The Regulars Read online

  Evie pinched the skin between her eyes. She could not get last night’s date out of her head. Quinn’s words circled, obsessively, dementedly on repeat. “What you spend most of your time doing is actually what you do.” If this was true, and Evie was pretty sure it was, then she really was nothing more than an overworked underling who made second-rate sexual puns.

  Maybe it was time to raise the bar.

  The monthly features meeting for what would be the November issue took place in a glass-walled conference room. Salty’s various section editors, the art team, and the other copyeditors were seated around a large oval table. Evie hovered next to the fashion editors, Gemma and Rose, breakable china dolls who lived on cigarettes and green tea. “Can I squeeze in next to you? I need to be close to the door in case of a snack-related emergency.” They both gave Evie a smile that didn’t reach their teeth or eyes, and wordlessly slid their chairs over to make room. A bone-deep feeling of being the odd one out—the last one picked for dodgeball, the first one to volunteer to be the designated driver in order to score an invite—resurfaced. Evie took a seat, reminding herself to stop making jokes with her coworkers.

  The empty seat at the head of the table was reserved for Jan Stilton, their editor-in-chief. The table tensed as she stalked in, a bone-thin, no-bullshit fortysomething wearing lightweight camel cashmere and a dark, chilly lipstick. In her editor’s letter, Jan came across as bubbly and celebratory as champagne. In reality, she was coolly impressive and generally terrifying, like a high-end meat cleaver. She was also extremely British. “Beauty.” Jan indicated Bethany. “Let’s start with you.”

  Bethany clacked ten tangerine-colored fingernails together in breathy excitement. “ ‘Law of the Jungle.’ ‘Survival of the Fabbest.’ How to do a perfect smoky cat eye. How to get hair as thick as a lion’s mane.”

  Ella-Mae thought out loud. “Something on Amazonian clay mud masks?”

  “There’s a new range of henna hair color that’s inspired by that lost tribe they just found,” Bethany added. “The ones who didn’t have language. I thought that could work.”

  “Speak to Carmen in Marketing,” Jan said. “Might get a spend with Revlon’s winter campaign.”

  One by one the section editors pitched Jan their ideas, to which she mostly nodded, firing off suggestions and only occasionally screwing up her face into a no way expression. (Jan waged a war on wrinkles, so these were far and few between.)

  Of all the section editors, Evie thought Entertainment had the best gig. Salty’s name got them into every event in town. Next week, they were going to the launch of Milk Teeth, the fifth novel by Velma Wolff, Evie’s favorite writer. Evie wasn’t that surprised when Jan approved running a few photos from the launch. Not because Velma’s books won awards, because she dated Victoria’s Secret models. Every semifamous lesbian on the East Coast would be there. This fit Salty’s idea of diversity. Famous, gorgeous queer women whom straight women would tweet about turning gay for.

  The only section editor not to have any of her pitches rejected was the sex and love editor, Crystal. She’d been at the magazine for ten years and read her notes with the vaguely bored air of someone discussing a weekly shopping list. “ ‘The Secret Sex Move Even Your Best Friend Won’t Admit She’s Doing,’ and that’s getting fucked up the ass wearing a blindfold.” A nod from Jan. “ ‘Rethinking Oral Sex,’ subhead ‘Hint: You’re Doing It Wrong,’ and that’ll be something about suction.” Another nod. “And ‘What He’ll Never Admit He Wants You to Do.’ And that’s sexify his favorite childhood cartoon, so he can fuck you dressed as Wilma Flintstone or April from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.”

  “Very nice,” said Jan, and everyone nodded in thoughtful approval.

  After going through the freelance pitches that had come in to fill the ten feature spots, Jan announced they still needed one more story. “Any ideas?”

  This was the cue for open discussion. Anyone at the table could make a suggestion. Evie had never had the courage to speak up. She cleared her throat. “Uh, I have a couple ideas.”

  A table of startled meerkats. En masse, every head swiveled in her direction.

  “Evie.” Jan sounded as surprised as everyone else looked. “Yes?”

  Evie held up a color printout. The table collectively eewwed in perverse delight. It was the most recent picture of former child star Lucy De La Mar, whose obsession with plastic surgery had resulted in a lopsided Frankenface. The candid snapshot Evie was holding had recently made the media rounds, with every commentator taking the chance to bemoan how she’d taken her “upkeep” too far.

  “What’s the angle?” Ella-Mae wondered. “Good nose jobs gone bad?”

  “We defend her,” Evie said. “The media had a field day with this. But what’s interesting is the double standard. Women are told that being beautiful gives us value. But if the pursuit of this compulsory beauty backfires, as it must do because it’s an impossible ideal, the media attacks.”

  “But she’s so vain, look at how much work she’s had done,” sniffed Rose.

  “But don’t you think that’s social pressure? It’s unfair. It’s like when you let your roots get too long, and everyone calls you Stripey.”

  “Who calls me Stripey?” Rose looked shocked.

  “No one,” hissed Ella-Mae, glaring at Evie.

  “Next.” Jan’s voice was ice.

  Evie swallowed. “I have one more. It’s a feature on how women use social media in protest movements.”

  Jan arched an eyebrow. “Okay,” she said carefully.

  Evie warmed with the borderline encouragement. “We start with female Saudi activists who post videos of themselves driving on YouTube. Maybe ‘Driving Miss Dhuka’ or ‘In the Driver’s Seat.’ Then we move on to the Arab Spring—”

  “Ooh!” Bethany perked up. “A spa feature? Like something that rates the top five day spas?”

  “No,” Evie said. “The Arab Spring uprising. The protests in the Arab world that started in 2010.”

  The table morphed into a circle of frowning, doubtful faces.

  “Women faced pretty intense backlash, even from their fellow fighters,” Evie said. “But they were vital participants, especially online. There’s some really awesome bloggers we could reach out to.”

  Gemma fluttered her eyelashes, voice whispery-soft. “That sounds . . . kind of depressing.”

  “It’s important,” Evie said. “It’s something that matters to women.”

  “Right,” said Bethany. “But so do day spas.”

  “Yeah, I think we all liked the day spa idea,” added Ella-Mae, scribbling a note.

  “That wasn’t one of my ideas!” Evie caught herself, tried to reestablish calm. “Guys, this issue is looking great, and I cannot wait to tell some guy he can fuck me while dressed as Smurfette, but maybe we can have a mix of ideas.”

  “A mix of ideas?” Jan asked.

  “Yeah!” Evie exclaimed. “Maybe we can have an opinion on current events and all the sexist shit that’s happening in the world. Maybe it’s time to raise the bar.”

  Crickets.

  Pissed-off crickets.

  Ella-Mae sat back in her chair with a squeaky little huff while Gemma and Rose exchanged incredulous glances.

  “Raise the bar—” Bethany began repeating caustically before Jan interrupted her.

  “Evie, let’s see a one-page on America’s best day spas,” she said. “Big cities only. Great work today, everyone.” She stood, gathering her phone and notebook. Evie sat without moving. Fingers of unease dug under her collar. “And Evie.” Jan addressed her from the doorway, face unreadable. “Pop by my office on your way out today.”

  That had been a mistake.

  A huge fucking mistake.

  5.

  The view from Jan’s office rendered New York picturesque and harmless; the city you wanted it to be as opposed to the city it was. As Jan finished up a phone call, Evie wondered if this was the last time she could hold Manhat
tan at such an arm’s length. Krista was chronically unemployed; she was practically allergic to work. And Willow had never worked a day in her life, beyond short-lived waitress stints to try to prove she could make it on her own. Evie couldn’t lose this job. It was an adult job, with adult benefits and adult prospects. Having grown up with a single mom, she saw how important each and every shift was to make ends meet. She’d been unemployed for four stressful months in New York before getting the offer to come in for the copyeditor interview, her previous summer interning stint thankfully paying off. The anonymity of being just another arts graduate in a city that was choked with them hadn’t just been depressing—it’d been frightening.

  Salty had been a life raft. And sure, the magazine was mostly dumb, and yes, it was copyediting, not actually writing. But it was for a magazine even her granddad had heard of, owned by one of the biggest media companies in the world. And now she might have gotten herself fired.

  Evie fidgeted, fighting growing panic. How desperate did you have to be before sex work was an option? Evie had tried phone sex last winter: one of Krista’s Craigslist temp jobs. When the guy on the other end asked what she liked, Evie blurted out, “Star Wars!” and hung up.

  Jan ended her call. “Sorry about that—”

  “Am I fired?” Evie all but yelled the question. “Because, uh, that would be denying me natural justice.” Her memory flapped about, trying to piece together Krista’s various just-got-sacked rants. “I don’t believe my behavior qualified as ‘gross misconduct,’ and if you take a look at the terms of my employment—”

  “I’m not firing you, Evie.” Jan tented her fingertips, the shadow of a smile on her mouth. “I just want to talk. Are you happy here?”

  “Yes,” Evie said. “Of course.”

  “I don’t mean, are you happy getting a paycheck,” Jan qualified. “I mean, are you happy here? Do you like it? Do you like the magazine?”

  Evie was expecting Jan to be her usual terrifying self. She twisted a little. “Can I be honest?”

  Jan gestured in front of her, as if to say, be my guest.

  “Salty has, what, three million readers?”

  “Three and a half.”

  “That’s an amazing platform. That’s so many people! It just feels to me like we could really make a difference for girls. Women. Women girls. If it was a bit more . . .”

  “A bit more what?”

  Evie squirmed. Her face had gone hot. “Well, feminist, I guess.”

  “You don’t think Salty is feminist?”

  “No,” Evie said. “I think it’s the opposite. Salty is just sex and shopping.”

  Jan regarded her thoughtfully. “What does feminism mean to you? What does it do for girls? For women?”

  Evie answered with the ease of someone who had attended approximately six million Women’s Action Collective meetings during her four years at Sarah Lawrence. “Empowers them.”

  “Makes them feel good about themselves,” Jan said. “Liberated. Independent.”

  “Sure.”

  Jan scooped up a copy of the current issue. Lauren Conrad simpered at them both from the glossy front cover, one cherry-red fingernail hooked into the plunge of a V-neck T-shirt to reveal a surprising amount of cleavage (Photoshop). For a magazine that generally shunned lesbianism, the cover shots were always confusingly erotic. Readers were supposed to emulate Lauren, never—despite her come-hither pout, her touch-me-now parted lips—feel anything other than friendly affection or requisite jealousy.

  Weird.

  Jan said, “Tell me what you see here.”

  Cover lines screamed in neon orange: fashion crazed, hysterically horny. Evie read them aloud with a heavy dollop of infomercial enthusiasm. “ ‘Eight MUST-HAVE Boots for Fall!’ ‘How to Make Him BEG FOR IT.’ ”

  Jan tapped at one of the largest ones: “ ‘Good Vibes: How to Buy YOUR FIRST VIBRATOR!’ ” She cocked a neatly plucked eyebrow at Evie.

  Evie had to stop herself from rolling her eyes. “I don’t think owning a dildo will start the revolution.”

  “I don’t think most girls want a revolution,” Jan said, sounding amused. “I think they want a publication where a healthy sexual appetite is celebrated. I think they want a magazine that teaches them to give and receive sexual pleasure the way sex should be: fun. Adventurous. Nonjudgmental. Where else do you go for that? The internet’s a pervy shitshow. You’re not going to ask Mum about it. And your friends are probably as clueless as you are, with a collective sexual history of getting fingerbanged at a frat party.” This almost sounded like a fond recollection. “I think they want a publication that celebrates the fact that girls love shopping. Fuck what the boys think. Fuck what their parents think. Our magazine says you can spend the money you earned yourself any damn way you like, and here’s some options we think are pretty fab. Because that’s what feminism did for women. It made us sexually liberated and financially independent. I think,” Jan finished, “sex and shopping are empowering for our readers.”

  Evie was speechless. Instinctively, she didn’t agree with Jan. But she couldn’t work out why not. Somehow, what her editor was saying made sense.

  Jan continued, “If you want to work for Jezebel, go work for Jezebel. But if you want to stay here, I need you on my side.” Jan leaned forward across the desk. Her voice was soft and proper. “Our brand is sex and shopping. If you want to work for Salty, you need to embrace that. Can you do that, Evie?”

  Evie willed herself to say no. No. That if Jan wasn’t interested in broadening the conversation, in writing about things that mattered—in yes, raising the bar—she was out of there. Because there comes a time in every girl’s—in every woman’s—life when you have to stand up for what you believe in. When you side with morals over money, when you put your foot down and say, “Goddammit. I am not going to take it anymore.”

  This, unfortunately, was not one of those times.

  “Yes,” Evie said. “Of course.”

  “Good. Look, you’re a great copyeditor and I want you to be happy. I know the spa special isn’t exactly what you had in mind. But there might be something coming up you could help with. Have you heard about Extra Salt?”

  Evie had, vaguely. It was something the digital team was doing: short biweekly webisodes.

  “We might need some help researching the stories,” Jan said. “Depending on who we cast as a host. Some of the girls have a background in journalism. And some are just . . .” She made a twirly motion with her hand.

  “Pretty faces,” Evie finished.

  “Less experienced.”

  “So if you cast a pretty face without experience, there might be a job in it for me.”

  “Exactly,” Jan said. “Just short term—don’t go burning any more bridges yet.”

  Evie smiled grimly at her feet.

  “We’re casting tomorrow and Thursday, up on thirty-nine,” Jan continued. “Pop by when you get in.”

  Evie tried hard to feel excited about this. A new opportunity, a new challenge. But for some reason, she could summon no such spark. How could this be anything other than more of the same? “Okay. I will.”

  Jan’s eyes slid back to her computer screen. “Thank you.” The lyrical dismissal signaled Evie’s departure. “And Evie?”

  She paused in the doorway. “Yes?”

  For a second, her editor was just a tiny slip of a woman with incredible bone structure. Hardly threatening at all. “We are doing good work here. You know that, right?”

  6.

  “Turn your face toward the light a little.”

  Mark obeyed and moved his head a quarter inch.

  “Mmm. Yep. Good.”

  Willow’s camera shutter clicked languidly, the sound of a long exposure.

  Mark tried not to move his mouth. “Are you getting the full glory of my Jew nose?”

  “It’d be hard not to,” Willow murmured.

  Mark grinned and took a swipe at her with his foot, managing to hook her in
to him, pulling her between his legs. He was sitting on a stool in front of a bedsheet Willow had hung up, creating the makeshift studio. A layer of incense smoke wafted close to the ceiling, visible in the afternoon light. Even though Willow’s bedroom overlooked Central Park, she’d covered all the windows in swaths of material.

  The photographs weren’t working. Why not? Willow tried to lull her mind, to have it find whatever it was that directed her hand when she decorated her space. The velvet-covered bed, junky old lamps, and collection of pinned butterflies looked less like a girl’s bedroom and more like the studio of a 1920s poet. Creating it hadn’t been deliberate: it just came into being. But the room’s unearthly aura was eluding her now, refusing to present its essence in Mark’s expressions. Maybe it was the fact he was here. Watching her.

  The palpable sensation of failure rose in her throat. She swallowed to tamp it down. The thought of Mark offering encouragement right now would only make everything worse. There wasn’t a new series idea here. Why did inspiration keep eluding her? Why couldn’t she see a way forward?

  Mark pressed his face between Willow’s small breasts, glasses pushing back against his cheeks. He inhaled deeply and let his breath out with a muted groan. She could tell he was getting turned on. He spoke into her chest. “Tell me something I don’t know about you.”

  Her phone chimed. She stepped out of Mark’s arms to reach for it. A text, from Evie. Just got off subway by you. Krista didn’t get commercial and is in weird mood: only wine can save us now! Willow looked back at Mark. His gaze was too intense for her to sink into it like she knew he wanted her to. Instead, Willow let her eyes drift over his thick eyebrows, down his jaw, and up over the tiny, star-shaped chicken pox scar on his temple. “I got my period today.”

  “I don’t care.” Mark’s response was immediate. “I really don’t.”

  Willow shifted the heavy camera from one hand to the other awkwardly. “I do.”