Lipstick Jungle

  Nico took out a compact and quickly checked her makeup. Pulling off this meeting wasn’t exactly part of her job (technically it fell into the realm of her boss, Mike Harness), but six months ago, Nico had decided that the bad feeling she’d been experiencing lately was simply the result of feeling stuck. It was wonderful and thrilling and exciting to be the editor in chief of Bonfire magazine, but she’d held the position for six years now, since the age of thirty-six, when she’d become the youngest editor in chief in the magazine’s fifty-year history. And unfortunately, success was like beauty: It wasn’t so exciting after it had been in the house for five days, wearing dirty socks. And so she had determined that she would move up in the company. The biggest position was CEO of Splatch-Verner, but in order to get that job, she’d have to conquer the position right underneath it first, by becoming the head of the magazine division. The only potential stumbling block was her boss, Mike Harness, who had hired her six years ago. But there was a principle involved: No woman had yet succeeded to the position of CEO of any Splatch-Verner division, and it was about time one did.

  And she planned to be the first.

  The Town Car pulled through a gap in the chain-link fence that surrounded the helipad, and stopped a few feet from the green Sikorsky helicopter that sat placidly on the landing pad. Nico got out of the car and began walking briskly to the helicopter. Before she reached it, however, she suddenly paused, surprised by the sound of another car coming up behind her. She turned to see a dark blue Mercedes barreling through the gate.

  This was not possible, she thought, with a mixture of anger, distress, and shock. The Mercedes belonged to Mike Harness, CEO and president of Verner Publications. Naturally, she’d told Mike about the meeting—several times, in fact, and had even suggested that he should come—but Mike had dismissed the idea with a scoff, insisting that he had more important business to attend to in Florida. The fact that he wasn’t in Florida and had turned up at the heliport instead meant only one thing: He was going to try to take credit for the meeting.

  Nico’s eyes narrowed as Mike got out of the car. Mike, who was tall and in his early fifties and unnaturally bronzed due to his excessive use of self-tanning products, began walking toward her with a sheepish look on his face. No doubt he knew she was annoyed, but in a corporation like Splatch-Verner, where everything you said, did, and even wore was potential watercooler fodder, it was always imperative to keep your emotions to yourself. If she confronted Mike now, she’d be labeled a bitch. If she raised her voice, they’d call her hysterical. And then everyone would talk about how she had lost it. Instead, she looked at Mike with a slightly perplexed smile on her face. “I’m so sorry, Mike,” she said. “Someone must have mixed up the schedules. My assistant booked the helicopter five days ago for the Huckabees meeting.”

  That put the ball back in his court, she thought. He’d have to admit that he was horning in on her meeting. “After all the work we put into getting this meeting, I decided I’d better come along and see this Borsch character myself,” Mike said. And then go back to Victor Matrick and try to tell him how he’d arranged the meeting himself, Nico thought, silently seething.

  She nodded, her face arranged into its usual expression of total impassiveness. Mike’s treachery was unspeakable but not unexpected—it was just business as usual for the executives at Splatch-Verner, where basically anything went as long as you could get away with it. “Let’s go, then,” she said coolly, and climbed the steps to the helicopter. As she sat down in the plush leather seat, she thought about how it had taken her three months to arrange this meeting with Peter Borsch, and about three minutes for Mike to ruin it. Mike sat down next to her, as if nothing at all were amiss, and said, “Hey, did you get Victor’s latest memo? He really is losing his mind, isn’t he?”

  “Mmmm,” Nico said noncommittally. The memo in question was an e-mail Victor Matrick had sent to all employees regarding the window blinds. “All window blinds should be positioned exactly halfway across each window, or precisely three feet, four inches from the bottom of the sill.” Like most CEOs, Victor, who was in his mid-seventies or possibly even eighty, was notoriously eccentric. Every few months he would take an unannounced stroll through the halls of the Splatch-Verner building, and the result would be these memos. Due to his age and his odd behavior, nearly every executive was convinced that Victor was insane, and couldn’t last much longer. But they’d been saying that for five years now, and Nico didn’t necessarily agree. Victor Matrick was certainly crazy, but not in the way people thought he was.

  Nico picked up a copy of the Wall Street Journal and opened it with a snap. Nearly every top executive at Splatch-Verner was angling for Victor’s job, including Mike, and another troublesome executive, Selden Rose. Selden Rose was the president of the cable division, and although he and Wendy were at equal levels, Wendy always worried that Selden Rose was trying to expand his territory to encompass her division. Nico hadn’t made up her mind about Selden Rose, but in a company like Splatch-Verner, anyone in a position of power was capable of turning against you in a second. It wasn’t enough to do your job every day, you also had to spend a good deal of time protecting your position while secretly plotting to get ahead.

  Nico stared down at her newspaper, pretending to be interested in a story about the retail business. She guessed that Mike could never imagine that she herself wanted the job of CEO of Splatch-Verner. With its Byzantine intrigues and enormous pressures, it wasn’t the kind of job most women—or men, for that matter—aspired to. But Nico wasn’t ashamed of her ambition, and twenty years of corporate life had convinced her that she could do any job as well as any man—and probably better.

  Look at Mike, she thought, glancing over at him. He was leaning forward in his seat, trying to shout something at the pilot about sports over the noise of the engines, which the pilot had just started. Corporations were filled with men like Mike—men who didn’t appear to be exceptionally smart or interesting, but who knew how to play the game. They knew how to align themselves with other powerful men; they were always genial and loyal, they were “team players”; they worked their way up the corporate ladder by knowing whose ass to kiss and when. Nico often suspected that Mike had become CEO and president of Verner Publications because he always managed to get Victor Matrick, who was obsessed with all forms of sports and competition, tickets to every major sporting event, which Mike, naturally, also attended.

  Well, Mike Harness wasn’t the only person who knew how to play the game, she thought, angrily. A couple of years ago, she would have been uncomfortable with the idea of trying to take her boss’s job, especially a boss like Mike, who was, in general, a reasonable person. But in the past year, Mike’s behavior toward her had changed. Subtly at first, with put-downs in meetings, and then more blatantly, when he had deliberately left her off the list of speakers at the biannual corporate meeting. And now, this, she thought: trying to take over her meeting with Huckabees—a meeting Mike never would have thought to set up himself, and even if he had, wouldn’t have been able to pull off.

  The helicopter lifted off the ground with a lurch, and Mike turned back to her. “I just read a story about Peter Borsch and Huckabees in the Journal,” Mike said. “This is a good call. Borsch might really come in handy.”

  Nico gave him a cool smile. The article had appeared two days ago, and the fact that Mike was going to make this look like it was all his idea filled her with fresh irritation. She could no longer avoid the reality that Mike was trying to squash her—in a few months he might even try to have her fired. His appearance this morning was no less than an open declaration of war. From now on, it was her or him. But years of corporate life had taught her to contain her feelings, to never let your opponent know what you were thinking, or what you were planning to do to them if necessary. She folded up the newspaper and smoothed her skirt. What Mike didn’t know was that she’d already taken steps to foil him.

  A month ago, when her assistant had tracked
down that first-edition copy of The Art of War, she’d gone to Victor Matrick himself to ask for special permission to expense the book, which cost over a thousand dollars. Naturally, she’d had to explain why she needed the book and what her efforts had been so far, and Victor had complimented her on her “creative approach.” The irony was that if Mike hadn’t left her off the list of speakers for the corporate meeting, she probably wouldn’t have considered going behind his back. But not including her had been an open insult that people had talked about for weeks before and after. If Mike wanted to crush her, he should have been more clever about it, she thought.

  But Mike had made a mistake, and now all she had to do was play along with him. If the Huckabees meeting went badly, it would be Mike’s fault. And if it went well, and Mike did go to Victor, Victor would know immediately what was going on. Nothing got past Victor’s terrifying blue and yellow eyes, and Victor wouldn’t like the fact that Mike had stooped to such petty behavior.

  These thoughts, coupled with the looming skyline of the city, combined to make her feel like her old fighting self again. As the helicopter swooped low, past the tall buildings that resembled a forest of lipsticks, Nico felt a frisson of something close to sexual excitement, which she experienced every time she caught sight of the familiar concrete-and-steel landscape. New York City was still the best place in the world, she thought, and certainly one of the few places in the world where women like her could not only survive but rule. And as the helicopter swooped low over the Williamsburg Bridge, she couldn’t help thinking, “I own this town.”

  Or in any case, she intended to, and soon.

  * * *

  THE COFFEE MACHINE EMITTED the satisfied gurgle of a creature emptying its bowels as it spat water through the filter and into the container.

  Even her coffeemaker was happier than she was, Victory thought disconsolately, pouring the bitter liquid into a simple white mug.

  She peeked at the clock on the wall, not really wanting to remind herself of the time. It was eleven a.m. and she was still at home, still in her Chinese blue silk pajamas imprinted with humorous drawings of small dogs. Which might in itself be some kind of insider Chinese joke, she thought, because there was nothing the Chinese loved more than eating man’s best friend.

  Which was also ironically appropriate, she thought, spooning three heaping teaspoons of sugar into her coffee. In the last three weeks, she felt like she’d been eaten herself, except that in her case, she’d also been spit out.

  She had tried something new, and her efforts had been rejected. The world was a very cruel place.

  She picked up her mug and wandered out of the kitchen, through the den with built-in bookshelves and flat-screen TV, through the foyer, and down the steps into the sunken living room with a working wood-burning fireplace. The apartment was what real estate agents referred to as “a little gem,” and looking up at the twelve-foot arched ceiling, from which hung a gorgeous antique Baccarat crystal chandelier, she wondered how much longer she’d be able to afford to live here.

  Her company was now officially in crisis.

  A long window seat ran the length of the French windows that looked out onto the street, and she sat down wearily. She’d been traveling for the last two and a half weeks, leaving town three days after her disastrous show, and the small mahogany dining room table was still piled neatly with the newspapers that had reviewed her show. The critics were not kind. Nearly a month had passed, but she could still remember every scathing word: “No victory,” “Lost her way,” “Disappointing,” and worse, “Who would ever wear these clothes, and if they did, where would they wear them?” and then the kicker: “Victory Ford is an entertainer more than a fashion designer, a truth that became abundantly clear with her latest collection in which she attempted to do high fashion . . .”—words that kept haunting her like a bad smell. She knew that lots of artists didn’t read their reviews, but Victory couldn’t do that; she couldn’t allow herself to turn away from the unpleasant reality. It was better to know the truth, and to deal with it. She probably should have thrown the reviews away, but she would file them with all her other press, and someday she would read them again and laugh. And if she couldn’t laugh, it wouldn’t matter, because she wouldn’t be a designer anymore. And if she wasn’t a designer, it wouldn’t matter, because she would be dead.

  She looked out the window and sighed. She was probably getting too old to see the world in black and white, to still believe that if she couldn’t be a fashion designer, she’d rather be dead. But that was how she had felt her whole life, from that moment when she was eight years old and, sitting in the waiting room at the dentist’s office, had picked up Vogue for the first time (her dentist, she later realized, must have been more chic than she gave him credit for). And looking at the pages and pages of fashion, she was suddenly transported to another world—a place that seemed to have unlimited possibilities, where anything you imagined could happen. And then the receptionist had called out her name, and she had looked up and was startled to find herself sitting on a green plastic molded seat in a small room with peeling, mustard-colored walls, and every detail in the room became magnified and she had an epiphany. She suddenly saw what she was meant to do. She was going to be a fashion designer. It was her destiny.

  She was a freak, of course, but she didn’t know it back then. Back when she was a kid, and for years afterward, she had assumed that everyone was just like her—and like her, they knew exactly what they were meant to do with their lives. Even when she was ten, she could remember boldly telling the other kids that she was going to be a fashion designer, even though she had no idea how to get there or what fashion designers actually did . . .

  And that youthful ignorance was probably a good thing, she thought, standing up and pacing the Oriental carpet in front of the fireplace. It had allowed her to boldly pursue her crazy dream, in ways she wouldn’t have dared to do now.

  She shook her head, remembering those early days in New York with affection. Everything was so new then, and exciting. She had very little money, but she wasn’t afraid—there was only one place to go, and that was up. Even from her first days in New York, the city had seemed to conspire in her dream. At eighteen, she moved to New York to attend F.I.T., and one day—it was an early fall day, the weather still slightly warm but with the crackle of winter in the air, a day not unlike today—she was riding the subway and a woman asked her where she’d bought the jacket she was wearing. Victory took in the woman’s highlighted hair and her dress-for-success suit, worn with a shirt with a little built-in bow tie, which was in style back then, and with the arrogance of youth, said boldly, “It’s mine. I’m a fashion designer.”

  “If you are a fashion designer,” the woman said, as if she didn’t believe her (and why should she have, Victory thought—she was as slim and flat-chested as a boy, and looked much younger than her eighteen years)—“then you should come and see me.” The woman fumbled in her Louis Vuitton handbag (Victory could never forget that bag—she’d thought it was so chic) and handed her a card. “I’m a buyer for a department store. Come and see me at ten o’clock on Monday morning and bring your collection.”

  Victory didn’t have a collection, but she wasn’t going to let that stop her. The miraculous encounter with the woman—Myrna Jameson was her name—had happened at five p.m. on a Wednesday. By Monday at eight thirty-three a.m. (which gave her just enough time to shower and get up to the Garment District by ten), Victory had her first collection of six pieces, including the jacket. She spent the intervening five days and her entire rent money—$200—drawing designs, buying fabric, and stitching up pieces on the sewing machine her parents had given her as a graduation present. She worked day and night, snatching a few hours of sleep on the used fold-out couch she had rescued from the street. The city was different back then—poor and crumbling—kept alive only by the gritty determination and steely cynicism of its occupants. But underneath the dirt was the apple-cheeked optimism of possi
bility, and while she worked, the whole city seemed to throb along with her. She cut and sewed to the background medley of car horns and shouts and the endless beat of the music from boom boxes. The possibility of failure never crossed her mind.

  Myrna Jameson was a buyer for Marshall Field’s, the famous Chicago department store, and her office was located in a cavernous building on Seventh Avenue and Thirty-seventh Street. The Garment District was like an Arabian bazaar. The streets were lined with mom-and-pop shops containing fabrics and notions and buttons and zippers and ladies’ undergarments; idling trucks belched exhaust into the air while workers wheeled racks of clothing and furs through the throng of humanity. Purse snatchers, street people, and hustlers lurked near the entrances to the buildings, and Victory clutched the bag containing her six-piece collection tightly to her chest, imagining the irony of having worked so hard only to have it snatched away.

  Myrna Jameson’s office consisted of two rooms located in the middle of a long, bleak linoleum-floored corridor; in the first room sat a young woman with a face like an angry bee, whose long fingernails made a clinking noise against the phone. Behind an open door was Myrna’s office; Victory could see a shapely black-panty-hose-clad leg in an elegant black pointy-toed pump. Myrna was the first real career woman Victory had ever encountered, and back then, career women weren’t expected to be nice. Myrna came out of her office and looked Victory up and down. “So you showed,” she said, in a voice with a hard metallic edge. “Let’s see what you’ve got for me.”