“The essential meaning is the same,” says Victoria. “In both versions, he’s saying cheating doesn’t necessarily spell divorce. Obviously some liberties have to be taken for the benefit of the narrative.”
“Some liberties!” Sylvia tosses up her spidery arms. “This is not your personal Web log, Victoria. You cannot simply invent facts and attribute them to people and then defend the action in the service of creating a narrative.”
“You’re being too rigid.”
“OK, let’s hold on,” I interrupt. “Sex stories are obviously extra tricky because people’s personal reputations are at stake. How’s this? Sylvia, if something appears in the transcripts, let’s go with it. To protect the women, we’ll use first names only. And with the experts, we need to run the edited quotes by them and make sure they’re kosher. All right with everyone?”
“Fine,” they say in unison, both fuming like petulant children. I often feel like I’m the only adult around here.
It doesn’t surprise me, later that day, when I spot Victoria and Sylvia in Mimi’s closed-door office. Sylvia looks as if she’s behind bars instead of glass.
Nor does it surprise me an hour later when I get a call from Suzie in Human Resources. An exit interview has been arranged for Sylvia. I sigh, mentally allotting myself an extra glass of wine for tonight. I make my way to Mimi’s office and wait to be filled in.
“Oh, Christ,” Mimi says. “Stop looking at me like I’m your teenage daughter who you just caught sneaking out to go blow my boyfriend. It had to be done. In fact, you should be kissing my ass. I’m saving you $85K in the budget.” It takes me a moment to realize that is Sylvia’s salary.
“But we’ll need to hire another researcher.”
“We can find someone fresh from college and throw her a starter salary—one of those freelancers we just brought in, for example,” she says. In other words, someone Victoria and company can stomp all over. “How hard it is to fact-check, really? Plus, it’ll mean fewer butting heads around here.” During Sylvia’s decade of duty, we haven’t had to issue a single correction. I fear for the future.
“OK, I’ll send word up to H.R. that we’re looking.”
“Oh, Abby, I wanted to see if you were free after work sometime.”
“Sure. That would be perfect. We could stick around and go over the budget together in peace, with no distractions.”
“Oh, no, nothing like that. I feel like you and I are on the same wavelength, and I see potential for us to be great pals, but we haven’t had the chance to get to know each other. I’m thinking drinks, maybe at a wine bar or that cute Mexican place down the street. It’ll be fun.” This is somewhat surprising, considering Mimi just accused me of acting like her uptight mother, but not so surprising. People tend to think I understand them; I’m someone others always confide in.
“OK, how’s this Friday?” I ask. “What’s that, June fifteenth?”
“We’re on.” As I watch Mimi record my name in red ink in her planner, I have an ominous feeling that I’m being added to the wrong list. “You know what?” She looks up. “It’s been a rough day. How about tonight—are you free?”
I shrug. Julia wanted us to spend the evening scrolling through more donor profiles, but I could use a break from that. “Sure, why not?”
“Yay,” Mimi says, and shocks me by pulling me in for a hug.
My wife would say this is a flaw of mine, my tendency to make friends with everyone. She believes selecting an elite few to associate with is a sign of good taste. According to her, choosiness in friendship is a demonstration of loyalty and commitment to those who’ve made the cut. I, on the other hand, think many people are worth befriending, and that hanging out with a hodgepodge of people is a good way to broaden one’s horizons. People say I’m easy to talk to. I suppose it’s ironic that I find it difficult to open up about myself.
With an hour left of the workday, I run into Sylvia by the photocopier. She must be back from her session in Human Resources. “I’m sorry about how this has turned out,” I say to her.
“I appreciate it,” she says calmly. “I suppose it’s time to move on. It has been ten years.”
“For me too.”
“You’re looking to move on, too?”
“Oh, dear, no.” My voice catches. “I meant I’ve also been working here for ten years.” Julia regularly encourages me to scour the job boards, pointing out that the only way I’ll make more money is to move on from Hers. She once caught me checking out a posting for Brooklyn Ladies, a Webzine for gay women in our borough; she got so excited, going on about how perfect it would be for me, that I immediately exed out of the listing. I never applied for the position. The truth is, I’m comfortable at Hers. Even amidst the recent chaos, it feels safe.
“What are you copying there?” I ask. Sylvia holds up a packet: Hers’ research guidelines, which I happen to know she’s painstakingly compiled and updated on a biannual basis for the past decade. They now fill eighteen pages.
“I know most people will probably chuck them out immediately,” she says. “But maybe they’ll at least glance at the contents beforehand. It’s not popular or hip to say so, but the first and foremost duty of a magazine is to be accurate.”
“Right on.” It’s so dignified, Sylvia’s grace in the face of her firing. As a tribute of sorts, I decide I’ll display her guidelines on my bulletin board. “We’ll miss you.”
“Not everyone,” she says with a dry laugh.
“Well, I sure will.” I take in the sight of her, spine straight as a yardstick, looking like no one could knock her over. I make an effort to stand a bit taller, and then leave Sylvia to her photocopying.
After work, Mimi and I head to a nearby Mexican joint. I feel like a bit of a traitor since it’s the same place I used to go with Liz before her maternity leave, and Leah, too, before she had her triplets. Our monthly tradition consisted of pigging out on tacos and getting tipsy on margaritas, and then Liz would start in on mocking the models who mill about the Schmidt & Delancey building. Liz could perfectly impersonate their pouty lips and big alien eyes; even while she was pregnant, suffering through virgin cocktails and stone sober, she could pull off the impressions. I really miss Liz. I kind of hate it when my friends become moms.
Turns out, margaritas are Mimi’s favorite—and she demonstrates it by sucking back three in the span of an hour. “I haven’t had drinks this good in months,” she says. “In fact, I haven’t had drinks at all. My friends keep saying we should go out to celebrate my new job, but I’m too preoccupied with the actual job to make it happen. Ha!”
I’m not sure what the motive is for this explanation: if she’s trying to prove to me her diligence at work or maybe the fact that she has friends, or if it’s a rationale for why she’s already slurring her speech. I nod silently. “You know who can mix up a mean margarita?” Mimi says. “My ex-husband. In fact, both of my ex-husbands! Ha!”
“Who doesn’t love a delicious margarita?” I say, trying to keep the conversation innocuous.
“We should tour the city’s offerings, you and me. We could do a bar crawl of all the restaurantes Mexicanos. ¡Ole!” Mimi winks and clinks her glass against mine, and I’m surprised to find myself thinking that might actually be fun. I’m realizing how it must be lonely in Mimi’s position, all alone up at the top. “Hey, wanna do shots of Patrón?” Mimi asks.
“Uh, OK.” I mentally note to make sure this tab doesn’t end up on her corporate card.
I can hold my liquor, but after taking her shot Mimi demonstrates further that she cannot. She’s mooning at the bartender, beginning to embarrass herself. “How about I call you a cab?” I offer.
Mimi shakes her head and comes dangerously close to toppling off her stool. “José and I are having fun.” Oh boy, I’m fairly certain the bartender said his name was Joe.
“All right, you have your fun.” I order a soda water and sip at it, scrolling through my BlackBerry.
“Hey, José, g
uess what? I’m the new boss in town.”
“Oh yeah?” he responds, uninterested. He looks like my eighteen-year-old nephew—that young, too—and I’m mortified on Mimi’s behalf. I pretend to be absorbed in my e-mail.
“I’m the boss,” she repeats. “That means I’m in charge, and I get to say ‘Yes, yes, yes’ or ‘No way, José!’ Whatever I want. All it takes is a single nod, or one stroke of my red pen. But let me tell you, mi amigo, it’s not all fun and games. Everyone looks at me like I’m gonna eat them alive. I’m a big girl, I know, it’s a funny joke, ha! Really they should be kissing my big, fat ass because I am going to be the one to save this freaking magazine. Jesus Christo, you should have seen this piece of crap before I came in, trying to be all top-shelf when the drinkers—I mean, when the readers—wanted the shitty well brand, you know? I know exactly what I’m doing, and I’m going to make this brand some serious dinero.” Oh, Jesus. “Hit me, José. Another Patrón for me and uno for mi amiga here.”
“I don’t think that’s the best idea,” the bartender says, eyeing me.
“C’mon, Mimi. He’s cutting us off because I’ve had a few too many. Let’s go, we’re getting a car.”
But Mimi won’t budge. “Abby, does everyone at work hate me?” she mumbles, head suddenly in hands.
“What? No!”
“I can bring in people and pay them to like me, but it’s not the same. My little puggle-wuggle Pookie likes me, but that’s not the same, either.” I sigh and start rubbing circles against the small of my boss’s back, like I’ve seen Julia do to the stomachs of sick animals. I’m thinking how in all the years I worked for Louisa she shared perhaps a total of five sentences with me about her feelings.
Eventually, with the bartender’s help, I manage to drag Mimi outside and into a cab. She immediately conks out, head pressed up against the window. I have to extricate her driver’s license from her wallet to find out her address. She snores softly as we cross Manhattan and fly up Park Avenue.
The taxi pulls up to Mimi’s building, a luxury high-rise on the corner of Seventy-fifth and Park. Mimi topples out, and the doorman catches her forearm. As we pull away, I spot my boss in the rearview mirror, removing the doorman’s cap and running her fingers through his hair. Oh dear. I bury this nugget in the let’s-try-and-forget-this-ever-happened portion of my brain, and then do my best not to imagine Mimi leaning over the lip of her toilet and vomiting for the rest of the night.
“Park Slope, Brooklyn,” I tell the driver, and then start scrolling through e-mail. I open one from Julia, which contains a photo of her holding a hamster, her own hand uncurling the creature’s tiny paw into a wave. She knows a hamster is my idea of the perfect pet, cute and cuddly, but also pocket-sized and manageable—no big messes or wild personalities to contend with. Julia has banned all animals from our home, her rationale being, I leave my work at work, so why can’t she, too? A fair point, although I don’t think she realizes how many middle-of-the-night hours I spend awake worrying about my job.
Just as I suspect, the hamster photo is a teaser for yet another sperm donor option. I scroll down, and this one reads like the dating profiles I sometimes see up on coworkers’ computer screens: He loves horror movies and crime novels, he appreciates a well-placed pun, and he rolls his eyes at all the gluten-free, farm-to-table, and caveman diet trends that seem to take hold of our culture for six months at a time. I laugh out loud at the last part (Julia is often imposing these fads on our home). I catch myself wondering when the guy and I can grab drinks, though, not whether I’d like his genetic material to make up half of my theoretical child.
I peer out the cab window and see we’re soaring over the Manhattan Bridge. I take in the New York City skyline, the glistening East River, Lady Liberty. I enjoy the same sights every morning on my way to the office, and again each evening on my commute home—and amazingly, all it usually costs me is the couple of bucks for the subway ride. I often wish I could figure out how to translate this concept of “the best things in life are free (or nearly so)” to my job; it would be much easier to stick to the budget.
I’m feeling anxious, and I fear it’s due to more than the four stiff drinks swirling around my bloodstream. I try to shake the image of Mimi slurring her words and slipping off her barstool, and instead focus on the familiar panorama. I am a creature of habit, and just as I depend on my elliptical-and-NPR morning routine and my very intricate, very effective filing system at work, I rely upon this twice-daily view of New York City to ground me and make me feel, if only for a glimpse, that all is right with the world.
7
Drew Hardaway, Photo Editor
Now that a new regime has begun, we’re being extra careful, Mark and I. I make sure to put at least three seats between us in the art department’s daily meetings. Mimi has taken to dropping in “for a listen,” and then it becomes like a poorly acted play, all of us delivering stilted lines as we strain to sound dazzling and visionary. I avoid Mark’s eyes for fear of breaking character and collapsing into giggles.
“Which stories are on tap today?” Mimi asks, propping herself on the table’s edge next to Mark.
“We were talking about October, figuring out visual concepts for the features,” says Mark. Mimi’s ass is perched inches from his hands, which he usually flails around in large mad-scientist-like gestures, but now he’s set them folded on the table. He looks like he’s wearing a straitjacket. “We already nailed down the free stuff shoot. Drew’s on it.”
My niche at Hers has become still shots of products for the giveaway and shopping pages. Pretty boring, but it also leaves me lots of time to zone out and think about my personal photo projects, or whatever else is on my mind. This gig has been great. Before Hers, I was sick to death of my starving-artist diet of Ramen noodles and dry cereal, not to mention my roach-infested digs in Bushwick. And ever since Debbie learned I like to cook, she sometimes sends me home with leftover ingredients from her recipes: half a pint of cherries, most of a wedge of Asiago, and last week a few ounces of truffle oil (I think the latter was just plain charity, since oil keeps). It’s a pretty good deal.
Mimi picks up the list of October features. “Ooh, the cheaters story! What are you guys thinking for that?” I silently root for Mark to blurt out something brilliant. He’s a genius in his sleek, minimalist way—I first fell for him when he showed me his series of stark black-and-white shots of suspension bridges—but it’s becoming clear that his design vision does not complement Mimi’s more-is-more sensibility. Rumors are flying about who’s interviewing to replace him. This is something he and I do not discuss.
Mark is still stammering. I hesitate before breaking in: “How about we shoot traditional-looking portraits of each married couple along with the person one of them is having the affair with? Like they can wear matching outfits and pose in those ridiculous Sears kind of setups, and they’ll all be smiling. But underneath the smiles you’ll be able to tell, for example, that the wife is furious, and the husband is all tense, and the other woman is triumphant, or sexually satisfied, or something like that. If the real people won’t do it, we can use actors.” I’m not sure where this concept came from but, looking down at my hands, I’m thinking it might not be such a terrible idea. For the tenth time this week I promise myself to stop biting my nails.
“Love!” says Mimi. “She’s got the plan. Mark, let’s schedule the shoot.” She slaps our creative director, and my secret boyfriend, on the shoulder; it’s playful, but I happen to know he bruises easily.
This office runs on meetings. Meetings to set deadlines, meetings to pitch ideas, meetings to review ideas, meetings to schedule more meetings. On my first day at Hers about a year ago, I recognized a fellow sensitive soul in Mark, and to survive this onslaught of meetings with some semblance of our spirits intact, the two of us began exchanging glances; they translated to “When will she give it a rest already?” and “Think it’s safe to take a little nap?” and “Please wake me up when this is over
.” It all began harmlessly, until six months ago, when I was going through a breakup and started noticing Mark’s eyes: intense and smoldering, like a soap opera star’s. Apparently Mark liked the looks of me, too. Eventually our intrameeting looks came to mean “Meet me in the supply closet—stat.”
It’s a doubleheader today: After the art meeting is a full staff one to discuss the notorious November relaunch, when everything the Hers brand has been up to this point will be crumpled up and tossed in the trash, and we’ll reinvent ourselves into a brand-new, suitable-to-sell-tons-of-ads magazine. At least, that’s the idea. I’ve wagered a bet with Mark that the redesign will be nothing more than a handful of tweaks that Mimi will pass off as a grand revolution.
I arrive early to the conference room and position myself against the back wall, far from the thin pane of glass that’s the only thing separating us from air, nine stories high. The seating arrangement is a clear marker of hierarchy. The top editors and directors all seat themselves at the table—the higher up in editorial, the closer to the front—and the art senior staff sits at the other end; we peons perch ourselves on the ledges around the perimeter, or hover in the back. Even those of us who find this pecking-order organization reminiscent of the middle school cafeteria have fallen in line.
At least we used to. Today the new guy, Jonathan, commits Hers blasphemy. (Ever since Mr. Powder Puff showed up I’ve been teasing Mark about his new male colleague, someone to talk football with. Mark, possessing perhaps even less knowledge about the sport than Jonathan, and sensitive about it, doesn’t find this very funny.) Jonathan saunters right up to the front of the table and plants himself in Abby’s usual chair. Victoria then seats herself next to Jonathan, surprising no one in her displacement of Leah. The rest of us file in, more or less in our appropriate places, until just one spot remains at the table. Laura and Leah are the last ones to enter, and Laura nonchalantly plants herself at the table—the first assistant who’s ever dared such a move—leaving Leah, our co-second-in-command, seatless. Zoe gasps. I’m surprised at how shocked I feel, too. As inane as the seating politics are, I’m no fan of this Laura character, whom I overheard telling Mimi that she thinks the whole magazine looks flat. It is flat, you idiot, I wanted to blurt out. A magazine page is two-dimensional.
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