Little Pink Slips Part 19

As if that weren't obvious the minute the woman opened her mouth.

"Grand party," the Brit said. "Are you another of Jock's lovelies?"

"Are you?" Magnolia asked.

Raven laughed like wind chimes. As if on cue, Jock appeared and linked arms with her and Magnolia. "Everyone drinking up?" he said.

"I'm told you press people here in the States don't like to drink,"

Raven said. "Not like us, who end every b.l.o.o.d.y workday with c.o.c.ktails."

"You're going to have to change that, Raven," Jock said, and moved on as happy host.

"Here for long?" Magnolia asked Raven.

"Not likely," Raven said. "I doubt you all could afford me." She let her wind chimes tinkle one more time, tossed her sable hair, and floated off with Darlene toward the bar.

"Who-or what-was that?" Natalie asked, sidling up to Magno lia as they watched heads turn toward Raven, who cut an inky wake in a crowd which had abandoned its customary black for hits of festive color. Natalie wore a thigh-high caftan in blue iridescent silk, gold bangles on each wrist, and slouchy, calfskin boots. Her hair was in its customary Wilma Flintstone do.

" ' Tis some visitor tapping at my chamber door,' " Magnolia said.

Natalie took a second to get Magnolia's reference. But she was an English major, too. "'Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,' " Natalie recited. "I take it that's the Raven SomethingSomething I've read about?"

"Only her and nevermore," Magnolia said. "Or at least I hope there's nothing more."

"Don't do one of your paranoid numbers-I hear she's in town about one of the cheesy tabloid jobs," Natalie said, always making a point of distinguishing Dazzle from the only slightly trashier celebrity magazines that had overtaken the newsstands. "Stop think ing about that pea-brained Page Six item. Everyone else has."

"Okay," Magnolia said. "I'll try." She decided now would be a good time to leave the party and collected her coat from the attendant in Jock's lobby. Despite Natalie's order, she couldn't stop obsessing over whether Raven might be the mysterious Englishwoman rumored to be after her job, and, to clear her head, she started to walk south rather furiously.

Soon enough, she was in midtown. She pa.s.sed Barney's Christmas windows, loaded with insider innuendo, walked over to Bergdorf's, whose displays were dripping with more layered opulence than she'd ever recalled, and past Cartier, whose whole building was wrapped in a red bow. She ultimately stationed herself in front of the towering tree at Rockefeller Center, standing before it as if it were the great Oz ready to spit out answers. Why can't anything be simple, she won dered? Not a store window. Not a party. Not a guy. Not a job.

Out of the corner of her eye, a tall man in a blue knit ski hat put his arm around a woman's waist and pulled her close for a kiss in front of the tree. Magnolia did a double-take. Could that be Tyler?

Magnolia blinked and the man disappeared. Had she made him up?

She walked toward the skating rink in an attempt to see him again, weaving in and out of the crowd until she spotted him. He turned.

Blue Hat had a cropped red beard. Not Tyler. But why could she not stop thinking about him? Since she'd left the hotel room yesterday, she'd been marinating in both guilt and a persistent emotion she couldn't name that was dangerously close to longing. Magnolia could see him, taste him, hear him, and smell him.

Was she so needy and vulnerable that she'd lost all common sense?

If they'd spent a whole weekend together, they probably would have run out of conversation by Sat.u.r.day afternoon.

Had she used Tyler? She'd discussed their time together with Abbey, who tried to convince her it had been the other way around.

You can't think about him, Magnolia told herself. And she didn't for most of the walk home, because she was back to ruminating about Raven, a certain head-of-another-masthead who Magnolia, informed by her intuition, knew had made the trip with the hope of becoming her replacement.

At the very least, Magnolia had distractions. Just as magazines glorified Christmas, whipping female readers into a froth of insomnia inducing, chemical-dependency-seeking stress as they compared their ragged efforts to the results of photo shoots engineered by teams of professionals, so, too, the industry romanticized the season for its own amus.e.m.e.nt. First, there were the parties. It was true what Magnolia had told Raven: during the rest of the year, if there weren't a profit motive to get together at the end of the workday, staffs splintered off to Westchester, New Jersey, Con necticut, and four of the five boroughs. (Magnolia had yet to meet anyone who worked on a magazine and lived on Staten Island.) But in December, they made up for it, with day after day and night after night of bonhomie, both real and faux.

Scary, for instance, traditionally invited every employee to the once-glorious Tavern on the Green, which they rented out in its entirety. Mail-room attendants showed off MTV-worthy dance moves with rhythm-challenged editors as partners. Those who didn't dance feasted from a pile of shrimp the size of the national debt.

For Magnolia, there was also Darlene's tree-tr.i.m.m.i.n.g party at her Upper East Side brownstone. The evening masqueraded as a family fete, her velvet-clad daughters-Priscilla, Camilla, and Annabel- circulating silver trays of canapes to the advertisers Darlene treated as her nearest and dearest. Magnolia knew that the magazine paid the bill. But who was she to complain? Lady used to do the same for the staff brunch she threw at her apartment, featuring an ec.u.menical spread of Zabar's finest Nova Scotia salmon, sweet potato latkes, and Christmas cookies she had baked herself from the magazine's recipes.

But this year, she wouldn't be giving her party. In its place was Bebe's Nashville rib-and-brew bash at Blue Smoke.

But that wasn't all. Until the industry flew west for skiing three weeks later, every venue from Mulberry to Madison was filled with mistletoe madness. The Estee Lauder gang, for example, invited the town's top editors in chief and beauty editors to a discreet c.o.c.ktail party at the 21 Club. Glamazon staged a disco night around the pool at Soho House. And Scary threw an official no-executive-left-behind lunch at Daniel, which was decked out with tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs fit for Dr. Zhivago. Between courses, Daniel Boulud himself greeted the guests to make sure the food was perfect. It was. Lunch ended with gifts- enameled cuff links for the gentlemen, fur shrugs for the ladies.

Presents flowed through the season. Magnolia gave and Magnolia got. For the staff, she decided on long, kiwi green gloves which Ruthie Kim ordered at a discount, though Magnolia footed the bill. She debated whether or not to stretch for the splurge. She wasn't the edi tor in chief anymore, and maybe her colleagues wouldn't expect it. But history and ego convinced her to go the distance; she didn't want to appear stingy, considering what she raked in from PR firms, grateful contributors, and the more senior staff members. While this year she didn't acc.u.mulate as much swag as in previous seasons, she adored the satin evening bag with its Swarovski crystal clasp, the cashmere hoodie and sweatpants, and best of all, a mad bomber hat from Cameron.

The presents were exhilarating, but the fake fun wasn't. By today-an afternoon on the final week of work before Christmas- Magnolia was as limp as the last piece of tinsel in the package. Natalie had invited her to Dazzle's ho-ho-hoedown. Magnolia sat at her desk and realized that she didn't have a thing to wear-anything party-worthy in her closet was, by now, at the cleaners or had been on view again and again, and she hadn't gone shopping in at least two months.

Briefly she considered if, for her, that could be as credible a sign of depression as a sudden change in appet.i.te. No problem. The fashion department could surely help, at least with the clothing challenge.

Remembering a plum velvet suit she knew had just been returned from a photo shoot, she walked into the fashion closet.

As Magnolia began foraging in the racks, she heard a husky male voice at the far end of the crammed room. "What the h.e.l.l are you doing?" it said.

"C'mon, babe," Bebe answered him, loud and clear. "I'm talking fun. Have another gla.s.s of Pinot Noir. I took you for a grown-up."

"No, thanks," he said. Magnolia heard a tussle. "No," he shouted.

"Get away . . . not my type."

"Sweetheart, you're too young for a type." Bebe laughed loudly.

"I can teach you a few things. You'll thank me for this later. And haven't I been good to you?"

"Yes, but-"

"Agree, cute b.u.t.t." Magnolia stuck her head through the racks just as Bebe started to unbuckle his belt. With the grace of a Bond girl, she pushed Bebe and Polo apart, shrieking, "Bebe, do the terms 'statutory rape' and 'jail bait' mean nothing to you?"

Bebe looked up, startled. Her beady eyes barely blinked.

"Paws off, Bebe," Magnolia said, having no idea where her convic tion was coming from. "And you, boy, out!" Polo bolted.

"Calm down, you little buzz kill," Bebe cackled at Magnolia. "I am educating this kid. Don't get your t.i.t in a ringer. And what's with the CSI Investigates bit anyway? Why are you snooping?"

"I didn't think I had to put on a HazMat suit to walk into our fash ion closet," Magnolia said, staying close to Bebe and talking in a hushed tone. "Why I'm here is irrelevant. What part of 'normal' don't you understand?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Bebe said, walking away. "I've always found 'normal' was highly subjective and sadly overrated. Get out of my face, Mag-knowl-ya. You're trying to turn a PG13 short into an X-rated miniseries. Go party and forget this happened."

"Your secret is safe with me," Magnolia said to Bebe's back. You sleazy child molester, she said to herself.

"And me." Magnolia spun around. Wide-eyed, her a.s.sistant, Sasha, had watched the whole thing.

Chapter 2 5.

Fattened Up for the Kill.

"Suing?" Magnolia asked. "Did you say they're suing?" It was odd for the phone to ring at 6:15 A.M., and even odder for an early morning caller to be Natalie.

"Magnolia," Natalie said, "you stayed too long in the sticks. Stop sounding like you're calling a hog."

"Natalie, I'm usually hitting my snooze b.u.t.ton about now," Mag nolia pleaded. "Can you just give me the net-net?"

"Let me spell it out. A little spook told our friends at the Post a story about Bebe coming on to Nathaniel Fine in the fashion closet."

Magnolia woke up fast. This was huge. "Back up!" Magnolia said.

"Someone tipped off my friends the Fines, and Nathaniel's dad is a $1,000-an-hour litigator," Natalie said. "Put together the pieces.

We're screwed. It's on page three, and G.o.d knows where else it will end up." Just when Magnolia was going to speak, Natalie started again, yelling so loud Magnolia had to hold the receiver away from her ear. "I see what you must have been thinking. Bebe's reputation gets trashed. The company pulls out of her magazine. Lady rises from the dead."

"Whoa," Magnolia yelled back. "Are you accusing me? Of the leak? That's absurd, Natalie. You are so off." Twenty seconds pa.s.sed before Natalie said "You'd swear you know nothing about this?"

"I didn't say that." Magnolia paused. "I saw it all." Magnolia won dered if she was a moron to have admitted this, but Nathaniel would most likely report it eventually. "But call a newspaper? What possible good could come of that? I like Nathaniel. And he's just a kid." Why was she squirmy and defensive? d.a.m.n Natalie for having that effect on her.

"Listen, I said nothing. To anyone." Abbey, she decided, didn't count.

"Oops, hold on." Magnolia waited while Natalie took another call.

"Can't talk, Cookie," Natalie said as she clicked back on. "Jock and Elizabeth conference call."

Natalie called her Cookie-she must be calming down, Magnolia hoped, as she began surfing the net and TV to see what play this was getting. So far, nothing on the morning shows, though the blogs were banging the item as if the United States had invaded St. Barth's. She threw a coat over her nightgown and ran to the newsstand.

BEBE PLAYS WITH FINE BOY TOY headlined a story accompanied by Nathaniel's water-polo team photo, and either the Post had digitally enhanced his crotch or their intern had a future on male greeting cards. Magnolia raced back to her apartment, threw twenty dollars at her neighbor's sixth-grader to walk the dogs, and dressed so fast that it was only when she was in a taxi that she realized her boots didn't match.

The corridors at Scary were strangely quiet as she walked to her office. Magnolia immediately called in Sasha and closed the door.

"How did this item get in the Post and every f.u.c.king blog?" she asked, throwing the paper on the desk. "Did you rat them out?" Mag nolia knew Sasha had been an eyewitness in the fashion closet; what she didn't know was if there'd been other flies on the wall that she hadn't noticed.

"Not me exactly," Sasha answered, biting her lip and looking like a high school soph.o.m.ore.

"Talk," Magnolia said.

"I was in a bar last night, drinking to the point where this I-banker was looking cute, and when he asked me where I worked, I found myself describing Bebe and Polo-the material was just too rich. He joked about calling it into the Post, that he knew someone who knew someone who knew someone."

"Sasha, do you realize what you've done? Polo's dad is a partner at a major law firm. Making noises about suing for child abuse, s.e.xual hara.s.sment, G.o.d knows what. You didn't think, did you? This is breaking-the-sound-barrier bad-for the magazine, the company, all of us." Magnolia stared at the ceiling and drummed her fingers on the desk. Though she might have made the same mistake herself when she was twenty-three, she nonetheless felt like ripping off Sasha's face.

"I'm so sorry-I just wanted to impress this guy," Sasha sobbed, as she pulled a tissue from the box on Magnolia's desk. "And I wanted to screw Bebe."

"You hit it out of the park on that last one," Magnolia said.

"Plus, I thought it might help you."

"Help me? If you wanted to help me, why didn't you at least warn me about this item? That would have helped me."

"But I only found out when I read it on the train."

"Okay," Magnolia said, finding a quieter voice. "Well, you're going to help me now. Get me every clip, every inch of loop tape, every Web site. We've got to be all over this. Now blow your nose and get out of here before someone walks in on us." She motioned for Sasha to leave, but her a.s.sistant didn't move.

"Am I going to lose my job?" she asked, sniffling.

"Really, Sasha," Magnolia said. "No one's going to lose her job."

Hopefully. "But if anything like this ever happens again, I want my cell phone ringing, my BlackBerry popping. I want a frigging blimp outside my window. Capeesh? What I don't want is to be woken up to hear about it from Natalie Simon."

"I get it," Sasha said, still trembling. "No problem."

"And while we're at it, Sasha, don't ever say that again, ever!"

Magnolia screamed. "Now go act normal and don't breathe a b.l.o.o.d.y word to anybody."

As Sasha walked out, Cameron walked in, holding the Post. He closed the door behind him.

"You know, Magnolia," he said, chuckling. "I'm only thirty-six, and up until now I have never felt old. But Bebe fondling Polo? I'm crushed. And here I thought Felicity was the weirdo."

"Felicity?" Magnolia said. "She's just toady."

"Where Bebe is a real predator?"

"In the Hollywood sense, yes," Magnolia said. "Thinks everyone and everything is available for her amus.e.m.e.nt."

"So it's true," Cameron said. "Just when I was starting to like her."

"If you must know, I was, too," Magnolia admitted. She'd been liv ing off the fumes of her Hugh Grant evening.

"Well, is there's anything I can do?"

"You can," Magnolia said. "Try to make sure people do some work today."

All day long, that's exactly what Magnolia tried to do. There was a numbing dearth of new information. She didn't hear from Natalie, Jock, or even Elizabeth. She definitely didn't hear from Bebe. The only call came from Legal, and other than Cameron, the sole person on the staff to acknowledge the incident was Felicity.

"A lot of hooey over nothing," Bebe's designated hitter said when she paid a visit to Magnolia. "This country is too litigious. And when a celebrity gets in the mix, all anyone sees is a cash register. It's not as if that snot-nosed Polo needs the money. Poor Beebsy."

"Poor Beebsy?" Magnolia said. "She was taking advantage of that boy!"

"It was a setup," Felicity sniffed. "Nathaniel exploited Bebe's good nature-after she gave him the opportunity to design a cover of a national magazine! It's shameful. I'm urging Bebe to take her lawyer's advice to countersue."

"Countersue?" Magnolia wailed. "There were witnesses."

"Witness-only one-and she has an ax to grind," Felicity said icily, apparently unaware that Sasha had been in the closet. "Magnolia, dear, I hate to break it to you, but you're not the most credible observer."