And she would pay for it now, because she was going to be late for her one thirty meeting with her bosses. She texted Sarah, her colleague and best friend since college.
R u in office? Could you tell bosses I’m in taxi & will be there in 10? They won’t mind too much if they have called meeting to promote me ha ha
Wendy tried to relax against the seat, scrolling through the thirty e-mail messages that had appeared on her phone in the ten minutes she’d spent on Zane’s dressing-down. But she willed the taxi to sprout wings and fly above the traffic to the Stargazer offices in Midtown. She would even pay extra. She hated being late. It was unprofessional, even though the time she’d stolen might have saved Zane’s career. And then she received an answering text from Sarah:
Done. Warning: bosses don’t seem happy.
As Wendy stared at the screen, her mind whirled with the possibilities. She’d been joking when she told Sarah she might get promoted, but she hadn’t thought it was out of the question. Could she be in trouble instead? Her methods might be unconventional sometimes, but she had a high success rate—despite Brad’s demise. In college she’d been second in her class among public relations majors, and the runner-up for the prestigious Clarkson Prize, awarded to the program’s most promising student. She did not get in trouble.
And she sounded just like Zane Taylor.
No, that was the jet lag talking. She desperately needed a fifth cup of coffee. Shaking her head to clear it, then pushing her hair behind her shoulders, she settled into her e-mail again, confident she could knock out half these messages before the taxi deposited her at Stargazer’s door. That would help free up her afternoon so she could deal with her other clients. They were counting on her to solve their problems, so she certainly didn’t have time to dwell on her own. Especially when they weren’t even real.
* * *
“I am very freaking likable!”
Wendy knew instantly she shouldn’t have said this to her three bosses across the conference room table. And she shouldn’t have said it so loudly.
Her direct supervisor, Katelyn, sat back in her leather chair and touched two manicured fingers to her perfect red lipstick, which had not smeared while she took dainty sips of coffee. Her supervisor, Jonathan, ducked his head and looked furtively over his shoulder at the Flatiron Building out the long bank of windows. But Archie, the head honcho of Stargazer PR, just put his chin in his big, hairy hand and scowled at Wendy, unflappable as ever.
She pretended she hadn’t noticed their reactions. She sipped her own coffee, trying her best to remain calm, though her blood pounded in her ears with over-caffeinated dread. She understood now that her bosses hadn’t called this meeting to talk strategy for Stargazer. They hadn’t brought her here to promote her, as she’d hoped, or even to talk her into representing Lorelei Vogel, the latest self-destructive client on the roster, as she’d feared. They’d ganged up on her so she wouldn’t pitch a fit—at least, not as much of one—when they fired her.
It had been ten years since Wendy had moved from West Virginia to Manhattan, coming for college and staying for her job with Stargazer. Now that she was losing her job, she didn’t have to move back to Morgantown. There was nothing left for her there. She wasn’t eighteen anymore, and she wasn’t vulnerable to Rick. But the way her panicked heart was racing, she might as well have been boarding the next bus back home.
“I mean,” she said, and her backtracking petered out. She’d already said what she’d meant. She did too much of that, which was her whole problem.
“Wendy,” Katelyn said, “you know we love you like a daughter.”
Wendy squinted at her. “A daughter you’re firing?”
“Yes!” Katelyn exclaimed. “If Arabella wasn’t up to snuff, I swear I’d hand her ass to her on a platter.” Her eyes shot sideways to Jonathan, who shook his head, warning of another outburst from Wendy. Taking the hint, Katelyn leaned forward across the table and patted Wendy’s hand soothingly. “Not that I’m trying to hand you your ass.”
Archie slouched diagonally in his chair with one ankle propped casually on the opposite knee. He punctuated each syllable with a plastic coffee spoon as he told Wendy, “You’re not really family, but we did want to make this as painless as possible for you, and this is the thanks we get?”
Gripping the arms of her chair, Wendy took a deep breath and said, “My job is to salvage the public images of stars who are about to go off the deep end. I’m dragging them back from the brink of drug addiction, alcoholism, whoring, or just plain stupidity before they fall into the abyss. Sometimes I go into the abyss after them and drag them out. They emerge kicking and screaming. You can’t expect them to like me.”
“That may be true,” Katelyn acknowledged. “By nature, your relationship with them is adversarial. However, if they hate you so much that they don’t want to work with you at all, we can’t send you anymore. You’re no good to us.”
“Who doesn’t want to work with me at all?” Wendy protested. Unfortunately, lots of possible answers rushed to mind. Zane topped the list.
“Brad McCain,” Jonathan piped up.
“That guy is dead,” Wendy told Jonathan. She was losing interest in being especially polite. Brad McCain was a sore point with her, and she wanted to set the record straight. She said quietly but firmly, “He was hell-bent on being dead, too. He was halfway there when you sent me to him.”
In fact, that was why they had sent Wendy. If anyone could have prevented Brad from getting plastered in a West Hollywood club and driving his Porsche off a mountain, over a privacy fence, and into the swimming pool of an up-and-coming handbag designer, it was Wendy. As it turned out, nobody could. But what she had done, after his death, was publicize that he’d set up his mom in a florist business and bought her a beautiful oceanside home in Florida. Because the public saw him in a more positive light, a movie studio rushed to release special editions of his older gross-out comedies, sending even more money to his deserving family.
Wendy had counted the case a partial success. Being accused of failure made her feel like crying in frustration. She couldn’t allow herself to tear up with her bosses watching her, so she did what she always did when she felt like crying. She lashed out. “If you want to present this argument to me, fine, but you can’t use the opinion of a dead guy as evidence.” She sounded bitter and defensive, and she knew it. She wasn’t just on shaky ground now. The ground crumbled under her feet. As she flailed, she couldn’t find a handhold.