Fashionistas

by Lynn Messina

  Roger is of medium height and build and is plagued by a persistent acne problem that is exacerbated by encroaching baldness—his hairline is receding, followed closely by an army of pimples that cannot march fast enough across the plains of his scalp to keep up with its retreat. Accutane did not help and only made spending time with him and Maya unbearable. Roger is quiet and introspective when he’s drunk.

  “Sorry about that, Vig,” he says, kissing me on the cheek. When he and Maya were dating, there were no cheek kisses or darlings. “I was leveraging information. It was a very important visit.”

  Roger believes that language is something you bend to your will instead of the other way around. He changes nouns into verbs and invents new usages. He thinks he’s revolutionizing the English language but he’s not. He’s just speaking nonsense.

  “Vig darling, meet Anthea,” he says, introducing me to his companion, whose eyes are so large and round she seems right out of a Margaret Keane painting.

  I offer my hand. “Hi, I’m Vig Morgan.”

  She takes a second to read and interpret my gesture before grasping my hand. Her grip is so loose and cold that for a moment she seems dead. “Hi.”

  “Vig’s a friend of Maya.”

  “Oh,” she says in such an arch manner that I naturally conclude that the only Maya she knows is Roger’s psycho bitch ex-girlfriend.

  “She’s an editor at Fashionista magazine,” he adds, giving me more context.

  Anthea looks interested. “That should be cool.”

  “Yes,” I say, because it should be.

  “Anthea works in a shop on Twenty-second. It’s called DeMask,” he says casually. “Ever hear of it?”

  DeMask is one of those sex shops that sells everything from inflatable butt plugs to male chastity belts. I’m not intimately acquainted with the establishment, but I’ve seen their ads in the Village Voice. “The Mask? No, I can’t say I have. Do they sell costumes?”

  Roger is annoyed by my ignorance and is about to elaborate but Anthea giggles. “Yes, sort of,” she says, before adding, “If you ever need one, you should drop by. All our latex originates in Europe.”

  “In Europe?” This is not an area of the fashion industry I’m familiar with, but I know that a European pedigree is always a selling point.

  “Yes, we’ve got outlets in Germany and Amsterdam.”

  Roger is not happy with this friendly chitchat. Now that DeMask is a friendly costume shop with Old World charm, he doesn’t want to talk about it. He looks impatiently at his watch. “Look at the time. Anthea and I have to engine. We’ve got somewhere we need to be.” He places his hand at the small of her back before leaning in to kiss me again. I’m prepared this time and dart my head in the other direction. His lips meet air. “It was so lovely to see you. You will send Maya my love, won’t you?”

  There is an awful victorious gleam in his eye. He is expecting me to go running back to his ex-girlfriend of four days with the tale of how he’s now dating a drop-dead gorgeous woman with large breasts and a yen for whips and chains, but I don’t. I tell Anthea goodbye and return to taking notes on the Delft School. I never say a word about the meeting to Maya.

  Still Phase One

  Alex Keller opens the door with an angry sneer on his face. Although he’s still devastatingly appealing, his posture is more in keeping with what I’ve come to expect from him and it puts me at ease. Now I’ll be able to clear up yesterday’s misunderstanding.

  “Who are you?” he asks, raising his voice and leaving me in the hallway where the neighbors can listen. “Why are you sabotaging my dog’s happiness? What have I or Quik ever done to you that you need to ruin his life?”

  I open my mouth to explain, but he doesn’t let me. Keller is on a rampage, treading familiar ground, and will not be interrupted.

  “Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a dog walker you can trust? Any idea? Do you have a dog?”

  I assume this is a rhetorical question, like the last one, and don’t answer.

  “Well, do you?” he presses, his voice raising thunderously.

  “No.”

  “Do you have a cat?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have a fish?”

  “No.”

  “Are you a pet owner in any way, shape or form?”

  “No.”

  “So you know absolutely nothing about the care and supervision of domesticated animals. You have no idea the damage you’ve done, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have any idea how hard it was getting that appointment with Kelly in the first place? She’s extremely busy and only agreed to see me as a personal favor to a friend. As a personal favor to a friend and I wasn’t here when she stopped by for our scheduled appointment. Do you know what she did when she found I wasn’t here? She left a short, abrupt note with the doorman informing me that she doesn’t have time to play games and that she’ll have to deny herself the pleasure of my custom. And don’t be naive. Her use of ‘pleasure’ was completely facetious.”

  It occurs to me that I wouldn’t want anyone walking my dog who routinely used the word custom, but as it was so clearly pointed out to me only seconds before, I’m not a pet owner in any way, shape or form.

  Keller takes a deep breath. He’s steadying himself. “Now, if you will excuse me. I don’t see why I should be afflicted with your presence any longer.” He closes the door.

  Over the years, Keller has behaved appallingly and no doubt voodoo dolls, hexes and incantations have all been implemented on his behalf, but I’m not a plague on anyone’s house.

  I knock on the door, hoping that he’ll at least come back and stick his eye against the peephole without my having to lean against the bell. I’m here to ask him a favor and am well aware that alienating him further won’t help my cause. Still, I’m prepared to do it. I’m prepared to stand on his doorstep and pound on his door and shout his name. I’m prepared to do anything. Jane’s downfall, once a part-time fantasy that sustained me during fourteen-hour days, is now a cherished goal. It will come to pass.

  A dark shadow, which I assume is Keller’s eye, covers the hole, and I adopt a posture of deep contrition, stooping my shoulders and looking abashed, even though the image he’s seeing of me is warped and tiny.

  “I want to apologize,” I say, knowing the door is thin. The neighbors are watching All in the Family and I can clearly hear every word Edith says. “Please.”

  He doesn’t respond but nor does the shadow move. “I’m very sorry and I would like a chance to explain my motives. I’m distraught to discover what a mess I’ve made.” I don’t know what distraught looks like, so I content myself with more pronounced contrition. I tilt my head down. “Please, I didn’t mean to sabotage Quik’s happiness,” I insist, trying very hard to sound sincere. I’m not quite convinced that anyone’s happiness has been sabotaged, but saying so at this juncture doesn’t seem wise. I decide to wait a few minutes, at least until I’ve passed the threshold, before instigating a more clearheaded discussion about the dog’s daily care and supervision.

  Keller opens the door. “Who are you?” he asks, his voice even and well modulated. I’m no longer worried that the neighbors are listening.

  “Vig,” I say, cringing and preparing myself for the onslaught of curses that are going to be rained on my head.

  Instead of raining curses, he furrows his brow. “Vig what?”

  Vig is not a common name and it’s inconceivable that he knows another one. “Vig Morgan. We work together.”

  “At Walters and Associates?” I can see him running through the faces he sees all the time at the office. Mine is not one of them.

  Walters and Associates? “No, at Fashionista.”

  “Oh,” he says, momentarily disconcerted. A faint blush creeps up his neck. He knows that I’m intrigued. He knows I’m interested and want to hear more about the firm of Walters and Associates. He stares at me silently, carefully considering his next move. Fina
lly he opens the door and steps to the side. “Come in.”

  Delia’s First Job

  Alex Keller is a franchise. He’s like V.C. Andrews, except he isn’t dead and his morbid plots only twist around movie stars. He has no plans to trademark his name.

  “Delia’s been editing the section for the last two years,” he says. “She does everything. Researches events, generates ideas, takes publicists out to lunch, hires writers, writes stories, approves layouts, draws up contracts, selects photos, edits articles, sets deadlines, plans the editorial calendar.”

  “You don’t do anything?” I ask, striving to keep the censure out of my voice. I’m trying not to sound appalled, as if I found deception on a scale this large commonplace, as if I don’t think it’s something that just governments do.

  He shrugs. “I make it possible.”

  This isn’t enough. “That’s all?”

  “I meet with Lydia from time to time to keep up appearances.”

  “From time to time?” Disdain creeps into my voice. What he’s describing isn’t a job, it’s a hobby, the sort of thing rich people do between lunching at the Plaza and buying diamonds at Tiffany’s.

  “Once a month, sometimes twice.”

  “And Delia is cool with this?”

  He’s surprised by my question. I can tell from the way he raises his eyebrows and stares at me. “Why wouldn’t she be?”

  “She does the work—you get the credit,” I say, highlighting what I think is an obvious point. But nothing is ever as obvious as I think.

  “Please,” he says with scorn, as if Delia were some sort of social or political cause he didn’t subscribe to, like Cartographers for Social Justice. “Delia is completely independent. She plans her days to best suit her, not me. She takes long lunches, comes in late and leaves early whenever she wants to. She works quickly and efficiently and doesn’t have to look busy when there’s nothing left to do because she works too quickly and too efficiently. She isn’t subjected to the whims of a tyrannical boss. I don’t ask her to get coffee, make my lunch reservations, pick up my dry cleaning, stay until nine o’clock to answer my phone or sort through a pile of receipts to itemize my expenses.”

  I’m not immune to the allure of independence and self-sufficiency and the freedom from tyranny. When I was young and fresh out of college, this is the sort of job I thought I would have. This is precisely the sort of job I thought I’d have before I realized that administrative assistants don’t actually assist in the administration of things. They only make photocopies and fill out expense reports and distribute memos.

  “Most of the important decisions are left to her,” he says, outlining more of the advantages of his franchise system. “She has all the responsibility of a high-pressure job but none of the accountability. It’s an ideal environment to learn about magazines in. Plus, she’s a shoo-in for the events editor job when I leave. Actually, she’d have the job already if Jane weren’t such a stickler about age. Fortunately for me, there’s no way she’d give my job to someone so young, even though Delia can do it with her eyes closed. But in a year or two, there’ll be no stopping Delia. I’ll have to step aside or get run over.”

  Delia is twenty-three. She’s the sort of go-getter overachiever that corporations all over America look for when they’re recruiting go-getter overachievers. She completed her undergrad degree at Fordham in three years and, because she wasn’t ready to leave her friends yet, she stayed on another year to get her master’s. The editorial assistant job at Fashionista was the first one she interviewed for and because both Alex Keller and the managing editor had liked her instantly, she was offered the job within twenty-four hours. She is one of those people who will be profiled in an NPR piece before she is thirty. New York magazine will include her in a “Thirty Under Thirty” article. She will be running a major publication, if not the world, before a dozen years pass.

  I don’t have the same hang-ups with age that Maya does— I’ve never had an agent or goals or a boyfriend for more than six months—but Delia Barker makes me feel old. She makes me feel like the game is already over, like twenty-nine is not the jumping off point that other people say it is, like my life has fallen short of its potential. She is that subtle reminder that you were never intelligent enough, never beautiful enough, never clever enough. You were just always you and that barely covered the cost of admission.

  No one has ever worried about my running them over.

  How To Build a Better Career

  By day, the mild-mannered Alex Keller is an architect.

  “Well, not an architect exactly. But I’m close. Only one year of school left,” he says, in response to my amazed statement.

  I’m wandering around his apartment, taking everything in. This time the bedroom door is open and I duck my head inside, noticing the drafting board in the corner, the shelves full of architecture texts, the models made from plywood that line the floor. I draw the obvious conclusion.

  “One year left?” I ask, flipping through a book on structural support. It has been liberally marked up with a pencil and a yellow highlighter. There are calculations in the margins that look like the formula for cold fusion.

  “One year.” Although he’s trying his best to hide it, Keller is nervous. He doesn’t know a thing about me and yet here I am, forcing his deepest, darkest secrets from him. This was not my intention. I meant only to come here and ask for his help in overthrowing Jane, but something more interesting has suddenly thrown itself into my path and I’m not about to walk away from it yet.

  When I realized his phantomness was the product of extended absences and not smoke and mirrors, I’d assumed that he was doing something useless with his free time. I’d figured he was out shopping or at home watching bad daytime television or sitting in a darkened movie theater in the last row daydreaming of things he’d like to do. It never occurred to me that he was actually doing those things.

  “How long?” I ask.

  “How long?” He draws his eyebrows together in confusion.

  “How long,” I say, nodding. “As in how long does it take to become an architect and how long have you been scamming Fashionista?”

  He flinches at the word scam and stares at me for a long time, trying to decide how much to reveal. It’s obvious from his stance that he doesn’t want to tell me a thing. He doesn’t want to reveal any of it, but he has enough sense to know when it’s too late to close the barn door. Vig Morgan is a reporter, even though she never actually gets to report on anything. My decoder ring might be a little rusty from disuse but I still know how to follow a lead. With one call to Walters and Associates, I could discover the entire truth. Keller would be hard-pressed to come up with a convincing lie and would know better than to tell me he was working on a story. Fashionista only covers interiors and we don’t care why a house stands as long as it does.

  “That’s a tricky question,” he says after the silence. “Cooper Union’s program is five years for a bachelor’s degree, but they accepted all my distribution requirements from my first undergrad degree, so that brought it down to four years. However, four years is for a full-time student, which I wasn’t in the beginning.”

  I don’t know if he’s being intentionally evasive or simply burying his response under a mountain of detail. “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  He looks at me with innocent green eyes. “Yes, it does. It takes four years to become an architect.”

  “You’ve been scamming Ivy Publishing for four years?”

  “Actually, I’ve been availing myself of their generosity for more than five years, but only on a part-time basis,” he says, as if this caveat excuses his behavior. It doesn’t. Nor does it explain Delia.

  “How long has someone else been doing your job?” I ask.

  Keller disappears into the kitchen and returns with a beer. “Do you want?” he asks, holding up a bottle of Beck’s.

  “Sure,” I say, accepting the drink. I’m standing awkwardly against one of th
e white walls and he indicates with a head gesture that I should take the couch. I look at it for a moment and then comply. Quik is lying on the floor next to the couch and he thumps his tail slowly as I lean down to pet him. Quik looks exactly the same as he did the day before and not at all like a dog whose only chance at happiness has been destroyed.

  “I’m sorry about yesterday,” I say sincerely, feeling bad about the damage I had unwittingly done. “I didn’t mean to screw anything up for you. I just came by to talk about something and never got around to it because I was having too much fun hanging out with you and Quik.”

  “That’s all right,” he says, sitting on the arm of the couch with his beer. “Quik’s a charmer. Kelly will come around. If not, we’ll find someone else. It’s not a disaster.”

  Although this is what I think, I’m not convinced that he really does. Just a half hour before he was railing at me for the awful turn I’d done his dog and now, because I know the truth of his identity, he’s trying to be agreeable.

  He takes a gulp of Beck’s before launching into the story of his perfidy. “Delia has been doing my job full-time for almost two years. My assistant before her, Howard, only did half of it. At that point, I was still telecommuting. I’d write, assign and edit articles between classes. I used a lot of writers from the West Coast because their hours were more amenable to my schedule. I could juggle the two things easily and the quality of the section didn’t suffer at all.”

  I’m not surprised he could do both. The events section isn’t brain surgery. The two-hundred-word blurbs on celebrity events are completely formulaic. You start with a sentence describing the room—flowers, candles, a few yards of hot-pink silk draped over giant Oscar statuettes. Then you get four or five gushing quotes from celebrities. If it’s a D&G party with a high school theme, you ask about their favorite subject. If it’s a Jaguar auction to raise money for AIDS research, you ask about their first car. If it’s a premiere for an action blockbuster about a shopping mall overrun by a tidal wave, then you ask about their worst shopping experience. Finally, you conclude with some zippy kicker that’s cute and smart. It’s fluff, complete and total fluff, and someone like Alex Keller can do it with his eyes closed.