The Pink Ghetto (3 page)

He glared at me and sank down on the couch. He always hated it when I reminded him of his name. There was a good reason he went by Fleishman.

“What are you going to do?” Wendy asked me.

“I guess I’m going to treat myself to a crash course in editing.”

For the next two days, I was a slave to the
Chicago Manual of Style.
I went through two red pencils marking up that manuscript. And in the meantime, I read several of the books. I read
The Fireman’s Baby Surprise, Beauty and the Bounty Hunter,
and I skimmed a long book that was a retelling of Cinderella set in Scotland in the 1700s called
Highland Midnight Magic.
I steeped myself in romance.

I don’t know what I was expecting. Hilariously purple prose, I guess. And it had been a long time, maybe forever, since I had heard a man’s sexual organ referred to as his manroot. But for the most part, the thing that surprised me was that the books were so not focused on sex. At least the little modern ones weren’t. (The Scottish book was half sex, half clan war.) The fireman had firehouse politics and an arsonist to deal with, along with his paternity dilemma. The bounty hunter was chasing an heiress wrongly accused of jewel smuggling—so that was a big mess to have to work out. Every step of the way, these poor people had problems,
and
they were falling in love.

By the end of the week I was beginning to see the appeal. If some schmuck has time to find an arsonist, expose his boss for corruption, find good daycare,
and
fall in love with a sassy local news reporter, the authors seemed to be saying, there was hope for us all.

I must have done something right, because the day after I turned in my test Kathy Leo called me to tell me to come in again, this time to talk to someone named Rita Davies.

When I was led back to Rita’s office, I was struck at once by the mess. If Mercedes’s office was disorganized, Rita’s could have qualified as a Superfund site. Manuscripts piled up precariously in teetering Seussian columns. I counted six different in-boxes, and all of them were full. Rita was a blousy, heavy-lidded woman with frizzy red hair. She looked up at me when I walked in and took a sip from one of the three coffee mugs on her desk.

“Do you smoke?” she asked by way of greeting.

I was a little taken aback. Was this a trick question? I took a deep breath and sensed a definite smell of tobacco. “Uh…not really. I mean, occasionally I’ll bum one at a bar or something…”

She cut off my answer with a wave. “Because if you want, we can go outside.”

It was drizzling outside. And cold. It wasn’t yet March. “No, I’m fine here.”

“Okay, great. Just a second.” She opened a drawer, tossed out several old pens, what looked like an ancient bagel wrapped in wax paper, and a box of nicotine patches. She took a moment to slap on a patch, waited a moment for the burn to begin, then turned back to me with an easy smile. “Great job on the test, by the way.”

“Thanks. I really liked that story.”

“Yeah, she’s a good author for us. I’ll give you more of her books, if you want.”

“Terrific!” I could give them to Fleishman. Ever since my first interview, he’d been on a romance reading jag.

“Mercedes told me all about you. She said you’re just what we need around here.”

“Oh, well…” What she really needed was a Mighty Maid service.

“She said you had worked with Sylvie Whatsawhosit and really were invaluable to her.”

I just shrugged modestly.

She squinted at me. “Sure you don’t feel like a cigarette?”

I was pretty certain there was a hard and fast rule about not smoking on your job interview. It was probably up there with not showing up shit-faced drunk or wearing flip-flops. I shook my head.

“Nicorette?” she asked, offering me a box.

“No, I’m fine. Really.”

“Wish I could say the same!” She sighed and popped a piece of gum into her mouth. “I guess I should tell you how we work around here. This little area here is referred to as the Pulse Pod.”

“Pulse?” I asked.

“I’m senior editor of the Pulse line.” She pointed to a shelf of books with identical red and white spines that were for the most part obscured by random piles of other books, souvenir ashtrays, and, inexplicably, a pair of beige suede boots. “It’s Candlelight’s line of medical romances. You know—doctors, nurses, paramedics. Even a phlebotomist or two.” I was going to laugh, but she didn’t give me a chance. “As far as staff goes, I’m the senior editor of the pod, and I’ve got an ed assist. Then there’s an assistant editor and an associate. Another person would be such a big help, I can’t tell you. I hope you don’t mind having a ton of work thrown at you all at once. You wouldn’t have much of a learning curve.”

“Learning curves? Who needs ’em?” I joked.

“Right. Well, what I could use is a vacation, but I doubt that’s coming anytime soon, unless it’s in a place with padded walls.”

She went on to explain to me that Pulse Pod people worked on all sorts of books aside from medical romances. “We also work on Hearthsongs, Flames, MetroGirl, Historicals, and occasionally Divines.”

She might have been speaking to me in a foreign tongue. I was lost. All I could think of when she said
divine
was the cross-dresser who starred in
Lust in the Dust.
I was pretty sure that wasn’t what she meant.

She stopped. “Divine is Candlelight’s inspirational line. Those books are
really
hot right now. You might say preachers are the new vets. Vet heroes came into vogue a decade ago. And cops are always the rage.” She sighed. “We don’t do a lot of Divines in this pod, though. Mary Jo is pretty possessive of those. Have you met Mary Jo Mahoney?”

I shook my head.

“You will.” She inhaled on her pen. “Lucky bitch—she knows she’s sitting on the gold mine over there in the God Pod. It’s where the real growth is now.”

I left the interview with mixed feelings. I couldn’t decide if the job looked like a great thing or a nightmare. When I got home hauling a totebag full of books, Fleishman was all over me. (Well, all over the totebag.)

“More books? Yay!”

I was beginning to worry about him. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

“I called in sick.” When I leveled a stare at him, he smiled impishly. “I had to see how your interview turned out.”

“It went fine.”

“I’ll say—there’s a message from Kathy Leo on the machine.”

I gasped and scrambled over to the phone. When I called Kathy, she announced, “I was calling to offer you the position of associate editor for Candlelight Books.”

Associate?
I gulped. Maybe I’d heard her wrong. “I thought…”

She laughed. “I know. You could have knocked me over with a feather when Mercedes came to plead your case. The thing is, we can’t up the starting salary for assistants without causing a revolution around here, but she really was impressed with you, so we decided that we should bump you up a job grade.”

Fleishman, who was practically shoving me out of hearing range so he could stick his ear next to the receiver, too, gave me a high five.

“I-I don’t know what to say,” I stammered. “Except…”
Except I think I’m in way over my head now.
“Except how soon can I start?”

K
athy Leo’s call put me in a panic.

What was I getting myself into? Sure, I could bluff my way through a half-hour interview or two. Apparently I had bluffed beyond my wildest dreams. But how could I bluff my way through eight hours a day, five days a week, fifty weeks a year?

Answer: I couldn’t. I was so screwed.

I didn’t even own the clothes to look the part. Aside from my Mao suit, my wardrobe leaned heavily toward the ultracasual, as befitted an ex-grocery shopper. I was utterly unprepared to enter a world where I needed to look like a grownup. I wasn’t even sure I still owned a pair of panty hose. Didn’t people still wear those?

On Friday, the day after the call from Kathy Leo, I was still flat on my back on the futon in the living room, awash in worry. Worrying was about all I could do, since God knows I didn’t have the funds to remedy my fashion deficiency. And no amount of money would render me suddenly competent for a job I was in no way qualified for.

I had a versatile skirt made out of some kind of tensile material that was supposed to be breathable but really felt like Saran Wrap, and I had the Mao suit. Wendy had an actual dress I could probably borrow to throw my new coworkers off my feebly garmented trail. That was three outfits—maybe five if I accessorized cleverly to disguise the fact that I was wearing the Saran Wrap skirt in three different incarnations. If I did that for two weeks, maybe three, I would probably be able to splurge for something new at Filene’s Basement with my first paycheck.

I envisioned myself at the end of those three weeks in my gamey black skirt, already the office pariah. Possibly by then the powers that be would have found me out—that I,
ahem,
stretched the truth in those interviews. That I had no business even applying for such a job. That actually, despite four years of college English, none of which remotely touched on the subject of grammar, my relationship with the technical ins and outs of my native tongue was haphazard at best.

In other words, that I was a fraud.

Just as I was considering holding up the nearest Duane Reade for some Zoloft, the apartment door flew open and Fleishman rushed in. At least I was pretty sure it was Fleishman. His distinctive features were almost indistinguishable behind heaps of colorful shopping bags.

“Where have you been?” I asked. “I thought you had work today.”

“I did, but then I got a summons from Natasha.” Fleishman was the only person I knew who called his parents by their first names, a practice that in my family would have earned any kid a whack upside the head. But Natasha Fleishman never seemed to mind; she seemed to think it was part of her son’s bad-boy appeal. Fleishman’s attitude toward his family was always that of a beloved scapegrace. His father might not be speaking to him, his mother might have to sneak into the city to see him, and he might profess contempt for everything they stood for (up to and including budget footwear), but he acted as though he believed they would all eventually come around to see his undeniable value and charm.

I wondered, though. Fleishman took an awful lot for granted. No person, even a father, wanted to be called a miserly old fascist forever. I mean, language like that tended to alienate people.

He grinned and explained his mother’s surprise appearance in town. “Natasha came to have lunch and to drop off part of the Fleishman fortune on Fifth Avenue. She called me at work before heading over, so I took the rest of the day off and here I am.”

I eyed those bags. One said Sak’s, one said Barney’s, and a few others boasted names of stores that I didn’t recognize.

“She took you to all those places?” I asked.

“No, no, no. Natasha just took me to lunch. I told her that we were collecting clothes for a charity drive, though, and so before coming over she loaded up the Benz with all her castoffs.”

“What charity?” I asked.

“The Rebecca Abbot foundation, dedicated to clothing the intolerably attired.”

He laid all the bags at my feet. I could hardly believe it. There had to be thousands of dollars worth of stuff in there!

“Oh my God. It’s like having a fairy godmother burst through the door!”

“I hope you don’t mind hand-me-downs,” he said.

He was joking. How many times had I repeated the factoid that I had not owned a first-hand coat until I was thirteen? When you’re the fifth of six kids, you learn to look at the closets of your siblings as your own personal thrift store. But this—this was a big step up in closet class.

I tossed my arms around Fleishman and gave him a noisy kiss on his cheek. “I can’t believe you did this for me, Fleish.”

“Who else
would
I do it for?” he asked, his grey eyes practically sparkling at me.

When people ask me to describe Fleishman, I usually say he sort of resembles the young Martin Landau from his
North by Northwest
days, only that doesn’t really do him justice. He’s that tall, thin, and angular, but he’s dapper. When you look at him—and he’s so distinctive that people always do crane around to look at him on the streets or in restaurants—you would think that he must be an actor, or some other person used to being in the public eye. He might not be handsome in the way Brad Pitt is handsome, but he carries himself like a man accustomed to thinking of himself as exceptional. Aside from his bearing, he has these steely blue-gray eyes—they can seem intense, or full of humor. They are mesmerizing.

On many an occasion those eyes have been my undoing.

I knew better now than to get tripped up by those eyes now. I knew my limits. Both of our limits. I was well aware of what all the sparking and smoldering could lead to: Wild abandon chased quickly by abject regret.

“Well, c’mon,” he said impatiently when I broke eye contact. “Let’s see what the old dame brung you.”

Say this for her, Natasha Fleishman did not skimp on charity. From those shopping bags, which still had a perfumey smell lingering on them, we pulled out a wealth of stuff. Twinset cashmere sweaters, fabulous lightweight wool outfits in rich tweeds and checks, silk shirts, and so-called casual wear that would only be casual to people who actually wore formal wear on a regular basis. Putting on Natasha Fleishman’s casual chic, I would feel like a kid playing dress up.

Yet after a few minutes I was pawing over garments bearing tags with Prada and Dior with a critical eye. The trouble was size. Natasha Fleishman was both taller and smaller than I was. That ruled out pants. I could, however, squeeze into most of the skirts and tops if I was careful to keep my breath sucked in.

Fleishman, who had begun to look like he was losing interest, dug out a vintage dress. “Wow—I think this was my grandmother’s.” It was a fitted turquoise and deep purple houndstooth shift. “I think you should wear this on your first day.”

I took the dress from him and frowned as I looked it over. The tag read Mainbocher, whom I thought was a really big designer at some point. “I’m not sure…”

Fleishman looked hurt. “Why not?”

“Because it’s not the kind of thing you wear on your first day to a job. Unless your job is as a guest star on
The Doris Day Show.
It’s loud.”

“You need to be louder,” he grumbled, putting the dress aside.

I wasn’t so sure. It was both loud and fitted, and things that were so fitted played right into my paranoia about body issues. Growing up, I had been fat. The kind of girl to whom people would say things like, “You have the loveliest brown eyes!” Or, “You look just like Winona Ryder!” Meaning, Winona Ryder, but fat. I had brown hair and brown eyes, and there our similarities ended.

When I lost weight, I actually did look a little more like Winona Ryder, but by then she was more known for shoplifting than good box office, so the resemblance was no longer in my favor.

“Do you think this is too tight?” I asked Fleishman as I stepped out a few minutes later to model a newer black scoop-neck dress with a Prada tag. I couldn’t believe this stuff was from someone’s discard pile.

Fleishman eyed me critically. “Sit-ups,” he said. “A week of sit-ups xand you’ll look like a million dollars.”

“I don’t have a week,” I reminded him. “Besides, I haven’t done a sit-up since P.E. in seventh grade.”

“Okay, we just won’t eat for the next three days.”

I nodded. If it meant fitting into a free wardrobe, that sounded like a reasonable suggestion.

That was the other thing about Fleishman. We’d known each other so long, he knew my history. He knew that growing up I was the little girl other kids had called Shamu in swim class. My weight had been a torment, but in a perverse way it had also seemed like my security blanket. Fat was who I was. The idea of losing weight and showing up at school thin (I always dreamed that it would happen overnight or something), which according to everyone was supposed to be my dream, made me feel even more self-conscious. I would be like the bald guy who suddenly shows up at work with a toupee.

The summer after high school, though, I took the plunge. I dropped forty-five pounds, and not by a method I would recommend to anyone. But by the time I got to college, I was average size. No one there knew I was only masquerading as a normal person.

At first, Fleishman was the only one at college I told about my deep dark secret. He knew all about me, and understood the yo-yo diet mentality and why I would panic when my size ten jeans started to feel tight. I have developed discipline over the years, but it’s the cockeyed kind of discipline that says that it’s fine to inhale a Krispy Kreme donut (or two!) for breakfast as long as you don’t eat again for the rest of the day.

It’s the kind of discipline Fleishman understood.

“Okay, modeling time’s over,” Fleishman said, two outfits later. “I’m taking you out.”

I tilted my head. “Out where?”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of cash. “Natasha made a generous donation to the Fleishman fund, too, so I’m treating us both to haircuts.”

Fleishman and I had been so tight knit for so long that we tended to treat financial windfalls as community property. We were so close we sometimes acted like twins with an extra set of parents. The fact that we had actually been an item—and that we had weathered not only a breakup but also a romantic lapse since—only made us that much more inseparable.

Wendy was always telling me that I should be more cautious; if Fleishman considered me his scold, Wendy was mine. Typically, she would wait until Fleishman and I had one of our periodic dust-ups to swoop down on me with advice.

“Someday you might want to put a little distance between yourself and the boy wonder,” she would warn. “I like him, too, but I’ve never been in love with him.”

“I’m not in love with him! We’re
friends.
”

That was her cue for the piercing stare. “Works out great, too. You get a Svengali, and he gets an entourage.”

I think the old college ties were beginning to grow frayed for Wendy. Luckily, she was in the middle of graduate school now and didn’t have a lot of time for conversations like these anymore. She was too busy working on lighting designs for
Waiting for Godot.
She was up to her armpits in lighting gels and asbestos cables and didn’t have as much time to devote to our ongoing domestic drama.

It was a beautiful winter day and Fleishman and I larked off into the city like two teenagers playing hooky. First we headed to Soho, where we were coiffed, and then we flitted down busy streets, in and out of stores, buying shoes and little trinkets and basically depleting the Fleishman fund to its previous shaky state. I charged a few things I shouldn’t have, and accepted a few freebies from Fleishman, including the haircut, without much protest. After all, I was usually the big breadwinner.

When we had worked our way all the way up to Union Square, Fleishman sighed contentedly. I’ll say this for him—you’ll never meet a man happier to be down to his last dime. Maybe that was because he was always assured that it never really was his last dime. Another dime was always around the corner. Poverty was just a temporary mix-up to him. “I have just enough for dinner and train fare back to Brooklyn.”

“I thought we weren’t eating until Monday,” I reminded him.

“But all this shopping—I’m starved!” he whined.

Fleishman was never big on deprivation.

“Okay,” I said, “but after this…”

Let’s face it. I wasn’t big on deprivation, either.

We ambled over to an Indian place we liked.

Once he and I were settled in our booth soaking in the comforting scent of curry, with our respective beverages of wine and tea, we both took what seemed like our first deep breaths since we had started our retail debauch.

Fleishman slipped down in the booth until his torso formed a leisurely C. He sipped his wine. “You know what? Your big success at finding work has given me a shot of ambition myself.”

I tilted my head. “You mean you’re going to look for a job?”

His eyes widened in alarm. “What? Why would I do that? I have a job.”

“A permanent job, I mean.”
One that you actually go to.

He shuddered. “I still feel that I’ll make my mark in the world through writing. I haven’t given up on
Yule Be Sorry.
”

I groaned. “I wish you would.”

We had been over this before, gingerly. “It isn’t about you and me,” he assured me for the hundredth time.

“No, it’s about an idealized you and a caricature of me.”

“Not at all. You make Ramona sound like a cartoon. She just has a few traits you share. I’m culling from all over, though. She’s a composite.”

Don’t be fooled; the woman was me.

And really, I had to wonder. Because the woman was doggedly conventional and a bit of a killjoy. One of those tiring people who believed every argument had a flipside—who would come out with expressions like “different strokes for different folks” as if she were delivering original kernels of wisdom. (I
never
said things like that!) The boyfriend, an artistic free spirit, comes to realize that what is holding him back is this girlfriend he’s attached to who doesn’t believe in him and reins in his phenomenal creativity out of subconscious jealousy.