when I reached my office. She knew better than to join the conga line from hell trailing after me, and she usually waited for me to get settled before she confronted me with anything, no matter how urgent. I could tell by her exasperated expression, though, that she had some really pressing, and probably unpleasant, news.
Within a second, Casey was in my office looking me up and down with her big brown doe eyes. She shook her head. “Of all days for you to arrive looking like Mary-Kate Olsen dressed you,” she said, referring to my ratty jeans and my stretched-out, extremely vintage yet very comfortable V-neck sweater. “Get to the fashion closet and the beauty closet, now.”
“Oh, shit,” I said.
“Yeah,” Casey confirmed. “Liz’s been calling all morning. She—and Ellen—want to see you right away. Like, half an hour ago.”
I trusted Casey’s urgency. She was always looking out for me. Even though she was a few years my junior, in her early thirties, she had a wise, motherly way about her, which contradicted her hip, petite, girlish looks. The best thing about Casey was that she was extremely grounded. She worried for me, put out fires, cleaned up messes, played my “bad cop,” and only occasionally broke a sweat. She was also one of my few confidantes, and her sardonic sense of humor never failed to cheer me up, even on the most dire occasion. Somehow, she was even able to juggle raising two kids in addition to taking care of me. And sometimes I thought she could read me at least as well as my husband.
My phone rang insistently. Casey picked it up. “Yes, Liz, she’ll be there in just a few minutes,” she said, rolling her eyes. “She’s already on her way,” she added, giving me a gentle push toward the door.
“Any important messages?” I asked as I headed off.
“Richard Ruiz,” she called after me. “He wants to have dinner. Oh, and did I mention that Liz and Ellen want to see you now?”
I picked up the pace, fully aware I was most likely facing another ass chewing. I’d been getting at least one a week since the incredibly brief honeymoon period with Nestrom Media had ended. The postcoital glow hadn’t even lasted a month before my new bosses began to lay into me about “making some changes” and “getting those ad numbers up.” At first, they were all spirit—“rah-rah, we’re a team; we’re the best and we’re going to get better.” They threw money at me like they were printing it themselves. I had a budget for clothing, primping, dining, and entertainment that seemed near impossible to spend. Even my staff members were allowed to expense “twelve working lunches” per month, when they would binge on everything from sushi to porterhouse steaks. If someone on staff was having a birthday, corks from the finest champagne would pop and cake would be delivered from the city’s finest bakery. If it was someone senior enough, or someone like Casey, I’d be able to expense a very nice gift, like a Prada wallet. My office looking a little drab? They allowed me to hire an interior decorator to spruce it up, and I put a feng shui expert on the tab while I was at it. If I received a lot of swag at Christmas, I could hire three cars to take it all home. They were only eighty dollars an hour, after all. Did a Nestrom editor need to hop to Paris for a meeting? “Take the Concorde, for Christ’s sake!” T. J. Oldham, the company’s chairman, would say. Nestrom editors never, ever, ever flew coach.
But of course, there were enormous puppet-like strings attached to all of it. Soon that team spirit and devil-may-care attitude with money devolved into a far less subtle, “make us more money already, bitch” attitude. When the ad numbers weren’t breaking world records, every other day I was subjected to a new mandate, budget cut, or system to implement. If I wanted to reshoot a cover, for example, I now had to beg for it, or use mediocre shots because Nestrom wouldn’t want to spend the money. Long gone were the days of adding bells and whistles to an issue—like releasing two different covers, or including a flashy fold-out cover. I now had to fight for such “extravagance,” as they would call it, while Fashionista never seemed to have to fret about any expenditure. (Sometimes I even suspected that cutbacks were made to Jill to compensate for Fashionista’s elaborate spending.) But I took it all in stride, curbing my habits a bit, too, being a little more conscientious about my spending, when expenses for the whole magazine—and staff—were suddenly scrutinized. I listened patiently, letting the suits feel that they were contributing something, then did what I pleased. After all, my name was on the cover, not theirs.
Nostalgia for the careless, decadent “old days” still plagued me as I dodged two dozen verbal bullets before I finally hit the fashion closet. Full of cast-off freebies and fashion shoot leftovers, these closets were godsends in emergencies like this. Stepping inside and closing the door behind me, I ripped off my Pumas, jeans, and sweater, leaving them in a heap on the floor. I rifled through the racks, coming upon a navy blue Marc Jacobs skirt in my size. That would do, I thought. As I began to pull it on, the closet door swung open. Sven the art director stood in the doorway. “We have to talk about the December fashion layout,” he said. “And if it ends up that Rosario can’t get anyone better, I think I can do something with Katy Hanson.”
I defiantly put my hands on my hips, standing there with nothing on except my lacy pink bra and the Marc Jacobs skirt. “Later, Sven,” I said, in my best I’m-in-charge-here voice, despite my scanty attire. The minutes were ticking away, and I didn’t want to give Liz and Ellen any more reasons to get riled up. “I promise. And drop the Katy Hanson thing,” I added, giving him a pleading look. I loved him dearly but I had bigger issues to deal with at the moment than our next cover model.
Sven still lingered, turning on his European charm. “What if we did something completely against her image?” he pressed. “A tasteful nude, perhaps, with her hands obscuring her breasts. I could light it like a Mapplethorpe. What do you say?”
“No,” I insisted. “I’m not putting Katy Hanson on the cover just because you want to see her boobs. Plus, we’ve already got a ton of letters complaining about the abundance of breasts in the last few issues.” Sven definitely appreciated the female physique. A little too much, I’d say. I didn’t mind skin in the magazine, but it was my opinion that most women don’t want to see perfect 34-Cs on every other page.
With that he gave up, yet he still lingered in the doorway. “Suit yourself,” he said, shrugging.
I quickly pulled on a cranberry and pink, spiral-patterned Anna Sui blouse; found an appropriate pair of D&G shoes; and pushed past Sven’s tall, blond frame to get next door into the beauty closet. There, I combed out my hair, which was looking like a wet golden retriever’s pelt; grimaced at my dark roots; made a mental note to ask Casey to get me in with my colorist; and put on some lipstick and a swift paint of mascara. I checked myself in the mirror. Almost decent. I was ready to face the Stepford Twins.
That was my secret nickname for Ellen Cutter, CEO and president of Nestrom Media, and Liz Alexander, Jill’s brand new publisher, who had arrived shortly after the Nestrom Media purchase. If Martha Stewart, Kappa Kappa Gamma, and Park Avenue had a ménage à trois, Ellen Cutter would be the resulting love child. She had that affluent, blond, bland, studied ivory girl quality, a society carbon copy that made her a bit of a wallflower in the hipper Manhattan media circles. But she was smart, in a benign, conniving way. She had a way of making herself look real good, and taking credit where credit was not due—at least that was what the word that had drifted over from Charisma, her last tour of duty, was. Ever since her supposed efforts quadrupled Charisma’s ad dollars, she was the industry’s reigning despot with a smile.
When Ellen first came on, I was impressed by her efforts to get to know me and actually secretly imagined that she seemed a bit starstruck. There were several lunches, a few postwork glasses of wine, and a couple of events where we gravitated toward each other. Underneath her WASPy exterior, she even showed a bit of an edge, like when she admitted going to a bondage club in my neighborhood. Was I crazy to think that we could get along? It seemed so now.
Liz Alexander had been Ellen’s number two at Charisma. She was also her number two before that at Joy! And the duo even started out together, years ago, at some small food quarterly that no longer exists. She had reddish brown hair, straight as a pin, like Ellen’s, and piercing green, Siamese cat eyes, with a stare that was always mistrusting,