Little Pink Slips (24 page)

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 college 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."

The last time she'd seen a man this emotionally exposed, she was

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 coat—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

Bebe's attention had moved on.

"Holy fuck, it's him, isn't it?" she said, fixated on the former presi

dent. "And her." She began to dart in the couple's direction.

Magnolia saw a flicker of terror in Jock's eye. As the former presi

dent was swarmed by wide-eyed females, Jock swiftly created a no-fly

zone around Hillary, whom he adroitly steered toward a cluster of

kingpin advertisers. His moves were as smooth as a swan dive.

For a split second Bebe stood paralyzed, then replaced her aston

ishment with cavalier amusement. She turned to Magnolia. "Gotta

get to my next party—one with real food," she said. "Want to join

me?"

"But there's a whole spread in the next room," where Magnolia

could hear Darlene.

"Suit yourself. I've had it with this crowd. An eggnog for the road

and I'm history." She padded off to the bar, leaving Magnolia to head

for the buffet to make sure that Darlene and the other Scary disciples

registered that she was here.

By the standards of a ten-room Fifth Avenue duplex, the Flana

gans' dining room was small. Magnolia found herself bosom to bosom

with Darlene, directly under a portrait of one of Pippi Flanagan's dis

approving ancestors.

"Have you met Raven?" Darlene asked, smearing caviar on a blini,

popping it in her mouth, and motioning toward an exceedingly tall

woman with hair and clothing as dark as her name. "Raven Kensing

ton-Woods, Magnolia Gold. Raven's visiting," Darlene said as she

chewed. "From London."

As if that weren't obvious the minute the woman opened her mouth.

"Grand party," the Brit said. "Are you another of Jock's lovelies?"

"Are you?" Magnolia asked.

Raven laughed like wind chimes. As if on cue, Jock appeared and

linked arms with her and Magnolia. "Everyone drinking up?" he said.

"I'm told you press people here in the States don't like to drink,"

Raven said. "Not like us, who end every bloody workday with cocktails."

"You're going to have to change that, Raven," Jock said, and moved

on as happy host.

"Here for long?" Magnolia asked Raven.

"Not likely," Raven said. "I doubt you all could afford me." She let

her wind chimes tinkle one more time, tossed her sable hair, and

floated off with Darlene toward the bar.

"Who—or what—was that?" Natalie asked, sidling up to Magno

lia as they watched heads turn toward Raven, who cut an inky wake

in a crowd which had abandoned its customary black for hits of festive

color. Natalie wore a thigh-high caftan in blue iridescent silk, gold

bangles on each wrist, and slouchy, calfskin boots. Her hair was in its

customary Wilma Flintstone do.

   
" ' Tis some visitor tapping at my chamber door,' "
Magnolia said.

   Natalie took a second to get Magnolia's reference. But she was an English major, too. "'
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,' "
Natalie recited. "I take it that's the Raven SomethingSomething I've read about?"

"Only her and nevermore," Magnolia said. "Or at least I hope

there's nothing more."

"Don't do one of your paranoid numbers—I hear she's in town

about one of the cheesy tabloid jobs," Natalie said, always making a point of distinguishing
Dazzle
from the only slightly trashier celebrity magazines that had overtaken the newsstands. "Stop think

ing about that pea-brained Page Six item. Everyone else has."

"Okay," Magnolia said. "I'll try." She decided now would be a good

time to leave the party and collected her coat from the attendant in

Jock's lobby. Despite Natalie's order, she couldn't stop obsessing over

whether Raven might be the mysterious Englishwoman rumored to

be after her job, and, to clear her head, she started to walk south

rather furiously.

Soon enough, she was in midtown. She passed Barney's Christmas

windows, loaded with insider innuendo, walked over to Bergdorf's, whose displays were dripping with more layered opulence than she'd

ever recalled, and past Cartier, whose whole building was wrapped in

a red bow. She ultimately stationed herself in front of the towering

tree at Rockefeller Center, standing before it as if it were the great Oz

ready to spit out answers. Why can't anything be simple, she won

dered? Not a store window. Not a party. Not a guy. Not a job.

Out of the corner of her eye, a tall man in a blue knit ski hat put

his arm around a woman's waist and pulled her close for a kiss in front

of the tree. Magnolia did a double-take. Could that be Tyler?

Magnolia blinked and the man disappeared. Had she made him up?

She walked toward the skating rink in an attempt to see him again,

weaving in and out of the crowd until she spotted him. He turned.

Blue Hat had a cropped red beard. Not Tyler. But why could she not

stop thinking about him? Since she'd left the hotel room yesterday,

she'd been marinating in both guilt and a persistent emotion she

couldn't name that was dangerously close to longing. Magnolia could

see him, taste him, hear him, and smell him.

Was she so needy and vulnerable that she'd lost all common sense?

If they'd spent a whole weekend together, they probably would have

run out of conversation by Saturday afternoon.

Had she used Tyler? She'd discussed their time together with

Abbey, who tried to convince her it had been the other way around.

You can't think about him, Magnolia told herself. And she didn't for

most of the walk home, because she was back to ruminating about

Raven, a certain head-of-another-masthead who Magnolia, informed

by her intuition, knew had made the trip with the hope of becoming

her replacement.

At the
very least, Magnolia had distractions. Just as magazines glorified Christmas, whipping female readers into a froth of insomnia

inducing, chemical-dependency-seeking stress as they compared their

ragged efforts to the results of photo shoots engineered by teams of

professionals, so, too, the industry romanticized the season for its own

amusement. First, there were the parties. It was true what Magnolia had told Raven: during the rest of the

year, if there weren't a profit motive to get together at the end of

the workday, staffs splintered off to Westchester, New Jersey, Con

necticut, and four of the five boroughs. (Magnolia had yet to meet

anyone who worked on a magazine and lived on Staten Island.) But in

December, they made up for it, with day after day and night after

night of bonhomie, both real and faux.

Scary, for instance, traditionally invited every employee to the

once-glorious Tavern on the Green, which they rented out in its

entirety. Mail-room attendants showed off MTV-worthy dance moves

with rhythm-challenged editors as partners. Those who didn't dance

feasted from a pile of shrimp the size of the national debt.

For Magnolia, there was also Darlene's tree-trimming party at her

Upper East Side brownstone. The evening masqueraded as a family

fete, her velvet-clad daughters—Priscilla, Camilla, and Annabel—

circulating silver trays of canapés to the advertisers Darlene treated as

her nearest and dearest. Magnolia knew that the magazine paid the bill. But who was she to complain?
Lady
used to do the same for the staff brunch she threw at her apartment, featuring an ecumenical

spread of Zabar's finest Nova Scotia salmon, sweet potato latkes, and

Christmas cookies she had baked herself from the magazine's recipes.

But this year, she wouldn't be giving her party. In its place was Bebe's

Nashville rib-and-brew bash at Blue Smoke.

But that wasn't all. Until the industry flew west for skiing three