The Pink Ghetto

by Liz Ireland

  She was hollering. There was no other way to describe it.

  “Child molester book?” I asked, alarmed.

  “Pursuing Paula! On account of the cover!”

  I crooked the phone between my left ear and shoulder as I scrambled to find this cover. After frantically pawing through the file cabinet and then my overflowing in-box for a minute, I had the cover of Pursuing Paula in my hand. It was from the Hearthsong line. On the front was a man who looked vaguely like Ben Affleck might have if he had been going gray at the temples. He was standing behind a teenage girl and had his hands clamped on her shoulders. The girl was looking off nervously to the side.

  My God, she was right. The pose made the man look like a child molester.

  “Hm…” I tried to approach this diplomatically. “Is there a reason the art department put a little girl on the cover?”

  “That’s not a girl, it’s my heroine! She’s a librarian, and she’s twenty-seven years old! How the art department fouled this up so completely is beyond me!”

  Me either. Failing to see any other option, I started babbling promises to right this grievous wrong…or at least see what I could do.

  Lesson Three: Never make promises.

  When I hung up the phone, I marched across the hall to confer with Rita.

  “She’s in the outer office,” Lindsay told me before I could even knock.

  I stopped. “Where?”

  “Next to the ashtray in front of the building.”

  Damn. I turned on my heel debating whether I should wait or go outside to track Rita down, but I stopped as I passed Andrea’s office. Maybe she could give me some tips on how to handle this. I rapped on the door.

  For a moment there was no response but the sound of paper rustling and a steel file cabinet door slamming. “Come in!”

  I poked my head in, and Andrea, who was sitting rigidly behind her desk, blew out a breath and reached for her file cabinet. “For God’s sake, it’s just you.” She pulled out a newspaper and shook it open to the want ads. “The classifieds this week are for crap. Did you notice?”

  I closed her door and edged toward her desk. Andrea made me nervous. “I just got this job,” I reminded her.

  “Oh right.” She slapped the paper down. “So what can I do you for?”

  “I just talked to an author. She was sort of upset about this cover…” I pushed the evidence across the desk.

  Who knows? Maybe it wasn’t as bad as I thought. Maybe Luanne had just been overreacting.

  Andrea recoiled. “Eww! What is this book about, some coach that seduces girls on the junior high basketball team?”

  I shook my head. “There’s no girl in the book. The heroine’s supposed to be a twenty-seven-year-old librarian.”

  “Wow!” she exclaimed, with something between revulsion and awe. “That really is a shitty cover.”

  “So what do I do about it?”

  She blinked at me. “Do?”

  “To fix it.”

  She laughed. “There’s no fixing it. The cover’s done. See? The title’s on it—probably tens of thousands have already been printed. That’s all she wrote, Myrtle.”

  “B-but if I talked to Rita?”

  Andrea nearly doubled over. “What’s she going to do? Blow magic smoke rings on it?”

  My ever shaky confidence began to tremble like a wet hamster. “I thought maybe since she was senior ed…”

  Losing interest in my dilemma, Andrea shook open her paper again. “No one in editorial has control over the art department.”

  “But how could Troy have let this go through? It’s so obviously bad.”

  “He probably took one look at the hunky guy with the sideburns and didn’t see anything else. I’m mean—look at that man. He’s definitely a good looking child molester. He looks sort of like Ben Affleck.”

  “But—”

  “Forget it, Rebecca. Tell the author better luck next time.”

  I slid down in my chair. “Okay, here’s the deal. I told the author I’d do something.”

  Andrea’s eyes went from squinting in concentration on an ad to popping open in shock at my stupidity. “Oh God! What possessed you?”

  “She was so upset…Julie left and didn’t tell her.”

  She grunted. “That Julie! Her water broke two weeks early and she tore out of here like a shot, lucky cow.”

  I frowned. “Why didn’t she take maternity leave?”

  “That’s the most disgusting part. She has this husband who works on Wall Street and begged her to be a stay at home mom. So she knew all along that she wasn’t coming back…and she even told Mercedes. The dope!” She shook her head mournfully. “She really didn’t know how to play the system.”

  “I don’t feel like I do, either.”

  Andrea waved her hand. “Give yourself a month or so in the pink ghetto. You’ll know all the angles in no time.”

  “The pink ghetto? What’s that?”

  “You’re in it, sugar plum. Romance publishing. It’s a world unto itself, always clamoring for respect and getting none. The authors get no respect, and neither do the editors. If you don’t watch out, it’ll suck you in and never spit you out. You’ll be stuck in the hood, just like me.”

  “You’re doing okay,” I told her. “I bet when the next job does come along, you’ll miss this place.”

  Withering doesn’t really describe the look she shot me. “Is your name Rebecca Abbot or Rebecca of Sunnybrook Fucking Farm?”

  I stood up and reached for Pursuing Paula. “My name’s going to be mud if I don’t get this cover situation figured out.”

  In the hallway I nearly had a head-on collision with Rita. We sidestepped just in time and I began to speak, but she gestured with her coffee cup that she didn’t have time. “Senior ed meeting,” she explained, rushing past. “I’m late.”

  I skip-stepped after her down the hall, unloading my burden. “What can I do?”

  “Just make up something. Tell Luanne that we made the heroine youthful because we’re trying to reach a younger demographic.”

  “Um…I don’t know if that will calm her down. She’s pretty upset. Julie didn’t call her to tell her that she was leaving.” I skidded to a stop as a horrible thought occurred to me. “Do you know if Julie called any of her authors to tell them she was leaving?”

  “Of course she did. I think. Luanne probably just fell through the cracks.” Rita stopped outside the conference room door and her brows knitted. “Still, you’d better call everybody.”

  Oh God.

  “You needed to do that anyway,” she said. “I guess I should have told you that, huh?”

  I schlumped back to my office, feeling defeated. How was I going to call that poor woman back and tell her that a book that probably took her months and months of work to write was going to be sent out with that child molester cover? She would be devastated. She would hate me.

  She would know I was a fraud.

  When I turned the corner into my office, I found Cassie standing in front of my bookcase, looking through my manuscript pile.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “I’m taking some of your authors.”

  “What?”

  “Just four,” she said, then added, “so far.”

  “Rita didn’t say anything to me about giving you my authors.”

  At the mention of Rita, she looked openly contemptuous. “Of course not. Rita’s been out all morning. And I have no idea where you’ve been, but my phone’s been ringing off the hook.”

  I craned my head forward. “Why? Because of Luanne?”

  She laughed. “No, because it’s all over the romance web rings that Julie bailed and left a novice in charge of her author list. Somebody who doesn’t even know what tip sheets are.”

  “I just thought…” Wait. My blood ran cold. “How would anyone know that?”

  She froze, realizing she had made a slip, and shook her head. “Well, what was I supposed to say to all these
worried authors who called me? Tough luck, you’ll have to work with this new chick, this total novice, or lump it? Authors aren’t idiots, Rebecca. They have careers at stake here.”

  “They do, or you do?”

  She smirked as she grabbed a fat manuscript from my shelf. The rotten thief.

  “I’m not a novice,” I lied. Well, I had a day under my belt now.

  “Right. Like working on some woman’s memoirs is the equivalent of four years of hard work. Not that I’m complaining, mind you. Life isn’t fair. I’ve always known that.”

  I squinted at her. “It’s certainly not fair of you to take my authors away before I’ve had a chance even to talk to them.”

  Fair was not the way of Cassie Saunders, however. And with Rita in a meeting, there was little I could do for the moment but watch as Cassie made off with her loot.

  When she was gone, I sank into my chair, burning with frustration. By all rights I probably should have marched right into her office and shoved one of those pilfered manuscripts down her throat. Instead, I sat there in a funk, wondering if I really deserved to be bested by her. And deciding that I probably did. I was the interloper here, after all.

  It was only a matter of time before everybody found that out.

  The phone rang, and—still not having learned Lesson Number One—I automatically reached for it.

  “Am I speaking to the girl genius?”

  If the male voice had asked me if my refrigerator was running, I couldn’t have been any more certain this was a prank. “This is Rebecca Abbot,” I said.

  “Right, Rebecca Abbot. Editor extraordinaire, or so I’ve heard.”

  An uncomfortable chuckle burbled out of me.

  “I know—the suspense is killing you. My name is Dan Weatherby.” The name sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it. “Luanne Seligson’s agent.”

  “Oh! Right!” I suddenly had the urge to put my head down on the table and cry. I was so not ready for this conversation. “I guess you heard I spoke to Luanne.”

  “Yes, I’m very sorry. Julie called me before she left, but then it slipped my mind to call Luanne. My bad.”

  A hint of sunshine peeked out through the clouds. Except there was still the matter of the child molester. “About that cover…”

  He laughed. “Don’t worry, I think between us we’ve talked Lu off the ledge.”

  We had?

  We?

  That word had such a comradely ring to it. I perked up. Suddenly I noticed what a rumbly, sympathetic sounding voice Dan Weatherby had. “I’ve been raising heck around here about it.”

  I know, I know. But I had to tell the man something. “Raising heck” sure as hell sounded better than “whining to my coworkers.”

  “I told Luanne you would,” Dan said.

  How did he know? Or rather, how had he arrived at that very shaky and utterly wrong conclusion? He didn’t know the first thing about me.

  “I explained to Luanne that there wasn’t a lot that could probably be done at this point.”

  “You did?”

  I wondered suddenly what Dan Weatherby looked like. He sounded a little like Russell Crowe, when he wasn’t speaking in the Aussie accent. I leaned back in my chair and twirled a Paper-mate pen through my fingers. I really liked Russell Crowe, apart from the jackass movie star behavioral problems.

  “I also told her that if you are half of what Mercedes built you up to be over the phone fifteen minutes ago, she’s in great hands.”

  Mercedes, a woman who clung ferociously to her misperceptions. God bless her.

  I sputtered modestly, “I don’t know about that…”

  He laughed. “I told Luanne that it’s always good to have a new editor anyway. That you’ll probably work extra hard on her behalf.”

  I would, I swore I would.

  At this point, it didn’t even matter whether Dan Weatherby looked like Russell Crowe or just a plain ol’ dead crow. He could have had a face like roadkill for all I cared. I was pretty sure I was in love with him. Such was the power of a seductive phone voice.

  We exchanged a few more moments of chitchat before he rang off, with me still assuring him that I was going to see what could still be done about Pursuing Paula, and him assuring me that it would all work out, because I was such a sharp young whippersnapper of an editor. By the time he rang off, I was thoroughly schmoozed.

  I leaned back in my chair, savoring the image of myself that Dan Weatherby had imprinted in my head. I was one of those go-to types. A problem solver. The sharpest knife in the drawer, and glamorous to boot.

  The seconds ticked by. The image began to fade.

  I was me again.

  I looked at the clock at the bottom of my computer screen and gasped. It was almost noon! And all I had done all morning was deal with this one cover controversy.

  And I still had all those authors to call.

  I looked at the list, crossed off the four Cassie had stolen, and considered nipping out to a Chinese restaurant I’d spotted around the corner. A large order of lemon chicken and some potstickers would really bolster my courage.

  It would also make the already tight button on my skirt pop.

  My stomach rumbled. The sad little sack lunch I’d brought from home mocked me. Could I really face twenty-one—no, seventeen—authors on nothing but tuna salad and an apple? Authors who had been told already that I was a hapless newbie idiot, and maybe worse?

  Lemon chicken, lemon chicken, lemon chicken.

  Sighing, I picked up the phone and dialed. Let the awkwardness begin.

  By the time five-thirty rolled around, I felt like something that should be carted off and rendered for pet food. As if being on the phone with authors for three straight hours wasn’t enough, at four o’clock Janice Wunch appeared at my door with an updated late list. Somehow my portion of it had grown by another half page in the past day. Something—perhaps the impatient tapping of Janice’s Naturalizers—told me I wasn’t managing my time wisely.

  At the end of the day, I filled up an old Candlelight totebag with homework and staggered to the elevator.

  “Good night, Rebecca,” Muriel said. The phones were silent, but in her headset she appeared poised for the slightest hint of a ring. The model of efficiency.

  “ ’Night.”

  “Is it your intention to burn the midnight oil tonight?”

  I grunted.

  There was an awkward stretch while Muriel stared at me with her amazing blinkless eyes as I fixed my own drooping gaze at the elevator doors. Finally, they slid open and I escaped inside.

  When I got on the elevator, there was someone already on I thought I recognized. At first I thought he must be a movie star or something, then I realized he was the suave elevator guy from the day of my first interview. The one who told me not to be nervous, then informed me I had lipstick on my teeth. He must have thought I was a complete bozo.

  “Well, hello!” he said, recognizing me.

  He was looking as dapper as he had the last time we had met, while I was sure I had that washed out after-five thing going on. My hair, not brushed since eight AM, hung in hanks around my ears, my makeup had long since faded under the fluorescent lighting, and my skirt had very pronounced sit wrinkles. I was not up to Suave Guy’s standard. Suave Guy didn’t even have a five o’clock shadow.

  “So you got the job,” he said. “Congratulations.”

  I felt like weeping on his shoulder. “Thanks. Never has the phrase ‘be careful what you wish for’ seemed more apt.”

  “That’s just that new job feeling. It’ll pass when you get that first paycheck.”

  Paycheck! I had forgotten all about that concept, even though it was my entire reason for being here. Now the prospect appeared to me like the light at the end of the tunnel. Or a carrot before the donkey. I was going to be paid for all this eventually. The very idea made my spine straighten.

  At the ground floor, Suave Guy held the door and waited for me to exit first. (As a suave
guy should.) “Good night,” he said as I stepped out.

  “Good night.” I walked ahead of him out of the building and headed for the subway, feeling a little more hopeful than I had when I’d stepped onto the elevator. I needed a Suave Guy with me twenty-four hours a day. A pocket size Suave Guy.

  On second thought, full size was awfully nice.

  The train took forever to arrive and then managed to get stalled in a tunnel, so when I finally climbed the stairs to the apartment, it was almost seven o’clock. The door flew open and Maxwell came bounding out like a carnival performer just shot from the cannon. He quivered with energy and let out a series of yips. Finally, seeing that not even his boundless enthusiasm would hurry me along, he slapped his rump down at the top of the stairs and watched with an eagerly thumping tail as I climbed the last flight. Looking at those adorable brown eyes and those goofy folded ears, I had to smile and make a few cooing sounds.

  Fleishman leaned against the doorjamb. “How’d it go?”

  That was a hard question to answer, mainly because I wasn’t sure if there were enough synonyms for the word bad to encompass everything I had to explain. I crossed the threshold with the puppy in my arms and deposited him on the floor. Our apartment smelled doggy now. “Where’s Wendy?”

  “Where else? Stuck in the NYU gulag.”

  I collapsed onto the futon—right on top of Max. How had he jumped up so fast? He hadn’t been wasting his day, obviously. I let him crawl up on my chest and lick the bottom of my chin. I was too tired to be grossed out.

  “Are you okay?”

  I slit one eye open. Fleishman was bent over me, looking as one might when trying to discern whether that homeless person you just passed was actually dead or alive.

  “Fine.”

  “Good. How about some dinner?”

  I shook my head.

  “Come on, Rebecca. You have to eat.”

  “No I don’t. Eating will only prolong it.”

  “Prolong what?”

  “My life.”

  I could hear his foot tapping. My life was full of foot tappers today. “You aren’t on some kind of funky diet, are you?”

  “I’m on the exhaustion diet,” I said.

  “The best thing for that is to go for a walk.”