Little Pink Slips (23 page)

Nothing about Fargo felt remotely like the sweetly unadorned town of

her memory. Nothing except Tyler Peterson. As he settled into his

chair, she could picture him on the bench in his football uniform,

turning shyly to look for her in the bleachers.

"I don't suppose you want the local specialty, a prairie fire—tequila and Tabasco?" Tyler said, as he smiled for the first time and ordered

them a pitcher of beer. "Tell me about your life in New York."

"Magazine editor. Two wheaten terriers. Good friends. Not a lot to

tell," she said. Not a lot she wanted to tell. She didn't know how to edit

the caption for her life in a way that wouldn't give Tyler the opportu

nity to denounce her as an urban sinner. Divorcee, workaholic, child

less woman, big spender. "You?"

"Church in a town where the tallest building is the grain elevator," he

said, looking at his hands. "Wife, two kids, small house, big mortgage."

"Circle back to that wife part."

"Jody's the sunniest girl I ever met."

"Sounds perfect," Magnolia said, thinking no one was ever going

to call her sunny. "Tell me everything."

"She's a preacher's kid, too; knows the drill; makes a mean ham

burger hot dish, teaches bible camp, can sew a Halloween costume

that fits over a parka," he said, looking Magnolia straight in the eye

for the first time. "But nothing's perfect."

The hue and cry of married men on the make, she thought, then

squashed the idea. Don't flatter yourself, Magnolia. Tyler is probably

here to save your soul. "I guess it's the not-perfect part that keeps your

business alive," she said.

"Secret of my success—people don't show up on Sunday for my

sermons."

"Pictures?" Magnolia asked.

Tyler reached into the pocket of his corduroys, pulled out a canvas

wallet, and opened it to a shot of two young teenagers—a pudgy,

sunburned girl and a boy who looked remarkably like the Tyler who

had sat next to her in geometry class twenty years earlier. They

were standing in front of an RV. "We took this last summer at

Yellowstone," he said proudly.

"They're so old," Magnolia stammered. She had prepared herself

for babies.

"We sort of had to get married," he said and laughed again, this

time nervously, absentmindedly rubbing his bare ring finger. "Tyler Peterson, are you blushing? It's not like you were a virgin."

As soon as Magnolia said it she wondered if she shouldn't take down

the smart-ass tone a notch. When she last knew this man, he did not

have an ironic bone in his damn good body.

"My wife reads your magazine," he said. "She's been following

your career."

   "My
brilliant
career?" Magnolia said, bristling at the "wife" word. "So I guess you know that Bebe Blake runs the show now."

"Jody figured that out. Watches Bebe every day," he said. "I don't

get that woman. Can you explain her to me?"

"I doubt it," Magnolia said. But the look on Tyler's face showed he

expected an answer.

"Hot-and-cold-running ego. But just when you really start hating

her, she does something decent. Then, when you let yourself like her,

she ignores you completely."

"Why do you submit yourself to that?" he asked.

"Well . . ." Magnolia said. It was an utterly reasonable question,

but she wasn't quite ready for pastoral counseling. Because even a not

great job is better than men, who never fail to disappoint? Because she

was afraid that living in a place as regular as Fargo would be an

e-ticket to hell?

"Maggie Goldfarb, are you blushing?" Tyler asked. He filled their

glasses for the second time, put his hand on top of hers and slowly

moved his palm toward her wrist. She felt warm everywhere, as if

they'd both stripped and were breathing heavily under the universe's

most luxurious duvet. "Soft," he said, as he moved his fingers toward

her arm.

Soft, she repeated to herself. She time-traveled to their first date,

when they'd French-kissed for hours in the back of the Fargo Theatre

and she confirmed firsthand the definition of the term "orgasm."

Tyler continued to stroke her wrist until he reached her watch.

Magnolia jolted back to reality. "Jesus, Tyler," she said. "Oh, Christ,

sorry I said 'Jesus.' What time is it?" She yanked her arm away and

quickly stood. "Bucky is picking me up in five minutes." "That fool who hawks cars on Channel Four?" he asked, not sound

ing one bit like the Reverend-anything.

"Don't act like you don't remember Bucky," she said. "You were

on the same football team." Is he jealous, she wondered? And are

they both insane? "It's not a date—it's supper. Misty Knight is the one

who invited me to speak tomorrow." Why was she explaining this to

Tyler?

"But when will I see you?" he said as he stood up to help her into

her coat.

"Tyler, get a grip . . ." she said, but this time she didn't finish her

sentence because he leaped forward and kissed her. His tongue tasted

like slow dancing, like high-octane teenage hormones, like midnight

skinny-dipping at Pelican Lake.

She pulled herself away, ran out the door and into the street.

Magnolia had
expected Saturday's event to be the equivalent of a lunchtime facial. It turned into a heart-lung transplant. Starting

at 8:30, seventy journalists from Montana, the Dakotas, and western

Minnesota assembled to praise and dissect one another in a drone of

panel discussions. Only at 2:30, after the last cup of weak black coffee

following pale chicken and limp broccoli bathed in hollandaise, did

Misty approach the podium for Magnolia's introduction.

"I remember her as Maggie Goldfarb, my coeditor on the South

High newspaper, but to all of you she's the famous New York magazine editor, the former editor in chief of
Lady
and now an editor with Bebe Blake on
Bebe.
Let's give it up for Magnolia Gold, Fargo girl made good!" Magnolia wondered if Misty, the former cheerleading

captain, would finish with the splits.

Applause carried Magnolia to the front of the auditorium. She

looked out at the sea of faces attached to Lands' End work clothes.

Embarrassed to think of her Manhattan colleagues seeing her feted

like a rock star, she waved for the crowd to stop clapping and signaled

a tech wonk to begin her how-a-magazine-gets-made lecture. When Magnolia read that public speaking was many people's worst

fear, she never got it. Put her in front of a microphone and a trained

monkey took over. Where this creature came from—complete with

stand-up comic timing—she never knew, and she could rarely sum

mon her on command. Today the audience laughed and clapped at all

the right places, and, in thirty minutes that felt to her like five, her

presentation was already done.

"Questions?" she asked.

"What do you pay celebrities to be on the cover?" asked a Missoula

court reporter.

   "Absolutely nothing," Magnolia said. "No money changes hands." Just a lot of
tsuris,
she thought, plus hairsplitting negotiations over locations, photographers, writers, stylists, hair and makeup crew, and

photo retouching.

"Your edit doesn't begin until page 102," complained a food editor

from Bismarck. "Why are there this many ads?"

"Without advertising, cover prices for magazines would be so high

no one would buy them," Magnolia said, although every reader bitched

about the same thing. "Newsstand sales are only a small part of the

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

tender but final good-bye speech—how she'd cherished their history,

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