The Pink Ghetto

by Liz Ireland

  “Underwear model?”

  He shrugged. “As long as we’re dreaming…”

  I liked Troy too much not to confess to my sin in this matter. “The truth is, you might want to take a contract out on me.” As our orders were taken, I explained to him what had happened at the conference. I told him that I had directed Darlene to lean on Cassie for what she wanted. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, and all that. Then, of course, I had insinuated that if she didn’t like working with one editor, it was not unheard of for authors to request a switch. Even if it meant switching twice in one year…

  Troy drew back. “Oh my God! It has claws.”

  “I only did it because Cassie’s been getting on my nerves. I never thought Cassie would start hassling you.”

  “Stop. It’s not your fault the woman is mentally unbalanced. I think she expected she was going to be super-editor when she came here. The Tina Brown of Candlelight Books. When you were brought in at a higher job grade, she snapped.”

  I shot him a sidewise glance. “So I take it you told her…?”

  “N-O.”

  “And she’s still angry?”

  “Angry?” He rolled his eyes. “She looked like she was going to explode. We’re talking Krakatoa.”

  I made my way upstairs and to the coffee room, girding myself for friction. I got it sooner than I had expected. No sooner had I found my mug in the lineup on the counter than Cassie pounced on me. It was as if she had been lying in wait behind the mini fridge. Terrifying. I was glad Troy had given me a little warning.

  She stood quivering and rigid by the coffee pot, her cheeks stained with red. “What did you say to Darlene Paige at that conference?”

  I did my best to keep a straight face. “What did I say to her about what?”

  “You know what!”

  My, she was huffy. I took a leisurely sip of coffee. “I’m afraid you’ll have to refresh my memory.”

  “About Forgotten Grooms! Darlene has it in her head that I’m just not doing enough to promote her series.”

  I was trying so hard not to laugh that I thought I was going to choke. Or else spew coffee all over Cassie.

  “Don’t smirk at me. You know what you did.”

  “Honestly, Cassie, I just spoke to Darlene once at that conference. I don’t even remember it all that well.”

  “You took her out for drinks.” She propped a hand on her hip. “Could you possibly have said something to her about getting foil on her next book cover?”

  I pursed my lips as if trying to concentrate. “Did I?”

  “You know you can’t get foil on a category romance cover!”

  “Okay, so tell Darlene that.”

  “I did, believe me.” She harrumphed. “Undoing the damage that you did.”

  I smiled. “But of course you’ll probably have to talk her off another ledge when she finds out that an author who has a book out the same month as hers does have foil lettering.”

  Cassie gasped. “Who?”

  “Joanna Castle.”

  For a moment I thought she just might go into orbit. “What!?”

  I nodded. “Heartstopper has red foil.”

  “No way.”

  “I sent it to the author yesterday.”

  To see the complete shock on Cassie’s face at that moment was so delicious. I understood now why football players did victory dances in the end zone after scoring touchdowns.

  “Did Troy okay this?”

  I nodded.

  For a moment such a look of hatred pierced through me that I was afraid she really might kill me. One day I would just be found dead in my office. And Janice Wunch would probably put a late list over my corpse.

  “I don’t know how you managed that, Rebecca.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe I went reeling into Troy’s office in a drunken stupor one day and forced him at gunpoint to okay foil lettering. Maybe you should run and tell Mercedes that.”

  Her jaw opened and shut a few times before any words actually came out. “You can bet I will talk to Mercedes about this!” She was so in my face that I could smell Crest Wintergreen. She lifted her hand and poked her index finger at my chest. “You think you’re such hot shit, but just wait!”

  I flinched and took a step backward to get out of the way of that poking finger. Unfortunately, as I reached back, I bumped against one of the mugs on the counter. It went flying to the floor and shattered.

  We both looked down. In unison, we gasped. Blood drained out of my face.

  “Look what you did!” Cassie exclaimed.

  I had broken Mary Jo’s mug. Little bits of it were strewn all over the linoleum, but it was unmistakably the Cathy mug. One of the larger shards had Cathy’s exasperated little face on it.

  “What I did?” I shot back as I dropped to my feet to start picking up the evidence. The first thing I did was cut my hand. I sucked on my finger even as I tried to keep gathering up the bits. The shards of doom. What the hell was I going to do? Mary Jo would murder me.

  “If you hadn’t been in the throes of some lunatic fit…” I told Cassie.

  Cassie didn’t respond. Which led me to believe that something was wrong. Very, very wrong.

  I angled my head slightly, and saw a pair of skinny legs in navy blue hose and matching pumps planted next to me. Slowly, I gathered enough courage to look up into Mary Jo’s face. She was staring at the floor. Her face was chalky white.

  “My mug…”

  “Rebecca knocked it over,” Cassie said in a tone of voice I hadn’t heard since I was eight.

  Mary Jo turned to me. Her expression was the same one you saw in TV courtroom dramas when outraged parents look into the eyes of child murderers.

  “I’m sorry, Mary Jo—it must have been on the edge of the counter, and it…well, it fell and broke.” No, it was worse than that. “I knocked it over.” I was a mug murderer.

  Her knees seemed to collapse beneath her and she knelt down. Her eyes flashed at me. “Do you know that I had this mug for twenty years?”

  I swallowed, guessing that she wasn’t going to accept this with good grace. No “accidents happen” type reassurances would be forthcoming.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  She didn’t say anything. Just picked up the pieces and put them in a paper towel that Cassie handed her. Her mug shroud.

  “Maybe I could find you a match. On eBay, maybe,” I suggested. “You can find everything on eBay.”

  “It wouldn’t be the same.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Would you please just leave me alone?” she barked.

  I hopped to my feet. Fast. Cassie was grinning at me. “You’d better just go, Rebecca. I’ll stay with Mary Jo.”

  I slunk out of the coffee room, then realized I had forgotten my coffee. No way was I going back in there. I headed straight for the elevators. Forget economizing. I needed one of those triple-shot espressos.

  Unfortunately, this left me standing in front of Muriel in the deserted reception area. “Oh, hello, Rebecca. I have been meaning to speak to you.”

  I bit back a sigh. I liked Muriel. I shared everyone’s intense curiosity about what kind of life she led. (Andrea always theorized that Muriel was probably secretly into leather and whips and submissive men; I preferred to imagine her living a sort of Jane Austen throwback existence in the Bronx.) But she had a one-track mind now where her friend’s book was concerned. Every time I saw her I cringed. I kept wishing she had chosen some other editor to give The Rancher and the Lady to.

  Or that her friend had written a better book.

  “I hate to keep bothering you about this…”

  I did the only thing I could do. I apologized for the hundredth time even as I stabbed the elevator button in hope of rescue. “I’m so sorry, Muriel. I really did mean to read it last night. I even took it home with me!”

  That, at least, was true. Unfortunately, the book was no more appealing to me sitting on my bedside table than it had seemed on my bookshelf
at work.

  “Well have you read any of it?”

  “Of course—in fact, I’m almost finished.” That was a lie, but only technically. I had decided that if I didn’t finish it soon, I would have to send the manuscript back and just comment on the parts I had read so far (thirteen pages). So really, I was nearly through.

  Muriel tilted a guarded look at me. “And what do you think?”

  “Well…so far, at least…I think it shows some promise.” As a sleep-inducing narcotic.

  She smiled. “Oh, that’s good to hear! It would be so awkward to have to tell my friend her book was a no-hoper.”

  It sure would be, I thought, wondering how I was going to manage to do just that. “Naturally, I can’t make any definitive comments before I’ve finished…”

  Muriel nodded. “Of course!”

  The elevator doors opened and I fled inside.

  About an hour later, Andrea came breezing into my office. She was all duded up in her best dark blue suit—her serious interview outfit.

  She shut the door quietly, and when she spoke, it was in that whispery shriek reserved for really juicy gossip. “Rebecca! Have you heard? The word from on high—from Art Salvatore himself—is we need to cut expenses, and so guess what?”

  “We’re all fired.”

  “Even better! Mercedes decided that only associate editors and up will be going to the national convention in Dallas!” She watched for my reaction. I didn’t quite get it. I wasn’t relishing going to this convention; my last conference hadn’t worked out so well, and Dallas in July didn’t sound like my cup of tea, either. She lowered her voice and pointed meaningfully at my east wall. “Cassie was just told she couldn’t go.”

  I drew back. The conference was only a few weeks away. The plans had all been made. Cassie had to be crushed.

  And furious.

  “How can Mercedes do that?” I asked.

  “Well, actually, that’s the bad news. You and I are going to have to take over Cassie’s editor appointments and her spot on a panel.”

  Andrea didn’t seem upset about this at all, though. And it just wasn’t like Andrea to be so gleeful when it meant taking on more work. I regarded her suspiciously. “Why are you so happy?”

  She flopped down in my spare chair. “Because, if you really must know, I’m pretty sure I won’t be going to this convention, either.”

  My jaw dropped. “You got a job?”

  She put her finger up to her mouth. “Shh. Or maybe I’ll be going to Dallas as a representative of…Gazelle Books!”

  I frowned. Gazelle was another publisher specializing in romance. “I thought you wanted out of the pink ghetto.”

  “Well, yeah, but Gazelle’s offering me five thousand more than I’m making here.”

  “That’s great.”

  “God, I hope it happens!” She leaned back. “I really sparkled in that interview. I could tell the person really liked me. Joan Conyers—you know her?”

  I shook my head.

  “She worked here ages and ages ago. I’ve interviewed with her before, but we didn’t hit it off so well last time. This time she laughed at my jokes.”

  “You made jokes?”

  “Oh, yeah. You’ve got to stay loose in these interview situations. At least, that’s what always works for me.”

  I was about to point out that it would be hard to tell what worked for her, since she never got any of these jobs she interviewed for. But I didn’t want to come across as hostile. And as much as I would miss her, I really wanted her to get this job. Or any job that she wanted. She seemed to have so many hopes pinned on getting away from Candlelight.

  “I tell you, it’s so close I can taste it. And after that first paycheck, it’s good-bye crappy Queens studio. So long seven train! I’m going to get a really great one bedroom somewhere in Manhattan.”

  “When will you find out?” I asked.

  “Joan said that I seemed like I would be a good fit, but they still had some interviews lined up.” She shrugged. “They have to go through the motions, you know.”

  “I’ll keep my fingers crossed, even though it’s against my best interests.”

  “Your interests? How?”

  When I first started working there, I had found Andrea scary. Now she was hands-down my favorite person there. “If you leave, who will I talk to?”

  Her puzzled frown turned to a look of disgust. “Please! Don’t go getting all sentimental.”

  I laughed at her discomfort. She looked like my little brother used to when I would give him hugs. “If I cried, would you stay?”

  “Hon, I wouldn’t stay if you said you were going to throw yourself out the window.”

  “Maybe it’s just as well that my office has no windows,” I observed.

  But I was going to miss her.

  When I got home that night, there was a puddle of dog pee by the door. Naturally, the first thing I did was step in it and nearly skid across the apartment. Maxwell was skating around me happily. He apparently had relieved himself long enough ago that he had forgotten he was supposed to feel guilty.

  “Damn it!”

  “What’s wrong?” Fleishman called.

  I jumped.

  He was leaning in the archway. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  I tossed my tote bag full of work down on the futon. I just assumed since Max had peed in the house that there was nobody home.

  Fleishman threw a startled look at the doorway, then turned back to me, annoyed. “You’ve tracked it all over.” He grabbed a roll of paper towels from the kitchen and ran around trying to clean up.

  I sat down and watched. “I thought we had made an agreement to double our efforts to housetrain him.”

  Wendy had bought a book on cage training.

  “I know…but I had so much going on today…”

  “Where were you?”

  “Here.”

  I scanned the room. The apartment looked exactly the same as it had when I had left that morning, so it was a cinch he hadn’t been cleaning.

  “Would you mind if I borrowed your WordPerfect?”

  “I sold my computer, remember?”

  “But you still have the disks,” he reminded me. “I want to load them onto my new machine.”

  “What new machine?”

  “Oh! I forgot to tell you—Natasha was so impressed by how hard I’d been working that she ordered me a new laptop.”

  He had been working hard. At what, I had no idea. “That was awfully generous of her.”

  He shrugged. “Actually, it’s part of our payback plan.”

  I hadn’t heard of this.

  “I told her that I wanted six months to concentrate on becoming a writer, and she agreed she owed it to me since she and my dad hadn’t put me through college.”

  I harkened back. I had gone to college with Fleishman. He had not been on workstudy. He had not received grants, or taken out loans. He had never scrabbled to come up with tuition at all, as far as I knew.

  “They paid for it out of my trust fund,” he explained. “But that was my grandparents’ money.”

  I nodded. It was so like Fleishman that he could explain all of this without a hint of irony. “I see. They do owe you. And maybe I should hit up my parents for a European vacation, since they saved so much by sending me to public schools all those years.”

  He sent me a long-suffering look. “That’s sort of apples and oranges, Rebecca. Anyway, Natasha agreed that since a good presentation could make all the difference in my line of work, I need to have a reliable computer and a new printer.”

  He escorted me to his bedroom nook and introduced me to his new computer. “It’s just a Dell, but I like it.”

  My computer had been a Dell, only his was the streamlined, light-as-a-feather model. I felt a spike of envy. Not that I had any use for a computer now. I knew I wasn’t going to write anything. I just wished I had a benefactress.

  “They delivered it this morning. I set it up
and registered it and all that jazz. And I was looking for your WordPerfect disks in your room—hope you don’t mind—when I found that manuscript.”

  “What manuscript?” I asked.

  “The Rancher and the Lady! Or, as I like to think of it, The Writer and the Bowel Movement.”

  I flinched. “It’s not that bad. There’s something there.” Just not something very interesting.

  He hooted. “It’s terrible! What are you doing bringing drivel like that home?”

  “It was written by a friend of an employee.”

  He rolled his eyes. “I knew there had to be some strings being pulled somewhere. You wouldn’t have made it past the first paragraph, otherwise.”

  “What do you think is wrong with it?”

  “What isn’t? First off, whoever the author is writes like she was teleported from the eighteenth century. Either that or she learned English by reading Victorian literature. Or else she’s just a kook.”

  If Muriel’s friend was anything like she was herself this was entirely possible.

  “To me it doesn’t seem very original,” I said. “I was going to read it tonight and write a rejection tomorrow.”

  “Save yourself the headache. Write the rejection tonight and get a good night’s sleep, your head clear of all thoughts of The Rancher and the Lady.”

  That was an enticing idea.

  “But first, come have dinner with me,” he said.

  I sighed. “I shouldn’t. There’s pasta in the kitchen.”

  “There’s always pasta in the kitchen,” he said. “Wouldn’t you rather go to Senor Enchilada’s?”

  He had said the magic words. Senor Enchilada’s was a place on Flatbush Avenue we’d found once in our wanderings. It was just a really good taqueria, actually, but we liked the name and the fact that it was decorated with fading piñatas and marionettes hanging from the ceiling. Going to Senor Enchilada’s was an occasion.

  “Maybe we should wait for Wendy.” I didn’t want her to feel any more left out than she already did.

  “Nah—she might not be home for hours,” Fleishman said. “Besides, I sort of wanted to be just with you.”

  If you think those words didn’t strike straight through my heart, maybe it’s because you didn’t see the slight yet oh-so-sexy waggle of his brows. Or maybe you just haven’t been paying attention.