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Mercury in Retrograde Page 5


  “I’m just stocking up for the May season.”

  “Off the rack?” Bitsy sneered. “I’m surprised. Shocked, really.”

  “Well, I have some lovely couture and vintage dresses at home,” Lipstick said.

  “Of course you do. Just be careful. If you buy off the rack, someone could show up wearing the same dress as you. And that would be even more of a disaster than the time you wore that Lagerfeld dress to two events and then tripped and fell in front of everyone.” Bitsy smirked as her phone started ringing. “Oops! It’s Thad, have to go.” Lipstick flinched at the sound of her ex-boyfriend’s name. Enjoying the look of pain on Lipstick’s face, Bitsy continued, “So nice seeing you, Lena, and”—waving a hand in Ashley’s direction—“you.”

  “Okay, what was that about?” Ashley said, as Bitsy disappeared into the Chloé boutique at the other end of the floor. “You are way cooler than her and have an actual paying job with a magazine she kills herself to get into. You should be making her squirm, not the other way around. Not to mention she stole your ex-boyfriend!”

  “Thanks for the reminder—I forgot about that,” Lipstick said, making her way toward a cash register. “Ever since that sleepover in the seventh grade when Bitsy and her friends locked me out on her mother’s balcony on the sixty-fifth floor and said they ‘lost me’ until the next morning, it was kind of game over. It was some sort of power play, and she won. It’s been like that for years.”

  “That’s ridiculous! Who wasn’t a bitch in middle school?” Ashley said.

  “I know, but Bitsy acts like she needs to put me in my place on a regular basis. I know it sucks, but that’s the way it is.”

  “Why do you even put up with Bitsy and her friends? They’re truly horrible. I mean, they all act like they’re thirteen. Like Mean Girls is on repeat in their heads. I can’t believe she ignores me. My mother’s family used to rule Italy, for chrissake!”

  “I’ve known her since I was two,” Lipstick said, piling her dresses on the counter. “Her parents are friends with my parents and we were debutantes together. I have to be careful. She pretty much rules our world. If I piss her off, she could make things very difficult for me.”

  “You could make things difficult for her,” Ashley said as they waited for the salesgirl to tally up the five dresses Lipstick was buying. “What if you stopped writing about her? You’d cut off her oxygen supply. And see how long Thad stays with her if he thought she had no juice!”

  “She’d still find a way to get in the magazine—through Jack or Muffie.” Lipstick sighed. “Either way, that’s just how it is. There’s a social pecking order, and she’s the reigning queen of the under-thirty crowd. I don’t really care, it’s just part of my job. It’s not like I actually hang out with her or the other Bitsies…much.”

  “The total is $35,572, miss,” the saleslady cut in.

  Lipstick rummaged in her tote and pulled out a black American Express card. “Here you go,” she said, handing it to the saleslady. “So anyway, do you want to go to Barneys? Maybe they’ve heard of that cream there.”

  “Nah,” Ashley said. “I’ll just call it a day. Arthur is getting home early, and I think he may want to have sex.” Arthur Winksdale was Ashley’s husband of two years. Every other Friday he came home early from his job as an accountant to have sex, despite his wife’s obvious lack of interest. “I mean, I know some people like it, but it’s just so…messy,” Ashley said.

  “Miss,” the saleslady cut in again.

  “Yes?” Lipstick asked.

  “The card’s been declined. Do you have another one, perhaps?”

  “That’s impossible,” Lipstick said, “it’s a black card. They don’t get declined. Can you call, please? It’s probably the strip. I always forget to put it back in my wallet, and it gets all scratched up.”

  As the saleslady picked up the phone, Lipstick looked up and went pale.

  “What’s wrong?” Ashley said. “You look sick.”

  “It’s Bitsy,” Lipstick whispered through clenched teeth, making sure her mouth didn’t move. “She’s over there, behind that rack of Prada skirts. I think she heard my card get declined.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Ashley said. “She’s on the phone and too self-centered to notice anything but her own reflection.”

  “Okay, maybe you’re ri—”

  “Miss,” the saleslady cut in again. “They say your card’s been deactivated.”

  “Shhhh!” Lipstick hissed. “Okay, okay, try this card.” She pulled out a Visa.

  Two cards later, it was clear that for some reason all of Lipstick’s credit cards had been canceled, and Bitsy, who was off the phone by now, was walking toward them.

  “Oh my God,” Lipstick cried. “Put them on hold—I’ll be back tomorrow to pick them up. Don’t do anything with those dresses!”

  “Everything okay, Lena?” Bitsy purred.

  “Fine, Bitsy—I’m just not sure about the dresses,” Lipstick said. “I think you may be right after all. Buying off the rack may be too risky.”

  “It always is,” Bitsy agreed, giving Lipstick a little smirk.

  Lipstick grabbed Ashley and the two ran out of the store.

  SAGITTARIUS:

  Trying to fit your round self into a square hole hurts—and never works. Your blind optimism on a certain matter led you astray.

  The garbage bin had finally been brought to her office, and Dana was slowly sifting through the remnants of her former life. During her divorce, she hadn’t wanted to throw things like wedding albums, anniversary pictures, vacation snaps, and love notes out, but she’d also not wanted them in her new home, so her back office drawer had acted like a perverse storage bin. She didn’t tell many people what she’d undergone, but most of her coworkers surmised something had happened when she sent around an office email saying, “Henceforth I would like to be referred to, professionally and personally, as Dana Gluck.”

  A Tiffany-framed picture of her and Noah smiling happily into the camera made her tear up. Outwardly their relationship seemed so much like a cheesy Disney fairy tale that she often ignored signs of trouble that popped up every now and then. Noah, who was very supportive of her job at first, had a sudden about-face and pressured her to quit to focus on getting pregnant. Dana was okay with the pregnant part—she’d always wanted children—but she’d never wanted to be a housewife.

  “You’re never around,” he told her. “I like to have my wife here when I come home.”

  “I’m here four out of five weeknights,” Dana had countered. “I even got them to let me work from the apartment after five p.m., but Wednesdays are the big work nights and I have to stay until eight. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not like we need the money,” Noah said sulkily. “I make enough to support a family of ten. Not that we even have kids yet. Maybe something’s wrong with you. We had sex three times last week and you’re not pregnant.”

  “It’s not about the money,” Dana had answered. “I love my job. And believe me, without it, I’d be a mess. You wouldn’t want to come home to a bored mess every day, would you? And it’s not my fault I’m not pregnant. I want a baby as much, if not more, than you!”

  To make up for not being a housewife, Dana started getting up an hour earlier than usual, putting on a pot of coffee and making Noah breakfast (an egg-white omelet and seven-grain toast).

  For their first anniversary Noah got Dana a mini-dachshund puppy—which she promptly named Karl Gluck-Glickman—and said, “Until you can get pregnant with a real baby, this will have to do.” The subtle dig was hurtful, but Dana loved Karl, not just because he had been a gift but because Karl developed an instant dislike to almost everyone but Dana. He didn’t even like Noah. She should have known.

  Another source of tension was her weight. That first year of marriage she’d put on a few pounds, like so many other women do at that one-year mark, and started losing her permanent battle with the bulge. Not a lot, only twenty pounds, but enough to go
up several pants sizes. “The lettuce diet was wearing thin, and besides, everyone gains weight the first year of marriage. It’s normal! And Noah said he didn’t care how I looked,” Dana told her yoga teacher and friend, Sally Brindle, one day after yoga class as she ate her second chocolate croissant during Sunday brunch at Le Pain Quotidien in Tribeca.

  “Yeah, right. See how long that lasts,” Sally said. She had seen her fair share of clients deal with men and weight issues in the past.

  “Getting plump,” Noah would comment, which always made Dana blush. She would laugh it off and comment on his growing gut, but she ran to Sally’s yoga studio the next morning after she’d made him breakfast and before heading to the office. In addition to yoga, she started attending Weight Watchers every Tuesday evening to shed the pounds that offended Noah so much.

  Six months before they split up, Noah started nudging Dana out of the house on weekends, claiming, “I need my alone time, and you need to go to Weight Watchers.”

  “Weight Watchers is on Tuesdays, and you don’t have to shove me out of my own house every night!” Dana shot back. “You say you want me home, so I’m home. Now you want me to leave?”

  “You were so hot when we first met.”

  “I was borderline anorexic.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I think I still look hot.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  LIBRA:

  Pay attention to dark omens, especially ones from your past.

  In the cab downtown Ashley looked at Lipstick, who was sweating despite the freezing temperatures outside.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah, thanks,” Lipstick said, slumped in the seat of the cab. “Bitsy just freaks me out.”

  “No, I mean, are you okay—what’s with the credit cards being declined?”

  “Oh, Mommy probably lost her purse again and canceled all the cards. She always forgets to tell them to only cancel her cards—and not mine as well. No big deal. I’ll just call her when I get home. But what a time to cancel! This will be all over the Upper East Side by dinnertime. Bitsy has a bigger mouth than the East River. I’m mortified.”

  “Forget her,” Ashley said as the cab passed under the shadow of the Empire State Building.

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Besides, she’s still mad that Cavalli gave me first look at his line last year, before her. Even if it was skanky.”

  But the unsettling feeling in Lipstick’s stomach wouldn’t go away.

  Any run-in with Bitsy was a bad run-in. Not only was Bitsy pure spite, but it reminded Lipstick of Thad, whom her parents, she was convinced, had liked even more than their own flesh and blood daughter. Lana Lippencrass, who was as devoted to the website Socialstatus.com as Lipstick—if not more—was furious that Lipstick had dumped Thad and that he was now dating Bitsy. As if somehow, despite her breeding and pedigree, something was so wrong with her daughter—and therefore her—that someone from the Newton family would choose a Farmdale over a Lippencrass.

  Lipstick’s father, Martin, was irked as well. Thad’s parents had sponsored his membership to the ever-exclusive Southridge Golf Club in the Hamptons, and when Lipstick dumped Thad, his parents dumped Martin.

  The whole encounter with Bitsy brought back bad feelings for Lipstick, which she normally didn’t like to think about at all, thank you very much. A black cat had crossed her path and she felt uneasy, as if it were an omen of doom.

  3

  SCORPIO:

  Sudden and disturbing speech outbursts could affect your professional life and a collision with Capricorn will cause you to examine your internal side. Literally.

  As she approached Martman’s office, Penelope could see Thatcher inside, slumped over in a chair opposite Martman’s desk, his flannel shirt lifted up. He was inspecting the contents of his belly button.

  “Mercury, take a seat,” Martman said as he shut his office door, pointing to the free chair next to Thatcher. Martman sat in the Posturepedic chair he had special-ordered a year ago to remedy his sciatica. Behind his desk the walls were covered in front-page Telegraph exclusives that had all been meticulously framed and lovingly hung by Martman’s loyal secretary, Rosario, who guarded the three-by-four-foot area outside Martman’s office like a rabid pit bull. On top of Martman’s oak desk, which wrapped around the entire back half of the office, was his collection of beer steins that he swore he’d collected from around the world, but which looked suspiciously like the Global Beer Stein Collection in the Franklin Mint ads in the back of the National Enquirer.

  “Now,” Martman said, clearing his throat, “I brought you two in here because you’ve both asked me about Kershank’s job.”

  Both? Penelope thought. Thatcher wants Kershank’s job? He never said anything, he doesn’t do anything, and there is no deli by the courthouse that serves Philly beef and Swiss sandwiches.

  “Mercury,” Martman said, leaning back in his chair, with his hands together as if in prayer and the tips of his fingers tapping against his mouth. “You’re a great city reporter and are semidependable—which is more than I can say about ninety percent of the rest of the newsroom.”

  “Semi? But—” Penelope stammered.

  “Now hold on there, cowgirl. I’m not done,” Martman said, resting his hands palms down on the desk in front of him and staring closely at her. “I value your work. Thatcher, you too. You’re great at rewrite. Your desk smells and you look like hell, but I’m a man of my word.”

  Man of his word? A warning bell rang through the layers of fuzziness in Penelope’s head. When did that happen? And word for what?

  “I promised you this job when I hired you away from the Daily News last year,” Martman said, looking at Thatcher. “I also remember telling my mother, your aunt, something to that effect as well. Which is why, after long deliberations, I’ve decided to let you cover Manhattan courts. Mercury, the next opening is yours.”

  “Whad?” Penelope cried, leaping out of her chair. “Thad’s insane. You told be I was the front-rudder—”

  “Sit down, Mercury,” Martman said, standing up.

  “Doh! Doh way…Thatcher? He doesn’t eben do eddythig!”

  Thatcher looked up and said, “Dude—not cool. Did you drink like a gallon of Hatorade all day?”

  “You habn’t eben seen be all day,” Penelope yelled back, “because I’be been out freezing id the snow od a wild goose chase for doh dood reason!”

  What came next happened in a kind of slow motion Penelope had previously assumed occurred only in Michael Bay movies or The A-Team reruns.

  Martman kept talking. “…an important asset to the Telegraph…blah blah blah…a real star…blah blah blah…Thatcher…seniority…blah blah blah…he threatened to call my mother who’s a real bitch if he didn’t get the job…blah blah…You can be in the office more and do rewrite…” but Penelope couldn’t follow what he was saying due to a strange buzzing in her ears.

  The buzzing reached a crescendo as Martman was extolling the virtues of doorstepping, and Penelope became increasingly dizzy as her forehead started throbbing anew. “I deed to sit down,” she said—which, in the arduous trek from her brain to her mouth, was retranslated and somehow came out as, “Fug you, I quit.”

  Martman cut off his speech midsentence.

  Oops, Penelope thought as her eyes crossed and she swayed with nausea.

  Her boss’s face turned an alarming shade of purple.

  She tried to walk to a chair as Martman blocked her path. He started screaming incoherently, spittle flying everywhere. “Fuck you? Fuck me? No way, sister, fuck you!…Blah blah…Fuck that!…Blah blah…fucking fired…get the fuck out…blah blah blah…”

  It was then that Thatcher sniffed the air and said, “Hey, you guys smell smoke?”

  A fire alarm suddenly went off and someone yelled, “The photo studio’s on fire!”

  Smoke poured from the end of the office where the smoking studio was and the sprinkler system was triggered, spraying a light rain
all over the office.

  Martman, still berating Penelope, was screaming with renewed vigor as droves of editors and reporters got up and ran for the fire exits.

  Penelope wiped Martman’s spittle off her face and, trying to push past him out of his office, mumbled, “Martman, move,” as a tidal wave of her vomit erupted out of her mouth, covering him.

  Martman froze as the remnants of the leftover lo mein Penelope had consumed the night before slid down his face and spackled his dark gray Men’s Wearhouse suit. He uttered a high, girlish screech and, shoving her out of the way, ran for the men’s room.

  As he disappeared around the bend, Penelope had her last semicoherent thought of the day: Get out now.

  LIBRA:

  Mercury is focusing on your home and family issues, and the supply of your everyday needs…

  Lipstick dropped Ashley off at her Gramercy Park town house and made it home as the winter sun disappeared early and the sky turned jet black. She walked up the stairs to the front door of the brownstone and straight back into her parlor floor apartment.

  “Home,” she said as she sighed and sank into the leather armchair in the front room. Lipstick loved this apartment—almost as much as she loved Lagerfeld. The two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment was meticulously decorated by her favorite designer and friend, Neal DuBoix, who also designed the garden and the terrace off the kitchen at the back of the parlor floor. The first floor had dark brown floors, light gray walls, and brown and khaki furnishings. The small entryway held a petite black lacquer table, on which she always threw her keys, bag, and mail, and was next to the dark leather nailhead armchair that had come from her mother’s grandfather’s study. Above it hung an oil painting of her in Valentino couture as the debutante of the year, 1997, at the Le Bal Crillon des Debutantes in Paris. The portrait of her, two years later, at the New York debutante gala, The New York Infirmary Ball at the Waldorf Astoria, hung above the fireplace in the living room. She had again worn Valentino but lost out on Deb of the Year to Bitsy Farmdale, whose mother was rumored to have rigged the jury.