The Pink Ghetto

by Liz Ireland

  “I’ll try,” I said, flashing a big grin. “And you keep the home fires burning, Cassie.”

  She sent me a cool, secretive smile that made it appear that she might just do that. In fact, she looked like she would enjoy burning down the entire building. “I will, though of course I’d love to be in Dallas. Really love it.”

  I puzzled over this on my way to the elevator. It wasn’t like Cassie to openly express envy. Openly anything wasn’t her style.

  But I let it go. I had other worries. I had to leave early the next morning. A car was picking me up at five-thirty to take me to the airport. Five-thirty AM. I hadn’t been up and about at five-thirty AM since my sophomore year of college; of course there was a big diff between staying up till that hour and getting up at that hour. Hauling oneself out of bed any time before seven is a daunting task.

  So it was doubly surprising when Fleishman met me on the street that morning, dressed and daisy fresh. I had assumed he was still in bed.

  I don’t think I had seen Fleishman this early in the morning before.

  “I sneaked out while you were in the shower.” He pulled his hand out from behind his back and presented me with a deli bouquet of flowers. “Have fun on your trip.”

  I stood next to the car, in which the driver was drumming his fingers impatiently against the steering wheel. I didn’t know what to say. It was early enough in the morning that I was confused as to his motives.

  “I didn’t want you to go to Dallas angry at me,” he said.

  “I’m not angry.” It had been days since he’d called me Renata; I hadn’t forgotten about it, exactly, but out of self-preservation I had pushed it to the back of my mind.

  “Then thinking badly of me,” he amended. “I didn’t want you thinking that I was…well, you know.”

  I didn’t know, but I gave him a hug. He squeezed me back and said, practically whispering in my ear, “I hope you see Dan Weatherby. I hope you two hit it off.”

  Dan Weatherby?

  I pulled back and fixed my gaze on him. “Hit it off…how?”

  He lifted those broad thin shoulders in a shrug. “Like you were before I came along and messed things up.”

  In other words, he wanted me to go to Dallas and sleep with Dan? Was he nuts?

  With as much fury as I could muster at that ungodly hour, I huffed, “So you woke up at five fifteen in the morning to tell me to find someone else?”

  Great. I think everyone had told me that, and now Fleishman was chiming in. Once I finally got it through my own thick skull to give up on Fleishman, it would be unanimous.

  “You said five-thirty,” the driver grumbled at me over the roof of the car. “It’s five-forty now.”

  “Okay,” I told him. I opened the door.

  Fleishman put his hand on my shoulder. “Enjoy yourself, that’s all I’m saying.”

  At that moment, I would have enjoyed giving him a sharp thwack over the head with those flowers. As it was, I thought I showed great restraint by waiting till I reached LaGuardia to stuff his farewell bouquet in a garbage can.

  When it came to sex, Renata had a strict lights-out policy. She wanted darkness. But her definition of dark was a little different than everyone else’s. Not for her the single flickering aromatherapy candle on the dresser. Even romantic moonlight filtering through the blinds was verboten; Renata had installed window coverings so aggressively opaque they would have served with honor during the London blitz.

  When she beckoned me to join her on her Flying Cloud futon bed and turned out the lights, there was nothing but a blanket of inky blackness. We groped at each other not just out of frantic desire, but also because we couldn’t see a thing.

  I assume her mania for darkness stemmed from her horror of my being able to detect a single bulge or stretch mark on her skin. Who did she think I had been sleeping with before, Natalie Portman? She, like most nineteen-year-olds weaned on Cosmo and Glamour, seemed to assume all women were supposed to have perfect airbrushed bodies, and that if they unwittingly revealed a flaw, their prospective lovers would run fleeing into the night.

  Her tactic did have one thing going for it: I couldn’t have fled. I doubt I could have found the door.

  It was a little ridiculous—like those old Warner Brothers cartoons where the characters could only see the whites of each other’s eyes. The ones where Elmer Fudd thinks he’s with a dazzling long-lashed lady when actually it’s Bugs Bunny. Come the light of day, I was certain I would not be waking up next to a wascally wabbit, but with Renata by my side—funny, sexy, lovably insecure Renata.

  She, unfortunately, seemed equally sure that I would find myself in bed with a gargoyle. An ankle-length yellow terrycloth robe was at the ready to prevent my disillusionment. To say she had self-esteem issues was like saying Donald Trump had a slightly inflated ego. Casual terminology just didn’t begin to cover this level of psychosis.

  Chapter 13

  In Dallas I was full of nerves. Thanks to some Dramamine and anger about Fleishman, I managed to make it through my flight without throwing up on anyone this time. But once I was at the conference, the jitters set in. I am not at my best in crowds, with a minute-by-minute itinerary in my hand and a hoard of women teeming around me speaking in those high boisterous voices. The conference hotel, the largest in Dallas, was a madhouse. Every square inch—every guest room, meeting area, dining room, and bar—spilled over with women bearing RAG name tags on their shirts. More confusing yet, I would sometimes think I saw someone I knew, then realize that I only recognized them from the backs of book jackets.

  When I did happen to have a moment free, as when I retreated to my room to change clothes because I spilled a Diet Coke down my front, I would stew about Fleishman. And those flowers. And that awful name, Renata. And all the years I had spent as his hanger-on, his groupie, his default girl. It was absurd, mortifying, depressing.

  So it was probably best that I was kept busy.

  This was Madeline’s first time at the big conference, too, and when I ran into her at the registration line, she seemed as dazzled as she could be in a hotel in which practically the only men were the busboys. “Susan Elizabeth Phillips was in the restroom line!” she whispered to me excitedly.

  It was as if overnight she had turned into a true romance groupie. But I could understand. It was hard not to catch the fever. Not if you’d spent the past months perusing the Romance Journal. There were giants among us.

  By the end of the first day, I hadn’t run into Dan Weatherby at the conference yet. Then again, I hadn’t seen a lot of the people from Candlelight, either. Andrea and I hadn’t actually spoken to each other since sharing a cab from the airport, and Rita I had only caught a few sightings of, holding court with the last remnants of the Smoking Author’s Guild. I was on a panel about romantic suspense, which I managed to get through, and I spent the rest of the time rushing from appointment to appointment with my authors. I’d tried to squeeze most of them in early on, before conference fatigue set in, and also because I was filling in for Cassie’s panel the next day.

  Everything had gone smoothly until the author appointments. Then—sometime just before noon on day two—something went wrong. Really, really wrong. Eerily wrong. I always think people are reacting to me oddly, so perhaps it was natural that I wouldn’t take in the fact that people I met seemed friendly at first and then turned stony, if not downright hostile. It took me a while to pick up on the dropped jaws, the glares, the mutters.

  But at some point, the fact that something was amiss was undeniable. I think it was during the author appointments that I realized that people were treating me not so much like an editor as a carrier of the Ebola virus. At first the appointments would start just as they always did, with an author telling me about her latest masterpiece of hospital romance or clan war romance, and I would nod and smile and ask her to send it to me. I would then hand her my business card, and she would either thank me profusely and make her exit, or her face would redden and she
would curtly take her leave. The longer the appointments dragged on, the more often the latter occurred.

  At first I thought it was just the stress of the big conference getting to everyone, but after a few hours I realized that people were becoming decidedly more hostile. They weren’t even waiting for the end of the appointment to glare at me.

  When I left the little room where I was doing my author appointments, glad to escape the glares from people I barely knew, a woman on the conference committee nearly crashed into me. She smiled, then glanced at my RAG tag and let out an angry harrumph.

  “Hope you’re enjoying yourself, Rebecca Abbot!” she sniped.

  I wasn’t just imagining it.

  For a minute I wondered if someone had pinned a sign on me. I was skulking off to the elevator when Mary Jo bore down on me so fast that there was no chance of escape. Her face was fiery red.

  “Here you are!” she exclaimed, as if I had been hiding. “Just what is it you think you’re doing?”

  Having Mary Jo huff at me was nothing new. Right after the fateful incident in the coffee room, the God Pod had presented her with a Dilbert mug, but she had put it on her shelf. “For safekeeping,” she had announced, pointedly, when I was in earshot. At all subsequent editorial meetings, she had brought her coffee in a Styrofoam cup.

  Still, at a conference you would expect a little friendliness from your coworkers. Especially when the rest of the attendees seemed to be giving you the frost.

  “I was going to my room to freshen up before my panel,” I said.

  She folded her arms and sent me a positively withering look. “You’re not on the panel.”

  I did a double take. I was sure I was on the panel, which was called “From Boardroom to Bedroom: White Collar Alpha Heroes.” It was originally Cassie’s gig, but when Cassie was sidelined, I had been chosen as a fill-in. Andrea was taking Cassie’s author appointments.

  “In the schedule, it said that I was going to be on the panel,” I insisted.

  Mary Jo bellowed, “Well you’re not! After the stunt you pulled, Mercedes decided she needed to fill in for you herself. Mercedes Coe, the editorial director of Candlelight, on an alpha hero panel!”

  There was so much indignation in her voice, it was as if she were talking about Meryl Streep being forced to go back to community theater. All because of me.

  “Why?”

  “I think you know,” she said.

  “But I don’t know.”

  “Oh, I think you do know.”

  It was tempting to reply, “But I don’t,” and make a real Abbott and Costello routine of it, but Mary Jo cut me off. In fact, the words nearly exploded out of her, as if she were so exasperated with my obstinacy, my obtuseness, and my feckless destructiveness that she just couldn’t hold back the tide of anger anymore. “Your business cards, Rebecca!”

  I frowned. I had no idea what she was talking about. “What about them?”

  She held out her hand. “Give me one.”

  I hesitated. I’d already handed out a fistful.

  She snapped her fingers. “I know you have them with you.”

  “Well, yeah, but I only brought about fifty, and I’ve given out over half of them.”

  There was another day of conference left. I couldn’t afford to start handing them out to coworkers.

  Mary Jo nearly snapped my head off. “We know you’ve been giving them out like candy, Rebecca! The directors of the conference are about ready to expel us all from the hotel because of the damn things. Mercedes and I have been doing damage control for the past hour.”

  Confused, I yanked my cards out of my purse. At first I couldn’t figure out what the deal was. It was just my regular card. My name was correct, as was all the contact information. Crimson over eggshell white. Classy. Then I looked at where “Books Are Our Passion” was supposed to be written. Instead, my card read, “Books Are My Toilet Paper.”

  Every ounce of blood drained out of my face.

  I blinked, hoping I had seen wrong. Regrettably, I hadn’t.

  “Books Are My Toilet Paper.”

  Not so classy.

  My jaw swung open and I looked searchingly into Mary Jo’s unforgiving eyes. “I suppose this is your idea of a joke,” she said.

  “No!”

  “Well congratulations!” she exclaimed. “You’ve given the entire Candlelight delegation a black eye!”

  “But I didn’t know!” I insisted. “I don’t know how this happened.”

  “Those cards didn’t get printed up and hop into your purse on their own, Rebecca.”

  “I know, but someone—” My mouth snapped shut. Oh, God. Cassie. No wonder she had made such a point of waving me off the night before I left. “I wish I could be there, too,” she’d said, smirking.

  No wonder. She would have loved to see the fruits of her labors resulting in my utter humiliation.

  I seethed angrily for a moment. “It was Cassie,” I said. “She did it.”

  “Cassie!” Mary Jo exclaimed skeptically. “Cassie’s not even here.”

  “I know. She was mad about being told she couldn’t come. And besides that, she hates me. She’s had it in for me from the very beginning. Just ask Andrea.”

  “That’s quite an accusation you’re making. What proof do you have?”

  Mary Jo seemed to think that I was fingering a suspect in a murder case.

  “Ask anybody.”

  She put her hands on her hips. “Cassie has been a responsible Candlelight employee for four years. Years before you ever got there.”

  I stuck to my guns. “If this wasn’t Cassie, then I’ll resign.”

  Mary Jo’s lips pursed. “By the time Mercedes is through with you, you might not need to.”

  For the rest of the day I was persona non grata at that conference. I apologized to Mercedes, but I was still excused from the “Boardroom to Bedroom” panel. In fact, it was suggested that I might want to look into exchanging my flight back to New York City for an earlier one. It was so humiliating. I’m ashamed to admit that I did not bear up well to the disgrace, either. Instead, I hid in my room emptying out my minibar until I was fairly certain it was the dining out hour and the coast was clear. Then I sneaked down to the hotel bar to partake of some liquor from full-size bottles. Tanqueray had never tasted so good.

  I don’t know how long I was draped over that bar before someone came for me. In the end, it wasn’t Andrea, Rita, or anyone else from Candlelight. My comrades seemed to have forsaken me. No, when someone tapped me on the shoulder and I looked up, it was none other than Dan Weatherby.

  “Long time no see,” he said.

  I could barely see now. The man was definitely blurry, but that smile was so welcome I hardly cared. In fact, I was comfortably past the point of caring about much of anything.

  “I heard about your trouble,” he said, sliding onto the stool next to mine.

  I waved a hand, as if the day’s depredations were just so much water off a duck’s back. And for the moment, they seemed like it. What mattered more was the fact that Dan Weatherby was here, and he was smiling that sexy smile at me.

  “I’ve been thinking a lot about you lately,” he purred.

  I wasn’t just imagining it, either. There was something definitely come-hitherish about him. I was picking up vibes.

  “Why?” I asked.

  He shrugged his broad shoulders. “Something I’ve been reading reminded me of you.”

  “What?” Right now I felt so pathetic, the only heroine I could possibly empathize with was something out of Judy Blume. Are You There God, It’s Me, Rebecca.

  “It’s something new,” he said. “But I predict it will be hot.”

  I snuffled self-consciously and poked his suit jacket with the toothpick from my drink. “Shouldn’t you be off schmoozing with clients?”

  “My client pooped out on me, so I’m available.” He grinned. “For anything.”

  Good heavens. If he’d kept going on like that, in anoth
er half hour I would have ended up in bed with him.

  As it was, he kicked it up a notch and it only took fifteen minutes.

  What do I remember? Not a lot. With his help I managed to weave up to his room. Then, once we were inside the dark hotel room, it was as if we were in some dark, sensual cocoon. He didn’t even bother turning on the lights, which was okay by me. I prefer the dark for these initial encounters, and I was gratified that he seemed to anticipate me on this point. In fact, he seemed to understand a lot about me. In some ways, it was as if we were connecting in a way that I never had with anyone else.

  But of course, I was also more looped than I had ever been with anyone else.

  When I opened my eyes the next morning to the sound of Dan brushing his teeth, I was still remembering the night before. It was as if no time had passed. At first, I didn’t even feel hungover. I felt great. Supercharged, even. I stretched like a cat and sat up, quickly grabbing my camisole top from the night before and slipping it on. I didn’t particularly want Dan’s first view of my body to be the stretch marks across my middle.

  I have to admit, my ecstatic mood wasn’t all about ecstasy. I was also feeling a little smug. Take that, Fleishman, I wanted to shout. I had found someone else—someone, if my soused memory served, who was even much better in bed than Fleishman could ever dream of being.

  Of course, the fact that Fleishman had basically been steering me in this direction was a little worrisome. But I didn’t dwell on that particular point.

  Dan finally came out, so thoroughly flossed and brushed that his teeth almost gave off a glare. “I hope you don’t mind that I ordered breakfast.”

  He obviously didn’t know me. “Not a bit.”

  “I have a client appointment for brunch this morning at ten o’clock, but I’m starved.” He let out a sexy rumble. “Guess we worked up an appetite last night.”

  Oh God. Was he not adorable? I couldn’t believe my good fortune. “It’s lucky I ran into you. Otherwise I might have ended up asleep on that barstool.”