“Good job,” Franklin said to Tabitha. Bergdorf Baby’s new night serum had got a great write-up and—much more important—photo in Sunday’s New York Times.

To me and Lauryn: “We gotta get things back on track, ladies.”

“Yeah, but—” Lauryn started.

“I know all the reasons,” Franklin said. “All I’m saying is, you’ve got to catch up. Big-time.”

Lauryn gave me a hard sideways look; she had plans for me. She was going to try assigning all my time to her feature ideas, while I needed to start generating captions and photos on beauty pages and getting my targets back on track. Which of us would win?

We streamed into the boardroom. We were all there, all fourteen brands. Some women were clutching newspapers and magazines. They were the lucky ones, the ones who had managed to get coverage.

I even had one or two pages myself. Not in the newspapers, obviously. While I’d been away, it looked like nobody had bothered to keep the badgering of newspaper beauty editors up-to-date—I didn’t know what those temps had actually done.

But because of the glossies’ long lead time, some of the schmoozing I’d done months ago had borne fruit—like putting bulbs down in September and flowers appearing months later, the following spring.

Along the wall, people jostled for space, trying to become invisible; you could almost smell the fear. Even I felt anxious, which was unexpected. After what had happened I’d have thought that a public bollocking at work wouldn’t touch me. But clearly it was a Pavlovian response; something about standing in this room on a Monday morning tripped my fear switch.

Monday mornings were horrible. I knew they were horrible for everyone, everywhere, but they were extra horrible for us because so much of our success or failure depended on what had appeared in the weekend newspaper supplements. It was so obvious.

Sometimes, if they’d been let down by a beauty editor and hadn’t got the coverage they’d expected, girls threw up before the meeting.

As we took our places, Ariella ignored us. She was sitting at the head of the long table, flicking through the glossy pages of a magazine. Then I saw what it was—we all saw at the same time: this month’s Femme. Shit. It wasn’t on the newsstands yet. She’d got an early copy and none of us knew what was in it.

But she was going to tell us. “Ladies! Come in, come closer. See what I’m seeing. I’m seeing Clarins. I’m seeing Clinique. I’m seeing Lancôme. I’m even seeing fucking Revlon. But I’m not seeing…”

Who was it? It could have been any of us. But who should it have been?

“…Visage!”

Poor Wendell. We all lowered our eyes, ashamed but oh so glad it wasn’t us.

“Wanna talk to me about that, Wendell?” Ariella asked. “About the most expensive campaign we ever did? Where exactly did we fly those leechy beauty gals to? Couldja just remind me?”

“Tahiti.” You could barely hear Wendell’s voice.

“Tahiti? Tahiti! Even I haven’t been to fucking Tahiti. And they couldn’t give us a lousy four-by-two? Whatcha do to her, Wendell? Throw up on her? Sleep with her boyfriend?”

“She was all set to give us a quarter page, but Tokyo Babe just brought out their new eye cream and her editor overrode her because they advertise so heavily.”

“Don’t give me excuses. Bottom line: if someone else gets coverage, you have failed. You are a failure. You have failed, Wendell, not just because you didn’t work hard enough but because you couldn’t get them to like you enough. You’re not a likable-enough person. Have you gained weight?”

“No, I—”

“Well, SOMETHING’S wrong!”

Horrible but true. So much of the PR game depended on personal relationships. If a beauty editor liked you, you had a better chance of your brand fighting its way to the top of the pile. But there was precious little anyone could do if a major brand threatened to pull a twenty-thousand-dollar ad if you didn’t give them nice coverage.

After the main event—the humiliation of Wendell—we moved on to Any Other Business. This was where Ariella pitted brand against brand. If one had done well, it was an opportunity to point out the failings of another. She also enjoyed pitting Franklin against Mary Jane, the coordinator of the other seven brands.

Then it was all over for another week.

As everyone trooped back out, several people murmured, “That wasn’t too horrible. She was okay today.”

And the great thing about the MMM was that once it was over, the week could only get better.

27

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: On the mend

Got the plaster off my arm today. It doesn’t look like my arm anymore, it’s a puny, shrunken little thing and so hairy, nearly as hairy as Lauryn’s arms. My knee is pretty good (and not hairy). Even my nails are growing. It’s just my face now.

I love you.

Your girl, Anna

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: My name is Anna

Today someone left an AA meetings list on my desk. Anonymously, as it were.

I love you.

Your girl, Anna

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: New hair!

I begged Sailor for a low-maintenance cut but he told me we have to suffer for our beauty and gave me a “directional” brushed-forward shaggy yoke. The only good thing is that it covers a lot of my scar. But when I try to blow-dry it myself, it’ll be such a disaster I’ll have to start wearing hats again. Obviously it was all a big conspiracy.

I love you.

Your girl, Anna

All week, I put in twelve or thirteen hours a day at work, and somehow enough time passed so that it got to be Friday evening. But no sooner had I let myself in and put down my keys than I saw, like a big guilt-making accusing thing, the flashing light on my answering machine. Bums. How bad was it? How many messages? I kept my feet planted where I stood and leaned the top half of my body over to look: three messages. I looked at Dogly’s kindly face and said, “I bet they’re all from Leon.”