Sympathy for the Devil Page 23

  “Really,” Roger repeated. “Apparently he was just offered a position at TMZ, and he’s decided to take it. Can’t blame him — it’s a good career move.”

  I nodded, and wondered why Roger had bothered to call me into his office to tell me this. Maybe he wanted me to organize a farewell party or something, although that was usually the sort of thing Jacqui would do.

  “At any rate, that leaves the feature editor position open. I’d like to give it to you, Christa.”

  For about five seconds I just sat there, staring at him, wondering if something had gone catastrophically wrong with my hearing. Had Roger just offered me an editorial job?

  Oh, it was something I’d secretly dreamed about. My degree was in journalism, after all, and even though I liked copyediting, I had to admit there wasn’t anything very glamorous about it. From time to time I’d written little snippets for our News section or done anonymous restaurant and movie reviews — you know, the little pieces that are only a paragraph or two long and are always just attributed to “Staff.” But it was kind of a leap to go from that sort of thing to the actual feature editor position, which was basically second-in-command to Roger.

  My vocal chords decided to function again. “I — I’m honored, Roger,” I began, and he waved a hand.

  “Don’t tell me that you’re honored,” he said. “Tell me if you’ll take it.”

  “I’ll take it,” I said immediately. I might have been shocked, but I wasn’t stupid.

  “Wonderful,” he replied. “I’ll let Jacqui know. Of course she’ll have to start advertising for your replacement, so I’ll have to see how soon you can actually start writing. But I have a few assignments I know Brian probably won’t get to, so I’m going to email those to you so you can start planning.”

  I stammered a thank-you, and he smiled. “Glad to have you on board,” he said. “I always thought you were wasting yourself in the copyediting position.”

  The ringing of his phone saved me from having to make a reply; I just nodded and walked out of the office, wondering when I was going to wake up.

  It took me about an hour of bliss before I began to smell a rat.

  The euphoria lasted through my informing Jacqui of the promotion and sending off some excited emails to family and friends. She was happy for me, of course, but her happiness was tempered by the fact that she was losing her copyeditor. Looking for new people is never fun, and although a lot of the time the editorial assistant would have naturally been moved into that position, this time around it wasn’t really an option. Stephanie, the current E.A., had only been on the job for about three months. Although she was fine for certain elements of her position, she wouldn’t know a misplaced modifier if it came up and slapped her across the face. Also, I had the feeling Jacqui had hoped that one day I’d take her job, even though being the managing editor wasn’t really my cup of tea. Frankly, I hadn’t really looked forward to dealing with bickering advertisers and babysitting the production staff.

  Whereas feature editors got to go to film premieres and gallery openings, interview local movers and shakers, and generally lead a fairly exciting life. And that didn’t even take into account the sizable bump-up in salary which accompanied such a promotion. It was also the only editorial position I would ever have had a true shot at, since I wasn’t really qualified to be the fashion editor, and as for being the food editor — well, that wasn’t going to happen in this lifetime. Still, I was younger than any of the other editors by at least a decade, and I’d always thought I’d have to do some serious time at the magazine before I would ever be considered for such a lofty position.

  All in all, it sounded too good to be true…which meant that it probably was.

  Luke?

  Of course. He could probably snap his fingers and make me President of the United States. Thank God my ambitions never reached that high. But my current situation was just as problematic, if on a slightly lesser scale. I’d accepted the job, which meant I’d have to do my damnedest to be as good at it as I possibly could. I just didn’t know if my best would be good enough. It wasn’t quite like working at Time or Newsweek or even Vogue or Harper’s Bazaar, but the position of feature editor, besides the obvious perks, carried a lot of responsibility with it. Any screw-ups would be highly visible.

  And what should I do next? Confront Luke with my suspicions? That would be the right thing to do — get it out on the table, let him know I didn’t appreciate him meddling with my life in such a high-handed way.

  Whether or not I’d actually have the guts to do that was an entirely different proposition.

  The phone rang. I started, then peered at the display. My mother. I supposed that made sense; she was on her home computer pretty much all day, so naturally she’d be the first to get the email.

  I took a deep breath, then reached over and lifted the handset.

  “Christa, that’s wonderful news! I’m so proud of you!”

  Right then having my office chair swallow me whole sounded like a pretty good proposition. Unfortunately, it showed no inclination to do that, so I was forced to reply, “Um…thanks, Mom.”

  Her voice sharpened a little. “You don’t sound very excited.”

  “Oh, I am, I really am,” I said hurriedly. Whatever doubts I might be having, I knew I certainly couldn’t pass them along to my mother. One of us should be enjoying this, if nothing else, and I wasn’t about to open the whole “my boyfriend is the Devil” can of worms. I couldn’t do much about Danny and his adolescent predilection toward spying on me, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to start spreading that information voluntarily. “It’s just a big step. I guess I haven’t really processed the fact that I’m going to be an editor yet.”

  “Well, you’ll do great, I’m sure. Those awards you won for journalism, your grades — I knew you’d get there one day.”

  I wanted to say that I really didn’t think a couple of second-place finishes for articles I wrote for the high school newspaper qualified me to be in line for a Pulitzer, but whatever. For all her airy-fairy clothing, rampant veganism, and general save-the-planet mentality, my mother wanted her children to do well. In an enlightened and responsible way, of course, but having a daughter who was feature editor at the biggest regional glossy rag definitely was going to earn her some points.

  “It’s exciting,” I said, after a pause that I could only hope she didn’t notice. “I’ll get to go to a lot of fun events and meet interesting people. I won’t be stuck in the office all day.”

  I should have known what was coming next.

  “It would be great if you could cover more social issues, and include more vegan restaurants in your reviews.”

  People’s agendas constantly amazed me. I never really had any, besides making it through another day and maybe at some point finding someone that I thought I could share the rest of my life with. Maybe my mother’s constant crusading had turned me off the whole socially conscious thing. She’d just never gotten over the Berkeley mentality. At least she hadn’t taken to growing pot hydroponically in the garage. I hoped.

  The fact that she thought I could somehow turn the magazine into a force for good made me want to burst out laughing, though. Although we did the occasional “in-depth” piece on some hot-button local issue, the truth was that we existed to cover a certain type of lifestyle, a lifestyle that only a small fraction of the population actually enjoyed but one which a whole lot more people aspired to. It was sort of like me buying Vogue and poring over all the gorgeous couture clothing inside; I certainly wasn’t going to run out and purchase a thirty-thousand-dollar Versace gown, but that didn’t mean I didn’t like to look at it. There’s always the vague hope that maybe someday your circumstances would change, and suddenly you’d be eating at the Ivy and driving around in a Bentley.

  Hmm. Well, I supposed I’d gotten the Bentley part of it already (sort of), although I didn’t see too many Versace gowns on my horizon.

  At any rate, the only way we’d b
e covering the sort of stuff my mother was interested in was if one of her pet causes became the latest in thing in Hollywood. Maybe that was more likely now than it had been a decade earlier, but I still wasn’t going to hold my breath on any crusades for raw food any time in the near future.

  I had an out on that one, though. “Uh, actually, the food editor covers restaurant reviews and interviews with chefs and that sort of thing,” I told my mother. “I’d be covering people in the community, local events, that stuff.”

  “Well, it’s still very exciting,” she said. “So when do you start?”

  “I don’t know for sure. It kind of depends on how quickly they can get a replacement for me in here. I may be having to juggle both jobs for a little while.” That was going to be a party, but Roger had made it sound as if he wanted to start transferring some articles to me right away. Oh, well, a little overtime never hurt anyone.

  We chatted for a little while after that, not about much in particular, and then I said I needed to get off the phone and back to work. My office is fairly relaxed on the whole personal calls thing, but I still didn’t want to abuse it. Besides, what I really wanted to do was ask my mother how she felt about the whole Dad/Traci baby mess, even though I knew work wasn’t the place to do it. So I just shoved that particular question to the back of my mind and hoped I’d have a better opportunity to discuss the situation in more depth at a later date.

  After that I got congratulatory emails from Jennifer and Nina (who said we needed to have another martini night to celebrate) and a quick note from my sister that sounded pleased but had a certain undercurrent of snottiness I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Maybe she couldn’t bear to think that she might not be the Golden Child of the family for a whole five minutes.

  Roger stopped by to give me a press kit and a pair of passes to an upcoming “Women in Film” festival that was going to take place the following week. “Your first big assignment,” he said, smiling a little. “I’ve assigned Lee to do the photography, so mainly what I’m looking for is an overview of the event, some good quotes, mini-reviews of the spotlighted films — that sort of thing.”

  I nodded, hoping I didn’t look as terrified as I felt.

  “H.R. is getting together a press photo badge for you,” he went on. “It should be ready by the end of the day. You’ve got two passes to the festival, so feel free to take a plus-one.”

  “Thanks, Roger,” I said. Well, at least for once I’d be the one taking Luke somewhere interesting instead of always the other way around.

  To my surprise, Roger gave me a conspiratorial wink, leaned forward slightly, and said, “The first one is always the hardest.” Then he straightened up and sauntered out, leaving me to stare at the materials scattered across my desk and pray that I really could pull this off.

  In one of those weird “Coincidence? I don’t think so” moments, Luke called a while later to offer his own congratulations. I’d blind-copied him in the list of people I’d sent the email to, but normally he wasn’t that quick to respond.

  He wanted to take me out to dinner to celebrate, and where did he propose to take me?

  The Ivy. Of course. Now, Luke had told me he couldn’t read my thoughts, but maybe he’d been lying about that as well. Or maybe he’d just figured it was about the hippest place he could think of to take me. I didn’t know, and challenging him then and there didn’t seem like a very good idea. So I said that sounded like a lot of fun, agreed that seven-thirty would be fine, and then hung up, already stressing about what I should wear.

  Under normal circumstances, a mere mortal like me wouldn’t have had a chance of getting a good table at the Ivy on a Friday night, especially at such short notice. However, although I was a mere mortal, Luke certainly was not, and I guessed he’d be able to wrangle the best seat in the house. Even A-list celebrities didn’t stand a chance in a smackdown with the Devil.

  So while I wasn’t worried about getting snubbed by the maitre d’, I didn’t want to embarrass Luke or look out of place. As always in matters of sartorial confusion, I picked up the phone and called Nina.

  I had to catch her on her cell; it turned out she was driving up to Malibu to supervise the installation of a pricey piece of modern art in some producer’s oceanfront mansion.

  “The Ivy, huh?” she asked. I could hear a weird background whistling noise and guessed it was the wind blowing across her sunroof. Nina tended to drive with it open as long as rain wasn’t actually falling. The day outside was actually quite pretty, from what I could see through my office window — big puffy white clouds, dark blue sky. It wasn’t really warm enough to be driving around with an open sunroof, though.

  “Yep,” I said. “I tried looking up some references online, but the most I could get was ‘dressy casual.’ Isn’t that an oxymoron?”

  “Not in L.A.,” she replied. “Probably not a dress — it’ll look as if you’re trying too hard. I’d say your most expensive pair of jeans, a jacket, and a nice camisole underneath. And a really good pair of strappy shoes.”

  The priciest jeans I owned were a pair of dark-wash True Religion pants that I’d found at Loehmann’s for the bargain basement price of ninety-nine bucks. That was a huge savings off retail, but if it weren’t for the fact that they made my butt look great, I would never have spent even that much. I still worried that somehow my mother would find out how much I’d paid for them and give me grief over my extravagance. Actually, Loehmann’s was my best supplier of designer duds at copyeditor prices — pretty much the rest of the ensemble I started mentally assembling had come from there as well. The shoes (a pair of sling-back Jimmy Choos), however, I’d snagged at the Barney’s warehouse sale at the Santa Monica airport.

  “I think I can manage that,” I said.

  “I want a full report. Food, celebrity sightings, everything.”

  “Deal. Thanks for the help.”

  “No prob,” Nina said, and then I heard her sigh. “Whoever thought I’d be living vicariously through your social life?”

  Not me, that was for sure, but I was also pretty certain Nina wouldn’t really want to hear that. I just said, “Oh, it’s not that big a deal. I’m sure regular people eat at the Ivy, too.”

  “Name one. Besides yourself, that is.”

  “Uh — ” I actually didn’t know anyone who had gone there. It was a little out of my price range and that of most of my friends, even Nina.

  “Exactly. Listen, gotta go — I’m pulling up at the house now.”

  I said good-bye and hung up. At least with Luke picking me up a little after seven I would have plenty of time to get myself pulled together. No time for a hair appointment or anything like that, but my hair was actually pretty easy to deal with. Naturally straight and thick, it just required a few passes with a ceramic iron to get it to premium gloss. Besides, anything else, and it would look as if I’d fussed with it too much, which according to Nina was a no-no. I wasn’t about to comment on the irony of spending a lot of time getting ready so that it would look as if you hadn’t spent a lot of time getting ready.

  I also didn’t want to stop and think that maybe I was obsessing over preparing for dinner because that way I wouldn’t have to think about how I could possibly confront Luke over my precipitous promotion.

  Considering our destination, I figured Luke would show up in the Bentley. The Jag was beautiful, but compared to Bentleys, they’re a dime a dozen in Southern California. But after I followed him down the steps and over to his customary premium parking spot, I stopped dead, wobbling a little on my Jimmy Choos.

  Sitting at the curb was a gleaming piece of silvery blue metal so elegant and muscular that it could only be one thing. I looked over at Luke, raising an eyebrow.

  He actually grinned. Oh, I’d seen him smile quite a bit, but there was a world of difference between the sort of subtly amused smiles he’d given me in the past and the look of unadulterated glee he flashed me now. “I’ve always had a sneaking desire to be James Bond,” he
said, and opened the door for me.

  I couldn’t help laughing. Was it possible for me to still be angry with him on one level and yet still so thrilled by his presence, by the odd flashes of the person I thought I could see sometimes beneath the outer sophistication?

  Apparently it was, since just sitting that close to him in the lush yet high-tech interior of the Aston Martin succeeded in getting my heart rate and respiration up to seriously elevated levels. I’d recognized the car right away; I’d seen all the latest Bond films (up until I’d met Luke, I hadn’t thought anyone could wear a suit better than Daniel Craig). Besides, I probably knew more about cars than I had any right to, thanks to my father’s automotive obsessions. Well, Danny had mentioned seeing a third expensive car in Luke’s garage, even though he hadn’t identified it. Maybe Zach, the spy, hadn’t recognized the Aston Martin for what it was. Zach had his own geeky fixations, but I didn’t think he’d was much of a James Bond fan.

  “Hiding any more exotic automobiles?” I asked, after we’d pulled away from the curb and were heading west on Wilshire. The thrumming power of the V12 hidden under the hood seemed overkill for the Friday night stop-and-go traffic that choked the streets.

  “No,” Luke said, turning right on Robertson. “The house only has a three-car garage, unfortunately. Maybe I should expand it.”

  “What, you want one for every day of the week?”

  Another flash of that boyish grin. “Maybe.”

  Whatever else he might be doing on earth, obviously the Devil was having fun playing with the big-boy toys. Not that I could blame him. Cars can be very sensual things, and I suddenly wondered what it would feel like to be blazing at wide-open throttle on a deserted highway somewhere, to hear that massive engine really perform in the way it had been intended, to sense the speed of the asphalt rushing beneath me at velocities that were definitely not legal anywhere west of the Autobahn.