The Knockoff (31 page)

“Come on, Carter.” She rarely used his first name. “Tell me.”

“Why not? You’ll find out sooner or later. There’s talk of selling off Glossy.com to a tech company, one that knows a little better what they are doing, one that can deliver on all of the things that Eve promised—traffic, sales, data collection. The girl came up with a genius concept, but I don’t know how she’s doing on the implementation side. And she’s killing the morale of that office.”

Of course Worthington knew what was happening downstairs. You didn’t get to his level by being oblivious. She didn’t know how he did it, but her boss must have eyes and ears on that floor. If he knew about her progress, then he knew about Eve’s inadequacies.

“Robert Mannering Corp. created
Glossy
. They would just sell it that easily?”

“It isn’t a child, Imogen. It’s a business. Like I said, it’s a strong brand. If they can get a good payday from a sale, the board will take it.”

It was a lot to take in. Not that she had always seen eye to eye with Worthington. In fact, she’d had some of the bigger blowups of her professional life with him, but she respected him as a businessman in a sea of creative people, the man who had to make the tough decisions because his staff often had their heads in the clouds.

Imogen looked at his moon-faced assistants, both of whom were staring at their boss with adoring gazes.

“What do the two of you plan to do?”

The shorter one smiled widely. Imogen felt badly that she had never bothered to take a second to learn their names.

“Our start-up just got funded!”

The taller one piped in, “Mr. Worthington was nice enough to introduce us to his friends who work in venture capital and we just got our first round of funding.”

Imogen both did and didn’t want to ask what the girls’ company was all about. She didn’t have to, because Worthington chimed in with pride.

“Tess and Marni came up with a brilliant idea.” The women beamed. “They are disrupting the way people wait for restaurants. They’ve built an app called LineDodge where users can input how long the wait is at any restaurant in the world so that you never get caught in a line.”

The taller one added, “It then crowdsources reviews off Yelp to tell you the next best rated restaurant with that cuisine with no line.”

“I invested some pocket change in it,” their boss admitted.

The shorter one shrugged. “We rented a co-working space at WeWork and we’re incorporated. It’s awesome.”

Rashid was right, anyone with a dream these days could go start a company.

“Who would buy Glossy.com?” Imogen asked, switching gears for a minute.

Worthington scratched his head.

“It’s all early-stage talks. Most of those never go anywhere. But I know there was a Chinese company interested. Plus, the folks over at that e-commerce company Shoppit have been by a few times to talk about it.”

Imogen felt a shiver run down her spine.

“Shoppit? Did you meet with Aerin Chang?”

“Chang. That is exactly who we met with. Smart whippersnapper, that one. Loves magazines. Loves you too. Had great things to say about you.”

Why didn’t Aerin Chang tell her she was looking to buy her website?
That was a huge deal. Was their meeting all a calculated game to find out more about the business? Imogen felt used.

“When did Shoppit come here?”

“A couple of weeks ago. The board thought it was a little crazy, but hell, if they end up getting two hundred fifty million dollars for the old product, I don’t think they care what that little Korean girl does with it.”

Aerin was seriously considering buying
Glossy
. More and more their meeting seemed like an attempt to pump information out of Imogen, especially when Aerin asked her what she didn’t like about her magazine. It should have been so obvious. It wasn’t the start to a friendship, it was corporate espionage.

Did this mean that Aerin was no better than Eve?

She walked over to Worthington, prepared to shake his hand and then at the last minute leaned in for a hug instead. The man seemed surprised, but he soon embraced her back, sniffing at her neck a little too long.

“We had a good run of it, kiddo,” he whispered in her ear. “Think about taking the buyout. Leave the
Glossy
Imogen Tate behind and become a new Imogen Tate. Write a novel, open a bakery. Start a second act. This is New York City. If you don’t reinvent yourself, you get left behind.”

“I think that might be the most true thing that has ever come out of your mouth, Carter.”

“Plus,” he said, winking suggestively, “I won’t be your boss anymore.”

Imogen smiled and patted him on the shoulder. It was hard to be angry at a dirty old man. “No, you won’t be.”

The assistants, both furiously typing away at their MacBooks, now commanded a new air of respect. Imogen gave them a grin and a small salute as she walked out, making promises to Worthington about getting together with the kids and the spouses, maybe out at the beach next summer.

Riding the elevator back to her office, she considered her options. She could call Aerin and tell her she knew. What would she even say?
How dare you invite me to your office and share macarons with me and then not tell me you wanted to buy my magazine?

Her phone vibrated in her pocket. Deep in thought and vaguely clumsy, Imogen fumbled for it. Ashley.

>>>>Your daughter is at the office.<<<<

It was hardly noon, lunchtime at Country Village Elementary.

Imogen was out of breath by the time she made it to
Glossy
’s floor. Quiet as ever, there was just the gentle
tap, tap
of manicured nails on keyboards. Her eyes scanned the room.

Eve’s tall desk stood empty.

They were in Imogen’s office. Eve and her daughter were in her office.

This time it was Annabel in her desk chair, laughing, as Eve perched precariously on the side of the desk. Imogen smoothed her hand over her ponytail and wiped her index fingers under her eyes to remove any traces of stray mascara.

“Annabel Tate Marretti, what in god’s name do you think you are doing here?”

At the authority in her voice, both Eve and Annabel were startled to attention.

“Mom.” Her daughter looked up, chagrined. “I came to see you.” There was something so honest and so innocent in her eyes. She saw something guilty lurking in Eve’s as she turned to face her.

“Please leave me alone with my daughter, Eve.”

Eve let out a hollow laugh. “What’s the big deal? She just came to see you.”

“Let us be, Eve.”

Imogen felt Eve’s roll of her eyes and as she turned saw Eve try to lock eyes with her daughter for a conspiratorial stare. For her part, Annabel wasn’t having any of it. She kept her eyes on the floor.

“Why aren’t you in school? How did you get here?”

“I wanted to see you,” Annabel said. Now tears streamed down both her cheeks. She let Imogen hug her.
Keep your shit together
, Imogen
said to herself. Her daughter’s words were barely audible through her hiccupping cries. “She’s so mean. Candy Cool is so mean. She sent this out to my whole school.” Annabel held her iPhone out at arm’s length like it contained a disease.

Another picture of her daughter. This one superimposed on an obese woman on a mock cover of
Glossy
magazine under the headline
EVEN MY MOM THINKS I
’
M UGLY
. The post had 345 likes and 57 shares.

Candy Cool was a cunt.

Her daughter’s eyes begged for compassion. Gone was the strong, confident young woman who threw organic produce into a Vitamix on a YouTube channel watched by thousands of other preteens. She was a scared little girl who needed her mother.

“Darling, do you still think that Candy is Harper Martin?”

Annabel shook her head from side to side.

“No. Harper is the worst, but she can barely use a computer. She couldn’t make these.”

“Do you have any idea who is?”

“No. Harper is like the meanest girl in the class but she isn’t this mean. The message posted after this was even worse.”

“What did it say?”

“She said, ‘Your mom thinks you are ugly because you don’t look like her.’ ”

It took all of Imogen’s strength not to scream out loud right then and there. Instead she softened her voice all the more.

“You know I don’t think that, right?”

Annabel didn’t nod. Instead she looked away.

“Sometimes I think you wish that I were as pretty as you.”

“Annabel. Stop it. You aren’t as pretty as me. You’re prettier than me. You’re beautiful. Do you know what I would give to have this gorgeous curly head of hair like yours or your perfect olive skin? I have this terrible pasty white skin that turns red the second I go into the sun. You’re the most beautiful little girl I’ve ever seen. I don’t know who this bully is. We’ll find out. I promise.”

She would let Alex play bad cop. She had to get her daughter out of here.

“Let’s go home.”

Annabel allowed Imogen to hold her hand as they walked out of the office.

Eve looked pointedly at them as they left, a smile lingering at her lips that Imogen just couldn’t interpret.

Once Imogen assured her daughter there was no truth to anything this bully said about their relationship, Annabel panicked that her parents would take away her YouTube channel.

“I love it. You can’t take it away. It’s my most favorite thing in the world.”

“Annabel. I don’t want you putting yourself out there like this right now. You’re so young.”

“Everyone does it! You put yourself out there on Instagram. You put yourself out there with the magazine. This is my thing. Please let me have my thing. The people who watch my videos are my friends. Maybe I don’t know them in real life, but they’re my friends and I need friends. It isn’t like you and Dad are ever around.”

It stung because it was true. Neither of them was home anymore. How could she punish her daughter when she was accusing her of being an absentee parent? Where were her priorities these days? With a stupid fashion magazine or with her child?

She opted to leave things be, and stroked Annabel’s head as she fell asleep.

It wasn’t until she had the kids in bed that Imogen remembered her talk with Worthington, which now seemed like a lifetime away.

“Worthington is leaving Robert Mannering Corp.,” she said to Alex, with less urgency than she had earlier imagined telling him.

“What?” he said, sitting up straighter in the bed.

“He took a buyout. He said they’re offering one to a lot of senior management to get salaries down.”

“What is he going to do?”

Imogen laughed at the absurdity of what her boss had told her. “He is going to Thailand. He says he might teach.”

“He’ll go crazy within two weeks without a company to run.”

“I know. I’m sure someone will snap him up. He said I could take a buyout.”

“Oh yeah? What do you think they would offer?”

“About a year’s salary.”

Alex whistled. “I wouldn’t laugh at that.”

“I know,” Imogen said quietly.

“Would you take it?”

“Here’s the other thing. They might sell
Glossy
.”

“To who? The Chinese?”

“Maybe,” Imogen replied. “But also maybe to Shoppit. Do you remember that girl, Aerin Chang, I told you about? The one I met when I went to the Shoppit office.” Even though Alex nodded Imogen was pretty sure he didn’t have any clue exactly which woman she was talking about.

“I think she may have just been pretending to be friendly with me so she could get information about buying my magazine.” Alex groaned.

“She sounds like another Eve.”

“I don’t want to think that. I really didn’t get that impression from her.” Imogen grew defensive about Aerin’s motivations.

“I don’t know, baby. All I know is that I am glad I never have to do business with any of these twentysomething millennial women. They’re fierce.” Alex sighed.

“Should I talk to her? Email her? What if she buys the magazine? What if I have two Eves bossing me around?”

“Then would you take the buyout?”

Now it was Imogen’s turn to sigh. “I can’t even wrap my head around that.”

JANUARY 2016

A
shley did not want to get on a scale in front of the entire office. This was humiliating.

“A hundred twenty pounds. Look at you, girlfriend. Gold stars all around. You’ve lost fifteen pounds.” Eve clapped as Perry stepped off the scale in front of Ashley, who reluctantly took her place to be weighed.

She squeezed her eyes closed as she felt Eve pinch her hard on her hip. “Oooo, you gained five pounds. Maybe just juice for you.” Eve snickered before looking her up and down again. “You were prettier when you first started working here.” She turned to the next girl in line. Ashley hadn’t felt so humiliated since rushing Kappa Theta, when the older sisters stripped the pledges to their underwear and drew circles around their fat bits. The weigh-in was ostensibly part of the “
Glossy
Body Challenge,” a three-week juice cleanse/boot camp program to “kick-start a new you after the New Year.”

“It’s really just to make sure everyone is a size zero at her wedding. She wants everyone there to look completely ano!” Ashley grumbled to Imogen from the confines of her office, where the two of them hid after her humiliating weigh-in. Imogen didn’t have to participate in
the boot camp or the cleansing. Eve, at least, granted her immunity from that.

“Do you know what she sent a bunch of us this weekend?” Ashley fumbled on her phone to find the picture Eve had texted her on Sunday. It was a frontal shot, taken before a mirror, of Eve in a bra and panties, her stomach concave, her thighs twiglike, with the caption “WEDDING READY BITCHES! Let this be your THIN-spiration!”

Imogen rolled her eyes at the picture. “Tell her you think it was inappropriate.” A smile played on Imogen’s lips. She knew Ashley would never say something like that to Eve.

“Maybe I will.” She crossed her legs and played with the little gold anchor on the chain around her neck, dipping it in and out of her mouth and letting her teeth brush against the metal. “I’m working on being meaner. It’s one of my New Year’s resolutions. Be more mean!”

Now Imogen laughed. “Please don’t do that. How about ‘Be more assertive,’ or ‘Stand up for yourself.’ ”

Outside the glass walls, Ashley could see the content producers quietly stuffing
Glossy
discount cards into white gift bags for Eve’s big day, tying the tops of the paper bags with giant red bows.

“Maybe I’ll get the stomach flu tonight and I won’t be able to go to the wedding,” Ashley said, making a faux vomiting noise and then instantly regretting it. Thankfully, Imogen laughed.

“She’d dock your pay.”

“That’s not even funny, because it’s true.” Ashley wanted to tell Imogen her good news. Would she be excited for her? Would she think it was silly? Ashley watched Imogen as she typed on the shiny MacBook Air. Gone was the near-constant frustration that furrowed her boss’s brow just a couple of months ago when she sat in front of the same computer.

Ashley wouldn’t quit work—not yet. A $100,000 investment wasn’t really enough to do that. She needed to hire a product manager, engineers, and a business development person. She needed to build her product before she could think about doing SomethingOld as her full-time gig. Besides, Imogen still needed her.

“So, I have something fun to tell you,” Ashley said, feeling like a little girl bringing home a straight-A report card to her mom.

“What, darling?”

“I kind of have this company that I have been thinking of starting. Well, no, I started it. It’s totally real. And we reached our fund-raising goal. I raised one hundred thousand dollars for it.”

Imogen closed the computer and placed her elbows on top of it, placing her chin in her hands.

“That’s wonderful. Tell me all about it.”