I gulped. Maybe I’d heard her wrong. “I thought…”
She laughed. “I know. You could have knocked me over with a feather when Mercedes came to plead your case. The thing is, we can’t up the starting salary for assistants without causing a revolution around here, but she really was impressed with you, so we decided that we should bump you up a job grade.”
Fleishman, who was practically shoving me out of hearing range so he could stick his ear next to the receiver, too, gave me a high five.
“I-I don’t know what to say,” I stammered. “Except…” Except I think I’m in way over my head now. “Except how soon can I start?”
Chapter 3
Kathy Leo’s call put me in a panic.
What was I getting myself into? Sure, I could bluff my way through a half-hour interview or two. Apparently I had bluffed beyond my wildest dreams. But how could I bluff my way through eight hours a day, five days a week, fifty weeks a year?
Answer: I couldn’t. I was so screwed.
I didn’t even own the clothes to look the part. Aside from my Mao suit, my wardrobe leaned heavily toward the ultracasual, as befitted an ex-grocery shopper. I was utterly unprepared to enter a world where I needed to look like a grownup. I wasn’t even sure I still owned a pair of panty hose. Didn’t people still wear those?
On Friday, the day after the call from Kathy Leo, I was still flat on my back on the futon in the living room, awash in worry. Worrying was about all I could do, since God knows I didn’t have the funds to remedy my fashion deficiency. And no amount of money would render me suddenly competent for a job I was in no way qualified for.
I had a versatile skirt made out of some kind of tensile material that was supposed to be breathable but really felt like Saran Wrap, and I had the Mao suit. Wendy had an actual dress I could probably borrow to throw my new coworkers off my feebly garmented trail. That was three outfits—maybe five if I accessorized cleverly to disguise the fact that I was wearing the Saran Wrap skirt in three different incarnations. If I did that for two weeks, maybe three, I would probably be able to splurge for something new at Filene’s Basement with my first paycheck.
I envisioned myself at the end of those three weeks in my gamey black skirt, already the office pariah. Possibly by then the powers that be would have found me out—that I, ahem, stretched the truth in those interviews. That I had no business even applying for such a job. That actually, despite four years of college English, none of which remotely touched on the subject of grammar, my relationship with the technical ins and outs of my native tongue was haphazard at best.
In other words, that I was a fraud.
Just as I was considering holding up the nearest Duane Reade for some Zoloft, the apartment door flew open and Fleishman rushed in. At least I was pretty sure it was Fleishman. His distinctive features were almost indistinguishable behind heaps of colorful shopping bags.
“Where have you been?” I asked. “I thought you had work today.”
“I did, but then I got a summons from Natasha.” Fleishman was the only person I knew who called his parents by their first names, a practice that in my family would have earned any kid a whack upside the head. But Natasha Fleishman never seemed to mind; she seemed to think it was part of her son’s bad-boy appeal. Fleishman’s attitude toward his family was always that of a beloved scapegrace. His father might not be speaking to him, his mother might have to sneak into the city to see him, and he might profess contempt for everything they stood for (up to and including budget footwear), but he acted as though he believed they would all eventually come around to see his undeniable value and charm.
I wondered, though. Fleishman took an awful lot for granted. No person, even a father, wanted to be called a miserly old fascist forever. I mean, language like that tended to alienate people.
He grinned and explained his mother’s surprise appearance in town. “Natasha came to have lunch and to drop off part of the Fleishman fortune on Fifth Avenue. She called me at work before heading over, so I took the rest of the day off and here I am.”
I eyed those bags. One said Sak’s, one said Barney’s, and a few others boasted names of stores that I didn’t recognize.
“She took you to all those places?” I asked.
“No, no, no. Natasha just took me to lunch. I told her that we were collecting clothes for a charity drive, though, and so before coming over she loaded up the Benz with all her castoffs.”
“What charity?” I asked.
“The Rebecca Abbot foundation, dedicated to clothing the intolerably attired.”
He laid all the bags at my feet. I could hardly believe it. There had to be thousands of dollars worth of stuff in there!
“Oh my God. It’s like having a fairy godmother burst through the door!”
“I hope you don’t mind hand-me-downs,” he said.
He was joking. How many times had I repeated the factoid that I had not owned a first-hand coat until I was thirteen? When you’re the fifth of six kids, you learn to look at the closets of your siblings as your own personal thrift store. But this—this was a big step up in closet class.
I tossed my arms around Fleishman and gave him a noisy kiss on his cheek. “I can’t believe you did this for me, Fleish.”
“Who else would I do it for?” he asked, his grey eyes practically sparkling at me.
When people ask me to describe Fleishman, I usually say he sort of resembles the young Martin Landau from his North by Northwest days, only that doesn’t really do him justice. He’s that tall, thin, and angular, but he’s dapper. When you look at him—and he’s so distinctive that people always do crane around to look at him on the streets or in restaurants—you would think that he must be an actor, or some other person used to being in the public eye. He might not be handsome in the way Brad Pitt is handsome, but he carries himself like a man accustomed to thinking of himself as exceptional. Aside from his bearing, he has these steely blue-gray eyes—they can seem intense, or full of humor. They are mesmerizing.
On many an occasion those eyes have been my undoing.
I knew better now than to get tripped up by those eyes now. I knew my limits. Both of our limits. I was well aware of what all the sparking and smoldering could lead to: Wild abandon chased quickly by abject regret.
“Well, c’mon,” he said impatiently when I broke eye contact. “Let’s see what the old dame brung you.”
Say this for her, Natasha Fleishman did not skimp on charity. From those shopping bags, which still had a perfumey smell lingering on them, we pulled out a wealth of stuff. Twinset cashmere sweaters, fabulous lightweight wool outfits in rich tweeds and checks, silk shirts, and so-called casual wear that would only be casual to people who actually wore formal wear on a regular basis. Putting on Natasha Fleishman’s casual chic, I would feel like a kid playing dress up.
Yet after a few minutes I was pawing over garments bearing tags with Prada and Dior with a critical eye. The trouble was size. Natasha Fleishman was both taller and smaller than I was. That ruled out pants. I could, however, squeeze into most of the skirts and tops if I was careful to keep my breath sucked in.
