“Hello, darling dear,” Lou yelled, kissing Molly on the cheek. She practically reeked of a floral bouquet; jasmine, honeysuckle, juniper, and eucalyptus followed her in a rotten cloud. “Isn’t this just the fur knickers.” Lou grinned approvingly at the room. “I really do love this marvelous fucking hotel.”
“Nice to see you,” Molly said politely.
“Well.” Her yell became a stage whisper. “Kit-Oh and Boots have a case of the old Mumbai handicap. They’ve sent me to run things in their stead. Girls will be girls, I suppose.” Lou winked one of her starry eyes conspiratorially.
“What?”
“The trots, darling. The scoots. Saltwater cleanse?”
Molly still looked confused.
“Bad tummies, darling. Bit of a party tax.”
“Oh.” Molly blushed. “Of course. I’d better go check on them. Can you keep the models from getting restless?”
“Oh no no no, Beans, you’re not going anywhere. These lazy Gauls will try to knock off at lunch, so we’d better get started. I think the girls need to be a bit shinier. Really gleaming. I’ll order some of the hotel’s moisturizer—it’s simply the best. Bring me the shot list.”
Molly frowned. “Sure thing,” she said. “Let me just pull that up.” As she pretended to search for the shot list, she texted Cat and Bess one more message:
DID YOU SEND LOU?!? SHE’S TAKING OVER!!
Bess, who had watched the entire scene from behind a luggage cart in the doorway, wrote back right away:
We’re fine, but don’t tell anyone. DO tell Lou she needs to check the hem on Alisa and set last looks on Yza.
Molly looked around, dumbfounded, and repeated the message; Bess folded herself between two garment bags and kept watch.
When Cat checked her phone, she found a message waiting from the exact person she’d intended to call: Paula Booth. Come up to the PH, she wrote back before changing into the dress that Molly had marked on her calendar, a calf-length Albert V. with thin straps that crisscrossed her shoulders. When Paula knocked five minutes later, Cat ushered her into the living room. Behind them, a click came from the front door as Bess let herself back into the suite. After seeing Paula, Bess sat quietly in a chair by the door.
“You do realize he’s going to sue you,” Cat said. Paula looked confused, until Hutton waved from the sofa.
“That’s true,” he offered, getting up. “I’m Mark Hutton. Though I imagine that you wouldn’t go to print without approval from Cooper Legal, am I right?”
Standing behind Cat, he towered over both women, yet Paula stared him down with confidence. “That’s correct. Cooper is not particularly concerned with defamation in this case.”
“I’ll try for copyright, then. I know you used Callie’s diary.”
“I see,” Paula responded evenly, looking around the room. She waved her hand toward the sofa and chairs arranged by the window. “Do you mind if I sit down?”
Hutton responded without blinking. “Of course,” he said politely, showing them both to a pair of chairs, though his tone was glacial. “Let’s sit.”
He lowered his frame onto the sofa across from Paula and Cat, who were seated in matching armchairs with a small walnut occasional table placed between them. Paula looked at him expectantly.
“All I’m telling you to do,” Hutton said confidently, “is to cut the text. Obviously, I think the photos are in poor taste, but you’re clearly welcome to publish those.”
“I can certainly appreciate your perspective,” Paula said, “although I’m afraid you may find a copyright suit against a billion-dollar corporation to be…difficult.” She turned to Cat before continuing, her posture tall and firm. “But that’s just my opinion. I’m afraid it’s not really up to me,” she said. “I’m resigning next week. I’m going to work for Mania. And I’m hoping you’ll come with—both you and Elizabeth, actually. I’m not here to fight. I’m here to offer you a very good job.”
Cat’s eyes bulged with shock. “Why?”
“Because they look up to you,” Paula said simply. “You’re very hard workers, Catherine, both of you. I know you’ll do well there. You’ll be their most important employees—‘maniacs,’ I believe, is the term they plan to use. And you don’t have to live in Los Angeles, obviously, or even New York. You could live anywhere you wanted to.”
Cat, openmouthed with disbelief, stared at Paula. “No, I mean, why would I take that job?” Her eyes narrowed.
“Well. That is what I’d like to discuss,” Paula said kindly. “Margot Villiers isn’t coming back to work—not next week and not ever. RAGE Fashion Book, as we knew it, is very much dead. I do realize that allowing Lou to write that article was insensitive. It was probably a mistake. It wasn’t very good, either, though it was—and I do hate this word—titillating. Margot’s judgment has not been the best this year, and while I have to give it to her—she really did pull out all the stops—nothing worked. Margot had a heart attack last week. She’s been unresponsive in the ICU for six days.”
Cat and Bess both gasped. Paula paused briefly to acknowledge their shock, then continued, “I’ve been handling her email. I’ve realized that it doesn’t matter to me anymore if RAGE survives, not if Margot’s gone. I don’t think she’ll be coming out of it.”
“But you took advantage of me,” Cat said quietly in a whisper gilded with contempt. “You used me. And my friends. And you made me become…this.” She gestured at her body, indicating her now-public identity.
“Nobody made you do anything,” Paula replied slowly, genuinely perplexed. “You did all of this”—she pointed to Cat’s emaciated frame and to her cellphone to indicate the Mania map—“all by yourself.”
Cat’s horrified face fell. “But I would have lost my job if I hadn’t done what you asked,” she said. “It was an impossible position.”
“That risk is where the rubber meets the road, isn’t it,” Paula agreed. “It’s hard to know your worth, or what to leverage and when to leverage it.”
“You’re telling me—after all the pressure you and Margot put me under—that I should have just quit if I didn’t like it?”
“Yes,” Paula said, agreeing again, “that is exactly what I’m telling you. It was my job to put pressure on you,” she explained gently. “I’m sixty years old, Catherine. I came up in this business when men called me ‘Sweet Tits’ to my face. I might be tougher than you,” she said, shrugging her shoulders, “and I might play the game a bit harder than you happen to think is fair, but that doesn’t mean you lack agency.”
Cat leaned back in her chair, folding her legs up under her arms and resting her head on her knees. As she looked at Paula’s face—her expression unexpectedly kind and clear—Cat realized how right she was. I should have quit months ago, she thought, should have quit the very second they asked her to write a memorial to Hillary and put their personal photos in the magazine. But she’d stayed, and she’d posed for a million pictures, and she’d let her whole life become a product.