picture and it’s money from ads that keeps the cost of subscriptions so
low, even with soaring postal rates.”
“Who gives a hoot about all those celebrities?” asked the fishing
editor of a small Minnesota magazine.
“Much as I might love to feature a big-mouth bass on our cover, sir, we could hardly call a magazine Bebe and not go with Bebe Blake,” Magnolia responded.
“How did you get your start?” inquired a white-haired woman
with a gravelly voice.
“Miss Pierce?” Magnolia said. Could it be? Rosemary Pierce had
been her ninth-grade English teacher, the woman who introduced
her to Dorothy Parker and was the first nonrelative to tell her she had
talent? “Is that you?”
“Yes, dear. We’re all so proud of you.” There was a ripple of applause.
“I moved to Manhattan and worked myself up from fetching cof
fee,” Magnolia began, and summarized the last twelve years of her life into two hundred and forty seconds. Magnolia let herself feel a
tremor of pride. It would be good to end now, she thought, but unfor
tunately one more hand was waving.
“Isn’t it hypocritical to advertise cigarettes in the same issue with a
‘5 New Ways to Stop Cancer’ story?” Misty asked, her face arranged in angelic innocence as she held up the current Bebe.
Magnolia locked eyes with her hostess and adolescent nemesis—a
girl who got into Brown, where Magnolia only made the wait list, and
then blew off the acceptance to attend the University of North
Dakota, so she could join her mother’s sorority. Of course it’s hypocrit
ical, Misty, Magnolia thought. But magazine publishing isn’t a social
justice organization, honey. Live a day in my shoes, you with your
four-car garage, 5,000-square-foot house, six-burner Viking stove,
wine cellar, media room, and snowmobile fleet.
“Those decisions are ultimately made by the publisher, not the edi
tor,” Magnolia answered and shrugged. “Division of church and
state.” But just the same, she resented the gotcha.
Satisfied or not by the answer, Misty thanked Magnolia and
announced that the afternoon seminars, which Magnolia this instant
chose to boycott, would begin. In fact, Magnolia decided that she
would call the airline and see if she could stand by for the next plane
out of Fargo. Later, she would tell Misty that an emergency back
home prevented her from attending the cocktail reception and
evening dinner dance. Magnolia could live without the karaoke.
“Great presentation,” a woman called to her as she made her way
out the door. It was Miss Henderson, the head of the high-school
physical ed department, who had accompanied Miss Pierce. So they
really were a couple.
“Will you sign my copy of Bebe?” said the man from Missoula. Autographs! No one in the office was going to believe it, not that she
would mention it. Magnolia finally reached the coat check.
“I had a feeling I’d find you here,” he said. “Good speech. I’m
impressed.” Tyler smiled warmly.
She hadn’t noticed him in the audience. “Tyler, thanks for com
ing,” she said, genuinely surprised. “You’re my whole point for driving into Fargo,” he said. “C’mon,
I’ll see you back to the hotel.”
She could hardly refuse him, considering that her chances of hail
ing a cruising taxi were right up there with finding a buffalo roam.
And she had to admit that throughout the morning, her mind had
drifted to Tyler once, twice, twenty times. It was another Magnolia
who had burned for him all through high school and well into fresh
man year of college, but seeing Tyler brought her back. Magnolia
realized she missed not just him but the girl she once was, a girl who
wrote poetry for friends’ birthdays, who cared more about a boy’s call
ing than whether she would get a raise. She wanted to spend a little
more time with both of them, Tyler Peterson and Maggie Goldfarb.
Magnolia followed Tyler out to the street, where a layer of light
snow was dusting the icy sidewalk. She climbed over a steep snow
bank—rather nimbly, she thought, considering her heels—and he
opened the passenger-side door to his minivan. During the ten-minute
drive, neither of them spoke. Magnolia, at least, was busy crafting a
how she’d love to meet his family if they ever visited the Big Apple,
how they could e-mail if he wanted. When they reached the hotel,
she opened her mouth to launch her oratory, which Tyler interrupted.
“Not such a good idea to talk here,” he said, unbuckling his seat
belt. “Didn’t you listen to the weather?”
She looked at him dubiously as he zipped past Christian rock on the
radio until he found the local news.
“—you betcha, ten to twelve inches of the white stuff. Get your
selves off the roads. Ya, gonna stick this time. Be a big one. Listen to
Ole here. Throw a log on the fire, open a bottle, snuggle up with
someone special. Settle in for the night. It’s baby-making time in the
Red River Valley.”
“You heard the man,” Tyler said and winked. “You wouldn’t send
an old friend out on the Interstate now, would you?”
Magnolia drew her coat around her in the frosty car as he reached
for her hand. She gently pushed him away. “Seriously, won’t your wife
be worried about you?” she asked. “Jody’s clear across the state for a 4-H event, staying at her parents’
farm with the kids. Judging from the weather report, she’s not going
anywhere.”
“Pastor Peterson,” she said slowly, “did you order this snowstorm?”
Magnolia walked out of the bathroom in her red plaid flannel pajamas and called Misty with apologies about skipping out on the
evening’s dinner. By the time she hung up, Tyler had stripped out of
his clothes and slipped into the steaming hot tub placed squarely in
the sitting area of the suite. Without his glasses, in the dimmed light,
she could take him for the Tyler in her yearbook who’d signed, “I’ll
love you forever.” The last time she’d seen his bare chest, it had eleven
pale, blond hairs, which her teenage fingers had memorized. Now, a
discreet patch of fur covered his sharply defined pecs. Clearly, a min
ister’s schedule allowed time to work out.
“You look about twelve in those pj’s, Maggie.”
“You were expecting, what, a little pink slip and high-heeled slip
pers trimmed in marabou?” Tyler didn’t need to know she had both
items back home.
“You’re everything I was expecting and more,” he said, moving
aside their second empty champagne bottle to pat the side of the tub.
“C’mon in.”
“Tyler, you’re ripped,” Magnolia said. “And this is wrong.”
“I’m not drunk—I’m happy. We’ve been together on that bed and
now you’re saying it’s wrong?”
She was covered with goose bumps—or was it guilt?
“We were both dressed on that bed,” she said. “Well, practically
dressed.” In her ten years of postdivorce dating, Magnolia had redefined appropriate on an annual basis. She’d been with a colleg
e roommate’s father; both her gynecologist and her periodontist, although
not at the same time; and a senator twenty-five years her senior. But
she’d never done the husband of a subscriber, at least not that she
knew of. By the technical definition of any blow-jobs-don’t-count,
friends-with-benefits teenager in America, they hadn’t had sex yet. Yet Magnolia felt queasy and was fairly certain it wasn’t from the
drinking.
“I care for you, Tyler,” she said. “I really do.” And she really did, in
a way that felt love-song pure—and appealingly naughty. “But this is
wrong.”
“It’ll be my sin,” he said.
Magnolia flashed to the perfume she’d discovered at a flea market
the past fall. “My Sin,” it was seductively labeled. She loved the pris
tine bottle, but when she opened it, the 1950s Parisian scent had
turned. Mosquito repellent smelled better. “My sin.” Not auspicious.
“I’ve been dreaming about you for years—you broke my heart
when you stopped writing me,” he said. Magnolia didn’t respond, in
hopes that he would continue. “I have a good life,” he said, “but I
need for us to be together again, even if it’s just for tonight. I have to
know what it would feel like.”
watching a movie on Oxygen. His letters—short, dear, pleading—
kept coming all through that first year at Michigan. She’d return to
the dorm after a date and tuck them away in the bottom of her
drawer, always meaning to respond the next day. But the girl who got
A’s in creative writing could never find the words.
Maybe she owed him. Magnolia took a what-the-hell breath,
divested herself of her pajama trousers, and walked over to the tub.
As she slipped in next to Tyler and eased her legs through the water,
her gooseflesh disappeared. He pushed aside her pajama top and began
to run his hands over her shoulders and breasts.
“Like silk,” he said.
Thank you, La Prairie Caviar Luxe Body Cream. She responded to
his familiar mouth as her hands slipped below the water. There was nothing boyish about him. Buzz … Buzz.
They proceeded to explore, above and below the water, but Magno
lia kept hearing the buzz.
“That the doorbell?” he asked, dreamily.
“My BlackBerry,” she said. “Your what? You lewd New York girls.”
“Just let me check it,” she said, hopping out of the tub and walking to her bag as she dripped water on the carpeting. Package to arrive by five … call ASAP, the message from Cameron said. “Just a minute,” she said to Tyler who waited in the water while she dialed the front
desk. “Any deliveries for me?” she asked.
“Golly, I’ll check,” said the front-desk clerk, who put her on hold.
Magnolia, with just a towel around her, stood freezing. “The FedEx
guy was late on account of the storm,” the girl at the front desk said,
“but something just arrived and I’ll send it up in a sec.”
Magnolia went to the bathroom for a thick white robe and handed
another to Tyler. “Get dressed, please,” she said.
“But … ?”
“It won’t take more than a moment,” she said, answering the
knock as he disappeared into the bathroom. The bellman handed her a box containing an early, unbound edition of Bebe, gun moll cover included. But it didn’t take a moment to read the issue in full. It took
a good forty minutes, followed by just as long a wait on the phone
with Cameron to rectify mistakes.
“Can’t this wait?” Tyler asked when she was halfway through the
ritual. He’d sat down next to her on the bed and was playing with her
as she continued to read.
“The thing is, no,” she explained, with her hand over the receiver.
“The magazine pays for delays.”
“Aren’t your values a little out of whack?” he asked.
“Yours aren’t?” she said.
“I’m just a guy, a guy in love, and God understands, if that’s what
you’re wondering.”
“You’re not in love, Tyler,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Well, maybe
you are—I hope you are, with Mrs. Peterson.”
“Take me seriously,” he said.
“What I have to take seriously right now is this little bit of work.”
She continued the task at hand, happy to opt out of a discussion that
had taken a turn for the uncomfortable.
Tyler started to doze. By the time she had finished talking to New
York, he was fast asleep. Magnolia gently outlined the muscles in his strong back, then moved down to between his legs, but he slept as if
he were drugged, tossing and turning and mumbling.
What was he saying? The Lord’s Prayer? Magnolia moved away
from him, got under the covers, and tried to sleep, but she stayed
awake most of the night, wondering if she hadn’t got an e-ticket to
hell after all. A one-night stand with a married minister wasn’t what
she’d expected room service to deliver. The chemistry might be there,
but it wasn’t just a case of his being from Mars and her from Venus;
they were from different galaxies. She could no more imagine him
discussing the Whitney Biennial at a Manhattan dinner party than
she could see herself running a bake sale in Wild Rice, North Dakota.
Magnolia rose at six A.M., baptized herself in a scorching shower,
and hurriedly packed. As she tiptoed around the room, she savored
one last look at Tyler’s sleeping frame now stretched comfortably
under the goose-down comforter. It took all of her willpower to slide
into her coat and turn to leave. Before she closed the door, she kissed
him softly on the lips and left a note by his pillow, still not sure that
the writer in her had the words. “Dear sweet Tyler,” it began. “God
works in mysterious ways… .”
C h a p t e r 2 4
In the Bleak December
“Magnolia, you’re here!” Elizabeth waved at Magnolia as if they’d bumped into each other in the Amazon rain forest. Was
she not expecting to see her tonight?
When the invitation arrived for Jock and Pippi Flanagan’s party—
which kicked off the holiday season the first Monday of every
December—Magnolia’s reaction was relief even greater than usual.
She’d made the cut. Jock had been known to include the head of
human resources, but not her counterpart in production; the pub
lisher of a magazine without its editor, and vice versa. The chosen
ones didn’t scan the room to view who else was there as much as to see
who wasn’t. Even though the gathering was called from six to eight,
to max out their exposure, guests tended to arrive exactly at seven,
after—with uncharacteristic cheer—they greeted Mike McCourt,
who decamped to the corner of Park and Ninety-fourth for note
taking. Tomorrow, the merrymakers would devour Mike’s recital of
the guest list, second in popularity only to his column about the Condé
Nast Christmas lunch, whose seating plan he analyzed like a pur
loined state department document.
Scary folk made up only a third of the group: the rest was a flesh
and-blood Q-rating of Manhattan’s reigning air kissers. As Magnolia checked her co
at—for tonight, mink was fine—she looked around.
The first two luminaries she spotted were the former mayor and his
second wife, who’d attached herself to Natalie Simon like a barnacle.
“Honey, she can suck up all she wants,” Elizabeth whispered, her
Southern accent switched on for the party, as if she’d pressed CHARM.
“Natalie’s never going to make her a columnist. Doesn’t she realize
the ex-mayor’s ex-wife is one Natalie’s best friends?”
“Pippi, you remember Magnolia Gold?” Jock said as she worked
her way to the front of the receiving line. Pippi Flanagan looked at
Magnolia blankly, though this was the third year in a row that she’d
attended their party. “Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Pippi said,
fingering her dainty pearls as her eyes shifted from knee-jerk polite
ness to unbridled delight. Magnolia turned to see who’d arrived. She
saw the top of a silvery head. Was it her friend, Dan Brewster? She
started to walk in his direction and then saw, no, it wasn’t Dan. That
handsome hair belonged to Bill Clinton, with Hillary.
As well-wishers swarmed around Bill and Hill, Magnolia was
pushed from the foyer into the Flanagan’s double-size parlor. She
heard Bebe before she saw her.
“The magazine’s doing fantastic,” she was crowing to a small
circle, including Darlene and the head of Glamazon. Magnolia won
dered if Bebe even recognized the woman who’d decided not to buy ads in Bebe. “Just wait till you see our next cover—designed by my secret weapon back at the office,” Bebe said.
Noticing Magnolia, Bebe charged toward her, her long sleeves flap
ping. Tonight she was Mrs. Claus with cleavage, dressed in red velvet
trimmed in white fur.
“Happy holidays, Magnolia, What, no drink? Let’s hit the bar.” She
corralled Magnolia into an alcove off the other end of the parlor. “I’m
so glad you’re here,” she said, handing Magnolia a cup of bourbon
heavy eggnog and quickly downing a glass herself. “Let’s show Jock
the cover. It’s in my bag.”
“Bebe, this isn’t the place,” Magnolia said. She could hear the ador
ing crowd that had swelled around the Clintons, and expected that Jock was reveling at its epicenter. Bebe began to fumble for the cover
just as Jock ushered the royal couple into the parlor.
“Let’s keep that cover between us, okay?” Magnolia said, but