Fashionistas (22 page)

K
ate summons me to the bathroom. She sends me an e-mail with a winking emoticon and tells me to show up at three-thirty sharp. It’s been several weeks since we’ve had our last conference, and things have changed. Now Allison hates me. Now she fumes in my presence and makes snide comments behind my back. She’s not a comfortable person to be around and I don’t relish the idea of being trapped in a small space with her, no matter how beneficial the meeting will be for both of us in the long run.

Sarah and Kate are waiting for me when I arrive. Sarah is sitting on the couch and she instantly moves over to make room for me. Kate is standing by the sink. She’s holding a clipboard and a red pen and is flipping through the many sheets of paper and sporadically shaking her head. She’s having a silent conversation with herself and Sarah and I respect her privacy, talking about the Beverly-Stickly affair while she sorts herself out. “All right,” she says after a few minutes, in an authoritarian voice I’ve never heard her use before. Kate seems different—and it’s not just the clipboard and the com
manding tone. Her back is straight and her head is up. Despite her Stuart Weitzman flats, she is taller. “We have a few weeks before the big event and there are several things we need to go over.”

I look around, surprised that we’re starting the meeting without a key member of our fashion infantry.

“She’s not coming,” Kate says, reading me correctly.

“She’s not coming?”

“She’s not coming,” Sarah confirms. “We’ve taken her out of the loop.”

“Taken her out of the loop?” I find the notion shocking. I’ve never taken someone out of the loop and am oddly uncomfortable with the concept.

Kate nods emphatically. “Yes, she’s completely out of the loop.”

Since I’ve spent the last several weeks dodging Allison bullets, I’m glad she’s not here. I’m relieved she’s not here to frown in my face and hurl accusations at me and embarrass me with her anger. She has a mean streak as wide as Jane’s and she’s learned much during her tenure. Still, I feel a need to protest. “But it’s her plan.”

Sarah is examining the fringe on her western-style skirt and avoiding eye contact. She’s not entirely comfortable with Allison’s loop removal.

Kate picks up the thread. “We know it was her plan,” she says, clearly annoyed by the reminder. “But she seems unnaturally fixated on the idea of your being promoted and the plan needs our total attention. Allison couldn’t focus, so we took her out of the loop.” She pauses for a moment and looks at Sarah. “She was hurting the cause.”

Sarah nods begrudgingly. “I know. It’s really like she took herself out of the loop.”

“All right,” I say. I’m not convinced that Sarah believes her own words, but it’s not my concern. I’m just happy to be in an Allison-free zone. “What do you want to go over?”

Kate flips back to the first page and looks at me. “One: party plans. How are they going?”

“Smoothly,” I say, wondering about the truth of the statement. This afternoon Jane had lunch with Anita to iron out a few remaining party details and I’m still waiting for a damage estimate. “I’ve hired the caterer and the band and photographers.”

But this isn’t what Kate meant. The minutiae of my job doesn’t interest her and she cuts to the glamour. “What’s the celebrity count? What kind of press coverage are we getting? Are any national networks interested?”

“The celebrity response has been good. His people are promising to deliver a stable of young British celebrities. As for press, we haven’t sent out releases yet.”

Kate raises an eyebrow. “No releases yet?”

I think of the pile of work on my desk, a pile that this meeting isn’t helping me get through. “No releases yet.”

“Hmm,” she says, in a disproving way before jotting something down. “When can we expect releases then?”

I assure her they’ll be done by the end of the week, but I don’t really know. I’m just telling lies now to avoid more red marks against me.

Kate sighs and makes a quick note. “Very well. But remember when you finally do get around to writing the press release, that the most important thing is to play up Jane’s participation. I want her fingerprints all over this. And on the night of the party, make sure she’s in every photo op. There shouldn’t be one single picture of Jesus in a dress that doesn’t have Jane’s smiling mug somewhere in the background.” Kate turns her interrogation eyebrows on Sarah. “Where are we with alerting the religious groups?”

“As you know, I’ve finished my press release calling for action,” Sarah says, with a slightly smug look in my direction. Darn teacher’s pet. “It’s from the CFCD. I just have to go to Kinko’s, make photocopies and distribute them to Christian organizations.”

“The CFCD?” I ask.

“Christians for Christian Decency,” Kate explains. “I made it up. I thought it captured the all-purpose decency of Christians. Now, which Kinko’s?”

This isn’t something Sarah has thought about, but we’re in midtown and there’s a Kinko’s on every corner. “The one down the block?”

“Nope. Go to Astor place. Pay cash and don’t forget to wear a disguise.”

Sarah isn’t prepared for this, either. So much for doing all her homework. “A disguise?”

“A disguise.”

“Like a wig?”

“Hats, sunglasses, shoes, jewelry,” Kate says impatiently. Accessories are her life—she spends most days cataloging and inventorying the accessories closet: one gold necklace, one braided leather belt with silver buckle, one pavé diamond watch—and she takes Sarah’s neglect of them personally.

“Of course,” Sarah says, once again playing with the fringe on her skirt. “I’ve rented a voice mailbox.”

Kate’s sense of organization overcomes her indignation and she nods slowly. “Be sure to leave a message from the CFCD that’s inflammatory and God-fearing. Which brings us to point number three: writing a letter from the CFCD warning all of
Fashionista
’s advertisers that our members will start boycotting their products if they continue to support this tool-of-Satan magazine. I’m currently working on the fifth draft and should have a final version for your review by the end of business day tomorrow. Watch your in-boxes. I’m also working on CFCD’s letterhead. I’m thinking something simple with one large cross down the center and maybe a few smaller crosses in the margin. Sarah, consult with me before you photocopy your letters. All CFCD communications should come on the same letterhead.” Kate takes a breath and flips through her clipboard. “That seems to be it. Right, next meeting. One week from today, same time. Put it on your
calendars. On the agenda will be timing questions—when to alert the advertisers, when to alert the religious groups. Vig, I expect to see the final draft of the press release by then and I’d like a list of celebs who’ll be at the party. Any questions?” she asks with the same chop-chop efficiency with which she’s run the meeting. Kate has only been lead fashionista for twenty minutes, but she’s taken to it like a duck to water. Her cheeks are flushed and her eyes are glowing happily. She likes telling people what to do. She likes giving orders and watching people jump in response. Her talents are wasted in the dark depths of the accessories closet.

W
ith her arms wrapped around a thick manila folder, Delia enters my office, sweeps her eyes quickly over the room and closes the door. Then she sits down in my one visitor’s chair and pulls it forward, knocking over a stack of last January’s issue that was piled precariously on an angle like the leaning tower of Pisa. Delia apologizes profusely and insists on dropping to her knees to clean up the mess, even though I tell her not to bother. You can’t move in my office without toppling something. Despite their lavish claims, maintenance never returned to remove the magazines, and staff members—at, I suspect, Allison’s urging—continue to use my office as a storage closet.

When the magazines are neatly stacked, Delia tries again, this time moving the chair gingerly. “I’ve discovered something,” she says softly.

Delia is clutching the folder tightly in her arms. She has a hunted-fox look about her and seems skittish. I keep my voice low so I won’t frighten her. “All right.”

She nods, takes a deep breath and just says it: “Jane had Marguerite deported.”

I stare at her for several seconds, not quite sure that I heard her correctly. Jane had Marguerite deported? How could Jane have anyone deported? Her power is limited to making editorial assistants cry and tearing up layouts seconds before they’re supposed to go to the printer. “What?”

“Jane had Marguerite deported.” She relaxes her arms, puts the file on the table and pushes it toward me. “Eight years ago.”

I open the folder and flip through it slowly. There are photos of Marguerite when she was young and articles she wrote for
Parvenu
and
Australian Vogue.
There are photocopies of newspaper clippings and scribbled notes of telephone conversations Delia had with former co-workers and family members. This file is uncensored. There are no black marks or whited-out words. Either Delia is beginning to trust me or she was in too much of a rush to waste the time.

“She was born Marge Miller in a Perth suburb,” Delia says.

For a moment I’m incapable of speech and my lips move without sound coming out of them. “Perth?”

“It’s in Australia,” she explains.

“I know where it is. I’m just not sure I understand.”

“What’s not to understand? Marguerite’s Australian.”

“She’s Australian?”

Delia nods. “Born and bred.”

“She’s not French?”

“Nope, she didn’t become French until—” Delia checks her files before committing to any details “—her twenty-third year.”

“Huh,” I say, trying to digest the strange fact that the in-house Audrey impersonator isn’t even from Europe.

“She moved to Sydney when she was fifteen. Worked there for a few years at a series of trashy magazines. Then she disappeared for a year, only to reemerge in London at the age of twenty-one as Marguerite Tourneau. She got an editorial
assistant job at
Hello
magazine. After two years, she moved to New York and got an assistant editor job at
Parvenu,
where she met Jane and adopted a French ex-pat persona,” Delia says, running quickly through the file’s highlights. “The details of her stint there are still murky. I have calls out to former colleagues, who should be getting back to me soon. But we know some general facts: Marguerite got the senior editor position and Jane left a few months later. They stayed out of each other’s way for the next few years until they came up for the
Face
editor in chief gig. According to the publisher’s assistant at the time, they were neck and neck until Marguerite got deported. Then the job was all Jane’s.”

“No,” I say.

Delia smiles. This is why she keeps files on all of us—because sometimes she uncovers something juicy. “Yes.”

“But people don’t behave like that.”

She shrugs. Her sense of moral outrage isn’t as keen as mine.

“How?” I ask.

Delia reaches over and sorts through the papers in front of me. Then she hands me a photocopied document. “Read the name of the INS officer who was in charge of the case.”

David Whiting—it means nothing to me.

She sighs impatiently at my confused look. I’m an unworthy co-conspirator. “Didn’t you look at the file I gave you at all? Whiting is Jane’s maiden name. David Whiting is her brother.”

I look at the document again, expecting it to somehow sprout horns and a tail. “But that’s so immoral and unscrupulous and just plain mean.”

Delia shrugs again. “That’s Jane. Or maybe the whole Whiting clan. Her brother doesn’t seem to be a very decent sort, either. It seems he made a habit of kicking people out of the country. In exchange for a small fee, he’d trump up charges against anyone. He was busted a few years ago but the whole thing was hushed up—friends in high places and all that. He’s working in the State Department now.”

I look at her sharply, suddenly terrified of being called before Congress on some dubious treason charge. A Whiting in the State Department can do a lot of mischief.

“Don’t worry,” she says, laughing at my concern. “He’s a glorified lackey with low-level security clearance. He’s mostly just marking time until he can collect his pension.”

I’m too anxious to be comforted by her assurances. I’m too disconcerted by the new truth about Jane—that she isn’t just an unruly child who throws tantrums and tears the heads off her dolls—to be placated by logic. “Still, it wouldn’t hurt us to tread more carefully from now on.”

“Speaking of which, how is everything going?”

I run through the highlights of this week’s bathroom meeting. I gloss over Allison’s loopectomy and focus on the things that are right on track—press releases, A-list celebrities, letters to advertisers. While I run through the details, I’m forced to admit that the plan is coming together smoothly. I’m forced to concede that my initial reservations were wide off the mark. Overthrowing Jane Carolyn-Ann McNeill isn’t a long shot—it’s an inevitability. And, in light of recent disclosures, it’s no longer a matter of enlightened self-interest. No, now it’s more like vigilante justice.