The Pink Ghetto Read online

  My dad owned a plumbing supply business, which, while lucrative, did not provide for periodic windfalls. I was the fifth of six kids. My parents bankrolled me through college with the tacit understanding that afterwards I was to be completely on my own. My dad, in his usual self-effacing way, called this kind of generosity paying for the privilege of getting rid of me. Given that they still had my little brother in college, and now grandchildren to juggle, I would have died before I asked them for more money.

  In February, my roommates and I were one hundred and forty dollars short on the rent, so I sold my notebook computer on eBay. This was a psychological low-water mark. Not that I actually needed my notebook. When I had come to New York, I had thought I would write something. Sylvie’s memoirs. Maybe short stories; I had done a few of those in college. It had been two years, though, and I hadn’t written anything more taxing than a grocery list.

  Unfortunately, my notebook was my only valuable. I couldn’t hock anymore even if I’d wanted to. I needed a job. Fast.

  Out flew the resumes. But the expected responses never came pouring in. After three weeks, I’d had exactly two interviews, neither of which had borne fruit. The calendar advanced relentlessly toward the next rent due date. It was nail biting time. So when my phone rang and the person on the other end of the line said she was calling from Candlelight Books and that I had an interview, it felt like a lifeline was being thrown at me. I was ecstatic.

  I knew what Candlelight Books was, of course. Who didn’t? They were the colossus of romance, the books everyone’s aunts read but that they never read themselves. You couldn’t walk through a superstore in the heartland or a drugstore anywhere without seeing racks of them, all branded with the flickering candle logo.

  I just didn’t remember applying there. Not that I was about to tell that to the woman on the telephone. I wasn’t about to say anything that might risk my chances for getting my foot in the door. She instructed me to appear at the offices on the following day at one o’clock, and I assured her I would be there.

  “What’s the job?” Fleishman asked when he saw me dragging my interview suit out of our closet.

  A railroad flat is not an ideal setup for communal living. The apartment took up an entire floor of a rowhouse, and there were three rooms, sort of (one had surely been meant to be a hall, or a dining area), but there were no doors between the rooms. It was just one long breezeway. In other words, for having blowout parties or as a roller rink, the place would have been ideal. For trying to section off three bedrooms, it was a challenge. We all had to share the one closet, which during the residency of some previous tenant had lost its sliding door and now was “closed” with a shower curtain with a tropical fish motif.

  “It’s with Candlelight Books.”

  Fleishman barked out a laugh. “You are kidding me. You’re going to work on romance novels? You? You’ve never had a successful romance in your life.”

  I didn’t really need to be reminded of that. Especially since one of my failed romances was with him.

  “They aren’t looking for Masters and Johnson,” I said.

  “Good.”

  I eyed him sharply. I admit it—I could still be a little defensive when it came to our relationship. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing,” he said, rolling his eyes. He always complained that I was too sensitive. “I’m amazed you applied there, though.”

  “I didn’t even know I had. The ad didn’t give the name of the company.”

  “They were probably afraid that people wouldn’t answer the ad if they knew it was for Candlelight Books.”

  “Probably.” No doubt there were some people who would turn up their noses at working around romance novels. I was not one of those people. Correction: Since having to auction my belongings on eBay, I had ceased to be one of those people.

  “I think you’d make a great editor.”

  “I think it’s just secretarial. Or something.”

  He raised his brows. Fleishman had very distinctive, Dracula-like brows, so it always seemed very dramatic when they arched at you. “You don’t know?”

  “I’m sure it’s an editorial assistant job.” I was fairly certain I had applied for a few of those. Not that I had any idea what an editorial assistant actually did. “Or assistant something-or-other. I answered so many ads…”

  I once read in a book about job hunting that you should keep a tidy folder documenting all the places you’ve applied, and listing all the relevant dates for callbacks and interviews. But if I had been that organized in the first place, I probably wouldn’t be the kind of putz who was scrabbling for a job, any job.

  Now Wendy, she would have made a folder. Wendy was that way. She kept a chart on our refrigerator to keep track of whose week it was to take out the garbage.

  Fleishman was more like me. (Which made it extra fortunate that we had Wendy.) “Well, whatever,” he said. “Once you have a bundle saved from your lucrative new career, you can produce Yule Be Sorry.”

  “Don’t hold your breath.” I quickly added, “The position’s not that lucrative.”

  But what I really meant was, fat chance I would ever help Yule Be Sorry see the light of day.

  Yule Be Sorry was Fleishman’s latest unfinished theatrical masterpiece, dreamed up after he had spent Christmas with my family in Cleveland. Fleishman’s plays, which had made him the Noel Coward of our little college, were airy, funny pieces with just enough message to justify their being written at all. Yule Be Sorry continued in this tradition. But even in the one act he had written, the thinly disguised picture of my family was not pretty—the Alberts came off as a collection of airheads and rubes. And the girl protagonist of the play, the one who brings her ex-boyfriend home for the holiday—in other words, me—was especially grating. She had a few good lines, but for the most part she was a scold, a former fat girl who secretly scarfed down spritz cookies when no one was looking.

  Okay, maybe that last part was me spot-on, but come on. Was I a scold? I didn’t think so. Yes, I was just more practical than Fleishman, but that was setting the bar so low the midgets of the Lollypop Guild couldn’t have limboed under it. Anna Nicole Smith was probably more practical than Fleishman.

  This play would have weighed more heavily on my mind if I had thought that Fleishman would ever finish his masterpiece. But he had been completely unproductive since graduation. What really went over big in a small school in Ohio was not exactly what the Great White Way was clamoring for. I could sense Fleishman getting discouraged. He hadn’t written much of anything in the past year, and he had lost that glow of the big-fish-in-a-small-pond celebrity he had when we first met. Lately it seemed that he mostly misspent his nights drinking too much cheap wine and watching Green Acres.

  Nobody tells you this growing up, but the reason you’re supposed to develop good work habits is so when the academic world spits you out at the age of twenty-two, your personal ambitions won’t be sidelined by the seductive lure of TV Land.

  Fleishman squinted in despair at my gray interview suit, which had been a college graduation present from my mom. I had never had to use it until that month. “You think that’s the right outfit for this job interview?”

  I furrowed my brow. During the last interview, I had splooped coffee on the jacket and I hadn’t been able to get it out with a Shout wipe. “Why not?”

  “Because that suit is not the right suit for any job interview.”

  I couldn’t argue. The suit was pretty much ugly all day: a slate gray color that would wash out even the most Coppertoned skin, a Mao collared jacket that made my bust look like one vast gray rolling plain, and a skirt with a hem that hit at mid kneecap, which was a flattering length on no one.

  “Plus I imagine people at Candlelight Books all run around the offices in pink sequins and feather boas,” Fleishman said.

  “It’s a business,” I replied. “The woman on the phone sounded very businesslike.”

  “Right. It’s
probably just the authors who run around all day in lounging pajamas.” He flopped onto the couch. “I hope you get this job! It’ll be so entertaining to hear you talk about. You’ll get to talk to people like what’s her name.”

  “Who?”

  He snapped his fingers. “You know—that one who’s on the bestseller lists all the time.”

  “I have no idea who you’re talking about.”

  Neither did he.

  “It’s probably just some flunky job. I might just answer phones or something.”

  “You’re always downpeddling,” he said. “What if this is actually the beginning of something big?”

  He flashed those gray eyes of his in a way that, I admit it, could still make my insides go fluttery. Which was amazing, considering all we’d been through. I mean, we’d been friends, and—briefly—lovers, and endured a breakup, and then become roommates. One New Year’s after we’d just moved to New York, we had re-succumbed to each other, but now our romance was officially in full remission. I’d watched him date other women. Worse, I’d watched him floss his teeth in front of the eleven o’clock news. That alone should have squelched any residual fluttering, but no such luck.

  I shook my head. “Big, as in…?”

  “Think of it. We’ve both been knocking around this city for almost three years now. It’s time one of us got a break, isn’t it?”

  “In other words, you think I’m going to go to that interview a youngster, but I have to come back a star?”

  “Don’t be so cynical. This could be a really great career turn for you.”

  Could it? I tried to stay guarded. Sometimes Fleishman exuded this crazy enthusiasm that could carry me aloft. He could go nuts over an idea, or some wacky plan, or even a new Web site he’d found. It’s part of why I found him so appealing. He could pull enthusiasm out of thin air and toss it over me like fairy dust. A little of it was twinkling over me now.

  Chapter 2

  Candlelight Books was located on two floors of a mammoth New York office building in Midtown. I huddled in a coffee shop in the lobby until it was just time for my appointment, then I hurried up. The only other person on the elevator was a tall, good looking man. Really good looking, I decided, doing a double-take. Dark blond hair, brown eyes. A combination of buttoned down and hott, with two Ts. I took all this as a good sign. Despite the butterflies in my stomach, I couldn’t be too nervous if I still wanted to take the time to ogle some man-flesh.

  He tilted his head at me. I smiled.

  He frowned.

  I averted my eyes.

  “Job interview?” he asked.

  I swerved back toward him, amazed. It was like he had powers, or something. “My God, you could be on Oprah. How did you know?”

  Laughing, he lifted his shoulders. “You looked nervous.”

  I sank against the wall. Damn! “Nervous isn’t exactly what I’m trying to convey.”

  “But you shouldn’t be nervous at all,” he said. “I’d hire you.”

  He was just being nice, but I was grateful. “You don’t happen to work at Candlelight Books, do you?”

  “Uh, no.”

  “Well, thanks anyway.”

  “Just the same, you might want to check your teeth.” A fresh Kleenex materialized in his hand, and he offered it to me. “Lipstick.”

  Startled, I glanced into the stainless steel of the doors and just before they opened, I saw a smudge of red on my left front tooth. “Shit!” I murmured, grabbing the Kleenex and scrubbing frantically. How embarrassing. I felt like a dumbass (with two Ss).

  “Break a leg!” he called after me as I stumbled off the elevator.

  I was standing in a carpeted lobby whose walls were lined with glass-covered bookcases. The cases gave the appearance of guarding something valuable, though the books inside them were rack-sized paperbacks you would see at any Walgreens in the country. Many of the covers bore pictures of men (usually shirtless) and women (usually in the process of tastefully losing their shirts), undulating against each other in various chaste and not-so-chaste ways. Some of them just had couples staring at each other, or the horizon, with dramatic urgency. A few just had a single man, usually in a cowboy hat, standing rugged and alone and staring ahead with what I supposed was meant to be a sensual glower.

  A woman about my age was doing phone duty at a large, double-tiered reception desk. All that was visible of her was her heart-shaped face, long blond hair, and a Peter Pan blouse in baby blue with navy blue piping—a hideous early Donna Reed thing that I hoped for her sake was being worn as an ironic statement.

  She smiled briskly at me. “May I help you?”

  “I’m Rebecca Abbot. I have an appointment with Kathy Leo.”

  “Kathy will be out momentarily,” the receptionist announced after buzzing her.

  Momentarily left me five minutes to stare more closely at the books in the cases. I recognized very few names. I had spent all my college years reading. I had been buried in books, but I knew nothing about romances. It was like I was discovering a counterculture.

  “Good, you’re on time!” a voice said to me before I knew I had been spotted. Kathy Leo strode toward me with her hand outstretched. “Nice to meet you. Come on back.”

  I was ushered through a maze of hallways, all buzzing with romance novel–related activity. Little clumps of people gathered together talking looked up with obvious curiosity at me as I walked by. Along one corridor we passed a lone young woman standing at a copying machine, staring mesmerized at the flashing light of the Xerox.

  My future, I thought.

  But it looked good! Earning money as a copying machine zombie sounded just fine. I’d take it.

  Kathy escorted me into an unadorned beige box of an office. Her desk had children’s pictures on it, a computer, and a Rolodex, but little else. “I showed your resume to the editorial director, Mercedes Coe, and she thought it looked good. Really good. So I want you to meet with her today. She’s got a meeting at one-thirty, but we should be able to just sneak you in.”

  “Great!” I said, wondering when she was going to ask how fast I could type. (I was prepared to lie.)

  “Good—let’s go.”

  And that was that. The next thing I knew, I was being led back through the maze again, until we arrived at what was clearly set up to be an outer office—a woman in her early twenties was sitting in front of a computer next to a door with a plaque that read Editorial Director. The absence of a name made me wonder if editorial directors came and went with such regularity it didn’t seem worth the effort.

  “Is she in?” Kathy asked.

  “She’s in,” the assistant said, giving me a quick visual going over. Her gaze seemed to linger on my Mao suit mono-bosom.

  Damn. I should have taken Fleishman’s advice and worn something else. The tricky part was, what would something else have been?

  Under her breath, the assistant started singing a bluesy song as I was shown into the office. “Stormy Weather.” I flicked a glance at her to see if there was some sort of message in it, but she seemed completely absorbed in whatever was on her computer screen.

  Inside the editorial director’s office, Kathy parked me in front of a desk that was a mass of stacked papers, pink message slips, paperback books, and yellow legal pads. Kathy made a quick introduction, and Mercedes Coe hopped up from her chair and came around.

  “Oh good! You’re here.”

  She was tall, slender, and wore a suit that was amazingly like the one I was wearing, only it was navy blue and looked a lot better on her. Her blond hair was swept up into some kind of coil on the back of her head, and her lips were bright red against her pale skin. Around her neck she had knotted a silk scarf in an elaborate stab at being Catherine Deneuve.

  “I have to be at a meeting at one-thirty,” Mercedes informed us.

  It was one-twenty already.

  “I told her you didn’t have much time,” Kathy said.

  “I’ve got a senior ed meeting,” Me
rcedes told me.

  Kathy left us alone, and I expected a rushed five minutes full of questions, after which I would be shown the door.

  Mercedes told me to take a seat, and then she lowered herself down in her leather desk chair. “I was very intrigued by your resume. Very intrigued,” she said, rifling through the mess on her desktop. “If I can find it…” she muttered. “Where did it scamper off to?”

  I didn’t see it there.

  She lifted her shoulders. “Oh well! I suppose it’s times like these when one is glad to have a photographic memory.”

  I chuckled. I appreciate sarcasm.

  But her expression wiped the grin off my face. “No, really. I do,” she said, with a little roll of her eyes to let me know what a burden this kind of super intelligence could be at times. “That’s how I ended up graduating cum laude from Stanford. It couldn’t have been hard work, I assure you!” She laughed modestly, all the while staring pointedly at the Stanford diploma hanging on a wall to my right. “And you went to school…where?”

  I gave her the name of my private college in Ohio; it was a good school, a little liberal arts haven, but not that many people knew about it. We had no major sports team.

  “Small schools have great benefits,” Mercedes observed consolingly. “Your major was…?”

  “English literature,” I said.

  “Right! English lit.” She chuckled. “Now I remember—it seemed strange to me that you didn’t major in French, because you went on to work with Sylvie Arnaud. You were her ghostwriter-editor?”

  I gulped. Had I written that? I was prone to resume inflation—it’s hard not to be when you’re starting out with the flaccid balloon of resumes. “Well, some might say that I was something more like an all-around personal assistant.”