Sad Desk Salad (29 page)

Sometimes those humans are even Rel and Tina. In the weeks after our respective tiffs, I invited them out to drinks and explained the whole Becky West/BTCH saga. They both impressed me with their easygoing forgiveness. I had been especially scared that acid-tongued Rel would hate me forever, but she understood why I had tweaked out so hard. She and Tina work on the Internet, too, after all—they both saw how I could lose perspective, and fast.

I never told anyone about my altercation with Cassandra. Rel and Tina noticed that the hate blog had disappeared, but they never asked me about it. They just assumed whoever was writing it got bored and moved on to hating bigger and better things.

For several months after that July day, I was anxious that Cassandra would find some new and inventive way to harass me. For a while, every time I’d open my inbox I’d dread a threatening e-mail from her. But I haven’t had a whiff of her since. She defriended me on Facebook and deleted her profile. The website for that magazine she founded,
Logos,
has disappeared as well. I heard through the Wesleyan grapevine that she sold her apartment and moved to Kinshasa, where she now goes by the name Ayana. Who knows if it’s true. Perhaps her revolutionary fervor goes over better in the Congo, but somehow I doubt it.

And what of Becky West? Molly’s post about her reality show didn’t sour the deal with MTV or with
People
. Just the opposite: It made the American appetite for all things Becky even more insatiable. The
People
issue with Becky’s sad-looking face on the cover was one of the most popular newsstand buys of the summer (just behind the cover with the woman whose face got eaten by a chimp). Becky became America’s favorite tabloid daughter and took an indefinite leave from MIT and her beloved robots. Her three sisters took leaves from their respective august institutions of learning and the whole lot of them moved home with Darleen so that MTV could film
West Knows Best,
a
Father Knows Best
update for the “End of Men” era. The show premieres next month; I’ve seen ads for it plastered all over the subway, the West sisters’ angelic faces beaming down at me on the F train.

Becky and I didn’t speak after that morning in the Pierre. I’d like to think that if we did see each other again she wouldn’t hold a grudge. It worked out well for her in the end. But who knows how she really feels. I don’t think even she knows, deep down.

Though I never heard directly from Becky, I heard from Darleen’s lawyers. Again. And again. And again. For the first time in Chick Habit history, Moira and our lawyer agreed to take my post down four months after it had been published, just to make Darleen go away. By then, it was only a token take-down—any curious Internet surfer would be able to find the video on a torrent somewhere, and the post had received ten million page views and put Chick Habit on the map in a way that it hadn’t been before.

As much as I had mixed feelings about publishing that video, it turned out to be a boon for my career. Suddenly the editors of those $2-a-word glossies knew my name and started assigning me short celebrity profiles and reported cultural essays. They wanted some of that trademark Alex Lyons sass, but the pieces of mine that ended up in the magazines were edited down to be both bland and utterly unrecognizable as the work I had handed in. No matter: I really enjoyed getting more than an hour to work on an article (sometimes I’d even get weeks!) and the checks didn’t bounce.

And then, a month ago, I was offered a job managing the website of one of those glossies, at nearly twice my salary plus health insurance. I would go into a real office every day, and ride the subway and interact with people and speak aloud regularly. More important, I would get to pick and choose what web originals to run. Though it is celebrity oriented, the magazine is also known for its profiles of politicians, musings on Wall Street, and dispatches from the Middle East. I could offer the same mix of stories I was trying to achieve at Chick Habit, but with a much bigger budget. It was an opportunity that was too good to pass up.

When I got the job offer, I couldn’t wait to tell my mom the exciting news. Things between us had been strained since that crazy week: She felt responsible for pushing me into a career that was making me miserable, and I felt guilty for making her feel responsible. Despite the fact that we both work with words for a living, neither of us could muster the right ones to say to each other.

I decided to go up to Connecticut to tell her the good news in person. I wanted her to see how genuinely thrilled I was about the job offer. I wanted to give her real credit for all the creative encouragement she gave me.

She picked me up at the Metro North station and took me home. The conversation between us in the car was stilted. When I asked her how the new crop of freshmen was she said briefly, “Oh fine. Same as they always are,” and kept her eyes on the road.

When we got home she put up a kettle to make us chamomile tea, which is the first thing she always does whenever I come home. We sat across from each other with steaming mugs and I told her about the offer. She took a sip from her mug—a wonky, handmade piece from my seventh-grade pottery class—and nodded. “Well, that sounds nice,” she said.

“Mom, aren’t you happy about my new job?” I ask her, a little wounded that she’s not kvelling.

“I’m happy if you’re happy, puffin,” she said, her expression unchanging.

“I am really, really happy about it. I swear,” I said, reaching out for her hand. It was warm and dry, just like I remembered it from when I was a kid.

She squeezed my hand in return. “Are you sure that you’re not continuing on this path just so that I can live vicariously through you?”

“I promise. This is for me.”

She sighed and her expression finally relaxed. “That makes me happy, then, yes.”

We sat in comfortable silence for a few minutes, blowing on our tea, and that’s when I mustered the courage to ask her what had been on my mind for years.

“What about your work? I know you have that thesis sitting up there in your desk. You could still finish it. It’s not too late.”

Mom put down her mug, smiled, and sighed wistfully. “I think that particular ship has sailed. But maybe when I retire in a few years, I’ll start writing again.” She paused and then added, “Your father and I had a great marriage, and I miss him every single day. I don’t blame him for giving me that ultimatum about my thesis—I chose to give it up. But when he was alive, I was too embarrassed to try to write again. Now I’m ready to go back to it.”

“That’s really great, Mom,” I told her, starting to tear up. “I’m so proud of you.”

“Maybe I’ll even start my own blog,” she said, smiling.

I laughed out loud. “Maybe you should.”

Even after everything that had happened, it was surprisingly difficult to leave my job at Chick Habit. I was grateful to Moira for the opportunity, and also for everything she taught me along the way. The job had been sort of like a mental and emotional boot camp, and I felt prepared for anything that could come my way.

When I gave my two weeks’ notice, I told Moira that I thought publishing that Rebecca West video was ultimately a mistake for the site. “I don’t think we have to be Pollyannas,” I said, “but I think we should be careful about how we construe the term ‘famous.’ Unknown children of famous people should be off-limits.”

To her credit, Moira sat and listened to my moralizing without interrupting. “Are you done now, love?” Moira asked after I had been speaking for a good ten minutes. When I nodded, she said, “Good. I’m glad you got that out of your system. You know I never forced you to post anything you didn’t want to post. It was your choice to put up that video, and even though you feel uncomfortable about it, it was the right decision.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but Moira continued. “You have to realize that this is what being a journalist is about. I always remember that Janet Malcolm quote when I encounter people like you, Al: ‘Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible.’ We writers are snakes, and don’t you forget it. If you wanted to do something that was always ‘right,’ you should have become a dentist.”

“Al?” Peter says to me, waving his hands in front of my face. “Isn’t it time to get a move on? You don’t want to be late for your first day on the new job!”

“Damn, you’re right!” I say, heading quickly toward the bathroom. I poop without the aid of a laptop, take a shower, blow-dry my hair, and put on a tasteful amount of makeup.

I laid out my outfit the night before: A DVF wrap dress that says “sexy competence,” my nicest matching underwear, and a trench coat. Peter’s fastening my dad’s beaker cuff links while I put my shoes on. I gave them to him right after we got back together—with my mom’s sincerest blessing.

Peter and I leave the house together and hold hands on the way to the F train. It’s a breezy spring morning, the sun is high and bright in the sky, and I’m so thrilled to be getting up and out of the house for work that I could almost float all the way to Forty-second Street.

When I arrive at my new office building, I get my pass at the front desk and the magazine’s executive editor, Joe Aaronson, comes and meets me at the elevator bank on the twentieth floor, kissing me on both cheeks in welcome. Joe is in his fifties and has been around the industry since the days of the three-martini, three-hour lunch. He exudes a sort of natty largesse that I find unfamiliar but appealing. “Let me show you to your office,” he says. “I’ll have my assistant bring us some lattes.”

Assistant! Lattes! I feel like I’m eons away from my dumpy brown couch and my sugar-sweet bodega coffees. I follow Joe down the hall to a small, windowless cubbyhole several minutes from the front door.

“It’s not much but it’s all we have open right now,” Joe tells me.

“It looks great,” I say, and I mean it. I could not be more excited to have a little place of my own.

An officious-looking twenty-two-year-old in a nubbly pencil skirt and sensible heels comes in a minute later with two china cups full of foam.

“Thanks, Annika,” Joe says, closing the door behind her. “Sit!” he says to me, directing me to the chair behind a brand-new Mac.

“Thanks,” I say, taking a seat.

Joe sits down across from me. “We’re all so happy you decided to come on board with us,” he says. “We really want you to hit the ground running.”

“Great! I am raring to go myself!” I say enthusiastically.

“There are a few meetings I want you to sit in on this morning,” Joe says. “But that’s all just bullshit. Here’s what I really want to know.”

“Yes?” I say, leaning toward him.

Joe smiles broadly, even eagerly. “Do you have any more Becky West–type exclusives up your sleeve?”

Acknowledgments

Sad Desk Salad
is a work of fiction, but it would not have been possible without the wonderful experiences I had working at both Jezebel and Slate’s section for women, DoubleX. All the women I worked with were beyond generous, smart, and compassionate coworkers—and nothing like Alex’s peers. Thank you to Hanna Rosin, Meghan O’Rourke, Emily Bazelon, Kate Julian, Nina Shen Rastogi, Anna Holmes, Tracie Egan Morrissey, Moe Tkacik, Dodai Stewart, Jessica Coen, Jennifer Gerson, and Megan Carpentier for making my workdays a delight.

Many other colleagues were incredibly supportive while I was writing this, in particular David Plotz, Daniel Engber, Michael Agger, June Thomas, Julia Felsenthal, Heather Murphy, Seth Stevenson, and Noreen Malone.

I am deeply grateful to early readers Nathan Heller, Marisa Meltzer, and Lucinda Rosenfeld, all of whom helped shape the book into something much deeper and smarter than it would have been otherwise.

My agent, Elisabeth Weed, is an indispensable giver of advice, edits, and all-around care. She worked tirelessly to get this book out there in the best shape possible, and is a font of wisdom on just about everything, from emotional sanity to acupuncture treatments. Her tireless assistant, Stephanie Sun, was always helpful and provided a smiling face and a can-do attitude.

Kate Nintzel, in addition to being a delightful drinking buddy, is the best editor around. She knew exactly where to fill the holes in this manuscript, and her suggestions were always spot-on and brilliant. The rest of the staff at William Morrow, including Meredith Burks and Mary Sasso, have been a complete joy to work with and I’m so grateful for their hard work on this.

Thank you to my family and friends—Richard and Judith Grose, David and Charlotte Winton, Jacob Grose, Anna Magracheva, Judson Winton, Meghan Best, Wendell Winton, Leah Chernikoff, Willa Paskin, Mary Lydecker, Kate Lydecker, and Liz Stevenson—for encouraging the crazy idea that I could write a novel in five months while holding down a full-time job without having a nervous breakdown. And they were mostly right.

But most of all I want to thank my husband, Michael Winton, for being my biggest fan and greatest solace. And, of course, for putting up with me.

About the Author

JESSICA GROSE
is a writer and editor. She was previously a senior editor at Slate and an editor at Jezebel. Her work has appeared in the
New York Times
,
Glamour
,
Marie Claire
,
Spin
, and several other publications, and on Salon.com. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband.

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www.AuthorTracker.com
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Credits

Cover design by James Iacobelli

Cover photograph © by Quayside/Veer

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.