The Brutal Truth

by Lee Winter

  “What do you do here?”

  “The graveyard shift. I write briefs on the news events happening in the middle of the night. Sometimes they get followed up by the day shift and expanded on. Sometimes not.” Shit. I’m rambling. Maddie hastily jumped to the point. “Crime. I write crime. Mostly. And, um, obits.”

  The edges of Bartell’s mouth twitched at that, which spiked Maddie’s irritation.

  “And you’re not from New York. Not with that accent.”

  “Sydney.”

  “Living the dream, then? Country mouse here to dazzle us city folk with your incredible talent and woeful dress sense?”

  “Hey, Sydney is no country backwater. I came here for a change of scene. And I’m making the most of things.” She aimed for nonchalance, but winced internally at how stiff it came out, like privileged apathy.

  Bartell gave her an assessing look. “You sound like you’d rather be back home. Perhaps I should do you a favour and fire you now.” Her voice dropped to a soft, loaded tone. “You can scuttle back to Sydney in relief it’s all over.”

  “No! I can’t!”

  “No? Well then, Graveyard-Shift Girl, are you a good journalist?”

  “I…” The elevator began slowing. Maddie scrabbled for an answer. Her university professors all said she had talent. On the other hand, she had nothing spectacular to point to that she’d done in the past eight months at the Hudson Metro News. Nothing beyond short police briefs and occasionally touching obituaries that probably no one read.

  “If you can’t answer a simple question,” Bartell said, giving her a look so direct that it felt like an X-ray, “then perhaps your secret little fears are right: you don’t belong here. We’re done.”

  Maddie stared at her as the doors dinged and opened. Was “drowning in New York” written all over her face?

  “Oh, and improve your wardrobe. I don’t want to be looking at a deconstructed beat poet for the next six weeks.”

  Bartell swept out of the elevator, leaving Maddie to grind her teeth. “Well, we can’t all afford yesterday’s steampunk, can we?” she said under her breath. She pushed off from the back wall and took two steps out of the elevator before freezing.

  Bartell was standing just around the corner, staring back at her, hand inside her bag.

  She’d heard?

  Bartell’s expression was hard, as she plucked out her phone. She spun on her heel and pulled her shoulders back, with an insanely expensive-looking, Hermes-stamped handbag wrenched tight on her shoulder. She stalked through the foyer, pressing a button on her phone, and began barking instructions.

  A blonde woman, all clopping heels and bony elbows, rushed forward to meet Bartell outside the building’s giant glass doors and pointed her to a chauffeured black BMW.

  Way to go, Maddie thought. In a single elevator ride, you actually guaranteed you’d never get a job at another Bartell Corp masthead. Anywhere. Worldwide.

  And that was a lot of newspapers.

  She definitely should have stayed in bed.

  * * *

  That night, Maddie experienced Simon’s idea of a Fun Factory. It involved alcohol and lots of it. Specifically, bottles of strange colours, which her housemate mixed and matched and turned into exotic-looking homemade cocktails.

  After drinking Simon’s third concoction—dubbed Car Seat Cover—Maddie confessed what had happened in the elevator.

  Instead of being sympathetic, he laughed his head off. “Wha-did-I-tell-ya!” he said with a snort. “Stick a fork in yourself, you’re done. You’re cactus! I mean you did look like a death worshipper.” He slugged back something obnoxiously green.

  “No, it’s she just has stupidly high fashion standards. I mean, I looked a tiny bit goth but not bad bad. I…it’s streetwear. I looked normal!”

  “You looked like a death-cult member. But that’s okay, Mads. Look, let’s recap your day—Elena Bartell, world-famous media mogul, told you off for looking unprofessional, and then you sounded your usual underwhelmed self about your job, New York, and life in general. After that, you couldn’t tell her you were a good journalist when she asked, and finally…for the perfect cherry on top…you insulted her by telling her she was decked out in yesterday’s fashion.”

  “Yesterday’s steampunk can look hot. Not my fault she took it the wrong way. It was kinda H.G. Wells if you want to know. Like, from that show, Warehouse 13?” Maddie slurped her drink.

  He lifted his hands. “Her again—you and your posh British actresses.”

  “Except Bartell isn’t posh, just cold.”

  “So cold that instead of firing you on the spot, she just jumped in her car and drove away?”

  “Uh. Yeah.”

  “So stop fretting then. If she was as thin-skinned as you think, you’d already have your marching orders.”

  “There’s still time. I’ll probably find them on my desk when I clock on tomorrow evening.” She peered at him and stuck out her glass for a refill. “The yellow thing this time.”

  As Simon obliged with her cocktail, he asked, “Don’t you think a global media mogul has more things to worry about than the midnight-shift girl on a second-rate paper she’s thinking of gutting?”

  “I guess.” She drained her drink in one hit.

  “You guess? I bet Madame Slash-and-Burn has forgotten all about you by now.”

  “Good point.” Maddie brightened. “Actually, great point! I’m, like, an amoeba in the scheme of Elena Bartell’s world. Right?” She felt a burst of hope and thrust her glass out again. “Some green with the yellow this time. The blue one makes my tongue look like some weird Outback lizard.”

  “You may even be lower than an amoeba,” Simon agreed amiably as he poured. “Single-celled organisms probably get more thought than you. Fear not. Cheers.”

  “Cheers.” She clinked her glass against his. “Wait, aren’t amoebas single-celled organisms already?”

  “You’re asking the business studies major?” Simon squinted at her before slugging back his drink.

  She laughed and, for the first time in hours, felt kind of positive.

  BlogSpot: Aliens of New York

  By Maddie as Hell

  Today there was an old woman sitting on a garbage can outside my Williamsburg apartment building, next to the auto repair shop. She sang softly to her bags of junk, a chaotic pile of blankets, clothes, newspapers, and food wrappings. Off-key and missing some teeth, she swayed gently to the rhythm. A scraggly white dandelion dancing in the wind, hairless in a few places but undaunted nonetheless. The upturned hat in front of her gleamed inside with a few coins. As I passed her, I realised one of the bags was actually a small child. The girl, maybe aged ten or so, had old, old eyes. She didn’t smile at me or the woman beside her. She stared into the distance.

  I swayed along with the song for a few moments, before dropping a few notes into the hat. That earned a wide, toothless grin.

  Look after her, I thought.

  As I walked away, I wasn’t sure which of them I’d meant.

  CHAPTER 2

  Tales from the Dark Side

  Elena Bartell’s lips curled as she listened on her phone to the witless prattling of her allegedly top editor-in-chief of her Australian fashion magazine. It might be just after four in the morning in Sydney, but she had questions that needed answers. She was being whisked away in her car from the commuter rag to which she’d given a stay of execution. Although if that disastrously dressed reporter in the elevator was the standard of staff they employed, Elena probably shouldn’t have bothered.

  Her gaze slid out the window, as she reviewed the odd meeting. The reporter had an expressive face beneath her pixie-cut titian hair. Elena had recognised the intelligence behind her intense, green eyes. They were also the only eyes that had lit with recognition at her choice of date on which she would announce the fate of the paper.

  Still, it seemed the woman’s appreciation of history might be her only redeeming feature. In fact, Graveyard-Sh
ift Girl was lucky to still be in her employ, but Elena had been too astonished at being insulted to do anything more than walk away. Not that it mattered. The insolent Australian would be unlikely to survive the axe any more than her underperforming colleagues would.

  Speaking of cursed Australians… Elena pursed her lips and moved the phone away from her ear a little. Jana Macy was still jabbering away, trying to cover her ass.

  “Enough!” she spat down her phone. “Your excuses are inane. There is no sound reason Style Sydney’s circulation should be in a death spiral. Turn the circulation figures around and quickly. Try to remember you’re supposed to be part of the world’s premier fashion magazine imprint. Run some actual in-depth fashion stories. I wouldn’t paper the staff bathroom with the features you’ve been commissioning. And make some hard budgetary decisions, or I’ll come down there and make them for you, starting with your contract. We’re done.” She ended the call with a vicious punch of her thumbnail.

  “Felicity,” she said, not glancing at her chief of staff, who was on the other side of the spacious rear seat. “I believe I told you I wanted a new PA by the time I reached the Hudson Metro News. And yet all I see in this vehicle is you. Was I not clear enough? Did you feel keeping me fully staffed was somehow optional?”

  “No, Elena. It’s just, she got lost.” Felicity began tapping on her phone. “Or something. I told her when,” her voice rose to a desperate height, “I told her where. I told her not to be late. And she keeps texting me with updates on her attempts to get here. And she’s miles away—still.”

  “Fire her. Get me a new assistant who is not geographically challenged. We’re a global company, so one would think grasping how a map works would be a prerequisite.”

  She flicked a glance at Felicity, who showed no reaction to the order. Why would she? PAs were changed like heels when they failed to meet her standards.

  The record for the longest-lasting assistant was still sitting at a year, nine months, and two weeks, or so she often heard Felicity tell the new PAs. The title holder was Colleen, a sweet-faced, plump Scottish girl with an impenetrable accent, blinding red hair, and an eidetic memory. Elena had personally written the girl a reference when she’d moved on. The event was so rare that the astonished woman had cried great, gulping, alarming sobs that made Elena regret her largess instantly.

  Elena scrolled through her text messages and stopped on one. Her husband wished for her presence at yet another party. The health insurance company Richard worked for had more parties than lawsuits against it. She sighed as she studied the invitation. It all became clear.

  She typed out her reply.

  I’d rather see flares make another comeback. Besides, I thought you had a convention on then? Miami? What changed?

  She already knew the answer. He was busy sucking up to the new vice-president, a man who had yet to forge alliances, so they’d all be sniffing around to toady up to him. Richard was singular in his hunt for status and power. There was no way he’d miss the opportunity. Ironic that people thought he was the charming, less ambitious one of their coupling.

  Elena hadn’t felt the need to share that she knew the VP’s wife, Annalise, because Richard would insist she make use of the connection. She and Richard saw power differently. For her husband, it was about boosting his ego, getting attention, and having people admire him. For Elena, power was finding a company on its knees that everyone said was worthless or a lost cause, and resurrecting it. Breathing life into a corpse? Creating a heartbeat from absolute death? That was power. Her ability was in seeing the possibilities and talents buried in a forest of media deadwood. But most people only focused on the destruction, the dying products she pulped, not the ones she pruned to allow fresh growth. What she did was a skill that few could understand.

  Elena dropped her phone in her handbag. Her mind wandered to the usual place it did when she recalled her underappreciated abilities in times long past. Times best not raked over.

  “I will temporarily base myself at Hudson Metro News,” she told Felicity. “I’ve informed them I’m giving them six weeks to prove themselves. You will work from there, too.”

  There was no disguising the confusion on the woman’s face. “Seriously? Oh right, sorry, I mean of course you’re serious. When are you not?”

  Her chief of staff gave Elena a pained look. Little was hidden on the woman’s face—and right now it bore dismay, shock, and a hint of revulsion.

  “Problem?” Elena asked in a warning tone. She did not have to explain herself to anyone, although Felicity had been with her long enough to raise the occasional question. But not today.

  “No,” Felicity said quickly. “It’s nothing.”

  “Are you quite certain? I’d hate for you to withhold your insightful thoughts,” Elena said in her softest tone. Only a fool would take her words at face value. And Felicity was no fool.

  The other woman’s eyes widened. “N-no. I would be honoured to work with you out of a building the size of a fish tank with an equivalent aroma,” she said politely, her voice clipped.

  Surprise jolted Elena. “You’ve been inside?”

  Felicity nodded. “It smells like the Hudson it’s named after. I mean just the lower floors—the advertising and finance departments. Our accounts team members were green at the gills when I had to visit them there last year. It was right around when you first bought them out. There were some due diligence papers I needed to collect.”

  “Maintenance costs…” Elena said under her breath. “Add it to my list of pending issues for that little rag.”

  “Yes, Elena.” Felicity’s head bobbed up and down. “May I ask…you say you’ve informed them you’ll assess them for six weeks. What are you really going to be doing there?”

  Elena regarded her, impressed at how nimble her chief of staff’s mind could be at times.

  “Why do you ask?” she said.

  “On most new acquisitions you know in days or a week what their future is. Usually just from going over the books. I mean, I know you got the Hudson in a bundle of other commuter papers, so maybe you don’t know enough about them, but still…six weeks?” She petered out under Elena’s intense scrutiny. “It’s just, um, interesting…”

  “Yes, it is interesting, isn’t it? Any further questions?” She injected steel into her voice, and Felicity shrank back at the tone, shaking her head.

  “Good. I need you to get one of our lawyers in London to lean on my useless ex-husband and get him to grasp the importance of not mentioning my name to talk himself up in interviews.” Her voice dropped to chilly. “Remind dear Spencer that the confidentiality clause he signed upon our divorce has teeth. Expensive ones. Oh, and if he takes credit for my career one more time, I will have him blacklisted. He’ll have to get his next book reviewed by a non-Bartell Corporation publication. And how many of those are left on either side of the Atlantic these days?”

  “Yes, Elena.” Felicity scribbled a note. “And I’m not sure. Not many.”

  “Mm. Contact the Australian executive team, as well as their national accountant, lawyers, and Don McKay on the board, and tell them all to examine the spreadsheet I’m emailing them. Something’s going wrong at Style Sydney, and the rot needs to be stopped before it gets worse. I need explanations. I want Don in the loop in case I have to do something drastic…and expensive.

  “Then book my Lexus in for a service. I want to do a run to Martha’s Vineyard to convince Stan to sell. Maybe he’ll be more open to compromise on home ground. And tell Perry no, I will not wear pink to the Publishers’ ball; I’m not a sixteen-year-old prom queen or a tea-cosy. I don’t care how ‘exquisite the cut’ or ‘brilliant the new designer’ that he wishes to promote. He’s an art director for a global fashion magazine empire—tell him to think like it. I want daring not dreary, and I’m perfectly capable of finding my own dress if he doesn’t grasp that…”

  She paused, as she was reminded of her bizarre ride down in the elevator with that green-
eyed fashion tragic. Elena still couldn’t believe she’d been trolled by the graveyard-shift reporter. How…disappointing. She would have to find out who she was. It had been a very long time since she’d had someone directly spit insults at her. And never an underling still in her employ.

  “We’re done,” she ground out.

  BlogSpot: Aliens of New York

  By Maddie as Hell

  They promised to visit. They haven’t. The reasons pile up like unpaid bills. I get it. They’re busy. Life gets crazy. But I long for the wash of home, and wish I could afford a ticket back.

  I want to hear, hidden in their broad accents, the hum of cicadas in summer and the gentle tik-tik-tik of backyard sprinklers.

  I want the smell of them to be a reminder of the salty air of Bondi Beach, mixed with the tang of vinegar from fish and chips spread on butcher’s paper across the sand. I want the whiff of cut grass and eucalyptus trees and the faint disinfectant on the train to Bondi Junction, which always signalled the start of the weekend.

  I want the taste of them. In the hello-again kiss, brushing tanned cheeks, I want to find the unique, almost dusty, taste of the air back home.

  When they promised to visit, was it a lie told knowingly? Do they think having my best friend here means I don’t need them? Even if we didn’t work the wrong shifts, my housemate has absorbed New York into his skin. He’s become the city I recoil from.

  I miss them.

  CHAPTER 3

  New Yorking Badly

  Maddie flopped onto her sofa, considering her options. It was mid-morning, and she was officially awake. Dressed even. Ready to seize the day. She’d slept off the Fun Factory hangover, but Simon had still looked as if he wished he could end it all when he’d schlepped off to his business internship. Such a wuss, she thought fondly. She yawned. Then again.

  She never felt fully awake anymore. At first, she assumed it was the night shift messing her up. She’d get home around 1:45 a.m., pace her apartment, or cook up some treats until she felt tired or until a rumpled Simon crawled out of bed and threw something at her. Then she’d fall into bed and sleep until noon.