New York for Beginners (14 page)

Whether you’ll actually win and make big bucks is anybody’s guess.

A man who accused a large brewery of false advertising actually won his case. He objected that although he had consumed large amounts of the beer, he still had no success with women, even though it was promised in the company’s TV commercials.

(
New York for Beginners
, p. 123)

12

The harsh ringing of her telephone woke Zoe up in the middle of the night. She wanted to remember her dream about McDreamy and desperately ordered herself not to forget the details. But they faded further with every ring of the phone, until all that was left was the warm feeling of having had a good dream, without actually remembering what it was about.

She reached for the phone and uttered, “Hmm?”

“Zoe, you won’t believe what that bitch did,” she heard someone howling on the other end of the line. “She fired me!”

Before Zoe’s sleep-drunken brain cells could process the information, the voice at the other end continued to babble. “It gets better. She hired Aaron Papst, the Prince of Darkness himself, to take my place.”

Zoe looked at her alarm clock. It was 4:47 in New York.

“Allegra, is that you?” She slowly began to grasp the situation. The CEO of Schoenhoff had fired her best friend.

Allegra. The brilliant editor-in-chief of
Vision
magazine. OK, so the magazine’s sales had been down recently, by about ten thousand readers. And there was the whole issue at the last board meeting about the slow digitization, which Zoe still felt guilty about. But could it really be true that Aaron Papst was now her new boss? A thirty-two-year-old? A man who’d worn nothing but black since he was thirteen, and was so hated in the editorial rooms that everyone called him Lord Voldemort or the Prince of Darkness behind his ramrod-straight back?

Zoe reminded herself that Al was still on the line. “Allegra, I’m so sorry. Truly.” It was too early in the morning to formulate a more coherent response.

The official press release said,
“We are very happy to welcome Aaron Papst as the new editor-in-chief of Germany’s most successful lifestyle magazine,
Vision
.” It had already been distributed to everyone in the office by the time Zoe arrived. “Papst is the youngest editor-in-chief of all time, and he will lead
Vision
into the new digital age.”

Aaron Papst had created The Fashionist blog in 2005. Back then, bloggers were still seen as people who wore pajamas all day and sat in their parents’ cellars writing crazy stuff on their computers because they couldn’t get themselves together enough to find a real job. But at the age of thirty, he had been offered a job as editor-in-chief of
Mademoiselle
.

Instead of the typical headshot, the official press release included an unusual full-body photograph. It showed a slender young man with carefully buzz-cut ash-blond hair wearing knee-high biker boots and a long black leather coat. In his hand was a black iPhone. If you were being generous, Aaron Papst looked like a bad imitation of Lenny Kravitz. In reality, he looked more like Hitler Youth 2.0.

After the initial shock had worn off, the office was abuzz with anecdotes about the Prince of Darkness.

“Did you know that Papst is totally short? He’s five five at the most. On tiptoe,” the photo editor said.

“You have to watch out for men like that,” Blonde Poison said. “Undersized men can be very dangerous.”

“Yeah, they try to make up for their small size with big egos,” the photo editor replied.

“Yeah, those Napoleon Complexes,” Blonde Poison added. “Guys like that are obstinate and have manipulative tendencies. I know his ex–head secretary. His third ex-secretary, to be precise. No one has ever survived longer than three months with him.” She paused, leaving a meaningful silence.

“Out with the details, then,” Eros insisted.

“Lord Voldemort only drinks espresso brewed with Evian water and exactly one quarter of a saccharine tablet. He sends interns home if they’re too ugly for him. And because he has absolutely no memory for names, he orders around his editors by their department names, like, ‘Culture, get over to layout!’”

Eros just stared in disbelief.

“When he was working for
Mademoiselle
, he even had a scale in his office,” Madison added in a whisper, “for the daily weighing of his slaves.”

Eros ran a hand over his slightly curved belly.

“When the worker’s committee complained about it to the board, he lied and said the scale was only there to weigh his luggage for business trips. As if anyone would dare to be so picky about weight limits with the Prince of Darkness.”

“What do we do now?” Eros asked Zoe. They were on their way to a lunchtime yoga class with Mimi.

Zoe would never have considered such a thing in Germany—that is, to skip the calories of lunch
and
burn more calories at the same time.

“I thought we were going to Jivamukti, to do the downward dog with Sting and Christy Turlington, or whatever you call it in yoga language.”

Eros rolled his eyes. “I was talking about Papst. Should we quit? As a purely preventative measure, I mean.”

“Maybe we should form a worker’s council,” Zoe suggested. “The guy sounds seriously dangerous.”

Mimi suddenly stopped in her tracks. “Are you two nuts? I hereby revoke our friendship, you wimps. How bad can it be?”

“So bad that I already have a nervous twitch in my eye,” Eros countered.

“Then in three months, you can sue him for a million dollars in damages for causing emotional suffering—and then move to Hawaii,” Mimi suggested.

“Do you think that would work?” Zoe asked.

“Nothing is impossible in American courts. You can even get compensation when you burn yourself on a cup of McDonald’s coffee, because you weren’t warned the coffee was hot,” Mimi said.

Eros rolled his eyes like he’d never heard anything dumber. “That case was suspended on the second appeal, you smart aleck. The coffee drinker never saw a dollar.”

The fact that Aaron Papst was an early riser turned out to be only one of the many delightful qualities of this very special new species of boss. Papst got to work every day at six in the morning, scheduled the weekly meeting for Wednesdays at eleven, went for business dinners daily at six p.m., and left the office at exactly nine at night. If the employees in Berlin didn’t like it (as opposed to their boss, they had personal lives to attend to), the employees in New York were speechless. They would all have to Skype in for the Wednesday meeting.

“Eleven o’clock in Berlin is five a.m. in New York!” Eros said. “Has Papst gone crazy?”

“Can you go crazy when you already
are
crazy?” Zoe countered.

Actually, Aaron Papst had generously made the video conference voluntary for his workers around the globe (“After all, I can’t force them to participate if it doesn’t fit into their time zones” he had announced, trying to sound benevolent). But it was of course crystal clear to Zoe that she would never be able to get ahead in the company if she missed the most important event of the week.

So Zoe and Eros found themselves in the office the next morning, shortly before five, armed with double espressos.

“Good morning, my dear,” Eros said, his voice still scratchy. “Or could it still be night?”

“Starting today, I hate Wednesdays,” Zoe said. “Can’t we just remove them from the week, like Pluto was removed from the solar system?”

Eros pouted. “Unfortunately not.”

Aaron Papst goose-stepped into the webcam’s field of view, and Zoe and Eros immediately ceased their complaining. The camera zoomed onto Papst’s salon-tanned face. The new editor-in-chief delivered a monologue in which he announced his new vision for
Vision
. It was his intention to turn the fashion bible into “
the
magazine for the modern woman.” He wanted to “awaken emotions,” “generate enthusiasm,” and “set journalistic high points.” Zoe could already imagine what that would mean. Depending on the daily emotional state of the boss, the editorial department would have to come up with articles about the cruelties of fate (“Fathers Can Be Horrible”), conduct investigative reporting (“The Truth About Weight Watchers’”), and score Big Interviews with VIPs.

“And now to the verticals!” Papst commanded after his State of the Union address. “New York, you’re all sitting around so idly!”

Zoe wanted to rattle off her slightly lame list of suggestions, but the Prince of Darkness cut her off before she had a chance to say anything. The weekly meeting was starting to feel like a Latin vocabulary pop quiz in front of the whole class. Everyone lowered their heads, trying to make themselves invisible, and hoping in vain that they wouldn’t also be chosen to be publicly shamed.

“I want a Big Interview from you, New York. Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton. Maria Shriver will do in a pinch. But then you’ll have to ask her about the Kennedy Curse,” Papst dictated to the camera. “Or come to think of it, get all three of them, together. For a round table.”

“Yeah, right,” Zoe muttered. She would have liked to sink her teeth into a round table right now, to work off some of the aggression that was building up inside her.
The White House, the State Department, and the Kennedy family are just waiting to philosophize about the global meaning of black leather leggings,
Zoe thought to herself. Then she cleared her throat and looked into the camera. “Of course I’ll try, Mr. Papst. But that won’t be easy. As a German fashion magazine, even with our digital platform, we are way down on the list.”

“Don’t bore me with your opinions. Do something to earn your salary. I want Michelle, Hillary, and Maria. Preferably yesterday. Tell them you’re from the German edition of
Vision
. Then they’ll go for it. American
Vogue
gets the ladies, too, after all. And don’t come to the next meeting without a confirmation of the interview!”

Zoe became uncomfortably hot and started to sweat. It might work in Germany to say that you were from the German edition of
Vision
. You might get some German VIPs. But at the White House, you would at best be met with a polite “Who (pause for the unspoken words ‘the fuck’) is
Vision
?” Or the usual “I’ll put you on the list.” If you were lucky, you’d get a form rejection letter, and if you were unlucky, you’d wait for an answer until you reached retirement age. Zoe’s heart began to race, and red stress splotches formed on her cheeks. Working for Aaron Papst was definitely bad for her health.

WASPs, or: The Americans Are Nuts

WASP is an acronym for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. These people have a high position on the American social ladder.

Natural habitat: New York’s Upper East Side, Connecticut, Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, or Southampton/Long Island (summer), and Palm Beach, Florida (winter).

Dress code: Preppy. Ralph Lauren, J. Crew, Brooks Brothers. Tip: Only wannabe preppies wear Abercrombie & Fitch!

“Old money” names: Charles (Chuck, Chip) Theodore (Ted), Trip (as in “the third”); Barbara (Binky), Theodora (Tattie), Louise/Louisa (Weezie).

“New money” names: Carter, Cole, Hunter, Justin, Leo, Milo; Ava, Chloe, Ella, Olivia, Violet.