Little Pink Slips

by Sally Koslow

  up and down her thigh.

  “Did you reject his advances?”

  “Yes!” Magnolia was surprised by the steel in her voice. “Of course.”

  “And after that incident were the terms or conditions of your

  employment adversely affected?”

  “After that I was moved from being deputy editor to corporate edi

  tor, and soon after that I was fired.” It wasn’t cancer. It wasn’t even a

  broken arm or a classic broken heart. She hesitated but said, “I call

  that ‘adverse,’ yes.”

  Wally turned off his tape recorder. “Was that so bad?” he said.

  “We’ve had worse conversations over what color white to paint the

  living room.”

  Magnolia remembered and laughed. “You and Whitney agree on

  all that?”

  “I pick my battles, doll,” he said. “Marriage—who ever thought

  that one up?” He began to tidy his desk. Magnolia considered that

  perhaps she should leave, but then Wally started talking. “By the way,

  were you surprised by the lawsuit?”

  Magnolia had rushed out without reading the paper or listening to

  any morning television. What new national or international scandal

  didn’t she know about? Her face registered empty. Lately, she’d been

  focusing so much on celebrity journalism—if that wasn’t an oxymoron—that The New York Times kept piling up unread. “Oh, you didn’t hear?” Wally said matter-of-factly. He broke into a

  grin. “That’s right. I forgot. You couldn’t have heard. Nobody knows

  yet.” He paused for dramatic effect. “Scary’s suing Bebe Blake. For

  breach of contract. You heard it here first. The story’s going to break

  in an hour or two.”

  “Who told you this?”

  “A friend handling the case,” he said. “Yes, ma’am. Scary’s suing

  for damages, punitive and actual. Three hundred big ones.”

  “Three hundred thousand dollars?”

  “Oh, you are an innocent. Million, honey. Million. Claims your

  Bebe Blake breached her contract. Behaved erratically. That true?” It was Magnolia’s turn to laugh. “Honestly, Wally, Bebe defines

  ‘erratic.’ One day she sends you the best birthday gift you ever

  received, and the next day you’re afraid she might steal your dog.”

  “So, did you see it coming?”

  “Wally, if you’re asking me if I’m surprised that Scary would sue,

  no. It’s Jock, down to his boxers. Ego the size of Alaska.”

  “Guess that means you’re rooting for Bebe?”

  Magnolia spoke very, very slowly. “Wally, honey. If Scary has money to throw around on vanity lawsuits, I’m rooting for me. Pull out every card in that pretty little deck of yours. Go get Magnolia a

  nice, six-figure check.”

  He smiled. “Now you’re talking.”

  “This is for you, Wally,” she said, ignoring his onion breath and

  kissing him on the lips. “Get lucky. Get very lucky.”

  C h a p t e r 3 7

  See You in Court

  “Miss Gold, delivery coming up.” The doorman purred over Magnolia’s creaky intercom. “Flowers for the lady.”

  Magnolia hadn’t received a bouquet in months. The only blossoms

  that weren’t on her wallpaper were from the deli. Just this morning

  she’d trashed two dozen roses which after only twenty-four hours had

  arrived at death’s door, bending over as if they were praying.

  Someone pressed her bell with short, urgent blasts. “Hold on,” she

  sang out, as she squinted through the peephole. All she could see were

  Smurf-blue carnations. Her fleeting thought was that this was

  Cameron’s idea of humor. Magnolia opened the door, hoping he was

  attached to the flowers.

  A squat, middle-aged man held tightly to the carnations. His

  greasy hair was combed over a shiny bald spot, and he wore an over

  coat that appeared to have been be plucked from the annual New York

  Cares coat drive. Magnolia reached for the neon bouquet, but the man

  pulled it back while he shoved an envelope in her face.

  “Consider yourself served,” he said before he slunk back into the

  elevator, carnations in hand, like a villain in a 1942 comic book.

  Magnolia ripped open the envelope. “You are hereby commanded

  to appear in the offices of …” She read the name of a patrician law firm and noted a place, date, and time the following week. Strange

  that Wally hadn’t mentioned anything about a command legal per

  formance, Magnolia thought, as she walked to her desk to check her

  calendar. “No can do,” she said aloud, noting a conflict with an ap

  pointment she’d scheduled weeks ago to put a blast of bling in her

  highlights—the winter was long enough without hair the color of

  burnt toast. She looked up Wally’s cell phone number to call and ask

  what this summons had to do with her contract dispute, then remem

  bered it was far too early to reach him in Colorado. Magnolia tossed

  the letter onto a pile of unpaid bills and returned to her television.

  She could crash in several episodes of third-tier celebrity shows

  before meeting Abbey.

  She’d been missing Abbey. The velocity of their IM-ing, text mes

  saging, and phone calls had petered out to half the norm. At least

  that’s how it felt to Magnolia, who for the first time in her adult life

  didn’t have to multitask while she and her only true confidante gave

  each other full accountings of daily minutia, the dull as well as the

  droll. Now, Abbey seemed to be abbreviating every conversation. Her

  business had taken off. Bergdorf’s had requested three dozen pairs of

  sea-foam sapphire earrings, Fred Segal was offering an exclusive for

  all of la-la land if she could whittle down the price and do them up in

  lemon jade, and Anthropologie would be willing to place an order

  that was seven times the size of the others combined.

  Yet Magnolia knew this flurry of entrepreneurial hyperbole didn’t

  explain Abbey’s attention deficit, and she didn’t think for a second

  that Abbey was cheating on her with another friend, someone who

  might be—at the moment—a whole lot perkier. Abbey had a low tol

  erance for perky, which was one of the qualities she and Magnolia

  shared. No, there was only one explanation. A man. To be specific, a Frenchman.

  Magnolia walked the long white runway that led to MoMA, where

  they planned to meet at one o’clock. Advancing out of the tunnel, she

  felt as if she should wind up in heaven, not a swanky café. Planted

  under an enormous leafy photo was Abbey, who in her scarlet coat

  looked like Little Red Riding Hood lost in the forest. Abbey waved gaily. “You look gorgeous!” she said, stretching to

  hug Magnolia.

  “You do and I don’t, but let’s not discuss it,” Magnolia said, return

  ing the hug, reassured by the all’s-well-in-the-world comfort she got

  when she looked into her friend’s dark almond eyes. “What I want to

  know is—everything. And—now that I don’t have to worry about

  falling asleep at my desk—let’s hear it over a drink.” One of a platoon

  of waiters in charcoal Nehru jackets showed them to a choice table

  with a view of the ghostly crystalline garden and its ice-frosted

  Calders. “To you,” she said, toasting Abbey with her gl
ass. “My own

  jewel of Las Vegas.”

  “To Magnolia, who I can count on never to set foot in Las Vegas,”

  Abbey said.

  “So? Is this Daniel Cohen the One?” Magnolia took a sip, put her

  glass on the table, and smiled warmly at Abbey. “He is! You’re blush

  ing!” Abbey’s cheeks were rapidly turning the pink of a sweet sixteen

  party.

  “I can’t get enough of this guy,” Abbey said. She started counting

  his virtues while tapping her delicate, white index finger on the digits

  of her left hand. “He’s charming, he’s handsome, he’s brilliant, he’s

  sexy.” She switched to the right hand. “He’s got an accent I could lis

  ten to even if he were reading a grocery list, he’s totally into me—”

  “That should be number one,” Magnolia said, cutting her off. “I

  get it. He’s the anti-Tommy.”

  “Right, except Tommy did have bedroom appeal. Let’s give him

  that. On the other hand, Daniel’s a grown-up,” Abbey said. “He’s

  older—thirty-nine—but mostly it’s his Frenchness. Even a Parisian

  sixteen-year-old seems older than Tommy.”

  “Where do you go from here?”

  “Literally?”

  “Cosmically,” Magnolia said.

  “I only know literally,” she answered. “To Paris again this week

  end. He keeps sending me tickets. And in a few weeks he’s coming

  here and I’m planning to introduce him to my nearest and dearest.

  Cocktails at my place. You’re not going to be away, I hope?” “For the near future I expect to be epoxied to my armchair with a

  view of the TV.”

  “It would never be a party without you. Oh, and Cameron,” she

  said, as she took a bite of smoked eel. Love seemed to have sparked

  Abbey’s appetite.

  “Cameron’s made your A-list?” Magnolia asked, truly surprised.

  “How do you do it? All my exes despise me.” Except Tyler, who every

  once in a while sent her a friendly, funny e-mail from his regular Pas

  torpeterson account. Harry? Had he thought to send her as much as an

  e-mail expressing sympathy about her job loss—which he had to know

  about, given its tabloid coverage? She’d concluded that Harry was a

  user, and at the moment she wasn’t even useful enough to be his friend.

  “To begin with, Cam and I never got near lust,” Abbey said. “He’s

  just not the one to own my heart—”

  “Whoa. You’re forgetting our rule,” Magnolia said. “No Country

  Western lyrics until after two or more beers.”

  “Plus, I know I don’t do it for him,” Abbey continued, ignoring her.

  “I can never tell if he’s laughing with me or at me. You get him a lot

  better than I do, but I do see where he’s hot, if that’s what you’re won

  dering.”

  Magnolia let the last bubble of conversation float in the air until it

  disappeared, then attacked her gâteau, a rich pastry featuring crispy

  potato and escargot. If you can’t eat carbs when you’re unemployed,

  she’d decided, you just don’t love yourself enough.

  “Back to Daniel Cohen,” she said. “You deserve this, Abbey. I am so

  happy for you that—look at me—I’m going to cry.”

  This was true. Magnolia blinked away tears. She was almost sure

  she was ready to shed them entirely on Abbey’s behalf and not

  because her friend’s attachment to the perfect Daniel might mean

  one more shutter closed in her shrinking, darkening world. You are

  pathetic, Magnolia told herself, brushing away both the thought and

  the tear. Also selfish. Jealous. Small-minded. You adore Abbey. You

  will find your own man. You will not be alone. Or a bag lady. Shoul

  ders back, girl. “Dessert?” Magnolia asked as a cart sailed past, laden with choco

  late napoleons and pale, lemony petits fours lined up like ballerinas.

  “Not today,” Abbey said. “Got to get back to my studio. Call you

  tonight?”

  “Date,” Magnolia said. They finished their espressos, split the bill,

  and left the restaurant. Magnolia wandered through a few cavernous,

  sparely hung galleries, then out on Fifty-third Street. She began to

  walk uptown toward Columbus Circle where she could catch a train.

  As she crossed Fifty-seventh Street, someone bellowed her name.

  “Over here,” said the voice. “In the limo.”

  Magnolia swiveled to avoid oncoming traffic. A Stretch Hummer

  had stopped across the street. “Where you headed, Bebe?” she shouted

  back.

  “My lawyer’s,” Bebe said.

  “What’s the occasion?” Magnolia asked when she got close to the

  car’s window. “Let me guess. You need another prenup. Are congratu

  lations in order?”

  “I need another husband like I need a third boob,” Bebe said. “Or

  like I needed a magazine. But Jock’s going to pay. He’s in for a little

  surprise.” She rubbed her hands together like an eager cannibal. “Don’t

  stand there shivering—I’ll fill you in. C’mon—Gold. Chop, chop.”

  “But I’m going uptown,” Magnolia said.

  “So we’ll take a ride.” Bebe gathered her plentiful fox coat with its

  hanging tails and tassels and patted the seat next to her. Magnolia

  climbed into the car. “Like I was saying, our countersuit is almost

  ready to rock and roll. Scary and Jock won’t know what hit ‘em. I’m

  talking major artillery shelling.” Bebe grabbed Magnolia’s arm—

  hard—and wasn’t letting go. “You didn’t honestly think I’d sit still for

  those mental midgets to steal my money, not when Jock and Darlene

  and all the others have treated me like pond scum, did you? Well,

  did you?”

  “Bebe, I’ve been trying not to think about any of this,” Magnolia

  pleaded. “I’m sorry you’re being sued,” she fibbed, “but you did pub

  lish a cover that was blatant gun-lobby propaganda. You weren’t always the easiest person to work with and, damn it, you fired me.”

  She wrested away her arm.

  “Jock fired you!” Bebe said. “I wanted you.”

  “Revisionist history. Jock may have pulled the trigger,” Magnolia

  said, figuring it was a metaphor Bebe would understand, “but I don’t

  recall an enormous show of support at the time.”

  “You don’t know what you don’t know. I was behind the scenes, say

  ing I wanted you. All along. You know I hate that eye-rolling bitch

  Raven. Tried to shoot down my ideas like they were enemy Black

  Hawks. And Jock! Did you know he had a security guard lock me in my

  office? I was stuck there for ninety minutes. Thought I’d have a stroke.”

  “I heard something about that,” Magnolia said. “But you’d threat

  ened to kick Raven in the teeth.”

  “I believe I identified a different body part,” Bebe said. “Lower

  down.” She stopped talking for a minute. “This is an absurd conversa

  tion. It’s all very simple. I need to pull out before I lose more dough,”

  she said after a minute of meditation. “Like my ma always said, she

  didn’t raise no stupid kids.”

  Bebe may have calmed down, but Magnolia hadn’t. “Shall we talk

  money now?” She asked. “How about the hundred people who got fired when Bebe closed�
�what about them? All they got was a month’s severance.”

  “That’s what Scary decided to give them, cheap bastards,” she said.

  “Though half that money came from me, which Jock neglected to

  mention. I also wrote checks out of my own pocket for at least a thou

  sand dollars each to every single person on the masthead.”

  “Really? That was incredible,” Magnolia admitted. Cameron had

  e-mailed her about Bebe’s gesture, and in fact, he had received two

  thousand dollars, as had Fredericka, Phoebe, Ruthie, and Sasha. As

  the star of her own tragedy, Magnolia had forgotten all about that.

  “After Jock ordered all those wimps not to talk to me or Felicity!”

  Spittle landed on Magnolia’s cheek as Bebe yelled.

  “Speaking of Felicity,” Magnolia said. “What do you think Ms.

  Whipsmart cost the magazine and the company?” Magnolia realized that now she was hollering as well. And probably spitting. “And what

  about coming on to Nathaniel? How perverted was that?”

  “Who?” Bebe looked puzzled.

  “Our intern, Polo? How soon we forget.”

  “That kid wanted it!” Bebe leaned back in the seat, turned her

  head to the window, and began to pout. The car stopped at a light on

  Central Park West about ten blocks from Magnolia’s building.

  “Driver, I’ll get out here, please,” Magnolia decided and motioned

  to him through the class partition. “Thanks for the lift.” She put her

  hand on the door and began to open it.

  “Magnolia, I was hoping for some support from you,” Bebe said.

  “It wasn’t that bad, our working together.” She sighed. “But it doesn’t

  really matter one way or another—you’ll be hearing from my attor

  ney. He’s going to depose you. We’ve already discussed it.” This

  seemed to cheer up Bebe, who put a smile back on her face. “You

  know what? I’ll see you in court.” She laughed. “I’ve always wanted to

  say that. ‘I’ll see you in court.’ “

  As the car sped away, Bebe blew Magnolia kiss after kiss.

  Magnolia walked to her apartment. It was just past lunchtime in

  Aspen and perhaps she could catch Wally; he’d be the kind of guy

  who’d ski with a cell phone.

  He answered on the first ring.

  “Fleigelman,” he said.

  “Gold,” she said. “How’s the snow?”