The Knockoff (34 page)

“Crap!” she cursed to the empty house, jabbing her index finger at the power button to coax it to reboot. A million windows popped up to let her know things hadn’t been properly shut down. Word document
after Word document that had been hanging out in the background of her computer popped up. Recovered. Recovered. Recovered!!!

What was this? ShoppitMag.doc [Recovered].

Imogen hadn’t thought about that at all over the holidays—the ideas she had for a Shoppit magazine after her meeting with Aerin. She must not have saved the document properly. These were good. She probably should have spent more time fleshing them out, but there were nuggets of something in here. Imogen heaved a sigh and carried the laptop over to the kitchen table. She could now balance a laptop on her palm as expertly as the women in her office.
What would be the harm in adding a little gloss to this proposal?

For the next six hours, that’s what she did. It took her mind off Eve and vengeance and
Glossy
and a buyout. Before she knew it, Imogen had a twenty-page manifesto. This is what a digital magazine should look like. It was interactive. It was user-friendly. It inspired the reader with words, pictures, videos and social media. It didn’t bash them over the head with BUY IT NOW captions, it merely intrigued them, encouraging them to mindfully consider making a purchase.

She featured real women in the clothes, women of all shapes and sizes and colors. They’d do behind-the-scenes videos of all of their shoots. She could do stop-frame videos of designers actually making the clothes. She’d let the designers take over Shoppit’s Instagram and Twitter. She’d let regular readers take over too. They really could make fashion democratic. She pored over old magazines. By midnight the kitchen table was covered with tear sheets, photographs and pages of scribbled ideas—some of them lousy, but some of them quite good. Really good. Imogen hadn’t felt this kind of jittery thrill of creativity in years. She drew out pictures of the pages in pencil and then snapped them with her iPhone before copying them into a document on the computer—a Google Doc!

But what now?
Screw it
. Imogen was just going to bite the bullet and send it to Aerin Chang. Time to put herself out there. Before she could talk herself out of it, she attached her memo in an email to Aerin and hit send.

Her fingers wobbled over her phone as she debated whether to
call Bridgett or Massimo to tell them what she had done when an email popped up in her in-box.

From: Robert Mannering ([email protected])

To: Imogen Tate ([email protected])

Dear Imogen,

Please attend an all-hands meeting tomorrow morning at 10 a.m.

Sincerely,

Robert Mannering Jr.

No one had seen the absentee chief executive of the company in the flesh for at least three years, not since he’d married an airline heiress and taken up amateur surfing on her private heart-shaped island off the coast of the Seychelles.

Had he been around when Worthington took the buyout? Imogen hadn’t seen him.

Was this when she got offered the buyout? Tomorrow at ten a.m.? Was this how her career in magazines would end?

Imogen fell asleep wondering if she cared.

The next morning, all the way to the office, Imogen replayed over and over in her head what she would say to Eve. She would confront her with everything she knew and then she would submit her resignation to Robert Mannering Jr., or he would fire her. Either way, with Eve she would get the last word.

Imogen rushed toward the elevator right as the doors were closing. A delicate ivory hand reached out to hold the doors open for her. Aerin Chang looked up, startled to see that it was Imogen walking into the elevator. The Shoppit CEO tucked both sides of her dark hair behind her tiny ears.

“What are you doing here?” Imogen said. “Did you get the email I sent last night?”

Aerin paused. “I did. I was about to email you back, but things got so rushed this morning.” Imogen realized that the girl didn’t answer her first question.

“Why are you here?” Imogen repeated it.

It was obvious that Aerin was trying to choose her words carefully.

“I have a meeting here with Rob Mannering.” Aerin’s face was blank.

With a startling clarity, Imogen realized the reason Aerin was there.

“Is this about the
Glossy
sale?”

The elevator doors opened onto a nondescript floor beneath the
Glossy
offices, a floor that housed Sales, Accounting and Human Resources. Aerin began to step out of the elevator.

“Imogen. I can’t talk about it right this second. I want to talk about it with you. I want to talk to you about your email last night. I want to talk to you about everything.”

The doors closed on her words and Imogen continued up another three floors.

Imogen had never doubted her own judgment of character, at least not until Eve came back. Eve made her question her ability to read people and their motivations. She’d had such a good feeling about Aerin Chang from the moment she started following her on Instagram, and it was only solidified when they met in person. She seemed so genuine. In hindsight, Eve had never been genuine, just eager, and her eagerness masked the naked ambition that was revealed once she was in a position with a modicum of power.

Mannering had sold
Glossy
to Shoppit. Imogen knew it. That was the meeting.

Maybe they weren’t going to fire her. She knew Aerin Chang wanted to work with her. But still, could she stomach working with Eve for a single day more? She would endure the same torture from that horrible girl no matter who owned the company. The sale was a good thing for
Glossy
. Of that, Imogen was sure. Aerin was a solid executive with a great head on her shoulders and an incredible eye. But Ron had been right. She needed to make a choice. She wanted Eve out of her life. She would congratulate Aerin on the sale and take the buyout.

Imogen scanned the office, looking for Eve, wanting to confront her before the big meeting. She needed to get it over with.

Her anger surfaced as, across the room, she saw the girl applying a fresh coat of bright red lipstick and pouting at herself into her iPhone camera. Around her neck, the very same shade as her lips, was the red Hermès scarf Imogen gave her two years earlier when she left for business school.

Breathe
. She had to remember to breathe.

Ashley cut her off before she could reach Eve.

“I need your help.” She was more frantic than usual.

“Ashley, can we talk about it in a little bit?”

“No. I need you now.” She pulled Imogen into her office. “The commenters on the site got nasty after Eve’s wedding. I don’t want to talk to her about it. Because you know. It was her wedding, but I need you to help me shut it down.”

“I have no idea how to even start doing that.”

“Me neither. It’s sooooo bad.”

Imogen didn’t bother to ask Ashley what “sooooo bad” meant. She took a look for herself.

That is the saddest white girl dance to Beyoncé I have ever seen. Those girls look like they’d rather be in prison!

Could the entire wedding party be any thinner? Gross!

I see a toddler in the corner. Did the groom bring a date?

DESPERATE!

I don’t want to BUY ANY of this NOW. I want to forget I saw it.

The bride scares me…STEPFORD!

Imogen glanced down at her watch. She had ten minutes. “Let me make a quick phone call and see what I can do.” As she sank into her
chair, she thought about doing nothing at all. Let them skewer Eve for the witch she was. She deserved it. Let the
Glossy
site be covered in hate mail. She’d be gone in a couple of hours anyway.

But she couldn’t. This was her magazine, until someone told her it wasn’t. She had pride.

Rashid answered on the first ring.

“Hello, beautiful.”

“Can you help me with something a bit technical?”

“Of course.”

“I need to shut off the comments on all blog posts about Eve’s wedding.”

He considered for a second. “What CMS are you using?”

Imogen surprised herself that she knew the answer to that question right off the bat.

“It’s based on WordPress.”

“Oh, easy then. Go into the back end of the system and click on the posts that are getting the comments.” Imogen did as she was told. “There should be a drop-down box that will let you see all of the options. You can just hide comments.”

It was so simple. Yet this was something Imogen never could have done three months earlier. She breathed a sigh of relief that it was something she could do now. She switched off the comments and pushed her chair back from her desk.

“Rashid…one more thing? How hard is it to hack into someone’s Twitter account?”

“For a regular person?”

“For you?”

“Easy. Unethical, but easy. You want into Eve’s account?”

“I might.”

“Anything for you, Imogen.” The plan wasn’t fully formed yet. She had to go to this meeting. Then she would deal with Eve and Candy Cool.

Eve had already vacated her corner. Deliberately, Imogen walked over to Ashley.

“Thank you,” she whispered in her ear.

“For what?” Ashley’s wide eyes were confused.

“For everything since I’ve been back. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.”

The girl blushed. “That’s my job. I’m here to help.”

“I know you are, darling. But you’re here to do more than that too. Make sure that people appreciate that.” Tears threatened to smear Ashley’s perfectly smudged smoky eye.

Imogen leaned in to hug her.

“Mr. Worthington was right,” Ashley said into Imogen’s shoulder. “About what?”

“When he was leaving he told me to try to spend as much time with you as I could. He said I should try to be more like you when I grow up.”

Imogen smiled at her old boss’s compliment.

“I think you are quite grown-up already.”

Imogen’s phone pinged with an incoming email.

From: Eve Morton ([email protected])

To: [email protected]

Please join me in the conference room in an hour to celebrate my big promotion with me. We also have a HUGE announcement about the magazine!!!! We’re about to be BIG-TIME LADIES!

It’s a Good, Great, Gorgeous, GLOSSY! Day!!!

Eve

The ecru walls of the hallway leading to the large executive conference room were lined with enlarged magazine covers throughout the history of Robert Mannering Corp. There was
Sporting, Chic, Business Watch, Beautiful Homes, Yacht Enthusiast
and, finally,
Glossy
. Early issues of the fashion magazine had beautifully illustrated covers of prettily coifed twentysomething housewives in tea-length dresses and hats. Then came the photographs, growing edgier and sexier as the
years went on. So much more skin. Just steps before the doors to the conference room the covers stopped. They were out of room. It made Imogen laugh.
How do you put a website on a wall?

Inside the bright and airy meeting room, Robert Mannering’s eleven gray-haired board members congregated around the mahogany table, furiously typing away on BlackBerrys. Bridgett liked to joke that it was executives in their sixties who were keeping BlackBerry in business. Imogen glanced longingly at their easy-to-type-on keyboards. The room had floor-to-ceiling windows on two walls and on a clear day the view stretched out to Coney Island and the Atlantic Ocean beyond it.

Aerin Chang sat at one end of the table. Robert Mannering Jr. at the other. Unfortunately, the only empty seat at the table was right next to Eve, who wore a smug smile on her wide face. She had no doubt this was her moment to shine.

Imogen kept a proud expression on her own face as she walked toward the empty executive-style high-backed leather chair. Lowering herself into it, she felt something prick her derriere. She glanced down, trying not to betray anything to the room, to see Eve’s plastic dinosaur on her chair.

“Rarrrr,” Eve mouthed, her lips red and swollen with collagen. Raising her lacquered blue nails like claws, she was more reptilian than the toy.

Did anyone else see that?

Two could play at that game. Imogen put the plastic animal on the table in front of her. She was older than Eve. So what? She owned it. Eve’s immaturity was comical at this point. Imogen placed her hand on her knee to keep her leg from bouncing up and down.

As she sat, Aerin stood, appearing cool and in control in a skinny Thom Browne pantsuit with just the faintest pinstripes. She tucked her hair behind her ears and sucked in a deep breath before smiling directly at Imogen.

“Imogen, I’m so happy you made it. I wasn’t going to start until you got here.”

Mannering Jr. stood too then. His face was sunburned, as though they’d pulled him, reluctantly, into the boardroom from the beach. He
looked lazily over at Imogen. “Heya, Imogen. Good to see you.” One by one, the board members turned their eyes away from their phones when Robert began talking.

“First, I know that I don’t need to say this, but I will anyway,” the chief executive said, tugging at his tie uncomfortably like it was a collar someone fastened too tightly. “What I’m about to tell you must remain in this room and completely confidential until we make a statement to the press.” Everyone made a big show of turning off their devices.

Eve stared only at Imogen, who could see her stroking the red scarf out of the corner of her eye.

“I want to thank everyone in this room for being so discreet as we worked on what I’m so happy to announce is the biggest sale Robert Mannering has ever completed. I don’t need to mince words here. We have sold the brand-new
Glossy
platform to emerging Internet giant Shoppit for the price of two hundred ninety million dollars.”

Mannering smiled and nodded like a pageant queen while his audience made a show of polite golf claps.

With that, he sank back into his chair. His work was finished and the check was probably already in the bank.