Little Pink Slips Part 18

She pulled herself away, ran out the door and into the street.

Magnolia had expected Sat.u.r.day's event to be the equivalent of a lunchtime facial. It turned into a heart-lung transplant. Starting at 8:30, seventy journalists from Montana, the Dakotas, and western Minnesota a.s.sembled to praise and dissect one another in a drone of panel discussions. Only at 2:30, after the last cup of weak black coffee following pale chicken and limp broccoli bathed in hollandaise, did Misty approach the podium for Magnolia's introduction.

"I remember her as Maggie Goldfarb, my coeditor on the South High newspaper, but to all of you she's the famous New York magazine editor, the former editor in chief of Lady and now an editor with Bebe Blake on Bebe. Let's give it up for Magnolia Gold, Fargo girl made good!" Magnolia wondered if Misty, the former cheerleading captain, would finish with the splits.

Applause carried Magnolia to the front of the auditorium. She looked out at the sea of faces attached to Lands' End work clothes.

Embarra.s.sed to think of her Manhattan colleagues seeing her feted like a rock star, she waved for the crowd to stop clapping and signaled a tech wonk to begin her how-a-magazine-gets-made lecture. When Magnolia read that public speaking was many people's worst fear, she never got it. Put her in front of a microphone and a trained monkey took over. Where this creature came from-complete with stand-up comic timing-she never knew, and she could rarely sum mon her on command. Today the audience laughed and clapped at all the right places, and, in thirty minutes that felt to her like five, her presentation was already done.

"Questions?" she asked.

"What do you pay celebrities to be on the cover?" asked a Missoula court reporter.

"Absolutely nothing," Magnolia said. "No money changes hands." Just a lot of tsuris, she thought, plus hairsplitting negotiations over locations, photographers, writers, stylists, hair and makeup crew, and photo retouching.

"Your edit doesn't begin until page 102," complained a food editor from Bismarck. "Why are there this many ads?"

"Without advertising, cover prices for magazines would be so high no one would buy them," Magnolia said, although every reader b.i.t.c.hed about the same thing. "Newsstand sales are only a small part of the picture and it's money from ads that keeps the cost of subscriptions so low, even with soaring postal rates."

"Who gives a hoot about all those celebrities?" asked the fishing editor of a small Minnesota magazine.

"Much as I might love to feature a big-mouth ba.s.s on our cover, sir, we could hardly call a magazine Bebe and not go with Bebe Blake," Magnolia responded.

"How did you get your start?" inquired a white-haired woman with a gravelly voice.

"Miss Pierce?" Magnolia said. Could it be? Rosemary Pierce had been her ninth-grade English teacher, the woman who introduced her to Dorothy Parker and was the first nonrelative to tell her she had talent? "Is that you?"

"Yes, dear. We're all so proud of you." There was a ripple of applause.

"I moved to Manhattan and worked myself up from fetching cof fee," Magnolia began, and summarized the last twelve years of her life into two hundred and forty seconds. Magnolia let herself feel a tremor of pride. It would be good to end now, she thought, but unfor tunately one more hand was waving.

"Isn't it hypocritical to advertise cigarettes in the same issue with a '5 New Ways to Stop Cancer' story?" Misty asked, her face arranged in angelic innocence as she held up the current Bebe.

Magnolia locked eyes with her hostess and adolescent nemesis-a girl who got into Brown, where Magnolia only made the wait list, and then blew off the acceptance to attend the University of North Dakota, so she could join her mother's sorority. Of course it's hypocrit ical, Misty, Magnolia thought. But magazine publishing isn't a social justice organization, honey. Live a day in my shoes, you with your four-car garage, 5,000-square-foot house, six-burner Viking stove, wine cellar, media room, and snowmobile fleet.

"Those decisions are ultimately made by the publisher, not the edi tor," Magnolia answered and shrugged. "Division of church and state." But just the same, she resented the gotcha.

Satisfied or not by the answer, Misty thanked Magnolia and announced that the afternoon seminars, which Magnolia this instant chose to boycott, would begin. In fact, Magnolia decided that she would call the airline and see if she could stand by for the next plane out of Fargo. Later, she would tell Misty that an emergency back home prevented her from attending the c.o.c.ktail reception and evening dinner dance. Magnolia could live without the karaoke.

"Great presentation," a woman called to her as she made her way out the door. It was Miss Henderson, the head of the high-school physical ed department, who had accompanied Miss Pierce. So they really were a couple.

"Will you sign my copy of Bebe?" said the man from Missoula. Autographs! No one in the office was going to believe it, not that she would mention it. Magnolia finally reached the coat check.

"I had a feeling I'd find you here," he said. "Good speech. I'm impressed." Tyler smiled warmly.

She hadn't noticed him in the audience. "Tyler, thanks for com ing," she said, genuinely surprised. "You're my whole point for driving into Fargo," he said. "C'mon, I'll see you back to the hotel."

She could hardly refuse him, considering that her chances of hail ing a cruising taxi were right up there with finding a buffalo roam.

And she had to admit that throughout the morning, her mind had drifted to Tyler once, twice, twenty times. It was another Magnolia who had burned for him all through high school and well into fresh man year of college, but seeing Tyler brought her back. Magnolia realized she missed not just him but the girl she once was, a girl who wrote poetry for friends' birthdays, who cared more about a boy's call ing than whether she would get a raise. She wanted to spend a little more time with both of them, Tyler Peterson and Maggie Goldfarb.

Magnolia followed Tyler out to the street, where a layer of light snow was dusting the icy sidewalk. She climbed over a steep snow bank-rather nimbly, she thought, considering her heels-and he opened the pa.s.senger-side door to his minivan. During the ten-minute drive, neither of them spoke. Magnolia, at least, was busy crafting a tender but final good-bye speech-how she'd cherished their history, how she'd love to meet his family if they ever visited the Big Apple, how they could e-mail if he wanted. When they reached the hotel, she opened her mouth to launch her oratory, which Tyler interrupted.

"Not such a good idea to talk here," he said, unbuckling his seat belt. "Didn't you listen to the weather?"

She looked at him dubiously as he zipped past Christian rock on the radio until he found the local news.

"-you betcha, ten to twelve inches of the white stuff. Get your selves off the roads. Ya, gonna stick this time. Be a big one. Listen to Ole here. Throw a log on the fire, open a bottle, snuggle up with someone special. Settle in for the night. It's baby-making time in the Red River Valley."

"You heard the man," Tyler said and winked. "You wouldn't send an old friend out on the Interstate now, would you?"

Magnolia drew her coat around her in the frosty car as he reached for her hand. She gently pushed him away. "Seriously, won't your wife be worried about you?" she asked. "Jody's clear across the state for a 4-H event, staying at her parents'

farm with the kids. Judging from the weather report, she's not going anywhere."

"Pastor Peterson," she said slowly, "did you order this snowstorm?"

Magnolia walked out of the bathroom in her red plaid flannel pajamas and called Misty with apologies about skipping out on the evening's dinner. By the time she hung up, Tyler had stripped out of his clothes and slipped into the steaming hot tub placed squarely in the sitting area of the suite. Without his gla.s.ses, in the dimmed light, she could take him for the Tyler in her yearbook who'd signed, "I'll love you forever." The last time she'd seen his bare chest, it had eleven pale, blond hairs, which her teenage fingers had memorized. Now, a discreet patch of fur covered his sharply defined pecs. Clearly, a min ister's schedule allowed time to work out.

"You look about twelve in those pj's, Maggie."

"You were expecting, what, a little pink slip and high-heeled slip pers trimmed in marabou?" Tyler didn't need to know she had both items back home.

"You're everything I was expecting and more," he said, moving aside their second empty champagne bottle to pat the side of the tub.

"C'mon in."

"Tyler, you're ripped," Magnolia said. "And this is wrong."

"I'm not drunk-I'm happy. We've been together on that bed and now you're saying it's wrong?"

She was covered with goose b.u.mps-or was it guilt?

"We were both dressed on that bed," she said. "Well, practically dressed." In her ten years of postdivorce dating, Magnolia had redefined appropriate on an annual basis. She'd been with a college roommate's father; both her gynecologist and her periodontist, although not at the same time; and a senator twenty-five years her senior. But she'd never done the husband of a subscriber, at least not that she knew of. By the technical definition of any blow-jobs-don't-count, friends-with-benefits teenager in America, they hadn't had s.e.x yet. Yet Magnolia felt queasy and was fairly certain it wasn't from the drinking.

"I care for you, Tyler," she said. "I really do." And she really did, in a way that felt love-song pure-and appealingly naughty. "But this is wrong."

"It'll be my sin," he said.

Magnolia flashed to the perfume she'd discovered at a flea market the past fall. "My Sin," it was seductively labeled. She loved the pris tine bottle, but when she opened it, the 1950s Parisian scent had turned. Mosquito repellent smelled better. "My sin." Not auspicious.

"I've been dreaming about you for years-you broke my heart when you stopped writing me," he said. Magnolia didn't respond, in hopes that he would continue. "I have a good life," he said, "but I need for us to be together again, even if it's just for tonight. I have to know what it would feel like."

The last time she'd seen a man this emotionally exposed, she was watching a movie on Oxygen. His letters-short, dear, pleading- kept coming all through that first year at Michigan. She'd return to the dorm after a date and tuck them away in the bottom of her drawer, always meaning to respond the next day. But the girl who got A's in creative writing could never find the words.

Maybe she owed him. Magnolia took a what-the-h.e.l.l breath, divested herself of her pajama trousers, and walked over to the tub.

As she slipped in next to Tyler and eased her legs through the water, her gooseflesh disappeared. He pushed aside her pajama top and began to run his hands over her shoulders and b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

"Like silk," he said.

Thank you, La Prairie Caviar Luxe Body Cream. She responded to his familiar mouth as her hands slipped below the water. There was nothing boyish about him. Buzz . . . Buzz.

They proceeded to explore, above and below the water, but Magno lia kept hearing the buzz.

"That the doorbell?" he asked, dreamily.

"My BlackBerry," she said. "Your what? You lewd New York girls."

"Just let me check it," she said, hopping out of the tub and walking to her bag as she dripped water on the carpeting. Package to arrive by five . . . call ASAP, the message from Cameron said. "Just a minute," she said to Tyler who waited in the water while she dialed the front desk. "Any deliveries for me?" she asked.

"Golly, I'll check," said the front-desk clerk, who put her on hold.

Magnolia, with just a towel around her, stood freezing. "The FedEx guy was late on account of the storm," the girl at the front desk said, "but something just arrived and I'll send it up in a sec."

Magnolia went to the bathroom for a thick white robe and handed another to Tyler. "Get dressed, please," she said.

"But . . . ?"

"It won't take more than a moment," she said, answering the knock as he disappeared into the bathroom. The bellman handed her a box containing an early, unbound edition of Bebe, gun moll cover included. But it didn't take a moment to read the issue in full. It took a good forty minutes, followed by just as long a wait on the phone with Cameron to rectify mistakes.

"Can't this wait?" Tyler asked when she was halfway through the ritual. He'd sat down next to her on the bed and was playing with her as she continued to read.

"The thing is, no," she explained, with her hand over the receiver.

"The magazine pays for delays."

"Aren't your values a little out of whack?" he asked.

"Yours aren't?" she said.

"I'm just a guy, a guy in love, and G.o.d understands, if that's what you're wondering."

"You're not in love, Tyler," she said, rolling her eyes. "Well, maybe you are-I hope you are, with Mrs. Peterson."

"Take me seriously," he said.

"What I have to take seriously right now is this little bit of work."

She continued the task at hand, happy to opt out of a discussion that had taken a turn for the uncomfortable.

Tyler started to doze. By the time she had finished talking to New York, he was fast asleep. Magnolia gently outlined the muscles in his strong back, then moved down to between his legs, but he slept as if he were drugged, tossing and turning and mumbling.

What was he saying? The Lord's Prayer? Magnolia moved away from him, got under the covers, and tried to sleep, but she stayed awake most of the night, wondering if she hadn't got an e-ticket to h.e.l.l after all. A one-night stand with a married minister wasn't what she'd expected room service to deliver. The chemistry might be there, but it wasn't just a case of his being from Mars and her from Venus; they were from different galaxies. She could no more imagine him discussing the Whitney Biennial at a Manhattan dinner party than she could see herself running a bake sale in Wild Rice, North Dakota.

Magnolia rose at six A.M., baptized herself in a scorching shower, and hurriedly packed. As she tiptoed around the room, she savored one last look at Tyler's sleeping frame now stretched comfortably under the goose-down comforter. It took all of her willpower to slide into her coat and turn to leave. Before she closed the door, she kissed him softly on the lips and left a note by his pillow, still not sure that the writer in her had the words. "Dear sweet Tyler," it began. "G.o.d works in mysterious ways. . . ."

Chapter 2 4.

In the Bleak December.

"Magnolia, you're here!" Elizabeth waved at Magnolia as if they'd b.u.mped into each other in the Amazon rain forest. Was she not expecting to see her tonight?

When the invitation arrived for Jock and Pippi Flanagan's party- which kicked off the holiday season the first Monday of every December-Magnolia's reaction was relief even greater than usual.

She'd made the cut. Jock had been known to include the head of human resources, but not her counterpart in production; the pub lisher of a magazine without its editor, and vice versa. The chosen ones didn't scan the room to view who else was there as much as to see who wasn't. Even though the gathering was called from six to eight, to max out their exposure, guests tended to arrive exactly at seven, after-with uncharacteristic cheer-they greeted Mike McCourt, who decamped to the corner of Park and Ninety-fourth for note taking. Tomorrow, the merrymakers would devour Mike's recital of the guest list, second in popularity only to his column about the Conde Nast Christmas lunch, whose seating plan he a.n.a.lyzed like a pur loined state department doc.u.ment.

Scary folk made up only a third of the group: the rest was a flesh and-blood Q-rating of Manhattan's reigning air kissers. As Magnolia checked her coat-for tonight, mink was fine-she looked around.

The first two luminaries she spotted were the former mayor and his second wife, who'd attached herself to Natalie Simon like a barnacle.

"Honey, she can suck up all she wants," Elizabeth whispered, her Southern accent switched on for the party, as if she'd pressed CHARM.

"Natalie's never going to make her a columnist. Doesn't she realize the ex-mayor's ex-wife is one Natalie's best friends?"

"Pippi, you remember Magnolia Gold?" Jock said as she worked her way to the front of the receiving line. Pippi Flanagan looked at Magnolia blankly, though this was the third year in a row that she'd attended their party. "Pleased to make your acquaintance," Pippi said, fingering her dainty pearls as her eyes shifted from knee-jerk polite ness to unbridled delight. Magnolia turned to see who'd arrived. She saw the top of a silvery head. Was it her friend, Dan Brewster? She started to walk in his direction and then saw, no, it wasn't Dan. That handsome hair belonged to Bill Clinton, with Hillary.

As well-wishers swarmed around Bill and Hill, Magnolia was pushed from the foyer into the Flanagan's double-size parlor. She heard Bebe before she saw her.

"The magazine's doing fantastic," she was crowing to a small circle, including Darlene and the head of Glamazon. Magnolia won dered if Bebe even recognized the woman who'd decided not to buy ads in Bebe. "Just wait till you see our next cover-designed by my secret weapon back at the office," Bebe said.

Noticing Magnolia, Bebe charged toward her, her long sleeves flap ping. Tonight she was Mrs. Claus with cleavage, dressed in red velvet trimmed in white fur.

"Happy holidays, Magnolia, What, no drink? Let's. .h.i.t the bar." She corralled Magnolia into an alcove off the other end of the parlor. "I'm so glad you're here," she said, handing Magnolia a cup of bourbon heavy eggnog and quickly downing a gla.s.s herself. "Let's show Jock the cover. It's in my bag."

"Bebe, this isn't the place," Magnolia said. She could hear the ador ing crowd that had swelled around the Clintons, and expected that Jock was reveling at its epicenter. Bebe began to fumble for the cover just as Jock ushered the royal couple into the parlor.

"Let's keep that cover between us, okay?" Magnolia said, but Bebe's attention had moved on.

"Holy f.u.c.k, it's him, isn't it?" she said, fixated on the former presi dent. "And her." She began to dart in the couple's direction.

Magnolia saw a flicker of terror in Jock's eye. As the former presi dent was swarmed by wide-eyed females, Jock swiftly created a no-fly zone around Hillary, whom he adroitly steered toward a cl.u.s.ter of kingpin advertisers. His moves were as smooth as a swan dive.

For a split second Bebe stood paralyzed, then replaced her aston ishment with cavalier amus.e.m.e.nt. She turned to Magnolia. "Gotta get to my next party-one with real food," she said. "Want to join me?"

"But there's a whole spread in the next room," where Magnolia could hear Darlene.

"Suit yourself. I've had it with this crowd. An eggnog for the road and I'm history." She padded off to the bar, leaving Magnolia to head for the buffet to make sure that Darlene and the other Scary disciples registered that she was here.

By the standards of a ten-room Fifth Avenue duplex, the Flana gans' dining room was small. Magnolia found herself bosom to bosom with Darlene, directly under a portrait of one of Pippi Flanagan's dis approving ancestors.

"Have you met Raven?" Darlene asked, smearing caviar on a blini, popping it in her mouth, and motioning toward an exceedingly tall woman with hair and clothing as dark as her name. "Raven Kensing ton-Woods, Magnolia Gold. Raven's visiting," Darlene said as she chewed. "From London."