Little Pink Slips (3 page)

than Fargo—which is to say, everywhere—had probably never even

been in the same room with your average coupon-clipping, Wal-Mart

shopping American woman. Magnolia grew up with her, respected

her, and was her—if you could overlook the cosmic good fortune of a

sprawling Manhattan co-op and a plus-size expense account.

Her favorite moment was knowing she'd written just the right line

to impel hundreds of thousands of shoppers to stampede through the supermarket because they
had
to find out what the twelve steps were in this month's hair rehab story. Early in her career, when she'd dashed

off "how not to be fat after 30," it had garnered a "Dear Pussycat, That

was absolutely fabulous" note from Helen Gurley Brown. Magnolia

kept the treasure—typed on fading pink paper—in a folder marked

OPEN WHEN FEELING SUICIDAL.

Plain and simple, Magnolia had always adored magazines. They'd

taught her to relieve flatulence, give a hand job, and handicap the mar

riage prospects of Prince William. Now her fun wasn't so much from

reading magazines, as from working on them, and the juicy center was

being surrounded by smart, talented people. Each editor, proofreader, and production associate on
Lady
was a jewel, handpicked. While Magnolia didn't feel these gems belonged in a tiara she expected to

wear forever, she appreciated that her top colleagues had followed her to
Lady
from her last job.

She swiveled her tall leather chair toward her Mac, banging out

the editor's letter. At half past one, Sasha brought her the usual from

the deli downstairs—grilled chicken, chickpeas, beets, cherry toma

toes, and romaine tossed with low-fat honey mustard dressing— which Magnolia gobbled along with
USA Today.

A few manuscripts later, she looked at the clock. Could she call

California yet? Two o'clock. Excellent.

   "How are we coming with December?" she asked.
Lady
still needed a cover.

"Reese Witherspoon—definite maybe," replied the overpriced,

L.A. celebrity wrangler. This was good, very good. Booking the deadon perfect star guaranteed that
Lady
would sell 70 percent of its copies, which was roughly double that of most magazines.

When Magnolia looked up again, it was 3:45. Already? So much for

rehearsing her presentation for the meeting. She brushed her teeth

and combed her hair, glad she'd worked in an appointment over the

weekend to have her amber highlights refreshed.

It was time.

C h a p t e r 3

Oprah Envy

The boardroom was filled,
every seat readied with a fresh yellow legal pad and an extrafine felt tip pen, Jock Flanagan's

preferred writing instrument. Darlene Knudson, in black Prada from

plunging neck to rounded toe, positioned herself—as always—at one

end, opposite Jock, as if she were his equal. Like synchronized swim

mers, numerous high priests from circulation, marketing, publicity,

production and research—several outranking Darlene—flanked each

side of the twenty-foot rosewood table. Everyone was waiting for the

master and commander. As usual.

At 4:25, he entered. As company presidents went, Jock was prime

time ready, from his monogrammed cuffs to his recently barbered

head of wavy hair, whose blackness he owed as much to chemistry

as genes. If it weren't for an unfortunate overbite, he'd be truly hand

some, and looked a decade younger than his fifty-five years. Taking his

seat at the head of the table and offering no apologies for detaining

twelve executives who, collectively, earned close to five million dollars,

Jock let several minutes pass before he beckoned for Darlene Knudson

and whispered something in her ear. Finally, he spoke.

"Ready, kids?" he asked the group. "I'm going to turn this meeting over to Magnolia, because I know you can't wait to see how she's going to reinvent
Lady, ev
eryone's favorite dowager."

   What's with the snarky tone, Magnolia wondered? Whose fault was it, anyway, that
Lady
needed a facelift? It's not as if during her interviews for the job Jock happened to mention that the magazine was two

million dollars in the red. The magazine looked like a frump when she

signed on, and she'd vastly improved it, even without the redesign she

was proposing today. Anyway, she could certainly hold up her head in public. As of a year ago,
Lady
had turned a profit. Plus, Magnolia had brought down the average reader's age to forty-two, practically prepu

bescent among traditional women's magazines. Jock should consider

her a sorceress. Still, there were limits to how much she could accom

plish with her current resources. After presenting to the group today,

Magnolia hoped-hoped-hoped they'd finally approve the investment

for which she'd been pleading. The magazine needed everything—

glossier paper, a larger format, more room for jaw-dropping art, and

the budget to pay for top-notch photographers and writers. What any

editor would require to drag an aging diva into this century. If Magno

lia's great-grandmother had lived in the United States, and not a shtetl near Minsk—or was it Pinsk?—she'd have been a
Lady
subscriber: the magazine was more than one hundred years old.

"Magnolia? Drumroll."

She realized she hadn't listened to a thing her boss had said in

the last ten minutes.

"Thanks, Jock," Magnolia rose from her seat and walked to the

wall. "You're all going to love what you see."

Magnolia had been shocked but pleased when Jock had agreed to

Step One of her master plan, and had allowed her to hire the city's premier design consultant to help her make over
Lady.
The vote of confidence had propelled her through the last two months of work. Until at

least ten on most evenings, she'd been working with Harry James, a

well-mannered Englishman. Medium height, with ramrod-straight

posture, he had longish hair which was receding ever so slightly, combed

straight back from his forehead. His chin had a pronounced cleft. As they pored over logos and layouts in his downtown design studio

at the end of Magnolia's regular workday, it surprised her that Harry

wore a suit, always in a dark color with skinny lapels and a narrow tie.

He dressed impeccably. From this, Magnolia didn't want to jump to

the conclusion that he was gay, though a fair number of designers cer

tainly were. Harry never mentioned a boyfriend, but he didn't flirt

with her, either. They kept to the business at hand, which was tricky.

   It was hard to change a beloved magazine, no matter how dowdy it may have grown. If
Lady
did a one-eighty, its identity would vanish— and so might its readers. Improvements had to be subtle. Yet the design

needed a distinctive point of view; when the magazine flopped open,

any woman in Random U.S.A. needed to know instantly she was looking at
Lady,
not another clone of
Real Simple
or a neon replica of
Us.
Today, each sample page of the magazine was mounted on heavy

black boards, turned back side out on ledges that lined the long wall

of the conference room. Magnolia inhaled deeply. "This is how we'd

treat the cover," she said as she flipped back the first board. "We'd

clean it up—fewer coverlines. Refined logo. Richer colors."

Jock and her colleagues got up from their seats and scrutinized the

design, gathering behind Magnolia. They all waited for Jock's appraisal.

"Impressive," he finally said with a nod.

   One by one, she turned around the remaining forty boards, showing how
Lady'
s columns, special sections, and the splashy pages in the middle—where no ads were allowed—would appear redesigned for a

woman who didn't want to buy a magazine that looked like what her

mom threw in her shopping cart with the mayonnaise.

As she took her seat, no one spoke. Magnolia thought she could

hear the head of marketing sucking an Altoid.

   "You've nailed it, Magnolia," Jock said. "This magazine is fresh, friendly, and modern—everything
Lady
should be."

   "Congratulations." "Great job." "I love it." The compliments

popped like champagne corks.

Magnolia felt like dancing on the table. She hadn't admitted to her

top editors how nervous she'd been—only Abbey, her best friend, knew.

Most editors in chief were years more experienced, and Magnolia always worried about making beginners' mistakes. Maybe now, finally,

she could let herself relax. She smiled and thanked Jock and the group.

"This magazine has Estée Lauder written all over it," Jock added.

Omigod, sweet. That was truly high praise. The beauty advertisers

were the most coveted—and cosseted—because they tended to have

the biggest budgets, and their ads looked so good they gave a maga

zine an upgrade. Half the time, readers couldn't tell the beauty ads

from the magazine's editorial anyway. Among the dozens of big-name

beauty advertisers, Lauder may as well have been named Leader.

Every other company waited to see where they put their ads, and fol

lowed their direction.

"I appreciate the hard work you've done on this, Magnolia," Jock

continued. He cleared his throat and fidgeted with the lapels on his

Brioni jacket. "And now let's consider Darlene's idea."

   
Darlene's idea? W
hoa. This was her meeting, Magnolia's. Her head was suddenly full of noise. Her publisher's name wasn't on yesterday's

e-mail that had confirmed the agenda. Why hadn't she known about

this? This was reminding her of last summer, when Darlene sched

uled a critical six-month review with Jock for eight A.M. on the Mon

day morning when Magnolia would be returning, jet-lagged, from a

two-week vacation in the Yucatán.

Magnolia scanned the faces up and down the table. None of the

others looked surprised.

Darlene stood up, smoothing the wrinkles on her snug black pencil

skirt. She walked to the door of the conference room and let in her

assistant, who distributed a shiny red folder to each person at the table.

Darlene turned to Magnolia and smiled. "Great design, really great.

But what I'm going to show everyone today is a license to mint money.

We have an extraordinary opportunity at hand, and I know you're all

going to want to get on board." She grinned at the group, revealing her

large, frighteningly white teeth. "You all know Bebe Blake," Darlene, a

former Big Ten football cheerleader, said in her stadium-worthy voice.

Who didn't? Bebe's name was in the tabloids every other day. She

was always suing someone. After a career as a singer, then as an actress,

she had a syndicated talk show, which Magnolia knew had been in steady decline. Somewhere in there had been one or two five-minute marriages. Bebe had been on
Lady'
s cover twice since Magnolia had taken over. Not only did neither issue sell especially well, both experi

ences were odious. The last time, Bebe's publicist, the profession's head harpy, had ordered
Lady'
s art director Fredericka off the set because Bebe couldn't abide the woman's Düsseldorf diction.

   "Bebe wants her own magazine, and she'd be willing to take over
Lady
and turn it into
Bebe.
"

   She'd be
willing
? Take
Lady,
where Eleanor Roosevelt used to write a column, and turn it into a magazine for show business's lead

ing flake? Is Darlene smoking crack?

   "Trust me,
Bebe
—that's what she wants to call the magazine— could be like minting money," Darlene concluded.

   "Like Darlene says, this could be just the ticket for
Lady,
" Jock chimed in. "Bebe is a marketing genius. When she plugs the South

Beach Diet peanut butter cookies on her show, the next day cookies fly

off the shelves. And she'd be willing to promote the magazine on air.

Take a look."

"Minting money," Darlene repeated. And again. And again, as if a

computer chip had malfunctioned. Magnolia wanted to knock Dar

lene on the head to get her to stop.

The group opened their folders. Inside were four pages of article

ideas, most of which Magnolia recognized as recycled from other

magazines. But what stood out was the red type. Now that she was

reading on, she saw that the color red, Bebe's signature hue—which

extended to her hair—would be featured prominently throughout the

magazine. Every cover would have a red background. The magazine

would end with "Seeing Red," an essay Bebe planned to write herself,

where she promised to "vent, no holds barred." Oh, yes, the world was

waiting for a download of Bebe Blake's opinions, of that Bebe seemed

to be sure.

   "The magazine that's
well-red,
that's the kicker Bebe wants," Darlene said. "Genius, no?"

Okay, joke's over, Magnolia thought. Everyone is going to groan

now, then toast my idea. She pictured confetti raining on her head. Apparently not.

"Well, done, Darlene," Jock said. "But this isn't a dictatorship.

I value the opinion of everyone in this room. Tell me what you think.

We know where Darlene stands, so we'll start with Milt."

Milt Herman, one of the grand poobahs, was the son of Scary's

former president and was the same guy who advised Magnolia, based

on an obscure study from 1987, never to use a celebrity's photo if her

teeth were parted. When she'd ignored that dictum with a laughing shot of Jennifer Aniston, she'd put out
Lady'
s best seller of the year. Milt had never forgiven her the success.

"I go with Bebe. I see it as a huge win-win, just like Oprah's maga

zine," he proclaimed.

That's it. Oprah-envy, Magnolia thought. From its premiere

issue—which needed to be printed twice because her fans snapped up

all the copies in two days—Oprah Winfrey's magazine was the

biggest triumph the magazine industry had seen in the last twenty