Chapter 9
NINE
As the glass crashed into the far wall of Lucinda’s office, red liquid splashing all over the celadon-and-pink-striped wallpaper, I was oddly touched by the ferocity of her reaction to my news.
“Are you going to one of our competitors?” she screeched. “Is it Vogue? Elle?”
“Um, no, Lucinda. I—”
She cut me off, rising menacingly out of her chair. “If it’s Harper’s Bazaar, I’ll kill you myself!”
“No, no, it’s not,” I said quickly, tensing my muscles in case she lunged for me.
I calculated how long it would take for me to reach the closed door of her office, factoring in the distance, the myriad artfully positioned floor cushions I’d have to vault, and my uncomfortable high-heeled suede boots.
I nervously fingered the sleeve of my sweater. “I’m going to NuVoices Media.”
Lucinda plopped back down in her chair, cocked her head to the side, and stared at me. “NuVoices? Isn’t that an urban company?” She said urban like it was roach pesticide or a past bankruptcy—something undesirable that one didn’t talk about in polite company.
“Yes, it is,” I told her. But before I could explain my new job, Lucinda interrupted again.
“You mean to tell me that after I’ve given you the promotion of a lifetime, you’re leaving to go work at some upstart urban company?”
“Yes. I’m going to be the editor in chief of a magazine called Sugar.” Since Lucinda was clearly uninterested in the details, I didn’t elaborate further. “But I truly appreciate the opportunity you gave me here.”
“You, overachiever, are a fool. If you hadn’t already ruined your career with this dumb move, I’d tell you you’ll never work for a major magazine again.
” She leaned forward to deliver the next sentence with chilly precision.
“No one leaves StyleList after getting promoted by me personally. No. One.”
With her flushed cheeks and wild hair, Lucinda, who normally looked like a stylish leprechaun, was infused with an energetic fury that made her almost attractive.
She summoned Mary-Kate, who appeared thirty seconds later with a fresh drink.
From the sympathetic look she shot me, I gathered that the commotion was audible outside Lucinda’s office.
“Mary-Kate, please escort Nicole out.” Lucinda swiveled in her chair to face away from me, her threat to kill my career serving as our sentimental goodbye.
By the time I got to my office, there was a security guard waiting.
I had exactly ten minutes to get my personal belongings together—the rest would be heaped into a box and mailed to me.
As I packed, taking extra care to remove the precious picture of me with Bobbie Washington on the Howard campus from my bulletin board, a small crowd of fake-sympathetic rubberneckers gathered.
Looking around at the wan, designer-clad fashionistas waiting to pounce on my remains, I was surprised by how excited I was to get out of there, potential career doom be damned.
I hoped to escape without any further confrontation, but I rounded the corner to the elevator bank to find Marie waiting, arms crossed.
Since Marie had been at my birthday party, I’d asked my girls not to spread the news about Sugar, and I’d been putting off the conversation ever since. Now I was busted.
“Marie, I really—”
“How could you let me find out this way?” Marie marched over and jabbed me a little too hard in the shoulder. “How are you going to let Lucinda of all people tell me that you’re leaving? And why wouldn’t you let me help you navigate your exit?”
“She called you?” I managed.
“Who else was she going to call to arrange for your exit documents, and your security escort?” she said, motioning toward the burly uniformed guy who was hovering behind me.
“It’s okay, Boris, I got it from here.” Marie waited until he left, recrossed her arms, and lit into me again.
“So, what are you thinking? Do you truly understand what you’re giving up? ”
Under her livid gaze, I felt like a third grader caught cheating on a quiz: ashamed and scared.
But even in my mortification, I realized that it had been more than cowardice that had kept me from telling her; I still held some insecurity about my decision to leave the Park Ave Pub ivory tower, and I knew that Marie was one of the few people who could get me to see my folly.
“I’m so sorry. I … I was afraid to call you after everything you’ve done for me here,” I told her.
“Yeah, okay, Nikki. But again: Do you have any idea what you’re giving up?”
“The gig wasn’t as amazing as it initially sounded.” My words sounded ungrateful to my ears, so I tried to clean it up. “You know that I had a lot of problems with Lucinda.”
Marie turned away and rubbed a hand over her side-parted and slicked-down blond Afro. She looked toward the ceiling and loudly said, “Are you kidding me right now? Did you think it was supposed to be easy?”
I winced, feeling more and more foolish. “I didn’t think it was supposed to be easy, but you know Lucinda is a closet racist.”
Marie swung back around and shook her head in disbelief. “Big deal, Nikki. What are you, a child? You think you’re the first Black person to deal with racism on the job?”
“How could you say that? Isn’t HR supposed to say the opposite? Isn’t it your job to protect me?”
“Oh, so now I’m ‘HR.’” Her air quotes drove home how weak I sounded.
“Well, my role as HR is also talent development, which I was doing by putting you in a position to blaze a trail at StyleList. You were breaking ground, so what did you think it was going to be like? The first one always has it bad. I just thought you were strong enough to deal with it.”
“I didn’t exactly quit for some cushy gig, you know.” My eyes were getting damp. Marie must have noticed, but she didn’t let up.
“No shit. You left to work for Barbara Porter, who, by the way, is no easier than Lucinda. But since you didn’t bother to give me a heads-up or ask if I had any intel, you probably don’t know the stories.”
I had nothing to say to that. I couldn’t ask what she was talking about even though I was dying to know what I’d gotten myself into.
Dropping her voice to an angry whisper, she said, “I could have at least coached you on how to tell Lucinda so you didn’t burn your bridge with her and Park Ave Pub. She was furious when she called me.”
“I know. She threw a glass at a wall, spilled her drink all over her silk pillows.”
“No! I would have paid good money to see that.” She cracked a small smile.
“Yeah, it was crazy. She totally lost it.”
“Apparently.” Her face turned serious again. “But I wouldn’t be so smug about making Lucifer lose it. She’s a formidable enemy. Frankly, for a mild-mannered bougie girl, you are racking up a lot of enemies.”
My hands squeezed into fists. “That’s not fair, Marie. You know what happened with Alonzo.”
“You know what I know?” she asked, punching the elevator button. “I know that you seem to have a habit of making rash decisions. And you need to think about that, Nikki. One day something’s going to happen, and you will not get off so easy.”
“It already has. Alonzo already told Barbara and, apparently, half the urban world that I’m a slut who’ll do anything to succeed.”
“Uh, you don’t think I know that, Nikki?
I’ve been shielding you for years. I know you’ve always wanted to be an editor in chief, and you think you’ll fit right in at NuVoices, but I’m not so sure that you’ve made the right calculation.
” The elevator arrived and Marie motioned for me to get in, saying only, “I will be rooting for you from afar.” The doors closed on her sad yet stern face, leaving me to escort my sorry self out of Park Avenue Publishing for good.
Barbara had pooh-poohed my request to give StyleList their full two weeks’ notice—or perhaps she’d understood that I’d immediately be shown the door like a drunk brawler at a nightclub.
Either way, she had insisted that I go to the NuVoices office for a morning meeting that Friday to rally the Sugar staff, and I was to start my new job the following Monday.
I’d dreaded telling Lucinda I could only give her a week to transition, but since she and StyleList wanted no part of me, I now had a few days off to prepare.
Within five minutes of setting foot in my Brooklyn studio, I’d put on sweats, ordered Chinese food, and had my phone in hand to call my mother.
Since I was already persona non grata at Park Ave Pub and had upset my one work friend, I thought I might as well piss off my mom too.
It was bad enough that she couldn’t talk me out of journalism as a career.
No way, I thought, would she endorse my departure from a stable job at a prestigious company to work for an unknown brand.
It was like leaving an executive role at the Coca-Cola corporation to run a lemonade stand.
I dialed her number, gave her the news, and braced for impact. There was a long silence before Mom exhaled and slowly asked, “Okay, does it pay as much as your position at StyleList?”
“The base is about the same.” My new job actually paid almost five thousand dollars less than my StyleList salary.
I was taken aback when Barbara told me, but she wouldn’t budge.
The only thing she promised is that if I lasted a year, she would consider giving me a raise and a bonus.
However, I had negotiated one solid perk. “But I do have a clothing allowance!”
“Then, we’ll have to go shopping,” she said. “You’ll need some suits.”
“Suits! Whoa. Mom, I don’t think—”
“Suits,” she repeated firmly. “You’ll have an entire staff to oversee, and you should look authoritative, Nicole.”