The Pink Ghetto (4 page)

That’s just what I gleaned from the first act.

I didn’t want to be unreasonable. I knew that writers had to cull a little of their work from real life. This one just seemed a little
too
culled. But what was I going to do, take his computer away from him? I suppose I could have put my foot down, but the hold-it-right-there-buster impulse was never strong in me. And as much as I hate to admit it, I was scared. I liked having Fleishman for a friend, if nothing more; I didn’t want to alienate him.

I consoled myself with the knowledge that it would probably never be finished, or if it were, that it would never see the light of day. The theater world was a lot tougher to crack than we had assumed back in our little college in Ohio. Wendy was going the academic route and following her dreams that way, but Fleishman professed to be burned out on school.

“I’m glad you’re feeling inspired,” I said. Supportively.

Maybe he would feel inspired to write something else.

He raised his glass of cheap house wine. “To new beginnings,” he said.

I clinked my chai tea against his glass. “Here, here.”

He leaned back and sighed dreamily, pinning me with that gaze of his. “I don’t know what I would have done without you.”

I chuckled uncomfortably. “You make it sound as if you’re either about to accept an Oscar or to ship out overseas.”

“It just seems amazing to me sometimes. We’ve been friends for so long.”

“Six whole years,” I said.

“Isn’t that a long time?” he asked.

“An entire lifetime…if we were six.”

He shrugged. “Well, it’s longer than most friendships I’ve had, and the amazing thing is what we’ve weathered. How many ex-boyfriends have you stayed friends with?”

I had to admit that he was it.

“And you’re the only ex-girlfriend I’ve ever been able to be around, too. Most of the time I duck down store aisles and sidestreets to avoid them.”

“I feel honored.”

“I guess the difference is we always knew getting together was a mistake,” he said.

I swallowed.
We did?

He explained, “It would be like the old
Dick Van Dyke Show,
if Rob had run off with Sally.”

I laughed, then stopped abruptly. Being compared with Rose Marie wasn’t exactly my dream.

Besides, what if Rob
had
run off with Sally? Would that have been so awful? Sure, she wasn’t Mary Tyler Moore, but she could make up jokes, and she could sing. Think of how much fun Rob had at the office. At the
Alan Brady Show
they were always laughing, but at home, it was just mixups and headaches, the Helpers and Little Richie. (Sally would never have saddled him with Little Richie.)

Fleishman snapped his fingers. “Rebecca!”

I jerked back to attention. “Huh?”

“You were about to start defending Sally, weren’t you?”

I choked on my tea. “Okay, I get your drift. We weren’t meant to be.”

“Right. Most people aren’t meant to be. The miracle is that we realized it was all a big mistake before our feelings got hurt.”

I nodded. “Exactly.”

At the end of the meal he looked at his watch and nearly knocked over his water glass in his hurry to wave down the waiter for the check.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“I gotta get back,” he said.

I frowned. “Back where?”

“To the apartment. I have a date.”

So much for companionability. I gritted my teeth. “Really? Who?”

“This woman from the telemarketing job. Dorie. She’s got a painting at some gallery, but I think the gallery’s more like a coffee shop. It’s probably going to be really lame, but I promised to go.” He shrugged. “Dorie’s not really my type. She’s mousy and insecure, but for some reason she’s latched onto me a little.”

I bolted the rest of my tea, cold by now. Fleishman generally went out a lot on weekends. I went out too, if less frequently. (Confession: A lot less frequently.) Still, every time I heard him say he was going out with someone, I could feel a little knife twisting in me.

I could also hear Wendy’s warning voice.

But I ignored it. Like Fleishman said, he and I were lucky that we had realized our mistake before any feelings got hurt.

M
y first day of work, and wouldn’t you know it, it was pouring rain. The cats and dogs kind of rain where there’s no way to avoid getting soaked. I had a dorky all-weather coat that I threw over one of Natasha Fleishman’s suits. It was Chanel, and pretty snazzy, if I did say so myself. Then I grabbed the biggest umbrella I could find and shivered and sloshed my way into Manhattan. When it rains the subway can be so gross. Even when it’s not hot, there’s something about so many wet bodies crowded into a confined space that starts making everyone look limp and slightly mildewed. Glancing around my crowded car, the moment did not seem to auger great things for the new beginning that Fleishman had been toasting a few days earlier.

As I was scurrying toward the building, I walked through a cloud of smoke and heard someone call my name. I turned. Rita, AKA my new boss, was huddled under a plaid umbrella, puffing away.

She had to speak loudly over the sound of the rain beating down. “Aren’t you early?”

“First day,” I confessed, though I had never had a boss complain about someone being on time. “I wanted to make a good impression.”

She lit another Benson and Hedges. She looked anxious. “I should show you around…”

“I can find my office,” I assured her, even though I was a little doubtful about whether I actually could. My memory of that place was that it was a confusing maze of hallways.

She flagged down a passerby. “
Andrea!
” Another figure under an umbrella stopped in mid-scuttle toward the doors. “This is Rebecca Abbot. She’s starting today. Think you could give her the tour?”

Andrea and I gave each other once-overs. She had dark curly hair, a Roman nose, and a mouth that turned down at the corners. She was tall and, I have to say, slightly intimidating. “So you’re the latest victim.” Her voice was loud, with a little bit of a scratch in it. “Okay, let’s go in before you float back to wherever you came from.”

“I’m right behind you!” Rita called after us.

We shook ourselves out like rain-drenched dogs in the lobby, causing the marble floor to get that much more slippery. In the elevator, Andrea turned to me. “So where else did you interview? Did you get in over at Avon?”

“No…”

She looked surprised. “They were looking for someone. But they didn’t call me back, either.”

“You applied there?”

She laughed as though I had delivered a zinger. “My resume has been to every company in this whole damn town. I’m not going to get myself out of this place depending on telepathy, you know. Did you interview at Warner?”

“Uh, no…I did interview at a trade publication. I think it was legal books…”

Andrea shook her head disdainfully. “Oh God! You’re better off here.”

An uneasy feeling nibbled at me. Could it be a good sign when the first coworker I met was scrambling to find a job elsewhere?

“I noticed Random House was looking for a full editor,” she said. “You didn’t apply there, did you?”

“No.”

She nodded. “Probably best not to waste your time. I interviewed with them before I came here.”

“What happened?”

“They hired someone else. Jackasses!”

We faced forward for a moment.

“How long have you been here?” I asked.

“Four years.” Before I could register whether I thought this was a long time or not, she answered the question for me. “I know, I know. I gotta get out—but the market is so tight right now.” She sighed. “My luck, I’ll probably spend the rest of my life in an efficiency in Queens.”

The doors opened, and Andrea waved me out with a sarcastic flourish. “Welcome to Alcatraz.”

First stop on the tour was the receptionist desk, where the woman with the Peter Pan collar still sat at attention with her headset, looking like the proverbial operator standing by in those TV commercials of old. And was that actually a cameo she was wearing today?

“Muriel, this is…um…” Andrea darted an uncomfortable glance at me.

“Rebecca,” I said.

“Yes, Rebecca, I remember you,” Muriel said. “Kathy Leo alerted me to your arrival this morning, so I have already put you into our message center.” She whirled a little plastic caddy around to the point where my name in a red colored tab was prominently displayed. “This is where you may retrieve messages left in person, or urgent messages that callers do not wish to leave on your answering service. But please keep in mind that the answering service is the most efficient way of retrieving your messages. I do my best to relay communications efficiently, but the human factor is always fallible, and I have noticed that
some
people forget to check for their message slips. So do set up your answering service at your earliest possible convenience. Your extension is fifty-six, which is written on the phone in your office, along with detailed instructions about setting up your personal recorded message. Of course if you have any questions, I will be more than happy to help. Welcome aboard!”

She ended her introductory monologue with a smile that was one hundred percent lips.

I felt like I should applaud. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome, Rebecca.”

Andrea tugged impatiently on my sleeve. During Muriel’s monologue, she had removed her raincoat and shaken herself out a little more, spilling droplets on Muriel’s carefully tended simulated wood grain work surface.

“Let’s show you to your cave so you can dump your junk and start to dry off,” she said, ignoring Muriel’s pursed lip parting glare. When we were out of earshot, she said, “She’s always like that.”

“Like what?”

“Prim,” Andrea grumbled. “I don’t know how she keeps it up. It makes me wonder if she’s not moonlighting as a lap dancer.”

We made our way through a labyrinth of hallways that I vaguely remembered from my last visit. As we were turning a corner, Andrea looked around furtively and asked, “When you were at Random House, did you talk to Margaret Wyberry?”

“I didn’t interview there,” I reminded her.

“Oh, that’s right.” She let out a puff of breath. “Oh well. I’ve heard there isn’t a lot of opportunity for advancement there anyway.”

“Is there here?” I asked.

She arched her brows. “Why? Are you bored already?”

“Well, no…I…” I had just been making small talk.

“Here!” She stopped at a small windowless office and flipped on the lights. There was a seascape watercolor gracing one wall and a large empty peg board over the desk. Andrea gestured grandly, like the hostesses on
The Price is Right.
“Home sweet home. I stole your chair and gave you my shitty one. Hope you don’t mind.”

I looked at the desk chair, which looked like standard issue office rolling thing. “I’m grateful not to be sitting on a plastic crate.”

“That’s only the ed assists,” Andrea joked.

I took off my coat and tossed it on the spare chair in the corner. As I did so, I noticed a bookshelf with piles and piles of manuscripts on it. “What’s that?”

“Your inheritance.” Andrea went over to inspect it. “Looks like slush, mostly, but there are a few agented proposals in here…” She whistled. “This one’s cover letter is dated 2003! Damn! That Julie had more nerve than I gave her credit for.”

“What happened to Julie?”

“It was very sad. One day she decided to end it all right there at her desk.”

I swerved in alarm, whereupon Andrea blasted out a laugh. “
Kidding!
She got knocked up.” She sighed. “That’s one way off the treadmill.”

“Yeah, but then you have a baby to deal with.”

Andrea snorted. “Here you have twenty.”

I looked at her, puzzled.

“Otherwise known as authors.” She gave my suit a once-over and whistled. “Snappy!”

“Thanks—it’s a hand-me-down.”

“What, are there tycoons in your family?”

“In my roommate’s family, actually.”

“Nice!” She frowned. “But can you breathe?”

I sucked in. I had never gotten around to those sit-ups.

Or starving.

When we ventured out again, our first stop was Rita’s office, which was dark. “She must still be downstairs,” Andrea said.

In the cubicle outside Rita’s office, there was a commotion, and we turned as one. Before, I hadn’t noticed anyone sitting there. “
Lindsay?
” Andrea asked, her tone doubtful.

A figured hunched on her hands and knees on the floor jerked up, banging her head on her desk. “Shit!” she cried. Then she saw me. “Oh—sorry.” She jumped to her feet and darted out her hand for me to shake, then thought better of it since it was holding a paper towel that was dripping some sort of fluid all over the carpet.

And that wasn’t the only odd thing about her. She was wearing a nubbly tweed jacket over what appeared to be an old taffeta formal. I usually wasn’t too judgmental about outfits. I had been around theater people, so I was used to creative dressing. But this girl looked bizarre. Plus, I have this thing about taffeta. I don’t like it. (It’s a long story.)

“I’m having
the worst
morning.” Lindsay gestured to her desk, where an overturned Starbucks cup told the whole tale. “I spilled my latte all over this manuscript. Rita’s going to kill me!”

Andrea waved off all her worries. “It’s no big deal. Stuff like that happens.”

“But it’s a Rosemary Cain proposal—and she’s rejecting it!”

Andrea went still. “Oh.”

I knew the name Rosemary Cain, but not well enough to be able to name any of her books by title. But I got the gist of what was going on. Big author, stupid boo-boo. “It’s just a few pages,” I said. “Why don’t you retype them? The author probably won’t even notice.”

It seemed a pretty obvious suggestion, but Lindsay latched onto it as if it were a pronouncement coming straight down from heaven. “That’s right! I could retype them. She’ll never know! Rita won’t even have to know.”