2 What the.?
2
What the...?
I didn’t close the blinds or the curtains last night, so the first rays of light flood my bedroom and hit my face like an alarm clock. Ivan, my pragmatic bestie, always says the furniture in my room is all in the wrong place, that it doesn’t have good feng shui. But I like everything exactly how it is. It was already like this before I even met Tristan. I’ve lived in this apartment since my last breakup, because I’ve been with men other than him, obvs. I had a very long, lovely, and boring relationship, the kind where we’re convinced we need them but we don’t really love them. Then I met a man who wasn’t good for me…the kind who we want but we don’t need. I discovered too late that he was married. After him, there were a few fun flings: the polyamorous one, which taught me a lot about jealousy; that skinny doctor who was so funny but I only went out with once; the singer…ay…he was such a fuckboy. But everyone gets tired of it all at some point.
I met Tristan right when I was promising myself I would never fall in love again. I needed to be alone and have some peace. I didn’t need a partner, just the occasional hookup to go to the movies with and fuck on the dining room table. Love is a fallacy. The opium of the masses. Blah, blah, blah. I fell in headfirst like an idiot and didn’t even put my hands out to break the fall, so…emotionally Tristan broke everything, even my teeth.
I don’t know why I’m speaking in the past tense.
The sound of the alarm clock forces me to get up, even though I don’t want to, and the first thing that surprises me is that I’m wearing pajamas. Two-piece pajamas with a black button-down top, which I thought I had gotten rid of ages ago. Cock is like acid… It takes you on a full psychotropic journey.
I go to the kitchen and put the coffeepot on the stove and throw my hair into a bun with the hair tie that’s always on my wrist and write on my team’s WhatsApp group:
Miranda:
Ladies, I was up all night vomiting. In charge of the photo shoot today (drumroll please): Rita!! If you have any questions, send me a message. Everyone else, please: behave. I’m staying home today. I’ll be by the phone in case there’s a disaster, but please, I’m begging you, don’t let there be.
I leave my phone on the kitchen counter and cling to it like Rose on the door in Titanic . I tell myself: Don’t worry, Miri. You’re gonna get him back. This can’t end like this. It’ll all be okay in the end, and if it’s not okay, it’s not the end.
I pour myself a coffee, add in a glug of agave syrup, and dunk three María cookies in it. The saddest breakfast since we all caught a stomach bug at the magazine; we were shitting ourselves like hoopoes, and all we could handle were sips of Gatorade.
A buzz from my phone breaks through the pleasure of feeling the cookies crunch quietly under my molars.
Rita:
Miri, I appreciate you trusting me to run a photo shoot that only exists in your wonderful and sparkling overworked brain, but I’m sorry to tell you the fact that you’re not coming is the disaster. We have the staff meeting today and the shit show.
I squint as I read it. What shit show?
Eva, the editor in chief, sends another message in case I didn’t get it.
Eva:
THE SHIT SHOW.
Wait, isn’t today the photo shoot? I press my forehead against the counter and sigh. They’re not even gonna leave me alone to cry my eyes out and wallow in this heartbreak. For the love of Harry Styles. Where did the phrase “work dignifies man” come from. More like it tortures.
I turn on the shower, and I’m surprised to see a hanger with an outfit all ready to go on the back of the door. I’ve been doing that for years under normal circumstances…but I don’t think “normal circumstances” is exactly the phrase I would use to describe yesterday’s journey. I only get clothes ready the night before because…well, I’m not exactly the regular kind of girl who works at a fashion magazine. I always had to make an effort, and that habit just stuck with me.
When you think of the kind of woman who works at a fashion magazine (and one of the biggest magazines in the world specifically), what comes to mind is the image of a leggy, size zero, young, beautiful girl with long, shiny hair…and I already made it clear that I’m not beautiful. What I am is attractive and full of personality. But I don’t have long, slender legs or incredible hair. If a model or an actress had to play me in a movie, it wouldn’t be Gisele Bündchen, just to give you a hint. I’m normal. Even though, actually, we’re all normal; “normal” is a word that doesn’t really mean anything.
This is something we’ve always defended tooth and nail at the magazine, ever since I started there as an intern. When I got there, I didn’t really care about fashion. I ended up there almost by chance, but something about my résumé caught the director’s eye, as well as the training I had gotten in my work experience. There were so many impeccably dressed girls vying for the job, and they gave it to the one who showed up in an oversized blazer she got half off from Mango and beaten-up Adidas sneakers.
Taste is refined over time and with practice. You learn what looks good on you, which parts of you should be accentuated, and what garments let you do that. You realize what colors suit you best, which haircuts make you feel powerful, what heels you can handle for eight hours (if you even want to wear them, because you don’t have to) and which will have you begging for a toe amputation… You’re aware of what fashion can offer you and what you can offer it. Apparently, I have a kind of innate taste that, alongside what I’ve been trained on since the day I started at the magazine, has equipped me with good judgment. And I’m a good boss…because with a lot of effort and a little luck, I excelled until I got to be the youngest deputy editor of a fashion magazine in the whole country. Right after I turned twenty-eight.
Before I get in the shower, I sit down to send Tristan a WhatsApp and write to him that I’d like to be home so we can talk calmly and maybe even suggest getting something to eat together…but after scrolling, searching, and more searching, I realize that last night I must have been on a bender of infinite sadness and done things I don’t even remember, like deleting his phone number, any trace of him in my calls, his WhatsApp chat, his profile on Instagram, and…on top of all that, he doesn’t even show up as authorized on our joint account. I mean, come on…
I don’t have time to figure out how I was so efficient even though I was half-asleep, so I postpone that. My stomach turns when I realize I’ve been doing that for at least a year: postponing. I postpone shit shows. I postpone plans. I postpone thinking about things on the back burner. I don’t have time. I really don’t. Up until yesterday, I had to juggle my life as a deputy editor (on call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week) with my personal life (a relationship, a father, a few friends), and I always felt like I was doing it all badly.
The clothes I picked out yesterday surprise me. It’s spring, but for some reason I can’t understand, I chose clothes for the middle of winter. God, Miri. Nothing has made sense since I got out of bed. Still, I open my window and lean out to see what the weather’s like: I’m shocked by a blast of frigid air that closes all my pores from now until next year. Maybe I was more lucid last night than I thought…even though I still can’t remember a single thing. How is that possible? I’m getting pretty worried, and the hypothesis of the brain tumor is starting to seem more and more likely.
I go through the motions, trying not to think. Black, cropped faux-leather pants, a chunky black sweater, pumps. I pull my brown hair back in a low pony and slap on a little makeup: clean skin, eyeliner on eyelashes with a light dab of mascara, and red lipstick. I look in the mirror right before I grab my leather jacket and my work bag from the hall closet and raise one eyebrow. I feel like I’m stealing someone’s look without realizing.
Years ago, when I started at the magazine, our office was on one floor of a terrifying building in an industrial estate, but someone (wisely) decided that we should move to a nice building on Calle de Santa Engracia in the center of Madrid. There are way fewer of us now. I still remember running around an editorial office filled with desks and more desks, organized into segments: fashion, beauty, lifestyle… It’s not like that anymore. We’re a pretty small team of women (100 percent women). We survive, we stay standing, we fight to change many stereotypes through glossy paper, to defend sisterhood, the truth behind beauty standards, physical and mental health, and a lifestyle that doesn’t feed unattainable goals that only lead to frustration.
Can you tell I believe in what I do?
When I go through the turnstiles at the magazine and wave at the doorman, I have my phone in my hand, as always. This fucking device has become an extension of my own body over the past few years. I check it when I get out of the shower, on the bus, in taxis, under the table at work lunches, while I’m waiting for coffee, the elevator, the bathroom, every-fucking-where. There’s always a fire to put out, a question, an email to answer or to ignore or to put a little red flag on so I’ll respond to it later.
“Hey, Miri!” the girls already sitting at their desks call out to me.
“Hi, hi… We’re going to change the world!”
I rush across to my glass-walled office as fast as I can, but before I can close the door, Eva, the editor in chief, darts in.
“How are you feeling?”
I stare at her in surprise as I slide my bag under my desk, still clutching my phone in my hand. I’m weirded out by her sudden interest in my health but also by how she’s dressed: ripped jeans, a rainbow sweater, kitten heels. She could have fallen out of the trends-of-five-years-ago section.
I decide to ignore it. Sometimes people get a little nostalgic about fashion.
“Why?”
“Because of all the barfing.”
I raise my eyebrows. Being a good liar means having a good memory, and that’s not really my specialty.
“Ah, right. Something I ate for dinner must not have agreed with me.”
“You and those poke bowls.”
“You know ever since I got food poisoning from that bluefin tuna at a magazine lunch, I never eat poke anymore.”
From the look she gives me, apparently she doesn’t remember, and that weirds me out too, because it’s not that easy to forget someone projectile vomiting in the hallway at the Ritz.
“Well,” she declares, “they’re coming at 11:30. Right after the staff meeting.”
“Who’s coming?”
Rita, the fashion director, comes in, and before she’s even all the way into my office, she’s already nattering away. Rita always likes her own voice to precede her.
“I prepared a few pitches, even though I think we’ve got it in the bag. Seriously, sometimes working here is like being high AF.”
“I’m not going to ask how you know what it’s like to be high AF, because I’m scared of what’ll come next,” teases Marta, the digital director, who just barged in without knocking.
“Why is my office like a whorehouse on payday?”
“Miri, put your phone down already, girl. It looks like it’s glued to your hand.” Marta laughs.
“She’s one to talk…” Rita retorts sarcastically.
The glass door opens again, and Cris, the beauty director, pokes her head in.
“Are you all meeting up without me?”
“We’re just kiki-ing before the shit show meeting,” Eva answers.
“Can someone explain this shit show thing?” I beg.
“Why do you have your phone in your hand like that, like you’re in the FBI and you have to show your badge? Are you waiting for an important call or something?”
The four of them—Eva, Rita, Cris, and Marta—waggle their eyebrows suggestively. Before I can respond to them, with my phone waving very visibly in my hand almost like a flag, a notification dings, and the Tinder icon pops up on the screen.
“What?” I yelp.
There’s a plural cackle that ricochets off the office’s glass walls. I don’t need to look in the mirror to see that I’m the color of a baboon’s ass.
“I mean…the thing is, yesterday… Well, actually, never mind. It’s just that…”
“Listen, chocho!” Rita cracks up. “It’s not a sin to have a little whore tour around Tinder, girl.”
I would say from experience that Rita is one of those women who believes in monogamy even more than the indisputable efficacy of the little black dress to get you out of a style predicament. I don’t understand this support unless I told them…
Wait.
“By any chance, did I send some of you a message with disturbing content last night?” I ask them anxiously.
“Ah, man, the girl goes out partying and doesn’t even invite us,” Rita teases.
“No…no…”
“You didn’t send anything,” Cris rushes to pacify me. My forehead must be covered in sweat. “And the scrolling Tinder thing is nothing new. Take a breath… ”
I woke up today, and the whole world is upside down. I sigh to try to blot it out and look at my phone. Last night, on top of erasing every trace of Tristan from my phone, I must have downloaded the app and started trying to find a match like my life depended on it. I glance at the notification on my screen.
Manuel:
Sounds good. I can meet up tonight or tomorrow night. Then I’m heading out of Madrid for the weekend.
“Holy shit…” I murmur.
“What?” they all say in unison.
“I must be losing it. I don’t even remember downloading Tinder.”
“They say the accumulation of heavy metals in our blood from sushi can make…”
We all glare at Rita, and she raises her hands in surrender.
“Okaaaay.”
“Have you been fishing for salmon in Norway recently?” Cris pipes up.
“It must be a mistake. I’m going to deactivate my account.” I put my phone down on the table and look at them again, faking a smile. “So? What are you all doing in my office? Is this about the shit show thing?”
“You can get used to a good thing so quickly, huh?” Marta mocks me.
I don’t get it, but I can’t be bothered to ask.
“Staff meeting,” I say as shorthand, even though I could’ve sworn we had other things scheduled for today. But my calendar lines up with what these girls are saying…so it must be. “At ten.”
“And the shit show at eleven thirty. But don’t worry. This week’s shit show isn’t going to happen,” Eva assures me.
“Wow, you’re having a pretty crazy first month…” Cris sighs.
Okay. I don’t understand any of them. I side-eye them, but they don’t take the hint.
“Is Marisol in her office?” I ask.
“Did you come in with no coat?” Rita responds, shocked.
“At this time of year, wearing a coat is a little much, right? Or is Milan street style dictating that we all wear coats in spring-summer?”
I catch the look they all give each other; they’re incredulous.
“Miri, are you okay?”
No. Last night, my boyfriend dumped me, and today, the world is even weirder than usual.
“Yes, yes. Of course. I’m going to get a coffee and a bun.” I turn on my iMac and pull my wallet out of my bag.
“If you spent the whole night throwing up, are you gonna be able to handle that?”
“I need sugar.”
It’s the only explanation I can think of before I hustle out of my own office. Out of the corner of my eye, I can feel them still staring at me, stupefied, as I hurry away. Something weird is going on here. Or maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m the weird one.
Dori, the waitress in the café across the street, serves me my Americano and my brioche without a word. I just smile. She asks me, like every day for the past few years, how my day’s going, but all I can do today is make a face and add:
“Weird.”
That’s enough for her. Sometimes we gossip about what we’re doing at the magazine, and we give her free makeup because she’s a doll, and on Fridays, she saves us churros if she sees they’re running low. On Fridays, even though we work in a fashion magazine and people probably expect something more glamorous and fancy, the heads of departments and the deputy editor, meaning me, eat churros for breakfast while we go through the agenda for the following week. Dori is our messiah and the churros our salvation.
When I get back, there’s already a commotion in the conference room. That’s where the planning meeting is held once a month, where we go over the topics for the next issue. We work on the content for the next issue a month and a half in advance, because we have to close everything and get it to the printer, which can be dangerous sometimes: nowadays, a topic can become obsolete in a week. But we’ve learned to be able to maneuver things thanks to the digital edition, which updates the publication every day in all the different sections.
My role is pretty important in the planning meetings. In the absence of the editor in chief, I’m the highest authority who decides whether a topic is in or out, and our director is usually absent. And it’s not because she’s blowing it off. Marisol, who has been with the company for many years, has learned to delegate, to give her deputy editor authority while shouldering a part of the job I personally find very thankless: corporate and public relations. You have to be up to it, and she is. She’s kind, intelligent, and sweet. She gets more advertisers than the whole advertising department and is the front-facing leader of a newsroom full of women whose voices are always heard. Can you tell I love what I do?
I go into the room with my coffee, my bun, my iPad, and my planner. I’m one of those…analog girlies. I’d rather write things by hand because somehow, I feel like I remember it better that way. It’s my way of organizing and categorizing. And my planner is my bible.
I sit at the head of the table, in the position I inherited from the previous deputy editor almost five years ago, and I smile at the girls who are already sitting around the table. Next, I freak out. What the hell are all these people doing here?
“Um…”
Across the table is one of our most beloved contributors who left the magazine the year before to work at a media agency that specialized in fashion. On her right, the perfect girl who we had to fire after the lockdowns. Opposite her, two whose contracts we couldn’t renew for exactly the same reason.
What? What’s going on? A reunion for old colleagues? The room is full, and they’re waiting for me to lead the meeting.
“Good morning, ladies. Um…I’m happy to see some old friends who must be here to share some interesting content with us.” I look at the girls in question, who stare blankly back at me, not giving anything away. What I do notice is everyone looking kind of bewildered. “Let’s get started then…”
I grab my agenda and open it where the bookmark is. I’m surprised to see the date. November 11. I furrow my brow. I must look like an idiot. The whole room is waiting for me to open with the articles we’re going to “syndicate,” meaning all the articles we’re going to replicate from the main masthead, in this case from the United States. But I could’ve sworn the planning meeting was in ten days…and that it was April, so I’m pretty lost.
If this is the best part of my life…we’re not doing very well.
Is this why Tristan left me?
“Everything okay, Miranda?” Eva, the editor in chief, asks.
“Yes,” I say very certainly. “Just lemme…”
I flip through the pages in my planner until I feel a little tap on my leg; to my right, Rita is gesturing at the iPad with her eyes and her perfect eyebrows. I grab the iPad, open the folder called “Current Planning” on the shared server, and glance at it.
“Sorry, girls…I had a terrible night. I had a really bad migraine.”
“I thought it was vomiting?” Cris asked.
I look up for a second very seriously and nod.
“Migraines make me vomit. It’s fine. We’re inheriting from our dear North American mother the Blake Lively interview, which is four pages, where she talks about what this pregnancy has meant for her career.” I look up. “I didn’t know she was having another baby.”
“We talked about it the other day, don’t you remember? She wore that blue dress with the Bardot neckline to some event. She looked divine,” one of the fashion editors comments.
What she was saying seems to ring a bell…but in the distance, deep down in my memory.
“Um…okay. We’re also taking the advertorial, which is coming to us written and produced by the mother ship. It’s from MAC about lipstick in grunge colors. The photo is of Lorde. It’s two pages. And we’re also syndicating…um…a Chanel campaign.”
I glance up from the iPad again and pull a face that makes everyone laugh.
“Maybe I’m getting old, but all this seems like the same as always. Give me something good, my girls, because we have to make nice things for the world. Fashion, what have we got?”
“We’re going over all the trends that are gonna stick around next summer and which are going to disappear. We’re highlighting the following: crisscross necklines, how to use it and where to find the best dupes from models’ street style. Athleisure, or how to use sporty pieces in your everyday fits without looking like you’re on your way to or from the gym. Oh! And a special on the best rock T-shirts. Then we have an accessories section, our own production, garments from the Dior cruise collection, and in the wardrobe section, we talk about sailor tees.” Rita seems pleased after she spews all this in one breathless stream.
“Seems okay to me,” Eva confirms.
I furrow my brow.
“Are you within your page limit?”
“Yes. The same pages as always.”
They’re all looking at me, waiting for an okay. I know fashion is cyclical, but…
“It seems a little warmed over to me, girls. Are you sure?”
Rita is looking at me, confused.
“Miri…it’s the most cutting of the cutting edge. We’ve been going through all the Instagram accounts of the major influencers all over the world and the trends on the runway, plus the fast fashion collections and the prêt-à-porter from the big businesses…”
“No, you know I trust your judgment one hundred, Rita. It’s just that… I don’t know.” I’m not feeling any understanding looks around me, so I decide to make a joke. “Seems like fashion died when Karl did.”
There’s a stir through every member of the meeting.
“What?”
“Huh?”
“What did you say?”
“Karl?”
“No way.”
“Quick, google it.”
I’m getting more and more sure that whatever was on top of that bun wasn’t sugar.
“Wait, what’s going on?” I ask, super confused.
They’ve all whipped out their phones and are pulling up Google. Is that an iPhone 7 in Rita’s hand?
“Miri, girl…” Marta says with a smile. “You’re bumping poor Karl Lagerfeld off before his time.”
I feel a knot in my stomach. I’m 100 percent sure Karl Lagerfeld is dead. He died two years ago. We did a special on his most iconic designs and his most famous quotes.
I look at my iPad for a second. I take my phone out from under my planner’s leather cover. I look at my fingers. A second-generation iPad. iPhone 8 plus. Brand-new. There’s no sign of a ring with a blue stone on my ring finger. I don’t know what to blame—the migraine, my sadness, or the pain of the breakup, which has been floating in my chest since yesterday—but something isn’t working how it should. I’m seeing weird stuff, things that aren’t possible…and normalizing them. How did I not realize all this when I’ve been checking my phone since I opened my eyes this morning?
“What day is it?” I mutter without looking up.
“Miri, are you okay?”
“What day is it?”
“The eleventh of November,” one of the younger voices says.
“Of what year?”
Cris gets up and hurries over to crouch down next to me.
“Miri, you’re super disoriented. Are you okay?” She touches my neck and my forehead.
I’m covered in a cold sweat.
“Should I call an ambulance?” Marta asks, worried.
“What are you trying to do, make her even more anxious?” Rita responds.
A bunch of birds start fluttering around the room. They’re all nervous, and they all want to do something for me.
“What year?” I repeat, my voice shaking.
When she tells me the year five years ago, I feel like I’m going to faint.
“Very funny.”
They all look at one another, confused.
“It’s not a joke,” I confirm. “It’s not…” I press a finger into my temple. “Ah…”
They’re truly alarmed, and they’re still all talking to one another.
“Call an ambulance.”
“Could it be a stroke?”
“Too much stress.”
“I told you…we should have helped her more with the transition.”
“But she wouldn’t let us… She has that obsession with doing everything herself…”
I stand up and stumble.
“Give me a second.”
“Miri, where are you going? We should go to the doctor.”
“Someone should go with her.”
I turn toward them and fake the most terrifying grin I’ve ever smiled.
“I’m fine. I’m just…a little dizzy. Let me go to the bathroom.” They all start following. “Alone,” I clarify.
I take advantage of them taking a couple of steps back to run off toward the toilets in panic. I’m reassured by the fact that my legs are working. I’m breathing normally, and I can talk, hear, see. I feel a resounding strength in each step I take, each time I notice my strides or the hand pushing on the bathroom door. But…
I go into a cubicle and lock it behind me before I sit down on the closed lid, hugging my knees to my chest.
That was a big year.
I’d like to say it was the most important year of my life.
In that year, I was promoted to deputy editor.
In that year, I went on vacation alone for the first time.
In that year, I met Tristan.
To be exact, on November 11.
Wait…what the…?