Privileged (3 page)
It was then that the realization hit me: I was draped in a white sheet stuck to me with brown frosting; I was not wearing anything underneath; and I still had to climb down the rungs of a ladder to the sidewalk. I looked back at James for guidance.
“Go, baby,” he ordered. “Just go.”
And so I went. But climbing down a ladder wearing nothing but a frosting-spackled sheet, all while keeping my legs together in a ladylike fashion, proved . . . impossible.
Which is how I ended up beavering the entire East Village.
Not wishing to appear __________, the junior magazine staffer kept her __________ well concealed.
(a) unsophisticated; ignorance
(b) desperate; trembling hands
(c) cocky; brilliant ideas
(d) fat; size-ten booty
(e) overqualified; pedigree
E
arly Monday morning found me sipping coffee and enjoying my second jelly doughnut at a small cafeteria table across from my sister, Lily, who daintily spooned a bite of fat-free yogurt into her pouty-lipped mouth. Of course, that’s what
I
should have been eating. But I figured that the events of the weekend entitled me to a full-fledged sugar infusion.
My apartment was uninhabitable. According to our barely decipherable Serbian landlord, Charma and I wouldn’t be able to return for quite a while—three weeks, at least. We were allowed one trip inside after the blaze to salvage a few personal effects but had to don mouth-and-nose masks that made us look like invading aliens from a C-grade horror flick. The masks proved necessary, because everything in our apartment was covered in a layer of soot.
During that salvage mission, I shed my sheet and donned the first things I found in my closet—jeans, a sweatshirt, and chunky black loafers that hadn’t been stylish even when I’d bought them freshman year. I took my iBook—praying that it had survived—and a garbage bag of clothes, plus the twenty emergency bucks I kept stashed inside a copy of
A Brief History of Time,
knowing that even if a junkie wedged his way under our kitchen-window security grate, he’d never steal that book.
Saturday night I slept at James’s place and didn’t attempt a return to birthday-seduction mode. Trust me, if you had an army of sidewalk strangers give you a visual gynecological exam, you’d lose your sex drive, too. His parents’ condo had a mini washer and dryer discreetly placed behind accordion doors, but my attempts to wash the soot and fumes from the clothes I’d salvaged proved fruitless.
Sunday afternoon, James lent me his smallest jeans, an old sweatshirt, and a hundred bucks. I went straight to the 70-percent-off clearance rack at Century 21. This being mid-November, it held nothing but summer clothes and a handful of items clearly left over from last winter because they were too hideous to be purchased by anyone who could actually see.
My hundred dollars bought a gauzy lavender and purple prairie skirt, a white cotton shirt, navy stretch pants with pockets over both hips that pretty much screamed WIDE LOAD, a brown sweater, and two summer T-shirts in the oh-so-palatable shades of vomit yellow and puke green. Sweet. I couldn’t enlist even Lily in this mission—she had a matinee and then a photo shoot for the Gap; they were doing a Stars of the Future ad campaign that would launch the following spring. The shoot went well into the night, which was why my sister had met me for coffee at my corporate cafeteria before her Monday-morning spinning class. Even without makeup and in gym clothes, she looked depressingly flawless.
“When can you get back into your apartment?” Lily asked.
My landlord had left another update on my cell voice mail. “Christmas. Maybe the week after.”
Lily swallowed another baby-size mouthful of yogurt. “I’m sure you want to stay with James, but you can always stay with me if you want.”
I had never actually informed Lily that living with James long-term was not an option due to his parents’ mandate. It just seemed too pathetic.
See, here’s the thing about my sister. I knew she’d offer to share her airy brownstone apartment on West Seventy-fifth near Amsterdam Avenue, and I knew she’d do it with grace. One of the worst things about Lily is that in addition to being stunning and disgustingly accomplished, she is also genuinely nice. If she were a self-centered asshole, I could loathe her. But since she isn’t an asshole and I still detest her for all the things she is that I’m not, being around her kind of makes me hate myself.
“Oh, I’ll work something out,” I said breezily, then polished off the second jam-filled doughnut.
“Umm . . . you’ve got a little . . .”
Lily motioned to her chest. I looked down. My new white shirt was smeared with strawberry jam between buttons three and four. I dabbed at it with a napkin, which only expanded the pinkish stain. Swell.
We walked to the elevators.
Scoop
occupied floors seven and eight of a magnificently renovated fifteen-story building on East Twenty-third Street, overlooking Madison Square Park. Other magazines owned by the same European publishing conglomerate—including
Rockit,
a new
Rolling Stone
competitor I desperately wanted to write for but couldn’t even get an interview with—took up the rest of the building, except for the sleek floor-through cafeteria where we stood. I pushed both the up and the down buttons. Guess which one came first.
“If you change your mind, just call me.” Lily gave me a little hug and stepped into the empty down elevator.
A minute later, I stepped out of a jammed one heading up to
Scoop
and beyond. I waved to Brianna, the receptionist who had started only the week before. The walk to my cubicle took me past Latoya’s open office door.
“Megan!” she called. “Editorial meeting in ten minutes.”
I hoped the horror of her announcement didn’t show on my face. I’d been a bit too preoccupied with the smoked-out-no-place-to-live-purse-ripped-off-no-money thing to plan a pitch for a meeting to which I’d been entirely positive I would not be invited again.
Ha.
Debra Wurtzel, my editor in chief, managed to be both totally cool and completely intimidating at the same time. She was in her early forties, with jet-black blunt-cut hair that fell just above her shoulders. Her severe bangs drew attention to her piercing blue eyes, which were, as usual, rimmed in blue-black kohl. There were five tiny platinum loop earrings lining her right ear and one in her left. Today she wore black wool trousers, a fitted black blazer, and layered black tees. When the last straggler arrived for the editorial meeting—thank God it wasn’t me—she took off her cat’s-eye reading glasses. I’d figured out at my first meeting that this was her signal to begin.
We were in the eighth-floor conference room, whose windows overlooked Twenty-third Street. I sat between Debra’s assistant, Jemma, and Latoya. Always stylish, Jemma sported a gossamer white blouse under a black Betsy Johnson corset top, a red-and-white-checked miniskirt, and round-toed heels that reminded me of Minnie Mouse. The only suggestion that she wasn’t as perfect as she looked were the raggedy cuticles lining her ballet-slipper-pink manicure. Evidently pressure got to her, too.
Latoya wore a thick gray cashmere sweater, a straight black skirt, and piles of oversize black beads around her neck. She looked like Debra’s style protégée, which of course she was. In my own jelly-stained shirt and absurdly out-of-season skirt, I looked like the protégée of a bag lady.
“Let’s start with Hooking Up/Breaking Up.” Debra fixed her gaze on Lisa Weinstock, the plump and brilliant editor whose department handled celebrity couples. “What’s coming up, Lisa?”
Lisa brushed her magenta-streaked bangs away from her eyes. “Totally fresh scoop, including trouble in paradise for Jen and you-know-who. We’ve also got cell-phone pix of Ashlee flirting with Nick at Bungalow 8—nothing like hitting on your sister’s ex to make a splash.”
“Excellent,” Debra said as heads bobbed in agreement all around the table. Of course, if Debra had agreed that a pictorial on donkey sex was “totally fresh,” heads would’ve bobbed.
“Latoya?” Debra asked. “Center story?”
This was the department for which I was an underling.
Scoop
did one weekly four-page “article” in the center of each issue.
“I’m working on a piece with Demi’s daughter Rumer,” Latoya reported. “An inside look at her mom, Bruce, Ashton, blah blah blah. Her photographs; she’ll write captions.”
“Excellent, Latoya.” Debra’s head turned slightly until I was squarely in her gun sights. “Megan? What’s your best new story idea?”
A dozen sets of eyes swung in my direction. I willed my face to remain this side of vermilion, but apparently, biofeedback wasn’t working.
“Well . . . I was thinking about a story on . . .” Think, Megan,
think
. “Some new studies are suggesting that a decline in breast cancer may be connected to a decline in menopausal women’s use of hormone replacement therapy.”
Someone snickered, but Debra’s face was inscrutable. She rolled a forefinger, indicating that I should continue.
“And that had me wondering what the connection might be to other forms of, um, hormones.” I felt my face flaming. “Like the pill,” I finished.
Debra raised her eyebrows at Latoya. “Did Megan discuss this with you?”
“No.” Latoya was more than emphatic.
This was not good.
“Would anyone like to comment?”
Jemma raised a finger. “People read
Scoop
to
escape
reality, not to read about it. Cancer? Hormones?
Menopause?
I mean, ew.”
I don’t know if it was the weekend or my jealousy that James had gotten to write about something with a modicum of intelligence or that I’ll always be my parents’ daughter, but I couldn’t help myself. “Don’t you think we have some responsibility to our readers?” I asked. “We have a broader reach than almost any newspaper. Maybe we should do . . .
something
. . . with that.”
Jemma glanced skyward in an apparent appeal to heaven to deliver her from me. “We write about important things
all the time
. But nothing goes wrong that a very expensive stint in rehab, or some very expensive plastic surgery, or perhaps a very,
very
expensive vacation on a private island can’t fix. And
that’s
what our magazine is about.”
“I think—” Latoya began.
“Excuse me. Does anyone smell
smoke
?” Jemma wrinkled her irritatingly pointy nose, which got a dozen other noses twitching like bunnies’ at a petting zoo. Shit. My shoes. I ever so casually shifted my legs away from Jemma and wrinkled my nose along with everyone else. There were murmurs around the conference table, until Debra asked Jemma to check with building security.
“Let’s wrap up for now, people,” Debra called as Jemma Minnie-Moused her way out of the conference room. The editorial staff shuffled toward the door. I was about to slip out with them, when—
“Megan?”
I turned back. “Yes?”
Debra slid her glasses onto her nose. “See me in my office in five minutes.”
This was really
not good
.
Choose the analogy that best expresses the relationship of the words in the following example:
DOWNSIZING : SELF-CONFIDENCE
(a) stovepipe pants : plus-size model
(b) Page Six exposé : notoriety
(c) Britney Spears : K-Fed
(d) Grammy win : ticket prices
(e) drunken rampage : opening box-office number
I
stood outside the door to Debra’s spacious office, listening to the wind howl around the corner of our building. NY1 had warned that the first real cold front of November was moving in. This seemed an apt metaphor for my life.
The mail guy wheeled his cart past me, careful not to make eye contact. Even the mail guy knew I was a
Scoop
leper. I glanced through the glass wall of Debra’s office. She was on the phone but waved me in.
I stepped into her office for the first time since I’d been hired and was struck again by how spare and clean it was. Glass desk, Toshiba laptop, plus more of those floor-to-ceiling windows. She motioned me into one of the three black director’s chairs facing her desk. The only decoration in her office was a silver Tiffany-framed photo of a much younger Debra at the beach, grinning at a little boy. Debra never talked about her personal life.
“Uh-huh. Okay. Fine . . . Yes, I’ll let you know, Laurel. Talk to you soon.” Debra finally hung up. “Megan.”
“Yes?” I managed, folding my hands in my lap.
“Your instincts are scaring me.” She swiveled her Aeron chair to look out the tall glass windows.
“I know my pitch was a little off,” I admitted. She was staring at me as if I were a dead cockroach on her desk, but I plunged on anyway. “Sure, people like to read about the rich and famous, but if you think about it, we have a unique opportunity to reach so many different types of women.
Scoop
’s demographic is—”
“Jemma was right, Megan,” Debra interrupted. “I’d hoped to move you from captions to articles by now—that’s why I put you in Latoya’s department. But it’s been two months, and you’re just not getting it.”
My face flamed anew. “I’m sure I can come up with some better ideas.” I hesitated, just in case Debra wanted to jump in at this point and agree with me. No such luck.
“I have to let you go, Megan.”
I looked at my lap. Let me go? As in
fired
? Unemployed? Unemployed
again
? I gulped hard. “I understand. I’ll just go clear out my—”
“I’m not finished,” Debra interrupted.
“I’m sorry?”
She folded her arms. “I like you, Megan. Actually, you remind me of me at your age.”
Evidently, she would have fired herself, then. I blinked my suddenly watery eyes.
“You’re smart. Your ideas are intelligent and ballsy. And you’re a hell of a writer—none of that is lost on me. But
Scoop
isn’t the right fit for you. You should be writing for a weightier magazine.
East Coast
.
Rolling Stone
. Even
Rockit
.”
