Little Pink Slips (37 page)

C h a p t e r 3 7

See You in Court

"Miss Gold, delivery coming up."
The doorman purred over Magnolia's creaky intercom. "Flowers for the lady."

Magnolia hadn't received a bouquet in months. The only blossoms

that weren't on her wallpaper were from the deli. Just this morning

she'd trashed two dozen roses which after only twenty-four hours had

arrived at death's door, bending over as if they were praying.

Someone pressed her bell with short, urgent blasts. "Hold on," she

sang out, as she squinted through the peephole. All she could see were

Smurf-blue carnations. Her fleeting thought was that this was

Cameron's idea of humor. Magnolia opened the door, hoping he was

attached to the flowers.

A squat, middle-aged man held tightly to the carnations. His

greasy hair was combed over a shiny bald spot, and he wore an over

coat that appeared to have been be plucked from the annual New York

Cares coat drive. Magnolia reached for the neon bouquet, but the man

pulled it back while he shoved an envelope in her face.

"Consider yourself served," he said before he slunk back into the

elevator, carnations in hand, like a villain in a 1942 comic book.

Magnolia ripped open the envelope. "You are hereby commanded

to appear in the offices of . . ." She read the name of a patrician law firm and noted a place, date, and time the following week. Strange

that Wally hadn't mentioned anything about a command legal per

formance, Magnolia thought, as she walked to her desk to check her

calendar. "No can do," she said aloud, noting a conflict with an ap

pointment she'd scheduled weeks ago to put a blast of bling in her

highlights—the winter was long enough without hair the color of

burnt toast. She looked up Wally's cell phone number to call and ask

what this summons had to do with her contract dispute, then remem

bered it was far too early to reach him in Colorado. Magnolia tossed

the letter onto a pile of unpaid bills and returned to her television.

She could crash in several episodes of third-tier celebrity shows

before meeting Abbey.

She'd been missing Abbey. The velocity of their IM-ing, text mes

saging, and phone calls had petered out to half the norm. At least

that's how it felt to Magnolia, who for the first time in her adult life

didn't have to multitask while she and her only true confidante gave

each other full accountings of daily minutia, the dull as well as the

droll. Now, Abbey seemed to be abbreviating every conversation. Her

business had taken off. Bergdorf's had requested three dozen pairs of

sea-foam sapphire earrings, Fred Segal was offering an exclusive for

all of la-la land if she could whittle down the price and do them up in

lemon jade, and Anthropologie would be willing to place an order

that was seven times the size of the others combined.

Yet Magnolia knew this flurry of entrepreneurial hyperbole didn't

explain Abbey's attention deficit, and she didn't think for a second

that Abbey was cheating on her with another friend, someone who

might be—at the moment—a whole lot perkier. Abbey had a low tol

erance for perky, which was one of the qualities she and Magnolia

shared. No, there was only one explanation. A man. To be specific, a
French
man.

Magnolia walked the long white runway that led to MoMA, where

they planned to meet at one o'clock. Advancing out of the tunnel, she

felt as if she should wind up in heaven, not a swanky café. Planted

under an enormous leafy photo was Abbey, who in her scarlet coat

looked like Little Red Riding Hood lost in the forest. Abbey waved gaily. "You look gorgeous!" she said, stretching to

hug Magnolia.

"You do and I don't, but let's not discuss it," Magnolia said, return

ing the hug, reassured by the all's-well-in-the-world comfort she got

when she looked into her friend's dark almond eyes. "What I want to

know is—everything. And—now that I don't have to worry about

falling asleep at my desk—let's hear it over a drink." One of a platoon

of waiters in charcoal Nehru jackets showed them to a choice table

with a view of the ghostly crystalline garden and its ice-frosted

Calders. "To you," she said, toasting Abbey with her glass. "My own

jewel of Las Vegas."

"To Magnolia, who I can count on never to set foot in Las Vegas,"

Abbey said.

"So? Is this Daniel Cohen the One?" Magnolia took a sip, put her

glass on the table, and smiled warmly at Abbey. "He is! You're blush

ing!" Abbey's cheeks were rapidly turning the pink of a sweet sixteen

party.

"I can't get enough of this guy," Abbey said. She started counting

his virtues while tapping her delicate, white index finger on the digits

of her left hand. "He's charming, he's handsome, he's brilliant, he's

sexy." She switched to the right hand. "He's got an accent I could lis

ten to even if he were reading a grocery list, he's totally into me—"

"That should be number one," Magnolia said, cutting her off. "I

get it. He's the anti-Tommy."

"Right, except Tommy did have bedroom appeal. Let's give him

that. On the other hand, Daniel's a grown-up," Abbey said. "He's

older—thirty-nine—but mostly it's his Frenchness. Even a Parisian

sixteen-year-old seems older than Tommy."

"Where do you go from here?"

"Literally?"

"Cosmically," Magnolia said.

"I only know literally," she answered. "To Paris again this week

end. He keeps sending me tickets. And in a few weeks he's coming

here and I'm planning to introduce him to my nearest and dearest.

Cocktails at my place. You're not going to be away, I hope?" "For the near future I expect to be epoxied to my armchair with a

view of the TV."

"It would never be a party without you. Oh, and Cameron," she

said, as she took a bite of smoked eel. Love seemed to have sparked

Abbey's appetite.

"Cameron's made your A-list?" Magnolia asked, truly surprised.

"How do you do it? All my exes despise me." Except Tyler, who every

once in a while sent her a friendly, funny e-mail from his regular Pas

torpeterson account. Harry? Had he thought to send her as much as an

e-mail expressing sympathy about her job loss—which he had to know

about, given its tabloid coverage? She'd concluded that Harry was a

user, and at the moment she wasn't even useful enough to be his friend.

"To begin with, Cam and I never got near lust," Abbey said. "He's

just not the one to own my heart—"

"Whoa. You're forgetting our rule," Magnolia said. "No Country

Western lyrics until after two or more beers."

"Plus, I know I don't do it for him," Abbey continued, ignoring her.

"I can never tell if he's laughing with me or at me. You get him a lot

better than I do, but I do see where he's hot, if that's what you're won

dering."

Magnolia let the last bubble of conversation float in the air until it

disappeared, then attacked her gâteau, a rich pastry featuring crispy

potato and escargot. If you can't eat carbs when you're unemployed,

she'd decided, you just don't love yourself enough.

"Back to Daniel Cohen," she said. "You deserve this, Abbey. I am so

happy for you that—look at me—I'm going to cry."

This was true. Magnolia blinked away tears. She was almost sure

she was ready to shed them entirely on Abbey's behalf and not

because her friend's attachment to the perfect Daniel might mean

one more shutter closed in her shrinking, darkening world. You are

pathetic, Magnolia told herself, brushing away both the thought and

the tear. Also selfish. Jealous. Small-minded. You adore Abbey. You

will find your own man. You will not be alone. Or a bag lady. Shoul

ders back, girl. "Dessert?" Magnolia asked as a cart sailed past, laden with choco

late napoleons and pale, lemony petits fours lined up like ballerinas.

"Not today," Abbey said. "Got to get back to my studio. Call you

tonight?"

"Date," Magnolia said. They finished their espressos, split the bill,

and left the restaurant. Magnolia wandered through a few cavernous,

sparely hung galleries, then out on Fifty-third Street. She began to

walk uptown toward Columbus Circle where she could catch a train.

As she crossed Fifty-seventh Street, someone bellowed her name.

"Over here," said the voice. "In the limo."

Magnolia swiveled to avoid oncoming traffic. A Stretch Hummer

had stopped across the street. "Where you headed, Bebe?" she shouted

back.

"My lawyer's," Bebe said.

"What's the occasion?" Magnolia asked when she got close to the

car's window. "Let me guess. You need another prenup. Are congratu

lations in order?"

"I need another husband like I need a third boob," Bebe said. "Or

like I needed a magazine. But Jock's going to pay. He's in for a little

surprise." She rubbed her hands together like an eager cannibal. "Don't

stand there shivering—I'll fill you in. C'mon—Gold. Chop, chop."

"But I'm going uptown," Magnolia said.

"So we'll take a ride." Bebe gathered her plentiful fox coat with its

hanging tails and tassels and patted the seat next to her. Magnolia

climbed into the car. "Like I was saying, our countersuit is almost

ready to rock and roll. Scary and Jock won't know what hit 'em. I'm

talking major artillery shelling." Bebe grabbed Magnolia's arm—

hard—and wasn't letting go. "You didn't honestly think I'd sit still for

those mental midgets to steal my money, not when Jock and Darlene

and all the others have treated me like pond scum, did you? Well,

did you?"

"Bebe, I've been trying not to think about any of this," Magnolia

pleaded. "I'm sorry you're being sued," she fibbed, "but you did pub

lish a cover that was blatant gun-lobby propaganda. You weren't always the easiest person to work with and, damn it, you fired me."

She wrested away her arm.

"
Jock
fired you!" Bebe said. "I wanted you."

"Revisionist history. Jock may have pulled the trigger," Magnolia

said, figuring it was a metaphor Bebe would understand, "but I don't

recall an enormous show of support at the time."

"You don't know what you don't know. I was behind the scenes, say

ing I wanted you. All along. You know I hate that eye-rolling bitch

Raven. Tried to shoot down my ideas like they were enemy Black

Hawks. And Jock! Did you know he had a security guard lock me in my

office? I was stuck there for ninety minutes. Thought I'd have a stroke."

"I heard something about that," Magnolia said. "But you'd threat

ened to kick Raven in the teeth."

"I believe I identified a different body part," Bebe said. "Lower

down." She stopped talking for a minute. "This is an absurd conversa

tion. It's all very simple. I need to pull out before I lose more dough,"

she said after a minute of meditation. "Like my ma always said, she

didn't raise no stupid kids."

Bebe may have calmed down, but Magnolia hadn't. "Shall we talk

money now?" She asked. "How about the hundred people who got fired when
Bebe
closed—what about them? All they got was a month's severance."

"That's what Scary decided to give them, cheap bastards," she said.

"Though half that money came from me, which Jock neglected to

mention. I also wrote checks out of my own pocket for at least a thou