The Pink Ghetto

by Liz Ireland

  She ended her introductory monologue with a smile that was one hundred percent lips.

  I felt like I should applaud. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome, Rebecca.”

  Andrea tugged impatiently on my sleeve. During Muriel’s monologue, she had removed her raincoat and shaken herself out a little more, spilling droplets on Muriel’s carefully tended simulated wood grain work surface.

  “Let’s show you to your cave so you can dump your junk and start to dry off,” she said, ignoring Muriel’s pursed lip parting glare. When we were out of earshot, she said, “She’s always like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Prim,” Andrea grumbled. “I don’t know how she keeps it up. It makes me wonder if she’s not moonlighting as a lap dancer.”

  We made our way through a labyrinth of hallways that I vaguely remembered from my last visit. As we were turning a corner, Andrea looked around furtively and asked, “When you were at Random House, did you talk to Margaret Wyberry?”

  “I didn’t interview there,” I reminded her.

  “Oh, that’s right.” She let out a puff of breath. “Oh well. I’ve heard there isn’t a lot of opportunity for advancement there anyway.”

  “Is there here?” I asked.

  She arched her brows. “Why? Are you bored already?”

  “Well, no…I…” I had just been making small talk.

  “Here!” She stopped at a small windowless office and flipped on the lights. There was a seascape watercolor gracing one wall and a large empty peg board over the desk. Andrea gestured grandly, like the hostesses on The Price is Right. “Home sweet home. I stole your chair and gave you my shitty one. Hope you don’t mind.”

  I looked at the desk chair, which looked like standard issue office rolling thing. “I’m grateful not to be sitting on a plastic crate.”

  “That’s only the ed assists,” Andrea joked.

  I took off my coat and tossed it on the spare chair in the corner. As I did so, I noticed a bookshelf with piles and piles of manuscripts on it. “What’s that?”

  “Your inheritance.” Andrea went over to inspect it. “Looks like slush, mostly, but there are a few agented proposals in here…” She whistled. “This one’s cover letter is dated 2003! Damn! That Julie had more nerve than I gave her credit for.”

  “What happened to Julie?”

  “It was very sad. One day she decided to end it all right there at her desk.”

  I swerved in alarm, whereupon Andrea blasted out a laugh. “Kidding! She got knocked up.” She sighed. “That’s one way off the treadmill.”

  “Yeah, but then you have a baby to deal with.”

  Andrea snorted. “Here you have twenty.”

  I looked at her, puzzled.

  “Otherwise known as authors.” She gave my suit a once-over and whistled. “Snappy!”

  “Thanks—it’s a hand-me-down.”

  “What, are there tycoons in your family?”

  “In my roommate’s family, actually.”

  “Nice!” She frowned. “But can you breathe?”

  I sucked in. I had never gotten around to those sit-ups.

  Or starving.

  When we ventured out again, our first stop was Rita’s office, which was dark. “She must still be downstairs,” Andrea said.

  In the cubicle outside Rita’s office, there was a commotion, and we turned as one. Before, I hadn’t noticed anyone sitting there. “Lindsay?” Andrea asked, her tone doubtful.

  A figured hunched on her hands and knees on the floor jerked up, banging her head on her desk. “Shit!” she cried. Then she saw me. “Oh—sorry.” She jumped to her feet and darted out her hand for me to shake, then thought better of it since it was holding a paper towel that was dripping some sort of fluid all over the carpet.

  And that wasn’t the only odd thing about her. She was wearing a nubbly tweed jacket over what appeared to be an old taffeta formal. I usually wasn’t too judgmental about outfits. I had been around theater people, so I was used to creative dressing. But this girl looked bizarre. Plus, I have this thing about taffeta. I don’t like it. (It’s a long story.)

  “I’m having the worst morning.” Lindsay gestured to her desk, where an overturned Starbucks cup told the whole tale. “I spilled my latte all over this manuscript. Rita’s going to kill me!”

  Andrea waved off all her worries. “It’s no big deal. Stuff like that happens.”

  “But it’s a Rosemary Cain proposal—and she’s rejecting it!”

  Andrea went still. “Oh.”

  I knew the name Rosemary Cain, but not well enough to be able to name any of her books by title. But I got the gist of what was going on. Big author, stupid boo-boo. “It’s just a few pages,” I said. “Why don’t you retype them? The author probably won’t even notice.”

  It seemed a pretty obvious suggestion, but Lindsay latched onto it as if it were a pronouncement coming straight down from heaven. “That’s right! I could retype them. She’ll never know! Rita won’t even have to know.”

  She thanked me profusely, and I felt a little embarrassed. It hadn’t taken a genius to figure out what to do. Lindsay was probably a few seconds away from figuring it out herself.

  Or maybe not. She obviously hadn’t figured out not to wear prom dresses to work.

  “She’s a mess,” Andrea whispered to me as we walked away. “Something like that happens every day. I call it the crisis cubicle. She and Rita together are a train wreck.”

  At the next office we passed, a woman about my age with dishwater blond hair was sitting at her desk with an untouched bagel next to her.

  “Hi, Cassie,” Andrea said. “This is Rebecca. You know, the new inmate.”

  Cassie’s blue eyes fixed on me. “Cool!” Her office was a duplicate of mine, with the exception of romance covers covering her cork board, and a single framed picture on the desk. It was a picture of a younger Cassie in a blue gown and mortarboard. Her hair was longer, but it was also frizzier; she had the Jan Brady effect going big time.

  Cassie stared unblinkingly at me. “Mercedes made you sound like Wonder Girl. She couldn’t stop singing your praises.”

  “Really?” I asked, surprised.

  “She said you worked for Sylvie Arnaud.”

  “Oh, right.” I nodded.

  Andrea tugged on my arm. “Okay, well I guess we should—”

  “You must have really wowed Mercedes at your interview,” Cassie broke in. “I thought they were just looking for another assistant editor, not an associate.”

  “I had thought so, too, initially…”

  Her lips tensed into a toothless smile. “I’m an assistant editor. This is my third year here. I was Rita’s editorial assistant one of those years.”

  “That’s…” I really couldn’t figure out what I was expected to say. “…good.”

  “You think so?” She shrugged. “I guess I just have high standards.”

  Andrea laughed and told me, “We’ll probably all be working for Cassie next year.”

  Cassie smiled, but I had a feeling she actually felt that we all really should have been working for her already.

  The rest of the tour was a blur. We ventured out into other pods, but after twenty minutes of meeting people, my brain started to go numb. Andrea introduced me to coworkers I knew I wouldn’t remember if I bumped into them five minutes later.

  But I did learn the important things—where the bathrooms were, and the mail and supply room. The mailroom was headed by a guy with a long blond ponytail named James. According to Andrea he had been a bike messenger until he had been hit by a bus. He still had the restless energy that I had noticed in bike messengers, that same way of catching your eye just long enough to let you know that he would be glad to run right over you.

  The only other guy I detected in the office was the head of the art department, named Troy Raymond. His office was cavernous and wallpapered with huge prints of cover art—which was to say, men with no shirts. Th
ere were two couches in his office (“For meetings,” he explained. “I like to be comfy.”) and a huge desk, and to the side, a drafting table.

  “Troy’s our link between the production folk downstairs and editorial,” Andrea explained.

  “Downstairs?”

  He laughed. “The mole people. Art, copyediting, production. The unglamorous folk.”

  “Right, like we’re glamorous,” Andrea said.

  Troy gave my outfit a pointed once-over. “I wonder. That’s an awfully nice Chanel there. Who’d you have to sleep with to afford that?”

  I began to sputter about it being a hand-me-down, and Troy burst out laughing. “I was just zooming you.”

  As Andrea and I left Troy’s office, she laughed. “Those ‘meetings’ he was talking about are his interviews with cover models. He’s the only one here who has any fun.”

  I shook my head. “Not many men work at Candlelight, do they?”

  “There are more in production, but editorial’s almost exclusively women right now. The president of the company is a man, of course. Art Salvatore.”

  “I didn’t meet him.”

  “And you probably won’t until the Christmas party. His office is over there”—she pointed to a long, dark corridor—“but he rarely walks among us.”

  “Oh, I see. Head honcho.”

  “More than that.” She lowered her voice. “It’s said that the Salvatore family used to be in the laundry business, if you know what I mean.”

  My mouth popped open stupidly, and my voice came out in a squeak. “The mob is running Candlelight Books?” Being from Ohio, I was still fascinated when I bumped into anything vaguely Godfatherlike, even after two years of living in Brooklyn. I never expected organized crime in romance publishing, though.

  “It’s all just a rumor, I think, but we like to keep it going. It’s the only thing lending this place even a little bit of mystique.”

  Apparently the tour was over, but Andrea seemed reluctant to go back to her desk. “Okay—pop quiz time,” she said. “Show me the way to the coffee room.”

  That was one quiz I could ace. Asking me to put names to faces of ten percent of the people I’d just met would have stumped me, but caffeine was important. I couldn’t have made it to the coffee room any faster if I had been laser guided.

  “I’m impressed,” Andrea said.

  “Impressed by what?” A woman dipping her Celestial Seasonings tea bag into a mug of hot water turned to us. I had met her at her desk already. Her name was Madeline, and she looked like she had stepped off the pages of a magazine cover. She towered over Andrea and me. And she wasn’t just pretty, she was stunning.

  “Rebecca found the kitchen on her first try,” Andrea said.

  Madeline smiled big, as if I really had achieved great things already. “That’s terrific.”

  When she sashayed out with her cup of herbal tea, Andrea leaned toward me. “She’s an associate editor, and very well connected. From the mailroom to the boardroom, she’s got this place covered. Both James and Art have the hots for her.”

  “What about Troy?” I asked.

  “He’s got the hots for both Art and James.”

  “Well! Who have we here?” a new voice asked.

  “Hey, Mary Jo. This is Rebecca.”

  Mary Jo smiled but didn’t stop what she was doing. She wore chic rectangular wire frame glasses and was anorexically thin. Arms stuck out through the holes in her sleeveless shirt like chicken wings that had been picked clean. She poured coffee into a mug that had a Cathy cartoon on it. Cathy was sitting behind a desk; the caption read, “I hate Mondays!” Into that cup Mary Jo emptied two packets of sweetener and about a quarter cup of non dairy creamer. My mouth started to pucker just looking at that concoction.

  “Mercedes told me a lot about you,” she said.

  She never stopped smiling, or stirring her creamer, but with one sharp flick of her eyes, I felt she was telling me something. And that something was that she had my number.

  I muttered something about hoping it wasn’t all bad.

  She dropped her stir stick in the garbage and picked up her mug. “No, it was mostly good.”

  Mostly?

  “Of course, too much praise begins to sound suspicious, doesn’t it?” She laughed tightly. “Oh, well, you two go back to your tour. Don’t let it last all day, though.”

  The moment she was out of earshot, Andrea mimicked, “Don’t let it last all day!” in a snippy little whisper.

  “She didn’t seem too friendly…” I ventured.

  Andrea rolled her eyes. “Ignore her when at all possible. She’s a tyrant.”

  I nodded.

  “Don’t get on her bad side, though,” Andrea advised. “You get on her bad side, and…” She stopped and made a slitting motion across her throat.

  “For some reason, I feel like I already am on her bad side.” Like my house just fell on her sister, basically.

  “That’s just her way. You know the type—she’s a…” She frowned. “Well, a bitch. And she’s second in command under Mercedes, so she tends to get a little nervous if Mercedes takes too much of a shine to anyone. As if any of us would want her stupid job!”

  “Yeah, that’s crazy.”

  “That’s Mary Jo. You know that coffee cup with Cathy on it? She’s had it ever since she was an editorial assistant. Almost twenty years! The first year she started work, her Secret Santa gave it to her. She’s got a real thing about it.”

  “Maybe there’s some deep psychological reason, or…”

  “Yeah, and that reason is she’s a controlling, obsessive loon.” She sighed. “Okay, back to work.”

  As we trudged back to our offices, I felt a knot of dread in my tummy, like I was being dropped off at kindergarten or something. I could handle meeting people. That was a snap.

  But work. That was the tricky part.

  Chapter 4

  By lunch, I was finally beginning to relax, if only because it finally dawned on me that chances were good that I wouldn’t be fired on my first day.

  I had worried that once Andrea dropped me back by my office, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself, besides stare at those ominous manuscript piles on the bookshelves. But if there was anything I really knew how to do, it was fritter away time. First I had to check out my computer. Solitaire had not been removed, and I even had pinball! This reminded me of the e-mail question, so I set up my account at rabbot@candlelight.net. Then of course I had to e-mail all my family and friends and brag about my new corporate identity.

  My sister Ellen replied immediately. She had just finished law school the year before and was working in a law firm back in Cleveland.

  I’m psyched about your new job. Congrats! I don’t read romances, natch, but what a hoot to be working there. Maybe you can send me a few beach books next summer. (I guess I do read a few of those…just don’t tell anyone here at the office!) XOX, E

  Once I started looking at it, rabbot seemed like a really bizarre handle. Like rabbit misspelled, or a combination of rabbit and robot. I started imagining bad sci-fi movie titles. Attack of the Killer Rabbots!

  So after much contemplation and doodling on my notepad, I changed my address to the more respectable rebecca.abbot@ candlelight.net. And then, of course, I had to send out my change of address.

  Ellen wrote back in a flash.

  Stop procrastinating and get to work!

  XOX, E

  Oh, and one of my coworkers wants to know if you publish something called Regencies? I think they’re like fake Jane Austen books…which actually sounds kind of good, now that I think about it. Do you really get freebies?

  I made a note to send Ellen books.

  All in all, setting up my e-mail killed a good hour and a half. A few games of pinball later, Andrea was knocking on my door. I reduced the screen and swiveled toward her.

  “How’s it going?”

  “Great!” I said.

  “Lunch?”

  I was up
like a shot. “Sure.”

  Rita was right behind her. “My treat.”

  “Which means she’s expensing it,” Andrea translated.

  We stopped by Cassie’s office on our way out. “Want to go to lunch with us?” Rita asked her.

  A plastic serving container of breadsticks and celery sat on the desk next to the manuscript she was reading, along with a half-eaten apple. “I’d love to, but I promised myself I would read this book today.” She eyed me staring at her meal. Like any veteran of Weight Watchers (ages twelve and fifteen), I was no stranger to breadsticks. I sometimes wondered if there were any other people besides WW veterans who actually ate those things.

  I smiled at her, sensing a kindred spirit.

  She did not smile back. “I like to stay up on things.”

  “Well, carry on,” Rita said. “We’ll be back in forty-five minutes.”

  Two hours later, we ambled back to the office, full of Chinese food. I had expected to get the lowdown about what they expected from me in my job. Instead, I got gossip. Gossip about everyone. There were no affairs reported, no embezzling or money scandals, no shocking Candlelight secrets revealed, although you wouldn’t have guessed it from the urgent tone in Rita and Andrea’s voices.

  “Did you know Ann takes her Maltese to doggy daycare every day?”

  “It must cost her a fortune.”

  “What else does she have to spend it on? The woman has no life. It’s pathetic.”

  “Sad. She should try online dating.”

  “First she should try to do something about that acne scarring.”