The Knockoff (24 page)

T
en hours later, Imogen found herself sipping a double martini with a twist at the little French bistro tucked inside The Jane hotel. After the day she’d had, the drink tasted like magic. They’d dispensed with the requisite discussion of Imogen’s shitty job and moved swiftly on to Bridgett’s love life. “I’m dating a great guy,” Bridgett informed Imogen matter-of-factly.

Imogen could picture him. From years of living together, Imogen knew her friend’s type as well as she knew her own. Bridgett went for older, distinguished, rich and successful. These days it seemed like everyone except Imogen was single and dating again. Most of her single friends and the single mommies at drop-off had been dipping their toes into online dating, where they all lied about their age—all of them except for Bridgett, who was incredibly honest about being in her forties and thought the ten-year-old photos or blurry shots on most of their friends’ profiles were nothing but false advertising. Another close girlfriend of theirs used a photograph clearly taken fifteen years earlier. When she met her date at the bar, he took one look at her, got up and left. Didn’t utter a single word.

Bridgett really didn’t look a day over thirty-five, so when they saw her in person men always complimented her on how young and fabulous she looked.

“Why would I lie?” she always cooed. “I’d much rather have someone show up on a first date and ooo and ahhhh and say, ‘Wow, you look so young!’ I don’t want anyone to get buyer’s remorse.”

Men ate that right up. Her last boyfriend had been the number two at Sony Pictures. Despite the fact that he stood only five foot two, in Los Angeles he could bag just about any woman he wanted. He acted as a sponge for all of Bridgett’s neuroses and the crazier she became, the more he was devoted to her. That was until a much younger and apparently even more neurotic actress stole his affection on the set of a $100 million action movie being shot in Dubai. He at least had the courtesy of ending their relationship over Skype, rather than relegating the task to text message or email. “It was nice that he let me see his little face,” Bridgett explained at the time.

“Do I know the guy?” Imogen now asked, knowing her friend wanted to draw out the telling of her news for as long as possible.

“You do.”

“Is it someone I dated?” She had to ask.

“I don’t think so.”

“Shall we play a guessing game or do you want to tell me?”

With that Bridgett opened up her cardigan to reveal a soft gray T-shirt with the word
BLAST
! across the front.

“Oh, that’s cute. Did Rashid make that?”

“He did.” Bridgett said, her hazel eyes twinkling as she batted Imogen affectionately on the forearm.

“It’s adorable. Next time you see him ask him to give me a couple for Annabel and Johnny. Those are cute. Are you guys meeting up to talk about your app soon?”

Bridgett looked at her like she was simple. “Imogen, I am dating Rashid.”

She hadn’t expected that.

“But I thought he was…”

“Gay.”

“Yes, gay.”

Bridgett grinned and spooned a piece of creamy burrata flecked with dried olives into her mouth. “You of all people should know not to jump straight to conclusions. He’s just well-dressed and groomed
and articulate. I know it’s a stretch, but there are still straight men out there with manners and class.”

Imogen estimated their age difference at about fifteen years and she felt doubly guilty that she felt a small bit of judgment about that. Pushing it down, she mustered all of her happiness for her friends. Rashid was amazing. He was brilliant and kind, and that was exactly the kind of man that Bridgett deserved. If Demi Moore, Heidi Klum and Madonna had taught them anything, it was that younger men were terribly attracted to strong, self-reliant older women.

Confident that she had given Imogen enough of a shock, Bridgett began rifling around in Imogen’s Birkin.

“What are you doing?”

“Do you mind if I go through your meds?”

“My what?”

“Just let me look at your medication?”

“Here at the table?”

Bridgett glanced around the dim room. “No one interesting is here,” she said as she pulled Imogen’s small cushioned bag from her purse and began looking at vitamins, supplements and four bottles of pills.

“What are these? Neupogen?”

Imogen grabbed the bottle. “Cancer drug.”

“What are these big ones?”

“Vitamins.”

Bridgett popped one of the large cylinders into her mouth. “Ooooo, Zoloft. Excellent. I’ll take one of these.”

“Bridgett!” Now Imogen rolled her eyes and smiled. “You can’t just take one Zoloft. It isn’t like Xanax.”

Her friend waved her hand away.

“Oh, please. I’ve been taking these since before you knew what a panic attack was. I am going to pick my new prescription up tomorrow. It’s fine. I just left my pills at the office…. Besides, I am a little nervous about hanging out with you and my new man.”

As if they had conjured him just by speaking his name, Rashid appeared at the entrance to Cafe Gitane, resplendent in a red sweater with heather-gray pants. He leaned in to double kiss Imogen’s cheeks before brushing his lips seductively across Bridgett’s.

“I hope I gave you enough time to let the cat out of the bag, otherwise that kiss is sure to make Imogen really uncomfortable.” He settled into the chair next to a flushed Bridgett.

“So Imogen, how is that idea for your app going?”

“I’ve barely had time to breathe, much less invent a new company.”

Rashid laughed. “One of these days you will start thinking about ideas for new companies while you breathe. I can tell it’s in you, Imogen.” He lowered his voice and gave it a mechanical monotone. “The force is strong with this one.”

The two women delivered blank stares.

“Yoda?” he said, giving them a questioning look.
“Star Wars?”

Bridgett piped up. “I don’t think this is an age thing, is it?”

Rashid shook his head. “No, it’s a nerd thing.”

The word “nerd” caught Imogen’s attention, since Eve loved throwing it out there as if “nerd” were somehow synonymous with “tech.” She said as much to Rashid, eliciting a grand sigh from him.

“Eve is the opposite of nerd, isn’t she?” Bridgett asked.

Imogen just shrugged.

“I never try to pigeonhole exactly what Eve is. It changes every single day.”

Rashid wanted to explain. “There are so many smart women working in technology these days. Take Aerin Chang. She’s just so fucking brilliant it makes my brain hurt. Half of the coders we have at BLAST! are now women. That’s a big deal considering we had just two last year. I love women in tech. But I hate women like Eve in tech. Eve was very obviously the popular girl in college.”

Imogen nodded, indicating that he was not wrong.

“You know what most of the guys in tech were doing in high school and college?” Rashid continued. Both women shook their heads.

“We played a lot of tabletop Dungeons and Dragons and we played with computers. Girls like Eve went to Beyoncé concerts and drank wine coolers while we learned code and we built code and we played games and made games, mostly because we didn’t have many friends in high school. We had acne. We were short. A lot of us smelled funny. Our parents’ suburban basements were our football stadiums. I figured I would always be the odd brown kid. We didn’t go into tech
because it was cool. We went into tech because it was what we were good at. Now you have women like Eve sweeping in, hopping onto the next hot thing. She isn’t in it because she loves what we do. She’s there to make money.”

He paused. “Which I respect. I love money. But she’s condescending to those of us who’ve been doing this our whole lives.”

Imogen got that. Eve was as condescending to her, a person who had been in magazines her entire life, as she was to Rashid, a person who knew more about technology than she could ever hope to. Eve was simply condescending to everyone. It wasn’t the tech that made her a bitch. She was just a bitch.

Imogen’s phone peeped at her like a baby bird.

“That’s a funny alert noise,” Rashid commented.

Imogen blushed. “I am still trying to figure out how to make it make a proper sound.” Rashid reached across the table and grabbed her phone. He made a few swipes and taps and then returned it to her.

“Now all messages will come with a very dignified and solemn small bell.”

“Thank you,” she said, taking it back.

“Oh, and it seems that your girl crush might just have a reciprocal girl crush on you?”

Imogen tilted her head in confusion.

“If I am not mistaken, you just got an email from the one and only Aerin Chang.” Imogen tried not to look too eager as she opened her mailbox. Sure enough, there was a message at the top from [email protected].

From: Aerin Chang ([email protected])

To: Imogen Tate ([email protected])

Subject: Fancy a coffee?

Hi Imogen!

I hope you don’t think this email is too forward. I’m a big fan of both you and
Glossy
. I’ve been having a real blast following your
Instagram. I would love to chat with you about
Glossy
and about what we do over at Shoppit. Essentially I just love sitting down to coffee with smart women and I think we have a lot in common. Would you let me buy you a macchiato?

Cheers,

Aerin

She had her at “macchiato.” Imogen must have had a goofy grin on her face, because Rashid and Bridgett were smirking at her.

“She wants to have coffee,” Imogen explained. “Did you tell her to email me?”

“I didn’t,” Rashid replied. “I meant to after we talked about her, but I haven’t had the chance yet. You go, girl. Go have coffee and then go take a job at Shoppit and stop working for that little witch,” Rashid said.

“Um, that isn’t at all what she wants to meet about. One, I have no place at all at a start-up. Two, she hardly knows me. Why would she want to hire me? Three, I like my job.”

“I could refute all of those points,” Bridgett said. “But I won’t. I do think you should meet up with her.”

“Is it weird that we kind of became friends on Instagram first and now we are meeting up?” Imogen asked.

Bridgett and Rashid shook their heads, practically in tandem.

“That’s how everything works these days,” Rashid said. “Everyone meets first online.” He considered it further. “For a while people were only talking online, but now everyone seems to be jumping on the whole ‘in-person’ thing, so online friends are becoming offline friends. Everyone wants to hang out IRL—in real life.” Even though Bridgett continued to nod, Imogen doubted that her old friend understood any of this much better than she did. Bridgett was simply better at faking it.

“Should I write back now or should I wait a bit?”

Bridgett laughed. “You’re not trying to sleep with her. Just write back and make a date. I don’t think you need to play coy here.”

“You’re right. Obviously.” Still, she slipped her phone into her purse, wanting to choose the right words to type back later when she was alone. She didn’t know why she wanted Aerin Chang to like her.

Imogen gave a long look at her old friend and her new friend. They were an odd couple indeed, but this was New York City and she had most certainly seen odder. What mattered was that they were both happier together than they’d been when they were apart.

“I love you two.”

They rose to hug her.

As she walked home, she composed an email to Aerin in her head.

From: Imogen Tate ([email protected])

To: Aerin Chang ([email protected])

Subject: Would love to meet up!

Dear Aerin,

Your email wasn’t too forward at all. I am just getting my bearings on Instagram, but I do adore everything that you post. I would love to grab a coffee or a drink. Do you want to let me know what works for you next week and we can go from there?

xo,

Imogen

The reply came in no time at all.

From: Aerin Chang ([email protected])

To: Imogen Tate ([email protected])

Subject: RE: Would love to meet up!

So excited! I actually have an opening tomorrow afternoon. It’s short notice and I’m sure you are busy as hell, but do you have any
interest in coming by the Shoppit office for lunch? We can order in here. Super casual. Let me know!

xo

Aerin

Why not?
Imogen asked herself. Lunch with Aerin Chang at the Shoppit office sounded delightful. Still, she had butterflies in her stomach, as if she were going on a first date.

T
his dress is a complete piece of shit!” was the first thing Imogen heard when she walked into the office the next morning.

“Someone get me out of this piece of shit!”

Rounding the corner, Imogen could see that all of the fuss was taking place around three stainless-steel rolling racks of wedding dresses lined up along Eve’s desk. Without an ounce of propriety she was slipping them over her matching red lace bra and panties, oblivious to the fact that her brazen nakedness might make anyone within eyeshot a little bit uncomfortable. Imogen glanced at the labels: Vera Wang, Dennis Basso, Pnina Tornai, Reem Acra, Lanvin and Temperley. These were all $10,000-plus dresses, $100k on that rack alone, and Eve treated them like she’d just grabbed them from the discount bin at T.J.Maxx. She wiggled her way out of a Monique Lhuillier mermaid dress and chucked it across the room.

“Nothing is right!” Eve glowered at the rack.

Trying to make her eyes fall anywhere else, Imogen strained not to take in Eve’s toned physique—a six-pack of abs, sculpted little triceps like oblong kiwis and not an ounce of cellulite. What must it be like to have that self-confidence? To have no barrier, no apprehension about what anyone else was thinking about you? She wandered
over to Eve’s tall desk and distracted herself by picking up the only piece of clutter, a toy plastic dinosaur. The long neck meant it was a brontosaurus. Johnny begged for one of these every time she took him to the American Museum of Natural History. It was nice to have something to occupy her hands. She ran her finger along the pebbled plastic surface of the toy.

“Imogen.” Eve’s snap brought her attention back to the moment. “Which of these dresses do you like?” Walking closer to the racks, Imogen tried not to feel like she was following orders. She feigned an actual interest in pulling them down and examining them.

“Well, Eve,” she began slowly. “It depends what look you’re going for. When you thought about your wedding when you were a little girl, what did you see? Were you a princess? Were you glamorous? Sexy?” Eve’s lower lip protruded from the top one and she bit down a little. Her hands moved up on her hips.

“I loved Kaley Cuoco’s wedding dress…and the one Chrissy Teigen wore when she married John Legend. Oh, and that bitchy girl from
The Bachelor
, the wedding they had on live television. I loved Pippa at Kate’s. I think my style can best be described as ‘sexy princess,’ ” she said, with the determination of an Olympic figure-skating judge.

Imogen briefly imagined shaking the girl and telling her she was the reason brides got such a bad name. Instead, always the editor, she thought quickly, considered the dresses, and ran her hand over the fabrics. She loved wedding dresses, loved the sense of occasion that went into creating them, the beading, the lace, the handiwork. A wedding dress was an event all unto itself, for some women the most important part of the big day, maybe even more important than the groom. “Okay, so I think we want a fuller skirt, but nothing too big, with a strapless top.”

Imogen pulled an Alexander McQueen sweetheart ball gown in silk satin with a natural waist and beaded embroidery and presented it to Eve. “Be delicate though, the beading can get caught on nearly anything and the whole thing will unravel at your fingertips.” Eve rolled her eyes and clumsily stepped into the dress, her foot coming down on the inside seam. Imogen blocked out the sound of something
tearing. Eve yanked it up. The dress caught on her bra and she wailed for Ashley to come behind her to zip her up.

What a gorgeous gown
, Imogen thought. Classy and yet sexy at the same time, a dress fit for royalty that showed the right amount of skin.

Eve wrinkled her nose. “Is it too old-fashioned?”

“I think wedding dresses should be a little old-fashioned,” Imogen said.

“Of course you think that.” Eve gave a rueful laugh. “I like this one. Let’s add it to the maybes.” She reached behind her, cocking her arm at a painful-looking angle to yank the zipper down and let the dress fall to the floor.

“Eve, be careful,” Imogen warned.

“If I mess it up they’ll send over another one. We’re getting them so much press for this wedding.” Eve stepped out of the dress, leaving it in a crumpled heap and knocking her hip into the corner of her desk. Rubbing the bruise, she scowled at the piece of furniture as if it purposely tried to trip her. She walked to the corner, her perfect ass swaying with each step, and pulled on a tight black skirt and low-cut sweater. “Did I tell you that I think we nailed down
Martha Stewart Weddings
magazine?”

Imogen shook her head. “You didn’t.”

“Yeah, I met one of the editors at Spirit Cycle last night and invited her to come to the wedding. You know she will write about it if I invite her. It will make her feel all special. It
is
expected to be like the wedding of the year.”

That was not entirely accurate, but Imogen was sure it would be a well-attended event.

“I’m happy for you.” As the words came out of her mouth, Imogen remembered some advice Molly gave to her in her late twenties before she got married. Her mentor had been incredibly intuitive and never needed to ask any questions to know exactly what was going on in any of her employees’ lives. There was a stretch, when Imogen was dating Andrew, when six of her friends became engaged and Imogen thought she was never going to find that particular happy ending. Molly, sensing her ennui during a lunch at La Grenouille, said
to her: “It’s best to be happy for all the weddings…all the engagements, all the babies, all the job promotions. You must try to be truly happy for these things.”

Small talk wasn’t ever easy with Eve, but Imogen thought she might as well give it a shot.

“Is your dad walking you down the aisle at the wedding?”

“My dad is dead,” Eve said evenly and then, as if realizing she may have been too flip, added, “He passed away last fall while I was at B-school. Heart attack during the last football game of the season.”

What could she say? With anyone else Imogen would have apologized profusely, maybe hugged her. Eve had already whipped out her phone, perhaps as an emotional shield, and was snapping pictures of the racks of dresses and posting them on Twitter.

“I’m so sorry,” Imogen said.

“It’s okay. He went out doing what he loved best.” For a second, her steely resolve wavered. “He’d be proud of me right now though. He always wanted me to be in charge of something.”

Eve quickly shifted gears. “We can check the dress off the list,” she said as she walked back over to her desk while Ashley stooped to pick up the remaining dresses off the floor, doing her best to smooth out wrinkles in the satin and organza before returning them to the rack and rolling them into another corner of the office.

“Eve, I have a lunch meeting today,” Imogen began.

“Sounds good. Have you met the new staffers?”

Imogen hadn’t. Twelve new women arrived in the office that morning to replace the six they let go the day before.

“Not yet, but I’ll make some time this afternoon.”

“Good. The amount of content we are producing is already up. Traffic is up. It was a good move. My decision was definitely the right one.” Eve paused for a second.

“This city is hard.” Eve swallowed impatiently. “Not everyone is cut out for it.”

“Sometimes you have to give people chances.”

“Isn’t that what I gave them? When they got the job here?”

Imogen decided to change the subject again. “So, after my lunch
why don’t we go over the details for the big winter fashion photo shoot?”

The winter fashion photo shoot was something of a coup for Imogen. She knew Eve hated spending money, especially on photo shoots, but showcasing designers in innovative ways was still something that mattered to Imogen. It was the heart of
Glossy
. Her own employees had been her inspiration for this shoot. She would feature young women working in tech wearing amazing designers. They would use a few models, but mostly real women, on the subway on their iPads, walking around town in Google Glass, on a conference call while going for a jog and sitting with their laptops all over the city. It would be gorgeous and empowering all at once and Imogen had exactly the photographer for the job. Her good friend Alice Hobbs was perfect for this. A fellow Brit, Alice was raised in both London and Switzerland. She understood women, captured their inner strength. She’d taken a two-year hiatus from fashion in the 2000s to shoot tribal women in Namibia, publishing her first book of photographs, titled
Brave
. Alice wasn’t cheap, but Imogen knew she was worth every penny and she somehow managed to convince Eve that she was the way to go. Eve was reluctant to spend money on things that mattered to Imogen, but she was loose with Glossy.com’s cash when it came to things that mattered to her.

Ashley let it slip that Eve was paying $10,000 and $20,000 to a handful of celebrity starlets to compel them to show up to her wedding and be photographed for just half an hour. She was also in negotiations to have her idol, the pop singer Clarice, serenade her as she walked down the aisle.

Eve shrugged. “Whatever. It’s just a photo shoot. I would be just as happy with someone taking pics on their iPhone. It might even be better, right? More raw! Maybe we should think about that?”

“We already put Alice on contract, remember?”

“Well. Next time. Let’s see how much extra traffic we get from having ‘the famous Alice Hobbs,’ as you call her, taking pictures instead of, like, ‘Intern Number Two.’ ” And then as an aside, more to herself than to anyone else in the room, Eve muttered, “We should get some
more interns in here. One more thing…let’s talk about creating some holiday GIFs.”

“You’re so right,” Imogen said. “I’ve been so busy I forgot all about the holiday gift guide. I think we should think out of the box this year. We can still do some of the traditional mom gifts, dad gifts, boss gifts, but let’s get a little wild. Gifts for your gay best friend, gifts for the office frenemy. We could have a lot of fun with it.”

Why was Eve laughing? She guffawed so hard a small snort came out of her mouth.

“GIFs, Imogen. I want to create some viral GIFs, you know, those moving pictures Buzzfeed is always doing…gift guides. You crack me up. Can I tweet that? I’m going to tweet that.” Imogen felt like a fucking idiot and began backing toward her own office, not noticing the plastic brontosaurus still in her hand until Eve shouted to her.

“Hey, give that back to me.” Flustered, Imogen looked down at her hands.

“I’m so used to grabbing these toys when the kids leave them around. I wasn’t paying attention.” She twisted it around as she tried to return it to its rightful place on the desk. On the side she hadn’t looked at, very clearly written with a thick black marker, was her name, IMOGEN, in neat all-cap letters. Why was her name on this plastic toy?

Eve noticed her confusion and for a moment she may have been at a loss for words. The moment, however, was brief. And she picked up the brontosaurus.

“I named it Imogen.” She held it aloft in one hand and made it do a little jig. “Because you’re our office dinosaur.” Eve’s lips turned up at the corners in a cruel smile. How was Imogen meant to respond? There was no shame in Eve’s face. She kept her eyes locked on Imogen’s.

Laugh it off. I have to laugh this off
.

“I’ve always thought of myself as more like the T. rex than a bronto,” Imogen said, walking away from Eve’s desk.

Eve didn’t want anyone walking her down the aisle. This was
her
day. If he’d been around her dad surely would have stolen the spotlight. He always did. It sucked being the unwanted daughter of the most popular man in town.

Big John Morton had passed his willful stubbornness along to his daughter as surely as he passed on his lumpy earlobes and wide mouth. The man was the most successful failure in Kenosha, Wisconsin. That was Dad—the high school football coach with the best record in the state who had never been invited to move up the ladder because of an attitude problem so severe, no one in the upper echelon of academia wanted to work with him. It was no secret that Big John wanted a boy and he hadn’t even tried to mask his disappointment over Eve. It got worse around the house after Eve’s mom died. Their similar facial structure and red curls made Big John cringe when he saw his daughter, who he regularly referred to as “just the girl,” instead of by her name, despite her best efforts to do all the things a boy child could do.

The girls at Ronald Reagan Memorial Elementary had been cruel to her. Her father had insisted on buying her asexual clothing, striped rugby shirts and baggy khaki shorts. He cut her hair off like a boy’s.

Finally, in junior high she rebelled through fashion, dressing as girly as possible, growing out her hair and overdoing it with eye shadow, lipstick and mascara. Boys started to like her and when boys liked you other little girls liked you too, or at least they pretended they did.

Making the varsity swim team in high school and getting a 4.0 still didn’t make up for her lack of a Y chromosome. Harvard was the first thing that made her dad proud. Now he was gone. Eve knew she was supposed to feel more, but at the funeral she had a hard time projecting the emotions people wanted to see. She’d almost stayed out East, but then she’d always be known as the girl who skipped her dad’s funeral, and that would look like hell all over Facebook.

She’d gone and seen all the losers who didn’t think there was a life to live outside of Wisconsin. They really should have been more impressed with everything she had achieved in New York and then
in Cambridge. But no one even mentioned Harvard or
Glossy
. It was like they didn’t follow her at all. Still, she had invited a group of them to her wedding. That way they would at least post pictures so people back in town would have to see that Eve Morton (soon-to-be Maxwell) was Winning-At-Life.

The girl who Imogen had seen crying in the elevator had looked broken, but harmless, which was why it surprised Imogen when she saw the email from her that afternoon. It wasn’t addressed to her, but to Eve. Imogen was copied, not blindly, along with twenty other
Glossy
employees and journalists from outlets all over the city, ranging from newspapers including the
Post
, the New York
Daily News
and the snarky
Observer
to websites like Gawker, BuzzFeed, TechBlab and the Daily Beast. The email criticized the way that Eve treated her while she worked there and systematically fired her.