Lipstick Jungle

“Thank you, darling,” she said, pressing the button for the elevator.

“You’re not sleeping over?” he asked.

Victory smiled and shook her head, thinking that that was his one concession to delicacy—he called spending the night “sleeping over,” like they were little kids. “Shouldn’t,” she said apologetically. “I’ve got an early flight to Dallas in the morning.”

“Take my plane,” he said, pressing her. “No one’s using it tomorrow. You’ll get there faster. You’ll save at least two hours . . .”

The offer was tempting, but she didn’t want to get in the habit of using Lyne for his private plane—or for anything else, for that matter.

“Sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “I prefer to get there under my own steam.”

Lyne looked insulted—he was probably more offended that she wasn’t going to take his plane than by the fact that she wasn’t going to sleep with him—and then he said coldly, “Suit yourself.”

He turned on his heel as if she were an employee he had just dismissed, and walked toward the stairs without a word of good-bye, leaving her to show herself out.

And the next morning, when the plane to Dallas was delayed on the runway for two hours due to air traffic control, she momentarily wished she had taken Lyne up on his offer of sex and his private jet. It would have made her life so much easier. Why should she have to sit on a runway for two hours with nothing to eat or drink, her fate in the hands of other people’s bad organization, if she didn’t have to? But Lyne’s offer would only have made her life smoother in the short run, she reminded herself sternly. She knew how easy it was to get used to Lyne’s style of living, and to get sucked into thinking that you were special and couldn’t live any other way. And from there, it was a slippery slope. Not just because that lifestyle could be snatched away in a second, but because of what you found yourself willing to do in order to keep it—like making the man your priority instead of your work.

Of course, that was probably what Lyne liked about her—the fact that she refused to put him before her work. She’d been convinced, once again, after that evening in which she’d turned down the offe

r of his plane, that she wouldn’t hear from him again, but Lyne was like a burr, she just couldn’t shake him. He seemed to have no recollection of those unpleasant moments between them—either that, or they simply didn’t affect him. In any case, he’d called two days later as if everything was fine, and had invited her to his house in the Bahamas for the weekend. She was exhausted, and figuring it would be nice to get away for a couple of days, she’d decided to take him up on his offer of a relaxing weekend . . .

Ha! “Relaxing weekend” was the biggest overstatement of the year, she recalled now, motioning to Ms. Smith to show her the diamond clip earrings. Lyne’s house on exclusive Harbour Island was beautiful, of course, with, as Lyne put it crudely, “hot and cold running servants.” Susan Arrow and her husband, Walter, had come as well, and on Friday afternoon, at five p.m., the four of them had piled into Lyne’s SUV for the ride to Teterboro Airport, where they took Lyne’s Learjet to the Bahamas. Victory had been shocked when she’d gotten in the car and found that Lyne’s assistant, Ellen, was coming too. This should have been a tip-off. The fact that Lyne refused to give Ellen two days off because he didn’t want to have to make his own arrangements over the weekend was not a good sign.

“If you work for me, it’s a twenty-four-seven job. Isn’t that right, Ellen?” Lyne said in the car on the way to the airport.

“That’s right, Lyne, we’re always working,” Ellen said pleasantly.

Lyne smiled, looking like a proud parent. “What do I always say about you, Ellen?”

Ellen caught Victory’s eye. “That I’m like a wife, but better.”

“That’s right,” he exclaimed. “And do you want to know why?” he asked Victory.

“Sure,” Victory said, beginning to wonder if this weekend was going to be a mistake.

“Because she can’t ever ask me for alimony.”

Ellen gave Victory a look.

“I always tell Ellen that I’ve got to treat her right or her hubby’s going to beat me up,” Lyne said, jiggling Victory’s hand to make sure she was paying attention. “He’s a cop.”

“He would just have you arrested,” Ellen said, correcting him. “And his name is Bill. Lyne never remembers his name,” she said to Victory. Victory nodded knowingly. In the few months she’d been dating Lyne, she and Ellen had become quite friendly. Lyne, Ellen explained, was a huge pain in the butt, but she put up with him because he had a good heart—and the enormous salary he paid her allowed her to send her two little boys to private school. The idea being that maybe someday they’d be rich themselves. Just like Lyne.

“That’s why I pay you $250,000 a year,” Lyne said. “So I don’t have to remember names.”

“He remembers the names of anyone who’s important, though,” Ellen pointed out.

“Aren’t men wonderful?” Susan Arrow sighed a little later when they were in the Learjet. “That’s what we women can’t forget. Can you imagine how boring the world would be without men? Frankly, I don’t know what I would do without my darling Walter.”

At that moment, “darling Walter,” who was at least sixty years old, was in a heated discussion with Lyne about the pros and cons of the latest hernia operation.

“What are you women talking about?” Lyne demanded, turning around in his seat and patting the top of Victory’s head.

“Only about how wonderful you men are,” Victory said.

“I know I’m wonderful, but I’m not sure about Lyne,” Walter said, making a joke.

“You know what they say: All men are assholes and all women are crazy,” Lyne cracked.