Ten Girls to Watch (24 page)

XADI appeared behind the glass door, pulled it open, and waited for me, without saying so much as a word.

“Hi,” I said awkwardly.

“Hi, you ready?” she answered abruptly. I nodded. Her black hair was shorter than the last time I’d seen her, but still every bit as severe, and she wore the same brusque magenta lipstick. And just like last time, she took the lead and I trotted behind. We went past her office, past the copy room, through the art department, past a conference room, and finally, lo and behold, we arrived in “The Pod.” Which I knew was called “The Pod” (with capitals) because as we entered the area, XADI said, with great weight, “Regina’s office is just off [pause]
The Pod.
”

The room was the bright and airy room I’d imagined I was going to be working in, before I was summarily packed off to the archives. Or at least semirelated to the room I’d imagined. The desks were of the same mold as the receptionist’s desk out front, but these white plastic desks and cubicle walls spanned the length of the floor. And while the lobby desk gleamed, while the receptionist there was a bit of a genie in her pristine bottle, here nothing was pristine. Stacks and stacks of black photo portfolios sat atop cabinets and desks, spread wide for review. Copious back issues of
Charm
were jumbled across shelves and desks. Half-closed cardboard boxes stuffed with sample products jutted out from beneath desks and chairs. Piles and piles of papers and folders perched on chairs and cubicle walls. And spread across each of the waist-high filing cabinets that ran the length of the walkway between cubicles was the most notable mess of all: food, food, and more food. I spotted a fruit tray with a few lonely pieces of cantaloupe, a box of donuts with only crumbles of a powdered jelly donut and a pink frosted donut remaining, bags of chips on a tray on the next cabinet down, and finally, cupcakes, cut in halves and quarters, crumbs trailing across the counter.

Women talked on the phone, typed, typed, and typed, and talked back and forth across desks. I recognized Rebecca Wagner, the platinum-blonde
Charm.com
beauty blogger, at a cubicle near the window. A few desks over was Allie Krezgy, dark curls, the health blogger who chronicled her every workout and meal. Her silence on the subject of cupcakes and donuts now seemed epic. For the first time, looking around at the mess, I thought perhaps I was lucky to be working in my quiet, comparatively orderly basement.

At the far end, which we were steadily approaching, a white silk bench flanked the door of an office. A rumpled assistant in very tall heels got up and closed the door, apparently under the impression that we would otherwise barge right in. “Regina will be ready in five minutes,” she said to XADI, not even so much as glancing at me.

XADI took a seat on the bench, and with an ordinary person, I would have followed suit. But XADI seemed to demand more personal space than most. I stayed standing. Again, with an ordinary person, this might have been the time for chatting. XADI and I waited in silence.

Finally the door opened, three stylish women shuffled out, and XADI and I rose to shuffle in. Every bit as lovely in her office as she’d been at the garden party, Regina stood over her desk in a glowing white tuxedo, the jacket gorgeously tailored with a wide peak lapel and a plunging neckline. She wasn’t the image of some languidly elegant movie star, though. She looked more like an athlete. Even before she moved, you could see her coiled energy.

“Dawn, it’s so good to see you again!” she said. As if I weren’t her lowest-level employee and were instead a friend she was just charmed to run into.

“Nice to see you too,” I said, with demure surprise. I think I’d half expected her to not even remember who I was.

“XADI, how’s everything?” Regina said, with the same warmth.

“No complaints,” she replied, all business as usual.

We circled up around Regina’s tortoiseshell office table, and XADI, in her shapeless black sweater and trousers, was like a black hole of fashion beside a radiant star. And even though she wasn’t exactly nice to me, or someone I particularly wanted to grow up to be, I had a brief moment of amazement in regard to XADI. Here was a woman who was what she was, and no one, not Regina, not a whole office full of trends and niceties and people wearing much cuter outfits and augmenting their lives with smiley-face emoticons, was going to make her otherwise. She was the opposite of me. She did nothing to smooth her path in the world. And she was successful. I took note.

XADI kicked things off. “To start with, Dawn has a list of all the past winners we’ve found so far.”

I passed them my copies of the color-coded spreadsheet and explained each designation. Regina nodded as she glanced over the first page.

“There are a few particularly high-profile women we haven’t talked with yet,” I continued, “but they’re still highlighted, since we know where they are. Gerri Vans; Robyn Jackson, who is the CEO of Madison Capital; Jessica Winston, the opera singer; Barbara Darby, the writer . . .”

“Do we have a plan for contacting those women?” Regina asked.

XADI jumped in. “Figuring out how we want to use them and the best way to approach them is on my agenda for this meeting.”

“Great, so does that lead us to the event?” Regina said.

XADI snapped her eyes to me, and I handed out the packets with event ideas.

Regina took hers, but without looking at it she said, “I’ve been thinking a lot about the event and the coverage . . .” Her voice trailed off for a moment before she launched into a full outline of her vision.

She wanted a gala dinner. She wanted Gerri Vans to keynote. She wanted a journalist-type celebrity to MC. She wanted to announce this year’s winners at the event. She wanted a video featuring the most prominent past winners. She wanted Clairol, the longtime sponsor of the awards, to give a big award to Anitha Ming, the activist responsible for freeing countless girls from brothels in Thailand and Vietnam, and she wanted
Charm
itself to give a big award to the new female president of Harvard, Drew Faust. All the past winners should be invited, though
Charm
wouldn’t cover any of their travel expenses. And she wanted a fancy press list, all the big names. The events team would get going immediately.

Regina could make you feel like you were chatting away over a pot of tea, but she could also clearly get down to business.

My list of ideas for a much less glamorous, conferencey type event were tidily tucked away.

Regina walked to her desk and pulled out her editorial calendar. “I want this in the January issue,” she said. “I’m thinking ‘Real-Life Role Models’ is the Hed. XADI, I think I mentioned I thought this would go well with the Real-Life Makeover special, right?”

XADI nodded.

Calendar in hand, Regina started announcing deadlines. “For the January issue we need final copy and layout no later than November 1. Which means at the very latest we need copy in the lineup starting October 15.” My arithmetic skills revealed that October 15 was a mere nineteen days away. I sat in silence as XADI nodded smoothly.

“Let’s make it easier and feature this year’s winners in a follow-up story on the event in February’s issue,” XADI said.

Regina nodded. Plans continued to roll forth. A photo meeting was set for later that afternoon. Video production had to start rolling. I needed to get addresses firmly squared away so the events team could get invitations out the door.

By the time the meeting wrapped forty-five minutes later, my ears were buzzing. I was going to have to find a hundred-plus elusive women in less than two weeks and generate all sorts of copy while I was at it.

“Oh, last thing, Dawn,” Regina said as we moved toward the door. “We need to start warming up all the big names. Call all of them except Gerri. I’ll talk to her.”

XADI didn’t bat an eye, but I felt a ping of exultation. Who cared if XADI had worried I wasn’t up for the big calls? Regina had declared me fit for duty.

“And as soon as possible,” Regina added, “I want the names and bios of the ten women you think are most worth featuring.”

The second we’d crossed back over the threshold, Regina’s assistant swooped in and closed the door behind us.

XADI walked me back to the lobby and said she’d be in touch about follow-up. I was slightly rattled after the immense number of tasks Regina had just given us, but XADI seemed completely nonplussed. I took comfort in her authoritative calm. We could do this, no problem! As she parted ways with me at the door, she nodded a curt good-bye.

The second the door clicked closed, the receptionist, who seemed to have been waiting for XADI’s departure as much as I had, smoothed another few hairs back into her bun and said, “How was your meeting?”

“Pretty good, I think.”

“Good.” She nodded, her voice with the same purring rumble from before. Then she suddenly sat forward and opened her eyes wide. “You know what I’m going to do for you? I’m going to bring you a mint cutting. You need some plants in your life! I can just tell. Next time you’re here, I’ll have it for you. Just you wait.”

“I’d like that,” I replied with reflexive politeness, but I could tell as soon as I said it just how true it was.

Tanya King,

Spelman College, 1985

_________

THE FILMMAKER

“I’ve always loved movies, and we need more women behind the camera,” Tanya says. She’s off to a great start—her short film,
Regaling the Ritz
,
about a jazz trumpeter, won top honors in Georgia’s student film competition. A jazz trumpeter herself, Tanya plans to keep performing while attending film school in New York.

Chapter
Eleven

R
egina had given her orders, and so I began my calls to big, famous, amazing women I had no right talking to. I left messages with secretaries and assistants and plotted out possible questions in the event any of them actually called me back.
What do you know now that you wish you’d known at twenty-one? Did winning the contest affect your life in any unexpected ways?

A few hours after I placed my first big calls, my phone rang, and I caught my breath, waited another ring, then answered as evenly as possible.

“Hello,” said the voice. “This is Jessie Winston.” Jessica Winston, soprano of Metropolitan Opera and perfume ad fame? Jessie Winston, on my phone?! Her voice sounded regal, crisp but luxurious at the same time, like a layered meringue dessert. I’d seen her just a few months earlier at the Met, descending into madness as Lucia di Lammermoor, trilling away with blood on her gown. The seats had been courtesy of Robert, pre-Lily. Since then I’d considered springing for my own twenty-dollar seat way up in the tippy-top of the theater, just to prove I could access the fine arts all on my own without Robert, thank you very much, but I hadn’t quite gone in for the splurge yet. But here was Lucia di Lammermoor saying hi to me, no opera tickets necessary.

I told her about the anniversary, how excited we were and how we were hoping to bring together as many of the winners as possible. And then I said I obviously had a good idea of what she’d been up to for the past fifteen years, but I’d love to hear a little more about it. Just like that. Nothing more than a little shimmying open the window of invitation, and yet she started pouring her voice through the crack I’d created.

“I’ve been incredibly blessed,” she said, her enunciation sparkling through the receiver. “Any singer who is able to spend her time performing has to acknowledge that. But I think I’ve also been blessed by the mind-body connection this profession fosters.

“Something most people don’t think about is just how physical singing is, and I think that’s what I’m most grateful for in my job. I rely so much on my body that I notice all the tiny differences. If I don’t sleep enough, if I’ve eaten poorly or had a little too much to drink the night before, it comes out in my voice. You can hear my sins. The thing is, everyone relies on their bodies; it’s just harder to hear the screeching when your job is writing or taking care of patients or crunching numbers. That doesn’t mean it’s not there. It just means that some people consider it part of their jobs to turn a deaf ear. I don’t have that luxury. I have to take care of myself, and that’s been a gift.”

“Absolutely,” I said, and she went right on.

“Taking care of yourself is one of the hardest jobs—don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise. It’s much easier to take care of others. After almost twenty years in this business I still struggle with it, but at least I know I’m engaged in the right fight. So many people seem to think there’s something honorable about hurting themselves—working through the night, drinking coffee and eating donuts and plowing through work, running themselves ragged. I’ve been lucky enough to have a job that has taught me to recognize that sort of toughness for the lie that it is. It’s the easy way out. Diligently caring for yourself, now that’s what’s really honorable. All those bad habits, you can get by with them for a while, but in the long run, you hobble yourself.”