“It would be Layla and Kelly?” I say, stupid and shell-shocked.
“This is the perfect example of how to get more women into positions of leadership,” Jesse says, in that rallying voice I usually find so inspiring. “I was just reading how family-controlled businesses have the largest number of female decision-makers. The three of you represent a new path to advancement that I think would be very beneficial for our viewers to see.” Jesse seems to consider something. “We do have to take child labor laws into account, which requires permission from not only you, Kelly, but from her father. Will that be a problem?”
“My father is Nigerian and he lives in Morocco,” Layla says, with an accusatory glance Kelly’s way.
Jesse’s face clouds. “So does that mean it would be a problem?”
Kelly rubs Layla’s back, consolingly. “That’s all we know about him, unfortunately. I never got his full name and by the time I realized I was pregnant, I was already back in the States with no way of getting in touch with him.”
“Well,” Jesse says to Layla, “I’m sorry, Layla. But it certainly makes things less complicated on our end.”
“Shouldn’t we talk to Lisa about this?” I try, pathetically. One last bid to stop this train before it leaves the station.
Jesse flicks away Lisa’s authority with the back of her hand. “The show has gotten too narrow in its definition of a Goal Digger. We’re a shoal of fish, not a school.” She clasps her hands between her knees and addresses Layla like she’s five, not twelve. “Do you know the difference between a shoal of fish and a school?”
“Um . . .” Layla thinks. “A school of fish swims in the same direction?” How the fuck does she know that? I don’t even know that, at least not that succinctly.
“That’s right!” Jesse exclaims. “A school of fish swims in the same direction, but a shoal of fish is a group of fish that stays together for social reasons. The group should make sense, socially, but it doesn’t make for great TV when everyone is swimming in the same direction. So.” She sets her hands on her thighs, like the start of a race. “Let’s at least visit the process. Get both of you on tape. Submit it to the network, introduce you to Lisa, she’s our showrunner, if you don’t know . . .”
It feels like the iris of a camera is shrinking, narrowing, slowly isolating the terror on my face. I’ve always been afraid that Kelly was too smart and too primed for greatness to play second fiddle to me. It was only a matter of time before she became listless and bored, before Layla wasn’t enough, before she would make a play for the top spot. It’s starting. Her comeback. This will get ugly.
CHAPTER 2
* * *
Stephanie
The general who wins the battle makes many calculations. I myself am down to two, side by side in my rift-sawn white oak custom closet: the Saint Laurent boots or the platform sneakers that everyone is wearing these days. I am not much for the sprezzatura pox that’s claimed most of the women in New York. When I moved here, twelve years ago, women wore ballet flats on the subway, work heels hooked over the lip of their monogrammed Goyard totes. Sneakers were exclusively aerobic in purpose, never for cocktail dresses and Chanel, New York Fashion Week, and martinis at Bemelmans. Sometimes, even on Madison—even in the eighties—I feel like the last of my kind. Nobody gets dressed anymore.
I consider the boots, worried they say I’m doing too well, which I am. When your memoir about your abusive teenaged boyfriend has been top three on the bestseller list for the last four months with no sign of slowing down, an Oprah’s Book Club pick, and an Oscar-nominated director’s next passion project, there is never more of a right time to bow your head. People prefer acutely successful women to have no idea how we got here, to call ourselves lucky, blessed, grateful. I hook a finger through the sneaker’s ornamental laces, considering their message on a spin. The sneakers literally level me. And people respond to approachable women, don’t they? It’s part of what the audience loved about Brett, part of what I loved about her, at least in the beginning. I pluck the other sneaker from its custom perch. Show, don’t tell. The bedrock of what I do.
The Rangers’ game goes mute as I descend the stairs to our living room. We have stairs in our prewar brownstone on the Upper East Side. This is not just architectural fact, it’s consolatory, something Brett pointed out to lift my spirits two years ago, when my third book came out and bombed. You have stairs in your apartment, Brett said. Fuck it. Not everything you do can be a win. I thrill every time I upset these stairs. Vince is always threatening to fix them—rather, use my money to pay someone to fix them—but I savor their squeaks and grunts, audible reminders of my earning power. It is one of the few times I allow myself to dissociate, to think about how I will never be at the mercy of Lynn from Creative and Marketing Staffing Pros again, creak, because I started writing the blog on my lunch break, and, creak, through the 3:00 P.M. slump too, and it became popular enough to net me a mid-six-figures book deal. I will never have to deposit seven dollars into my bank account, creak, just to be able to make the minimum withdrawal of twenty, creak. Because I have sold over three million copies of my first two books and am on track to surpass that with my memoir, which the Sunday Review embraced, breathlessly. (Finally.) Then there is the million Warner Bros. paid for my life rights, and the half I’m getting to adapt my memoir for film. Creak. Creak. The last two stairs sound absurdist, like a witch opening a door to a haunted house that you will tour, scream-laughing. Vince is watching me from his favorite navy club chair. Navy is the only color I’ve allowed on this floor.
Vince looks confused when he sees me. “You’re not going?”
It’s the sneakers. My mother wore heels in her bathrobe and that’s what I was taught. “I’m going,” I say, sinking into his lap. “Do I look like a slob?”
“Oof!” He grimaces, squirming a bit. “Wait. Wait.” He shifts me around on top of him. “That’s better.” He breathes a sigh of relief.
“Thanks,” I crack, digging my knuckle into his bicep, still far from solid though I’m paying Hugh Jackman’s trainer three times a week.
“Hey-ayy!” He clutches his shoulder, his lips an astonished o. How could anyone want to hurt Vince?
“You never answered me.”
“What?”
“Do I look like a slob?”
Vince pushes his hair out of his eyes. Between him and Brett, sometimes I just want to superglue their hands to their sides. “But a sexy slob.”
“Really?” I frown at my feet. “I just wanted to be comfortable.”
“You look cool, babe,” Vince says to the TV screen, lifting his glass of wine from the marble-topped side table. I can smell the vintage.
“Is that the 2005?” I ask, an edge creeping into my voice. I don’t know much about wine, but I know I had to put a hold on Vince’s credit card last year after a Christie’s online auction for Fine and Rare Vintages ended in obscenity.
Vince quickly sets the glass back on the table and his hand gets lost in his hair again. “Nah. 2011 or something lame like that.” He squeezes my side, and in a suggestive voice says, “You could stay, though.” His hand moves lower. Squeezes there too. “And we could open that one.”
I swat him away with a giggle. “I can’t. I need to see them.”
Vince holds up his hands. He tried. “I’ll be waiting up.” He purses his stained lips.
It’s a chaste kiss—it always is, these days—but when I lean in, I get a whiff of his old Rutgers tee and can’t help but feel pleased. BO is the scent of devotion in our marriage. Vince is not getting up to anything smelling like that. He means it when he says he will be waiting up. My husband is never more faithful than when he has to crane his neck to look up at me.