up at him like a goon, with my chubby little fingers crossed. Is he going to ask me? Is he going to ask me? Oh, goodie. He’s opening with the Christmas party. That must mean he’s going to ask me!”
Stephanie leaned in. “So what did he say?”
“He asked me whether I knew any cute girls I could fix him up with at the last minute because he was desperate to have a date for tonight,” Anna said darkly. “Like he never thought, for one second, he could ask me. I made him a turkey for Thanksgiving. With trimmings! And yet even when he’s dying for a date, I’m not good enough. Like what am I, turkey-girl of the Western Hemisphere?”
“Of course not,” Stephanie shot back. “You’re adorable. And wonderful. And much too good for that jerk.”
“Jerk is right. He probably ran right down the hall and asked Missy.”
“Missy,” Stephanie said with a sneer. She was starting to feel outraged all over again. “It’s a joke. We are so much more in tune with the Glam demographic. I mean, you and I, Anna, we know where the 18-to-25-year-old woman eats and drinks, her favorite colors, what CDs and videos she buys, who she wants her hair cut like and what celeb she wants to sleep with and why.”
“We’ve got our demographic cold,” Anna said sadly. “And nobody cares.”
“I care. I care about our demographic. I care about all those poor 18-to-25-year-olds who are going to be pushed into buying the wrong cosmetics because stupid Missy is in charge.” Resolute, Stephanie raised her glass. “I promise you this, Anna. I will not let my demographic down. I will do what I can to combat the Missies of this world, so that the 18-to-25-year-olds coming up will not be forced to wear strawberry lip gloss in the pursuit of the Glam lifestyle.”
“You go, girl!” Anna stopped. “But how are you going to do that?”
Stephanie thought for a long moment, but nothing came to her. Finally, she set her cocktail glass back down on the table. “I don’t know yet.”
Narrowing her eyes, Anna chewed on the end of a maraschino cherry stem. “There has to be some way we can use what we know. We’ve worked so hard.”
“Exactly. And I know we can think of something. We’re smart, we’re committed and we have a lot to say.” Warming to her topic, Stephanie declared, “The women of the twenty-first century need to know what we have to tell them.”
“Like how to turn the tables.” Her friend smiled gleefully. “Like, what are you thinking, girls? You do not need to get hooked up with some loser and let him bring you down.”
“Exactly,” Stephanie said firmly. “Like you should never sit around waiting for a man to call. Better yet, you should sleep with whoever you want and then not take his calls or return his messages. Better the dumper then the dumpee, you know?”
“This is good, Steph!”
“The women of tomorrow should do what they want, when they want. Forget marriage. Forget all those nasty bonds that only benefit the men.” Marriage—that’s your five-year plan, isn’t it, Stephanie? Mr. Findlay’s mocking words played back in her mind, spurring her on. “We’ll come right out and say, hey, bucko, I want to sleep with you, but you can darn well do your own laundry and pick out your own ties and, and—”
“And make your own Thanksgiving turkey!”
“And trimmings! We should never share our money, our closets or our bathrooms—”
“Oooh. Bathrooms. Excellent one,” Anna chimed in. “No fighting over seats up, seats down, which way the toilet paper roll goes, any of that.”
“Because we don’t need them or any of their baggage!”
Anna’s volume rose as she came in with, “You are so right! Not in my bathroom! Not with your baggage! But lots of sex. Everywhere, anywhere, all the time! Sex!”
Stephanie suddenly noticed all the attention they were getting in the crowded bar. Anna went on, blithely indifferent, bouncing on her barstool and slamming a fist into the air, as her voice grew increasingly louder.
“Boink ’em and throw ’em away! Woo-hoo!”
“Anna, maybe you should—”
“No, listen, Steph. We should so do this! A new message for a new century. Gloria Steinem meets Britney Spears. Independence. The bad girl. The independent bad girl! It’s perfect!”
“Okay, well, let’s not run away with ourselves.”
“No, no, you don’t see.” Anna leaned closer. “I don’t have a job, and you’ll be working for Missy. They don’t respect either of us, and we don’t have to put up with that. So you’re going to go back to work on the Monday after New Year’s and tell Findlay that you quit.”
“I am?”
“Yes, you are. And then we’ll have the time. We already have the brains. And we have you.”
“Me?” Stephanie asked dimly. “What does that mean?”
“Well, we can’t go revolutionizing women without a spokesmodel.” Anna crossed her arms over her chest. “Face it. No matter what we do to me, I’m still going to be too short and too square. But you…You’ve got real possibilities. You could be really hot if we put some Tae Bo and a few Glam products where our mouth is. Besides, you’re great at presentations, remember? You pitch like nobody else. This is like one big pitch.”
“But, Anna…” Stephanie peered at her friend. “How did we get from ‘boink ’em and dump ’em’ to me being a spokesmodel? I am so not the type. I’m way too nice!”
“But that’s just it. Inside, I think there is definitely a naughty girl itching to get out.”
“Out of me?”
“You bet! Babe, you and me, we know women ages 18 to 25 like the back of our hand,” Anna argued. “We know exactly who they want to be. So we provide the who. You! I do the marketing, you write the results, you live the results. This is so perfect.”
“Are you talking a how-to?” Stephanie asked. “Or something more like a like a video or a magazine?”
“We’ll figure that out later. Put some focus groups together and see what plays the best.”
“But what’s our message?”
“We’ve already got it. The independent bad girl. Spike your stiletto heel through his heart!”
“That’s a tad violent, isn’t it?”
“Okay, then—sassy sisters doing it for themselves. Guys are for fun, but not for forever.” Anna beamed with satisfaction. “We make up for every Fred in Accounting, for every Mr. Findlay who ever picked a bimbo over the smart girl. We show them all who knows what about marketing. And our demographic eats it up with a spoon.”
Stephanie blinked. She couldn’t quite believe it, but this all made sense. Cold, hard, perfect sense.
“So?” Anna prompted, raising her cosmopolitan in a half
