Little Pink Slips by Sally Koslow Page A

suspected that at
    Scary, Natalie Simon, for example, was first among equals and earned
    at least $200,000 more than she did.
    What a lot of bunk, Magnolia thought. Even if her title became Your
    Royal Highness, everyone in her world would read the invisible ink and
    know that Bebe was running the show. Still, she would like to stay a
    chief, and if her title hadn't been decided yet, perhaps she could bargain
    for it later. If Jock had a pixel of guilt, she might get him to agree. She took the elevator down to her floor. Magnolia had wanted to
    announce the change to her staff personally, but when she walked
    into her office, she could tell from the hush that everyone already
    knew. A flock of assistants was already helping Sasha arrange her
    belongings in neat brown boxes for the move down the hall.
    Sasha pulled her aside and whispered a report. While Elizabeth
    had been delivering her orders to Magnolia, Jock had addressed the
    troops, using words like "eye candy" to describe Bebe, assuring editors
    that Bebe had a "dynamite idea" she'd explain herself. Later. When
    "later" he didn't say.
    "Did Jock mention me?" Magnolia asked Sasha when her helpers
    had left the office to replenish supplies. It humiliated Magnolia to be
    seeking information from her assistant, but she had to know. Sasha
    stopped unpinning Magnolia's elaborate bulletin board collage,
    which she was carefully dismantling and putting into folders.
    "He said you were totally behind the Bebe change, that you'd be
    working with her." Sasha paused and bit her lip.
       "Spit it out," Magnolia said.
       "I'll still work for you, right? I'm not going to have to work for her, am I?"
    Magnolia hated to admit she didn't know the answer to the ques
    tion almost as much as she hated the thought of losing Sasha. "We're
    working that out, Sash," she said, hoping Sasha would buy it. "Don't
    worry. Change is good."
    Magnolia walked to her new office and slumped at the desk. The
    space was cramped. The office's most unfortunate aspect, though, was
    that—inspired by newsrooms—one wall was transparent glass. The
    architect's fantasy might have been to motivate editors to feel like
    Lois Lane chasing the page one story, but for the staff who inhabited
    these quarters the primary activity seemed to be carping about lack of
    privacy. Magnolia knew her new office would make her feel like a
    monkey at the zoo.
    Cam knocked softly on her door. "There's no use talking about
    this," he said. "For now, I have the solution." "A brick wall?"
    "Getting hammered." Cameron enclosed Magnolia in a quick bear
    hug.
    In ten minutes, Cam and Magnolia were sitting at the bar at the
    Mesa Grill, and by six o'clock Magnolia had lost count of how many
    margaritas she'd downed. One by one, the wake expanded to include all of the top Lady edit staff—a very pregnant Phoebe Feinberg-Fitzpatrick, Fredericka von Trapp, Ruthie Kim, and several others.
    As the afternoon turned into evening, the digs about Bebe got deeper,
    and the jokes, increasingly lame. "Do you think she'll do a cat cover?"
    Phoebe Feinberg-Fitzpatrick asked while she absentmindedly pattered her pregnant tummy. " Catwoman, the prequel? Halle Barry, get out of town."
    "My fashion department can supply a red leotard," Ruthie suggested.
    "That would put the scary back in Scary," Cameron said. " Nein, " Fredericka said. "She'll vant boys on the cover. Young boys." "There could be a tagline: Where IQ doesn't count. "
    Magnolia realized she had to shut down the conversation. "We're
    going to make this work," she said, hoping she didn't sound as drunk
    as she was. "Celebrities are the future." At that, she whipped out her
    corporate AmEx card, paid the $350 tab, and escaped into a taxi. A
    half hour later, when she arrived home, her phone indicated fourteen
    phone messages. All were from editor pals, and except for Natalie
    Simon, she didn't return any of them. Nor did she reply to the dozens
    of "Oh, shit" e-mails.
    "Of course, you