For All the Wrong Reasons by Louise Bagshawe

den, with the extensive his-and-hers Rolodexes. Somewhere among those exclusive hairdressers and flavor-of-the-month manicurists were her old numbers from London; if she made a few calls she could get an excellent list of contacts and just go from there. Within a week, Diana exulted, I’ll have a wonderful job and he won’t be so certain of me anymore.
    She pressed the kitchen buzzer and told the cook to make duck a l’orange, Ernie’s favorite, for dinner tonight. No need for a big scene. She hadn’t got her job lined up yet. Besides, Milla was probably 100 percent right. Ernie was faithful. Diana decided that maybe she’d misunderstood the call this morning. Maybe it was a business acquaintance. Ernie loved to make money, and she loved him to make money. I can’t blame him for working hard, Diana said sedately to herself. She looked around the opulent, barely used little den, and past the mahogany walking-cane case out to her flagstone-floored hallway, with its gilt-framed paintings and subtle sconce lights on the walls. She was living in paradise here. Why rock the boat?
    *   *   *
    â€œBut I don’t understand,” Diana protested. The managing editor’s office was immaculately decorated in tasteful white, with framed covers and black-and-white photographs of models. “You’ve seen my portfolio of work for Vogue. Why isn’t there anything for me?”
    â€œI keep trying to tell you, Mrs. Foxton.” Kathy Lybrand leaned forward, her long-nailed bony fingers folded one over the other. “We prefer single girls here at City Woman, and besides, you’re about five years too old for our magazine.”
    Diana swallowed both her anger and her pride. She was getting the run-around, and it had been the same way at American Vogue, Glamour, Marie Claire, Elle and all the other major fashion mags that she had targeted over the last fruitless week. She, Diana Foxton, was “too old.” At twenty-nine! She wasn’t about to go crawling to some old dowdy Redbook - or Family Circle –type thing. Besides which, Diana had a sinking feeling that, even if she changed her mind, the answer there would still be no.
    â€œCan I be frank?”
    â€œCertainly,” Diana snapped. “Why stop now?”
    Kathy gave her the smile of a feeding cobra and plowed right on. “You’re a society wife, Mrs. Foxton, and that’s just great for you. At City Woman we like our assistants to be hungry, ambitious and driven.”
    â€œI’m driven,” Diana said, annoyed.
    â€œYes—by your chauffeur.” Kathy chuckled at her own joke. “It’s hard to find a girl who’s excited about sweating her way up to a contributing editor position on thirty to forty thousand a year when that’s about your yearly budget for clothes.”
    My yearly budget for clothes is a lot more than that, Diana thought, rather spitefully.
    â€œIn conclusion, if you want to find something to fill your time, might I suggest that you do whatever the other Fifth Avenue wives do—volunteer to organize charity balls and luncheons and write letters to Town & Country, ” the businesswoman added with a sneer. “Although I never saw why they didn’t just give away the money to charity and add on the cost of hosting the thing. Perhaps that’s because of the lack of paparazzi involved in just writing a check.”
    â€œThank you for your speculations,” Diana said crisply. “I’d rather you kept them to yourself.”
    â€œI dare say you would.” Kathy tapped her long nails on the desk. “I’d rather you didn’t waste my time in the office just because you once had my boss to dinner. Lots of people need the job you’re asking for to put bread on their tables— and they have a passion to work. That’s the kind of people we’re looking for.”
    Completely discomfited, Diana sprang to