Little Pink Slips Part 4

"You shrews take it down a notch," Magnolia said. "What you don't know is that this week a gentleman sent me flowers."

Abbey and Lily swiveled their creaky vinyl chairs to face Magnolia. "The designer I worked with on the Lady redo sent me a magnificent orchid in a tasteful white china pot."

"He's looking for more work," Lily said. "Doesn't count."

Magnolia hated that Lily might be right.

"Is he interested in Magnolia the delightful divorcee, or Magnolia the on-the-rise editor?" Abbey asked.

"I'm trying to decide whether I should find out. When we finally spoke last night, he suggested meeting for a drink."

"You accepted?" Abbey asked.

"Gave him the 'I'm on deadline.' "

"Technically, he's not your employee," she pointed out. "You should have said yes."

"Okay, I'll ask him to join me at Natalie's party. It's a business thing, so I can't embarra.s.s myself that badly." In fact, bringing along Harry, who'd only recently moved here from London, might even elevate her stock. He was a hot design consultant, and Americans always thought anyone who sounded like Ralph Fiennes was profoundly intelligent.

Lily gave Magnolia's fingertips a final coat. Abbey's nails were now a shiny crimson, as they sat at the dryers at the far end of the shop. Magnolia noticed the latest Lady, along with any number of tattered Peoples. "Good, we've escaped Lily," Magnolia whispered, as she began thumbing through her own magazine. As soon as Lady was printed, she always found at least two dozen things she wished she'd done differently. "I've hit a little, ah, speed b.u.mp at work." She filled her in on the Michael's breakfast.

"She brought a cat to a midtown restaurant?" Abbey asked.

"That was the highlight. This whole Bebe thing is spiraling out of control. Very soon it's going to be the cheese stands alone, and I will be a piece of very stinky Limburger." Magnolia tried for breezy, but she knew Abbey would see straight through to the hollow spot inside of her that exposed her worst-case scenario. Humiliation! Loneliness! Finan cial ruin! That's what she saw for herself if Jock pulled the plug on her magazine. Working didn't just pay the bills-it made her whole.

"You've got to talk to Jock," Abbey insisted. "Get him to see reason."

"Natalie thinks that's a vile idea."

"Natalie? The only good advice she ever gave you was never to incriminate yourself in e-mail. If your magazine turns into Bebe Blake's Christmas letter, Natalie has nothing to lose. Fight!"

"Jock's totally dollar-happy," Magnolia said. "I'm afraid his mind is made up. He thinks going with Bebe is a blue-chip deal."

"How can you be sure?" Abbey asked.

Magnolia didn't know whom to believe. Her friend's love was never in dispute, but she thought like an artist, not a corporate strategist, while Natalie had stayed at the top of her game for close to twenty-five years, when some colleagues as young as forty were already roadkill.

"I say, 'Feed me,' " Magnolia said. "Omelets at Nice Matin?"

"Bye, Lily," they shouted. "See you next Sat.u.r.day."

"Don't forget your newspaper," Lily called out.

Magnolia had almost left her Post behind. "Hold up, guys. Let's see what Miss Universe has in store for me today."

Can you trust other people's advice? Today's stars warn that not even close colleagues and confidants can be relied upon to share good information. They may not be trying to deceive you, but how do you know that they themselves have not been deceived?

Always with the questions, that witch. This mess, she could see, she'd have to figure out on her own.

Chapter 8.

Cleavage Never Hurts.

Magnolia had forgotten how much effort a woman needed to look good, really good.

The week had been too busy for a fake-and-bake at Brazilian Bronze, so the night before Natalie's party on Sat.u.r.day, starting at midnight, she anointed herself with self-tanner, which dried while she fell asleep right before Ingrid Bergman discovers Cary Grant was actually single in Indiscreet. Fortunately, the next morning she awoke even and bronzed, not like the mutant tiger she'd feared.

Magnolia ran at eight, the earliest hour Abbey deemed civilized for weekends. Her shiatsu ma.s.sage guy, Eli Birdsong, showed up at 9:30 for an hour of bliss-by-kneading. After a quick shower, she had just enough time to cab it to Frederic Fekkai for an eyebrow shaping and blowout. Satisfied that her stylist didn't completely obliterate the body in her hair-the ramrod-straight look made her nose look the size of a m.u.f.fin-she tipped handsomely and walked up Madison Avenue, scoping out shops to see if she could improve on the clothes she'd laid out. So, of course, she was late for this week's manicure.

It was 4:30 by the time Magnolia got home. Biggie and Lola a.s.saulted her, hyper and indignant-they'd been deprived of Sat.u.r.day afternoon's usual rampage at the dog run. One short whip around the block was all the time Magnolia could spare if she was going to detox even a little, look over a bit of work, and do her makeup right. She'd drawn the line at a professional job, even if Natalie's guest list would feature a column's worth of bold-faced names. In fact, now that she thought about it, she'd have to scratch the work. Harry was picking her up at 6:45.

As she poured the last of her precious and now extinct Ralph Lauren Safari bath beads into the tub, the phone rang.

"Running a tad late," Harry said. "I'll bring round the car and have the doorman ring up. Will you forgive me for being the kind of cad who expects a lady to meet him on the street?"

I am such a sucker for a proper Brit accent, Magnolia thought. Give him a Hugh Grant stutter and I'd marry him even if he were a televi sion evangelist. "Take your time, Harry," Magnolia said. "We'll make an entrance."

She poured herself a gla.s.s of Pinot Grigio, switched on a Norah Jones CD, and let the glorious bubbles wash off the week, which she gave a B plus. On the upside, she, Cam, Fredericka, and the gang had-as of 10:59 the previous night-shipped the September issue.

They'd needed to work late every night. September was always a monster-three-minute makeup, fall fashion must-haves, a sixteen page parenting section underwritten by Toys "R" Us, and one article she knew each Lady reader would memorize: the five secrets to getting a good night's sleep. That last coverline alone would sell the issue. The women in America may as well have a big pajama party between three and five in the morning-the adult female half of the country was all up, ruminating.

But the best part of the September issue was Magnolia's off-the-charts cover girl: a sweeter-than-Krispy-Kreme portrait of Kate Hudson and her adorable, hipster toddler. Home run. Eighty percent newsstand sell-through, at least, maybe 85, plus she'd be the envy of every other editor.

Magnolia had had to wait almost two years for that photo shoot, performing due diligence with Kate's celebrity flack by featuring sev eral of her less fabulous stars-actresses way past their sell-by dates or no-name wannabes. It was a form of blackmail the industry shrugged off and accepted. The cabal of publicists who controlled celebrity coverage put all the magazines in a rotation. This meant that it would be at least nine months-when Kate's next movie premiered-until one of Lady's compet.i.tors would be allowed to feature her on a cover. That's if the publicists were true to their word. Some times a promise was a promise, and sometimes just a suggestion. An editor could think her cover was locked, only to be told there were "extenuating circ.u.mstances" . . . which turned out to be that the celebrity preferred to be on Vanity Fair.

It took at least two years to get to the front of the line and by then, anything could happen. A young mom celebrity could, for example, decide once her baby became older, "for security reasons," never to allow her child's face on a magazine again. Editors had it easier at People or Dazzle, Magnolia thought. They used paparazzi photographs, although the fights for the best ones got ugly and monstrously expen sive. Still, it didn't matter if the star had lettuce in her teeth, as long as readers recognized her. Magnolia and all the editors of more traditional publications needed a perfect studio shot, where the celebrity locked eyes with the reader, Mona Lisastyle. And forget about recycling a photograph from a few years ago. Any of the stars you'd want bought the rights to all the photos that had ever been taken. Every single one. It was an arcane system. You needed the approval of a celebrity's publicist to reprint a photo and if you tried to sneak around and approach the photographer or his rep directly, they would alert the publicist who, by midday, would be on the phone, taking your name in vain as she drove to work in L.A.

So the Kate Hudson cover was good news, very good. On the down side, though, Magnolia hadn't been able to meet with Jock. It took her all of Sunday to convince herself that confronting him-make that, gently reasoning with him-was her best move. His a.s.sistant had rescheduled an appointment three times over the course of Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Then Jock flew off with Darlene, Charlotte Stone, the publisher of Elegance, and two other publishers to weasel the Detroit car lords into doing a lucrative joint buy of Scary ads. Magnolia tried not to think about the whole nasty business. It was time for the evening's first big decision. What to wear? She didn't know whether tonight was the equivalent of a budget meeting washed down with a few martinis or a potentially life-altering first date. Magnolia tried on the new Tuleh floral. It showed tasteful "I'm a woman, not just a working girl" cleavage, and Abbey had lent her a pair of dangly tourmaline earrings that made her eyes look as green as granny apples. Her orange mini and halter? Did it say "festive dress," as Natalie had requested, or "tranny hooker"? Should she go for understated chic with the Chloe cream eyelet pants and semisheer shirt? The outfit was her seasonal splurge-she could have gone to Paris for a week on what she'd spent-and now she wondered if it looked like she'd grabbed it from Forever 21. Maybe she should default to her five-year-old black Gucci pants (thank you, Abbey, for insisting that Loehmann's wasn't a waste of time) and compliment generating $69 Pearl River chinoiserie jacket. With that getup at least no one would be staring at her chest.

Dressing for Natalie's little party was harder than writing a resume. In terms of self-promotion, more depended on it.

Tuleh won. Cleavage never hurt. As Magnolia slipped on the frilly frock, the doorman rang to announce Harry. She gave herself a spritz of scent, slicked her lips with gloss, and looked in the tall mirror that leaned against the foyer wall. Good to go.

She'd never seen Harry in anything but one of his dark business suits, b.u.t.ton-up shirt, and narrow ties. But there he was in a pale pink shirt, linen trousers, and a three-b.u.t.ton black jacket. And d.a.m.n he had blue eyes, blue as a '57 Chevy. His wavy brown hair, combed straight back, looked as if he'd just stepped out of the shower, an image she'd never considered until this very moment.

Harry walked around to give her a peck on one cheek and then the other-he smelled good, too. He opened the door of his car. Magnolia hated to be behind the wheel of a car-she didn't know a clutch from a carburetor-but she was reasonably sure this was a vintage Jaguar.

Sinking into its nicely broken-in tobacco-brown leather upholstery as they headed toward Westchester, Magnolia once again thanked Harry for Uma, who was still in full bloom on her coffee table, and told him for at least the fifth time how much she liked his Lady redesign. "Now tell me what you're not telling me," Harry said, laughing and turning his eyes from the Henry Hudson Parkway to Magnolia's face-and if she wasn't mistaken, her legs. The self-tanning had been worth the effort.

"Just that I'm not sure the design's going to go forward," Magnolia said, hating that corporate-speak was the best she could do, wearing a girlie dress on a balmy June night with Diana Krall in the air and a handsome man to her left.

"This toiling artist demands a reason," Harry said.

"My publisher has an idiot big idea, high concept, never gonna hap pen, but I have to make nice."

"Big how?"

"Bebe Blake."

"She's big all right." Harry roared. "We're talking wide-angle lens. But I'm not connecting the dots. What does she have to do with Lady?" "Bebe wants to do an Oprah. Start an empire, mold nubile minds, preach to the little people. The Scary folks are thinking of giving her Lady on a silver platter."

"Which makes you the turkey?"

"Stuffed, trussed, eaten alive."

"Magnolia, luv. Dial back. They can't just give away a magazine.

Utter rubbish. Wouldn't get all worked up if I were you. The folks at Scary have got to be smarter than this."

"Have you met Jock Flanagan?"

"Only in Liz Smith."

Magnolia raised her eyebrows and gave him a long, skeptical look.

"I take your point," he said.

As Harry smiled at her, she noticed a dimple. That and what a fast driver he was. They were already beyond Scarsdale, sailing through that slice of good-school-district burbs to which most of Magnolia's college friends had migrated with their reliable husbands and fast track toddlers. By the time Exit 4 on 684 came into view, an hour had melted away. They'd covered all the safe subjects: their first jobs (his was at Rolling Stone), their last vacations (Barcelona for her, Reykjavik for him), and their dogs (could she warm up to a hyperactive Jack Russell?).

Magnolia guided Harry through the twists and turns of what New Yorkers loved to refer to as "the country." Then they entered the grounds. It was 8:30. Showtime.

Beyond stands of evergreens and birch, elegant gray gates parted on a winding road. At the top of a hill stood not a condo development but the house Natalie had christened Simply Simon. Every lamp and chandelier was ablaze, rivaling dozens of Chinese lanterns strung along an open front porch and swinging from old oaks in the soft breeze. The only thing missing was Bambi. That and the paparazzi- though for all she knew, Natalie might have hidden a crew in the bushes. They got out of the car, handed the key to the valet parking attendant, and walked to the front door.

The first time Magnolia laid eyes on Natalie's house, her envy was like a rash. Natalie and her husband had bought their mini-estate only three years before. After a contractor had gone belly up, he'd unloaded his family dream house and its nine hilly acres to Natalie and Stan ("all cash") Simon. Within a year, Natalie had nestled a swimming pool and Jacuzzi into rocks that looked cloned from the set of The Flintstones-if Wilma and Fred had lived beside a man-made waterfall and hot tub. She and her decorator had tag-teamed at every antique show on the Eastern seaboard for insta collections of McCoy pottery, folk art tchotchkes, and flower-sprigged English china, which crowded into imposing cupboards with their requisite peeling paint.

Outside, weathered European garden furniture dotted the lush, rolling grounds. An herb garden sat next to two tennis courts surrounded by a tasteful log fence. A cutting garden wasn't far from the basketball court and campfire circle, should anyone have a k.u.mbaya moment.

"Cookie, you made it," Natalie shouted as she encircled Magnolia with a warm hug. Natalie wore a heavily embroidered purple kimono over silky black cigarette pants. Her hair was secured by chopsticks.

Magnolia was glad she'd ixnayed her Chinatown jacket.

"And you must be . . . ?" Natalie asked. "Harry. Harry James," he said as he extended his hand.

Natalie clasped Harry's hand with both of her own. "Harry, I'm so glad you could join us." But when Harry began to thank her, she had already turned to receive the next couple, whom Magnolia recognized from the Sunday Times Evening Hours photos as a Park Avenue plastic surgeon and his bony wife. Natalie didn't bother to introduce Harry and her, and motioned them toward the door to the back veranda. Waiters circulated with delicate walnut-stuffed artichokes, gooey Brie tartlets, and spears of asparagus to dip in a lemony sauce.

Magnolia and Harry maneuvered past a throng to the bar, trying to avoid eye contact with the head of Scary circulation, who looked like the missing Marx brother but who, sadly, lacked the family's wit.

Drink in hand, Magnolia noticed an old-fashioned glider at the end of the porch. She weighed whether she might park herself with Harry for a respectable length of time, dodge the small talk with other guests, and get to know this man just a little better. She didn't know if it was due to the magical combination of dusk and high-voltage electricity-or the fact that she hadn't eaten so much as a six-ounce yogurt all day-but during the ride, he seemed to have grown more attractive.

No such luck. "Magnolia, speaking of the devil . . ." It was Darlene, coming at her like a tornado and speaking with that natural disaster's force. "Charlotte and I were wondering if you'd be here. I knew you were a Wong girl."

Magnolia had almost forgotten that the party was in tribute to Dr. Winnie Wong, the dermatologist, and Darlene and Charlotte were patients, too. Not that Natalie would have left them out even if tonight's celebration honored the a.s.sistant to the head of sanitation in Queens. Charlotte and Natalie were the best of friends and Darlene was, well, Darlene, who got herself invited everywhere.

Charlotte, she suspected, had done a bit better at the Chanel sample sale than she had. As Magnolia was complimenting her on her satin pants and tiny beaded halter, both of which exactly matched her Gwyneth-blond hair, Darlene was leaning dangerously close to Harry, snorting at something he'd said. Magnolia tried to eavesdrop while nodding attentively as Charlotte described in footnoted detail the house she was building in Sagaponack.

"After a lot of thought, we decided to go with bidets in three out of five bathrooms," she said. "You know, from Waterworks. The white, not the bone. Definitely not the ivory." As Magnolia tried to concentrate on the stress of picking high-quality porcelain fixtures, she realized Darlene had commandeered even more of Harry's personal s.p.a.ce and was now whispering-she hoped only that-into his ear. Magnolia waited until Charlotte drew a breath, then turned to Darlene.

"What are the girls doing this summer?" she asked. Magnolia knew Darlene always shipped the three of them and the two senior nannies to her parents, the ranking royalty of Des Moines's country club set. Then in August she and her husband spent two weeks en famille on Martha's Vineyard. But Magnolia suspected that Darlene wouldn't want to out herself to Harry as a young matron with a large family.

"The Vineyard. The usual," Darlene responded, with less than complete enthusiasm. But Darlene was not to be bested easily. "Harry, have you met Jock, our president?" she asked.

There he was, strolling toward them, arm in arm with Bebe and Felicity, each of whom was dressed as if for the Grammys. In her red sequined pants and flowing top, Bebe appeared ready to accept her trophy with thanks to Jesus and her band, the Mother f.u.c.kas. Felicity took it down a notch, in a black-and-gold-striped caftan. A vaguely familiar-looking man trailed them. Oh, yes, the Southerner, Arthur Montgomery, Jock's elevator friend and Bebe's lawyer.

"Can you imagine anything more ideal than all of us meeting up here?" Jock boomed, pecking Magnolia's cheek.

Magnolia could, actually. She and Jock exchanged introductions.

"Magnolia, I believe you've met Arthur," he said.

"Mag-knoll-ya, the magazine girl," Bebe asked. "Who's the hottie?"

Bebe zeroed in on Harry. Arthur disappeared to refresh both Mag nolia's drink and his own. Darlene, Charlotte, and Felicity attached themselves to Dr. Winnie, who was being led around like a show dog by book publishing's glamour girl, Rachel Wright. Wright had made the doc's book, The 30-Day No-Wrinkle Diet, the top of her summer list, along with political screeds from both the right and the left. That left Jock holding a double-malt Scotch, waiting for Magnolia to speak.

"I'd hoped to get to you this week," she began.

"Right."

"About Bebe."

"Change of heart?" Jock asked. He wasn't making it easy.

"Not exactly," she began.

"But you'll trust me to make the right decision?" he said.

Magnolia began to answer, but there was Arthur, back with the drinks. "My lovely Magnolia," Arthur said, "you've done up one pretty little magazine. Good girl."

"We made a big change when we brought Magnolia Gold in as editor in chief of Lady," Jock said. "Our job right now is to support her, to give her both the time and the room to perform."

Magnolia thanked him, although nothing he'd said or done in the last two weeks suggested that his statements were anything but hooey.

"You are a generous man," Arthur said, "given the numbers you showed me,"

Score one for Bebe: her attorney had seen Lady's books, although not necessarily the ones with the figures Magnolia had been shown.

Magnolia downed her second martini.

"Magnolia, care to join us tomorrow at Winged Foot?" Jock asked.

"Arthur, Darlene, and I are in hot pursuit of a fourth."

During her marriage, whenever conversation drifted to putters and the back nine, Magnolia's boredom began to simmer. She'd explained to her ex, Wally-who'd always wanted her to join him at his parents'