“It’s not because of our fight—”
“No,” Bess said sincerely. “I’m comfortable at Cooper. I know who I am there. I’m not like you, Cat. But please don’t let me stop you.”
“Okay.” Cat exhaled and squeezed her friend’s hand. Bess looked back toward the throng of RAGE employees hovering in the middle of the room. In an instant, Cat took in the opulent ballroom—the sunlight streaming in from the high windows, the cigarette smoke she could smell from the front door, the traffic honking on the street out front—and watched as her friend’s posture shifted ever so slightly, as if Bess finally stepped into a pair of shoes that fit. Was this where their paths divided?
“If you’ll excuse me,” Bess said confidently, “I want to finish this shoot. Even if RAGE folds after this issue, you and Hillary put a lot of work into this. I don’t want it to go to waste.”
“Thank you,” Cat said simply.
Bess smiled. “You’re welcome.”
“Don’t forget to quit,” Paula interrupted.
“Okay,” Cat said automatically. She’d spent half a dozen years obeying Paula Booth, assuming that she was really listening to Margot Villiers, but perhaps it had been Paula speaking the whole time. Cat turned, broke through the crowd of gossiping RAGE staffers, and went directly to Constance.
“I quit,” she said, holding out her hand and shaking the damp, skeletal palm of an astonished Constance. “And give Bess my job,” Cat ordered. “She earned it.” Even if RAGE disappeared in the next year, having “Senior Editor” on her résumé would help get Bess anywhere she needed to go.
Constance nodded limply.
Cat turned to Hutton and leaned in close, whispering in his ear as he held Lou at a distance. “See you in New York,” she said, trying to sound nonchalant. He wrapped his free arm around her and kissed her—a long, searching kiss, one that embarrassed everyone around them.
“Come home soon,” he said to her. “We’ll pick up where we left off?” Cat smiled in reply, let go of him, picked up her handbag, and dropped her contract in it as she headed for the door.
“What are you staring at?” Bess yelled at the stunned room. “We have twelve shots to pick up. Let’s go.” The group slowly broke apart, and everything returned to normal for everyone except Lou.
Hutton could feel her hands shaking through their plastic bracelet chain before she passed out, her head hitting the wall behind her with a very loud smack.
Dammit, he thought, checking her pulse and trying to find a way to discreetly loosen the thick plastic casing she’d squeezed into, don’t these women ever eat?
Epilogue
Cat sat in a second-class compartment of a high-speed train bound from Paris to Brussels, sipping coffee from a paper cup and turning over her new camera in her hands, a Canon 5D she’d purchased on her walk from the hotel to the Gare du Nord.
In under an hour she would be back home. Though it had been a decade, she knew it would be the same: the farm, with its damp ground, was a place of unshakable rhythm. While she was home, Cat and her mother would wake at dawn every morning to feed, water, and groom the horses before completing endless farm chores until nightfall, when they would eat bread and cheese and meat. When the sun rose, Cat would meet her mother in the barn with a thermos full of coffee and everything would start again. That was farm life. It was rigid, but it needed you.
She stared out the window at the passing countryside, absentmindedly circling her wrist with her fingers, and let herself eavesdrop on the French and Flemish conversations happening throughout the train car, realizing, for the first time in years, how hard it had been to go without those sounds, to live without this air. She felt herself diving deep under the surface of her consciousness, swimming away from her American, English-speaking world and, finally, reappearing on the long-forgotten shore of her Flemish self.
She was suddenly so tired of trying to fit in. All she wanted was to lie in the yellow grass of the farm’s fallow fields, to go to sleep without worrying about tomorrow, to feel loved, to feel that she belonged.
For the first time in a very long time, Cat thought that she just might be able to.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to:
Julia Langbein, for all your help, edits, creative and emotional support, for suggesting Hutton’s final line, and for being my high-water mark. Laura Pettitt, who made me feel like I was writing The Count of Monte Cristo for the over-thirty wine-and-Capri set, for happily debating the finer points of it all. Abbe Wright, who lugged a printed 8.5x11 version of this book in a binder to the ob-gyn and read it in the stirrups (the platonic ideal of an attentive audience), for being so supportive.
Emily Griffin, for being my guiding star and for bringing my book to Grand Central; Maddie Caldwell, for stepping up to the plate with so much enthusiasm and dedication; and Rose Tomaszewska, for all your insights and hard work on this book and for taking me overseas. I’ve never had a trine of editors before but it was truly a special experience, and I’m so grateful to all three of you. Many thanks, as well, to the teams at Grand Central and riverrun for all of your hard work, and to Lisa Forde in particular for making this book so beautiful.
My agents, Victoria Sanders and Bernadette Baker-Baughman, for your unwavering confidence and positivity, and for your excellent work on my behalf.
Carol Stack, Siri Hellerman, Jane Orvis, Patricia Van der Leun, Jasmine Oore, John Guari, and Alex Yanofsky, for your feedback and encouragement on early drafts and chapters, and to both of my parents.
Everyone I’ve cribbed from, a likely incomplete list: David, thanks for letting me borrow some of your weekend in jail, which I maintain was not my fault, no matter where you were headed. Clifford Owens, thank you(?) for referring to Bushwick as “The Bush”; Alfred Bridi, for steering me from cars to jewels; Jent from The Watch and Wait, for your awesome name.
There were several books about fashion, magazines, labor, and the garment industry that I devoured while writing and editing this book, and I highly recommend the following, in no particular order: Overdressed by Elizabeth L. Cline, Bad Girls Go Everywhere by Jennifer Scanlon, Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster by Dana Thomas, Wear No Evil by Greta Eagan, Asians Wear Clothes on the Internet by Minh-Ha T. Pham, Sex and the Single Girl and Having It All by Helen Gurley Brown, Love and Capital by Mary Gabriel, the essay “Distinction” by Pierre Bordieu, and, of course, Ways of Seeing by John Berger; thanks specifically to Penguin for providing permissions. And, in “preparation” for my own wedding, I was reading One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding by Rebecca Mead, along with her piece “Precarious Beauty” in the New Yorker, when I wrote the very first sketch of this book, so to Mead I owe a serious debt of inspiration—thanks for everything you write.
And to Ian for everything.
Reading Group Guide
Discussion Questions
At the start of I’LL EAT WHEN I’M DEAD, Cat Ono and Bess Bonner have seemingly perfect lives with great jobs, clothes, and friends in a very glamorous version of New York City. How does Hillary Whitney’s death shake that foundation? What does Hillary’s death say about the pressure on a modern woman in work, life, and love?
Cat is determined to use her job at RAGE and the medium of fashion editorials to push a more modern agenda for women. Do you see the same thing happening in pop culture and fashion magazines today? How do you think standards have changed for women’s clothing in the last hundred years?
Detective Hutton starts the Whitney case with a very male-centric view of women and fashion. Do think meeting Cat and discussing her job have an effect on his perceptions? How does how he views Cat change over the course of the novel?
RAGE Fashion Book is dedicated to using only ethically sourced clothing in its editorials. Do you think it’s possible to hold magazines to an ethical standard, when it comes to how clothing is made? How much responsibility do consumers and retailers have in standards of clothing manufacturing? Do you think about these issue
s when you go shopping?
Bess steps in to support Cat when she needs it most, even getting arrested with her. Do you have best friends that you can count on like this? Is this type of relationship uniquely female? How do you think male friendship differs from female friendship?
In RAGE’s rival, Mania, we see the rise of technology and social media in the fashion world. How has the Internet changed the way we view style? Where do you go to find the latest trends? Do you think we see more blatant advertisement in fashion publications or “advertorials” today?
Women often feel the burden of an unrelenting pressure to be thin. We see this play out in I’LL EAT WHEN I’M DEAD with Hillary’s death and Cat’s increasing anorexia in the second half of the book. Have you, a loved one, or close friend been personally affected by an eating disorder? Do you think there is enough awareness about how to deal with these issues and teach women about healthy body image?
Were you surprised by Callie’s death and the other characters’ reactions to it? If so, why? Do you think Hutton is right to blame himself?
Halfway through the book, Cat and Bess’s roles at RAGE change drastically when they become the faces of the magazine and are launched into tabloid notoriety as famous fashionistas. How do you think these changes alter Cat’s relationship with Bess? How do you think you would react if you were suddenly thrust into the spotlight?
In the end, Cat decides to set off on her own and learn to love herself and treat her body well again. Has she made the right decision to leave RAGE? Do you think she’ll be able to get healthy and possibly open herself up to a new start at Mania and a relationship with Hutton?
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