by Gemma Crisp
Nina sighed – Jeremy just didn’t get it. He might spoil her rotten, but to him, everything was black and white; there were no shades of grey. She found herself wishing he didn’t have to be so pragmatic and logical all the time. Most of the time, she loved how he was so laidback he was practically horizontal, and how he never sweated the small stuff. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t be sympathetic when she wanted to sweat the small stuff. Why couldn’t he just try to understand that she was upset about the distance growing between her and Johan, and help her deal with it, rather than telling her she was overreacting? Which she probably was, but he could at least acknowledge she was upset and indulge her for a bit. Sometimes, she just wanted him to listen, instead of being a typical guy with a chronic allergy to emotions.
‘I’m going to bed,’ Mr Black and White announced, completely oblivious to the cacophony of emotions churning inside her head. Nina stared at the bedroom door as it closed behind him, then felt the hot sensation of tears prickling her eyeballs. Squeezing her eyes shut to stop them breaking their banks, she felt like the two guys who mattered most in her life had shifted away slightly and were now just beyond her reach – she could see them, but she couldn’t seem to touch them.
fifteen
‘Okay, girlies, what have you got for me this month?’ Kat ripped open the giant share pack of peanut butter M&Ms she’d brought back from her trip to New York Fashion Week and poured them onto the middle of the table in the features department. It was time for Lulu’s monthly features brainstorm to pitch ideas for upcoming issues – if the International Olympic Committee ever decided to introduce feature brainstorming as a competitive event, Nina would be a shoo-in for the gold medal, even if she did say so herself.
‘I’ll go first,’ she volunteered. ‘I think we should do a story on guys who are perfect in every way, except for one problem: they’re emotionally unavailable. I don’t mean like they’re cold or humourless – they’re easygoing, laidback guys who are in loving relationships, but if you try to scratch the surface, or ask for emotional support when you need it, they just disconnect. It’s like the SNAG has lost the sensitive part of himself and now he’s just a NAG – a New Age Guy who looks and plays the part, but when the going gets tough, he isn’t comfortable discussing any kind of emotion – either his or yours.’
It wasn’t the first time Nina had drawn inspiration from her own life when pitching feature ideas, and she was pretty sure it wouldn’t be the last. Sometimes she felt guilty about plundering her friendships and relationships for material, but then she figured that if it was an issue she was going through, surely there’d be plenty of other women who were experiencing the same thing. So, in a way, she was performing a community service. Straws? Clutching? Maybe. But it was for a good cause, she told herself. And no one needed to know that her idea had been partly inspired by Jeremy – even though he’d apologised the next day for being blasé about her problems with Johan, blaming it on being exhausted after his work trip, she felt like something had shifted slightly in their relationship but she wasn’t sure how to get it back on track.
‘From SNAG to NAG – there’s a coverline right there. Add it to the list for the next issue,’ Kat said, popping her seventeenth M&M into her mouth. ‘Anything else?’
After Nina finished pitching a real-life read about an American woman who had sued her ex for giving her an STI and won $1.5 million, a career feature on young, successful twenty-somethings who were franchisees, and a celebrity charity campaign, she reached the next story on her list and started smirking.
‘So this one is a bit nuts. But I figured sometimes the crazy ideas are the ones that get everyone talking about the mag, so I’ll put it out there.’ Nina took a deep breath and hoped she wasn’t about to destroy her own credibility. ‘You know how there are some women who can’t stand chest hair on a guy, and then there are others who love it? But when you meet a guy in a bar, most of the time you have no idea what’s hiding under his shirt. I thought we could do a photo shoot with a group of guys who have varying degrees of hirsuteness. In the first pic, they’re fully clothed so you have no idea who’s hairy and who’s not, and you have to guess who is the werewolf and who’s the Ken doll. Then you turn the page and there are pics of them topless, showing off their rugs or lack of . . . because it’s not always the ones you expect . . .’ Nina trailed off sheepishly as the features team cracked up and started talking over one another.
‘Ken Doll or Werewolf – I love it!’
‘I know a guy who would be perfect for this – he’s just an ordinary Aussie guy but he takes his top off and there’s a carpet covering his chest, shoulders and arms. You’d never guess just by looking at him!’
‘We could rate their topless pictures – the art team could design werewolf and Ken doll stamps! Love me a baby-smooth chest!’
‘Euuuwww, no way – a light-to-medium sprinkling is the way to go!’
As Kat added it to her list, Nina poked fun at her idea with a self-deprecating: ‘Obviously, that idea is totally going to win me a Walkley Award!’. She knew that some of their more intelligent readers would think it was a waste of space, but having a bit of fun was part of Lulu’s DNA. People bought magazines for entertainment and escapism as well as information, so sometimes you had to plant your tongue firmly in your cheek and do something a bit out of the ordinary. It was usually those stories that had the valuable ‘pass-around factor’ that every editor hungered after – the idea was for a reader to say to her friends, ‘Oh my God, did you see that ‘Ken Doll or Werewolf’ story in this month’s Lulu?’, which would make her friends run to the nearest newsagent and pick up copies for themselves. Because at the end of the day, the aim of the game was to sell the mag – the more copies, the better.
As the rest of the features team took turns pitching their ideas, Nina played with the small pile of M&Ms in front of her and kept an eye on Romy, the deputy features editor – as usual, she had been the only one to not comment on any of Nina’s ideas, instead looking beyond bored whenever Nina had opened her mouth. There was something about Romy that Nina wasn’t quite sure about. She’d been at Lulu for a few years before Kat and Nina had landed there, starting off in the advertising department then swapping over to editorial, and had made it quite clear that she thought she should be sitting in the features editor chair. ‘Tough luck, treacle,’ Nina thought to herself. ‘In this industry, sometimes it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. It’s called networking – maybe you should try it sometime.’
It didn’t help that word had got back to Nina that Romy had tried to start a smear campaign against her before she’d even started at Lulu, telling anyone who’d listen that she’d only got the job because she had dirt on Kat, and had blackmailed her boss into giving her the job. Nina could totally understand why some people were surprised when her appointment as features editor had been announced, seeing as she’d been camped out on the beauty side of Nineteen, but she also knew that Kat wouldn’t have given her job if she didn’t think Nina could do it – and do it well. It just meant she had been head down, butt up ever since she’d plonked herself down in the features editor’s chair, determined to prove her critics wrong. If she cultivated a reputation for being an A-plus features editor, the next logical step would be associate or deputy editor, and then she’d only be one step away from the editor’s hot seat. She just had to remember to watch her back whenever Romy was around. Sometimes you couldn’t pull all the knives out by yourself.
As the meeting wound up, Nina grabbed her notebook and started heading for her desk – she had a phone interview with a psychologist scheduled in fifteen minutes and needed to go over her questions to make sure she hadn’t missed anything.
‘Hey, Neenski, have you got a minute?’ Kat called after her.
‘Sure, but only fifteen of them – I have an interview to do at four thirty,’ she replied, ignoring the scowl on Romy’s face as she digested Kat’s nickname for her.
‘Won’t t
ake long – come in and shut the door behind you.’
Nina’s stomach curdled. Kat usually operated an open-door policy, so whenever she asked for the door to be shut, it usually meant bad news was about to be delivered. Maybe she hadn’t been doing as good a job as she’d thought? Maybe Kat was about to give her a verbal warning for something and she didn’t want the rest of the office to overhear? Quickly flicking through her mental Rolodex of recent events, Nina tried to figure out what she’d done wrong.
‘So, how many months have you got left on your passport?’ Kat asked.
Nina looked at her, perplexed – what did her passport expiry date have to do with anything?
‘Uh . . . I think it still has twelve months on it. Why?’
‘You know how Global Bus Travel is one of our biggest advertisers?’
Nina nodded, mentally scrambling for a clue as to where this was going.
‘They’re organising an Eastern Europe media trip and want to send a journalist from Lulu. They originally asked me, but the dates fall over print deadline and I need to be here. So I thought I’d send you instead. Interested?’ Kat grinned as Nina’s mouth fell open.
‘Are you serious? A trip to Eastern Europe? When? For how long? Why me?’
‘Yes, I’m serious. Yes, a junket to Eastern Europe – starting in Vienna, finishing in Warsaw. Next month. I think it’s for >eight days. And I’m asking you because I need someone senior to go, who’s not involved in print deadline.’
‘Romy’s not going to happy,’ Nina blurted out. ‘I haven’t even been here for six months yet and already I’m running off to Europe on a press trip.’
‘Don’t worry about Romy – she went on a South American tour just before you started here, so she’s had her fair share of the press-trip pie recently. Plus, I have a feeling she might not be here when you get back.’
Nina raised an eyebrow.
‘Don’t look at me like that – I may be wrong though, so that’s all I’m going to say. You’d better go do your interview – I’ll reply to the email from the Global Bus Travel publicist and cc you, so the two of you can organise flights and all that stuff. They’ll need a scan of your passport, so remember to bring it in tomorrow. In return, you’ll need to write a one-page travel story when you get back, so don’t get so hammered on cheap vodka that you can’t remember anything – from what I’ve heard, Global Bus’s tours are legendary in the liquid department.’
Walking back to her desk, Nina tried to act normal – she didn’t want to rub her good news in everyone’s face, but she could tell they were dying to know what had happened behind the closed door, wondering if she’d had strips torn off her. ‘Keep guessing, bitches,’ she thought. ‘It’s not what you think.’
Glancing over her interview questions, she picked up the phone to dial the psychologist’s number then noticed the red flashing light that announced the presence of a voicemail – or possibly seven. Already one minute late for the interview, she decided the messages could wait, and tapped out the number.
‘Dr Clements? Hi, it’s Nina Morey here, features editor of Lulu – we set up an interview via email about the body image article I’m writing. Is now still a good time?’
Half an hour later, Nina hung up the phone, turned off her digital recorder and quickly played it back to make sure it had taped the interview properly – like pretty much every other journalist on the face of the planet, she’d been caught out before by accidentally inserting the sound jack into the wrong plug, not realising her mistake until she started to transcribe the interview the next day only to listen to dead silence.
Satisfied she’d got it right this time, it was time for a loo break. While washing her hands, the press trip cleared its virtual throat and tapped her on the shoulder. OMG she was going back to Europe! She hadn’t made it to the eastern side of the continent when she’d lived there – France, Spain and Italy, yes. But Austria, Poland and all the countries sandwiched in between? Nuh-uh. She wondered if she’d have time to do a side trip to London to catch up with Camille, the Bickford crew and the girls at Marie Claude. Not to mention doing some serious retail damage on Oxford Street.
Back at her desk, she quickly texted Tess: ‘A press trip with Global Bus Tours to Eastern Europe next month? Don’t mind if I do!’ She’d just hit send when it dawned on her that maybe it wasn’t the best idea to rub Tess’s nose in her good fortune, seeing the black cloud that hovered over her cousin’s head didn’t seem to be going anywhere soon. She wished she could get the old Tess back, the one who used to love nothing more than getting all her friends together to go to all of the indie music festivals to see her favourite DJs, but then who’d ruin her street cred whenever she belted out Bonnie Tyler’s cheesy ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ at karaoke – which used to be often. Nina could remember loads of times when Tess would end up in a karaoke bar with a bunch of her hotel friends after finishing a late shift back in London. These days, she doubted Tess would be able to name one karaoke bar in Sydney without having to resort to Google.
Sighing, she opened Kat’s email to the publicist explaining that unfortunately, due to their print deadline, she wouldn’t be able to go herself but would love to send Lulu’s features editor in her place, then scrolled down to the itinerary the publicist had proposed. Fly to London, then straight to Vienna, where she’d have a free day before meeting up with the rest of the travellers on the bus tour. Then they’d head east to Budapest for two nights, up through Slovakia to the Czech Republic for a couple of nights of partying in Prague, then on to Krakow in Poland, before finishing in Warsaw. ‘Bloody hell, that’s a lot of time to spend on a bus with a bunch of strangers,’ Nina thought, then immediately pulled herself up. ‘Hello? You’re getting a free trip to Europe. A lot of people spend years saving up for trips like this, so get off your spoilt high horse.’
She quickly composed an email to the publicist, gushing about how excited she was and promising to send her passport details the next day. Halfway through, a text from Tess arrived: ‘I hate you ;)’
When she’d sent the email she picked up the phone to call Jeremy, then remembered he was locked away at a crisis meeting, battling to save his company’s biggest client from defecting to their main competitor. Working sixteen-hour days had become standard practice, so Nina had barely seen him over the past few weeks – and when she did, he was snoring on the couch by nine pm, while she buried her head in the pile of magazines she brought home from work. ‘When his work crisis is over, maybe we should head to Byron for a long weekend of R&R,’ she mused, hitting the red flashing voicemail button and keying in her passcode. She took a large swig of water from the bottle on her desk, then almost spat it all over her keyboard when a furious American voice blasted down the phone.
‘This is Hayley Zelman, Nicolette Rivera’s publicist. I’m calling about the disgusting cover story you wrote about my client. I suggest you call me back IMMEDIATELY, otherwise I will blackball you and your nasty magazine to every single celebrity publicist in the States and Europe, and you will never get approval to run a celebrity on your cover again!’
sixteen
Before Nina could even get her key in the lock, the door of the apartment swung open and Tess greeted her with four words: ‘You need a drink.’ She pushed her back down the stairs and practically carried her up the road until they were parked at a table at the Old Fitzroy, a pub in the back streets of Woolloomooloo that was big on atmosphere and low on attitude. It wasn’t till after Tess put a double gin with half tonic, half soda in front of her and made her drink most of it that she was allowed to speak.
‘I thought I was being so clever and flipping the bird to the celebrity publicity machine, you know? Why didn’t I think of the consequences? How on earth did I think I’d get away with it? I could have destroyed my career.’ Nina shuddered as she imagined no longer working in the industry she absolutely loved. Magazines were more than just a hobby now; they were her life.
Tess patted her arm sympat
hetically and waited while Nina rallied.
‘It pisses me off, to be honest. I only wrote what happened; it’s not like I made anything up. I did spend ages setting up the interview, only for it to be cancelled after it was scheduled to happen, and then I had to chase Nicolette’s assistant for the answers, which only arrived just in time and there were barely any of them. So it’s not as if I lied. I guess they’re not used to journalists telling the truth, which is ironic when you think about it, seeing everyone reckons we’re full of bullshit.’ Nina smiled grimly and sucked down the rest of her drink, then dropped her head onto the table with a thud. Without a word, Tess got up and came back with another drink.
‘So do you know how she found out about it? Lulu isn’t sold in the States, is it?’
‘Not the actual magazine, but anyone can download the digital version on a tablet – which I completely forgot about when I wrote it,’ she admitted.
‘But even if you had remembered, would it have made any difference?’
‘Probably not. I was hell-bent on exposing what it’s really like to wrangle celebrity interviews and deal with the nightmare that is the publicists. And you know what? When the issue came out, we had so many emails from our readers thanking us for not sticking to the “she’s so stylish, she’s a total inspiration” line like other mags do, and telling it like it really was. Too bad it’s now bitten us on the butt,’ Nina said miserably.
‘So what happened after you got the voicemail?’
‘You mean after I almost threw up in my mouth? I bolted into Kat’s office; she was on the phone, but she could tell something was majorly wrong, so she cut it short. Then I broke the good news that we were about to be blackballed by Nicolette’s publicist, thanks to my cover story.’