The women exchanged the obligatory air kiss.
“Don’t you fucking love it here?” Audrey dropped the word “fuck” as adjective, adverb, and verb. It reminded Janey of Ivy, and she made a mental note to try to catch up with her cousin later that afternoon. “I fucking love this class. I feel like I’ve run a marathon and done a Master Cleanse on top of a colonic. I’m exhausted now, though. Don’t you miss the days when we all just did liposuction and didn’t have to work out? I’ve been coming here for three months and I’ve lost twenty pounds. Twenty pounds at my age is like a hundred. How are you? Why didn’t you call me after the doughnut situation? I heard all about what happened. Beau has some balls on him, doesn’t he? Or does he? I never could tell. I would have gotten you half that company and on Oprah!”
“It was a bruffin,” Janey murmured under her breath as she moved toward the elevator, Audrey glued to her side.
“I still own half the company. I’m just taking some time off, Audrey. But thanks so much for your concern. But what about you? Tell me which Hollywood star’s love child you’re hiding this week.”
Audrey began pecking away at her phone. “Celebrities don’t need publicists anymore. They have Snapchat. I do have a huge client here in New York City. Can you keep a secret?”
Janey pushed the button for the first floor. “Better than you.”
Audrey took the ribbing in stride. “Fine. I’ll tell you. I’m working for Swiss Chard.”
The name didn’t ring a bell for Janey, but then keeping track of all the new young Disney stars turned pop stars and bisexual models turned Golden Globe–winning actresses was a full-time job.
“Is that the little rapper boy? The one with the clubfoot and the lisp the tweeny girls are crazy for?”
Now it was Audrey’s turn to laugh. “No, no, that’s Maxwell Rutebegah. I’m working with the Swiss Chard Farmer’s Council of America. I’m representing the plant. The wonderful, sustainably grown vegetable that’s so high in iron you’ll never get a bruise again. The world’s perfect superfood that time has forgotten. The leafy green that will kick kale’s ever-loving ass.”
“You’re doing crisis PR for a vegetable?”
“Of course I am. Chard’s in crisis. For the past three years kale has been having its moment. Everyone orders the kale now. Did you even know about kale before 2012? Of course you didn’t. Kale was something eaten by Birkenstock-wearing hippies out in Petaluma who do alot of crystal healing between growing their own pot, sprouting their own grains, and naming their children after constellations. But then kale went and hired Tom Cruise’s publicist, and now kale is all the rage. The chard folks are livid. They want a piece of the pie.”
“So what exactly do you do for Swiss Chard?”
“What don’t I do? I’m really just getting started. We need to get chard booked on all the top cooking shows, Top Chef, Foodie Diva, The Chew, MasterChef, Iron Chef, World’s Greatest Chef. Last week I met with each and every associate producer. They’re the ones who do the grocery shopping, you know, and I told them, ‘You have a recipe for kale? Try chard instead.’ And then I gave them all-access passes to Bonnaroo. I’ve already gone on the offensive against kale. You’ll see some serious investigations in the coming weeks about how kale might not be as good for you as you think. It can actually cause toxins to build up in your brain. Do you know how terrible that is for pregnant women? I have a doctor who says it might actually cause autism, but you didn’t hear that from me. And did you know that the majority of kale is farmed using child labor?”
Janey shook her head.
“You’ll know it soon. Nightline, Sunday night. We’re getting celebrity influencers on board to start talking about how much they love Swiss Chard. Fingers crossed we’ve got Caitlyn Jenner. Everyone just loves Caitlyn these days. Then the athletes Serena and Venus of course. They aren’t cheap, but man can they sell. I had a meeting with Natalie Portman’s people. You know how vegan she is.” Audrey rolled her eyes at the word “vegan.” “But she wouldn’t sign anything unless we promised to lobby to make all chard GMO free. Christ, we don’t have that kind of money. Hollywood is a steal compared to buying votes in D.C.”
They’d reached the street, and Audrey’s black car appeared to be double-parked right outside the door.
A light went on behind Audrey’s bright blue contact lenses.
“Have you tried chard?”
“Probably, but you know all green vegetables just look like salad to me.”
“Hmmmm…maybe once you lose the weight and get the job back, you give an interview to New York magazine crediting Swiss Chard with your reinvention? Can I give you a ride back uptown?”
There were no free rides with Audrey. Janey fibbed.
“I have an appointment down here.”
“Okay honey. Well, call me. We have money. Gotta go. Getting Beyoncé to work chard into her next women-empowering super ballad. Do you know what she did for sales of lemonade?”
Audrey, coupled with the lack of sleep and the crash from her endorphin high, had Janey ready to curl into an exhausted ball. Her dog walker had visited Boo Radley this morning, so she had nothing to do but get home and fall right into bed, but as she raised her hand to hail a taxi she heard Stella behind her.
“Janey! I thought I’d missed you. Breakfast?”
“Sure. Somewhere close, though.”
“I know just the place.”
Stella grabbed her hand and led Janey down a tiny side street and into a doorway that didn’t look at all like a commercial business, but inside it was one of the coziest coffee shops Janey had ever seen, all whitewashed walls and long wooden tables with giant benches covered in overstuffed cushions.
“I love this,” Janey said.
“Just opened. Another one of my clients. Former stockbroker, walked by here every single day. When she burnt out, she burnt out huge. Quit onstage ringing the NASDAQ bell with those guys from Google, the two who started it. I took her away with me to Tibet for three whole months. Then she decided what Wall Street needed was a little oasis of calm. Thousands of people work down here and there was nothing but a few Lebanese delis with three-day-old falafel and sad salad bars. So she opened this. The coffee’s phenomenal. Have you heard of the Jacu bird? He processes the coffee beans in his intestines before they are harvested. It sounds gross but it’s the best damn coffee you’ll have in your entire life.”
“I went dumpster diving last night,” Janey said, which seemed the logical response to ordering coffee pooped out of a Brazilian pheasant.