Fashionistas (18 page)

B
efore giving it to me, Delia went through Jane’s file and censored the things she didn’t want me to see. Like a letter from your grandfather on the front in 1941, the pages are speckled with blocked-out words. Anything that might reveal where troops are stationed is crossed out with a black felt-tip Sharpie. There is nothing here that vital and I can’t make sense of Delia’s choices. I’m trying to establish a pattern but they are completely haphazard. She’s like Yossarian declaring death to all modifiers.

Ninety percent of the file is mundane and boring, and I have to force myself to stay awake. While reading Jane’s address to the Women’s Editorial Society, who honored her with a coveted Helen award, for Best Magazine, I nod off and I only wake up when the telephone rings. I splash cold water on my face and try again but I have to stop. The thank-you speech is more than seven pages long and there is only so much I can take of her protestations of gratitude to the sisterhood. Jane is not a sister. She’s an only child who doesn’t play well with others.

The interesting part of the file is the folder filled with receipts and bills of sales and vouchers that document Jane’s systematic stealing from the company. Every chair in her apartment, every Picasso lithograph on her walls, every stitch on her body was paid for by the Ivy Publishing Group.
Fashionista
foots the bill for her annual two weeks in Borneo and her lovely little weekend rental in Aspen. We pay for her haircuts and massages and for the skin on the heel of her foot to be rubbed off once a week. Lunch is always on the company as well as transportation and Broadway shows. The only thing Ivy Publishing does not pay for is her children’s pricey Upper East Side private school educations, but that’s just a matter of time. In a year or two or three she’ll convince the accounting department that her daughter is a primary source, that her sense of style is what keeps the magazine fresh and on the cutting edge.

“That’s an insane amount of information,” I say to Delia, when I see her in the cafeteria. We are standing in front of the international section, a series of Sterno-heated trays that are usually filled with refried beans and ground beef with taco sauce. Today it’s stocked with Southern cuisine. “Why haven’t you used it?”

“I’ve tried. She’s like the Teflon Don. Nothing sticks to her.”

“You’ve tried?”

She spoons some grits onto her plate. “I’ve tried. I leaked some of those documents to Bob Carson in finance a year ago and nothing happened. He didn’t even flinch when he saw that
Fashionista
paid for her face-lift.”

“Her face-lift?”

“You missed that?” she asks with a smile. “She listed it on an expense report as ‘massage.’”

“Massage?”

“Yes, as in massaging the truth, I believe.” She gives me a curious look as she takes a piece of fried chicken. “You were her assistant. Didn’t she have you doing these reports for her?”

I shrug. “I never paid the least attention to what I was doing. She could have expensed the Statue of Liberty and it wouldn’t have made an impression. How’d you leak it?”

“Left it in his in-box when nobody was looking.” She holds a serving spoon filled with fried okra in my direction with a questioning look. I shake my head. Although I’ve been following her to each station in the international section, I don’t have any intention of eating. I’ve just had lunch with Maya and only stopped on the second floor to pick up dessert.

“Didn’t flinch at all?”

“Nope. And when I leaked documents that suggested she was selling furniture the company owned and pocketing the profit—nothing. I’ve tried and I’ve tried but they don’t care. She’s held to a different standard of accountability. Why else do you think I’m so excited about your idea? It’s about time someone else gave it a shot.”

“I guess so,” I say, trying to digest the fact that Delia has tried to depose Jane as often as the CIA has Castro.

She takes her tray laden down with Southern specialties to the cash registers. “I’m really excited about this. I think it could work. I think this might finally be the silver bullet that takes her down.”

I watch her walk away before picking up a Rice Krispies treat and heading for the cash registers.

K
eller takes me square dancing.

“I don’t two-step,” I say, when we enter the large room that looks and smells like a high school cafeteria. We are in the basement of a church on the corner of Broadway and Eighty-sixth. Someone has adorned the room with purple and green streamers and they hang from the ceiling like Christmas decorations.

With a hand on the small of my back, Alex steers me to the ticket table and plunks down his ten dollars. The cashier puts it in a metal strongbox. “That’s all right. Just as long as you do-si-do,” he says.

I’m not sure if I do-si-do. The last time I stood in a square and danced was twenty-two years ago at a Brownie function with my father. My memory of the evening is hazy and if I didn’t still have a navy-blue bandanna from the event, the experience would have erased itself completely from my mind.

“I’ve never been to a church social before,” I say, taking in the scene. Across the room the band is setting up. A thick man with a potbelly stomach and a goatee is strumming his gui
tar and trying to get it in tune. “Do all the proceeds go to the orphans?”

Keller takes my hand and leads me over to the refreshment table. “I don’t know if there are orphans and I don’t know where the money goes. This is a first for me, too.” He gestures to the list of beverages. “What can I get you?”

Although it is still early in the evening, I’ve already had two gin and tonics—one while waiting for him and another while we were talking. Since I’ve already had two strong drinks, the wise thing would be to say that he could get me a Coke. But I’m not feeling wise. I’m in the basement of a church about to square dance. I get a beer. You can’t do-si-do sober.

The room is packed with a wide range of demos—MTV, AARP, PTA—and we have to snake ourselves through the crowd to find an unoccupied spot. “How did you hear about this?” I ask.

“Read about it in the
Resident,
” he explains, taking a sip of beer. “I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time. I was a square-dancing fiend at summer camp.”

“That’s amazing.”

“That I was a fiend?”

“No, I already knew that. I meant your reading the community paper.”

He looks at me with genuine surprise. “You don’t read yours?”

“Uh, no,” I admit, feeling as though I’m confessing to a mortal sin. It’s not up there with impure thoughts, but suddenly it seems worse. “I don’t even know what it’s called.”

“Where do you live?”

“Cornelia, between Bleecker and West Fourth.”

“The
Villager.
”

“How do you know?”

“Community papers are a passion of mine.”

I laugh. “No, really.”

“I used to live down there.”

I’m about to ask where and when but the band, the Hog-Tieds, has finished tuning and is ready to start. I finish my beer in two impressive gulps, toss out the plastic red cup and present myself, along with Alex, to a square looking for a fourth side. There is a nervous fluttering in my stomach, the unreliable sort that makes you wonder if you’re going to throw up. I give my date a sidelong glance.

Alex squeezes my hand. “You’ll be fine.” He is trying to be reassuring and supportive, and even though he fails, I give him one of those thanks-for-playing smiles.

I check out the other people in my square, sizing them up. None of them look truly confident—the woman across from me is jiggling her partner’s hand with a compulsion that seems beyond her control—and I take comfort in their obvious discomfort. By the time the band strikes up the first song and the caller tells us to promenade to the right, I’m almost relaxed.

The act of square dancing requires a certain amount of physical grace and a working knowledge of right from left. Although I have the former in short supply, I can sometimes rise to the occasion; I’m useless with the latter. In the right circumstance—laboratory, no ticking clock—there’s always a chance that I’ll get it correct but with a barker shouting out orders to the beat of a banjo, there is no hope. In the end I’m forced to watch my partner and follow his direction. I’m always one step behind. It’s like a satellite is transmitting my image there on a two-second tape delay.

“That was fun,” I say, when the band takes a break. I’m huffing because I’m out of breath and sweat is trickling down the side of my face. Square dancing does not show me to the best advantage.

“You sound surprised.” He is leading me up the stairs to the street. The air in the basement is thick and hot, and in late August Broadway offers an agreeable alternative.

“Well, duh. It’s square dancing.”

“Ye of little faith.”

“It’s square dancing,” I say again, trying to emphasize the unlikelihood of anyone finding it fun.

Keller shakes his head, as if I have a lot to learn. “Do you want to get ice cream? There’s a place around the corner that makes excellent sundaes.”

Since it’s only ten o’clock and the blood is still swirling in my head, I say yes. I say yes and follow him around the corner to Time Café, where we both order chocolate-fudge sundaes with extra nuts. He’s funny and sweet and likes to square-dance. I feel myself falling. Even though I’m trying my damnedest to hold fast to the edge of a cliff, I feel myself falling fast.

A
llison wants my job.

“It’s not fair. It was my idea and she’s the one who gets a promotion and a gigantic office.”

I put the last of my office supplies—stapler, paper clips, scissors—into a box with Post-its, envelopes, thumbtacks and pens and tape it closed. Even though it’s only going twenty yards, I feel compelled to seal it. I only know one way to move.

“Yes, that’s what I’m saying. It was my idea. We just asked her to do one small thing—one tiny thing that was practically inconsequential—and now she’s taken over and stolen a senior editorship that should have been rightfully mine.”

Next I turn my attention to the filing cabinet. There are three years of files here and the sensible part of me wants to go through them one by one and throw away the dead weight. Most of these files are dead weight.

“Like, cavernous. Remember my first apartment? It’s bigger than that. Yes, even including the balcony.”

Allison has been complaining about my promotion all
morning. Since the moment she arrived to find the memo about it on her desk, she has been on the phone. She has called every person she’s ever met to rant about the injustice. Fleeting seconds of silence are accompanied by breathing or dialing.

Christine sticks her head over the thin wall and rolls her eyes in a show of solidarity. “She’s awful,” she says under her breath, although there’s no need for discretion. Allison can only hear herself.

I throw all my manila folders into a plastic yellow crate that maintenance has supplied. I can sort through my files in my new office—in peace and quiet. “I know.”

“What’s she talking about?”

“Hmm?” I ask absentmindedly, looking at the pile of promotional items that have collected in my cube’s corner. Do I really need a beach ball that says SPF Perfect on it?

“She keeps saying that the plan was her idea.” Christine leans against the wall. “What plan?”

The more people who know about the plan, the less likely it will succeed. I hold up the beach ball as an offering and, without considering its merits, she shakes her head. I deflate it and throw it into the trash. “That’s exactly what I keep wondering. What plan?”

Christine has been listening to Allison for almost as many years as I have. “I hate to say it but I think she’s losing it.”

“Really?” I ask, shocked by this statement. Christine rarely says a mean word about anyone, not even Jane.

“Well, she’s never made sense—at least as far as I’ve been able to discern—but in the past week she’s been nonsensical and angry.” Christine leans close to my ear and whispers. “I think she might be schizophrenic.”

This is not what I’m expecting her to say, but I treat the comment with respect and seriousness, although my impulse is to laugh. “Schizophrenic?”

“There’s a disassociative quality to her ramblings, and she’s
paranoid and her conversation suggests that she might be suffering through some sort of delusional episode.”

Christine makes an excellent case. Even though I know the truth, she almost convinces me. I don’t know what to say.

“Do you think we should do something?” she asks.

“What?” I blurt out. It’s meant to be an exclamation, but she interprets it as a question.

“Have an intervention,” she says seriously.

An image flashes through my brain: Christine telling a hysterical Allison that everything will be all right as orderlies from Bellevue put her in a straitjacket. “No,” I say, “I don’t think we should have an intervention.”

“Should we call her parents?” Her concern is real and I feel awful for nurturing it.

“No, not yet,” I say, playing for time. “Charges of schizophrenia are a serious thing and we shouldn’t do anything until we’re absolutely sure. Let’s observe her for a little bit longer.”

“I’ve been observing her for a while now,” Christine admits. “Are you sure we should wait longer?”

In a few days Allison would calm down about my promotion. The heat of anger will pass and she’ll resent me silently. “Positive.”

She doesn’t look convinced but is willing to heed my advice, for a little while at least. When she asks if I need help packing, I assure her I’ve everything under control.