by Julia London
“All I can say is that I hope his new direction works out for both of you. But now I have to fill a hole. A hole you convinced me to create, you may recall. Just so you know, since I think you’re pretty new to this business, it’s not cool to cancel a publication at this late date.”
“I’m actually not that new,” Carly said. “If you have a chance to look at my résumé, you’ll see that I have a lot of experience.”
“Are you talking while I’m talking?”
Carly pressed her lips together.
“Maybe you don’t know, but we have lead times for a reason, and I pushed those lead times all the way to the crash point because you would not leave me alone. You begged and cajoled and promised me something pretty fucking amazing, and now you’re pulling him?”
This was possibly the worst moment of Carly’s life. Ramona McNeil was dressing her down and was clearly never going to look at her résumé. Megan would say to pull on her big girl panties and seize the moment. Naomi would say to go for it. Carly didn’t know how to do any of that. “I’m very sorry, Ms. McNeil. I would sew those pieces myself if I could. But he’s an artist and he’s made it plain that he doesn’t want to show the red pieces.”
“Don’t give me that sensitive artist crap,” Ramona shot back.
“What if we photograph the finished white pieces?” Carly suggested. She tried not to sound desperate. She tried to sound like a problem solver.
“The white is not editorial. We emailed about this. We need a very editorial look and the red is where it’s at.” There was silence on the line, and for a moment, Carly thought she’d hung up. “What else has he got?” Ramona asked curtly.
Carly perked up. The door had not been completely slammed in her face. “He is in the process of creating a new look,” she said quickly. If he wasn’t, he damn sure better be by the end of the day. “I can let you know when he’s going to have something to show. I know it will be quick, and I know it will be amazing.”
“Lord,” Ramona muttered. “Okay, listen up. You’ve got me in a real bind here. You have two weeks to come up with something new. And you can tell your client that the likelihood of him getting another shot like this is nil, and the next time he books this kind of exposure, he better be ready to roll. You better be ready to roll. Have a good day.” She clicked off the phone.
Only then did Carly realize she wasn’t breathing and took a dramatic breath, like she’d just burst through the surface of the ocean.
She couldn’t disagree with Ramona—Victor was a fool. Even worse, he was making her look bad after working so hard for him.
Carly was so mad about it that she did not dress in a Victor Allen design that day. She dressed in regular clothes that she’d bought right off the rack and that happened to look pretty damn good on her, thank you very much, and went in search of Victor.
She found him at his studio. But he wasn’t working. He was on his skateboard, slowly circling around the tables and dress forms. He looked weirdly despondent. “Is everything okay?” Carly asked.
“Yeah. Why?” Victor asked. He allowed his skateboard to do a slow crash into the couch and collapsed onto it.
“I have some great news, Victor! I’ve been on the phone with Ramona McNeil herself. They get that you don’t want to showcase the red pieces but are happy to look at something else.”
Victor shrugged and rolled onto his side, facing the back of the couch. “Yeah, I don’t know. I’m not feeling the whole Couture vibe. It feels too fancy.”
Too fancy? “It’s the best fashion magazine there is,” Carly said. “And you’re a fashion designer. Every fashion designer wants their designs in that magazine.”
“Am I a fashion designer? Or am I just someone who sews? I don’t know anymore.”
Well, this was new from a kid who was overconfident on his worst day. Carly exchanged a look with his mother. She did not like the look of worry on June’s face. “This is Couture, Victor,” Carly said.
He slowly sat up. He looked Carly directly in the eye. “I don’t mean this to come off as rude, but I’m not feeling it.”
“Okay,” Carly said, nodding. “Okay, then. No Couture.” For now. She had to think of a way to finesse this. If she didn’t call Ramona back in the next two weeks, that magazine would never book her clients again. Assuming there were any more clients after Victor. And she definitely wouldn’t be getting a job there.
“What do you mean, no Couture?” June asked.
Carly lifted her hands, palms up. “They have deadlines. But listen! I have two blog features lined up for you, and they are very excited about you. The New Designer Showcase is a big deal for the fashion blogs.”
Victor sighed and looked at his hands. “Yeah, maybe.” He pushed himself off the couch and walked into the kitchenette.
Carly looked at June. “What is happening?” she whispered.
“He gets depressed sometimes,” June said softly, her gaze darting toward the kitchenette. They could hear Victor putting something into the microwave. “He’s having some confidence issues.”
“But why?” Carly asked with alarm. “Why now? Why at all? He won Project Runway!”
“Social media,” June muttered. “People are so cruel.”
Carly felt sick. She posted content on his social media channels, and of course she kept an eye on his mentions and user comments. She hadn’t seen anything to give her concern—most of the comments were positive. But then again, she’d been wrapped up in dog issues over the weekend. “Which account?”
“Instagram.” June frowned darkly.
“Mom, we’re out of ketchup!” Victor called.
Carly grabbed her phone and pulled up Instagram.
“Look in the cabinet,” June called back.
Carly began to scroll through the posts.
“I can’t find it!” Victor shouted.
“Look in the cabinet!” June walked into the kitchenette to help him find it.
Carly didn’t see anything to alarm her at first. She had posted a lot of pictures of his completed work, pictures of Victor hard at work, mentions of him in the press. Victor had posted some of his sketches, too, all of which she’d seen and thought were great content. But there was a post from last Thursday, a sketch of an evening gown that featured his signature shoulders and hips. Someone had panned the design and called it a second grade art project featuring Minecraft characters.
That was the sort of comment Carly would have paid no heed to at all and would advise Victor, or anyone else, to ignore. That was the problem with social media—there were people in the world who seemingly existed just to tear other people down, but you couldn’t give them any oxygen. You couldn’t let them steal your mojo. And the best way to keep your mojo intact was to stay off social media and allow your publicist to post for you and monitor comments.
Unfortunately, Victor hadn’t done any of that. He’d fired back at the comment, calling the female a wannabe who was obviously jealous of his success and probably, judging from her comment, lacking talent. Others had begun to pile on. They’d called him names, said he was overrated, that they hated him on Project Runway.
Victor had responded to each and every comment.
That’s when the worst trolls began to suggest that he was such a talentless hack that maybe he ought to kill himself.
“Oh my God,” Carly breathed when June returned. She deleted the post.
“And there is this one,” June said, and held out her phone to Carly. It was a fashion blog site called Felicity’s Fashions. The header was an illustration of a smartly dressed woman dashing across a street with a poodle on a lead, oversized sunglasses, and wearing a polka-dot dress.
“What about her?” Carly asked.
“Oh, she ranked all the designers who are showing in the New Designer Showcase.” June glanced back at the kitchenette and whispered, “Sh
e ranked Victor last. She said his designs looked like someone took a surplus army tent and cut holes for the arms and legs.”
“Don’t let him see that,” Carly said, pushing June’s phone back to her. “Delete it.”
“He’s the one who showed me. And then said he didn’t take advice from someone with so much side boob.”
Carly gasped. She grabbed June’s phone and scrolled through the comments. They were just as awful on the blog as they were on Instagram, but here an argument had erupted on the blogger’s post. Some defended Victor. Some suggested that others who defended a young upstart designer who hadn’t sold any clothes to the masses ought to sit down and shut up. Others took umbrage with the word upstart and its culturally negative connotations, and especially those with tattoos and rainbow hair and suggested that it was homophobic.
“No, no, no,” Carly groaned.
“You need to turn this around, Carly,” June said. “That’s why we hired you.”
“I will do my best,” Carly promised. “But I can’t do that if Victor is going to come in behind me and make these comments. He needs to stay off social media.”
“I am doing my best, too,” June said. “But he gets like this. He gets all in his head. His dad suffers from depression, too.” She glanced back at the kitchenette. “I’m worried.”
Carly was, too.
She left them and headed to a coffee shop to craft plan C.
She bought a latte and took a seat at the bar facing the street. She stared into space for a good half hour before she finally admitted to herself that she didn’t have a plan C. She didn’t know what to do with this side of Victor. Social media was such a trap.
She sipped her coffee. She picked up her phone, pulled up Instagram, and in the search box, typed, Dr. Max Sheffington. The search results came up empty. She tried Tobias Sheffington III. Bingo. There weren’t many posts, but there were a couple of very cute pictures of a Labrador in goggles. And a diagram of the human brain with the caption The human brain is awesome. And a cartoon from the New Yorker that showed two surgeons leaning over a man with half his head sawed off. “It’s a no-brainer,” one said to the other.
She quietly giggled.
She was supposed to be crafting plan C, but she went to Facebook. She found a public page for Max’s courses. There were tabs for class notes and a meme with a mad scientist with googly eyes staring at an overflowing test tube, and a post from Max. “I get it. Axons are tough. Just wait until we get to the endoplasmic reticulum. Neuroscience humor! Are you ready for your axon guidance exam? Come see me if questions.”
She was smiling at the post when her phone suddenly vibrated awake. It was Gordon.
“Hi!” she said cheerfully. “How are—”
“Need you to come by this afternoon,” Gordon said gruffly, without greeting.
Carly suppressed a groan. “Ah . . . sure,” she said, her eye on her clock. She had some cold calls to make to Los Angeles this afternoon to drum up support for Victor. “Could it wait until tomorrow?”
“No, it cannot wait until tomorrow.”
She grimaced. “Can you give me a couple of hours? I’ve got a thing I’ve got to take care of.”
“Fine.”
“Can you give me a heads-up?” she asked.
“We’ll talk when you get here,” Gordon said, with all the charm of a rock.
“Okeydoke,” she chirped. So much for developing a plan C. Carly took one last look at Max’s Facebook page, then slid her phone into her bag.
She went home to let Baxter out, then headed over to Gordon’s lush, riverfront home. When she arrived, no one answered the front door. Carly went around to the side door, through which she often entered, and tapped on that door, peering into the massive kitchen. There was no sign of mean Alvira. But Alvira’s little Ford Fiesta was in the drive, and through the garage windows, she could see Gordon’s Maserati.
She figured they were probably out back. She stepped into the house. “Alvira? Gordon?”
No one responded.
Carly walked into the kitchen and put her bag on the kitchen bar, took out her phone, and texted Gordon to let him know she was here. There was no answer. A thought occurred to her—what if there had been an intruder? What if they were tied up or murdered or kidnapped? Because it didn’t make sense that both cars would be here, the doors open, and no one answering her or her text.
She walked into the living room. Huge picture windows overlooked the backyard, the pool, and the river below. Nothing out there but a giant yellow ducky float skimming along the surface of the pool, turning its strange pirouettes with the breeze.
As she stood there, peering out, she heard a sound from down the hall. “Of course,” she muttered. They were in his office and hadn’t heard her come in. With a laugh at her wild imagination, Carly walked across the carpeted living room and up the two marble steps to the entry. She turned into the long corridor that led to Gordon’s office when Gordon suddenly stepped out of a room. He was looking back over his shoulder, and paused to say something to someone in that room. He was laughing. And he was completely and utterly naked. Carly was so shocked she could not tear her eyes from the flabby paunch and penis dangling from a thatch of overgrown gray hair. She must have cried out with alarm, or maybe Gordon was the first to screech, because he did, and dove back into the room.
“Oh my God,” Carly said. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.” She whirled around and ran, not even sure where she was going. She ran out the side door, all the way to her car, and then remembered her tote, and ran back inside to grab it.
“Carly!” Gordon had donned a dressing gown and was striding across the kitchen toward her.
She grabbed her tote. “I am so sorry, Gordon,” she said, pressing a hand to her heart. “I am so, so, sorry, but the door was open and your cars were here and I thought something had happened and I am . . . I am mortified and I can’t apologize enough.”
“Come into my office,” he said, gesturing her forward. “Come on. It’s just a body, for fuck’s sake. Stop acting like you’ve seen the devil himself.”
Carly had seen the devil himself. She did not want to go inside. She did not want to go to his office. She did not want to look at him. But Gordon gestured impatiently again, so she clutched her tote to her chest and followed him through the living room and to his office.
On their way, Alvira passed them. She did not make eye contact with Carly, but her hair was standing almost straight up and her sweater was on inside out. Carly’s breath caught in her throat. That was a pairing she would never have guessed. Damn it, even sour-faced Alvira was seeing someone.
In his office, Gordon stomped around to his big leather chair, picked up a cigar that appeared to be still lit (what, had the mood struck them and they’d started ripping clothes off?). He sat heavily, then propped one bare foot on the edge of his desk. Carly had to keep her head down, lest his robe fall open and she was treated to that indelible image again.
“So, Carly—”
“I’m so sorry.”
He waved her off with a thick hand. “Listen, let me put this to you straight. I hired you because no one else really wanted the job. But I want sales. I don’t want this blog business—”
“I hear you, Gordon. That was one idea. If you don’t like it, we’ll do something else.”
“I think you’ve got this all wrong. You need to get out there and hustle for me.”
“I do hustle for you. I have a call into the Woodworker’s Journal—”
“No, I mean something like setting up a booth at the Pecan Street Festival,” he suggested.
Carly stared at him. He wanted her to attend one of Austin’s longest-running art festivals and hawk his stupid circles?
“There’s probably something like it in San Antonio, too. You need to check into that.”
“You mean you want m
e to put in the paperwork so you can go.”
He looked at her like she was crazy. “I’m not going to go. You need to do that.”
Carly needed this job. She really did. But she had her limits. She was in public relations—not sales. And who the hell did he think he was to know her job better than she did? “Gordon, I—”
“Wait, I’m not finished. That’s what you need to do. But it seems to me you don’t have that kind of drive.”
Her mouth fell open. Well, now he’d gone and pissed her off.
He suddenly sat up and planted his arms on his desk. “I’m going to give you a piece of friendly advice, Carly. People who succeed work their asses off. They do everything it takes to make a project work. You have to have the burn in your gut—you know what I mean? You’ve got to want it.”
Something snapped in Carly. Maybe it was the accumulation of stress over the last several months. Maybe it was the realization that no matter how hard she tried, no matter how hard she worked, there would always be men like Gordon Romero. Maybe it was something as simple as her day had really, really sucked so far. Whatever, she slowly stood. She thought about her rent increase. She thought about her résumé. She thought about all those job applications that were not being answered. She thought about being a good girl and letting him tell her what she needed to do. The client was always right, after all. But what she said was, “I think you should find someone else.” She hitched her tote bag onto her shoulder. “And for the record, I do work my ass off. But sometimes, you get a client who thinks he knows everything, and maybe he knows a lot, but then you figure out that the one thing he doesn’t know is that no one wants a damn circle of wood.”
Gordon squinted. He pointed his cigar at her, and said, “You’re fired.”
“Nope. Sorry. I just quit. Beat you to it.”
“No, I fired you,” he insisted as she walked out the door.
“Nope! I quit first!” she shouted back at him.
Alvira was in the kitchen when Carly walked past the marble bar and chuckled as Carly walked out.
