Pretty in Ink

by Lindsey Palmer

  Mark glances in my direction, his demeanor stark. He’s usually game to poke fun of the seating silliness, but today he looks staid sitting at the head of the art side of the table, proud to have claimed his position, however tenuous.

  “OK, announcements first,” says Leah, who’s taken the seating blow in stride and is standing at the front of the room to reestablish her authority. (Mimi is absent, taping a Today show segment based on a Hers story about the best ways to prevent heart disease, a story commissioned and edited by her predecessor.) “Mimi has decided that the big feature for the relaunch will be about extreme plastic surgery.” Leah makes no effort to mask her distaste at what she’s saying.

  “You guys,” says Jonathan, “we found moms across the country who had at least ten procedures each. We’re going to do a before-and-after kind of thing, and explain each procedure and whether or not you should do it, too.”

  “Actually, it’ll be more along the lines of ‘don’t try this at home,’ ” says Leah. “These women are narcissistic freaks. The story will be a cautionary tale.”

  Laura jumps in: “Not necessarily, right? I bet some of our readers are eager to hear which surgeries might make sense for their lifestyles.”

  “I can manage the photo shoots,” I blurt out. All eyes land on me, and I feel my skin sprout up with goose bumps.

  “That’s the spirit, Drew,” says Victoria. Abby marks down the update on her clipboard, registering no reaction. Mark is less subtle, but I avoid his condescending stare. Something about photographing women with so many fake parts intrigues me. I picture shooting them like dolls, limbs stiff and expressions fixed, the backdrop a kind of real-life Barbie’s Dreamhouse meets horror film set. Maybe we can find a crazy, plastic-surgeried man to play Ken.

  “I have an announcement to add,” says Abby. “I just got word that GladWare and Crystal Light are upping their advertising for November, so we’ll be blowing out the Thanksgiving entertaining package into a ten-page feature, like a mini-magazine within the magazine. We’ll supplement our usual coverage with leftovers recipes and low-cal cocktails for cold weather.”

  “Deborah says she’ll have recipes to me for editing by end-of-week,” Victoria says. I happen to be glancing at Leah just then, and in one flash I see her expression morph from outrage to hurt and back to neutral, then she fixes on a smile so bright one might mistake the water pooling in her eyes for a twinkle. I guess no one told Leah that Victoria was taking over as editor of the food coverage.

  “Ahem, and for those of you who need a cocktail today,” Debbie says, “and I’m guessing that’s everyone”—she eyes Leah—“I’ll be bringing down Hot Toddies and Dark and Stormys this afternoon for testing.”

  “Fun!” says Victoria. “Though let’s push back the happy hour until after six, so everyone can get all of their work done beforehand.”

  Debbie nods, but at four o’clock on the dot she appears in the office carrying a large tray of drinks. Only Victoria and Laura remain at their desks.

  I’m halfway through my Dark and Stormy when Jane approaches, wielding a page layout. “So I’ve only got room for about ninety-seven words here,” she says, pointing to a text box that easily fits two hundred words. “Do we really need this enormous image monopolizing the page?”

  “That’s one of our standard layouts, Jane.” Of course she knows this already; she’s been producing the love and marriage section for years, and there’s the same room for text that there always is on a one-pager.

  “Can I please have space for just a few more sentences, or maybe a teensy extra paragraph? Pretty please!” I know I’m probably being paranoid, but I imagine in Jane’s plea the covert message: You know what I know. Namely, about Mark and me.

  I cave: “Sure, no problem.” As I rejigger Jane’s layout, shrinking the photo to tiny and expanding the text box so that the page looks cramped and uninviting, I remind myself that at any point Jane could sabotage my relationship with Mark. A few months ago, after Mark had finally broken up with his girlfriend, and just when we were starting to relax out in public together, we had the luck of running into Jane at the movies, the two of us holding hands no less. I rambled on about who knows what—I can picture myself laughing too loudly and making a dumb pun about the film’s title. And although Jane gave me the “lips zipped” signal when we parted ways, I’ve been nervous, and sucking up to her, ever since. Coworker dating is prohibited at Schmidt & Delancey.

  When I present the new layout to Jane, I find myself complimenting her skirt. “Thanks,” she says, all smiles.

  I’m browsing the boxes of off-brand sandwich cookies and powdered milk, waiting for Mark in our postwork meeting spot, the 99-cent store in the subway station below the office. We’re careful never to leave work together.

  Mark barges in. “Fucking Me-me-me,” he says, referring to our new boss by the nickname he’s coined for her; he believes himself very clever.

  “Well, hello to you, too.” I peck him on the cheek.

  “She calls me into her office to talk about the redesign. She shows me tear sheets from Starstruck and Teeny Bopped and OMG. The pages were so garish, I practically had a seizure right there at her desk. I actually asked if she was joking. Turns out, that load of garbage is what she wants us to aspire to for the redesign.”

  “Well, she did show us that data about how OMG is the other magazine Hers subscribers are most likely to buy. Our readers are not exactly New Yorker fans.”

  “Our readers are idiots, just like Mimi! Idiots!” He shouts it, making a passing woman flinch. Mark sighs and snatches a package of Hostess Sno Balls. I happen to know this is the reason he designated the 99-cent store our covert meeting spot. He would never admit it, much less let anyone else catch him eating the hyper-processed snack; after all, he prides himself on his rarefied diet of artisanal farmer’s market fare. My eating habits are not nearly as virtuous, but just glancing at a Sno Ball gives me a sugar headache, that cloying pressure that permeates the brain.

  “Let’s go,” Mark says, tearing open the cake’s package. The cellophane squeak sends a shiver down my spine.

  The next morning, Mark is fired. He emerges from Mimi’s office fuming. I am technically his employee, so I hope it doesn’t look remarkable that he immediately calls me into his office.

  “That Me-me-me Walsh possesses a complete and utter lack of taste,” he says. “And our readers are total morons who couldn’t recognize fine design if it showed up and magically made over their living rooms.” Mark sits there like a lump as he rants and raves, and meanwhile he has an hour to pack up all his belongings. “I am so happy, I am goddamn thrilled to be free of this fucking place, to never have to return to this shithole ever again.”

  I start clearing out Mark’s desk drawers, zoning out the rest of his diatribe and saying not a word. I don’t respond to his freak-out, nor do I point out that Mimi seems to be noticing and appreciating my taste. I don’t mention that I am still employed at this so-called shithole, or that I have already filled three boxes to Mark’s zero. Never mind the fact that now we can finally be open about our relationship. I keep my mouth shut then, and also an hour after Mark is gone when Lynn, the new creative director, moves into his cleared-out office, and also that night when I arrive home and Mark shouts out hello.

  He’s in the living room, slapping thick swaths of paint onto a canvas. Flecks of red and green speckle the carpet. The guy who will pick a fight over a lack of a coaster under a glass apparently hasn’t laid down a drop cloth before deciding to pull a Jackson Pollock. An empty wine bottle rests atop the side table. Mark says something, but I can barely hear him over the music: Nirvana.

  “What?!” I yell.

  “I said, how was your day?” he shouts back.

  “Fine.” I wander into the living room. “Louisa’s still gone, Laura’s still a total ice queen, the coffee machine’s still acting up, and the guy I love got canned.” I leave out the they-hired-your-replacement part. “New day, same old crap
.”

  “Yeah?” Mark puts down his brush and pulls me down onto the couch.

  “We should crack a window,” I say, feeling suddenly lightheaded from the paint fumes, like my brain is filling with soapsuds. Mark’s fingers are working at the buttons on my shirt. “And how was your day?” I ask.

  “Shitty commute, boring meetings, bad coffee. But I scored a surprise afternoon off.” He kisses me, his breath ripe.

  “And then you got wasted, huh?”

  “And then I got wasted.” His hand inches up my skirt. “Now, no more talking, my sweet spice.”

  Mark’s drunken snores are like the honks of an 18-wheeler, bellowing over the wheezing air conditioner. I give up on sleep and instead watch the night shadows shift from one menacing shape into another on the wall. When I moved into Mark’s place three months ago, I painted these walls slate gray. I brought hardly anything with me besides my clothes, my cameras, and my TV, so the painting was my one special thing, the one marker that this space would become my home, too. It was a new beginning, a fresh coat over the pale yellow that Mark had shared with his ex. But now I wonder what I was thinking; the gray looks dreary and ominous, and I feel as if the walls might start closing in on me.

  Anxious thoughts fling about my head like pinballs, jolting me further and further from the possibility of sleep. I forfeit exactly half of my salary to Mark each month, which comes to just over a third of our rent, and now I wonder how much Mark has saved up, and how much severance he’ll receive; he is notoriously cagey about money. I hoped to stay at Hers for another few months, socking away enough to be able to quit and then refocus on my own art or try something else; but now I fear how essential my regular paycheck will be. I wonder if I’ll have to dip into my savings, which are meager. I wonder how long it will take Mark to find a new job, and how much drunken finger painting he’ll have to get out of his system before he even begins looking. I wonder how long before I’ll be able to share anything substantial about my workday without considering how it will affect my boyfriend’s feelings. I’m starting to tremble. For fear that I might emit a howling scream à la Munch, I grab my camera. I start snapping photos, first of the shadowy shapes on the wall and then of Mark sleeping, curled up on his side, mouth agape. Perhaps there’s some artistic potential to this situation.

  “I love this place because the waiters are all so darn fuckable and they humor you by pretending they’d actually consider taking you to bed.” Lynn, Mark’s replacement and my new boss, is treating me to lunch at Applebee’s on her third day. “Look at that one’s fresh buns,” she says, tittering and peeking out from behind her menu at a waiter carrying a bread basket.

  Lynn wears a gauzy floral dress that floats behind her when she walks, or, more accurately, glides. Gemstones speckle her boxy pumps, and delicate silver bangles climb up her forearms. Pendant earrings reach nearly to her shoulders, over which is draped a colorful knit scarf, and her shock of orange hair is slicked back from her head like a flame. Suffice it to say her look is not exactly standard Schmidt & Delancey.

  “You have got to try the breadsticks,” she says. “They’re both delectable and abundant—finish one basket and another arrives without delay. Like magic!” Up until an hour ago, I was certain that no Manhattan resident had ever stepped foot in the Applebee’s in Times Square. “This is my absolute favorite restaurant,” Lynn says, and I can’t tell if she’s screwing with me. “I’m from Ohio, you know.”

  I didn’t know. When Mimi introduced Lynn to the staff, she didn’t go through the usual résumé rundown, and the rumors of Lynn’s mysterious past are rampant: She taught graphic design to women prisoners at a correctional facility upstate; or she oversaw the catalogs for Bergdorf’s back in the nineties; or she was selling her abstract paintings at a roadside farmer’s stand in the Poconos when a headhunter from a major advertising agency discovered her; or she’s an ex-con herself. Google has proved surprisingly reticent on the matter. That Lynn is not of the magazine world is as clear as the glass of water she’s now tapping at with her spoon.

  “Speech! Speech!” she announces. “OK, I know I’m new, and that life is a little wacky back at the ranch, what with folks getting the ax left and right.” She beckons the waiter, keeping her glass held aloft. “We’ll have the spinach artichoke dip and the classic wings for the table. We’re just going to have to make like glue and ride out this storm and see where the chips land, OK?” The server looks confused, like this convoluted pep talk is part of our order, and Lynn shoos him away. “I’m not saying we’ll all make it through the battle with all our limbs intact, but we’ve got to dig out our little foxholes and try. And that means choosing the most dynamic photos to go on page and designing the most wow-a-riffic layouts we can possibly create, OK?” I nod, and we clink our water glasses. “Don’t worry, I’ll order us a round of Bahama Mamas on the double,” she adds.

  Back in the office and both of us a little drunk, Lynn shows me the new, brighter palette we’ll be working with for the redesign. I’m scrolling through the photos for the cheaters story—the shoot was yesterday—altering the color on the subjects’ clothing and eyes so the pictures pop in a kitschy retro way, when my phone rings. My home number flashes up; it’s a strange sight on my work phone.

  “Hi. I can’t find my magnet,” Mark says. “You know, ‘Earth’ minus ‘art’ is just ‘eh.’ Last I saw it was in my office.”

  I roll my eyes. I’ve always thought that magnet was moronic. “OK. And?”

  “Well, can you check if it’s still in my office?” My stomach flips. I haven’t yet told Mark that his office is under new management.

  “Maybe later, love. I’m in the middle of something right now.”

  “I know, you’re very busy with your long, important to-do list at your big, fancy job. Such a busy little bee.” I can’t tell if he’s purposely being mean or if he’s just drunk again. I hear the TV on in the background. Mark didn’t own a television before I moved in, and I’ve never seen him pick up the remote, much less turn it on; I’m curious what he’s found to watch. “Look, I’m sorry,” he says, switching to the sweet, quiet tone that always gets me. “That magnet is just very important to me and I’d love to get it back.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. Make sure you eat something today, OK?”

  “I will. Bye, love.”

  “Bye,” I say, then realize Jane is standing by my desk.

  “Psst, was that Mark?” she whispers. “How is he?”

  “Driving me crazy at the moment.” I keep my voice low. “He’s throwing a fit about losing a magnet with some stupid catchphrase on it.”

  “Oh, the one about art? I thought that was so clever.” I remember that Jane’s cubicle walls are plastered with inspirational quotes from important female journalists.

  “He’s transformed the living room into a painter’s studio,” I say. “I come home and he’s working on these big, crazy art projects, stuff he never did when he was toiling away here. So that could be good, I guess. Though he’s pretty much replaced all food intake with alcohol.”

  “I don’t blame him, considering. When Jacob and I were dating, all it took was his boss shooting him a dirty look and he’d turn to a bottle of Jack and slip into a funk for the whole night.”

  “It’s hard,” I say, thinking it’s a good thing Jane is no longer with that guy.

  “And how are you doing?” she asks.

  “Shitty, I guess. Or fine. I don’t know. It’s been kind of nice to not have to walk around hiding our relationship all day.”

  “I bet. Hey, can I ask you a personal question?”

  “Okay,” I say tentatively.

  “I’ve never been into older guys myself. So what’s the appeal—is it like a power thing, or a daddy thing?”

  “Thank you for your astute Psych 101 insights, Jane,” I say, feeling my stomach turn over despite myself. I think about how my father has always referred to my work as “your little pictures.” Mark examines each of m
y photographs like it’s hanging on the wall at the Met.

  “Sorry, that was over the line,” Jane says. “It’s just that I’m editing a story about couple dynamics and what makes people stay in love. Jacob was six months younger than me, and I’m starting to think one of our problems was that I was older and somehow made him feel emasculated.”

  “Believe me,” I say, “that can be an issue even if a guy’s fifteen years older and your boss.”

  “The plot of like half the romances out there is some brilliant boss seducing his innocent little underling. Or a genius professor falling for his eager young student. It works because he’s the one in charge, right?”

  “I’m guessing those stories are all written by men, or at least for men,” I say. “Notice how the brilliant boss never gets fired? If he did, the heroine would probably find him even more irresistible because he’s all vulnerable and stuff. Utterly the stuff of male fantasy.”

  “Hmm. Well, if it’s the power thing you’re into, you could always shack up with Lynn now.”

  “There’s a solution,” I say, laughing at the thought. For the first time it feels like a relief to have a coworker who knows about Mark and me.

  I knock on Lynn’s office door, and she waves me in. “I’m hoping we can talk about the images for the shopping pages,” I say, and then rattle on for five minutes, reestablishing the most basic points about optimal lighting and camera angle. Meanwhile, I’m glancing around furtively in search of Mark’s keepsake. No dice. On my way out I conjure up the courage to ask Lynn directly: “Oh, hey, did you happen to see a little green magnet in here, up on the shelf over there?”

  “Yessiree, let me see if I can find it.” Lynn spins in her chair. “Did your lover leave it?”