Lipstick Jungle
She had hidden out in Victory’s loft until the end of the day, waiting for the time at which Seymour might reasonably be home. When she walked in, Seymour was in a panic. He’d heard the news—it was all over town, and the newspapers and gossip columns were calling. Getting fired from Ratz Neste, it seemed, was more interesting and newsworthy than when she’d been hired two years before. For weeks afterward, she’d had to endure reading lies and half-truths speculating on the reasons she’d been fired, and the possible flaws in her personality and management style. She was shocked to discover that there were people she’d hired who’d hated her—enough, anyway, to complain about her “coldness” to the press. She was more surprised that the press was even interested. She hadn’t realized she was so “important.”
She wanted to disappear, but Seymour insisted that she had to be seen out in public. It was important to send a message that she was still around, that she wouldn’t be beaten. Seymour said the bad press was only a test. And so, three nights a week, she would dress up and drag her expanding belly out of the apartment, and she and Seymour would attend the rounds of cocktail parties, openings, and dinners that made up the social fabric of New York publishing.
Well, she thought, pulling on her pajamas. Seymour had been right. It was a test. There were people with whom she’d thought she’d had a relationship who brushed her off. And there were others, like Victory and Wendy, who were there, who didn’t care if she’d been fired from Ratz Neste or not. At the end of these evenings, she and Seymour would analyze what had happened, who they had seen, what they’d said, and what their possible agendas might be. It was crucial, Seymour said, to know what people wanted, what they needed, and how far they’d go to get it. It was a question of personal morality . . .
At first, these discussions made her head throb. She was never that interested in getting inside other people’s heads, as she imagined they weren’t interested in getting inside hers. All she had ever wanted to do with Glimmer was to make it a great magazine. That she understood. It seemed to her that hard work and good work should lead directly to its own reward, and if other people had any sense, they would just get on with it. But Seymour explained again and again that the world—the big business world, anyway—didn’t work that way. There were millions of talented people out there who got squashed every day because they didn’t understand that it wasn’t really about talent. It was about perception and positioning. You had to be able to walk into a situation and read it immediately.
One night they were at a cocktail party for the launch of a new Mont Blanc pen when a man in his late forties sidled up next to her. Two things struck Nico: his skin was stained a deep mahogany with self-tanner, and he was wearing a silver-and-black-striped tie. “I just wanted to say that you were doing a great job with Glimmer. Ratz Neste made a big mistake,” he murmured.
“Thank you,” Nico said. Who was he? She had a feeling she ought to know him.
“What are you working on now? Besides the obvious,” he said, glancing down at her belly.
“I have some interesting offers I’m pursuing,” Nico said. It was what Seymour told her to say when someone asked.
“Do you think you might be interested in talking to us at some point?” the man said.
“Of course,” Nico nodded.
It wasn’t until the man walked away that Nico realized who he was—Mike Harness, who had just been promoted to CEO of publishing at Splatch-Verner.
“You see?” Seymour crowed in the taxi going home. “That’s the point of going out in New York. Now all we have to do is wait.”
“Maybe he won’t call,” Nico countered.
“Oh, he will,” Seymour said confidently. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he wanted to hire you to replace Rebecca DeSoto at Bonfire magazine. Rebecca isn’t his hire, you see? He’s going to want to put his own person into place. To solidify his position.”
Nico knew Rebecca DeSoto a little bit and liked her. “Poor Rebecca,” Nico said.
“Poor Rebecca nothing,” Seymour scoffed. “You’ve got to develop a tougher hide. It’s not like you’ve got anything personal against her. You don’t even know her. It’s just business.”
Three months after Katrina was born, Splatch-Verner announced that Nico O’Neilly was replacing Rebecca DeSoto as the new editor in chief of Bonfire. And Nico imagined that Rebecca hadn’t seen it coming either.
And then, once she was back on top, people came out of the woodwork, sending flowers and cards and messages of congratulations. Seymour insisted that she answer each one, even the messages from people who had shunned her when she’d been fired. But the first note she sent was to Rebecca DeSoto, telling her that she’d done a great job and wishing her luck in the future. There was no point, Nico thought, in creating enemies where you didn’t have to.
Especially when you had real rivals to defeat.
Two weeks into the job, Nico realized that her first deadly foe was someone who should have been her ally—Bruce Chikalis, the publisher of Bonfire. Bruce was an arrogant young man in his mid-thirties who was considered Mike Harness’s golden boy, something he never let anyone forget.
He and Nico hated each other on sight.
Bruce’s understanding of women was limited to his narrow definition of what women should be in relationship to him. There were only two kinds of women in the world: women who were “fuckable,” and women who were not. And if you were not, he’d just as soon you didn’t exist. To him, women should be beautiful, large-breasted, skinny, and compliant, meaning they were willing to suck his cock whenever he so desired. He never came out and said this, of course, but he didn’t need to. Nico could sense his disdain for women under the surface of everything he said. The first time Nico met him, he had walked into her office, pointed to a model on the cover of the last issue of Bonfire, and said, “All I want to know is, can you get me a date with this?”
“Excuse me?” Nico said.
“If you can get me a date with her,” he said, with a grin that indicated he was used to women falling all over him, “you can keep your job.”
“With that attitude, I think you’re the one who needs to be worried,” Nico replied.
“We’ll see about that. The last editor didn’t last long,” Bruce said, taking a seat and giving her a deceptively boyish smile.
Nico stood up. “I’m not the last editor, Bruce. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a meeting with Victor Matrick.” And she walked out of her office, leaving him sitting there to ponder his fate.
She didn’t have a meeting with Victor Matrick, of course, but Bruce couldn’t prove she didn’t. Instead, she went to the ladies’ room and hid out in one of the stalls for ten minutes, thinking. She was going to have to take out Bruce Chikalis. She didn’t doubt his implication that Rebecca DeSoto had failed because of him. But mostly, she guessed that Bruce didn’t really care about Bonfire at all. To him it was merely a stepping-stone on his way up to a bigger position, which meant, consequently, more money and better chicks. If she failed too, it would reinforce the fact that he wasn’t to blame, and he would only end up looking good in the process. But he’d taken on the wrong opponent. She wasn’t going to risk being fired twice in a row. Once was a fluke; two times a loser. Her career would be over, and what would Seymour say? And what would her little daughter think of her?
The answer was simple: She was going to have to destroy Bruce Chikalis.
Before she got fired and before she’d met Bruce, it wouldn’t have entered her mind to think about her career that way. She would have told herself that eliminating her adversaries was beneath her. But that was only because she wasn’t sure she could destroy them. She didn’t know if she had the guts. But sitting there on the toilet seat thinking about it, she realized that not only did she have no choice, but that she might even enjoy it.
She would wipe that mocking, disdainful, sexist grin right off of Bruce Chikalis’s face.
The next day she called Rebecca DeSoto. She and Seymour had
spent an hour discussing where the meeting should take place. Seymour thought it should be secret, but Nico disagreed. Besides, she couldn’t invite Rebecca De-Soto to lunch and take her someplace obscure—Rebecca would consider it an insult, and Nico remembered how shunned she’d felt after she’d been fired. She couldn’t probe Rebecca for information while acting like she was ashamed to be seen with her.
They went to Michael’s for lunch.
“You’re the only person who had the decency to send me a note,” Rebecca said. They were sitting at one of the front tables in full display of the restaurant, and Nico could feel the curious eyes of the other patrons. “You’ve got to watch out for Bruce. He’s dangerous,” Rebecca said cautiously.
Nico nodded. “How? Exactly,” she asked.
“Advertising,” Rebecca said. “He schedules important meetings with advertisers and then changes them, and then his assistant ‘forgets’ to tell you.”
The next day, Nico ran into Mike Harness in the elevator. “I hear you had lunch with Rebecca DeSoto yesterday at Michael’s,” he said casually.
Nico’s stomach tightened, but she reminded herself that she’d chosen Michael’s deliberately, so word would get around. She wanted people to know that she wasn’t frightened. “That’s right,” she said blandly. She offered no explanation or excuse. The ball was back in his court.
“An unusual choice of lunch partner, isn’t it?” Mike asked, scratching at the inside of his collar.
“Is it?” Nico said. “She’s a friend of mine.”
“I’d be careful if I were you,” Mike said, looking at the deep orange skin on the back of his hand. “I hear she’s a liar.”
“Thank you. I’ll keep that in mind,” Nico said.
Bastard, she thought, as she watched him walk off the elevator. Men always stuck together, no matter how wrong they were. Well, women could play at that game too.
Two weeks later, she began to execute her plan.
Victor was hosting a “Spring Fling” Sunday afternoon at his estate in Greenwich, Connecticut, which was, apparently, a yearly tradition for selected Splatch-Verner executives. The house was a turreted gray stone mansion built in the 1920s and set on fifty acres next to a land preserve. She and Seymour had a Jeep Wagoneer back then, and as they were pulling into a parking spot at the end of the mile-long driveway, Bruce Chikalis came roaring up in a vintage Porsche 911. Nico got out of the Jeep, holding Katrina in her arms, as Bruce leisurely slid out of his Porsche, taking the time to clean his sunglasses with a special cloth. He carefully put the sunglasses back on his face, looked over at Nico, and smiled—just as Victor Matrick came strolling around the side of the house dressed in tennis gear. “Now that’s how I really see you, Nico,” Bruce commented loudly. “As a mother. Isn’t it wonderful, Victor?”
Nico wanted to kill him, but instead, she caught Victor’s eye. Victor clapped Bruce on the back. “You should think about having kids one of these days yourself, Bruce,” he said. “I always find that family men make better executives.”
That was all Nico needed to hear.
At one point in the afternoon, she took Katrina into one of the guest rooms on the second floor to breast-feed her, and as she was heading back to the party, she ran into Victor in the hall.
“Thank you for that,” she said matter-of-factly, referring to the incident by the car. It seemed that Victor puffed up ever-so-slightly. “Got to keep these young bucks in place,” he said. “How’s it going, by the way?” They had almost reached the stairs—in a few seconds, they’d have to part company—this might be her only opportunity to speak to Victor alone.
“We’re going to have an amazing first issue,” Nico said confidently, shifting the baby from one hip to the other. “And I know we’re going to continue to grow as long as we remember that Bonfire is a magazine that promotes women. When advertisers see a male publisher walk in, well, I’m not sure that sends as strong and as powerful a message as we’re capable of.”
Victor nodded. “You might have a point,” he said. “I’ll think about it.”
She kept at it, bit by bit, taking every opportunity with Victor to remind him about sending the right message to advertisers, while constantly watching her back with Bruce. A few months passed with no real progress, but eventually, as it always does, opportunity knocked.
One of the cosmetics giants was hosting a weeklong promotion and celebration at an exclusive ski resort in Chile. They were flying celebrities, models, and magazine people in a private 747 for an exclusive “holiday”—it was the kind of event Bruce lived for. Unfortunately, Splatch-Verner frowned on executives taking trips to faraway places from which they couldn’t easily be called back. Nico knew that if Bruce had any sense, he would pass on the trip. The trick was to convince him to do otherwise and take the risk.
But how?
“These things are easier than you think,” Seymour said. “Men are simple. Just tell him he can’t go.”
“It’s not really my place to tell him what he can and can’t do,” Nico said.
“That’s the point,” Seymour said.
On Wednesday mornings, Nico had a weekly meeting with Bruce and his senior staff. At the end of the meeting, she brought up the event in Chile. “I don’t want you to go,” she said in her flat, affectless voice. “I think it would be a far better use of your time if you were in New York that week.”
Bruce raised his eyebrows in outrage but quickly recovered. “Playing mommy again?” It sounded like he was joking, but there was an edge to his voice.
Ten minutes later he was in her office. He shut the door. “We need to talk,” he said. “Don’t you ever tell me what I can and can’t do in front of my staff.”
“They’re my staff too,” Nico said evenly. “I need to make sure this magazine stays on schedule.”
“I handle my own schedule.”
“Suit yourself.” Nico shrugged. “I’m only watching your back.”
He snorted in disbelief and walked out.
Sure enough, he took the bait. While he was off skiing in Chile with bikini models, Nico and Victor chose his replacement—a woman. Mike Harness could have protected Bruce, but Nico suspected that Victor was using the Bruce incident to keep Mike in his place, by insisting that Bruce had to go.
Bruce was scheduled to get the ax the day after he returned from Chile. He must have suspected that something had happened in his absence, because the afternoon he returned, he called Nico and insisted they have dinner that night in order to “strategize.”
It was an offer Nico couldn’t resist, and one of the early high points of her career. She would always remember that evening, sitting across the table from Bruce as he went on and on about how they had gotten off on the wrong foot but should try to work together as a team. And she’d nodded and agreed with him, knowing all the while that by noon tomorrow, he’d be finished and out of the building and she would have won. There had been a few brief moments during the dinner when she’d felt sorry for him, when she’d actually considered telling him the truth. But she quickly rejected the idea. She felt the sweet, creamy sensation of power. This was big business, and Bruce was a big boy. He’d have to learn to take care of himself.
Just as she’d had to learn to take care of herself.
At twelve-thirty, half an hour after the announcement was made, Bruce called her. “This was your doing, wasn’t it?” he asked, bitterly congratulatory. “Well, I’ve got to hand it to you. I didn’t think you were capable of it. I didn’t think you had the guts.”
“It’s just business, Bruce,” she said.
God, it was a heady feeling. She’d never experienced anything like it in her life. It was oddly centering. From outside her consciousness, she knew that, as a woman, she should have felt guilty. She should have felt bad or frightened for not being “nice.” And for one tiny moment, she was afraid. But what was she afraid of? Her power? Herself? Or the archaic idea that she had done something “bad,” and therefore would have to be p
unished?
Sitting in her office that afternoon, having just hung up the phone with Bruce, she suddenly saw that she would not be punished. There were no rules. What most women thought were “the rules” were simply precepts to keep women in their place. “Nice” was a comfortable, reassuring box where society told women if they stayed—if they didn’t stray out of the nice-box—they would be safe. But no one was safe. Safety was a lie, especially when it came to business. The only real rules were about power: who had it, and who could exercise it.
And if you could exercise it, you had it.
For the first time, she felt that she was equal to anybody. She was a player in the game.
That night, she bought beluga caviar and Cristal champagne, and she and Seymour celebrated. And later, Seymour wanted to have sex, and she didn’t. She remembered the feeling so clearly: She didn’t want anyone else inside her. She seemed to have filled all the empty nooks and crannies inside herself, and for once, her own being was enough.
But was it still?
She walked to the window of the bedroom and looked out. In the years since Bruce Chikalis, she had carefully exercised her power, using its full force only when absolutely necessary. She had learned not to gloat over her conquests or to even admit to them, because true power came from using an unseen, always controlled hand. She couldn’t help feeling a thrill when she won, but that didn’t mean other people had to know about it.
And thinking of Mike, and what she was going to do to him, caused her to feel the unavoidable buzz of impending victory. It was slightly hollow, though, and a little bit sad. There was a part of her that still hoped that people at the top of corporations would behave decently, but experience had taught her that when money and power were involved, it was always the same story. If only Mike were older and looking forward to retirement . . . but he wasn’t, and if she didn’t eliminate him, he would make her life miserable. He had taken two swings at her already; his next blow might be a knockout.