Little Pink Slips (32 page)

older and oozing charm." She noticed that he still wasn't stingy with

the aftershave, although along with a better wardrobe he'd upgraded

to a more subtle scent than Old Spice. His suit was light gray wool; the

shirt, red-striped with a white collar, French cuffs, and discreet gold

cuff links; the shoes, soft, well-polished black leather oxfords; and the

tie, subtle silk twill.

"You look like someone I was married to once, only prettier," Wally

said, hanging up Magnolia's coat and motioning for her to sit at the

couch in the corner of his office, where the wraparound windows

looked north over the park and west toward the Hudson. On the

glass table in front of the couch were a stack of legal pads and a foun

tain pen.

"Nice outfit, by the way," he said. "My wife would approve."

For their meeting Magnolia pulled out her Chanel bag, a black

Dolce & Gabbana skirt—Wally had always complimented her legs,

whose calves, she thought, were a little too muscular, but were just

like his mother's—and a pale pink V-neck sweater that revealed a

peek of cleavage. She hoped her choices balanced needy female with

worth-every-damn-dime executive.

"Thanks, Wally," she said. "Love to see pictures of your kids."

He walked to his desk and returned, carrying a photograph of two

toothless tykes with long bangs and chin-length, dark brown hair.

"Harper and Morgan." Magnolia didn't want to ask if they were boys,

girls, or one of each.

"Adorable," she said.

"Take after their mommy," he said.

"You were always eager to be a dad," Magnolia said.

"Didn't that have something to do with our splitting up?"

   That, the tennis pro, and an almost complete lack of shared inter ests, but who's keeping score? "We were just too young to be married,"

Magnolia said. "At least I was."

"So, tell Wally everything," he said. "You have a contract they

don't want to honor?"

   "The company's claiming it's for a job that no longer exists," Magnolia said, and retold her story of
Lady
turning overnight into
Bebe,
of being demoted to deputy editor of
Bebe,
then being switched to corporate editor of nothing.

   "With all these different jobs, were you paid the same?"

   "Yes, I was," she said, placing her contract on the table.

   "And how much was that?"

   She handed him pay stubs from each job.

   Wally whistled. "Not bad," he said. "That's what you get for put ting in commas? Wish my wife pulled in dough like this—I wouldn't

be busting my balls." As Magnolia scrolled through her brain for a

response, he continued. "Just kidding—I love that Whitney's home

with the kids. She's always bitching about how all those committees

she's on are as much trouble as a job, though. You tell me."

   "I wouldn't know," answered Magnolia, truthfully.

   "So, anything more?" Wally asked.

   Magnolia debated whether or not to tell Wally about Jock's come- on. As a lawyer, he'd surely heard far more lurid tales, but as an ex

husband who always accused her of being a flirt—despite the fact

that he was the actual cheat—she hated the idea of Wally's judging

her. She decided to edit that part of the story.

"Seems pretty clear to me," Magnolia said.

"Then I'll read this contract on the plane, sweetheart," he said.

"Call you as soon as I can, and you call me if any other details come

to mind."

"Thanks, Wally," she said, as he helped her into her sheared mink.

"Your fees?" "You can afford me," he said, laughing, and paused. "Hey, I'm

thinking, why don't you come to our place Sunday? Whitney's having

a bunch of friends in. Superbowl."

"Oh, I don't know, Wally," she said. "Don't you have to ask her

first?" To get him to take her case, did she really have to sit through

hours of Fleigelmans and football?

"What's to ask about?" he said. "We're at 740 Park. Any time after

four."

"Sunday, then," Magnolia said. If she didn't come down with a

twenty-four-hour virus and have to beg off.

"Just one more question," he said.

She knew it: he'd read her mind, and was going to nail her on the

Jock proposition.

"Shoot," she said.

"What'd you do with the ring?"

"The ring?" Magnolia said.

"You forgot about a flawless three-carat emerald-cut stone set in

platinum with two serious baguettes?" he asked. "Did you hock it?

Turn it into a necklace? That's what Whitney did with her first ring.

You need a loupe just to find the little fucker."

"The ring's in a safety-deposit box, Wally," she said. "I like know

ing it's there."

"You always were such a Midwesterner," he said. "And I was some

schmuck to let you keep both that ring and the apartment." He gave

her a hug and patted her butt.

As Magnolia walked down the hall, she could still hear him

laughing.

C h a p t e r 3 2

A Defining Address

"Abbey, what do people
wear to watch football?" Magnolia called to ask.

"Cameron, what do people wear to watch football?" Abbey

shouted. At three o'clock on Sunday afternoon, it appeared that Satur

day night hadn't ended for the newest couple on the Upper West Side.

Magnolia didn't like to think of herself as a jealous person—not

when it came to close friends—but the thought of Abbey and Cam

having sex made her squirmy; not picturing-your-parents-in-bed

squirmy, but close. Was it because she felt left out? One down? Propri

etary about Cameron? Abbey kept insisting they hadn't slept together,

but Magnolia found that hard to believe.

Cameron grabbed the phone. "Jeans, sweatshirts, and cheese

heads," he said.

"Cheeseheads are for Wisconsin," Magnolia said. "Even I know

that. They're not playing, and I doubt this is a sweatshirt crowd. Put

Abbey back on."

"Go with a sweater and good jeans," Abbey said, taking back the

phone.

"You're sure? Friends don't let friends make fashion faux pas."

"Trust me."

"Boots: high or low?"

"Low," Abbey declared. "It's Sunday afternoon."

   Of the better buildings on Park, 740 was even more persnickety about its owners' pedigrees than Jock's residence up the street or

Natalie's co-op on Fifth. Rumor had it a co-op applicant needed a liq

uid net worth of more than $100 million to pass the board, which was

rumored to have ixnayed show biz types, including Barbra Streisand

and Liz Taylor. It wasn't lost on Magnolia that Wally had probably

extended his invitation to give her a taste of what she'd missed.

She checked the time that the game would start, and calibrated her

five o'clock arrival to be late enough to avoid pregame chitchat, but

not so late that Wally would consider her a brat unworthy of his help.

Magnolia checked her coat in the lobby as the doorman directed, and

rode the elevator to eleven.

Maybe this was a sweatshirt crowd: a pack of small boys in Manhat

tan private school sweatshirts opened the door and confidently yelled

out, "Hello" like the type-A investment bankers and hedge-fund man

agers they would no doubt later become. Magnolia took a guess and

addressed the tall child who resembled Wally's pre-braces, Raquette

Lake Boys Camp photographs. "Are you Morgan?" she asked.

   "Do I look like a girl?" he said. "I'm Harper. Who are you?"

   "A friend of your daddy's," she said. "Magnolia Gold."

   "Hi, Mrs. Gold," he said, and tore off up the staircase with his friends. She left the chocolates she'd brought next to a vase of white

calla lilies on a large, exquisitely polished table. As Magnolia was try

ing to figure out her next move, one of the French doors at the end of

the foyer opened. From a distant room in the generously proportioned

apartment, she heard a buzz of conversation. A waitress walked

toward her with a silver tray of empty champagne flutes.

   "Hello, Mag—Miss Gold," she said.

   "Hello," Magnolia said.

   "I temped for you when Sasha was on vacation," she said. "Remember?"

"Of course," Magnolia said, drawing a blank. Magnolia prayed

she'd done nothing to offend this girl, and that she wasn't marketing a

novel based on an egomaniacal editor in chief.

"I'll be back with refills," the waitress said and pointed toward the

doors. "Everyone's in the media room."

Magnolia entered a gathering of no less than a hundred people.

The room smelled like a cigar bar crossed with the fragrance floor

of Bloomingdale's. Every woman was perfectly blow-dried and the

men—Magnolia couldn't see any men, although at the other end

of the room, which had to be at least thirty-five feet long, she could

pick out an enormous plasma television screen. Magnolia was al

ways astonished that you could live in Manhattan for years, yet in

a crowd notice no one familiar. An anthropologist could get loopy

mapping the town's circles of influence—so many people considered

themselves supremely important, yet relatively few circles over

lapped.

As she searched the room for Wally, a trio of blondes seemed to be

looking at her. Magnolia approached them. "Magnolia Gold," she

said, extending her hand.

"Lizzie," the tall one said, "and this is Julia and Rachel." Each was

dressed as if for the most important job interview of her life, except

with more jewelry. Magnolia saw them eyeing her jeans. If they

asked about them, she'd have to say she'd just come from mucking out

her barn, that the horses couldn't wait.

"Are you a friend of Whitney's from nursery school?" asked the

medium blonde.

"Did Whitney and I go to nursery school together?" Magnolia

asked. What a peculiar question.

   The women exchanged a glance. "Did your
child
go with the twins to the Ninety-second Street Y?" the short one asked. "We've never

seen you up at Horace Mann."

"I don't have any kids," Magnolia said.

"Oh, forgive me," she said, casting her face in dramatic sympathy.

"I am so sorry." Magnolia was afraid the three of them were going to

hug her. "It's fine, really," Magnolia said. This would have been a good time

to add, "I work." Except she didn't.

"So how do you know Whitney—from a committee?" Lizzie asked.

"I don't," Magnolia said, "know Whitney, that is. Can you point

her out?"

As the women turned to search for their hostess, Lizzie's long blond

mane swatted Magnolia in the face. "That's Whitney over by the

chairs," Julia-or-Rachel said. "Isn't it sweet the way she's made this

look like a screening room?"

"Right," Magnolia said. All she could see of Whitney was that she

was taller than Lizzie—and Wally, for that matter—and blindingly

blond.

The four women stood together awkwardly. As Magnolia drilled

deeper for schmooze material, she was grateful when Julia-or-Rachel

spoke up. "Say, maybe you can help me," the short one said. "My

housekeeper's gone AWOL. I'm losing my mind. My son, the apart

ment . . . It's been since Monday. Know of anyone? I'm ready to slit

my wrists."

Magnolia's weekly cleaning woman had just lost one of her other

day jobs. "Which day do you need?"

"Well, every day," the woman said, as if Magnolia were brain

damaged. "But for the right person I suppose I could give up Saturday."

"What are the responsibilities?" Magnolia asked.

"The usual. Laundry, ironing, cleaning, errands, cooking, dog

walking. I like someone to help me get Joshy ready for school, so that

means starting at seven, but she can go home after the dinner dishes

are washed and put away. That's usually around nine-thirty, some

times ten," the blonde said and smiled charmingly. "I'm flexible."

This woman worked Scary hours. She might be a brain surgeon, a

district attorney, an Internet entrepreneur with an international

travel schedule. Magnolia was intrigued. She asked the question

asked of her at every New York social event for the last ten years, the

one she was hoping no one would ask today. "What do you do?"

   "
Do?
" the blonde replied in the mystified tone Parisians reserve for those who butcher their language.

"Your job?" Magnolia said. "It must be fascinating." "I don't work," the blonde sniffed. "I'm
busy.
"

Magnolia's comment hung in the air like a fart. She scoped out the

room, caught Wally's eye, and waved enthusiastically. He walked over

to Magnolia and embraced her from behind as she noticed Whitney

noticing her.

"I see you've met Whitney's friends," he said. "Ladies, how do you

like my ex-wife? See, I always get myself a looker. Mind if I steal her

away from you beauties?"

Magnolia imagined they didn't.

"You might have told me your friends dress up to watch football,"

Magnolia said.

"Whitney's friends," he said. "Look at me—I'm the same old slob."

"Wally, I know that sweater," she said. "It's Tse cashmere."

"Doll, you look gorgeous," he said. "All the guys are looking at how

you fill out those shrink-wrapped jeans."

While she knew she wasn't dressed like a Hassidic matron, neither

did she want to be seen as a tart. Even worse, had she gained weight

and not realized it? "Some apartment, Wally," Magnolia said, eager to

change the subject. "This place is enormous."

"Five thousand square feet," he said. "With the kids, we need the

space."

Need or want? Another Manhattanite who couldn't tell the differ

ence, Magnolia thought.

"C'mon, let me show off my favorite room," he said. "We can talk

business there. I've read your contract." He led her to his upstairs

plaid-as-a-kilt study and closed the door. "Whitney had these shelves

made for my trophies," he said, pointing to a wall of shiny, engraved

silver cups from two decades of golf tournaments.

She really is a trophy wife. "Very impressive," Magnolia said.

"Who are you trying to kid—you hate golf," he said, grinning.

He sat in one of two club chairs and patted the other. Magnolia sat

down. "Listen, I've read over your particulars. It's an interesting

case." Magnolia didn't want her case to be interesting. She wanted it to be

over, with her savings, pride, and future intact. "How so, Wally?"

"Well, your company—Scarborough, is it?—could argue that they

acted in good faith. After they stopped publishing your magazine,

they did, in fact, give you another job for quite a few months—until

the end of the year—so they might say they fulfilled their end of the

deal."

"I'm with you," she said.

"Then again, this new job, the 'corporate editor' thing, one might

argue that it was bullshit . . ."

"One might."

". . . and that Scarborough did not, in fact, act in good faith—stick

ing you in a crappy job they planned to eliminate, and, if you'll par

don the expression, leaving you up shit's creek."

"That's my address, all right."

"Then again, had I been your legal counsel when you accepted this

job, I'd have made damn sure we paid attention before you started,

and addressed the contract issue then and there," he said. "You and

your attorney were asleep at the wheel, toots."

"I didn't have an attorney," Magnolia admitted. She was suddenly

afraid she might cry. Why hadn't she gone over the details with a

lawyer? Because the thought had never occurred to her.

"That's my girl, Miss Naive and Frugal," Wally said in his own

sweet way. He began to doodle on a legal pad. "I keep wishing there

was more to this," he muttered. "Some point where I could really

stick it to them. Got any help for me in that department?"

"You know I really didn't 'accept' this job," she said, after thinking

it over. "There was never a choice."

"Why is that?" he asked.

Magnolia cleared her throat. "My boss," she said. "I mean my ex

boss, Jock Flanagan . . ." The tears started.

"What is it?" Wally said, without the bluster now.

"He propositioned me, that asshole," she said. "I rebuffed him.

The corporate editor job was payback. I had to take it—or quit— which I thought meant I'd be breaking my contract, so I stuck it out,

feeling like a horse's ass."

"Okay," Wally said, drawing out the word as if he were enjoying it