Blood Is the New Black

by Valerie Stivers

I definitely do think it’s time for Beverly to leave while she can still walk.

  Twenty air-kisses and one annoyed taxi driver later and I’m back at the party.

  I run into James at the door, which expels all thoughts of vampires from my mind. He’s done for the night, the big camera stashed in a bulky black shoulder bag.

  “I thought you left,” he says.

  “Nope.” He was looking for me? “Are you leaving?”

  “I could get another drink,” he says. His cheeks are flushed and he has the dark line of a wine stain on his cherubic red lips. I wonder how many drinks he’s already had. I follow him into the bar area, which, since dinner is still happening, is mainly deserted.

  He orders wine. I order another Bloody Mary and vow not to drink it, since I’m already way over my limit.

  We talk about the party, work, nonsense. Dinner ends. From the other room comes the sound of the band starting up. He says, “You know those photos of you I took? The ones I said weren’t going to be pretty?”

  “Yeah?”

  “They’re pretty.”

  His dark-golden eyes are guileless. We’re sitting on bar stools facing each other, so that my knees are between his knees, our feet on each other’s rungs.

  “Thanks.”

  “Look,” he says, “I’m sorry if I’ve been weird with you.”

  “I haven’t noticed you being weird with me,” I lie.

  “Yes you have. I have been. You’re so young,” he says. “And there’s a lot you don’t know. You’re a lot younger than I am.”

  “I’m not. How old are you, twenty-seven? I’ll be twenty-three in March.” I’ve already calculated his age from the year he graduated college (which I know because I Googled him).

  “I could tell you,” he says sadly “reasons that make certain things a bad idea.”

  We’re leaning so close together, our noses are almost touching. Up close, I can see the individual flecks of gold in his eyes.

  “Oh, fuck it,” he says. He wraps a hand around the back of my neck.

  He kisses me. We kiss. He is a fantastic kisser. I am perfectly, gloriously happy. And then he reaches underneath my bar stool and drags it closer, with me on it, and kisses me some more and I’m even happier.

  He holds my chin and looks into my eyes. I grab him by the shirt collar. “Do you realize that a lot of our coworkers are here?”

  “Yes.” He kisses me some more. “It’s bad. I know it’s bad.”

  Aching with reluctance, I pull away. “People are going to see,” I tell him.

  “Do you want to go somewhere else? You can come back to Brooklyn with me. I promise I’ll be a gentleman.”

  I’m about to say yes, I swear I am, when some vestige of Kate-ness reasserts itself in my lust-soaked brain. I don’t just go home with guys. I never just go home with guys. Especially not with a guy I really like. If a guy likes you, he’s going to call you, so you’ll get a second chance. And if he doesn’t really like you and this is your only chance, you don’t want to sleep with him, anyway. Right?

  “I don’t think so,” I whisper.

  He’s still holding my face in his hands, and he stares at me for a long time when I say this, opening his mouth a few times as if to argue and then shutting it. Then he lets go of me, leans back, and sighs. “You’re right,” he says. “I’ve gone insane.”

  It’s at this extremely inopportune moment that Annabel chooses to interrupt. “We have an emergency.” She looks genuinely upset.

  James stands up, sliding off his bar stool and picking up the black camera bag. “I should go. I was just leaving,” he says. The way he gets to his feet tells me that he’s drunker than I realized.

  Annabel and I both watch him stagger away. Then she leans forward and hisses. “Lillian wants him!”

  “For what? I already sent him over there once.”

  Annabel gives me a withering look.

  “You mean wants-him wants him? Doesn’t she have better people to want than the photo boy?” Mentally, I apologize to James for the characterization.

  “That’s complicated. She likes them because they’re young. Before James, she was after an intern in Ad Sales.”

  “What happened to him? Why doesn’t she still like him?”

  “He’s gone….” Annabel looks evasive. “It doesn’t matter. You have to stay away from James. I don’t think anyone but me saw you, but if they did, you’re dead. Lillian will kill you. Literally, she’ll kill you, if you make her jealous.”

  I hate the way people misuse the word literally.

  10

  Relative Notoriety

  PERVERSELY, BY THE time the subway gets me home, I’m wide awake. I dawdle along Broadway and when my cell phone beeps, my heart lurches with the wildly improbable hope that it’s a text message from James. Never mind that he doesn’t have my number. The more rational part of me expects that it’s Sylvia, who could easily be up at this time on the West Coast, but the number on my display is a 917, a mobile phone code for New York City. I open the message.

  Congratulations Baby Mac, you’re famous.-SO

  I stare at it and type back:

  Who is this?-KM

  There is no reply. I quicken my pace toward home and call Sylvia, whose last name does not begin with O.

  “This crazy researcher,” she asks me after I fill her in on my dinner companion, “do you think she’s onto something?”

  “I think she might be on something….”

  “But the world of fashion would be the perfect hideout for vampires!” Sylvia says, having fun. She’s very smart, but she loves this stuff—Anne Rice, Anita Blake, Buffy. Vampire novels were her secret vice at school. “You told me yourself they sleep all day. And didn’t you mention something about them having cold hands and fangs?”

  “They don’t sleep all day every day. Sometimes they go to fashion shoots, or to spas, or to sample sales.”

  “So they’ve adapted to the modern world,” she concludes, as if she weren’t talking total nonsense. “You need a protective necklace or amulet and—Oh.”

  “Oh what?”

  “Oh, never mind.”

  “No, what were you going to say?”

  “What about James? Could he be one, too? He works at Tasty. Did you notice if his hands or lips were cold?”

  “They definitely weren’t cold.”

  “That’s good but not conclusive. He might have just fed.”

  “Sylvia!” I screech.

  I hang up with Sylvia before getting into the elevator of Vic’s building. The apartment, as usual, is still and empty, populated only by nodding orchids and priceless art. I head into the kitchen and rustle up ingredients for a grilled cheese. Thanks to drunk Beverly Grant and her disturbing convictions, I didn’t get enough to eat during dinner.

  My aunt walks into the kitchen wrapped in a fuchsia silk robe with a contrast-band of brilliant blue around the waist and blue bias-tape trim. “What’s this very unusual smell?” she asks.

  I take my grilled cheese out of the pan and divide it between two plates. There is nothing more delicious than a midnight grilled cheese, though in this case it’s a two A.M. grilled cheese.

  “So tell me, darling, what was your evening like?”

  Chatting with Vic about her party and my party, I realize this is what I hoped that staying with her would be like. I’m about to suggest we do it more often when she drops the bombshell.

  “I’m flying to Italy tomorrow evening and I’m not sure when I’ll be back.”

  My heart plummets. If she hadn’t been lured by the smell of food cooking, would she have just left? No note? Nothing?

  “I’m sure you’ll be fine here by yourself. The maid will come. She waters the orchids.” Victoria waves a hand airily, as if my only concern would be taxing myself with the housework.

  “Why are you going?” I try to cover my distress.

  “A collector I’ve been working on for ages has decided to sell a Schiele. I have to hold
his hand to make sure he doesn’t change his mind. It’s utterly vexing, but the painting will be the sensation of the fall auctions.”

  “Oh. Congratulations.”

  “Thank you. It is a coup de grâce, if I do say so myself. So go ahead, do whatever it is you’ve been dying to do except for the presence of the old bat.”

  I haven’t been dying to do anything except spend some quality time with my aunt.

  “Have a nice trip.” I air-kiss her good night.

  I DRESS myself with extra care in the morning. Blue velvet wedges. A stark, super-short black sheath dress with tulip sleeves of my own design, very punk princess. I tie a white velvet ribbon around my wrist. Not bad.

  But when I get to the office, I begin to feel paranoid.

  Is it me, or am I sensing a pregnant hush? Felix eyes me with more interest than usual. A couple of girls who I think are in the face creams department fall silent and stare at me when I walk past. By the time I get to my area, I’m actually relieved to see Nin and Rachel. At least I know why they hate me and aren’t speaking to me.

  But, ominously, they are speaking to me.

  “Hi, Kate!” Nin says. “Did you have fun at the party last night?”

  I don’t like the way she cackles after she says this.

  “Did you talk to anyone interesting?” she asks coyly.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Just trying to live vicariously. Enjoying my proximity to the new It girl.”

  I wonder what new form of mockery this is.

  “What are you talking about?” I ask her. “I was a seat-filler.”

  “Why don’t you read StakeOut, and then you tell us,” Rachel suggests.

  SOON-TO-BE-FATAL ATTRACTION

  Looks like someone is getting long in the tooth. Among her many other charming attributes—sleeping in a coffin, drinking blood, and having a “signature style,” to name just a few—Tasty EIC Lillian Hall is known to enjoy flirtations with her younger (and we’re talking centuries, folks!) male colleagues. At last night’s party at Carnivoré, Hall’s flavor of the month was seen deep in conversation with an attractive young junior staffer while the Queen of the Damned Fashionable was a bored stiff in the dining room. Heads are going to roll if Hall finds out. Oh, oops, she just did.

  TAGS: TASTY, VAMPIRES, OLDHAM INC., LILLIAN HALL, THE DAMNED

  Deep in conversation. That’s not so bad. That’s not “engaged in ravenous kissing,” which would be closer to the truth. Who the hell is writing this stuff? I’ve suspected Rico, but Rico wasn’t at the party. Unless, I realize with horror, James told him when he got home. But why would he do that? James may be maddeningly elusive, as is the way of cute guys, but he wouldn’t want to get me in trouble. And he told me he tries to stay out of the gossips. Unless that was a front.

  I click the browser window shut and stare at my screen, brain churning, afraid to turn around and face my fellow interns’ questioning gazes. Since we’re at a temporary lull in Tasty Girl work—Lexa is deciding on winners from the list of semifinalists Annabel gave her—I’m free to freak out, and wait to be fired.

  Around eleven-thirty a message comes in from Annabel.

  It says:

  Don’t panic. No one but me knows it was you.

  I e-mail back:

  People are acting weird. Rachel and Nin all but accused me. Are you sure?

  Her reply:

  Yes. They are gossiping about everyone, and your name is on the list as a junior staffer at the party, but there’s nothing specific.

  Me:

  Thank you, thank you, thank you.

  Her:

  Don’t thank me yet. You’re toast if Lillian suspects you.

  I try not to despair. But if StakeOut is right—and evidence suggests that it is—then I’m in serious trouble. Because one other person has seen me tucked into a corner with James, deep in conversation. And that’s Lillian herself at the Saks party last week. Even if no one else is especially suspicious of me, she will be.

  THE DAY drags on.

  For once, Lexa isn’t bombarding us with requests. I want to walk by the photo department and catch a glimpse of James, but I can’t muster the courage. All I can do is check my e-mail every thirty seconds, hoping that he’ll send me a greeting or acknowledgment after last night.

  Just as I’m starting to think about lunch, a brisk rap sounds on our door. I don’t turn around until I hear Rachel in tones of scandalized awe say, “Hello, Lillian! Hello, Lexa!”

  I whirl in my chair, palms sweating. Lillian looks fantastic in a black pencil skirt (they’re calling them “skinny skirts” this season), black blazer, and patent-leather shoes like alien architecture. She catches my eye. Her matte red lips grimace. I think it’s a smile. But it can’t be a smile. Lillian can’t continue being friendly to me after reading on the Internet that I, a lowly intern, am her rival. Especially because StakeOut committed the unforgivable sin of making fun of her age.

  Lexa looks grouchy. Belatedly, I realize that my morning’s perusal of the tabloids didn’t turn up a single mention of her. No wonder she’s pissed.

  “Kate,” Lillian says. “We have a special surprise for you.”

  Oh, God.

  “Now that Reese is no longer with us, we have a column opening up. She wrote a page in the ‘GirlTalk’ section that was supposed to be youthful and casual.”

  Wait a minute. What happened to Reese?

  “So someone with no writing experience should be able to handle it,” Lexa adds.

  Lillian continues, “Lauren told me that you had spoken to her about wanting to write something. She said you’d been working on some ideas for us.”

  I came up with them only last week but it seems like much longer than that.

  “I have,” I say hesitantly, acutely aware of Rachel and Nin listening. “I’ve been exploring good fashion. Morally good fashion. If I wrote a page on that, we could show clothes that are sweatshop free. Environmentally responsible fabrics for people who sew. Accessories with small carbon footprints. The theme could be different every month….”

  The room is silent.

  “Sounds PETA to me,” Lexa says coldly.

  At the word PETA, there’s a nervous rustle. Nin glances surreptitiously at Lillian, as if awaiting her wrath. It’s well known that our fearless leader and PETA have a personal enmity.

  “Would the clothes be cute?” Lillian asks.

  Around here, “cute” is the highest form of praise. The opposite of cute is “enh.” And believe me, you don’t want to be “enh.”

  “Of course.” Sweating, I stumble forward with my explanation. “They are great for our demographic. A store in Los Angeles just hosted an Eco Fashion Week. And that brand Stewart + Brown uses all organic cotton and donates part of their profits to save the environment.” I’ve done my research.

  Lillian’s look is unreadable.

  “Tsch!” Lexa leaps into the breach. I take it that’s even worse than “enh.” “Fashion is supposed to be fun.”

  “It can be fun to wear environmentally clean clothes.”

  “Clean clothes,” Lillian pronounces. “I like it. Have something for us by Wednesday.”

  Lillian is famous for her relentless awareness of current media. The only possible explanation for her continued favoritism is that she hasn’t read StakeOut today.

  Why hasn’t she read StakeOut?

  Lillian and Lexa sweep off, leaving us in stunned silence.

  Then Rachel collapses onto her desk and starts wailing. “I should have gotten that assignment! I’m the writer! I blog thanklessly, day in and day out.” She bangs her head on the desk. “I’ve begged them—Lillian, Lauren, Lexa, Kristen, Alessandra, Reese, all of them!”—Bang—“to give me a byline. Just one tiny byline so I can get a real fucking job!”

  “You’ve asked people for writing assignments?” Nin squeals. “You lied to me!”

  “Of course I’ve asked, you idiot!” Rachel cries.

  Nin’s or
dinarily happy face goes dark. “I may not be a genius,” she says, “but at least I didn’t go into magazines for the writing.”

  “I think I should close the door,” I say, hopping to my feet.

  Rachel keeps sobbing and banging her head. “What’s the point of publishing if you don’t do it while you’re young and hot?”

  “You guys,” I say, hovering anxiously between the two of them. “We should try working together. Maybe if we supported each other we’d all get what we want.”

  They both glare at me. They’re so myopic, it’s frustrating.

  “I could help you both,” I tell them. “I could help you get into parties. I could put in a good word with you for the writing. But the way you’ve acted, why should I bother?”

  “Why would you do that?” Nin asks. “What would you get out of it?”

  “I’d do it because I’m nice.”

  Rachel lifts her head off the desk. Her face is red and her hair is sticking to her lip gloss. “Nice?” she asks. “I want to be a magazine editor! Being mean and not doing any work is the industry standard!” She balls up her fists and folds over in her chair.

  “Try ujai breathing,” Nin suggests. “It’s a yoga thing.”

  “Look,” I say, slowly and patiently, “let’s just give it a try. Right now. I’ve always wanted to go to the cafeteria. Do you want to come?”

  THE OLDHAM cafeteria is disorienting like the first floor of a department store—crowded, confusing layout, too much choice, danger of asphyxiation by secondhand perfume—but it’s much, much more fabulous. I’m way too overstimulated to choose my food properly, and end up with the odd combination of a beet-and-goat-cheese salad and a plate of sautéed broccoli rabe.

  “Look at that girl,” I say to my fellow interns after we’ve found a seat in the undulating-glass-walled room. I subtly indicate a Nicole Kidman look-alike wearing a giant corset belt. “Cute or enh?”

  “Enh,” Rachel says. She’s got her notebook out and is madly scribbling notes.

  She and Nin have seen it all before, and today they don’t want to talk about clothes. They want to talk about Lillian.