The Pink Ghetto (13 page)

The bulk of the magazine, though, was devoted to brief book reviews in which practically every book published under the umbrella of women’s fiction was given a rating of one to five kissy lips. According to authors, those lips could make or break a career. I’d had one woman call me in hysterics over getting a one kissy review—in romance review terms, the kiss-off. I had a hard time convincing her not to file suit.

How had Fleishman even found out about the
Journal?

“Look, you’re scaring me. I’m grateful for all your interest, but it’s my job.”

“But I
need
to go.”

Was he nuts? “Why would you need to go to a romance conference in Oregon?”

He folded his arms. “I just do.”

There was more to this than what he was telling me. “Fleish…”

He lifted his chin. “Well, if you must know, I haven’t been idling away my days while you’ve been at work. I’ve been at work, too. Writing a play.”

So? He was always writing a play.

And then it hit me. This was a new play. About Candlelight Books.

About my job.

“A play!” I stood back, aghast. This was worse than I could have imagined. Fleishman was going to write some horrible play making fun of romance writers; by some fluke it would be produced, become a Broadway hit, and I would be fired.
That’s why he wants to go to the conference.
To find material to write a play that would wind up deep-sixing my career.

“No way,” I said. “You can’t do that.”

“Why not? It’ll be funny.”

Funny.
Oh God.

“No, that’s not right,” he said, bobbing his head to one side in thought. “It will be more than just funny. I want to tell all sides of the story, not just the lampoony cartoon side that people think of when they imagine romance writers. I mean, these writers are pros, Rebecca.”

“Yes, I know.” I bit my lip.

“Well, did you know that romances are forty-eight percent of paperback book sales? Did you know those sales amount to over one billion dollars each year?”

“Where did you hear this?” I asked.

“Off the RAG Web site.”

How did he even know about RAG?

He shook his head in apparent wonder. “The most interesting thing is, most of these authors didn’t even set out to be authors. They didn’t attend graduate writing programs in Iowa. They started out as nurses, or lawyers, or teachers, and then just started writing because they had this burning urge to tell a story. I mean, that’s astounding. You don’t hear about people becoming concert violinists after being nurses, do you?”

“I don’t think—”

“Yet these women manage to write their way into new careers, and hit the
New York Times
Bestseller List! If you hear their stories, a lot of them have had to spend years writing before being published, working before everyone else in the family is awake, or after putting the kids to sleep. They had to steal time to teach themselves to write. Some of the most famous writers spent years getting manuscripts rejected, but they kept going. It’s amazing!”

“Right, but—”

“The thing is, everybody dismisses these books. Like there’s some kind of formula. But the formula’s no different from a mystery, or a sci-fi book. The formula is the author’s own creativity. Plus time. Plus determination.”

I gave up trying to interrupt him. He seemed possessed.

“Can’t you see?” he asked. “I really need to go.”

“You don’t
need
to do anything but chill out,” I argued. “I’m sure you could write a fine play, Fleishman, but going to Oregon is out of the question. I don’t know a lot about business, but taking your roommate along to a writer’s conference doesn’t sound professional to me.”

He sighed. “Well could you take some notes? I know—I’ll give you a tape recorder. You can tape record people’s conversations for me.”

“No! I’m not going to spy on these people. They’re paying my way, you know.”

“My God, you’re a killjoy.”

“And you’re a pain in the ass.” It had been a while since we’d had a fight like this. Once he got an idea in his head, he could buzz on incessantly about it, like a whiny mosquito.

“I thought you were still working on
Yule Be Sorry,
” I said, trying to change the subject.

“You didn’t want me to write that play, either.”

No, I didn’t. But now it sounded pretty good. If Fleishman humiliated my family on stage, they could disown me, but they couldn’t fire me.

“H
ello, Miss Plot Expert!”

When I heard Dan’s voice on the phone, I swiveled in my chair and kicked my office door closed. Down the hall, Mercedes’s assistant, Lisa, was singing “Stormy Weather” again. She had a great voice but a limited repertoire. This was the tenth time I’d heard it today.

Plus, I wanted privacy. “What are you talking about?” I asked Dan.

“Check your e-mail. They just sent out the weekend schedule for Romance on the River.”

My spine was suddenly ramrod straight. “Are
you
going to the Portland conference, too?”

“You betcha.”

If there had been any confetti handy, I would have thrown it. I had a schoolgirl crush on Dan Weatherby. That bedroom voice and that super schmooziness of his were hard to resist. In the most offhand way possible, I had asked Andrea about his looks and his marital status, and she had burst out laughing.

“If you didn’t skip lunch so often, you would know from lunchroom scuttlebutt that you aren’t the first person in this office to ask that question.”

“And the answer is…?”

“Yes, he’s good looking—like a soap opera actor. Early thirties. Divorced.”

“So he’s…”

“Up for grabs, apparently.” Then she leveled a forbidding look on me. “Unlike Mr. Incredible the elevator man, who of course is mine. But as far as Dan is concerned, you go, girl. I haven’t heard of him squiring anyone around for months.”

“
Months?
”

“Yeah, he’s a little bit of a lothario. Rumor has it that he broke poor Clea Shafransky’s heart. Clea was an associate in the Hearthsong pod. She got sort of cozy with him. Then, right after a conference in Minneapolis where Dan was spotted flirting with an editor from Venus books, she left publishing altogether, moved back home to Buffalo, and opened a knitting store.”

“So it wasn’t clear that it was actually Dan’s fault.”

“The evidence was inconclusive,” Andrea admitted, “but damning.”

It was hard to keep poor Clea Shafransky out of my head when I was talking to Dan now. It was equally difficult to banish the phrase “up for grabs.”

“Imagine my surprise.” He chuckled. “I thought Rita was going.”

“Her niece is getting married.”

“Oh, so she’s not losing a conference, she’s gaining a nephew.”

I laughed. Too hard—I’ll admit it. A throaty chortle just burbled out of me, caused not so much by Dan’s dumb joke as by the confidentially husky tone he spoke in.

“Look, I was going to have drinks with Rita at the conference…are you filling in on her social engagements, too?”

Zing went the strings of my heart. “I’m always willing to take someone’s place at the bar.”

“Actually, I was thinking that since we’ve never had a face-to-face, we should make it a little more festive. There’s an old seafood restaurant in downtown Portland…and if you weren’t doing anything on Saturday night…”

I tapped my pen on my desk and counted to five, pretending to check my calendar. Which, had I looked, would have been as wide open and windy as the Great Plains. “Hm…that looks very doable.”

“Great—then it’s a date?”

“It’s a date,” I said.

My first in six months.
Of course it wasn’t really a date. Just a professional business meeting. At night. In a strange city. Just the two of us.

What was I going to wear? Suddenly, all my speech worries and death-in-a-fiery-crash flashes seemed insignificant next to wardrobe woes.

It’s not a date,
I repeated to myself, while at the same time thinking that my shoe situation was going to be the real crux of my problem. I could keep on wearing Fleishman’s mom’s clothes (it would help if I stopped eating dinner and maybe breakfast, too), but my scuffed old shoes would show me up as a failed fashion aspirant.

My hair could use some touching up, too.

I started making a list of all the things I wanted. (Shoes, haircut, new bra, soft-sided briefcase like Ann’s.) Then, on the other side of the legal pad, I started a list of all the money I didn’t have, despite my higher salary: rent, credit card bill to pay off, and next month was my turn to pay the cable bill. I’d paid it this month, too, because Fleishman was broke.

I dumped the idea of wowing the romance writers of Portland with a new soft-sided briefcase. Or fashion footwear. Frankly, I was already in the red when I started trying to figure a way to shoehorn a new bra into my budget.

Damn. A few days ago I’d felt rich. Where did all my money go?

I tried to make myself forget shopping. This was just a business trip; I didn’t need anything new. And after what Andrea had said about Dan, it was clear that he was just a romance industry Romeo. I shouldn’t take a little thing like dinner with him seriously.

But a little voice kept niggling me.
So don’t take him seriously. Have yourself a cheap tawdry fling.

Maybe that would flush Fleishman out of my system.

Andrea flew into my office, shut the door, and collapsed into my chair. Her arms were folded across her chest, which was heaving indignantly.

“What’s wrong?”

“I just had my review!”

“Didn’t it go well?”

“Oh, terrific—they gave me a one point five percent raise! It’s the lowest raise they give! And to me, of all people. I’ve been slaving away at this place most of my working life.
Damn it!
”

“Rita did this?”

“Yes! Oh, she tried to fob it off as something Mercedes and Mary Jo had dictated—she did look a little embarrassed to be treating me so shabbily—but come on. She’s a senior editor! She should be going to bat for me.”

“Did Mercedes give any reasons?”

Andrea snorted. “She said I have
personality issues!
She told Rita I should take an anger management class.”

“Hm.”

“What?” Her eyes flashed at me. “Do you think I have anger issues?”

“No!” I answered quickly, before she could bite my head off.

It looked like she might anyway. All at once she leaned over, opened the door, and screeched, “Will you please give ‘Stormy Weather’ a rest, Lisa?
Jesus!
” Then she slammed the door again and turned back to me.

I tried to look calm even as I shrank back in my chair.

“They always talk about how there’s no employee loyalty anymore,” she continued without missing a beat, “but let me tell you. It’s these management types that drive us out. I
have
to find another job now,” Andrea fumed. “They’re forcing me out. This is just outrageous.”

“I’m sorry.”

She frowned at my notepad. “What are you doing?”

“My budget.”

“Do all those little minus signs mean no money?”

“Unfortunately.”

She clucked. “Oh well. Hang on for another ten months, and maybe you’ll get a whopping one and a half percent raise, too!”

“What should I wear to a RAG conference?”

She shrugged. “Wear your office clothes. That’s what they want—to see a professional in their midst.”

I hesitated. “Well, yeah…but then there’s the matter of going out to dinner and things, right?”

“Dinner? With authors? Don’t worry about it! They won’t expect you to be dressed to the nines.”

“Well, actually…” I confessed to my rendezvous with Dan.

Andrea straightened in her chair. “Dinner? It’s usually just drinks. Maybe he really likes you!”

“He’s never met me.”

“So? You haven’t seen him, either.” She looked pointedly at my black pumps, which I think might have been the ones I wore to my college graduation. “You need some new shoes.”

I groaned. “Impossible.”

She narrowed her eyes on my messy columns of numbers. “What’s that?”

“That’s what I owe Discover.”

“And what’s your credit limit?”

“Five thousand three hundred dollars.”

Her eyes widened; she really looked stunned. “Well then, what’s the problem?”

“I’ve been trying to pay it off, not run up more debt.”

“So you have to make the minimum payments for a while. Wouldn’t it be worth it? For Dan the man?”

“It’s just a business meeting,” I repeated, fooling neither of us.

“Bloomingdale’s is having a summer preview sale this week.”

My head snapped up.

“You want to go during lunch?” she asked.

“I shouldn’t,” I said.

But I did.

F
or a week I kept my loot at the office. The corner next to my file cabinet became a cache of MasterCard enabled plunder. It wasn’t that I was hiding anything…I just told myself I was too lazy to lug it on the subway. Besides, there was always the chance I would suffer buyer’s remorse and want to return something, so why haul it all the way to Brooklyn if I was going to have to bring it back to Manhattan?

But of course I never did return anything. And finally, just before the conference, I realized I would have to carry it home. All of it.

I left the office that day looking like an upscale bag lady.

All the way home, I prayed Fleishman would be out. Even that he would have a date.

But when I walked in, he was eating a bowl of noodles and watching reruns of
Felicity
on WE. The minute he saw me, he snapped the television off by remote.

“Don’t let me interrupt,” I said. I meant it. All I wanted to do was sneak back to my bedroom and shove all my new stuff under my bed.

“It’s okay,” he replied. “I know the ending. She starts out an idiot, and she remains an idiot.”

He was standing now, circling me to inspect the names on the bags. I have to confess, my little spree went a teensy bit beyond Bloomingdale’s. I had taken in quite a few Upper East Side emporiums on my lunch hours after Andrea convinced me that I was letting a generous credit limit go to waste.

“I just ran into a few sales…”

He lifted a bag from an expensive luggage store and peeked inside. Letting out a long whistle, he pulled out my new soft sided leather briefcase. “What’s this for?”

“I’m going on a business trip, remember?” I turned and hurried toward my room to sock away my stuff, dropping a shoe box in my wake.

“Manolo Blahnik? For a business trip?”

“I hadn’t bought shoes in a while,” I said, as if this explained anything.

He was right on my heels, eyeballing the familiar logo on one of the smaller bags. “An upcoming business trip also required you to go to Victoria’s Secret?”

I glared at him. “I’m going to be giving a speech. I want to have all-over confidence.”

“And where did you get the money for all this?”

“I charged it.” Looking at all the bags on my bed now, I was a little astounded with myself. What had seemed like booty from a modest spree when it was shoved into a corner of my office now looked like shameful excess when strewn across my bed.
Good heavens, what had I done?

He shook his head. “My God, I always expected you to cut loose someday. But I never expected this.”

“I have a good job. It’s not like I won’t be able to cover it…” Unbidden, an image appeared in my mind of wild-eyed Andrea scrawling out her debts and her minimum payments across a pad of paper. What on earth had made me listen to
her?

“Your salary pays for sprees at Bendels?”

The Bendels bag was tiny. “I didn’t go on a spree there. I just bought a…” Come to think of it, I couldn’t even remember
what
I had bought there. I peeked into the sack. “Oh! A scarf. Just a scarf.”

He pulled it out. At the time I bought it, with Andrea egging me on, it had seemed like a steal at $69.95. It was longer than I remembered…and it had sparkly things on it that hadn’t really seemed so prominent in the store, but here in the apartment it looked garish. Like I was flying out west to become a Vegas showgirl.

It dragged on the ground, and Maxwell confused it for a new doggie bed. He promptly plopped his little rear down on it.

Fleishman took in a big breath and then, to show his forbearance, did not huff it out in one impatient sigh. “You know, it’s understandable that when you’ve never had a salaried job before, you might go overboard with the spending at first.” Suddenly he was Ward Cleaver. “But you know, Rebecca, just because there’s money coming in doesn’t mean you can throw economy out the window.”

I couldn’t believe it. This was
Fleishman
talking. The man who went out one afternoon to grab a slice of pizza and came back an hour later with a plasma screen television.

My face must have been turning purple, because he added, “It’s nothing to be embarrassed about. You just have to watch it.”

That was my limit. “I’m not embarrassed, I’m mad. Where do you get off telling
me
to economize? You’ve probably never made out a budget in your life.”

He looked offended. “Of course I have. I budget all the time. I just do it stealthily. I don’t walk around announcing to the world that I’m poor.”

“Neither do I,” I said.

He raised his brows. Okay, maybe I did.

“Besides,” I sputtered, “you’re
not
poor!”

He leveled a probing gaze on me. “This is not about me, is it?”

“What?”

“This argument. You feel guilty, and so you’re taking it out on me.”

For a moment, he stopped me cold. He was right, in his usual twisted way. I yanked the scarf out from under Maxwell and started folding it. Then I tossed it in my drawer. “I just don’t like being lectured.”

“Is there maybe something you’re leaving out of this discussion?” he asked.

I slammed the door shut. “What do you mean?”

“Like, maybe there’s some really studly guy from Candlelight going to the conference with you?”

That was a laugh. “There is no great looking guy at Candlelight. No straight ones, anyway. Except the mailroom guy, and I don’t think he travels.”

But really, it was eerie how close Fleishman had come to the truth. It worried me. Was I that easy to read, or did he know me too well?