For Money or Love

by Heather Blackmore

  Jess frowned. “My life’s a dichotomy. At least usually. I’m either by myself or in a work setting surrounded by others. I’m not used to being shadowed.” Jess drummed her fingers on the steering wheel for several seconds. Then she flicked her eyes to TJ and offered a smile. “You’re throwing me off my game.”

  It was a cliché, but TJ sensed truth in the statement. Was Jess used to playing a cunning game when she wasn’t alone? Did she purposely affect simplemindedness when in company? If so, why? “How long have you been playing it?”

  “Turn of phrase.”

  TJ let it go for now. “Can we get back to this soiree matter?”

  “Sure, though your apology doesn’t buy you a get-out-of-jail-free card.”

  “I don’t really do dresses,” TJ admitted.

  “It’s black tie. That includes tuxedos. Rent one and expense it.”

  “You want me to wear a tuxedo to this shindig?” TJ couldn’t have heard correctly. “You realize that could be construed as my being gay?”

  “What does being gay have to do with wearing a tux? I have a tux. In fact, I have two. Gucci and Burberry.”

  “Will you be wearing one?”

  “No. But there’s no reason you shouldn’t.”

  TJ mulled this over. Something didn’t quite fit, like a woman trying to shimmy into her wedding dress on her twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. “Okay, what gives? I imagine my wearing a tux to this affair would go over like Ford’s pardon of Nixon.”

  Jess sighed. “Muriel Manchester. Heard of her?”

  “No.”

  “One of twenty-three female CEOs in the Fortune 500 and one of only three out executives among them. She’s worth several billion, and we’ve been pursuing her for years since she travels in my parents’ social circle. She insists the firm’s an all-boys network and refuses to give us the time of day until we embrace diversity in the workplace. We want to show her we’re not like that, or if we were, we’ve changed.”

  TJ gaped. “Have you looked around the office?”

  Jess bit her lower lip. “I know.”

  “One lesbian staffer isn’t going to change her mind.”

  “Probably not.”

  “Then what’s the point?”

  “One point five percent annually of billions in assets under management.”

  TJ tapped her fingers against the armrest. “I’d have to bring a date in order to make it perfectly obvious.”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t have anyone to ask.”

  “I don’t imagine you’ll have any trouble,” Jess said.

  TJ was oddly pleased by the notion that Jess thought so. While it was true TJ wasn’t usually turned down, she rarely did the asking. There weren’t enough hours in the day for dating. “Even if that were true, it’s not dinner and a movie. Getting gussied up for a party with a group of strangers isn’t first-date material.”

  “Ask a friend. No one would ever know she’s not a real date.”

  TJ wondered how much to divulge. During the years of her mother’s decline, after she’d moved back to help care for Kara, she’d lost touch with most of her friends. Long hours working and studying left little room for downtime, which she willingly allotted to her sister. Though she missed her friends, there was no contest when it came to being there for Kara versus having a social life.

  “The idea is to prove to this Muriel Manchester, if she happens to notice, that the Spaulding clan is perfectly comfortable hanging out with homosexuals?” TJ asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you?”

  Jess was taken aback. “Of course I am. How can you even ask me that?”

  “Not you. Your family. As a family-run business, your family sets the corporate culture.”

  It was a question Jess struggled with, especially as gay rights remained at the forefront of federal and state news, from marriage to marriage licenses to bathroom utilization to faith-based discrimination. If Derrick and Lilith knew any gay people besides Muriel, they didn’t mention it. On more than one social occasion, Jess had overheard derisive comments made by her stepmother’s friends on the subject of gay marriage. Her stepmother never corrected them. Gary never said anything bad about anyone except for their attire. Brooke said mean things about everyone. Jess had never heard her father bad-mouth gays, but Muriel had a point: Magnate was hardly a model of anti-discrimination practices in the workplace.

  Jess blew out a breath. “I don’t know.” Whatever reaction TJ was set to give, Jess wanted to be honest with her.

  After some deliberation, TJ asked, “Are you bringing a date?”

  “I am.” Jess infused the comment with as much excitement as she could muster. She wondered if it was convincing.

  “Someone special?”

  “Yes.” It was a lie. Chad Astor was a known quantity. They dated occasionally, Chad always wanting more than Jess was willing to give. But as something of a player, he didn’t pressure her because he could readily find women who were charmed by his good looks and moonstruck over his fortune. The fact that he was an Astor shot him straight to the top of Lilith’s list of suitors for Jess. Too bad his brain was two sizes too small for his opinions. He wasn’t an awful person and could be fun at times. Best of all, as far as Jess was concerned, he was low maintenance. They mutually used each other to attend various social engagements when the other was available.

  “Okay.”

  Jess heard the disbelief in TJ’s answer, turning it into two syllables and lilting the “y” upward.

  “You don’t even notice when you do it, do you?” TJ asked.

  “Do what?”

  “Slide into your public persona.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “The way you said, ‘I am’ and ‘Yes.’ It’s as if you’re trying to believe what you’re telling yourself.”

  “You don’t know me well enough to make that kind of statement.”

  “Fair enough. How would it go over with your family if you brought a woman to the party?”

  “Everyone including Muriel knows I date men. She’d see through it immediately. It would be so obviously platonic, what would it accomplish?”

  “Sorry. What I mean is, for the sake of argument, pretend you actually wanted to date a woman. How would it go over with your family?”

  Jess deliberated. “I don’t know. My parents’ friends are fairly conservative, and my stepmother’s all about what people think. She’d freak out about what it would mean to her reputation, and my father would probably defer to her in terms of how to handle it. I think they’d be disappointed.”

  And there it was. It wasn’t until she’d said it aloud that Jess hit on the truth. Her parents were homophobic—at least Lilith was. And Jess didn’t have the backbone to stand up to it. She felt her face flush with shame. Would TJ notice? Thankfully the interior of the car was fairly dark.

  “That’s not an uncommon parental response, unfortunately. But at the risk of downplaying umpteen million dollars, the more important question isn’t what Muriel thinks of Magnate, but whether my date and I will be sending a truthful message. If there’s no will on your family’s part for substantive change regarding diversity in the workplace, it’s…artificial.”

  Now Jess felt like a pimp as well as a spineless drudge. She pulled into Magnate’s parking lot. “I’m sorry I mentioned it. It was selfish and unfair of me to ask. Rest assured you’re under no obligation to attend.”

  Chapter Three

  Gary knocked, entered Jess’s office without waiting for a reply, and closed the door. It was his standard practice, and Jess appreciated it as much as breaking a nail.

  “She needs new clothes,” he said.

  There were only two other women in the firm, one of whom, the receptionist, had been with them for several years. The other was Brooke. Therefore “she” could only be TJ. Still, Jess feigned ignorance for the sole joy of rattling Gary. “Who does?”

  “Your intern.”

&n
bsp; “She’s not my intern.”

  “Have you seen what she’s wearing?”

  “A suit. Perfectly suitable attire.”

  “Perfectly suitable satire. Don’t tell me your internal fashion police haven’t pulled out their riot gear.”

  “Around here, individuality gets expressed with an amount of fabric that would make a bikini blush: a quarter inch of shirt collar, half an inch of cuff, several inches of necktie. My fashion police head for the nearest doughnut shop as soon as I walk in here.”

  “No one’s going to take her seriously if she doesn’t dress the part.”

  “I don’t see what it has to do with me.”

  “Who knows fashion better than you?”

  “Gary, what do you want from me? I’m not her personal shopper. And even if I were, it’s none of our business.”

  “Intern or not, each of us is a representative of the firm. How we dress communicates volumes about who we are and who we represent. Make it your business.” Message delivered, Gary left.

  For the eight hundredth time, Jess was treated not as head of marketing, but as head of vanity. Usually she’d be pleased at her success in maintaining the artifice. But every so often, it chafed. She responded the way she’d learned to in order to stay sane: she left early and went to her loft.

  After catching up on industry news and drafting a blog post, Jess took a break and contemplated her dilemma. Ignoring Gary wasn’t an option. He was COO, handpicked by her father to run the day-to-day operations of Magnate. He was no more insightful than a Magic Eight Ball, but he had fantastic fashion sense. If he deemed someone’s wardrobe unsuitable, it needed to change.

  More importantly, Jess needed to shift TJ’s focus away from her. How better than by focusing on TJ’s appearance? Their conversation en route from the Open had unsettled her, with TJ hinting Jess was putting up a front. She didn’t need TJ to take that train of thought any further. Perhaps Gary’s timing was perfect. By calling TJ out on her wardrobe, Jess could convince her of her superficiality and stop the inquiries into her world.

  Spirits raised, instead of continuing to do the work no one expected of her, she returned to the office to do exactly what was expected of her.

  *

  Settled back in her comfortable office chair, Jess lost her gumption to attack TJ’s clothing issue. God damn Gary. Though the clothing discussion was inevitable, she’d derive no pleasure from it. Years of observing the hurt inflicted on less popular students by her wealthy friends regarding attire made her stay out of the fray. She always enjoyed wearing the latest fashions by the world’s most famous brands, but the clothes spoke for themselves. She never felt the need to point out differences that were so obvious between her classmates. Bringing someone else down in order to lift herself up was never her MO. She’d been on the receiving end of that painful experience at fourteen and didn’t intend to return the favor. She’d rather find another way to keep TJ at bay than by criticizing her.

  Inwardly cringing at her mandate, she asked TJ to join her in her office.

  She opted for the direct approach since TJ would see through anything else. “We need to discuss your outfit.”

  TJ quickly glanced down at what she was wearing before crossing her arms and legs in a defensive posture.

  “I’m afraid that’s not going to cut it,” Jess said.

  “I’m dressed according to the firm’s business-formal dress code. I’m in a suit. Like everyone else here.”

  “You wore the same one Monday.”

  TJ’s eyes gleamed with fire.

  “You’ve also lost weight since you bought that. You practically need suspenders—which I don’t recommend with those slacks—and your heels are too short for the length.”

  TJ blinked several times and clenched her jaw. She took a deep breath. “I’d like to get back to the project you’ve assigned, unless there’s something else?”

  Jess knew TJ was displeased by the work she’d given her for the day: applying personalized stickers to the backs of stacks of books they were mailing to financial advisors in their network. It was a task she normally outsourced, reserving a small box for the office to maintain the illusion she didn’t engage in anything more worthwhile.

  “You’ll be meeting clients, representing the firm, representing Derrick Spaulding. Like it or not, that,” Jess motioned to TJ’s outfit, “does not.”

  Okay, this wasn’t going well. Or maybe—now that Jess’s goal was to shift TJ’s scrutiny away from her—it was. The animosity pouring from TJ was so thick, Jess could spread it on toast.

  Jess withdrew her wallet and keys from her purse. “Take my car. If you go to Saks Fifth Avenue at the Lakeside mall, charge whatever you buy to my account.” She pulled out her American Express card. “If you want to go somewhere else, use this.” She held out the card to TJ.

  TJ stared at her. “That’s your answer to everything, isn’t it?”

  “If you prefer to pay, I rescind my offer.”

  “I can’t afford one button on a suit at Saks.”

  “Then why not let the firm pay?”

  “I’m not a charity case.”

  Upon reflection, Jess should have expected some resistance from the woman who wasn’t comfortable eating lunch at a posh establishment. “I didn’t mean to imply you were. If you want to pay, I’m sure I can arrange a signing bonus or an increase in your stipend or salary or however it is we’re paying—I haven’t even finished my sentence and you’re shaking your head.”

  “The university set the stipend. All of us get the same.”

  “I’m sure each employer has the discretion to—”

  “I don’t want special treatment. And it’s no different than you paying.”

  Jess nodded. TJ had a point. “An advance then.”

  “Unbelievable.” TJ strode to the door.

  “I’m sure plenty of stores carry brands you could afford. You don’t have to wear Armani.” But it can’t be whatever that is, Jess thought.

  “What I can and can’t afford is none of your business.” TJ exited, continuing past her desk and out the building, likely taking some time to calm down.

  Damn the woman’s pride. How was she going to get TJ into some Spaulding-approved clothing? And damn Gary for bringing it up in the first place. Her father would have handled it so much better. He was buttery smooth; he could make TJ believe a new wardrobe was as much a part of every intern’s onboarding process as a laptop. At least now TJ couldn’t possibly harbor any doubts about how superficial Jess was. That was a win.

  *

  Monday morning, Jess breezed past TJ’s desk just after eleven. She’d been productive this morning, continuing to make headway on a special speaker event for select clients and prospects that’d made it big in technology. Many entrepreneurs turned around and invested in new startups, but lots more of their money was at play, and Jess aimed to convince these leaders to invest some of their windfall with the firm. One such entrepreneur had been with Magnate for years and was happy to oblige her request to speak at the event. A similar one she’d put together for leaders in the biotech industry had been incredibly successful, and she had high hopes for this one.

  Time to dumb things down. She selected a bottle of nail polish from her stash. The resentment at playing into the hackneyed blonde stereotype usually faded when she arrived at the office. It was her mental downtime, and typically she was able to check her emotions at the door.

  As soon as she passed TJ’s workstation, however, she realized it wasn’t possible today.

  Earlier, thoughts of TJ had woven themselves in and out of Jess’s consciousness until she’d become completely wrapped up in her work. She was concerned the intern might walk off the job after being told her outfits could use improvement. She’d long been conflicted about being judged by what was on her body versus in her head. Years of being pushed to focus on style and manners instead of studies had turned her into the duality she’d become: a numskull wrapped in a put-togethe
r package and an astute businesswoman recognizable to no one. Her identities were no less divergent than Clark Kent and Superman.

  Telling TJ that her attire was lacking was no different than Jess’s stepmother telling her to keep up with the latest fashion trends. It discounted the woman’s mental acuity.

  Yet the firm’s clientele undeniably expected its personnel to dress and act in a certain way. As a marketer, Jess spent countless hours working to create and cultivate a specific perception in her clients’ minds concerning the caliber of the firm’s services. Despite the bruise to TJ’s ego, how she dressed did matter. All the wishing in the world wouldn’t change the fact that people did judge a book by its cover.

  A sharp knock on her door frame pulled her from her musings.

  TJ stormed into Jess’s office, protocol be damned. “Excuse me, Ms. Spaulding.”

  Jess kept her attention on applying her nail polish. “You know to call me Jess, TJ.” She dipped her wrist to display her fingernails. “What do you think? The shade’s called ‘mini bikini.’”

  TJ bent over the guest chair and held its armrests. “I’m learning nothing.”

  “No?”

  TJ started pacing. “I’ve been here a week. I’m supposed to be learning how Magnate’s managed to beat the market in good times and bad. I have no access to any client records or financial modeling data. How am I supposed to create a case study if I’m not allowed to study anything? All I do is put stickers on books and print address labels. A monkey could do it.”

  Jess brushed some polish onto her pinkie nail. “I do it.”

  “This is the best you can do?”

  “In terms of a retort?”

  “In terms of work! You’re the freaking head of marketing and you’re sending out mailers? Christ. You should be working the gift-wrap counter at Neiman Marcus.”