a female model who shared her shoe size, was never there and was stupid enough to pay three-quarters of the rent, and, if that wasn’t enough, she had lucked into an amazing job organizing events for one of our best friend’s PR firm. I was very proud of her. I was also, on occasion, ever so slightly jealous. A feeling that didn’t exactly go away as the lift doors opened into Erin White PR to display a life-sized black and white photo of a half-naked Sigge, Jenny’s boyfriend, advertising a very scanty pair of pants. English usage. There were some things you never needed to know about your friend’s boyfriend, and as far as I was concerned, the contents of his Calvins was one of them. But it was a bit late for that. Jenny was an oversharer.
I blinked four times at the receptionist, who acknowledged me with a raised eyebrow, then skulked directly over to Jenny’s office, trying not to make eye contact with any of the girls on the floor. I’d never quizzed Erin on her hiring policy, but I was prepared to bet none of these girls had ever seen the inside of a McDonald’s. Everyone was so bright and perky. Why they were called public relations when they bore no relation to the public whatsoever was a mystery to me.
Luckily, I was soon safely inside Jenny’s office, hidden from the judgemental, overly made-up eyes of the office minions. That is to say, Jenny’s corner office. Jenny’s huge, airy, floor-to-ceiling-windows corner office. Ever so slightly mad, accidentally ended up living with a high-class hooker in LA, borderline alcoholic Jenny had it together. Forget earthquakes, hurricanes and the advent of Justin Bieber; if Jenny being a grown-up wasn’t a sign of the apocalypse, I didn’t know what was.
‘Hey.’ I knocked lightly on the door and stuck my head in cautiously. ‘It’s me.’
Jenny leapt up from behind her desk, resplendent in her sexy secretary skyscraper heels, pencil skirt and pussy-bow blouse, masses of hair levered away from her face by several thousand kirby grips. She made Joan from Mad Men look like the office frump.
‘Hey!’ She skittered around her desk to give me a huge hug before holding up her hand for silence and pressing a button on her Star Trek phone. ‘Melissa, could you bring me two Diet Cokes, please?’
She paused, biting her bottom lip with eyes as wide as saucers and pointing at the phone with pantoesque enthusiasm. Like I said, I was so proud.
‘Sure, Ms Lopez,’ a voice chirped over the intercom. ‘Can I get you anything else at all?’
‘That’ll be fine, Melissa,’ Jenny replied. ‘And please stop calling me Ms Lopez – you’re making me feel like I’m your homeroom teacher.’
‘You love being called Ms Lopez, don’t you?’ I asked as she took her finger off the button.
‘First time the bitch calls me Jenny, she’s fired,’ she confirmed, settling back into her chair as a tiny blonde bounced through the door and deposited two icy cans of Coke on the desk in front of us before vanishing in silence. ‘God, I love having an assistant. Now, tell me everything.’
‘I’m getting kicked out.’ I picked up my drink to see it had already been opened. Melissa wouldn’t want Ms Lopez to break a nail. Melissa was a genius. ‘I don’t have a job, which means I don’t have a visa, which means I’m getting kicked out.’
‘You do have a job. You’re my therapist and personal shopper,’ Jenny acknowledged. ‘Actually, scratch that, I’m yours. What is it you do for me?’
‘Generally make you feel better about your life?’ I suggested. ‘Oh, and I get your shoes reheeled.’ I passed her a shoe bag containing the borrowed Louboutins, freshly heeled and shined to perfection by the lovely man on the corner of North Eleventh and Berry.
‘Thanks,’ she said, stashing the shoes under her desk. ‘What did Alex say?’
‘He’s sleeping.’ I shook my head hard, trying to shake away the black and white lines of the letter that had imprinted themselves on my eyelids. ‘I didn’t want to wake him.’
‘Pretty sure he’d want to be woken for this,’ she said, holding her hand out. ‘You must have really rocked his world last night, huh? Give me the letter.’
‘I flashed his friends, fell over, knackered my knee and then rocked his world,’ I said, ticking the order of events off on my hands before pulling the offending piece of paper out of my MJ bag with my thumb and forefinger. I just didn’t even want to touch it. ‘Enjoy.’
‘As long as worlds were rocked,’ she said, eyes trained on the letter. ‘Shit, Angie.’
It was never a good sign when Jenny reacted to something badly. The queen of positive thinking, I’d sort of been hoping she would laugh, ball it up and throw the letter in the bin. Instead, she was putting on her reading glasses.
‘This doesn’t look great. Did Mary tell you they were going to do this?’
‘Nope.’
Mary Stein had been my editor and ally at Spencer Media, but since we’d parted ways, I hadn’t heard a peep out of her. Not totally shocking: Mary was all business and, well, we weren’t in business together any more, but even so, I couldn’t believe she hadn’t given me a heads-up on this. I mean, it wasn’t a slap on the wrists, it was a deportation notice.
‘So, no luck with anything new?’ Jenny gave me her concerned face. ‘You email any other editors?’
‘I’ve emailed everyone I’ve ever met,’ I said. When Alex was first away, I’d spent days contacting every single editor I’d ever met in New York City. People from newspapers, websites, blogs – everything but high-school newsletters. And they were next. I’d even tried setting up my own blog with my fingers crossed for enough ad revenue to keep me in the style to which I had become accustomed, but to date I wasn’t even making enough to keep a gerbil in the style to which it had become accustomed. Those spinning-wheel things are not cheap.
‘But there’s nothing. Not even rejection emails. It doesn’t make any sense. I know I’m not exactly the world’s most renowned journalist, but after the whole James Jacobs thing, I thought I’d definitely be able to find something.’
‘The whole James Jacobs thing’ being the time I accidentally outed an actor when I was just supposed to be interviewing him. Still, as my dad always said, better out than in.
‘OK, I’m scheduling you an appointment with our lawyer,’ Jenny said, tapping away at her keyboard while I pushed my Diet Coke back and forth, leaving a wet trail across her desk. ‘He definitely works on employment visas and stuff. We have an Australian girl here, and he helped with that. You have to go and see him. Can you do this afternoon?’
‘What else do I have to do?’ I asked. This woman was truly a goddess. ‘I’ll be there.’
‘He’s hot.’
‘It won’t help.’
‘It always helps.’
‘Fair enough,’ I accepted. ‘Bad news does sound better coming from a pretty man. I don’t know, I just hate not knowing what’s going to happen.’
‘That’s because I turned you into a super-awesome take-control-of-your-own-destiny proactive ass-kicking wonder-woman,’ Jenny explained before taking a deep breath and a deep draught from her Coke. ‘But now there’s some stuff that’s out of your control and that’s hard to accept. Unless you take
