“Thanks, Gina!” she yelled, pulling open the heavy glass door and waving her bag spastically in front of the aluminum pole that controlled the basement’s elevator bank.
I’m going to make something of today, she thought, stepping into elevator G. She told herself that every morning. Lou was thirty-seven years old and this was her very first job. She’d spent her whole life as somebody’s wife, somebody’s trophy. Married first at seventeen to the ninth Earl of Southumberland, Charles Molton, who died four years later in a fatal Formula One racing accident; then again at twenty-five to Alexander Lucas, from whom she was just recently finally and officially divorced, this was her first real year as an adult on her own.
Up to now she hadn’t minded; she’d never known anything else. Lou’s mother, Aurelia Beaton Mauve, Marchioness of Dorset, had spent her entire life simply throwing parties, and she’d been more than approved of; she’d been downright celebrated. The Mauve family’s greatest hope for Lou—with her horsey teeth and booming voice—had been to marry well and become as accomplished a hostess as her mother, ideally with someone who had far more pounds sterling in the bank than her own father. Well, she’d done that, and now that her own girls were old enough to head off to school, she’d been wondering if there was more to life than just spending other people’s money.
The opportunity at RAGE had come at the perfect time. Her contract was just for six months, but now that she’d had a taste of shaping the zeitgeist, she never wanted to stop. Lou was determined to figure out a way to stay on the RAGE masthead—Paula had told her they intended to eventually promote Cat, but Lou was certain she could find a way to stay. Just before she reached the forty-sixth floor, she told herself: You are not going to waste this opportunity. You’re just as good as everyone else in this building. The doors slid open. She marched purposefully through the marbled lobby and into the cubicle maze. It was time to get to work.
After Cat skulked into the office, she started on the to-do list she’d compiled the day before, barely making it uptown to Per Se on time for the promo lunch for Delvaux. She was so hung over that she almost couldn’t remember what it was like to be sober. She left the lunch early and took a cab back to Cooper, locking her office door before crawling under the desk.
With the chair shoved out of the way and her sunglasses on, the underside of her desk wasn’t half bad. She stuck her legs out, tried to assume corpse pose so she wouldn’t overly wrinkle her dress, then promptly passed out.
Forty-five minutes later she felt her phone buzz on the floor next to her. Shit. I’m sleeping on the floor, she thought before looking at the screen. It was Hutton. Dear Lord, please don’t let him come storming in here. Long gone was the fantasy where Hutton barged into her office and bent her over the desk. If he was at Cooper now, she would have to go outside, dig a hole, crawl into it, and die of embarrassment.
She managed to answer just before the call went to voicemail.
“Hello,” she said through a sigh, hoping she sounded world-weary and mysterious instead of ready for her first AA meeting.
“How are you?” he asked in a voice that seemed clipped and neutral.
“I’m alive,” she said. “I’m embarrassed, but I’m alive.”
“That’s good.”
“Did you find out what was in the products?”
“Not yet.” His voice definitely did not contain a single ounce of flirt.
“Am I in trouble?”
“No,” he said, sounding distracted. “I’m going to have to call you back.”
He hung up.
Well, I guess that’s that, she thought. He’s over it. She let her head fall back down onto the office carpeting. It smelled like vacuum cleaners, like the accumulated dust of a thousand and one boxes of printer paper. Cat let out a long breath and willed her body to expel every ounce of her hangover into the ether.
For a fleeting moment she became vaguely paranoid that Hutton had somehow found out she’d spent the night before boozing, snorting, and licking a bartender. Not that she was ashamed—far from it—but it seemed prudent to maintain a certain kind of facade with the kind of man who joined the NYPD to make a difference. At least at first. But the only person they could know in common was…Bess, she remembered. She reminded herself to bring it up in the future.
Her computer buzzed. Cat dragged herself into an upright position, trying to quietly roll the chair back into place as she awkwardly hoisted her body into it, catching a whiff of herself as she landed in the chair; god, was she sweating beer? She looked at the monitor, the bright screen hurting her eyes.
bess.bonn: hey, lou doesn’t know how to use chat
catono: ?
bess.bonn: beet dye in home upholstery!
Fuck. Cat opened the CoopDoc marked “beets” and scanned the very brief notes that Lou had made.
positives: non toxic, very strong dye, easy to plant in a variety of climates, can adapt sugar beet plantations, doesn’t pollute soil, no GMOs needed, a sustainable plant’s sustainable plant, if you know what I mean.
cons: looks like period blood??
Cat let out a snort over the last line. Well, if anyone can make me feel better, Lou probably can. Might as well do some work. She punched Lou’s extension into her Cooper landline and unlocked her office door. Within five minutes Lou had pulled up a chair beside her.
It took just forty-five minutes to hammer out the copy for September’s page on eco-friendly fabrics from one of Lou’s pet projects. RED IS THE NEW GREEN, declared their headline. “From the thread and dye, all the way to the packaging, this eco-warrior is using beets—one of the world’s most renewable resources—to reimagine home furnishings.” The accompanying photographs had come in that morning, and the subject of the photos, Lou’s friend Criselda Johnson-Butler—former Photogram marketing guru turned eco-designer—looked like she hadn’t eaten in days. Her arms were overflowing with beets.
“God, she’s as thin as a feral dog,” declared Lou. “I wonder what she’s doing.”
“I’d say ‘eating beets,’ but somehow I don’t think food is involved,” Cat guessed.
“I bet she got a lap-band. I hear they’ll give it to anyone now.”
Cat laughed. “That’s horrible.”
“It’s not horrible!” protested Lou. “Some people just don’t have any self-control.”
“Yeah, obese people. Not size twos.”
“Well, I support whatever elective surgery she wants. That, my darling, is what we call choose-your-choice feminism.”
Cat rolled her eyes. “Yeah. That’s exactly what it means. Like telling the bear performing at the circus that it can ‘choose’ its own tricycle to ride on.”