“He’s not Gabriella,” I said, because it was a safe answer, and true in every context. Neil had spoken to everyone in a natural, unthreatening way. If Gabriella had been there, she would have eviscerated him with lasers from her eyes.
“Did you hear he’s nixed the Versailles shoot?” Jake swore under his breath. “I know it’s shitty to complain about losing an all-expenses-paid trip to France, but that was supposed to be my crowning achievement here. I might have gotten a book deal.”
For over a year, Jake had been orchestrating a massive photo shoot at the Palace of Versailles. Designers had submitted special pieces. It all had been meant as a framework to showcase Jake’s essay on pre-Revolution French fashion and its influence on contemporary design.
“What?” I took him by the arm and pulled him aside, so we didn’t block the flow of traffic as the office resumed normal operations. “He’s cutting it?”
“No, he’s not cutting it.” Jake leaned his shoulder against the wall. “But we’re not going to France. His idea was to shoot on a set, with the models in Baroque frames. ‘The flavor of French nobility, without the expense of French nobility.’ And I can’t really say I blame him. I mean, if the magazine is doing poorly—”
“How poorly?” I interrupted. It was something I was dying to know. If Porteras was going down, why hadn’t we heard rumors about it? People were consistently rooting for us to fail, because we were, without a doubt, the top.
Jake frowned. “He didn’t say. I don’t think we’ll ever know the whole story.”
No, we probably wouldn’t. But that was no excuse for me to start thinking well of Neil Elwood. “Canceling the shoot is bullshit. That spread was your baby, and now this guy just comes along and stabs it in the throat?”
Jake’s frown deepened. “Ew.”
Okay, maybe I should have left out the baby stabbing. But I couldn’t stand it if Jake turned Team Neil in one day. I’d seen how everyone had gone from nervous about the fates of their jobs to being charmed by their charismatic new boss within seconds. It seemed unfair, and I was totally taking it personally.
“I am leaving!” Cassidy, one of the copy writers, pushed past us carrying a carton that appeared to hold her entire desk.
“Whoa, Cass, what’s wrong?” Jake caught her as she stalked by, and she whirled on us. I can only assume she was so full of venom that it had to go somewhere. The fact that we were the ones who milked her fangs was just bad luck.
“I am not going to work for him! I came here to work for Gabriella Winters.” She lifted her chin a bit when she said that holy name. “Where’s the prestige in working for a magazine owned by the same people who publish three major tabloids and All Woman Weekly? That’s a fat people magazine!”
Cassidy could drag “fat people” into several syllables by extending the consonants. She said it like, “fffffffat peopllllle,” as though her rage over their very existence caused a chronic speech impediment.
I thought of all the size twenty-eight dresses hanging in my mom’s closet at home, and I realized I wouldn’t miss Cassidy all that much.
But she did have one good point. Porteras wasn’t just a fashion magazine, it was the fashion magazine. It was fashion, and what got printed in its revered pages dictated what was worn by the Western world. Would it still be respected and admired by the people who mattered if it shared a parent company with magazines that paid top dollar for paparazzi shots of pregnant celebrities in bikinis?
I went back to my desk and checked my itinerary for the day. A lot of stuff got crossed off by virtue of my boss not being my boss anymore. I wouldn’t be driving Gabriella’s dog, Empress Catherine, to her pedicure. I wouldn’t be attending a luncheon meeting with the Calvin Klein advertising people either, which was a shame. I leaned my elbows on my desk and contemplated Penelope’s empty one across from mine. Where the hell was she?
My iPhone alerted me to a new text. I didn’t recognize the number, but I could guess who it came from when it said: May I see you in my office?
I rose and took a deep breath. I hadn’t even realized Neil was behind the closed door. Probably in there with the testosterone brigade, still.
When I knocked, Neil called, “Come in.”
I stepped into the office, and my mood flipped from relieved that his goon squad wasn’t with him to dread that I was in his office with him, alone. As nerve-wracking as it was to speak to him in front of people, it was even worse on my own. He didn’t appear to be uncomfortable at all. His jacket was off, his sleeves were unbuttoned and rolled up, and he smiled at me with genuine warmth as I stood in front of him.