by Sally Koslow
Bebe’s attention had moved on.
“Holy fuck, it’s him, isn’t it?” she said, fixated on the former presi
dent. “And her.” She began to dart in the couple’s direction.
Magnolia saw a flicker of terror in Jock’s eye. As the former presi
dent was swarmed by wide-eyed females, Jock swiftly created a no-fly
zone around Hillary, whom he adroitly steered toward a cluster of
kingpin advertisers. His moves were as smooth as a swan dive.
For a split second Bebe stood paralyzed, then replaced her aston
ishment with cavalier amusement. She turned to Magnolia. “Gotta
get to my next party—one with real food,” she said. “Want to join
me?”
“But there’s a whole spread in the next room,” where Magnolia
could hear Darlene.
“Suit yourself. I’ve had it with this crowd. An eggnog for the road
and I’m history.” She padded off to the bar, leaving Magnolia to head
for the buffet to make sure that Darlene and the other Scary disciples
registered that she was here.
By the standards of a ten-room Fifth Avenue duplex, the Flana
gans’ dining room was small. Magnolia found herself bosom to bosom
with Darlene, directly under a portrait of one of Pippi Flanagan’s dis
approving ancestors.
“Have you met Raven?” Darlene asked, smearing caviar on a blini,
popping it in her mouth, and motioning toward an exceedingly tall
woman with hair and clothing as dark as her name. “Raven Kensing
tonWoods, Magnolia Gold. Raven’s visiting,” Darlene said as she
chewed. “From London.”
As if that weren’t obvious the minute the woman opened her mouth.
“Grand party,” the Brit said. “Are you another of Jock’s lovelies?”
“Are you?” Magnolia asked.
Raven laughed like wind chimes. As if on cue, Jock appeared and
linked arms with her and Magnolia. “Everyone drinking up?” he said.
“I’m told you press people here in the States don’t like to drink,”
Raven said. “Not like us, who end every bloody workday with cocktails.”
“You’re going to have to change that, Raven,” Jock said, and moved
on as happy host.
“Here for long?” Magnolia asked Raven.
“Not likely,” Raven said. “I doubt you all could afford me.” She let
her wind chimes tinkle one more time, tossed her sable hair, and
floated off with Darlene toward the bar.
“Who—or what—was that?” Natalie asked, sidling up to Magno
lia as they watched heads turn toward Raven, who cut an inky wake
in a crowd which had abandoned its customary black for hits of festive
color. Natalie wore a thigh-high caftan in blue iridescent silk, gold
bangles on each wrist, and slouchy, calfskin boots. Her hair was in its
customary Wilma Flintstone do.
” ‘ Tis some visitor tapping at my chamber door,’ ” Magnolia said.
Natalie took a second to get Magnolia’s reference. But she was an English major, too. “‘Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,’ ” Natalie recited. “I take it that’s the Raven SomethingSomething I’ve read about?”
“Only her and nevermore,” Magnolia said. “Or at least I hope
there’s nothing more.”
“Don’t do one of your paranoid numbers—I hear she’s in town
about one of the cheesy tabloid jobs,” Natalie said, always making a point of distinguishing Dazzle from the only slightly trashier celebrity magazines that had overtaken the newsstands. “Stop think
ing about that pea-brained Page Six item. Everyone else has.”
“Okay,” Magnolia said. “I’ll try.” She decided now would be a good
time to leave the party and collected her coat from the attendant in
Jock’s lobby. Despite Natalie’s order, she couldn’t stop obsessing over
whether Raven might be the mysterious Englishwoman rumored to
be after her job, and, to clear her head, she started to walk south
rather furiously.
Soon enough, she was in midtown. She passed Barney’s Christmas
windows, loaded with insider innuendo, walked over to Bergdorf’s, whose displays were dripping with more layered opulence than she’d
ever recalled, and past Cartier, whose whole building was wrapped in
a red bow. She ultimately stationed herself in front of the towering
tree at Rockefeller Center, standing before it as if it were the great Oz
ready to spit out answers. Why can’t anything be simple, she won
dered? Not a store window. Not a party. Not a guy. Not a job.
Out of the corner of her eye, a tall man in a blue knit ski hat put
his arm around a woman’s waist and pulled her close for a kiss in front
of the tree. Magnolia did a double-take. Could that be Tyler?
Magnolia blinked and the man disappeared. Had she made him up?
She walked toward the skating rink in an attempt to see him again,
weaving in and out of the crowd until she spotted him. He turned.
Blue Hat had a cropped red beard. Not Tyler. But why could she not
stop thinking about him? Since she’d left the hotel room yesterday,
she’d been marinating in both guilt and a persistent emotion she
couldn’t name that was dangerously close to longing. Magnolia could
see him, taste him, hear him, and smell him.
Was she so needy and vulnerable that she’d lost all common sense?
If they’d spent a whole weekend together, they probably would have
run out of conversation by Saturday afternoon.
Had she used Tyler? She’d discussed their time together with
Abbey, who tried to convince her it had been the other way around.
You can’t think about him, Magnolia told herself. And she didn’t for
most of the walk home, because she was back to ruminating about
Raven, a certain head-of-another-masthead who Magnolia, informed
by her intuition, knew had made the trip with the hope of becoming
her replacement.
At the very least, Magnolia had distractions. Just as magazines glorified Christmas, whipping female readers into a froth of insomnia
inducing, chemical-dependency-seeking stress as they compared their
ragged efforts to the results of photo shoots engineered by teams of
professionals, so, too, the industry romanticized the season for its own
amusement. First, there were the parties. It was true what Magnolia had told Raven: during the rest of the
year, if there weren’t a profit motive to get together at the end of
the workday, staffs splintered off to Westchester, New Jersey, Con
necticut, and four of the five boroughs. (Magnolia had yet to meet
anyone who worked on a magazine and lived on Staten Island.) But in
December, they made up for it, with day after day and night after
night of bonhomie, both real and faux.
Scary, for instance, traditionally invited every employee to the
once-glorious Tavern on the Green, which they rented out in its
entirety. Mail-room attendants showed off MTV-worthy dance moves
with rhythm-challenged editors as partners. Those who didn’t dance
feasted from a pile of shrimp the size of the national debt.
For Magnolia, there was also Darlene’s tree-trimming party at her
Upper East Side brownstone. The evening masqueraded as a family
fete, her velvet-clad daughters—Priscilla, Camilla, and Ann
abel—
circulating silver trays of canapés to the advertisers Darlene treated as
her nearest and dearest. Magnolia knew that the magazine paid the bill. But who was she to complain? Lady used to do the same for the staff brunch she threw at her apartment, featuring an ecumenical
spread of Zabar’s finest Nova Scotia salmon, sweet potato latkes, and
Christmas cookies she had baked herself from the magazine’s recipes.
But this year, she wouldn’t be giving her party. In its place was Bebe’s
Nashville rib-and-brew bash at Blue Smoke.
But that wasn’t all. Until the industry flew west for skiing three
weeks later, every venue from Mulberry to Madison was filled with
mistletoe madness. The Estée Lauder gang, for example, invited the
town’s top editors in chief and beauty editors to a discreet cocktail
party at the 21 Club. Glamazon staged a disco night around the pool at
Soho House. And Scary threw an official no-executive-left-behind lunch at Daniel, which was decked out with trimmings fit for Dr. Zhivago. Between courses, Daniel Boulud himself greeted the guests to make sure the food was perfect. It was. Lunch ended with gifts—
enameled cuff links for the gentlemen, fur shrugs for the ladies.
Presents flowed through the season. Magnolia gave and Magnolia
got. For the staff, she decided on long, kiwi green gloves which Ruthie Kim ordered at a discount, though Magnolia footed the bill. She
debated whether or not to stretch for the splurge. She wasn’t the edi
tor in chief anymore, and maybe her colleagues wouldn’t expect
it. But history and ego convinced her to go the distance; she didn’t
want to appear stingy, considering what she raked in from PR firms,
grateful contributors, and the more senior staff members. While this
year she didn’t accumulate as much swag as in previous seasons,
she adored the satin evening bag with its Swarovski crystal clasp, the
cashmere hoodie and sweatpants, and best of all, a mad bomber hat
from Cameron.
The presents were exhilarating, but the fake fun wasn’t. By
today—an afternoon on the final week of work before Christmas—
Magnolia was as limp as the last piece of tinsel in the package. Natalie had invited her to Dazzle’s ho-ho-hoedown. Magnolia sat at her desk and realized that she didn’t have a thing to wear—anything
party-worthy in her closet was, by now, at the cleaners or had been
on view again and again, and she hadn’t gone shopping in at least
two months.
Briefly she considered if, for her, that could be as credible a sign of
depression as a sudden change in appetite. No problem. The fashion
department could surely help, at least with the clothing challenge.
Remembering a plum velvet suit she knew had just been returned
from a photo shoot, she walked into the fashion closet.
As Magnolia began foraging in the racks, she heard a husky male
voice at the far end of the crammed room. “What the hell are you
doing?” it said.
“C’mon, babe,” Bebe answered him, loud and clear. “I’m talking
fun. Have another glass of Pinot Noir. I took you for a grown-up.”
“No, thanks,” he said. Magnolia heard a tussle. “No,” he shouted.
“Get away … not my type.”
“Sweetheart, you’re too young for a type.” Bebe laughed loudly.
“I can teach you a few things. You’ll thank me for this later. And
haven’t I been good to you?”
“Yes, but—”
“Agree, cute butt.” Magnolia stuck her head through the racks just as Bebe started to
unbuckle his belt. With the grace of a Bond girl, she pushed Bebe and
Polo apart, shrieking, “Bebe, do the terms ‘statutory rape’ and ‘jail
bait’ mean nothing to you?”
Bebe looked up, startled. Her beady eyes barely blinked.
“Paws off, Bebe,” Magnolia said, having no idea where her convic
tion was coming from. “And you, boy, out!” Polo bolted.
“Calm down, you little buzz kill,” Bebe cackled at Magnolia. “I am
educating this kid. Don’t get your tit in a ringer. And what’s with the CSI Investigates bit anyway? Why are you snooping?”
“I didn’t think I had to put on a HazMat suit to walk into our fash
ion closet,” Magnolia said, staying close to Bebe and talking in a
hushed tone. “Why I’m here is irrelevant. What part of ‘normal’ don’t
you understand?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Bebe said, walking away. “I’ve always found
‘normal’ was highly subjective and sadly overrated. Get out of my face,
Mag-knowl-ya. You’re trying to turn a PG13 short into an X-rated
miniseries. Go party and forget this happened.”
“Your secret is safe with me,” Magnolia said to Bebe’s back. You sleazy child molester, she said to herself.
“And me.” Magnolia spun around. Wide-eyed, her assistant, Sasha,
had watched the whole thing.
C h a p t e r 2 5
Fattened Up for the Kill
“Suing?” Magnolia asked. “Did you say they’re suing?” It was odd for the phone to ring at 6:15 A.M., and even odder for an early
morning caller to be Natalie.
“Magnolia,” Natalie said, “you stayed too long in the sticks. Stop
sounding like you’re calling a hog.”
“Natalie, I’m usually hitting my snooze button about now,” Mag
nolia pleaded. “Can you just give me the net-net?”
“Let me spell it out. A little spook told our friends at the Post a story about Bebe coming on to Nathaniel Fine in the fashion closet.”
Magnolia woke up fast. This was huge. “Back up!” Magnolia said.
“Someone tipped off my friends the Fines, and Nathaniel’s dad is a
$1,000-an-hour litigator,” Natalie said. “Put together the pieces.
We’re screwed. It’s on page three, and God knows where else it will
end up.” Just when Magnolia was going to speak, Natalie started
again, yelling so loud Magnolia had to hold the receiver away from
her ear. “I see what you must have been thinking. Bebe’s reputation gets trashed. The company pulls out of her magazine. Lady rises from the dead.”
“Whoa,” Magnolia yelled back. “Are you accusing me? Of the
leak? That’s absurd, Natalie. You are so off.” Twenty seconds passed before Natalie said “You’d swear you know
nothing about this?”
“I didn’t say that.” Magnolia paused. “I saw it all.” Magnolia won
dered if she was a moron to have admitted this, but Nathaniel would
most likely report it eventually. “But call a newspaper? What possible good could come of that? I like Nathaniel. And he’s just a kid.” Why was she squirmy and defensive? Damn Natalie for having that effect on her.
“Listen, I said nothing. To anyone.” Abbey, she decided, didn’t count.
“Oops, hold on.” Magnolia waited while Natalie took another call.
“Can’t talk, Cookie,” Natalie said as she clicked back on. “Jock and
Elizabeth conference call.”
Natalie called her Cookie—she must be calming down, Magnolia
hoped, as she began surfing the net and TV to see what play this was
getting. So far, nothing on the morning shows, though the blogs were
banging the item as if the United States had invaded St. Barth’s. She
threw a coat over her nightgown and ran to the newsstand.
BEBE PLAYS WITH FINE BOY TOY headlined a story accompanied b
y Nathaniel’s water-polo team photo, and either the Post had digitally enhanced his crotch or their intern had a future on male greeting
cards. Magnolia raced back to her apartment, threw twenty dollars at
her neighbor’s sixth-grader to walk the dogs, and dressed so fast that
it was only when she was in a taxi that she realized her boots didn’t
match.
The corridors at Scary were strangely quiet as she walked to her
office. Magnolia immediately called in Sasha and closed the door.
“How did this item get in the Post and every fucking blog?” she asked, throwing the paper on the desk. “Did you rat them out?” Mag
nolia knew Sasha had been an eyewitness in the fashion closet; what
she didn’t know was if there’d been other flies on the wall that she
hadn’t noticed.
“Not me exactly,” Sasha answered, biting her lip and looking like a
high school sophomore.
“Talk,” Magnolia said.
“I was in a bar last night, drinking to the point where this I-banker
was looking cute, and when he asked me where I worked, I found myself describing Bebe and Polo—the material was just too rich. He joked about calling it into the Post, that he knew someone who knew someone who knew someone.”
“Sasha, do you realize what you’ve done? Polo’s dad is a partner at a
major law firm. Making noises about suing for child abuse, sexual
harassment, God knows what. You didn’t think, did you? This is
breaking-the-sound-barrier bad—for the magazine, the company, all
of us.” Magnolia stared at the ceiling and drummed her fingers on the
desk. Though she might have made the same mistake herself when she
was twenty-three, she nonetheless felt like ripping off Sasha’s face.
“I’m so sorry—I just wanted to impress this guy,” Sasha sobbed, as
she pulled a tissue from the box on Magnolia’s desk. “And I wanted to
screw Bebe.”
“You hit it out of the park on that last one,” Magnolia said.
“Plus, I thought it might help you.”
“Help me? If you wanted to help me, why didn’t you at least warn me about this item? That would have helped me.”
“But I only found out when I read it on the train.”
“Okay,” Magnolia said, finding a quieter voice. “Well, you’re going
to help me now. Get me every clip, every inch of loop tape, every Web
site. We’ve got to be all over this. Now blow your nose and get out of
