The shoe issue had gotten his last assistant, Corinne, fired. Or at least, that was the water cooler version. After the carpets were put in, Duncan had suggested to Corinne that she should remove her shoes before entering his office. This was her last straw; a screaming row ensued. Corinne threatened to file a sexual harassment claim against him (the rest of the office found this very funny). Duncan promptly fired her, or threatened to and she quit, which was how Marina had gotten her job. Marina had been at Press for less than a week when someone told her this story. Overwhelmed, she had picked up a pint of frozen yogurt on the way home, eaten it for dinner in front of the television, and cried. All she could think was how embarrassing it would be if she were required to pad shoeless around her boss’s office, like some sort of geisha. She had gone to Princeton, for God’s sake . . . Would she have to buy new socks? She certainly couldn’t afford to, given what Press was paying her.
After eighteen months as Duncan’s assistant, this story had lost all shock value. Marina had grown accustomed to his peculiar brand of fastidiousness, and to his outrageous and sometimes morally questionable requests, and to the tantrums he threw when his world order was tampered with. She had become, she thought, a remarkably patient person.
Duncan’s face was so close to the surface of the light box, and his arms were splayed out in such a way that for a split second Marina thought he might be dead. She stepped closer. He was looking at some photographs through a loupe. When he was working, Duncan had an uncanny ability to remain still for minutes at a time, far longer than the average person. It seemed to absorb him wholly. Sometimes, Marina found this inspiring. On the days she wanted to leave at a reasonable hour, it was profoundly frustrating. Holidays were the worst. It was almost as though he wasn’t aware of them. Marina often wondered if this was because he had no one with whom he could celebrate. That was sad, but not sad enough for her to feel anything but irritated by him.
The sound of the cleaning lady’s vacuum filled the hallway behind her. Marina sighed.
She had said good-bye to the last editor over an hour ago, and she was beginning to give up hope that she could leave the office in time to get her hair done. Her boyfriend’s parents’ annual “Thanksgiving Eve” party began promptly at 5 p.m., and she would feel much better with a blowout. The Morgensons’ party was a very big deal. Their apartment was on Eighty-first Street and Central Park West, a prime perch from which to watch as the balloons for the Thanksgiving Day Parade were inflated on the street below. Since 1927, New Yorkers and tourists had gathered in the cold for this spectacle. They jostled behind police lines, their faces growing red in the frigid night air. Some had staked out small squares of the sidewalk for their kids, who invariably had to pee or had forgotten their hats in the car. It never felt worth it until the balloons came alive overhead, puffing up like giant, animated cumulus clouds. The Morgensons’ guests enjoyed it from seventeen floors up, beside a crackling fire and a tower of cocktail shrimp. For one night a year, The Beresford was the best building in Manhattan, and Grace Morgenson made sure to capitalize on it. She invited everyone. Friends, cousins, business associates. Also, any New Yorker of particular note with whom she shared even a tenuous connection: a Times columnist; the mezzo-soprano from the Metropolitan Opera; a principal dancer from the New York City Ballet; a state senator; a talk-show host; the head of the teacher’s union; a designer known particularly for her wedding dresses; a hotelier who had recently made the papers for leaving his wife for a minor British royal.
Tanner had asked Marina twice what she was planning to wear. Nervously, she had modeled three outfits for him; he seemed most content with the tweed skirt and cable-knit sweater combination from Ralph Lauren that was now hanging in the office coatroom. She’d brought it to work in a hanging bag so that it would not wrinkle, and planned to change into it in the women’s bathroom. It was clear that the Morgensons and their friends would be evaluating her as potential wife material. She had been unfocused all day, unable to think of anything other than last-ditch measures that might improve her by the evening. Now, it was game time. Every minute mattered.
“Duncan,” Marina said, trying not to sound anxious. “How’re you doing?”
He looked up from the light-box table and frowned at her, as though he was trying to place her. “These photos are atrocious,” he said, finally.
“Which photos?”
“The ingénue spread!” He exclaimed, waving her over to look. “These women do not look like The Ingénues of Fashion Week to me. They look like tarts. Tarts or hookers.”
Marina sighed, audibly this time, and crossed the threshold into his office. Tart was Duncan’s new favorite word. It would bore him in a few weeks, but for right now, everyone was a tart. Paris Hilton was a tart; the night receptionist was a tart. Duncan was certain that the Bush twins—and possibly their mother—were tarts. For all Marina knew, she was a tart when she wasn’t around. He had that difficult tone of voice, the one that meant that nothing was going to be good enough. She took her place next to him at the light-box table but refused to look through the loupe. She had seen the photos countless times; everyone had. This was the first time she had heard him complain about them.
“Look at this one!” He plunged back toward the table, like a porpoise after a fish. “She’s far too thin. She looks like a heroin addict! You can practically see the track marks on her arms.”
“Do we have the time and the budget to reshoot?” Marina said, knowing the answer.
“Of course not. Of course not,” Duncan snapped. “This is for the January issue. We’re absolutely out of time. And we’re so far over budget it is appalling. No. These are going in. Well, some of these are going in. That can’t be helped. But it just upsets me, printing this sort of trash.” He closed his eyes and turned his face to the heavens, as if to say, God help us all.
Every fiber of her being told Marina not to roll her eyes, not to open her mouth. If she rolled her eyes, he would fire her. If she opened her mouth, she was afraid a torrent of screaming would pour out, and every single frustration she had with Duncan and the magazine and her boyfriend and the snobby Morgensons and the fact that she got paid less than $30,000 to work eighty hours a week and was treated like a total peon even on Thanksgiving eve would be aired, and she would not be able to stop it.
Instead, Marina said timidly, “Maybe the piece stays in, but you could add the finance piece you were describing to me yesterday, to provide, you know, a little balance?”
Duncan looked at her for a few seconds, and then switched off the light box and went over to sit at his desk. He didn’t answer. Marina realized that by speaking, she was at best prolonging her departure, and at worst, she was enraging Duncan with the implied presumption that he gave a shit what she thought about the magazine’s content.
“Remind me what I said yesterday,” he said, tapping his fingertips together.
She took a deep breath and tried to recall what he had said, word for word. Duncan liked to hear her repeat his own words back to him, but she had to be precise. “Yesterday, you were saying that we had to be careful not to seem like we’re out of touch with the financial crisis. That if we published too many pieces on fashionistas and socialites, we would seem irrelevant and frivolous and too many magazines are falling apart precisely for that reason. Then you said that Rachel’s suggestion for a piece on Lily Darling and her new line of dog accessories was exactly what you didn’t want to hear.” Marina paused, and then blurted, “I have to say, I agree with this; I can’t imagine anyone would actually buy designer dog sweaters right now, and Lily’s too young and ridiculous to actually run a business. But that’s just my opinion.” She fell quiet again; she shouldn’t have editorialized. The wall clock ticked away. Though she desperately wanted to, she refused to look directly at it. If he caught her wanting to leave, it would end very badly.
“Go on.”
“Anyway,” she resumed quickly, “you said that instead, we should be running a piece
on her father, Carter Darling, who was actually a person of interest and substance who ran a real business that people would want to read about. Then you said that dedicating four pages of the January issue to a photo spread on twenty-year-old models was mindless and unmemorable.”
Marina looked up. She had a tendency to look at the floor when she spoke. She felt her face hot with embarrassment and wondered how long she had been talking. It was probably the longest she had ever spoken inside Duncan’s office.
To her relief, he wasn’t glaring. Instead, his eyes were closed behind the frames of his tortoiseshell glasses.
“I was right about the ingénue piece,” he said. He opened his eyes and nodded thoughtfully, as though he were acknowledging someone other than himself. “That’s exactly the issue. Relevancy. Right now, the only thing anyone in New York cares about is Wall Street. No one gives a shit about some twenty-two-year-old anorexic model at Fashion Week. We simply don’t have time for frivolity right now. We can’t afford it.”
“I—”
“Agreed. It’s too late to cut the ingénue piece. But if we ran it in the January issue next to some exposé about the board of Goldman Sachs, or some hedge fund manager who has done something naughty, I think we’re in business. I love this idea. It’s very high/low. That’s what this magazine is all about. We just have to develop it, and quickly.”
Marina nodded, still a little dazed from being addressed as though she was a working member of the team.
What came out of her mouth next surprised them both.
“What about a piece on the Darlings?” she said, with unprecedented boldness. “Remember last summer, when we did that spread on their house in East Hampton? You said there was tension between them. They fought in the kitchen when they thought no one could hear them? And then Ines Darling was such an utter bitch to everyone all afternoon, bossing everyone around, micromanaging the photo shoot.”
Duncan sat forward. He nodded, prodding her to continue.
Marina paused. They stared at each other in silence for a minute, each waiting for the other to say something.
Finally she said, her voice a little small, “Well, that’s all I’ve got. I just meant you could write an article on them as a power couple. I don’t know. Maybe it’s a stupid idea. It’s just a thought. I think people love to read about the personal lives of billionaires. Especially if they’re kind of screwed up.”
Duncan smiled and sat back in his chair. “Yes, there’s a certain schadenfreude about these finance people, isn’t there?” He was feeling magnanimous suddenly; Marina was there, after all, to be journalistically nurtured by him. “I mean, look, we’ve all secretly hated them for years. I’m the managing editor of this magazine and I make less than Carter Darling probably spends on lawn care in East Hampton. But the game’s up, it seems . . . All right, let me think about this. I’m not sure Carter Darling is the right person for this piece. He might be too squeaky clean, if you know what I mean. I just saw them the other night at the New Yorkers for Animals benefit. Ines had on a hideous dress. Lorenzo Sanchez, I think it was? You know, that new latin designer who puts ruffles on everything? She’s a bitch, but he seems like a nice old-fashioned WASP and I don’t think they are the type to throw parties in Sardinia on the corporate AMEX, you know? I need to noodle this over.”
Yes, Marina thought, please go home and think about this, or noodle this over, or whatever it is you do. That way I can finally get out of here.
She turned to go. “Marina,” Duncan said, in that voice that stopped her cold in her tracks, “You’ll make yourself available over the weekend if I need you for anything.” His words ended flatly, more of a statement than a question.
Marina closed her eyes and choked back frustration. She waited a second before turning around, so that he wouldn’t see her falter. When she did, a brilliant smile was pasted on her pretty face. “Of course,” she said. “Happy to.”
Duncan gave her a single quick nod. “All right, then,” he said, and swung back to his computer. “You’re off. Have a good night.”
“Same to you!” She called. “I hope your family has a wonderful Thanksgiving!” She moved so quickly toward the door that she did not see the spark of sadness that registered in Duncan’s eyes. After she was gone, he sat a while longer at his desk, her words ringing in his ears against the silence of an empty office.
WEDNESDAY, 3:45 P.M.
Paul spotted Alexa through a sea of Japanese businessmen, like a peacock in a flock of penguins. She was standing under a wire mobile, part of the Calder retrospective, wearing the same bright blue coat that she had worn the last time Paul had seen her. She didn’t notice him at first. Instead, she was looking up at the mobile overhead, a constellation of red stars or birds on the wing. Her mass of thick black curls fell gently behind her ears. She looked smaller than he remembered, more like the Alexa from college than the Alexa he had seen most recently. He had a distinct memory of wandering through the galleries with her at UNC’s Ackland Art Museum during a high school field trip. They were sixteen then, and though he was desperately in love with her, they were just friends. A year later, they would sleep together, complicating everything.
Theirs had been the kind of love that blooms in a small town but fades when exposed to the elements of the wide open world. As adolescents, they were united by a desire to get the hell out of North Carolina. Alexa, the stronger willed of the two, was the first to go. She had always remained at arm’s length from her peers, carrying herself with the quiet complacency of someone who knew that she would be moving on soon enough to something better. Paul had thought she’d become an academic, maybe, or a curator. He wasn’t surprised when she was offered a scholarship to Yale. “Not bad,” she had said, “for a girl from Charlotte.”
Paul stayed behind, taking a full ride at Chapel Hill. When Alexa left, their parting was tender and tearful and they vowed to stay together despite the distance. For a few months they were steadfast, each logging hours on trains and planes when they could. But as the weather turned cold and the calendars filled with parties, exams, and football games, their visits became less and less frequent, and the phone calls shorter and more perfunctory. By the time Alexa came home for the holidays, they both knew it was over. They stayed friends, but afforded each other a respectful distance, especially when it came to the subject of current flames.
Alexa wasn’t pretty, exactly, but she was pleasant to look at. She had a brilliant smile, and a maternal way about her that set dogs’ tails wagging. Her curvy figure was the kind that played better in the South than in Manhattan. She had come close to marriage once, to a guy with whom they had grown up; Paul knew him only in passing. But “the bar exam had gotten between them” was the way she put it, which Paul took to mean that she hadn’t been willing to give up her career for a life as a suburban mother in Charlotte. He didn’t blame her.
“She’s intense,” Merrill had said flatly after their first meeting. “I mean, what was she wearing? Is that some sort of statement?”
Paul couldn’t recall what Alexa had been wearing, but she did tend to err on the side of casual. “That’s just Alexa,” he said. He had underestimated how it would feel for Merrill to meet Alexa. They had, he realized, spent the majority of the dinner talking about home, a topic to which Merrill was rarely subjected. Alexa had meant to bring a date but she hadn’t, and so the two women sat awkwardly beside each other on the banquette like a panel of interviewers, staring at him and not quite at each other. “She’s just not that into the way she looks.”
She’s not from New York, Paul thought. Then a stab of guilt: he shouldn’t defend his ex-girlfriend to his wife, if only in his head.
After a pause, Merrill said softly, “I bet she thinks I’m a brat.”
This was Merrill’s tender spot. Her warm eyes grew earnest and worried; Merrill was not accustomed to people disliking her, and the thought that someone might always troubled her deeply.
“I promise she doesn’t,” Paul
said, wondering if that was true. “All she cares about is her work. She doesn’t think about much else.”
“She cares about you.”
“She does. But as a friend. That’s all, I promise.”
He kissed her on the head, and then the conversation was over, for that evening anyway. He knew it would come up again, if only in a raised eyebrow or slight shake of the head, anytime he mentioned Alexa’s name. It became easier not to talk to Alexa at all. Being with her was like a detour off the main highway. Scenic, pretty but ultimately a distraction.
Paul had hoped that with time and a little distance, the complications of the past might slip away. The moment he saw her, he had the uncomfortable feeling that the exact opposite was about to happen.
“Hi, stranger,” Alexa said, giving him a fierce hug. She was happy to see him, but strain radiated from her eyes and the tightness of her jaw. “Thank you for seeing me.”
“Course.” He gave her a quick squeeze and then snapped back, fast as a rubber band. He hated that it felt good to see her again. “Look, I don’t have much time, so . . .”
“I know. I don’t, either. Let’s walk? There’s a new Rothko exhibit upstairs.”
“Sure.”
She took a deep breath and stepped onto the escalator. As they ascended to the permanent collection on the fourth floor, she glanced behind them. No one was in earshot. She seemed jumpy, like a person being followed. “I’m just going to start talking,” she said in a low voice, “and maybe you could just listen. And when I’m done, then you can ask questions. Okay?”
“You’re the boss.”
He extended his hand to her as they stepped off the escalator on the fourth floor. “Okay. Here’s the situation,” she said. “You’ve spoken to David Levin. He’s technically my boss at the SEC; I report to him, he reports to Jane Hewitt. Also—” she shifted awkwardly now, fumbling to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear “—we’ve been seeing each other. For quite some time now. We live together.”
The Darlings Page 8
