Felicity’s voice rang out down the hall. “Yoo-hoo, Magnolia.
Cameron. Is this beyond exciting?”
Both Magnolia and Cam would have chosen a different word.
Felicity had a cat carrier in her hands. In it was Hell, wearing the
smirk of a serial killer. Magnolia backed away as the feline stuck out a
clawed paw.
“We’re moving in!” Felicity trilled. “Jock told us to camp out in the
conference room until the paint dries. Don’t you just love that perfect rouge?”
“Felicity, just the woman I was hoping to see,” Cameron said, a
little too heartily, Magnolia thought. “If you wouldn’t mind putting
the tomcat down for a minute, I was wondering if I could steal you to
go over some dates?”
“I’ll leave you two,” Magnolia said, backing out of the office and
pondering where she could, with a modicum of dignity, pounce next.
She entered the art department, walked beyond the three designers,
past the photo editor’s desk and her assistant’s cubicle, and into Fredericka’s elegantly spare taupe office. Fredericka, her tanned arms
loaded with silver bracelets, hovered over her light box.
“Magnolia!” she moaned. “Vat am I going to tell Fabrizio about his
October cover?” Fredericka had shots of Sarah Jessica Parker spread
out, tenderly looking at each one as if it were an in utero image of her
unborn child. Just a few weeks earlier, Fabrizio daVinci had finally agreed to work for Lady—the result of Fredericka’s considerable persuasive abilities and magnums of Cristal sent to his cavernous down
town studio.
“Fredericka, his rep probably has ten offers for those pictures,”
Magnolia said. “First, remind him that Scary still holds a six-month embargo on the images.” Maybe this whole Bebe nonsense will disappear and we can restore Lady, Magnolia thought fleetingly and—she realized—stupidly. But Scary did own the pictures, and she’d be
damned if another magazine would benefit from her misery. “Then promise him the premiere Bebe cover.”
Fredericka blanched, her skin almost matching her platinum hair.
Apparently she hadn’t yet fully absorbed that she and her photo
editor would be responsible—issue after issue—for turning Bebe Blake
into a cover temptress. She looked at Magnolia like a raccoon in a trap.
“But Fabrizio vould never, never agree to shoot Bebe,” she said.
“You know he only likes gorgeous vomen.”
Fredericka was right. And Magnolia realized no good could come
from hanging around her office. Even if the dentist told her he’d need
to pull a front tooth, she’d rather be in his chair than here. She returned to her office, packed her Tod’s tote with the latest Vogue, and left for his office, arriving forty minutes early.
Two hours later, her face looking like a stroke victim’s, Magnolia heard her cell phone ring. Sub-Zero, she hoped. While sit
ting in the dentist’s chair, she’d happily relived every stroke and
thrust of both Saturday and Sunday nights. At one point, in her dental
stupor, she worried that she might be doing a pretty fair “yes! yes! yes!” from When Harry Met Sally. But it wasn’t Harry.
“I’ve been calling and calling,” Sasha said. “How quickly can you
get back here?”
“Fifteen minutes,” Magnolia answered, overly optimistic. She’d
already been standing for ten minutes on 57th Street, searching for
a taxi.
“They’re gathering,” Sasha said. “Drop quiz. Cameron’s looking
for you. Surprise staff meeting.”
A half hour later Magnolia bolted off the elevator onto her floor.
She listened for the raucous laughter that usually erupted during a
meeting, the rising voices of editors interrupting one another with
ideas that trumped the next person’s. An amped-up, competitive staff
meeting was better than a basketball game at Madison Square Gar
den, and sometimes just as sweaty.
She heard nothing.
When she entered the conference room, however, the gang was
there, stony and mute. Bebe presided at the end of the table in Mag
nolia’s usual spot. For her first day of work she wore a silvery satin
bomber jacket embroidered with dragons, and coordinating pants.
With the ceiling spotlight shining on her you, had to squint.
“Sam here told me it was high time that we, uh, convened,”
Bebe said, looking at Cam. “I was just telling the girls—oh, ‘scuse
me, Sam—about my idea for the first cover: posing in a tub full of
bubbles.”
happened to you, Mags? Wild nooner?”
The staff turned to Magnolia, who ignored Bebe’s comment.
“Bubbles. What, exactly, would you be trying to convey in that
image?” Magnolia asked Bebe in a level tone.
“That I’m all about fun,” she answered, staring at Magnolia as if
that weren’t as obvious as the fact that they both had boobs. “Life’s a
hoot. Join in. Party on.”
“I’m not sure most women want to hop in a tub with another
woman, Bebe,” Magnolia said.
“Holy Jesus and Mary, my women aren’t that literal,” Bebe answered.
“Felicity, what do you think?” “Your crowd would follow you anywhere, Beebsy,” she said.
“Who are ‘your women’?” Magnolia asked. “We need to establish
that.”
“Every woman. That’s who watches my show. Nuns, truck drivers,
inmates, old biddies, teenagers. Here, the cover would look like this.”
She sketched herself next to words marching down the right, instead
of the left. Bebe’s rendering looked reversed. Perhaps it would sell
well to the dyslexic—or in Tel Aviv.
“Bebe, maybe we should brainstorm about the cover later in a
separate meeting,” Magnolia said. “Fredericka has some drop-dead
ideas—Ruthie, too.” She turned to her lieutenants. Fredericka flashed
her whiter-than-white teeth, but Magnolia noted she had chewed her
fingernails to the quick. Ruthie, not usually a poster girl for perfect
posture, appeared starched.
“How about turning our attention to what’s going to be inside the
October issue,” Magnolia said. “When you think of fall, what comes
to mind?” She hadn’t a clue how to tease great ideas out of Bebe,
assuming she had some.
Bebe leaned back in her chair and put her boots on the table. “The
fall makes me think of … Harleys,” Bebe said, finally. “Tearing up a
quiet country lane on a big road hog.”
“I see models posing with bikers,” Ruthie ventured. “It could be a
great way to show denim.”
“But not those skinny bitches,” Bebe said, opening her jacket and
pulling at a roll around her middle. “Every woman hates ‘em.”
Bebe had a point. “So are you seeing a plus-size fashion story?”
Magnolia asked. She noticed her anesthetic was wearing away. Had
she wanted to, she could now smile.
“Plus, minus …” Bebe answered. “You all can figure that out. Just
find me a bunch of biker babes.”
“Ah, real people—that makes it much harder, Bebe. We have to
find the women, be sure there’s geographic and racial diversity, see
when they can be flown to N
ew York, be fitted for clothes—it takes
planning, and real women don’t usually fit into sample sizes.”
Magnolia answered in a tone even she identified as prissy, but the fact was that organizing real people stories was like planning the inva
sion of a small country. They were ten times the trouble of regular
fashion stories, where you phoned an agency, cast a few models, and
called it a day. Real people stories required massive effort and yet often
looked amateurish.
“They can wear their own clothes,” Bebe said.
“But women want to be able to buy the clothes they see,” Magnolia
said, thinking that the bigger problem would be with Darlene. Peri
odically, Darlene gave Magnolia a list of the fashion advertisers she
was wooing, and she expected the magazine to flog their clothes in the
editorial pages, even if they came with price tags way out of reach for
the readers.
“You work out those details,” Bebe said, frowning. Her eyes looked
even closer together than usual. “You and Sam must be gangbusters at
that. Now in the fall, I also like to eat. Well, I always like to eat. Felic
ity here bakes bread, believe it or not.”
“Mother taught me,” Felicity explained with pride. “I’d be happy to
be photographed teaching the readers. I bake a mean pumpernickel.”
“Sounds delicious, Felicity,” Magnolia answered. Now that her
painkiller was gone, she remembered that she hadn’t eaten a bite of
anything today. “But most American women try to stay away from
bread.”
“Bullshit, Mags,” Bebe said. “Show me one.”
“Ladies?” Magnolia looked to her staff. A few timid hands shot up,
but several editors refused to yield, even though Magnolia knew
they’d rather give their Jimmy Choos to the homeless than eat the
crust of a pizza.
“Okay, bread, done.” Bebe switched on to a higher voltage. “And then
I’ll write a sex column. Answer readers’ questions. Nothing off-limits.”
She nodded her head in enthusiasm. “We’ll need a great name. I’m
thinking ‘Pussy Talk’?”
According to polls, if you believed them, Lady’s readers—and Scary would send Bebe to all of those subscribers; that’s how it worked—had husband and children, but no one ever admitted to having, liking, or
being the least bit curious about sex. “You think it might be a smidge too graphic, Bebe?” Magnolia
asked.
“How about ‘Getting Naked,’ ” she suggested.
“Love it,” Magnolia said, “but some other magazine uses it.”
” ‘Sex Ed,’ ” an editor shouted.
” ‘Your Pleasure Starts Here.’ “
” ‘A Course on Intercourse.’ “
“Not just intercourse,” Bebe said. “Get real, girls.”
” ‘The B Spot! The B Spot!’ ” a very pregnant Phoebe, who usually
never came up with an idea beyond her annual “Metallic Makeup for
the Holidays,” screamed the suggestion.
” ‘The B Spot,’ ” Bebe hollered it back. “I get it. I like it. ‘The B
Spot.’ “
“Whatever turns you on,” Magnolia snickered softly.
“What’s that? ‘Whatever Turns You On!’ ” Bebe repeated. ” ‘What
ever Turns You On.’ Yup, that’s it. Magnolia, you little genius. ‘What
ever Turns You On.’ “
Magnolia realized she could transform the meeting into a Roman
holiday, with every editor feasting on the gore and barbarism of
watching her tear out Bebe’s squinty little eyes. Or she could encour
age Bebe to create a magazine in her own image and have it die a nat
ural death.
That is, if the magazine would fail. With the American public, who
knew? Bebe could be right. Women might adore these ideas. Maybe
every woman was secretly dying to hop on a big old Harley, stuff her
face with a loaf of pumpernickel, and have mind-blowing sex on a
quiet country lane with a three-hundred-pound biker named Runt.
“So Mag-knowl-ya, what do you think?”
“Whatever Turns You On …” Magnolia said. “Let’s make it happen.”
C h a p t e r 1 5
In This Life, One Thing Counts
During the two years Magnolia had reported to Jock Flanagan, he had not once popped into her office for a schmooze. So it
was curious that today, Friday, the end of her first full week as Bebe’s
deputy, Jock arrived like a missile. He landed on her new guest seat
ing—an armless, royal blue swivel job, pilfered from the conference
room—as if it were time for their weekly therapy session.
“So how’s it going with Bebe?” he asked, trying to smooth his thick,
wavy hair. Jock required regular mowing, and if he missed a trim, he
looked as if he’d been coifed by a Cuisinart.
Magnolia flashed on the last few days. She and Bebe had settled
into a no-routine routine. A few times Bebe had buzzed her to demand
a drive-by meeting, but either she hadn’t learned to turn on her Mac
or didn’t care to use it, so no e-mail volleys existed. Felicity kept regu
lar hours to supervise the fluffing of Bebe’s office, and could be heard
squealing with glee as each mirror, poster of Bebe, or carnivorous
looking plant found its home in the red lair. Bebe fit the magazine around rehearsals and tapings for The Bebe Show.
Magnolia wished that Jock were, in fact, an actual therapist. Then
she could have told him how she felt. Ridiculous, pissed off, and stuck—
she couldn’t afford to walk out since no guardian angel had dangled another opportunity in her face. This didn’t surprise her; she’d counted on the redesign of Lady to project her into the orbit of hotshots who circled from big job to bigger job. But she also felt guilty—she knew she
should be grateful for the well-paying, well-percolated position she still
had, even if it was at a lower rank than at the first of the month.
“Magnolia, I asked you a question,” Jock said.
“Everything’s fine,” she answered. “Really. We’re developing a
terrific sex column, we’re stalking biker chicks for fashion, and we’ve
got a story in the works where we’re all over leopard—clothes, shoes,
dishes, furniture, everything except the big cat itself.”
Jock seemed to cringe a little, but offered no response, so Magnolia
continued.
“There’s a special section called ‘Don’t Get Screwed—Get Every
thing,’ where matrimonial attorneys advise divorcing women. Bebe
came up with the idea, based on her last settlement. She’s been mar
ried several times, you know? Husband number three demanded a
fortune in alimony—I’m sure you read about it. He was her agent, ten
years younger. It’s sad the way he ripped her off.”
“Hmm,” Jock said.
She thought, given Jock’s marital history, that at least the divorce
story would have piqued his interest, but now it was Magnolia’s turn to wait. It hadn’t sounded like a good hmm. The staff was busy, she thought defensively. Whether it added up to a unique magazine was
not for her to say. Not that anyone was asking.
“Magnolia, from what I hear you haven’t been, well, the most
cooperative.”
“What?” she snapped, wondering who might have slimed her. She
thought she’d been as neu
tral as Switzerland. Well, maybe not sweet,
stern little Switzerland, but definitely more Western European than
Middle Eastern. If someone—most likely Darlene, that sociopath
masquerading as a publisher—had portrayed her as a suicide bomber
of Bebe’s plans, it was outrageous. “You heard this where?”
“Where doesn’t matter,” Jock said, staring at his manicured nails as if
he’d just noticed they were attached to his hand. “You get how serious
this is, don’t you? How much money Scarborough has on this horse?” Magnolia took Jock’s measure. She wasn’t convinced he was angry:
she’d seen him in this state enough times to recognize his version of
rage. Once, when he’d swooped down on an editor whose newsstand
sales had plummeted 62 percent, you’d have thought she’d shot his
bulldog, Grover Cleveland. Magnolia decided Jock probably just
needed reassurance. No doubt, he was getting heat from the Scary
brothers who owned the company. They rarely left Santa Barbara, but
tortured him by phone, fax, and summons to California.
Magnolia calculated that she’d best kick it up a notch. She’d need
this job until something better came along. “You have my word that I
will get and keep things in line,” she said, in honor student mode.
“Bebe’s first cover shoot’s today, and I’ll be there to run interference. Elizabeth’s people have arranged for an Access Hollywood crew to film the shoot. Build buzz. They’ll air the film the week of the launch.”
Would she be insane to spit out what she was thinking of saying
next? “Would you like to come to the shoot?” Magnolia held her breath,
thinking how the photographer they’d booked—Francesco Bellucci, a
fading star known for grand opera tantrums—would very likely walk
out if the president of the company showed up to cramp his style.
Jock appeared to consider the invitation. But then he said, “Oh,
please, that won’t be necessary,” and waved away the thought. “In
fact, I’m catching a plane. I know I can count on you, Magnolia.”
He looked at his vintage Patek Philippe and stood to leave. Should
she spring her next question, the one that kept her up every night and
had, as a result, cost her four hundred dollars for a QVC chinchilla
wrap too faux for even a ho? Magnolia went for the red meat. “I’m glad
you stopped by, because I was hoping we could discuss my … title.”