Gloss

by Marilyn Kaye

  On one of the shelves in the supply room there was a row of small black and white bottles bearing the label Liquid Paper. She took one, shook it and unscrewed the cap. Dipping the tiny brush in the white liquid, she scraped it along the side of the bottle to lose the excess. Then carefully, very carefully, she applied the liquid and covered the name and address of the applicant. Afterwards, she blew on it so it would dry. Touching it lightly to make sure it had set, she then took a pen from a shelf, and wrote over the new blank spaces.

  LAST NAME: Peake

  FIRST NAME: Donna

  It had been almost a week since Sherry had left her article on Caroline’s desk, but Caroline hadn’t said a word about it. She didn’t even know if the woman had read it, or if it was now buried under the piles of paper in her in-box.

  She knew the managing editor had been unusually busy this week. Some executive editor on an upper floor had suddenly resigned, and Caroline was constantly called out of her office for meetings upstairs. Then her assistant had been rushed to the hospital for an emergency appendectomy.

  So Sherry had been busy too, because Caroline had asked her to fill in for the ailing assistant. For the first couple of days she’d been asked to look over articles and check the grammar and punctuation. But while she was reading, Sherry hadn’t been able to resist adding a few notes about improvements she thought could be made in the text. Caroline had liked her suggestions. And now Sherry had more articles to read.

  That wretched Simpson had objected of course, when Sherry wasn’t available to do his scutwork, but Caroline had mollified him with the services of another intern.

  Working for Caroline was entirely different. There were deadlines that had to be met. And if Sherry hadn’t finished with something by five o’clock, she didn’t leave the office until she had.

  Mike didn’t approve of this. ‘She’s using you,’ he’d warned her. ‘You’re just an intern — you’re not even being paid.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ Sherry had assured him. Strangely enough, the more she worked, the more she enjoyed herself.

  On this particular morning she arrived at her desk to find a stack of files with a note from Caroline on top.

  Sherry, these are unsolicited article ideas that have been submitted. Could you take a quick glance, decide if any of them have potential and pass the promising ones on to the appropriate editors? Give the rest to my secretary, and tell her to send out standard rejection letters.

  Sherry was thrilled with the assignment. Just a few weeks ago she would have been typing those standard rejection letters for the articles turned down by Mr Simpson. Caroline was actually asking for her opinion. She was doing something real, something that would have an impact on the contents of Gloss. And the feeling this gave her was something she couldn’t even put into words.

  She started going through the files, making notes on them, organizing them into piles on her desk. The next time she looked at the clock, an hour and a half had passed and she’d barely made a dent in the stack. Just then Caroline came into the offices, with the harried expression she’d been wearing so much lately. As she passed Sherry she made the waving gesture that Sherry had come to recognize. It meant that Sherry was to follow her into the editor’s office.

  Caroline sank into the chair behind her desk. ‘First off, I took your advice about Donna. I’ve sent her upstairs to meet with David Barnes this morning. I just ran into him on the elevator, and he thinks she’s going to work out fine.’

  ‘That’s great!’

  ‘And another thing — that interview you did with the designer, Rafe Bryant — it’s very good.’

  Sherry drew in her breath. ‘Really?’

  ‘It needs some work,’ Caroline went on. ‘You’ll need to lose about three hundred words, and cut about a hundred exclamation points as well.’

  ‘I guess I went a little overboard,’ Sherry acknowledged. ‘I was so excited by what he was saying.’

  Caroline smiled. ‘Your enthusiasm shows, and that’s good. That’s our style here at Gloss. But can you tone it down just a little?’

  ‘Sure,’ Sherry said, and looked at the editor questioningly.

  Caroline nodded. ‘I think we can use it.’

  Sherry’s eyes widened. ‘It’s going to be published in the readers’ issue?’

  ‘Actually I think I’ll hold it for the issue after that, our special fall-fashion one. So of course you’ll be paid for this, at the rate we pay all our contributors.’

  The thrill she felt from these words sent her flying. Getting paid for an article … and it wasn’t just the money, it was the fact that she was being treated like a real writer, a professional writer.

  Caroline eyed Sherry keenly. ‘Sherry, what are your plans after this internship?’

  The question brought her back down to earth. ‘I’m going to college in Atlanta.’

  ‘Will you be able to study journalism there? Because I think you have a real future in this business.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sherry replied. She was suddenly embarrassed to admit she knew very little about the college. ‘It’s where my mother went to school, so …’ Her voice trailed off.

  ‘Well, maybe you should look into this. You need to think about your future.’

  My future, Sherry thought as she left the office. That vague, fuzzy thing that used to be so clear. There was the future she thought she had with Johnny, the future she was beginning to imagine with Mike. And now a very different possibility, one that she’d never considered at all …

  She arrived back at her desk to find Mike standing there waiting. Glancing at the clock, she saw that it was coffee-break time.

  ‘Mike, hi! Listen, I’m sorry, but I’m swamped.’ She indicated the stack of files on her desk. ‘I’ve got all those to get through.’

  ‘I need to talk to you,’ Mike said. ‘It’s important.’

  She actually looked at him, and she was alarmed by the expression on his face.

  ‘Well … OK.’ She picked up her purse and followed him to the exit.

  She was still drifting on the euphoria of Caroline’s news, which might have been why Mike’s silence in the elevator didn’t bother her. It wasn’t until they were settled at a corner table in the cafeteria that she gave him her full attention. That was when she noticed he’d been carrying an envelope, which he then slapped down on the table.

  ‘I got this today,’ he said.

  The envelope had already been ripped open, and Sherry extracted the paper inside. Opening it, she could see that it was on Gloss stationery, with the magazine’s name embossed on the top.

  Dear Mr Dillon, Thank you for your submission to Gloss. While your short story was read with interest, we regret that we are unable to accept it for publication. However, we believe that your work shows great promise and we encourage you to submit future work.

  ‘Did you have something to do with this?’ Mike asked.

  She sighed. ‘When I typed up your story, I made a copy and gave it to the fiction editor. Oh, Mike, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Sorry for what?’

  Startled by the coldness in his voice, she looked up. His face was positively stony.

  ‘Sorry my story wasn’t accepted? Or sorry you submitted it? Because you had no business doing that, Sherry.’

  He didn’t look at all the way she’d expected him to. He wasn’t disappointed. He was angry. And she was confused.

  ‘I thought you would want to be published.’

  ‘I do, some day. When I’m ready. When I feel like I’ve written something I want people to read. But this story … this was something I wrote for myself.’

  ‘Oh.’ She was still puzzled.

  ‘And I certainly wouldn’t want my first publication to be in some stupid girly fashion magazine,’ he added.

  Sherry frowned. ‘Gloss isn’t stupid. OK, maybe it’s not exactly an intellectual literary magazine, but we publish some good fiction, we’ve got the largest circulation in the field and we’re mov
ing in very interesting directions.’

  ‘We? You’re talking like you actually work here!’

  She ignored that. ‘And it would be so good for your future, to get published now. It could be the beginning of a real career!’

  ‘A career? I’m only eighteen! I’m not even thinking about a career yet. I just want to write.’

  ‘But you could be a successful writer,’ Sherry argued. ‘You’ll need to make a living if you want to get married, raise a family …’ she stopped. Mike had gone positively white.

  ‘Good grief, we’ve only been seeing each other for a few weeks, Sherry.’

  Hastily she amended that. ‘I wasn’t talking about marrying me, having a family with me. I’m just speaking generally.’

  But it was too late. ‘I gotta get back to work,’ Mike mumbled. And without even meeting her eyes, he was gone.

  She stared after him in disbelief — a disbelief that was directed more at herself than at him. She’d just committed the cardinal sin — she’d been pushy.

  And she was pretty sure she’d just been dumped.

  For a moment she sat there and tried to collect herself. Within thirty minutes, she’d gone from the highest high to — what? She couldn’t honestly say it was the lowest low. It certainly wasn’t the kind of blow she’d experienced when Johnny ended their relationship. Still, she’d invested some time thinking about a future with Mike, and now those dreams were shattered too.

  Oddly enough though, she didn’t feel the need to immediately seek out an empty restroom and feel sorry for herself. Possibly shed a few tears. Maybe she was just too stunned. It would probably hit her later, and the restrooms would still be there.

  Work turned out to be her consolation. She got so caught up in the files she didn’t even seek out Pamela and Allison to share her new tale of woe, and when they came by to get her for lunch, she asked if they could just bring her back a sandwich to eat at her desk. At six o’clock, long after the other interns had left for the day, she closed the last folder.

  Was now the time to hit the restroom and mourn her loss? No, she decided, she might as well wait till she got back to her room. Donna would probably be eating dinner, and she’d have the place to herself.

  Sure enough, the room was empty when she arrived. She lay down on her bed, buried her face in the pillow and waited to feel really sad.

  But the feelings didn’t come. She rolled over and stared up at the ceiling for a while. Then she got up, went to her desk and took out her stationery box and a pen. She’d write a letter, that’s what she would do. She’d write her girlfriends back home and tell them about her latest heartbreak.

  In the process of opening the box, she managed to knock the pen. It fell on the floor and rolled under Donna’s bed. With a sigh, she reached under the bed with one arm and felt around on the floor. Her hand touched something. It wasn’t a pen, but she tugged on it anyway.

  It was a scarf, a beautiful silk scarf, in a blue and white print. She’d never seen Donna wear it, and she was surprised to find she had something so nice.

  She reached under the bed again, and this time pulled, out a bright red patent-leather pump, brand new and shiny. She looked at it in wonderment and something clicked in her memory.

  Using a coat hanger, she poked deeper under the bed. Slowly she pulled out more items — a soft cashmere sweater. The other red pump. Two charm bracelets. And finally something she recognized immediately — the black quilted Chanel handbag that Caroline had shown them that very first day at Gloss.

  The door to the room opened, and before she could even turn to see Donna, she heard her roommate gasp.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Donna whispered.

  ‘Donna. These are the missing things from the samples closet.’

  Donna didn’t deny it. Slowly she made her way to her desk and sat down on the chair.

  ‘Donna, you stole these!’

  The girl nodded.

  Sherry was stunned. ‘Listen, I know you don’t have many clothes, but—’

  Donna interrupted her. ‘I wasn’t going to wear them.’

  ‘Then why did you take them?’

  Donna hesitated. Then she gave an odd sort of shrug, like someone who’d just given up. ‘I thought I could sell them on the street. Or maybe to a store. I need money.’ After a few seconds she added, ‘For a bus ticket.’

  ‘A bus ticket,’ Sherry repeated. ‘To where?’

  This time Donna gave a shrug. ‘Anywhere.’

  Sherry gazed at her in bewilderment. ‘I don’t understand.’

  There was a moment of silence. Then Donna began to talk.

  She spoke in a monotone, and Sherry listened to her story in horrified fascination. Of course she’d known people who had family problems, who didn’t get along with their parents. But she’d never heard anything like this before. The father who left, the mother who drank. A little brother and sister who were taken away. Getting pregnant, marrying a man who didn’t care about her, who hit her. Losing the baby. “It was unbelievably sad.

  When Donna got to the part about forging the application for the Gloss internship, Sherry could totally understand her action. She herself would have done anything to escape.

  ‘I can barely read or write,’ Donna said. She offered a half-smile. ‘You already know that, don’t you? I never thanked you for fixing that autobiography note for me.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ Sherry murmured.

  ‘But I know someone at Gloss will find out the truth about me sooner or later,’ Donna went on. ‘And I’ll have to take off.’

  ‘Would you go back to your husband?’

  Donna shook her head vigorously. ‘Never. And he can never know where I am. Before I left I wrote my father and told him to stop sending cheques. I’m sure Ron’s ready to kill me by now.”

  Sherry shuddered. After a moment she said, ‘Now that you’re working for David, you probably won’t have to do any writing.’

  Donna nodded, and almost smiled. ‘It’s a good job for me. I mean, I’ve only been with David for a day, but I like the work. And I’m learning about photography …’ Her voice drifted off, and she gazed down at the items from the samples closet.

  ‘I’ve never stolen anything before,’ she whispered. ‘OK, the application … but nothing valuable. I just didn’t know what else to do.’ She looked at Sherry. ‘I guess I have to give them back, huh?’

  Sherry nodded.

  ‘And I’ll be fired from the internship,’ Donna said.

  She was right. Sherry couldn’t imagine Caroline keeping an admitted thief in the programme. But what she said out loud was, ‘Maybe not.’

  Donna looked at her wonderingly.

  ‘If you could get the stuff back into the closet without anyone seeing you … no one would know who took them.’

  She couldn’t believe these words were coming from the lips of Sherry Ann Forrester, Little Miss Perfect, the goody-goody who couldn’t even tell a lie or use a four-letter word.

  She took a deep breath. ‘I’ll help you.’

  The Copacabana!

  In all of her many fantasies about life in New York, Pamela had never entertained the idea that she might find herself in the famed eastside nightclub, the swankiest of them all.

  Walking under the red awning, descending the staircase and entering the huge, tropical-theme room, with columns that resembled enormous white palm trees, she tightened her grip on Alex’s hand. A red-jacketed waiter led them through a jungle of round tables decorated with little lamps and populated by dressed-up men and women.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ she breathed.

  ‘You fit right in,’ he whispered.

  Actually, she had to admit she did. The strapless beige gown was sleek and simple, and as sophisticated as anything else she saw in the room. She’d gone to Caroline and pleaded for the opportunity to wear something from the samples closet. Lately Caroline had become even more rigid than usual about borrowing clothes. But when she heard where Pamela would
be going, she’d agreed to let her choose something. Of course, she didn’t know who would be accompanying Pamela to the Copa.

  She’d managed to keep Alex a secret from everyone at Gloss, except Allison and Sherry. And now she was wishing she’d never told them either. They were starting to fret about the relationship.

  ‘Aren’t you seeing an awful lot of him?’ Allison had asked. And Sherry, with her ladylike concern, had wondered if maybe Pamela wasn’t getting too ‘involved’.

  ‘I’m just having fun,’ she’d assured them both. ‘We’re not lovers.’ But she silently added, ‘Not yet.’

  It would happen though, and very soon, she thought. Because it wasn’t only being in the most famous, most glamorous nightclub that had her so wildly happy. It was also being in love.

  She hadn’t expected this. It wasn’t part of her plan. She’d only wanted to have fun, to experience the New York she’d seen in movies, to live the Sex and the Single Girl fantasy for a summer. Alex would be her escort, someone to get her into the best places, pay her way and show her a good time.

  To her immense surprise, he’d become more. Much more.

  It all began to change with that first kiss, in front of the Hartnell mansion on Long Island. Had it really been less than two weeks ago? It seemed like a lifetime. They’d gone back to the city together, and for the very first time he took her to his apartment.

  It was a nice place. Nothing like those neat bachelor digs she’d seen in movies like Sunday in New York and Boys’ Night Out. But it didn’t seem like a family home either, not like the kind she’d known. Maybe because all she saw was the living room and the guest bathroom. He didn’t even give her a tour of the other rooms, which was fine with her. She really didn’t want to see evidence of his kids, and he didn’t seem eager to share anything about them with her.

  But he did talk about his wife, Phyllis. He’d mixed them a couple of martinis, they’d sat on the sofa and he told her all about his life with her. How they’d married just after college, how they lived in a tiny walk-up, how Phyllis had worked as a secretary while he’d struggled to make a living as a low-level adman in a small agency. Then he got a job at Hartnell Publications, his salary had gone way up and they bought this place. Phyllis had been able to quit her job, and she got pregnant.