw twenty dollars at

her neighbor's sixth-grader to walk the dogs, and dressed so fast that

it was only when she was in a taxi that she realized her boots didn't

match.

The corridors at Scary were strangely quiet as she walked to her

office. Magnolia immediately called in Sasha and closed the door.

   "How did this item get in the
Post
and every fucking blog?" she asked, throwing the paper on the desk. "Did you rat them out?" Mag

nolia knew Sasha had been an eyewitness in the fashion closet; what

she didn't know was if there'd been other flies on the wall that she

hadn't noticed.

"Not me exactly," Sasha answered, biting her lip and looking like a

high school sophomore.

"Talk," Magnolia said.

"I was in a bar last night, drinking to the point where this I-banker

was looking cute, and when he asked me where I worked, I found myself describing Bebe and Polo—the material was just too rich. He joked about calling it into the
Post,
that he knew someone who knew someone who knew someone."

"Sasha, do you realize what you've done? Polo's dad is a partner at a

major law firm. Making noises about suing for child abuse, sexual

harassment, God knows what. You didn't think, did you? This is

breaking-the-sound-barrier bad—for the magazine, the company, all

of us." Magnolia stared at the ceiling and drummed her fingers on the

desk. Though she might have made the same mistake herself when she

was twenty-three, she nonetheless felt like ripping off Sasha's face.

"I'm so sorry—I just wanted to impress this guy," Sasha sobbed, as

she pulled a tissue from the box on Magnolia's desk. "And I wanted to

screw Bebe."

"You hit it out of the park on that last one," Magnolia said.

"Plus, I thought it might help you."

   "Help me? If you wanted to help me, why didn't you at least warn me about this item?
That w
ould have helped me."

   "But I only found out when I read it on the train."

"Okay," Magnolia said, finding a quieter voice. "Well, you're going

to help me now. Get me every clip, every inch of loop tape, every Web

site. We've got to be all over this. Now blow your nose and get out of

here before someone walks in on us." She motioned for Sasha to leave,

but her assistant didn't move.

"Am I going to lose my job?" she asked, sniffling.

"Really, Sasha," Magnolia said. "No one's going to lose her job."

Hopefully. "But if anything like this ever happens again, I want my

cell phone ringing, my BlackBerry popping. I want a frigging blimp outside my window.
Capeesh? W
hat I don't want is to be woken up to hear about it from Natalie Simon."

"I get it," Sasha said, still trembling. "No problem."

"And while we're at it, Sasha, don't ever say that again, ever!"

Magnolia screamed. "Now go act normal and don't breathe a bloody

word to anybody."

   As Sasha walked out, Cameron walked in, holding the
Post.
He closed the door behind him.

"You know, Magnolia," he said, chuckling. "I'm only thirty-six,

and up until now I have never felt old. But Bebe fondling Polo? I'm

crushed. And here I thought Felicity was the weirdo."

"Felicity?" Magnolia said. "She's just toady."

"Where Bebe is a real predator?"

"In the Hollywood sense, yes," Magnolia said. "Thinks everyone

and everything is available for her amusement."

"So it's true," Cameron said. "Just when I was starting to like her."

"If you must know, I was, too," Magnolia admitted. She'd been liv

ing off the fumes of her Hugh Grant evening.

"Well, is there's anything I can do?"

"You can," Magnolia said. "Try to make sure people do some work

today."

All day long, that's exactly what Magnolia tried to do. There was a

numbing dearth of new information. She didn't hear from Natalie,

Jock, or even Elizabeth. She definitely didn't hear from Bebe. The

only call came from Legal, and other than Cameron, the sole person

on the staff to acknowledge the incident was Felicity.

"A lot of hooey over nothing," Bebe's designated hitter said when

she paid a visit to Magnolia. "This country is too litigious. And when

a celebrity gets in the mix, all anyone sees is a cash register. It's not as

if that snot-nosed Polo needs the money. Poor Beebsy."

"Poor Beebsy?" Magnolia said. "She was taking advantage of that

boy!"

"It was a setup," Felicity sniffed. "Nathaniel exploited Bebe's good

nature—after she gave him the opportunity to design a cover of a

national magazine! It's shameful. I'm urging Bebe to take her lawyer's

advice to countersue."

   "Countersue?" Magnolia wailed. "There were witnesses."

   "
Witness
—only one—and she has an ax to grind," Felicity said icily, apparently unaware that Sasha had been in the closet. "Magnolia, dear,

I hate to break it to you, but you're not the most credible observer."

"Felicity, out!" She pointed to the door. "You codependent leech.

What kind of shit are you shoveling?" "Well, if memory serves, young Nathaniel's here courtesy of you

and your friend Natalie Simon," Felicity said with a final smirk, as she

slammed the door so hard the papers on Magnolia's desk scattered.

At five, Magnolia attempted a drive-by visit to Natalie, who hadn't

responded to the three messages she'd left. As Magnolia got out of the

elevator, however, Jock was walking toward Natalie's office and she

aborted her mission.

A half hour later, Jock's assistant called to inform her she had a

command performance: lunch with him tomorrow.

The next morning
the Bebe story was bouncing around the Internet, but the television shows, both news and celebrity—to the

degree you could tell them apart—had stopped reporting the inci

dent, probably on advice of lawyers. Magnolia didn't know if she was

in the eye of the hurricane or if it had blown out to sea and, as a

result, she deliberated for twenty minutes about what to wear. Every

thing in her closet looked too giddy, too grim, or too prim. She ulti

mately defaulted to an old black velvet jacket, narrow tweed pants,

and black suede boots that gave her three and a half extra inches of

courage. Whether she was preparing for her own memorial service or

a tête-à-tête on the post-Polo spin cycle—which her inner optimist

decided was more likely—she felt well-dressed.

At 12:15, she waited at the appointed spot downstairs, the late

December wind whipping her face. Ten minutes passed. She called

Jock's office to see if he was delayed. No answer. Then she heard him.

"Over here, Magnolia." He was calling to her from his town car.

"C'mon in."

She'd assumed they'd walk to one of his neighborhood joints—the

Gramercy Tavern, perhaps, or Union Square Café. But a car? In that

case, she hoped for Michael's or the Four Seasons. "Where are we

eating?" she asked, forcing a smile, as she settled herself on the seat

next to him.

"It's a surprise," Jock said. They traveled south, crawling along Broadway in the seasonal slog.

Might they wind up at WD-40? Nobu? That hole in the wall with

taxidermy at the end of Freeman Alley? No, they kept going, and sud

denly they were on a bridge. Jock must be one of those Manhattanites

who's just discovered Brooklyn, Magnolia decided, praying they

weren't headed for a slab of cow at Peter Luger's.

During the drive, the conversation skirted Bebe and Polo, though

Jock did bring up the gun cover. "Not only is it nuts, that cover, this

morning I found out a bunch of the supermarket chains won't display

it," Jock complained. "As goes Wal-Mart, so goes our newsstand—

right down the toilet."

   Magnolia felt her stomach turn over. He's going to blame me. What was I
thinking,
that today's lunch would be about making the Polo mess go away? I'm over. Talk about deluded.

She had a sudden urge to tell the driver to turn around, that she just

remembered her apartment was on fire. But then Jock switched to

harmless subjects, and she zoned out, trying to respond at appropriate

moments. After twenty more minutes, they arrived at a Brooklyn

restaurant that Michelin had proclaimed one of the city's best. As they

stepped behind a velvet curtain, Jock pressed his hand on Magnolia's

back to guide her to a corner table in the tiny, avocado green room.

Jock ordered a bottle of 1997 ZD Cabernet Sauvignon—the restau

rant was known for its wine list—and quickly downed a glass, urging

Magnolia to do the same. "A toast," he said. "To Magnolia, a woman of

exceptional talent, courage, and valor." He clicked her glass.

"Thanks, Jock," Magnolia said, suspicious of the accolade.

"You've been a great sport, kid," he said. "I thought you deserved a