Little Pink Slips

by Sally Koslow

  “Like your attitude. Visit?”

  There was an easy way to get out of this rabbit hole.

  “Merry XMAS & good night!” she wrote, switched off her computer, slammed it closed, and crawled into bed. Yet as she tried to read

  the bestseller on her nightstand, the unnerving image of Tyler as

  perv replaced every sentence. Ten minutes later, she turned off her

  light, pulled the covers to her chin, and begged for sleep.

  In her dream, a phone rang. And rang. Magnolia awoke and recog

  nized that the relentless trill was coming from her intercom. She

  stumbled to the hall and pressed the TALK button.

  “The funny-accent guy, he’s back,” Manuel said. “Won’t say his

  name.”

  “Well, don’t send him up, Manuel,” Magnolia said as she shivered.

  “I ain’t going to do that, Miss Gold. Wanted you to know, though.

  Now don’t worry.”

  But she did. What if this Tommy-Harry-creep was a stalker? Over

  the last two years she’d received repeated, illiterate scrawls from a Florida prison inmate who, inspired by her Lady editor photo, professed to have fallen in love with her. While Scary’s attorneys reas

  sured her that the matter had been addressed, no one accused them of

  being a crack legal team. Could Fred the Felon have found out where

  she lived? Her phone number and address were unlisted, but a dedi

  cated psycho had his ways.

  Or what if Bebe had got completely unglued—enraged by the sum

  she was going to have to fork over to Prince Fine—and ordered another

  special delivery for her, this time in the form of someone a lot more like Tony Soprano? Knowing she’d been butted off Bebe might simply be a down payment toward the penance that woman felt she deserved.

  Bebe had to blame her for her public humiliation, and she couldn’t

  inform her otherwise without exposing Sasha.

  Magnolia was ready to call Abbey, who’d tell her whether she

  was having an attack of the paranoids, when she thought she heard

  someone shout her name. The snow was falling heavily now, and her

  view was blurred. She opened the window, letting a gust of cold rush

  into her bedroom. Yes, someone was shouting, “Maggie.” It wasn’t Tommy, and it wasn’t Harry. Blue Hat was standing below

  her window. Tyler in his blue ski hat.

  “What are you doing?” was all she could think to yell back.

  “Freezing my buns off,” he said. “Can I come up?”

  “You must be crazy,” she shouted. She pressed her eyes shut. Was he

  transported here by burning lust, romantic ecstasy, or random lunacy?

  “Please,” he shouted back. “Maggie, I’ve come all this long way.”

  “No!” she shouted, but friends don’t let friends wake the cranky

  couple in 2A, from which place an angry voice was already rumbling,

  “Hey, Romeo and Juliet, shut yer traps. People wanna sleep.”

  “Okay, I’m coming down,” she gestured. “Go inside.” She grabbed

  her parka and threw it over Jean Harlow, stepped into her dog-walk

  ing boots, and rode the elevator to the main floor. At the end of the

  hall which led to the entrance, a twelve-foot Christmas tree, switched

  off for the night, stood guard like a sinister totem. Magnolia’s footfalls

  echoed as she rounded the corner, her nightgown dragging on the

  marble floor.

  “You know this guy?” Manuel asked.

  “I do,” Magnolia said. “Old friend.” She moved out of the door

  man’s earshot and fixed on Tyler. “Whatever are you thinking?” she

  whispered.

  “Obviously, about you,” he said, smiling slightly but looking like a

  child on the back of a milk carton.

  “But to get on a plane and arrive unannounced?” Magnolia shook

  her head.

  ” ‘I’m aware it’s a bold move.’ ” She realized he was trying to mimic Jack Nicholson in a movie she’d seen on HBO.

  “When did you arrive?”

  “Two days ago. Staying at the Y. Walking the city. There are a lot of

  beautiful women here.”

  “Part of our regional charm.”

  “But you’re the one I want.” He paused. “I’ve been thinking …”

  And, apparently, following her.

  Magnolia cut him off. “Why didn’t you just call me?”

  “I wanted it to be a surprise,” he said, stepping closer. “Believe me, it is.”

  This was the moment when a woman in love would reach out to

  the man, draw him close, kiss him tenderly, and know her life had for

  ever changed. Magnolia searched her heart. It was … crowded. There

  was, she had to admit, warmth and not just of the chocolate chip

  cookie variety. Compared to most men she’d met, Tyler was forthright

  and kind and frighteningly handsome, especially out of his clothes.

  And while she was shocked by his kamikaze courting, she was less

  angry than overwhelmed that he’d flown thousands of miles to take a

  chance on her. Yet bigger than the intense pleasure of chemistry and

  flattery was an impenetrable layer of guilt from knowing her e-mails

  had apparently been misinterpreted.

  Magnolia fumbled in her mental toolbox once more and pulled

  out … management skills. She took his hand. “Come upstairs,” she

  said quietly, thinking out loud. “You’ll call your wife—who must be a

  wreck.” Magnolia turned to look at him. “Where does she think you

  are, by the way?”

  “Visiting my brother in Butte,” he said. He tapped his pocket. “Cell

  phone.”

  “We’ll get you home by Christmas Eve,” she murmured as they

  rode up in the elevator. “Your wife won’t have to know.” She couldn’t

  say if the promise was directed to Mrs. Tyler Peterson or to him, or

  was for her own benefit.

  Magnolia kindled a fire and settled Tyler across from her on the

  deep green velvet couch, a pot of herb tea and a plate of biscotti on

  the suede ottoman between them. Instead of lighting her chunky

  white candles, her usual custom with evening guests, she turned on a

  lamp. In the burnished glow, she saw him look around the room as if

  he were visiting the private quarters of the White House, and she

  felt embarrassed by her home’s casual luxury. She’d never been so

  happy she had two sloppy dogs, who ran to him, placing their paws

  on his legs, looking for a scratch. He knew exactly how to please them.

  “Talk to me,” she said.

  “I feel so trapped,” he said. “Got it coming and going—listening to

  Jody complain about money and trying to comfort the people in my flock—plus the church is falling down on my head. Everywhere I

  look, complaints, complaints. I feel so alone. I’m thirty-eight and all

  used up …” He looked into her eyes. “I was hoping you could be

  there for me.”

  “Tyler, I can’t even imagine how hard your life must be,” Magnolia

  said, and meant it. “What I do, compared to you, is … trivial. And I’m

  paid well to do it. Right now I’m feeling ashamed.”

  “Hey, you deserve it,” he said. “Those magazines make folks

  happy. Either they look at celebrities’ lives and thank God they’re not

  one of them, or get a kick in the butt to change their ways. Jody is

  always clipping and quoting stuff she reads in magazines, yours

&nbs
p; included.”

  Magnolia felt too guilty to think about faraway, faceless Jody, and

  how she took to heart stories like “A Little to the Left”—How to Say

  What You Want in Bed Without Bruising His Ego” or “Have You Let

  Yourself Go? Downsize Your Thighs in 4 Weeks.”

  “What I don’t deserve is you, Tyler,” she said.

  He got up from his chair, sat next to her, and gently touched her

  face. His hands were still cold. She placed one of his hands between

  both of hers.

  “I haven’t felt this way in a long time,” he said. “That weekend—

  there was something between us. Don’t you love me, Angel Girl?”

  Magnolia knew she wanted to be loved. But this was, she realized,

  irrelevant, because she didn’t want to make her life with Tyler, and she

  couldn’t return his love the way he hoped. “I’m someone who adores

  you, but I can’t be your Angel Girl,” she said. “I’m sorry if I misled you.”

  “Then are you my temptation?” he asked without a speck of

  detectable irony.

  “When you use words like that, I can’t answer,” she admitted. “I’m

  still trying to believe that you went to all this trouble to surprise me

  here.”

  He looked to the other side of the room, but she knew she was

  reaching him.

  “Tyler, listen to me. It’s not our fate to be together.” The Yiddish word beshert—destiny—popped into her mind—and not only wasn’t he it, she didn’t want to have to translate from Yiddish. “Tyler, I’m

  sorry, but I think it’s best for everyone if you leave in the morning.”

  He nodded.

  “Turning you away is very hard for me,” she added, nervously twist

  ing her hair. “I would love to play house with you, to show you Man

  hattan. To prove I’m not the ball-busting bitch people take me for.”

  “Maggie, if anyone knows that, it’s me,” he said, and let his lips

  graze hers. The graze turned into a long, deep kiss. “But I hear what

  you’re saying. I don’t like it, but I hear it.” He stared into the fire.

  “And if this is your decision, I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  He pulled away. “All of a sudden I feel very tired.”

  She squeezed his hand.

  “I do have one request,” he said.

  Magnolia brushed away a tear from her cheek.

  “Let me borrow a dog for the night,” he said, stretching out on the coach and pulling an ivory cashmere throw over his lanky frame. “If I

  can’t have your warm body, at least let me hear a dog snoring.” He

  shut his eyes and she tiptoed out of the room.

  In the morning, Magnolia slept past ten. When she straggled out to the living room, Tyler was gone. “Dogs walked & fed,” he’d writ

  ten on a note. “Making 11:30 plane. Didn’t want to wake you.”

  That night, Christmas Eve, she heard from him. “Angel Girl, thank u for the wake-up call,” he e-mailed. “You will be forever in my heart. But I’m writing to say good-bye. P. S. I’m closing down this account.”

  C h a p t e r 2 8

  One-Way Ticket to Siberia

  “See you at the retreat,” a new publisher at Scary boomed to Magnolia as he swung his duffel into the elevator on a late

  January morning. “You’re speaking, right?” He’d started Monday and

  didn’t know any better.

  “Uh, no,” Magnolia said. That would be the executive retreat at an

  upstate inn where anyone who wanted to present an idea had thirty

  minutes for her personal tap dance; the retreat capped by Pilates and

  outlet shopping, followed by an evening of fine food, good wine, and serious posturing—that retreat, the one a corporate editor whose job meant something would definitely be attending. She had the feel

  ing—egocentric as it was—that the off-site gathering, which nor

  mally was held over the summer, had been moved up on the calendar

  simply so Jock could exclude her, enrage her, and get her to quit.

  Magnolia opened the door to her office-in-exile and read her e-mail,

  which took only minutes now that she was no longer logging on to AOL

  six times a day to see what Preacherman8 had to say. To her relief, last

  week she’d got a handwritten letter from Tyler, who’d gone on a Chris

  tian marriage weekend with Jody and was praying—which Magnolia

  took literally—that their marriage could be saved.

  She followed her e-mail with her regular four newspapers plus the Los Angeles Times, then glanced at her yawning in-box. Even her magazine pile was low—she’d been reading issues cover to cover the minute they arrived. She opened this week’s New Yorker and was idly flipping through the magazine, cartoon by cartoon, when Bebe

  clomped through the door.

  “So what the hell are you doing in this job?” she asked by way of

  greeting, making a chair creak as she sat down. Either she’d gone on

  anabolic steroids or put on at least twenty pounds since the Polo

  episode. “Hanging out where you can call tips into tabloids more easily? Bankrupt a few more people?”

  “Nice to see you, too, Bebe, and once more for the record, I wasn’t

  the snitch,” Magnolia said. “Not that I approved of what you were

  doing.”

  “And I am a natural redhead,” Bebe said as she rolled her eyes.

  “You expect me to buy that?”

  “I don’t care what you buy,” Magnolia said, wondering whether

  she came off as petulant as she sounded to herself. “If you’re looking

  for an apology, you’re not going to get one.”

  “Okay, keep your Girl Scout badge. That’s not why I’m here.”

  “To what do I owe the honor?” Magnolia asked, genuinely curious.

  Bebe looked around the office. “You know, this is really a dump. Remind me why you quit Bebe?”

  “Quit?” The words flew out of her mouth.

  Bebe raised her eyebrows. “Escaped, whatever?”

  Magnolia weighed the advantage of revealing that her reassign

  ment had been involuntary. She couldn’t see the percentage. “If I told

  you what really went on,” Magnolia said, “I’d have to kill you.”

  “Well,” Bebe said. “You’ve made your point.” Bebe studied her fin

  gernails, long tips enameled in a blackened red. “Get your butt back.”

  Magnolia took a quick breath, turned and gazed out the window so

  Bebe couldn’t see her shock. Suddenly, the sky looked bluer and was

  stenciled with wedding veil clouds. A pigeon landing on her ledge,

  she noticed, had feathers that shimmered silver-gray with a hint of

  pink. She used to think of them as flying rats, never appreciating how

  attractive pigeons—doves, yes?—actually were. She tried not to smile, but the sensation of Bebe asking her to return was sweet and as

  she savored the taste, time stood still.

  “Well, don’t just sit there,” Bebe said, looking uncomfortable. She

  cleared her throat. “I’m not going to beg. What’s your answer? Com

  ing or not?”

  As if Jock would let her kiss and make up with Bebe. Still, the plea

  sure of having Bebe ask was multiorgasmic. “I can’t. Raven’s here.

  The job’s filled.

  Bebe brushed away the thought and chortled. “Let Jock send her

  back.”

  “Not so simple,” Magnolia said. “Scary jumped through hoops to

  get Raven a green card, rent her apartment, the whole bit.” And, of

  course, that wa
s only the public half of why Jock wouldn’t make a

  change.

  Bebe scowled.

  “How are things with Raven, anyway?” Magnolia asked. Bebe sat back, and the frown hardened. “I hate her,” she said in a

  spasm of candor. “Eat Street this, Eat Street that. Who cares and

  where the hell is it, anyway?”

  “It’s ‘Fleet Street.’ Means she’s a British journalist, that’s all.”

  “And what’s ‘fine fettle’? The woman won’t speak English.” Bebe

  picked up an antique paperweight from Magnolia’s desk and idly

  moved it from hand to hand. “I’d like to break her skinny little neck.”

  Bebe stood, glanced back, and filled Magnolia’s doorway. “So I gather

  your answer is ‘no’?”

  “Not for me to say,” Magnolia said. “It’s a Jock decision.”

  “If I can get him to throw her across ‘the pond,’ will you come back?”

  “It could happen,” Magnolia said, as Bebe walked off.

  Since Jock had relocated her to Siberia, she’d only seen him twice,

  both times on his way to the men’s room. But two could play the

  game. A few days after she’d been planted on the executive floor, he’d

  asked her, by e-mail, to analyze the covers of all the Scary magazines.

  Within a week she’d fulfilled the request, presented in a gleaming

  report which had been marking time on his desk for a week—if he

  hadn’t filed it in the trash. Though she had virtually nothing to do, she was keeping regular hours, even if a considerable number of

  them each day were spent on obscure Web sites. Magnolia had been

  careful not to leave a computer trail that might suggest she was job

  hunting—she didn’t want to give Jock grounds for firing with cause;

  there was too much money at stake. She had a contract, after all. Best

  to wait things out and hope that a mouthwatering job would come on

  the market, and she’d be on the short list.

  She’d kill to see the look on Jock’s face, though, when—and Bebe begged to get her back on Bebe. But Bebe had opted out of the retreat, so nothing would happen for days—if at all.

  It was only eleven. Too early for lunch. Maybe she’d check in with

  the new couple. Or maybe not. Cameron and Abbey had gone out

  twice, and while neither claimed to be struck by lightning, they’d

  purchased tickets for an Off-Broadway play two weeks from that day,

  which, Magnolia decided, practically implied a betrothal. “She’s good