The Assistants(46)

What a thing to say. What did she mean by that?

“So what’s this I hear about a party you’re having, Tina?” Margie said. “For your nonprofit website.” She drew out the non and profit for special emphasis.

Dear god, I thought, please don’t let her say anything incriminating in front of Kevin. And I remembered just then how Robert had asked me about Margie that day in the office, how he stared deep into my eyes all creepy like. If she does start bothering you at all, asking you questions, anything like that . . . Because you know there are a lot of people out there who would like to see me hurt. Robert had wanted to know if Margie was trying to bully me in any way. I wondered if this counted. She had knocked my hot dog out of my hands, after all.

“Do you want to come to our launch party, Margie?” I asked. “I think you’d agree with our site’s mission.”

Kevin grinned at my usage of the word.

Margie lifted her eyebrows all the way up to the brim of her helmet. “My, haven’t you come a long way?” she said. “You’re a regular Norma Rae now, aren’t you?”

I wasn’t sure what that meant, so I neither nodded nor shook my head.

“I don’t like parties.” Margie scratched at an itch beneath one of her elbow pads. “But we should talk, you and me. I am interested in your site’s mission, as you put it. And how much does this one know?”

Kevin looked to me, a confused and slightly terrified retriever pup.

Again I neither nodded nor shook my head.

“Yeah.” Margie smacked the top of her helmet with both hands. “That’s what I figured.” Then she spun around and peeled off, leaving us in her gravel dust.

I made an attempt to continue walking forward, but Kevin stayed put. “What was that about?” he asked.

“Nothing.” I took his hand in mine and gave his arm a rub, as this situation called for an emergency public display of affection. “Margie’s always messing with me. All because I once accidentally told her she should switch to skim milk.”

Kevin tilted his head at me.

“Don’t worry about it,” I said, pulling him forward, and thankfully he followed along.

—

BACK AT MY APARTMENT, I inadvertently stepped foot into launch-party planning headquarters. Emily and Ginger, still in their work clothes, each with a phone to her ear, glanced up from their laptops.

“It needs to be someone big,” Ginger declared into her cell. “I mean really big. Do you still have a relationship with Don Julio? How about Patrón? Or even Captain Morgan?”

Presumably, she was not referring to some excellently named male strippers she wanted to hire for the launch.

Emily ended her call and gestured for me to take a seat in the empty chair at the table, but I stayed put. Then she began waving her manicure in front of Ginger’s face while loud-whispering, “Don’t forget to ask about swag bags.”

I bolted for my bedroom while her attention was diverted. God bless the two of them for being the exact sort of girls who were my polar opposite, because I’d never pull this off without them. They took to this abrupt change in plan like white on rice, as Robert would say. They were built for this shit—party planning, attention getting, convincing people to give them money.

I changed into my pajamas even though it was only eight thirty at night and took out my contact lenses, enjoying the soft, comforting blur the world became when I could no longer see it. I plopped down onto my bed and stared up at the ceiling bubble. It had lost a little weight on account of the recent dry spell. Who knows, I thought, if the current drought continues, the ceiling bubble might dehydrate into the ceiling dried apricot. Then who would I tell my problems to?

I glanced at my bedroom door to make sure it was tightly shut but I could still hear Ginger on her phone. “Remember that time you accidentally forgot to book your boss a hotel room, and he was stranded in LA, and I managed to call in a favor to get him the penthouse suite even though it was already booked? And he never even knew how badly you messed up? Do you remember that? Because here’s what I need from you now . . .”

I listened to one call after the next, one favor traded for another.

“If you can get Brooklyn Brewery to sponsor us, I can get you a reservation for the best table at Per Se.”

“If you score us Cipriani, I’ll score you press tickets to Katy Perry at the Garden.”

“I can get you on the list at Provocateur if you can hook us up with a DJ.”

It was like listening to a podcast on high-end bartering. Access as currency, access in lieu of currency, because I knew for a fact that neither Ginger nor Emily, nor any of the assistants on the other end of the phone lines, had two dimes to rub together. After all, that’s what got us into this mess in the first place.

As Robert Barlow’s assistant, I understood the value of being in close proximity to power. Of being power’s gatekeeper. Everyone who was anyone owed me a favor, and if they didn’t owe me a favor they were dying to. But I never called in any of them, so to speak, because I never cared about any of that crap. Restaurants, nightclubs, hotels. I was much more of a Seamless-in-bed type.

But Emily and Ginger . . .

“You slept with my boyfriend while I was right in the next room. The least you can do is design our logo for free.”

. . . were masters of leverage.