These Girls: A Novel

One

“HOLD IT!” A VOICE commanded.

The elevator was already crowded—at a few minutes before 10:00 A.M., everyone was heading for the upper floors of the Manhattan skyscraper that housed office space for a half dozen glossy magazines—but Cate Sommers instinctively reached out and prevented the doors from closing.

“Thanks.”

The air crackled with energy as Trey Watkins stepped inside, and Cate saw one young woman nudge another. Trey wore faded jeans, hiking boots, a green henley shirt, and his cheeks were slightly windburned, as if he’d just finished scaling a mountain. Which he probably had, right before he’d started a fire by rubbing two sticks together, and, Cate thought as she managed to avoid rolling her eyes, possibly shimmied up a tree to save a stranded bear cub.

“Excuse me.” Trey was standing to Cate’s right, and he reached an arm around her, enveloping her in a half hug. She blinked up at him in surprise.

“Nineteenth floor,” he said, grinning as he pushed the button. She leaned away from him, irritated with herself for being unoriginal enough to fall, even momentarily, under his spell. Trey was a legend around this building, and not just because a six-foot-three, single, straight, employed man was more coveted and rare in New York City than a rent-controlled one-bedroom.

Sure, he was gorgeous, but Cate couldn’t get distracted by his presence, even if they were pressed together as close as it was possible to be without touching at the moment. This was her first month as features editor of Gloss, the magazine battling InStyle to nab a shrinking audience of consumers in their twenties through forties who liked a spirited mix of articles about celebrity, home, and style. She had photos of Will and Jada Smith’s new swimming pool to consider, headlines to tweak, and a profile of a young wife who’d left a polygamous marriage to shepherd through the editing process (the wife, surprisingly sexy with a new short haircut and a wardrobe with even shorter hemlines, had just won a bit part in a Quentin Tarantino film; otherwise the magazine never would’ve been interested). Plus she needed to weed through a stack of submissions for the first-person back-page column. All before noon.

The doors opened and Trey held them, politely gesturing for two other men to get out first, then they all headed toward the double glass doors etched with the words THE GREAT BEYOND. Cate could’ve predicted this would be their stop: The guys all wore sneakers, and one even sported a backpack instead of a briefcase.

Gender and dress identified who belonged to which floor long before the elevator doors opened: The young women in miniskirts and bright tights with sassy streaks of pink or blue in their hair all left for Sweet! on the twenty-fifth floor; the women in sensible gray or black suits picked up their equally sensible briefcases and headed into Home & Garden on floor twenty-two; and all the guys were disgorged on floor nineteen, which churned out manly features yet spotlighted a gorgeous girl—or, more accurately, her cleavage—on every cover.

“Mmm.” The girl who’d nudged her friend rolled the sound around in her mouth as the doors slid shut, and the other four women in the elevator all laughed. Except for Cate, who flinched.

The sound was nearly identical to the one made by Gloss’s editor in chief, a Brit named Nigel Campbell, who—apparently following the trend set by the cover models for The Great Beyond—always left one too many buttons undone on his shirt. The troubling thing was, he’d made the intimate, yucky noise two days before he promoted Cate. She didn’t react, and now she couldn’t stop beating herself up about it. Later that night, in bed, she’d formulated the perfect response: an arched eyebrow and a pointed “Excuse me?”

But she’d frozen, and he’d walked on by, and it was as though the moment had never existed. She kept trying to convince herself that she’d misheard him, that he was clearing his throat instead of admiring her as she leaned over her desk to reach a file folder.

Except she still heard that sound whenever she met with him—she was always on the lookout, ready to put him in his place—but he’d never repeated it.

The elevator lurched upward and Cate glanced at her BlackBerry, tapping out a message to Sam, the writer responsible for the polygamist wife story.

Can we meet in my office at 10:30?

Cate had worked until nearly midnight making notes on the piece, which wasn’t quite right. She needed to coax a rewrite from Sam, who’d worked for the magazine for a decade, without alienating him. She wanted her first issue on the job to be special, to sparkle with wit and depth and perfectly packaged information. This issue had to shine brightly enough to quiet the voices of the colleagues who’d wanted her job, those who resented the fact that, at the tender age of thirty, Cate had nabbed one of the plum positions at the magazine.

But, most important, to quell the whispers in her own head that told her she wasn’t good enough.

At least she dressed the part, in a black-and-red color-block dress and black slingbacks. Her long auburn hair was blown out straight, and mascara highlighted her wide-spaced, gray-green eyes, her best feature. Cate thought of clothes and makeup as her armor some days, a glossy veneer that protected and hid her true center. Since fleeing Ohio to start over in New York, she’d rebuilt her image. No one—not even her roommates, Renee and Naomi—knew about what had happened there.

Cate wasn’t close to Naomi, a photographic model who was always traveling or at her boyfriend’s place, but she’d hoped by now, after six months of living together, that she and Renee would have moved beyond a casual friendship. It certainly wasn’t Renee’s fault that they hadn’t. She was outgoing and kind, always flopping on the couch and offering Cate some of her cheap Chinese take-out dinner, saying, “Save me from my thighs!”

A few times they’d rented movies together, and Cate had tagged along with Renee on her girls’ nights out a couple of times—the woman was friends with everyone in New York; even doormen greeted her by name as she passed by—but so far, the kinds of confidences Cate yearned for eluded her. She was private, always had been, and couldn’t slip into the sorts of confessions other girls seemed to share as easily as trading a lip gloss back and forth.

The elevator stopped at the twenty-seventh floor, and Cate stepped out into the airy, lush space. Sunlight streamed in through the oversize windows of the private offices rimming the perimeter, while dozens of cubicles with desks for the editorial assistants and copy editors filled the center of the room. Past covers of the magazine lent splashes of bright color to the walls, and the blond wood floors gleamed.

“Morning!” the receptionist called.

Two women were clustered around the receptionist’s desk, and Cate paused, wondering if she should join them. But one of the women was gesturing animatedly, and the others were hanging on her words and laughing. Cate waved and kept walking toward her new office, her shoes clicking briskly against the floor.

Just as she opened her door, Sam’s response pinged back: No can do. At a press conference all morning.

“And thanks for suggesting a different time,” Cate muttered as she dropped her briefcase onto her desk with a thud.

She sighed and forced herself to focus on all she needed to accomplish today, on the words and meetings and phone calls filling her to-do list. But she couldn’t erase the sound of illicit admiration—that half moan, half growl—that relentlessly wormed its way into her brain.

---

Half a banana. It was an outrage.

Who, other than a premature baby monkey, could nibble a few bites of banana and call it breakfast? Renee Robinson reached past the remaining half, which Cate had enclosed in Saran Wrap like a gift-wrapped package, and grabbed the sugar bowl, rationing a teaspoon into her travel mug of coffee. She rinsed out the coffeepot, then bent to pick up the shoes she’d kicked off the previous night and tossed them through her open bedroom door. Renee wasn’t naturally neat, but their Upper West Side apartment was so tiny that if the shared living space wasn’t kept completely clutter-free, it would quickly turn into a candidate for the Hoarders TV show.

Other than three minuscule bedrooms (the apartment originally held two, but a flimsy partition halved the bigger one), there was a bathroom with a shower that was more temperamental than the fashionistas Renee worked with, and an optimistically named kitchen-living area that barely managed to contain two stools and a love seat. It was filled to bursting—kind of the way Renee felt right now in her boot-leg black pants and lavender silk shirt. She sighed, wishing elastic waists would suddenly roar into vogue. Or mumus. The mumu was highly underrated in the fashion world, in Renee’s humble opinion.

Renee picked up her purse and headed out into the crisp fall morning, sipping coffee and trying not to stare enviously at the Starbucks cups every third person she passed seemed to be carrying. What she wouldn’t give for a caramel latte right now—sticky sweet and foamy and rich—but it wasn’t only the fat grams she couldn’t afford. Her thirty-eight-thousand-dollar salary as an associate editor at Gloss would go so much further in her hometown of Kansas City, but here in New York . . . well, the thick stack of bills she was carrying right now said it all.

Renee stopped at the corner mailbox and reached into her purse for the envelopes. Her Visa balance—she flinched as her check was greedily gulped by the mailbox—was even worse than she’d expected this month. Her goal had been to keep it under four figures, since at least that way she had a chance of cutting it down to zero someday, but working at Gloss meant looking the part. She shopped sample sales, swapped clothes with friends, and purchased cosmetics at Rite Aid, but even a jar of peanut butter in New York was shockingly expensive.

Renee fed the rest of the envelopes through the slot, then reached into her purse, digging through the mess of receipts and makeup and spare change, to make sure she hadn’t missed one. Her fingers closed around a piece of paper, and she pulled it out.

She stared at the words on the robin’s egg blue sheet of stationery for the dozenth time, trying to discern clues about the author from the graceful sweeps of the g’s, the l’s that tilted slightly to the right. Renee had been carrying the letter around ever since she’d received it, a week ago, and already the edges were soft from handling.

. . . You must be shocked to learn about me. I’m reeling from it all, too. But maybe we could correspond, sort of like pen pals? And I was hoping to come to New York so we can meet in person . . .

Warmly,

Becca

Warmly. That was the word that threw Renee. She hadn’t responded to the letter yet because she had no idea how to respond. She didn’t feel warmly toward Becca yet, even though she wished she could. Learning she had a half sister who was just a year older was strange enough. The fact that her father had had a one-night stand right after marrying Renee’s mother? Her sandals-with-socks-wearing, History Channel–loving, henpecked father, engaging in a tawdry fling? It defied the imagination. Which was a fortuitous thing; Renee didn’t want those images renting space in her brain.

Her parents were such a couple, two halves of a matching pair, which made it even stranger. Their names were Maria and Marvin, and everyone referred to them as M&M. They had dark curls that were rapidly graying, were the same height when her mother wore her one-inch Naturalizer heels, squabbled almost constantly, and finished each other’s sentences. Actually, Renee’s mother finished most of them—her father had a habit of getting distracted by the television or sports page and letting his half-finished sentences dangle in midair, like fishing lures for her mother to snap on to.

Renee had thought her dad’s idea of high excitement was buying a new wrench at Home Depot; their conversation about his decades-old indiscretion had been searingly uncomfortable. He hadn’t known about his other daughter’s existence until recently, either. Since then, Renee knew, her father had gone out for lunch with Becca. He was figuring out how to navigate this new relationship, too, while trying to repair the damage to his marriage.

Renee had phoned her mother, who’d informed her that her father was sleeping in the guest room.

“Are you going to . . .” Renee had let the sentence trail off; she couldn’t bear to hear the words aloud. But her mother had decades of experience of leaping into the conversational breach, and she’d deftly completed Renee’s thought.

“Leave him? Of course not,” her mother had said. “But I’m angry.”

“Do you want me to come home?” Renee had asked.

“Oh, honey, there’s no need for that. Thank you, but what would you do? Watch your father tiptoe around and do things like take out the trash without being reminded to win me back? No, it’s going to take a while, but we’ll work through this. We’ve been through worse.”

You have? Renee’s mind had shrieked, before she realized she really didn’t want to know.

“Okay,” Renee had finally said. “But if you change your mind, let me know and I’ll be on the next plane.”

Renee slowly refolded the letter and tucked it back into her purse as she continued down the street. She was seized by a sudden thought: Did Becca look like her? What would it feel like to look into her own round blue eyes with thick lashes, to see her snip of a nose and the lips she always thought were just a bit too full on another face that was framed by a familiar mass of dirty blond hair?

She’d have to get past this unsettling feeling. She’d e-mail Becca tonight, she promised herself, just as her cell phone rang.

“Aren’t you coming in?” It was Bonnie, the beauty editor for Gloss and one of Renee’s closest friends at the office.

“Just running a bit late. I swear I need a louder alarm clock,” Renee said. “Or maybe one with a built-in cattle prod.”

“I’ve got news,” Bonnie said.

“What is it?”

“Big news, actually.”

“Really? Oops, hang on a sec. There’s a miniature chain gang heading my way.” Renee dodged left to avoid a gaggle of toddlers who were all holding on to a long rope. Two preschool teachers walked alongside the kids, calling out encouragement to keep them on pace. Renee bent down to pick up a teddy bear one of the kids dropped and was rewarded with a shy smile.

“I think it might fall into the category of huge news,” Bonnie was saying. “Maybe even gigantic.”

“Do you want to call me back after you’ve selected a category?” Renee asked. “Or you could just string it out for another half hour. You know I love it when you do that.”

Bonnie laughed, then dropped her voice to a whisper. “I’m leaving.”

Renee stopped walking. “New York?”

“I’m leaving Gloss,” Bonnie said. “I just got an offer from Vogue.”

Renee’s emotions wrestled with one another, and envy strong-armed its way to the top. First Cate had leapfrogged to the features editor job and now Bonnie. Why them and not me?

But Renee quickly pushed the petty thought down where it belonged, beneath happiness for her friend. “Congrats! Drinks tonight, okay? On me.”

“Yes, but I’m leaving,” Bonnie repeated. “My job is opening up. You need to apply for it.”

“Oh,” Renee breathed. “God, Bonnie, do you think . . . ?”

“Why not you?” Bonnie asked.

“I love you,” Renee blurted, feeling a flush of shame.

“That’s what you say, but you never call in the morning.”

“Hey, I leave a good tip on the nightstand,” Renee said, hearing Bonnie’s laugh as she hung up. Renee surveyed her outfit with new eyes. She had to look spectacular today. Winning the beauty editor job would mean a nice boost in salary but, better yet, the perks! She’d go on junkets to spas, be flooded with packages of all the latest cosmetics and skin care lines, and nab invitations galore—which meant she’d get to eat out at cocktail parties whenever she wanted. She’d save loads of money.

She turned and ran back to the apartment, huffing as she climbed the four flights of stairs. She burst into her bedroom and stood in front of her closet, scanning the contents. She needed something chic and, above all, slimming, she thought, already regretting the spoonful of sugar in her coffee. If only she could be more like Naomi, who seemed to live on protein bars and air—or even Cate, who was a naturally lean size 4. Cate treated food the way some guys treated women—she took exactly what she needed and never gave it a lingering thought afterward. She was the type of woman who could eat a single potato chip (type? There was no type; Cate was the lone woman in that bizarre demographic). It would be intolerable, except that Cate wasn’t the slightest bit smug about it.

Twenty minutes later, her closet was more of a shambles than usual, and Renee was no closer to finding the perfect outfit. All of her cheap lunches consisting of a slice or two of pizza from Ray’s, the half-priced happy hour drinks, and the illicit handfuls of chocolate meant her size 12 clothes were getting tight. Now she was sweating and late for work.

She reluctantly shrugged back into her original outfit, despising the roll of flesh that protruded over her waistband. Anyone working for Gloss needed to look good, but the beauty editor was held to an elite standard. Back in Kansas—heck, in most of the world—Renee would be considered a healthy size. Here in the epicenter of New York’s magazine world? She was the fat girl.

Starting today, though, that was going to change. She was going to give careful consideration to every crumb that passed through her lips. She’d be more selective than an Ivy League admissions officer. And in two months—voilà!—she’d be fifteen pounds slimmer.

It would take weeks for the Gloss editors to settle on Bonnie’s replacement. By the time they were ready, they’d look up and see Renee, slim and chic, standing in front of them. They’d recognize her years of hard work at the magazine, and she’d land the job. She had to. But first she had to get to the office and ask for it.