by Renée Rosen
George waved her argument away. “Hearst will never go for it.”
“They will if it’s served up to them in the right way,” said Helen.
“There is no right way to serve up a platter of boobs to Berlin and Deems,” said Tony.
“Have ye little faith?” Helen grinned, courting the challenge. “Do you know how many breakthrough advertising campaigns I sold to clients? Clients who were just as stubborn and conservative as Richard Berlin and Dick Deems. I can sell this cover. Trust me. Just don’t let anyone at Hearst see this until I have a chance to present it to them. Understood?”
* * *
• • •
In the days following, while Tony worked on the new cover, I was trying to justify why I still hadn’t enrolled in that photography class, telling myself that I was learning more from Christopher, which in part was true. We’d gone out shooting a couple more times, and thanks to him, my work was improving, but deep down, I was afraid of getting into a class and seeing just how far behind I was.
Besides, I told myself that Helen needed my full attention now. She was finalizing the July issue, starting on August and the preliminary flatplan for September. She was also juggling close to thirty articles in various stages of production. All week I’d watched writers and editors come and go from her office. Liz Smith had seemed perfectly content when she’d walked in, but thirty minutes later she left, her shoulders broken down, her manuscript covered in Helen’s red pencil. Even Walter Meade’s articles got delicately ripped to shreds.
I was in Helen’s office, bringing her a fresh cup of coffee, when Bobbie Ashley and George Walsh handed her an article about ten doctors’ favorite crash diets.
“Well, you get what you pay for,” said George, an obvious jab about hiring inexperienced and inexpensive freelance writers.
“I’m afraid he’s right,” said Bobbie, plopping down in a chair. “This article is—well, it’s just not publishable.”
“Let me have a look.” Helen was curled up in the corner of her sofa as she started to read.
George folded his arms across his chest and shifted his weight from one leg to the other. “Obviously the first paragraph is—”
“Shssh.” Helen held up her hand and continued reading, her lips curving into a measured smile. When she finished, she looked up. “Well, it just needs a little love is all. We’ll just punch it up a bit and use it for August.”
“What?” Bobbie’s mouth gaped open.
Helen picked up her pencil and made a notation in the margin. “Oh, it’s a fine little piece.”
George slapped his forehead. “It’s not fine.”
“It reads like a child wrote it,” said Bobbie.
“Why?” countered Helen. “Because it’s not gushing with a lot of big highfalutin words? That doesn’t make for good writing. My girls don’t want to have to run to a dictionary just to get through an article.”
“But we have to maintain some standards,” said George. “This is Cosmopolitan.”
“I’m sorry,” Helen purred. “But the piece stays in. I’m slating it for August.”
Later that same morning, she came out of her office and walked up to my desk. “Will you be a little lamb and type this up?”
Helen handed me eight pages of handwritten notes paper-clipped to a manuscript that had been discarded for a past issue. I saw that Lin Root had written the original article about a gynecologist in New York City touting an estrogen pill called Premarin. He claimed that it saved women from the discomforts of menopause and was the way to stay youthful and womanly forever.
Helen kept the original facts, but had rewritten the rest of it in her usual style, using as few monosyllabic words as possible along with lots of italics, ellipses and exclamation points. She referred to Premarin as a “honey of a hormone.”
As I began typing, Bridget came up to me. “How about lunch today?” She was wearing a blue miniskirt that I’d never seen before. For someone who said she never had any money, she’d been buying a lot of new clothes lately. She extended her leg, toes pointed as she pulled up her tights, inch by inch.
“I can’t. Sorry.”
“What are you working on?” Before I could stop her, she had picked up Helen’s notes and began leafing through the pages. “Oh, What a Lovely Pill!—what’s that about?”
“A new contraceptive pill.”
“Interesting. It’s about time. Do you know that I’ve been to four different doctors and not one of them will prescribe any form of birth control for me? One doctor told me it was immoral for an unmarried woman to be engaging in sexual activity. He said he wouldn’t give me a license to ruin myself. Those were his exact words. Ruin myself. Can you imagine?”
“Thank God for rubbers, huh?” I said as my fingers clacked away.
“And what about those poor women in Connecticut? Even the married ones. It’s illegal for them to use any contraception. That includes rubbers. And it’s not like they’re living in some Podunk town. My God, they’re within spitting distance of Manhattan. Wake up, people. It’s 1965.”
“Well,” I said, feeding a clean sheet of paper into the typewriter, “if this pill does even half of what they claim, I want it.”
“What all does it do?” she said, clearing a corner of my desk and settling in to read.
“Things like stopping menstrual cramps and bloating.”
“I’m all for that.” She turned the page and kept reading.
“Helen says it’s the fountain of youth for older women. It’s supposed to keep your hair shiny and thick. And keeps your eyebrows and your lips full, too.”
“My lips? What do you mean? Are they supposed to get thinner?”
“Apparently so.” I paused with my fingers on the keys. “I’m getting the impression that everything that’s nice and thick when you’re young gets thin, and everything that’s nice and thin gets thick.”
Bridget grimaced. “Great. So that’s what we have to look forward to?”
My phone rang. It was Erik, also asking me to lunch, which had to be code for sneaking over to his place for a quickie. The last time he’d taken me to lunch for lunch’s sake was that day at La Grenouille. Bridget was still perched on the edge of my desk, reading through the article.
“Sorry but I can’t today,” I said, the receiver cradled between my ear and shoulder. He persisted and got a little snippy when I said no a second time. It was okay for him to decline a poetry reading but not okay for me to work through lunch. “I’m swamped. Maybe later in the week.”
When I hung up, Bridget pointed to the manuscript and laughed. “Would you listen to this—‘Keeps a girl’s libido in tip-top shape and makes her private parts extra juicy.’”
“Please tell me I don’t have to type that.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Helen had left early to attend a dinner with the head of Revlon, in hopes of getting him to advertise in Cosmo. I had finished up for the day, and since Helen was gone, I decided to leave early. At least early by Helen’s standards. It was close to six o’clock and Erik was meeting me at Keens Steakhouse on Herald Square in half an hour.
I was already down in the lobby when I remembered I’d left my keys on my desk and called for another elevator. The cleaning service was making their rounds and there were only a handful of people still working when I went back up to the office. Whoever was left was on deadline, reworking their pieces so Helen could edit them and possibly rip them to shreds.
As I turned the corner, I was surprised to see Margot still there. The hairs stood up on the back of my neck. She rarely stayed a minute past five, and she was standing at my desk, going through my top drawer. When she saw me, she jumped, a hand splayed across her chest.
“Oh Gawd, you scared me half to death.”
“What are you doing?” My tone was harsher than I’d expected.
&nb
sp; “I just got my monthlies,” she said, shaking her head. “I thought you might have a napkin.”
“Other side, bottom drawer.” My voice still had an edge I couldn’t shake. I didn’t like the idea of her rummaging through my things.
“You’re a lifesaver.” Retrieving a Kotex, she said, “At least I know I’m not pregnant.” She laughed, trying to lighten things up.
“Anything else I can help you with?” I consulted my watch to keep from looking her in the eye.
“Thanks again. You really are a lifesaver.”
“Well, it’s a good thing I came back when I did.”
“You can say that again.”
She’d missed my sarcasm, or maybe ignored it on purpose.
I grabbed my keys, looking around my desk to make sure she hadn’t helped herself to anything else before I left to meet Erik.
* * *
• • •
I’d never been to Keens before, another one of Erik’s top restaurant picks. He said they were known for their mutton chops and an impressive collection of churchwardens. I had no idea what churchwardens were until I arrived and saw all the white, long-stemmed clay pipes mounted on the ceiling. Some of the stems were more than a foot long.
There was no sign of Erik, so I sat at the bar and waited for him there. It was a masculine place with dark paneling and, of course, those racks of pipes. The bartender was a kindly-looking man with large, round eyes, and I noticed he blinked rapidly while he explained that Keens had once been the meeting place for a pipe club.
“Keens’s Pipe Club had over 90,000 members in its heyday,” he said, rinsing some glasses in a bin behind the bar. “Some of those pipes date back to the 1800s. And anyone who was anyone belonged to Keens’s. We’ve got Teddy Roosevelt’s pipe up there. And Albert Einstein’s, J. P. Morgan’s, even Babe Ruth’s.”
He continued to chat with me, something I noticed a lot of bartenders did whenever a young woman was by herself. It seemed to keep other men from bothering the fair maidens. While he was chatting and making a martini for me, my eye kept going to a portrait on the wall behind him. It was a woman, nude, lounging suggestively on a chaise, keeping watch on the activities at the bar.
“I bet she’s seen a thing or two through the years,” I said, gesturing with my glass.
“Ah, that’s Miss Keens.” The bartender smiled and blinked, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb.
“Who’s the artist?”
“One of the great mysteries. No one knows who painted her. Some say the artist tried to copy a Goya nude. Ain’t she a beaut?”
He continued talking about the nude and the pipes while I finished my martini. Still no sign of Erik. My friend, the bartender, produced a second drink for me. “You’d be wise to eat a little something,” he said, handing me a menu. The only thing I could afford was the Miss Keens steak burger for $1.75.
“Comes without a bun.” He winked. “Get it? She’s served naked.”
“And I suppose you could order a tomato slice or lettuce leaf with it if you like lingerie.”
He laughed.
My Miss Keens burger was delicious but did little to offset the gin. I kept my eye on the door while I ate, even glanced about the restaurant thinking I might have missed Erik when he came in, but there was no sign of him. By the time I’d finished my burger, it was a quarter till eight, and I was done waiting. I paid my bill, grateful that the bartender hadn’t charged me for that second martini, and made my way to the Herald Square subway station.
I sat on the train, my head leaning against the cool glass on the window. I was furious with Erik—he’d been pushing to see me. Was this some game he was playing? Was he punishing me because I hadn’t been available for lunch? I wondered how everything got so complicated? What happened to us just having fun? Now I was annoyed with myself and questioning how far was I willing to go for great sex.
The walk from the subway to my apartment took some of the edge off my anger but didn’t really sober me up. Now I just wanted an aspirin and sleep. It was stuffy inside my place, but before I could open a window, the telephone rang. I pushed my heels out of my pumps, the kitchen floor cool and soothing against the balls of my feet as I padded over to answer the phone. It was Erik calling.
“Why’d you leave?” I heard people in the background and assumed he was on the pay phone at Keens.
“I was waiting over an hour.” Cradling the phone between my ear and shoulder, I unzipped my dress, letting it drop off my shoulders and fall onto the floor. “If I waited any longer, someone would have had to carry me out of there.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, sounding genuinely apologetic. “I got pulled into a meeting with Deems and Berlin. I couldn’t get away. I rushed over here as soon as I could. The bartender told me you already left.”
I was inclined to believe him, but still, I was annoyed. “Oh, well,” I said in a la-di-dah, couldn’t-care-less sort of way.
“Ali, I really am sorry. Let’s meet up now. I can come to your place.”
“It’s late. I’m drunk. I’m going to bed.”
“Ali, please? I need to see you.”
“You can see me tomorrow. Good night, Erik.”
Even though I’d eaten that burger, the gin was still swimming inside my head. I reached for a bottle of aspirin, and as I was filling a glass of water from the kitchen tap, the phone rang again.
I was snippy when I answered until I realized it was Christopher calling.
“Listen,” he said, “I’m in a bind and was hoping you could help me out.”
“Sure. That is, if I can.”
“I’m over on Park between 66th and 67th at the Armory. I’ve got a shoot tonight, and my assistant just canceled. Can you give me a hand? It doesn’t pay much. Just $25, but I promise, I’ll be forever in your debt.”
I had sobered up by the time I arrived at the Park Avenue Armory, a massive but decrepit building. It was dank and eerie inside, raw space with peeling paint, the brick and stonework crumbling. It was a stark contrast to Daphne and the other glamorous models Christopher was shooting that night. There was a small entourage of makeup artists and stylists there, but nothing like the crew at J. Frederick Smith’s studio for the Jax shoot. Mostly I loaded cameras, took light meter readings and brought the models coffee.
Technically, it was my first real assignment, my first paid photography job, but I told Christopher I would have done it for free, even if I’d known that we’d be shooting until dawn.
* * *
• • •
After the photo shoot at the Armory, I went home, cleaned up, changed my clothes and arrived at the office in time to bring Helen her newspapers and a cup of coffee. Judging by the number of cigarettes in her ashtray, I figured she’d already been at it for a couple hours. She set her pen down on a manuscript covered in red strikeouts with comments in the margins and reached for her copy of The Elements of Style.
“Do you think you could do me a favor, love?” she said, her eyes still on the pages of the book. “Will you get the comp of the July cover from Tony and schedule a meeting with Richard and Dick? I want to present it to them this afternoon.”
“Of course.”
I headed down to Tony’s office. He was hunched over his drafting table, Nehru jacket hanging by the shoulders off the back of his chair, shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows. He looked beat as he rubbed his hands along his whiskers.
“I left the mockup on Helen’s desk last night before I went home,” he said.
I bounced back to Helen’s office and reported the update.
“Oh, he did?” She drummed her pen against her desk. “I haven’t seen it.”
Together we searched her office, looking on the sofa and the coffee table and going through the stacks of papers on her desk and the credenza. I didn’t see the cover, but much to my surprise, I came ac
ross my portfolio.
“Mrs. Brown?” I held it up to her.
“Oh, that,” she said, distracted, still looking for the cover. “I meant to give that back to you. I found it in the wastebasket by your desk. Such a shame to throw out your lovely photos.”
I wasn’t sure if I was glad she’d saved it or if I was going to throw it out again anyway.
She didn’t say another word about it. I set the portfolio aside and went back to helping her rummage through the file cabinet.
“Are you sure Tony said he dropped it off? Because it’s definitely not here,” she said.
I was about to go back down to Tony’s office and double-check when Richard Berlin burst into Helen’s office.
Mystery solved.
“Is this some sort of a joke? What on earth were you thinking?” He was holding the mockup of the July cover, waving Renata’s breasts in the air.
“How did you get that?” she chirped.
“Does it really matter?” He slapped it down on her desk. “The point is, you’re not running that cover.”
“Now wait a minute.” Helen was dug in. Her voice was still calm and steady but I could see the determination in her eyes. “I’ve backed off on everything. I’ve let you and everyone else at Hearst dictate what I can and can’t do. This cover is where I draw the line.”
He bellowed back and I stood to the side trying to figure out how he’d gotten his hands on the July cover in the first place. I couldn’t imagine that someone would have walked into Helen’s office and taken it. Besides, only a handful of us knew she was redoing the cover, and even George wouldn’t have stolen it off her desk. Admittedly, I thought of Margot, but I couldn’t go around accusing her without any proof. I also thought of Erik, but there was no way he would have had any knowledge of that cover.
“But don’t you see?” said Helen. “I’ve given in to you on everything. This is one time I’m not willing to compromise.”
