How to Be a Grown-up (5 page)

I got off the elevator on the tenth floor to an orgasmic blast of air-conditioning and a hot pink Lucite wall. The receptionist who buzzed me in was wearing a blazer over a chevron-patterned romper. Due to the Lena Dunham effect, thighs in the office had become commonplace. Girls of all sizes were now wearing things I once would have called panties to answer phones and populate spreadsheets. “I’m here to see Taylor and Kim—they’re expecting me.”

She nodded as if she might have heard me—or might not. “At nine,” I added, taking a seat beside a life-sized My Little Pony encrusted with crystals. The fact that I’d met its creator, a Dutchman as drab as his art was flamboyant, put me at ease. Then I heard something that sounded like ballerinas slapping their toe shoes against a wall to soften them. And around the corner came . . .

“Hi. Taylor,” she introduced herself brusquely. Tan, prepubescently thin, with waist-length dark brown hair, she was easily five foot ten
before
she put her heels on. If I’d passed her on the street, in her skintight sleeveless dress, its hem a fraction of an inch past her ass, I would have guessed she was a floor girl at Bebe. On her way to a club.

“And I’m Kimmy.” Her pale blond hair was parted down the middle and pulled in a low bun, accentuating large milk-blue eyes.

“Rory.” I pivoted to her, but she didn’t extend a hand; they were tucked up under her chin, holding her black sleeves in place. Only the tips of her toes and the backs of her hands were visible. I tried to determine what exactly she was wearing, but my best guess was a large bolt of black jersey held in place with angst.

These two were not at all what I’d been expecting. They looked as if they hadn’t paused for so much as a menstrual cycle between degrees. Were they geniuses? Was this what Mark Zuckerberg would look like if he were a girl? A hooker, or Yoda?

Wordlessly the two women turned away, clip-clopping in unison—Taylor atop her fear-me shoes and Kimmy on her geisha clogs. On the far side of the sparsely populated bullpen, glass partitions created two offices. “Come in. Have a seat,” Taylor instructed, gesturing to the canvas chair across from her python-print leather desk. Kimmy carefully deflated onto a Moroccan pouf so she was level with my knees while Taylor opened the lid of her thermal mug that said PUSSY across the front in blocky silver font, and poured in her Starbucks.

“These are great offices,” I said, looking into the airshaft as if it was a view of the Louvre.

“My mom loaned us her designer,” Kimmy answered, her voice hoarse.

Taylor shot Kimmy a silencing look, making her shrink further into herself like something on
National Geographic
under attack.“So you want to work at JeuneBug,” she challenged.

“I think you’re onto something brilliant here.” Although they hadn’t gone live yet, so I was basing that on their landing page:
Wait for it!
“I’d love to hear a bit about JeuneBug’s journey.”

Taylor sat back, flared her ribs, and cupped her armrests. “JeuneBug grew out of our final MBA project: ‘Old Media: Who Cares?’ The giants are trying to adapt, but it’s like trying to make faster horses instead of inventing the car. We’re inventing the car.”

I tried to keep my smile from wavering. “That’s so interesting,” I murmured.

Taylor crossed her shaved arms. “We’re a digitally native business, a technology company that produces media instead of a media company that uses technology. Everything we’re doing is optimized.”

“Everything,” Kimmy echoed, then started to cough.

“Of course. So smart.” Not a word. “Well, perhaps I should talk you through my portfolio?” I reached into my bag.

“I’m Googling you.” Taylor flicked a finger at her obscured computer screen and Kimmy roused herself to go around the desk to join her.

I sat with my knees together while they scrolled through whatever the Internet dragged up with my name attached.
How had I never Googled myself?

“You’ve been doing this a long time,” Kimmy observed astutely.

“I’ve worked with pretty much every major designer, yes. I came to it from theater, so I know how to achieve drama and have an eye for editorial.”

“And you had a perm.”

“Sorry?”

“You had a perm?” Kimmy asked.

“Yes . . . in sixth grade. Sorry, are you looking at—”

“Facebook.” Taylor peered at the screen. Mortified, I mentally ran through the photos posted by my family. “Oh that’s cute how you don’t care how you look in a swimsuit. Very Dove. So you graduated in . . . ?”

“1995.”

Taylor and Kimmy caught eyes.

“Rory.” Taylor paused, presumably to let my own identity sink in. “We raised a significant capitalization—”

“Significant.” I was starting to think Kimmy was actually on Taylor’s personal payroll as her gospel chorus.

“—on the premise that we are building this from the ground up with no preconceptions. We haven’t been steeped in ways that, frankly, no longer work. We don’t want to start bringing in
old
thinkers.”

My aunt, watching her daily VHS recording of the last remaining soap opera, was an old thinker. I rooted for Katniss and had sex dreams about Adam Levine.

Then Kimmy’s palm landed hard on Taylor’s arm. “Is that North West’s nursery?”

“Oh,” I answered. “Yes.”

“You worked with Kanye?” I had Taylor’s attention.

“Y-yes?” I helped photograph the nursery his decorator styled that his nanny raised his child in, but—technically—yes.

“So you’ve styled for celebrities?”

“Oh, yes,” I said.

“Celebrities with kids?”

“Sure. Elton John, Pink, Gwen Stefani.” I wasn’t sure they understood what a photo stylist actually
did
. “A rock and roll chic that would lend itself well to JeuneBug.” Whatever the fuck JeuneBug was.

“We don’t have a curator for the design vertical,” Kimmy said to her cuticles.

I sat forward. “That’s where I can add value.” I handed her my résumé, which, following their Googling of me, seemed like inviting her to an ice cream social after we’d 69’d.

Taylor held my gaze. “JeuneBug is about to fill a
massive
hole in the marketplace. Massive. Walk Madison from Eighty-Sixth Street to Ninety-Sixth Street and what do you see?”

I mentally called it up. Armani Kids, Bonpoint, Crewcuts, Magic Windows, Jacadi, Rosie Pope, that British store with the titanium pram in the window. A four-year-old could blow her clothing allowance in a few blocks, maybe even in a single store. “Kids’ shops.”

“These boutiques are moving $500 dresses so fast they can’t keep them in stock, yet no one is directly tapping this consumer where he likes to eat, where she likes to have her hair done, where he wants to vacation.”

“And by ‘consumer’ you mean—?”

“JeuneBug is the first lifestyle site for kids,” Taylor answered triumphantly.

“For their lifestyle?” I coughed.

“Yes.” She squared her arms while Kimmy cracked a hint of a smile and I tried to imagine Wynn’s lifestyle. Was Ninjago a lifestyle?

Taylor’s eyes sparkled under the awning of false lashes, like diamonds under a straw hut. “It’s a no-brainer, right? And that’s before we even talk about proprietary software. The site will function as a catalogue. For too long, magazines have been relying on featuring brands in their editorial pages in the pathetic hopes of getting an ad buy—but that’s a dwindling revenue model. You click on any item in our stories, it’s an instant purchase.
And
we get a fee.”

“So the pages are gridded like InStyle spreads?” I asked.

“Ugh, no,” she snapped. She spun her monitor to show a photo of a toddler running through Central Park in something nicer than my wedding dress. “Looks like any page in any magazine, right?”
Vogue for the toothless,
I thought. “But when our consumer clicks on the dress, or the shoes, or the tiara, they buy it.”

“The children?”

“The moms. But we will have a function on the app where kids can swipe and tap. But everything they pick is held with the concierge . . .”

“We hate the word
shopping cart
. It’s so—” Kimmy shuddered.

“. . . until Mommy can approve.”

“Wow.” It was all I could say. “How enterprising. And the position?”

“Running our Be vertical,” Kimmy answered.

“A vertical is what print media calls a ‘department,’ ” Taylor added as if I was a foreign exchange student.

“Yes, I’m familiar. My best friend runs Huffpo’s parenting vertical. So . . .
Be
?” I asked.

“Interiors,” Taylor clarified.

“Because kids should have a place where they can just . . . be,” Kimmy explained.

My phone buzzed, and I glanced down as I silenced it:
Incoming call from Husband Blake.
“Sorry,” I apologized. “Gaga’s people. Look, here’s the truth.” They needed me to shepherd them as much as they needed me to teach them needlepoint (which I could have done). “You can poach someone from Refinery 29 who can style antlers in Williamsburg, but I know luxury. I know glamour. Heart-stopping glamour. And I can translate that for any age demographic you want. And, I should mention, I have two little sophisticates at home.” And if this paid off my credit card and helped me put a down payment on their sophisticated orthodontics, well, it was a win-win.

“Huh,” Taylor said thoughtfully.

Having worked around my share of flaming egos, I knew my only currency here was status and my only hope for that was to leave. Not beg. Begging would have been bad. “It was a pleasure, Taylor. Kimmy. I actually have the first PTA meeting of the season today so I have to . . .”

“That kind of thing wouldn’t be a problem?” Taylor asked as I picked up my bag.

“Which kind of thing?” I stood.

“Needing to leave early for . . . kids.”

“No more so than anyone else here who has kids,” I reassured them.

“Oh, no one does.” She crossed her arms like I had suggested her employees had VD. “No, no.”

“Got it.” For kids—by kids. Jesus.

“We’ll be in touch.”

When Blake traveled for work, FaceTime was an iMiracle for connecting with Wynn and Maya. And even when he and I couldn’t talk during the day, we always managed to kiss our good-nights before nodding off.

“Sorry I couldn’t pick up earlier,” I said into my earpiece as I turned down the light and dropped onto our bed. “How’s it going?” I asked, realizing that Wynn’s science book, which I’d intended hours ago to deposit in his backpack, was on my pillow.

“Fine. Hot.”

“I know. I’m so over it.” I forced myself to get back up and put the book away. “So, guess what? I have some potentially amazing news.”

“Yeah?”

“I think I may have found a full-time job.” I closed myself back into the cooling bedroom. “It’s a young company called JeuneBug. The hours might be crazy, but Stellar seems to really believe in it.”

“I’ve been gone for a day,” he said.

“It all happened really fast, but this could be the answer—”

“Because you don’t think I can turn this around?”

“No, Blake. I just think one of us needs to—”

His audible exhale cut me off.

I scratched off a glob of candle wax from his night table. A remnant from more romantic evenings. “The girls who run it are such pieces of work.” I tried to lighten the conversation. “I mean I’m sure they’re smart as hell, but the attitude—”

“What if I have a job? What’s the plan for picking up the kids?”
Oh, that we should be so lucky that we were both simultaneously employed.

“Well, they’re in aftercare at school ’til six. So we’d get a sitter.” I wiped the shavings into my palm. “But if you’re ready to talk logistics . . . I mean,” I proceeded carefully. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m not, Rory. This shoot’s intense. Pete’s got a lot of ground to cover. I should jump, actually. He needs me.”

“I need you.” I was surprised by the smallness of my voice.

“Do you?” He was really asking.

“Seriously?”

“I’ve got to go—”

“Wait. So do you not want me to take this job?” I asked. “If they offer it to me?”

“Well, it’s not like I have an alternative to rescue you.”

“I’m not expecting that. I have never been expecting that.” Even when I imagined myself as the not-famous half of our couple, I wasn’t thinking in terms of rescuing. “Have you talked to your agent? What’s Richard’s sense of things?”

“They’re calling places. I’ll try you back.” He hung up, leaving me holding a handful of clumped wax—and pretty much everything else.

Chapter Four

I awoke to Maya kneeling over me, pressing the horn button on the toy car keys Blake and I both swore we did not buy, yet somehow lived with us anyway. “It’s morning, Mommy!”

“Hey, Mayabear!” I volleyed with a perkiness betrayed by my closed eyes.

“Ith today a thchool day or a home day?”

“School day.”

“Aw.”

“But I’ll make pancakes.” I stiffly pushed up to sit and checked my phone. Blake hadn’t even tried to reach me. But a job offer from Taylor had arrived in my inbox a little after midnight. I shuffled into the hot hallway as the attachment uploaded.