The Pink Ghetto. Liz Ireland

and picked up her mug. “No, it was mostly good.”

      Mostly?

      “Of course, too much praise begins to sound suspicious, doesn’t it?” She laughed tightly. “Oh, well, you two go back to your tour. Don’t let it last all day, though.”

      The moment she was out of earshot, Andrea mimicked, “Don’t let it last all day!” in a snippy little whisper.

      “She didn’t seem too friendly…” I ventured.

      Andrea rolled her eyes. “Ignore her when at all possible. She’s a tyrant.”

      I nodded.

      “Don’t get on her bad side, though,” Andrea advised. “You get on her bad side, and…” She stopped and made a slitting motion across her throat.

      “For some reason, I feel like I already am on her bad side.” Like my house just fell on her sister, basically.

      “That’s just her way. You know the type—she’s a…” She frowned. “Well, a bitch. And she’s second in command under Mercedes, so she tends to get a little nervous if Mercedes takes too much of a shine to anyone. As if any of us would want her stupid job!”

      “Yeah, that’s crazy.”

      “That’s Mary Jo. You know that coffee cup with Cathy on it? She’s had it ever since she was an editorial assistant. Almost twenty years! The first year she started work, her Secret Santa gave it to her. She’s got a real thing about it.”

      “Maybe there’s some deep psychological reason, or…”

      “Yeah, and that reason is she’s a controlling, obsessive loon.” She sighed. “Okay, back to work.”

      As we trudged back to our offices, I felt a knot of dread in my tummy, like I was being dropped off at kindergarten or something. I could handle meeting people. That was a snap.

      But work. That was the tricky part.

      Chapter 4

      By lunch, I was finally beginning to relax, if only because it finally dawned on me that chances were good that I wouldn’t be fired on my first day.

      I had worried that once Andrea dropped me back by my office, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself, besides stare at those ominous manuscript piles on the bookshelves. But if there was anything I really knew how to do, it was fritter away time. First I had to check out my computer. Solitaire had not been removed, and I even had pinball! This reminded me of the e-mail question, so I set up my account at [email protected]. Then of course I had to e-mail all my family and friends and brag about my new corporate identity.

      My sister Ellen replied immediately. She had just finished law school the year before and was working in a law firm back in Cleveland.

      I’m psyched about your new job. Congrats! I don’t read romances, natch, but what a hoot to be working there. Maybe you can send me a few beach books next summer. (I guess I do read a few of those…just don’t tell anyone here at the office!) XOX, E

      Once I started looking at it, rabbot seemed like a really bizarre handle. Like rabbit misspelled, or a combination of rabbit and robot. I started imagining bad sci-fi movie titles. Attack of the Killer Rabbots!

      So after much contemplation and doodling on my notepad, I changed my address to the more respectable rebecca.abbot@ candlelight.net. And then, of course, I had to send out my change of address.

      Ellen wrote back in a flash.

      Stop procrastinating and get to work!

      XOX, E

      Oh, and one of my coworkers wants to know if you publish something called Regencies? I think they’re like fake Jane Austen books…which actually sounds kind of good, now that I think about it. Do you really get freebies?

      I made a note to send Ellen books.

      All in all, setting up my e-mail killed a good hour and a half. A few games of pinball later, Andrea was knocking on my door. I reduced the screen and swiveled toward her.

      “How’s it going?”

      “Great!” I said.

      “Lunch?”

      I was up like a shot. “Sure.”

      Rita was right behind her. “My treat.”

      “Which means she’s expensing it,” Andrea translated.

      We stopped by Cassie’s office on our way out. “Want to go to lunch with us?” Rita asked her.

      A plastic serving container of breadsticks and celery sat on the desk next to the manuscript she was reading, along with a half-eaten apple. “I’d love to, but I promised myself I would read this book today.” She eyed me staring at her meal. Like any veteran of Weight Watchers (ages twelve and fifteen), I was no stranger to breadsticks. I sometimes wondered if there were any other people besides WW veterans who actually ate those things.

      I smiled at her, sensing a kindred spirit.

      She did not smile back. “I like to stay up on things.”

      “Well, carry on,” Rita said. “We’ll be back in forty-five minutes.”

      Two hours later, we ambled back to the office, full of Chinese food. I had expected to get the lowdown about what they expected from me in my job. Instead, I got gossip. Gossip about everyone. There were no affairs reported, no embezzling or money scandals, no shocking Candlelight secrets revealed, although you wouldn’t have guessed it from the urgent tone in Rita and Andrea’s voices.

      “Did you know Ann takes her Maltese to doggy daycare every day?”

      “It must cost her a fortune.”

      “What else does she have to spend it on? The woman has no life. It’s pathetic.”

      “Sad. She should try online dating.”

      “First she should try to do something about that acne scarring.”

      “Would insurance cover plastic surgery for that?”

      “She could pay for it herself if she weren’t wasting all her money on her canine.”

      They asked me a few polite questions about myself, which I evaded to the best of my ability. (If Ann and her doggy daycare were worth a conversational massacre, imagine the hay they could have made out of my living with my ex-boyfriend.) By the time the fortunes cookies rolled around, it felt like I had been working with them for months instead of hours.

      When I got back, I continued to pile up accomplishments. I played a few rounds of solitaire and did very well. A few people, some of whom I had met that morning, came by to ask how I was settling in. Actually, I think they had afternoon restlessness and just wanted to get away from their desks for a while.

      At one point, I had three other editors and Lindsay the editorial assistant all squeezed into my office, talking about famous person sightings they’d had in New York City. Ann—she of the pampered pooch—had stood in a deli line behind Leonardo DiCaprio, which was pretty damn impressive. The only famous person I’d come in that close contact with was Al Roker, who Fleishman and I had seen coming up the theater aisle the night we had gone to see Gypsy.

      Lindsay had a good one. “Whoopi Goldberg goes to my dentist.”

      This revelation brought gasps. “No way!” Madeline exclaimed. “Your dentist?”

      Lindsay puffed up a little, sensing she had scored. “I saw her in the waiting room once, even. She was there for a cleaning, the hygienist told me.”

      “Where? What dentist?”

      “His name is Dr. Stein, and he’s on Eighty-fifth Street.”

      Ann’s forehead wrinkled. “Does Whoopi Goldberg have good teeth?”

      “Of