The Pink Ghetto

by Liz Ireland

  Poor Andrea. “Maybe there’s some reason fate has brought you here,” I said.

  She surveyed her cluttered desk, the piles of manuscripts, the as-yet-unopened Sunday Times. “I’m just doomed to rot here. When I die I’ll just be a frustrated old spinster living in a studio in Queens, and I’ll have two hundred items on the late list.” She slid down lower in her chair. “I mean, look at you! Four months in, and you get trapped in an elevator with my dreamboat. Don’t talk to me about fate. Life is not fair.”

  I shut up.

  She brooded for a few moments, then angled one of her brows my way. “He gave you his bagel?”

  “Half of it.”

  “Top half or bottom?”

  “Top.”

  She sighed. “A gallant hottie.”

  “His name is Luke Rayburn. He’s an attorney. Wills and estates.”

  She frowned. “That sounds very dull.”

  “But lucrative,” I pointed out.

  She slapped a hand on her desk in frustration. “Yes, damn it! He’s good looking, rich, chivalrous, and now he’s yours. Even my pathetic little fantasy life at this place has been shattered.”

  “He’s not mine,” I assured her.

  “Well it’s no fun dreaming about some guy someone else has been stuck in an elevator with. Besides, I don’t like the name Luke. It reminds me of Luke Skywalker, and that soap opera guy from the eighties with the fuzzy hair.” She moaned sadly. “I’m just screwed. I’ll be here forever.”

  “Is it really so bad here?”

  Her lips twisted. “Asked the lab bunny in the next cage.”

  I was wracking my brains for something positive to say, but all at once Andrea’s door opened and shut and Troy appeared, grinning ear-to-ear.

  “Is everybody happy?” he shouted, complete with jazz hand gestures.

  We gaped at him.

  “I just heard the news and had to rush over!”

  “Cassie got the job Andrea wanted,” I explained. “At Gazelle.”

  Troy drew back. “Oh no, girl! No tears over that place. I used to work there.”

  “And?” Andrea asked.

  “It’s a madhouse. It’s like being on the chain gang. And the models—definitely second rate!”

  Andrea laughed. She actually seemed to be perking up. “Really? You like it better here?”

  “Oh, yeah! Never mind those people.” He lifted a hand. “Besides, I was just interviewing a model who was telling me he had heard that there might be something opening up over at Venus.”

  She gasped. “Really?”

  “I’ll look into it.”

  “And you still haven’t opened your Sunday Times,” I reminded her, pointing to the folded paper in front of her. “There could be all sorts of jobs this week.”

  Andrea looked transformed. “Maybe so.”

  “There!” Troy said. “And so in honor of Cassie, let’s all join in a chorus of ‘Ding, Dong, the Witch Is Dead.’”

  We started singing, and after a few words, Lisa came running and joined in. Then Lindsay. By the time were done with three choruses—Troy knew them all—every pod in earshot had joined us. I’m not even sure everyone knew why they were singing, but they seemed ready to celebrate anyway. Or maybe just ready to goof off.

  When the merriment was over, I stopped by Cassie’s office, which looked pretty much like it always had, except of course her salutatorian picture was gone. (No doubt that was already sitting on her desk at Gazelle.) She had been here—practically lived here—for four years, and if Andrea hadn’t told me, I don’t think I would have noticed she was gone. Except, of course, I would probably have realized that the person trying to ruin my career was missing.

  When I got back to my desk, I was surprised by how edgy I felt. My nemesis was gone. I was safe now. Mercedes wouldn’t fire me. (At least not this week.)

  So why couldn’t I relax?

  I was still pondering this question when Lindsay came in and flopped down in the spare chair. She seemed agitated. But of course, she was always in a swivet about something. “Can you believe about Cassie?”

  “I’m still trying to absorb it all. And you don’t even know what happened over the weekend,” I said. “Cassie stole my business cards and—”

  She cut me off with a wave of her hand. “Oh, everybody’s heard about that!” She made it sound like last month’s news. “She really went out with a bang. I wonder if those people at Gazelle are having second thoughts yet about hiring her.”

  “Give them a week.”

  She reached around and shut the door. “So, what do you think my chances are?”

  I had no idea what she was talking about. “Chances of what?”

  She looked at me as if I were being purposefully dense. “Of being promoted.”

  “Oh!” I had to lean back in my chair so I wouldn’t fall out of it. “I didn’t know…”

  She slurped some coffee and nodded. “I know—you don’t think of me as ambitious. But I can’t be Rita’s assistant forever.”

  “No…I can see how that wouldn’t be a good situation.”

  “And anyway, look at all the other people working here. Look at…”

  Look at me, I thought.

  Of course, I wasn’t creating mad cock-ups every other day, either. (More like every week.) “I see your point.”

  She nodded eagerly. “Will you talk to Rita about promoting me?”

  “Me?” I squeaked.

  “Rita likes you.”

  “Well…” I tried not to look too uncomfortable, but the words no fucking way were playing through my head in a loop. I didn’t want to touch this situation with a vaulting pole. “Wouldn’t it be best if you talked to her yourself?”

  “But she can’t stand me.”

  That was the problem, all right. “Or what about Andrea? She’s more senior than me…”

  “I talked to her first thing.”

  “What did she say?”

  “‘No fucking way.’”

  Now why hadn’t I thought of that?

  Lindsay leaned forward. “Please? I’ll owe you, big time.”

  “It’s really not that great a job,” I said. “I mean, it’s fine, but don’t you like being an assistant? It’s less pressure.”

  “Not the way I do it. I figure as much as I angst over my little screwups, why shouldn’t I get promoted and angst over bigger screwups?”

  I shook my head and nodded. What she said made sense, in a Lindsay sort of way.

  “Besides,” she continued, “a promotion means more money. Maybe with more money, I could convince Rowdy we could afford separate places.”

  Who could argue against more money? “I’ll see what I can manage,” I finally agreed, figuring they were words I would probably regret. But I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t have the forthrightness of Andrea. And I liked Lindsay.

  I tried to get to work. There was a manuscript on my desk by a new, unagented author who had written a five-hundred page book about a divorcee who falls in love with her art teacher; the cover letter described the teacher as “the Jackson Pollack of Lawrence, Kansas.” I scanned the first page, ready to toss the opus on my “to be rejected pile,” when my gaze fell on the opening paragraph.

  The only thing wrong about Jared Pickett was that he was completely awful in every way imaginable. For me, of course, it was love at first sight.

  I laughed a little at that, and since it had seemed like ages since anything I had read had made me laugh, I kept going right up until the moment when Lindsay again poked her head into my office.

  Surely she didn’t expect me to have spoken to Rita already! Besides, I still had my own little snarl to wriggle out of. I had been expecting my phone to ring with a summons to speak to either Mercedes or Mary Jo. Or at least Rita.

  “Mercedes has called a meeting. All editorial.”

  The conference room seemed fuller than usual. It would be, would’t it? The first time I had to show my face after Dallas, everybody
was there. Oddly, however, no one seemed to be the least bit interested in l’affaire de business cards, except that it was common knowledge that Cassie had been at the bottom of that stunt. All the buzz was about Cassie.

  Even Mary Jo was polite to me when I slipped into the only free chair available, next to her. “Disgraceful!” she muttered, and so pointed was her reference that I didn’t even suspect she was talking about me. “To think I didn’t believe you when you said Cassie set you up. And all the while she was back here in New York, defecting!”

  “I’m still in shock,” I said.

  She leaned closer. “Tell me, it was really Cassie who was responsible for my mug falling, wasn’t it?”

  It was like being handed a gift. “I don’t like to point fingers, Mary Jo…”

  She slapped the table. “I knew it!”

  I quickly started trying to think of other screw-ups I could blame on Cassie now.

  Truly, though, I was a little nonplussed by the outrage her leaving was stirring up among the higher ups. Hadn’t people told me that editors left here all the time? But when Mercedes marched in, scarf fluttering behind her, and banged her little gavel so solemnly, I began to understand.

  It wasn’t that Cassie had left; it was that she had left abruptly, and on her own terms.

  “I suppose by now you’ve all heard the news,” she said. “While we were gone, Cassie defected. She went to Gazelle. As you know, she left in a very unclassy way.”

  “But in a very Cassie way!” Andrea sniped.

  Mercedes pursed her lips patiently and waited for the groans and sniggers to die down. “She took her Rolodex with her. Beyond that, we aren’t sure what else. We need to touch base with all her authors and make sure they’re all still on board.” She sighed. “And again, we must redouble our efforts to improve our market share.”

  “Because of Cassie?” Ann blurted out.

  Mercedes zeroed in on her with hawklike intensity. “You can bet word of this incident has spread. We’ve got to try even harder now to make authors feel like Candlelight is a place they can settle in and grow. Which is why we need to keep looking for innovative new projects. Has anyone found anything along those lines?”

  It was an odd question to ask, considering that most of us had been out of our offices for the past few business days.

  But to my surprise, I found myself lifting my hand. “I have a slush book. The author meant it for Signature—”

  “That’s a line for established authors,” Mary Jo said quickly.

  “I know, I was doubtful. But I read a few chapters anyway, and the author has a really strong voice. It’s not your usual story, but I think she’d fit somewhere—MetroGirl, maybe.”

  “There—perfect,” Mercedes said. “That’s what I want you all to do. Keep your peepers open. Give that book to me as soon as you’re done, Rebecca, s’il vous plait. And don’t forget to mark it N.”

  She let out a long breath and looked around the table. Her gaze alit on every single face assembled, from the heads of departments to the assistants sitting in the back. “Work is hell, isn’t it?”

  The question hung there, as if she really expected an answer. Everyone at the table seemed to shift, casting sidewise glances at their coworkers.

  “Work eats up our lives,” Mercedes said. “We get up, we commute, we sit in cubicles and offices for eight hours, we commute home and then have maybe a couple of hours to ourselves before we have to go to sleep so we can start the process over the next day. C’est la vie. We’re luckier than workers a few generations back, especially women workers, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t become a grind. It wears you down. I know this. Some of you probably sit in your office dreaming of getting different jobs, or going to grad school.”

  I trained my eyes on my notepad so I wouldn’t look up at Andrea.

  “What gerbil doesn’t want to jump off the wire wheel eventually?” Mercedes went on. “You get tired of coming in day after day, tired of the same old faces. Mine, probably more than anyone else’s.”

  There were nervous titters around the table. From the tension crackling in the air, you could tell that everyone thought Mercedes had flipped her lid. “You probably feel unappreciated. You hear us say we’re a family here, and you sneer. You think we don’t mean it, but we do. We are a family here. So please, if you ever feel as if you are going to explode out of your desk like Cassie did, come to me first. I mean it. This may be a big outfit, but we are very serious about trying to keep our family together.”

  She let that last statement hang in the air while we all sat, silent. Next to me, Mary Jo snuffled. Then Mercedes banged down her gavel. “Senior eds in my office, pronto.”

  Maybe it was just the day I was having, but Mercedes’s words actually hit home in a weird way. More than the usual corporate we’re-all-a-big-family nonsense. Maybe it had something to do with my near death experience in the elevator that morning, but I think it was her acknowledgement of the cost of the long hours of work that reached me. And then I thought about all the hours she had clocked there…not to mention Mary Jo, and Rita, and even Andrea. They’d all been there longer than I could imagine, toiling away to try to make these books as enjoyable for the readers and as profitable for the authors and company as was feasible. It wasn’t glamorous work. But it meant something to a lot of people.

  I didn’t have to wonder long about what Andrea had thought of the speech. She stuck her head in my office and made a retching gesture. “Can you believe that prissy windbag? And Mary Jo—crying!”

  Having been on the brink of sniffling myself, I failed to join in her sneering. “She was just trying to make us feel like she understands our day-to-day tribulations.”

  “Right. She feels our pain. Spare me! If she really felt my pain she’d give me a decent raise.”

  “So why don’t you go ask her for one?”

  She blinked at me. “Are you nuts? Do you think she meant what she was saying in there? Boy, you really did fall off the turnip truck!”

  I could still hear her laughing as she returned to her office and shook open the classified section of the New York Times.

  I went back to reading my weird chick lit book. It had definite possibilities, even though the plot seemed to ramble a bit. It rambled in a good way, I thought. I began to feel excited, actually, like editors I had witnessed in meetings describing a book they wanted to go to contract on. They would get this possessive gleam in their eyes, like a farmer who had grown a prize tomato.

  It was all luck. This project had landed in my lap. But somehow, now that I had it, I felt a real stake in being the person who was going to midwife it into the world.

  Rita sauntered in under an armload of manuscripts.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Your share of Cassie’s workload. We’re divvying it up.”

  I frowned as my shelf sagged under the new weight. “Are we going to get a new Cassie?”

  “That could take a while. Art has ordered belt tightening.”

  “Oh.” I gulped. Great. More work. Then I remembered. “I guess I just assumed…” I shook my head. “But you wouldn’t want to do that.”

  She took the bait. “I wouldn’t want to do what?”

  “Well…why not move Lindsay up?”

  Rita actually had to grip the wall to stay upright. “This pod has enough problems as it is.”

  “But one of our problems is we don’t have enough workers.” I shrugged. “Well, never mind. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to go through all the hassle of finding a new assistant.”

  That prospect—finding a new assistant—obviously had its appeal. A tiny lightbulb went off over her head. “Do you think she’s ready?”

  “You could always start grooming her,” I said. “Or, if you want, I could work with her, maybe steer her through a few edits.”

  “You’d really do that?” she asked.

  I cast my eye on my recently swollen slush pile. “Sure, if it would help out.”
>
  A minute after Rita left, I picked up four unpromising looking manuscripts off my shelf and ferried them over to Lindsay’s desk. “You’re on your way,” I told her.

  She gasped. “You talked to her?”

  “Yup. Take a look at these and see what you think.”

  “Wow, thanks!”

  Her ecstatic reaction to having more work dumped on her was most gratifying. No wonder people wanted to climb the corporate ladder. Delegating was divine.

  “Where’ve you been?” Fleishman asked as soon as I came home.

  I had stayed at work a little longer than usual, finishing the chick lit book about the fifty-year-old art student. Mercedes had already left a note on my desk telling me she wanted to see it ASAP. The next day I planned to run in, type up a memo recommending the book, and hand it over to her. It might just be the quickest turnaround in Candlelight history.

  “I thought you’d be back an hour ago, at the most. I’ve been waiting to take you out to celebrate.”

  “Celebrate what?” For the life of me, I couldn’t think of what there could be to celebrate. Especially between Fleishman and me.

  “Your homecoming, for one thing,” he said.

  “Right. Finding my way home after work was a great achievement.”

  He shook his head in exasperation. “Not from work—from Dallas.”

  I wasn’t kidding myself that my homecoming from anywhere was the reason behind his wanting to go out. Something else was afoot here. What could be going on in that feverish brain of his?

  Maybe I was making it all too complicated. Could be he was just bored. Maybe it’s just that Renata isn’t available tonight, I thought bitterly.

  I was none too eager to go out; I felt like collapsing. Fleishman would want to know all about Dallas, and what was I going to say? That I managed to make a spectacle of myself without his help? That his power of suggestion had sent me into the arms of Dan Weatherby?

  The wounds of the weekend were still too fresh to laugh about them with friends. Especially Fleishman.

  “I don’t know…” I said, looking longingly at the couch and the television. If ever there was a night for vegetation, this was it.