Summer Intern

by Carrie Karasyov

  “How’d you learn all this stuff in one day?” I asked. Just then, the answer came around the corner.

  “Hiiiiii, orphans!” squealed a gray-haired guy wearing a neck scarf and motorcycle boots. Someone actually topped Gabe in over-the-topness.

  “Oh, you’re cute. You are rocking that belt,” he said, looking me over. “Richard Finn, accessories director.”

  “Richard is the eyes and ears of this institution, like the janitor in Sixteen Candles,” Teagan said, “but without the broom. He filled us in on everything yesterday.”

  “Oh, I got your broom right here!” he said, patting his pants.

  I laughed, blushing again.

  “So, Kira, right? Aiiight, baby, we’re gonna throw you to the wolves today, baptism by fire, best way to learn.”

  Gulp. I just hoped I wouldn’t get burned.

  As Richard walked away, we all bemoaned the fact that we were not going to be working for someone like him.

  “It’s so effing unfair that those little heiresses can pick and choose who they want to work for,” lamented Teagan. “What a bummer that Daphne Hughes’s mute idiotic friend got Richard for a boss!”

  “I know. It would have been the best. He seems so nice. And so is Alida,” I added.

  “They know who is nice and who is mean. That’s why they snag all the good spots,” said Gabe.

  “And do no work,” said Teagan. “We heard they take two-hour lunches, which cost more than the editors make in a week, and then bail early to get ‘manis’!” she mocked with finger air quotes.

  I was neither a wealthy socialite who could call my own shots at Skirt nor a punkish rule breaker determined to make a statement, like Gabe and Teagan seemed to be. I guess I was somewhere in between. I had always thought I had killer style—in school, when all the girls in my class took to wearing exactly the same outfits that Jessica Simpson and Nicole Richie were wearing on the opposite coast, I didn’t let that influence me. I scavenged flea markets and vintage shops, raiding my great-aunt Mimi’s closet (she was something in her day, according to her, anyway), and put together a look that I felt was distinctly me. This was no Sienna Miller copying Kate Moss situation. I had my own thing goin’ on. My friends, while telling me I looked cool, all admitted that they would never have the nerve to wear the clothes that I did. Translation: Some of my stuff is semi-weird. Leg warmers in April? Vests over T-shirts? True, it all sounds pretty heinous when you dissect it like that, but the overall effect was pretty chicadelic, I swear. I felt that my fashion style is what separated me from the crowd, allowed me to express my individuality and all that new-agey stuff. (Paging Dr. Phil.)

  But that all came to a screeching halt last night when I arrived in New York and headed for my hotel, where I’d stayed for a night before moving into the apartment I’d share with Gabe and Teagan. When my taxi pulled off the FDR Drive into the East Village and I glanced out the window at the people on the street, I was shocked. I was—gulp—not that original. Those leg warmers that I thought so chic and unusual? I saw four people wearing them in a one-block radius. And I guess vests weren’t my reinvention, ’cause I spotted a gaggle of girls prancing around in them. Yikes. Was my eclectic-style persona fading away? Was I just not that interesting anymore? Maybe what was edgy in Philly was not so slick in the grit-filled Big Apple. It started to slowly dawn on me that this was New York—Manhattan—and what was innovative in Philly was totally common here.

  Suddenly, as I sat there at that cubicle, the summer seemed like it would be very long and lonely. Would I become friends with any of these people? Or was I going to be hanging solo, counting the days until it was all over? I didn’t know. But out of nowhere, the face of James, the guy from the photo department, came into my mind. He was hot, and he definitely seemed nice. Maybe he and I would be friends. Maybe more. And before I knew it, my mind was racing with thoughts of James and me dining at sidewalk cafés and going to see Woody Allen movies at small alternative theaters. But okay, full disclosure. I am a pretty confident girl, not cocky or arrogant. I have always aced school, had a sense of self and strength to conquer whatever I put my mind to—except maybe when it comes to the opposite sex. I kind of still haven’t mastered that one, and am often confounded as to what drives these beings, or how we’re supposed to relate to them. Sure, I’ve dated, had a boyfriend or two, but I’ve never yet really connected to any of them.

  “Yoo hoo, earth to Kira?” Gabe’s voice interrupted my glum reverie of solitude.

  “Sorry,” I said quickly.

  “We’ve got to go report for duty. You coming?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, following him and Teagan.

  We walked down a long hallway, turned a corner by the Xeroxes, and were suddenly face-to-face with Daphne and James. Huddled together. Intimately.

  “Hey,” said James.

  “Hi,” we all mumbled.

  Daphne just looked at us from top to bottom, smiled, and said nothing.

  We kept walking. When we were out of earshot, Teagan leaned over and whispered to me, “I forgot to tell you, I overheard an editor talking in the bathroom. Hot James? He’s Daphne’s boyfriend.”

  Good thing she was in front of me and didn’t see my face turn purple. I winced as my flickering Manhattan montage of courtship faded to black.

  Chapter Three

  “And you are…?” asked the ice-cold voice as I lingered nervously in the door frame.

  “Kira. Your intern. For the summer,” I replied, shuffling back and forth like a three-year-old who had to pee.

  “Ugh, I always forget what day you people start,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I swear, sometimes this intern program is more trouble than it’s worth!”

  Was it too late to switch to boring fact-checking?

  “S-s-sorry” was my tepid response.

  “We are a magazine, not a forum for education!” she huffed. “But no matter. Maybe one day you’ll be running this place!”

  I smiled hopefully.

  “HAHAHAHAHAHAHA,” she wailed in piercing hyenalike laughter, her head thrown back. I guess she had been joking.

  “Have a seat,” CeCe Ward finally said, looking me over and gesturing to an extremely uncomfortable-looking steel stool. Behind CeCe was a wall of model cards, five-by-seven-inch glossies with sexily posed women featuring their agencies’ logos in the lower-right-hand corner: Ford. Wilhelmina. Elite. The models’ names were in bold in the lower-left-hand corner: Esmé. Lila. Eugenia. Zxykasmir.

  Face after beautiful face, the girls were at the top of their game, booked in the editorial pages of Skirt to be shot by the best photographers in the world. And all day, and often into the night, CeCe Ward had to stare at them. No wonder she was bitter.

  “All right, you can start by sorting the new model cards,” said CeCe with a sneer. She opened her crocodile Hermès Kelly bag and unzipped a compartment, retrieving cigarettes. She put a finger to her lips as if to say “shhh” and lit up. I knew smoking was strictly against the rules, but I had no choice except to sit in her clouds of smoke while sorting the cards into piles: blondes, brunettes, redheads, and parts models—for when we did shoots of just legs for shoes or hands for rings, etc.

  “Is it true there’s some butt model who makes like fifty grand a shoot?” I asked, trying to make conversation as CeCe puffed away.

  “What’s that expression they have in Europe? Children are to be seen, not heard,” she sneered. “It’s like that here.” She patted my head and walked out, extinguishing her Satan stick in an ashtray right next to me. Great. So much for my big learning experience. I was starting to think my summer was turning out to be a wash. I had walked away from making thousands folding shirts at Anthropologie in Philly to making zero in New York at this unpaid internship while being treated like a zero at the same time.

  After opening two hundred something envelopes, I was elated that the lunch hour was upon us. There was usually so much work that Gabe had been told no one really left for lunch
except the Trumpettes, and that the food was cheap and low-cal in Hughes Hall, the cafeteria for Hughes Publications.

  The all-glass dining hall was like something out of Star Trek— podlike sitting areas encased in glass for privacy so groups could have private convos while their fabulous clothes were on display. The aisles were like catwalks with beneath-the-floor lighting, rendering them mini-runways for the beautiful people to stroll en route to sitting down with their salad.

  My friend Cassie and I always used to joke about what a nightmare it would be to slip and fall during lunch in our high school caf. But in retrospect, a tumble like that in front of dumb jocks and pom-pom toters was little league. To take a spill here and wipe out in front of everyone—now that would be horrifying beyond words.

  Gabe and Teagan got gourmet salad bar spreads while I waited in the quesadilla line. When I finally got the goods, I nervously walked down the lit aisle and surveyed the scene, spotting my roommates in a pod by the window.

  “Hi, guys,” I said, overwhelmed. “This place is crazy.”

  “I know, sticks on parade, right?” joked Teagan.

  “Hey, whores!” laughed Richard, who came over with a liter-size Diet Coke. “I’m plopping with you for a sec. How ya holding up, new girl?” he asked me. “Is CeCe a freak or what? She’s living proof that not all the nuts are in the nuthouse.”

  I smiled, and before I could give a response, James came waltzing over.

  “Hey, guys, can I crash your table? Our whole staff seemed to go out today. Nothing like bailing when we’re on deadline,” he said, shaking his head.

  “Where’s the Dapher?” Richard probed.

  “Out with Jane and Cecilia, at some new Ian Schrager hotel café.”

  “Oooh, you mean C-Level? The one with the ginormous fish tanks with merpeople swimming in them? Awesome!” gushed Gabe. “I just read in The Village Voice that it takes like two months to get in there.”

  I labored with my plastic knife and fork to get a soggy bite of quesadilla and not look like a total slob, all the while imagining Daphne and her clones delicately wielding custom chopsticks to pluck a perfectly rolled piece of sushi off some merman’s ripped abs.

  “So how are you guys doing?” asked James. “Kira, you’re with CeCe, right? How’s that been so far?”

  Heavens open, clouds part, angels sing their soprano chorus: He remembered my name! And who I worked for. I was officially on the radar. Wait—Kira, you effing idiot. He’s with the billionaire pixie owner of the pod, the caf, and the building you’re sitting in! The flaxen-haired nymph who dines not at Daddy’s dumb caf for worker bee drones but at the hardest place to book a table in the city! Pull the rip cord on the parachute back to earth.

  “She’s…something” was all I could lamely muster.

  “Her intern hazings are fabled,” James said, laughing. “But I bet you can handle it,” he added with a warm smile.

  “I hope.” I shrugged. “I’d be psyched for the Genevieve West gig, though. I think I’m going to toss my hat in the ring for that.”

  “You go, girl!” said Richard, patting me on the back. “Go for it! Why not?”

  Gabe and Teagan were quiet. Uh-oh. Things could get really dicey if we had to go head-to-head for the internship. But I had no choice. I was here to learn as much as possible, and it’s not like Gabe and Teagan were my best friends from childhood. I took a deep breath.

  “Are you guys trying out for it?” I asked, trying to be casual. “I just figured you’re really in the thick of it then and could learn a ton. I don’t know…I probably don’t have a shot but—”

  “I’m not trying,” said Gabe. “I love Warren, anyway.”

  “Me, neither,” added Teagan.

  My body relaxed. It was terrible but I was glad that there were two down, which meant less competition for me.

  “Plus…” Teagan continued, looking at James carefully. “It’s kind of stiff competition.”

  I stared at Teagan, who locked eyes with me, and I knew what she was saying in the unspoken subtitles: Teagan did not want to mess with the boss’s daughter. Clearly, Daphne was the queen bee—even Alida walked on broken glass around her—so no way would Teagan or Gabe rock that boat. Or should I say yacht. No matter how hard I worked, no matter how little Daphne did, everyone assumed she’d get the job. That was how it worked.

  I was suddenly getting the picture: Daphne Hughes got anything and everything she wanted. Whenever she wanted it. But you know what? Not this time. No way. I wanted that internship, and I was going to get it.

  Chapter Four

  After work, Gabe and Teagan took me to our pad downtown. Because I’d found out I’d won the internship just last week, I’d had little time to prep for the move. I’d decided to spend my first night in a hotel to rest up for day one, so I was just now seeing my summer abode. For some insane reason, I was envisioning the set of Friends or one of the funky lofts on The Real World, complete with state-o’-the-art electronics and hotties shooting pool on our living room billiards table. My daydream couldn’t have possibly been more off base. But hey, if those shows were actually the real real world, the cribs would be tiny, grody hovels, just like our summer apartment. Gabe and Teagan had settled in and already claimed rooms. So, naturally, I ended up with the smallest, which was literally no bigger than a closet. With no closet in it, my stuff would hang on a rack in the hallway. Good times. Next to my army-style cot was a teeny side table with two drawers for all my stuff. Bonjour, Alcatraz.

  After unpacking I plopped in the living room, which looked like Pier 1 had exploded. Gabe suggested we hit Schiller’s, a restaurant that he’d heard about from one of his friends. The food was really good and the atmosphere cool, but I wasn’t sure I would be able to afford eating out like that every night. Or even every week. Maybe once a month. I was glad, though, that I had a chance to get to know Gabe and Teagan better. Well, Gabe anyway. Teagan was really private and said very little about herself, and usually used sarcasm to answer any serious question. All my efforts to penetrate were deflected. She was totally cool about filling us in on what she had heard about the magazine from a friend who worked there last year, but when it came to personal stuff, she was mute.

  Gabe, on the other hand, let everything just flow without an edit button. I could tell he was the type who liked to use his friends as psychiatrists. He explained that he was from the Midwest and his parents were really conservative Catholic Italians who had no idea he was gay and would freak if they did. He had two brothers and two sisters (and had always loved doing their hair and picking out their outfits), and they were totally loving, but he always pretended to be into sports and stuff when his dad was around. The big secret was that his parents thought he was going to the University of Wisconsin this fall and had no idea that he had accepted a full scholarship to Parson’s. In fact, they thought he was interning this summer for Sports Today, one of Hughes Publications’ other magazines. He planned on coming out to them and telling them about school at the end of the summer, and was prepared for a huge meltdown. I said I would stand by with Kleenex and defibrillators.

  When we got home at midnight, I was so exhausted I thought I’d pass out—on my cot that looked like a house party for bedbugs.

  Teagan ran a black-nail-polished hand through her raven hair. “Kira, I feel bad you got the shittiest room. If you wanna trade halfway—”

  “Oh, no, it’s okay,” I said truthfully, touched by her offer.

  “I’m so wiped out, you guys, I’m hitting the hay,” Gabe moaned. “I can’t believe I’m dying for the weekend already and it’s only Monday night.”

  I felt the same way. Especially because I had the sinking feeling that the long days working beside CeCe could be measured in dog years.

  The next day, I was on my knees, attempting to alphabetize back issues of Russian Vogue (which was virtually impossible considering I can’t read Cyrillic), while I listened to CeCe dissect yet another fifteen-year-old wannabe model to her fa
ce. It was amazing how she could be so cold, and equally amazing that these girls would sit there and take it. I’m sure the second they were out of the room they burst into tears, but before they did, they were somehow able to sit there stoically and listen to an evil woman not half as pretty as they were go on about how they were too fat, their nose protruded, their look was too eighties, their hair too long, their eyebrows too arched, their ankles too thick, and so on and so on. From my angle on the floor, CeCe’s desk obstructed my view, but I could hear everything. She criticized one girl so severely that simply listening you’d think she’d be a zit-covered walrus, but when I looked up I saw a dangerously thin redhead with a perfect oval face, porcelain skin, and china blue eyes that were filling up with tears. Forget Skirt, CeCe should be interrogating prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

  The door opened and closed again, and I stopped to rub my temples. It was only eleven o’clock but I was already beat. “Hi, CeCe,” said a voice that belonged to someone wearing lizard-skin Jimmy Choos.

  I was waiting for a cold, terse reply from CeCe but was shocked when she warmly said, “Hiiii, sweetness!”

  Was this one of her favorite models? Oh God, what if it was someone like Gisele? Or Natalia Vodianova? But the voice didn’t have an accent. Maybe it was Christy Turlington stopping by for old times’ sake?

  “I am so beat,” said the voice, and flopped onto a chair.

  “I hear you,” said CeCe sympathetically.

  “Can I have a cigarette?”

  “Sure.”

  Must be another editor, I thought. I returned to shuffling the magazines around.

  “Wait, is someone in here?”

  Suddenly a face appeared under the desk. As her head was upside down, it took a second to recognize the small cornflower blue eyes and slightly weak jaw with the overly plump pink lips to compensate.

  “Hi, Daphne,” I said.

  Daphne flipped her head back up. “CeCe, what’s your intern doing on the floor?” Daphne laughed. “You are so mean!”