These Girls (20 page)

“Oh, yeah,” Renee said. She shrugged and kept her eyes fixed on her keyboard. “It’s all part of the job, right? I mean, sometimes when writers do personal essays, the letters to the editor are awful. Remember that woman who talked about how she’d hid her bulimia for twenty years? Someone beat up on her for being a spoiled rich kid.”

“I guess you’re right.” Cate wanted to say more, but maybe Renee really didn’t want to talk about it.

Cate stood there for an awkward moment, but Renee still didn’t look up at her. Cate wished she could find something,
anything,
to say to make Renee feel better, because she was obviously hurting. But all she could think of before she walked away was a feeble “If you change your mind, I’m here, okay?”

Renee just nodded, and didn’t even look up.

Two days later—endless, agonizing days in which Renee constantly scanned the faces of those around her at the office, wondering who knew about the blog comments—she positioned the scale in the forgiving spot between two bathroom tiles that provided her lowest weight readings, held her breath, and stepped on. She’d lost three pounds.

Three whole pounds in forty-eight hours! It was a miracle.

It also seemed like a good omen. By now another dozen people had commented on Renee’s blog, hiding the awful comments on the second page. She would post a new blog today, which would further bury the mess. Nigel hadn’t brought it up, and there was a chance he hadn’t even seen the comments. Even if he had, she could try to salvage the situation. If she updated her photo, readers might rally behind her once they saw
how quickly the weight had peeled off and noticed how hard she was trying.

By now she’d figured out the perfect dosage of pills: two in the morning and one in the afternoon. It was similar to drinking coffee, Renee thought. Not only did they give her more energy but they also boosted her mood, making her feel vibrant and energetic. How could she have gone this long without knowing about them?

She turned on her computer and scrolled through the Internet until she found an online Canadian company that sold Naomi’s brand. They were expensive, but look how much she was saving on food! Renee clicked on a button that would send a hundred pills sailing across the border, directly into her mailbox.

Fourteen

CATE WALKED DOWN THE
hallway, passing a dozen cubicles where the editorial assistants worked before stopping in front of the enormous bulletin board that displayed mock-ups of the pages for the upcoming issue. The individual pages were tacked up in three long rows, which allowed editors to take in the entire issue in one sweeping glance. In this way, they could ensure the magazine would be balanced. If there were, say, three articles that featured dogs in the accompanying photos, editors could easily spot the repetition and have an early chance to order one or two replacements.

Cate studied the pages, first individually and then in relation to one another, paying particular attention to the features. She jotted down a few notes—two headlines sounded too much alike; a blond model was in the photo accompanying an article written by a woman who described herself as a brunette—before she walked directly in front of the blank space that should be holding Sam’s polygamy story. She’d asked for a rewrite by 9:00
A.M.
today. Now it was 10:00, and she hadn’t heard a word from Sam.

It was one thing to press up against deadline for the cover story on Reece Moss; that piece was necessary to anchor the issue. It was quite another to throw production into a tailspin over a piece that could have—should have—been finished a week ago.

Should she kill the piece like she’d threatened? Cate wondered. The magazine had a few “evergreen” articles filed away—pieces that could be whipped out to substitute for articles that fell through at the last minute. But she didn’t want to do that. The evergreens were fine, but there was a reason they hadn’t been published yet: They weren’t spectacular. The polygamy story could be, though.

Cate went back to her office, tapping her index finger against her bottom lip. She thought about sending an e-mail, but that seemed like a wimpy option. She picked up the phone and dialed, hoping her voice would remain steady.

“Sam, it’s Cate. Can you swing by my office?”

Sam let a pause stretch out. “Right now?”

“Yes.” Don’t add anything else to that, Cate told herself. No excuses or explanations. She needed to achieve control over the situation. The way this power struggle turned out would set the tone for the rest of their relationship.

“I was just on my way to the bathroom,” Sam said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Tension roiled in Cate’s stomach, which was obviously Sam’s goal. What was his problem? It was possible he’d wanted to be features editor—or maybe he believed Jane’s gossip.

“Please stop by afterwards,” Cate finally said, because what else could she say? Hold it? Sam hung up without saying goodbye, and Cate massaged her temples, feeling a pounding in her head.

Her phone rang again and Cate picked up, wondering if it could be Sam, coming up with another excuse for why they
couldn’t meet. But she heard a deep voice instead of his squeaky one. “Bad news,” Trey began.

Her first thought was of Abby.

“Is she—” Cate started to say just as Trey said, “Reece Moss canceled. She’s flaking out.”

Cate slumped in her chair. The magazine would go to bed in three weeks. It was one thing to scrap the polygamy article, but Reece was the centerpiece of the issue; the photographer had already turned in incredible photos of her. Instead of posing her in the expected designer clothes, he’d captured Reece during the course of a single day, in a series of stills that seemed more like photojournalism than fashion photography. The pictures provided more than an intimate look at Reece; they were a glimpse into the mechanics of the explosion of any young star—of
all
of them. They showed Reece surrounded by two makeup artists, a hairstylist, and a manicurist—with everyone perfecting a tiny piece of her, like an eyebrow or a pinkie nail—while her manager went over talking points in the greenroom of
Good Morning America.
There were shots of Reece doing interviews with a half dozen newspaper journalists from foreign countries—her beauty and innocence in stark contrast to their rumpled world-weariness. Cate’s favorite was Reece in a limousine with darkened windows after her long day. Her head leaned back against the seat, exposing her long white throat and dark eyelashes resting on her cheeks. There were shadows under her eyes, and on her lap were not one but two BlackBerries and a cell phone. Her publicist sat next to her, still frantically working the phones. Reece’s exhaustion and vulnerability were all the more palpable juxtaposed against the frenzied crowd visible outside the limo, and the flashes exploding from the paparazzi’s cameras.

All those gorgeous photos couldn’t go to waste. If he was given the chance to write it, Trey’s article would not only delve deeply into Reece’s psyche but examine the American pattern
of canonizing and subsequently tearing down celebrities. He would get beneath the surface, making Reece a human being, instead of a carefully calibrated star. Now Reece was everyone’s sweetheart. Would she follow the path of a Lindsay Lohan, or would she take the happier course of a Taylor Swift? She was teetering on the brink, being faced with decisions every day that caused her to tilt in first one direction, then another. Capturing her at this particular moment in time would be riveting journalism.

It wasn’t just that the magazine would lose money, even though the fee for dispatching a top photographer and his assistants to cover Reece for a day was astronomical. This was the signature story of Cate’s first issue. If it tanked, so would she.

Cate walked over and closed the door of her office. “How can we salvage this?” she asked.

“I’ve got a few ideas,” Trey said, and Cate felt her body go weak with relief. “Everyone’s going through her publicist. That’s the problem; we’re competing with the
Vanity Fair
s and Simon Cowells and Spielbergs for her time. Let’s try another route.”

“Do you have one in mind?” Cate asked. Normally the features editor would be the one to brainstorm a solution, but her mind was blank. Trey was the expert anyway; who was she kidding? He’d handled far more sensitive issues than this. He’d interviewed terrorists, world political leaders, Army Special Forces leaders. She’d been wiser than she’d known by assigning him this piece.

“Her best friend.”

“Okay. Who is that?”

“It’s her roommate.”

Cate blinked. “She has a roommate?”

“I read about it in an interview she did for
The Denver Post
a few years ago, before she hit it big. It was a little inside piece, a hometown-girl-makes-good feature when she got a bit part in
that movie as Clint Eastwood’s granddaughter. Anyway, when she moved out to L.A. she was just nineteen, and her best friend went along for the adventure. I checked some records; she works as an assistant for some big studio guy in Hollywood. She’s probably one of the few people who really know the details about Reece’s evolution. If I talk to her, make her understand the kind of article I’m trying to do, she might be able to get through to Reece.”

“Are you going to ask her for an interview?”

“It’s already set up. Just need you to authorize my flight.”

“God, yes,” Cate sighed. “Trey—I can’t thank you enough. Truly.”

The call-waiting beep sounded on Cate’s cell phone, and she glanced at it briefly. It was her mother. Cate had forgotten to phone her earlier today, as she’d promised to. Cate felt a little pang as she listened to a final, hopeful beep before it went silent.

“Look, when I came back from Thailand, Abby seemed better,” Trey was saying. “She’s going for walks, getting outside. She finally told me a little bit of what happened, too. Apparently she fell in love with the father at her nanny job and got her heart broken.”

“Did . . . something happen between them?” Cate asked. An image of Timothy standing in the front of the lecture hall, his shirtsleeves rolled up to reveal thin, muscular forearms as he wrote on the blackboard before turning around and giving her a private smile, floated into her mind. She knew exactly how it felt to carry on a hidden affair. She wondered if the father had dumped Abby after having a bit of fun, or if maybe the wife had found out about it.

“I don’t know the whole story yet,” Trey was saying. “In a way I’m glad I’m going to L.A. Whatever you did for her . . . can you do it again?”

Cate opened her mouth to say, “It was Renee,” but she didn’t want Trey to think she was pushing Renee on him.

“Of course. When do you leave?” she asked instead.

“Day after tomorrow, but early. So I’ll bring her by tomorrow night? Around eight? I’ll only be gone two nights.”

“Perfect.” Cate hesitated, then made a decision. She felt awkward asking, but she wanted to do it, for Renee. “Trey? Do you want to stay and we can all have dinner when you bring Abby?”

She could almost feel him smiling across the telephone line. “I’d love it.”

“I’ll order in,” she said. “Do you like Indian food? Because trust me, one thing you wouldn’t like is my cooking.”

“It’s my favorite,” he said.

“See you then,” Cate said. She hung up and sat there for a long moment, staring into space. Trey was saving her story, and possibly her job. There wasn’t any other reason for why she was smiling.

A knock at her door startled her, and, as she looked up, her good mood evaporated. Sam stood there, his arms folded across his chest.

On Annabelle’s seventeen-month birthday, Abby and Bob kissed for the first time.

Bob came home from work with a bulging paper bag of groceries, which he began to unpack in the kitchen while Anna-belle drove a toy fire truck between his feet.

“What did you two do today?” he asked Abby as he opened the refrigerator and tucked a wheel of Brie into the cheese drawer. It was almost eerie how she and Bob had identical tastes in food. Once they’d discussed things they couldn’t stand (sardines, oysters, crunchy peanut butter, and Jell-O) and things
they adored (shrimp, guacamole, smooth peanut butter, and carrot cake). Their tastes lined up perfectly.

“We spent hours at the park,” she said. “We met another little girl there named Celia, and she and Bella really hit it off. They chased each other around all morning.”

What Abby didn’t report was that Celia’s nanny had spent the whole time sitting on a bench, chatting on her cell phone, while Abby shared the containers of cut-up bananas and Goldfish she’d brought for Annabelle with the tiny girl with sad eyes. She’d felt so sorry for her, and couldn’t help wondering if this was how her own mother had acted when she’d been a little girl.

She also couldn’t tell Bob that driving to the park was a triumph, one she’d been working toward all week. She’d followed the counselor’s advice, sitting in the front yard near the car, then climbing into it while holding Annabelle for a few light-headed moments. She’d forced herself to stretch out the time spent in the seat, and after a week, she’d strapped Annabelle in and sat there, slowly counting to sixty in her head, before taking the little girl out. The next day, she’d driven all the way to the library. She’d gripped the steering wheel tightly and her stomach had clenched, but her fear didn’t churn into panic. Still, she remained on edge, wondering when an attack would strike again.

“Sounds nice,” Bob said. He rearranged a few things in the refrigerator, looking into it as he spoke. “You know, some days when I’m stuck at work, just staring at a computer screen all day . . . I try to imagine what you two are doing. If you’re eating lunch, or reading a book together. Sometimes I see you pushing her on a swing.”

Abby’s breath caught in her throat. “You could always call,” she finally said, deliberately casual. Maybe she’d misunderstood . . . but he’d said he pictured the
two
of them.

Bob nodded, then looked down at the empty brown bag in his hands, seeming surprised to find it there.

“Here,” Abby said, reaching for it. She was going to fold it up and put it under the sink, where the others waited to be stuffed with old newspapers and set out for recycling. But Bob reached over and held her wrist. For a moment they just looked at each other.