“Dear Leslie,” the letter on the stationery of Jolie Magazine began. “We hope you had a wonderful summer as an intern with us. Everyone here at Jolie enjoyed working with you, and we greatly appreciate the assistances you provided in making our magazine the #1 voice of young women across America!”
Must have been another staff cutback after I left, Leslie thought when she noticed “assistances.” They were probably using more temps.
“Unfortunately, due to budget restrains and a declining market for general circulation publications, we will be unable to offer you a full-time position upon graduation.”
She snorted, a sort of half-laugh, and Iris, the girl standing next to her in the college mail room, looked at her. “Restrains”—maybe the verb sprang into the mind of whoever typed up the letter, she thought.
“We sincerely wish you the best of luck in finding a position that will employ your talents to the fullest. Very truly yours, Diana Chapin, Editor-in-Chief.”
She shook her head, slipped the letter back into the matching ecru envelope she had withdrawn it from, and dropped them both into a wastebasket.
“What was that about?” Iris asked.
“I just got a rejection letter from my internship,” she said.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’ve got another job—I gave up on them long ago.”
“You wanted to work there at first though, right?”
“Sure. At least I thought so.”
“But you didn’t have a good summer?”
“It was okay,” Leslie said, “but the place was going down the tubes.”
“Glad to hear it. I mean—I’m glad to hear that you don’t care.”
“It was okay, I just decided I didn’t care whether they made me an offer or not, so everything’s cool.”
“Okay—see you,” Iris said.
“See ya,” Leslie said, and began to go through the rest of her mail; a credit card offer, a notice from her bank about an overdraft that she had already taken care of, a flyer offering commemorative doo-dads for graduation. She dropped them all in the trash and headed out the door, shaking her head as she set off towards her dorm, thinking about the summer just past.
Her internship had at first seemed the fulfillment of a fantasy; a foot in the door at a major fashion magazine, the kind she had read voraciously since she was a little girl. She had loved the world that looked out at her from their pages; the women were stylish, the men looked on from the background, desire in their eyes. The photos took her to places she’d never been—New York, Paris—and would likely never see. There was nothing in those glossy publications that resembled her humdrum life in a small midwestern town; one highway running north and south, one running east and west, and from the point of intersection little squares radiating out to the city limits, like the patchwork quilts that the old ladies made in the basement of her church. Jolie would be her ticket out of the little county seat where the best she could expect to achieve in the world of fashion—if she was lucky—would be to become a buyer for the only department store in any direction for twenty miles.
Her mother had taken her shopping when she first came home from college after getting the internship offer, buying her a load of clothes that she wore for the first week on the job, then not much for the rest of the summer; it was a discordant collection of compromises and ultimatums, things her mother insisted a working girl would wear in the big city. Her mother’s notion of appropriate dress for women in business was hopelessly outdated, though; working in a fashion and lifestyle magazine for just one week, she’d been surrounded by women much more stylish than her mother could have imagined. The staff didn’t so much dress for work as to preen for the Editor-in-Chief, who was known as Queen Diana behind her back.
On her first day Leslie was assigned a drawing table in an office with Jules, a youngish man who’d worked his way up from the mailroom to become an administrative assistant, a title Leslie considered a euphemism for “go-fer.” After a few weeks of work, she decided that he was delusional; he thought that he had enough talent to eventually become an editor, which she had concluded was unlikely. He’d dropped out of college and as far as Leslie could tell had risen higher than he should have due to attrition. Jules was a terrible speller, and she wondered how anyone could hope to make it in the world of publishing who didn’t know the difference between “there” and “their.”
She was given a project for the summer; create the design, layout and text for an article on hats that was scheduled to appear in the December issue. It wasn’t enough to fill her days, so her mind wandered, and she spent a fair amount of time walking the halls, dropping in on meetings, looking at work in the art department—anything to avoid sitting in her chair looking at a blank easel pad.
“So what did they give you to work on?” Jules asked her one day when silence hung heavy on the somewhat stagnant summer air in their office.
“Hats Are Back!” she had said with a trace of self-mockery she felt was appropriate given that she might get an offer at summer’s end that would put her a rung above him.
“Oh, God!—not ‘Hats Are Back’ again!” he exclaimed dramatically.
She was caught off guard; she had thought she was being gracious, and Jules had turned her humility around on her.
“So other interns have done it before?”
“Too many to count,” he said. She squinted at him, trying to figure out how much older he was than her; she guessed five to seven years.
“What have other interns done with it?”
“Let’s see,” Jules said, looking out the window at the river. “There was ‘Hats Are Back—With a Flair!’ And… ‘Hats Are Back—Bigger and Bolder!’ What were you thinking of doing?”
She hadn’t thought of doing anything; she’d only thought that she’d call around, or otherwise tap into what was new and au courant, and… just report the facts.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I figured the story would… reveal itself… after a while.”
He laughed, a compact, condescending little laugh. “The return of hats is a spotted trend that, whenever it’s sighted, scurries back into the underbrush. It’s like ‘Men Are Switching to Handbags’: often predicted, never really happens.”
“So—I won’t be doing any actual reporting?”
“Save yourself the trouble, sweetie,” he said with a knowing look. “Just go down into the archives and see what people did before you.”
“Won’t they know?”
“Are you kidding? All they care about is ad revenues. That’s what they take home every Friday.”
She didn’t like how cynical Jules was—she was still eager to get a job offer at that point–but she figured with several years of experience he must know what he was talking about.
“Where are the archives?” she asked.
“The older stuff is on microfiche—the current stuff, a few years back, is in the stacks. It’s all on the fourth floor. I’ll take you down there sometime if you want.”
“Sure.” She hesitated, then said “Can you show me today?”
“Why not?” Jules said, getting up from his desk with an air of slightly repressed annoyance. “Let’s do it… right now,” he said, looking at his watch.
“I don’t mean to put you out…”
“The summer internship program is important,” he said with affected seriousness. “We want you to have a rich and rewarding experience in your brief time here at Jolie.” She realized after he was through that he was mimicking the speech that Diana had given the first day at the interns’ orientation session.
They took the elevator two floors down where he led her through a high-ceilinged room whose walls bore racks of periodicals—Women’s Wear Daily, fashion magazines from France and Italy—then finally to a small room with a microfilm-viewing machine and a counter that had a woman behind it.
“Here you are,” he said, as if he were dropping her off after a date. “This is Evelyn, our wonderful librarian,” he said introducing her to an older woman with greying hair and ostentatiously colorful glasses. “Evelyn—this is Leslie, one of our summer interns.”
The two exchanged greetings and Jules showed Leslie around a bit. “I think I’ll get started,” she said after they had made a circuit of the windowless room.
“Okay. Diana’s got a lunch I’ve got to get her ready for.”
“Thanks for your help,” she said. “I appreciate it.” She was anxious to be rid of him and to begin her research, and he was just as eager to get back to the office to work by himself while she was busy elsewhere.
Leslie dove into her work, searching through the indexes that Evelyn showed her, copying issues of the magazine going back to the fifties, when the annual review of women’s headwear—the term used within the trade—was actually important. Now, she gathered, it was an afterthought, a sop to advertisers.
She spread her portfolio out on a table and, as she worked back into the past like an archaeologist digging through successive layers of dirt, competing ideas began to present themselves to her. She could use the most outlandish designs from this season but she understood that this was an approach that the high fashion magazines used, and that Jolie consciously departed from; they preferred to show the tastes of the smartest young women, supplemented with a few new fashions of the season. We don’t dictate, Diana had said at one meeting, we lead.
After she’d sketched a few sample layouts on pages of her pad Leslie looked up and saw that it was past five o’clock. She collected her things and headed back to her office, and when the elevator stopped she could hardly get off for the crush of the people trying to get in and on their way home.
“You are an eager little beaver, aren’t you?” Jules said, but not in a cutting way as he stepped back to let her off.
“I found some really good stuff, thanks!” she said as he stepped into the elevator.
“No problem,” he said with a smile as the doors closed.
“See you tomorrow,” she said. She liked that Jules had broadcast to everybody else that she was staying late. She went into their office and laid her things on her easel, but decided after she’d spread them out that she was too tired to do anything creative, and would be more productive in the morning.
When she got back to her apartment she found a note from her roommate saying she was gone for the weekend to her parents’ house in New Jersey and that Leslie could finish any of the food she’d left. There wasn’t much—just some pineapple and cottage cheese—but she ate a few spoonfuls of it while she played a message on the phone.
“Hi girls, it’s Roberto next door,” the tape said when she played it. “Calling to see if you want to join me for drinks on the balcony. Just ring the buzzer if you do–ciao!”
Roberto had helped them move into their apartment over Memorial Day when he saw them struggling down the hall with overloaded suitcases, fans and tennis rackets for their summer in New York. “Good Lord,” he had said. “You got bad directions–nobody comes into New York in the summer.” They had him in that night for pizza and wine on the living room coffee table to thank him, and he’d become the sort of New York neighbor she had hoped she’d find, a friendly, funny one, like on the TV shows.
She brushed her teeth and washed a bit, then decided to take a quick shower because she felt grosser than she had when she first walked in. She wasn’t primping, she told herself, she was just being… civilized. It was one thing her mother was right about—you always wanted to look nice, and certainly not to offend anyone.
She took the only bottle of wine out the refrigerator and walked next door to ring the bell.
“Well, I’m glad I’m not the only one stuck in town this weekend, come in!” Roberto said when he saw her. They were not at the party kiss stage, she thought, as she scooted around him, and there would probably never be any romance between them. They were neighbors, just friends; she figured he understood, and that there was some deep-seated incest taboo among apartment dwellers.
“I brought you some wine,” she said sheepishly as she handed him the bottle.
“You didn’t have too, and anyway I’ve got the blender going!”
“I think I’d better stick to wine,” she said. “Hard liquor would knock me out after the week I’ve had.”
“Isn’t there a law against overworking interns?” he said, as he found a corkscrew and opened the bottle. “I thought they fed you lobster and took you to Yankee games all summer.”
“It’s a fashion magazine. I don’t think we’ll be going to any baseball games.”
“No great loss,” he said as he poured her a glass. “The only thing more boring than a baseball game is a double header.”
They went out onto the balcony, which was separated from the one in her apartment by a frosted glass panel that he covered with a bamboo screen. His was furnished, unlike hers, and reflected better taste than the men she’d known who lived off campus at college. Their decorations usually consisted of a hibachi and aluminum lawn chairs; Roberto had plants and an all-weather rug and a little side table on which he had rested a designer tray with cheese and fruit.
“Well, this is lovely,” she said as she sat down.
“Might as well make the most of what you’ve got,” he said with some resignation. “Fifty years from now I won’t be living in anything much better.”
She took a sip and didn’t say anything. She supposed she should let him vent, but on the other hand if he didn’t think he would ever live any place nicer she wasn’t sure how much closer she wanted to get to him.
“So is your job turning into everything you dreamed it would be?” he asked.
“It’s okay—I’m not sure why they even have internships, they don’t have that much for us to do.”
“Just play the game. You’ve seen those signs that say ‘Jesus is coming—look busy!’–right?”
She snorted and told him she hadn’t but thought it was funny. “How long have you been out of college?” she asked.
“Five years—seems like twenty,” he said.
Before she could pursue why he felt that way, his buzzer rang and he got up to answer it. It was another man, Andy, with red hair and a beard.
Roberto introduced them and brought a third chair out from the kitchen, and they sat and talked.
“Looks like the summer is breaking up that old gang of mine,” Roberto said. “We have a crowd of five or ten for these little soirees after Labor Day.”
“Really—where do you put everybody?” she asked. One aspect of New York life that did not resemble what she’d seen on television was that everyone’s apartment was smaller than in the situation comedies.
“As long as everyone eats standing up, like a horse in a stall, you’re fine,” Andy said.
They ate and drank and talked until the sun went down, then Leslie said she should go to bed.
“You sure? Because we’re probably going out to eat.” Roberto said.
“I’m about to pass out now,” she said.
“What happened to the hard-drinking college girls of yore?” Andy asked facetiously.
“I was wiped out from finals when I got here, and I feel like I’ve been running around ever since. I need to catch up on my sleep.”
She thanked Roberto and told Andy it had been nice to meet him, and Roberto assured her she was welcome any Friday night.
“Okay—I’ll probably take you up on it.”
“You know you will,” he said. “Somebody once told me if you want to die young try walking into a Manhattan office building at five o’clock on a summer Friday.”
“Okay—I’ll see you.” She swayed forward involuntarily, a little unsteady on her feet, and he leaned in to give her a kiss.
“Good night,” he said, as Andy backpedaled onto the porch, not sure of the significance of the kiss.
She woke the next morning with a hangover and went out of her way to avoid Roberto as she went about her Saturday chores—dry cleaning, grocery shopping, getting the bolt for the door lock fixed. He seemed to be gone Sunday, maybe to the beach that he and Andy had been talking about.
On Monday she was back in the archives and stumbled across an edition of the magazine with a feature under the headline “Women’s Hats: What’s Your Angle?” She liked the way people used to cock their hats in old black-and-white movies and she experimented with various double entendres—“A New Angle on Hats,” “Hook your man with a hat on an angle!”–but rejected them all. She worked with the theme for a while, picking through pictures to find models who wore their hats rakishly, then just decided to use the old headline since Jules had said it didn’t matter.
“How’s it going?” Jules asked her on Wednesday when she brought her pasteboard up from the archives.
“Okay,” she said hesitantly.
“Let me see,” he said as he moved behind her. “Umh-hmm,” he hummed softly behind her. “Very retro.”
“I’m supposed to show it to Diana tomorrow.”
“I think she’ll like it.”
“You do?”
“Sure—she loves retro. She’s retro herself,” he said with a laugh as he went back to his desk.
“She does have that… Joan Crawford, or Bette Davis… coldness about her.”
“Honey—you’ve got to be cold to survive in this business. Is this your one-on-one session?”
“Yes—I’m the first intern alphabetically I guess. Is she brutal to people?”
“She’s nicer to interns than she is to me. You’d better get to her before noon, though. She leaves early and if you get in the way of her exit to the Hamptons she’ll be crabby.”
Leslie did as Jules suggested, and was hovering around the executive offices early Friday morning with her portfolio.
“Is she in yet?” she asked the receptionist.
“Not yet. She just called, she’s on her way.”
“I’ll just wait for her.”
“You’re one of the interns?”
“Right.”
“I’ll tell her you’re here if she calls again.”
She sat, feeling exposed as people came and went in the reception. When Diana arrived she stopped to pick up her messages, and only turned around to see Leslie when the receptionist prompted her.
“Leslie?” she asked with a smile adopted for the occasion.
“Yes.”
“Come on in—let’s see what you’ve done.”
The Friday sessions were supposed to be the highlight of the program for the interns at the company’s various magazines, a chance to have their work critiqued by a top professional, but they were also a trial by ordeal if the folklore surrounding them was accurate. Leslie would have preferred that someone else go first so that she could get a sense of how tough things would be.
“Spread your stuff out on the table,” Diana said as she tossed her little briefcase on her desk. “Would you like some coffee or water?”
“No, I’m all set, thanks.”
“What assignment did they give you?”
“The hat one.”
“Okay. How did you come out on it?”
“Well, I, uh… did some research…”
Leslie hesitated as Diana rearranged the pasteboard to see it better. “Go on,” she said as she lifted her glasses to the bridge of her nose from the chain where they hung on her blouse.
“There didn’t seem to be much activity … in terms of new styles.”
“Hats Are Back: What’s Your Angle?” Diana read aloud.
“Right. I… thought if I emphasized how they should be worn… it would make up for the lack of new styles.”
“Um-hmm.” Diana looked closely at each of the photographs, then held the board out at arm’s length to get perspective. “You’re supposed to be defending this—you don’t seem too enthusiastic.”
Leslie swallowed, caught off guard by the editor’s bluntness. “Well, I’ve never been much of a hat person myself. My… forehead’s too big.”
“Then that’s an approach you could consider. Some women don’t look good in hats, but in the winter, when this will come out, everybody has to wear one. What do we have to say to them?”
Leslie opened her mouth, then closed it, thinking she didn’t know what she would say to someone like herself, who’d always felt awkward in a hat. “Right—I guess that’s something we could… help them with.”
“Just a thought,” Diana said. “We provide a service. Anything else?”
Leslie searched for words to say, but realized she had nothing to add. Jules had made it seem that her project was make-work, but Diana treated it as if circulation and ad revenues depended on it.
“Nope,” Leslie said, then corrected herself. “No, I… can do more research on it if you want.”
“That’s all right, I have to meet with all the other interns before you folks go back to school in August. This is more of an exercise for your benefit so you understand the process of putting the magazine together. We’ll turn this over to a staffer to complete.”
“Okay. I’m sorry… I see there’s more to it than I thought.”
“You can get snow-blind with an assignment like this.”
“What does that mean?”
“You keep looking but you don’t see anything, so you just start groping and fall back on what we’ve done in the past. Like the drunk who drops his car keys and only looks under the streetlamp because that’s where the light is.”
Leslie smiled, as Diana had concluded with a cool, thin smile at her.
“For instance,” Diana said, “this head: ‘Hats Are Back: What’s Your Angle?’”
“Yes?”
“My guess is you got that from the archives—correct?”
Leslie blushed, and her neck felt warm. “Well, yes. I thought that would be okay.”
“It is,” Diana said, “but you’re here because we want fresh insights from you young people, not cornball expressions that an old foagy like me wrote three decades ago.”
“You wrote that?”
“When I was a junior copywriter. So I know it’s out of date.”
“Oh. I thought it was… clever-sounding.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere, sugar.” She stood up and it was clear that the session was over as she walked behind her desk to look at her calendar. “There’s a saying an old boss of mine used to use, the guy who ran this place when I started out. ‘Don’t confuse effort with results.’ Keep that in mind as you embark on your career.”
She could feel she was still red in the face, but she steadied herself as she stood up. “Okay—I will. Thanks.”
Diana smiled but didn’t look up as she scrolled through messages on her phone. Leslie turned around and walked out, staring straight ahead so that she didn’t have to look anyone else in the eye. She went down to the archive room to collect herself for a while; there she would see only the librarian on her way in, and could take a seat that faced the wall.
“Well, how’d it go?” Jules said when she felt sufficiently recovered to go back to her office.
“Fine,” she said, but she looked at him askance as she settled herself in to see whether his face revealed any signs that he was amused at her situation, or that he had intentionally set her up to be embarrassed. He seemed to be uninterested in how the session had gone, as if the question were merely a pleasantry. She couldn’t tell if he was pretending, or genuinely didn’t care.
They worked together in silence for a while, then he left at noon and wasn’t there when she returned from lunch. The place was beginning to empty out, and she decided to go home and take a nap, get ready for a pleasant Friday evening on Roberto’s balcony.
She stopped to get a bottle of wine on the way back to her apartment because she recalled that she only had half a bottle in her refrigerator. When she got home she turned on the fan, poured herself a glass from the open bottle and, after she’d finished it, lay down on her bed. The wine seemed to accelerate a headache that she had felt only vaguely the night before, when she had begun to tense up in anticipation of her session with Diana. She closed her eyes and tried, as she had done when she was a girl, to focus on the spots she saw behind her eyelids to take her mind off her day.
She fell asleep, and when she woke up it was dark and the lights of the street below cast a purplish glow on her ceiling. She rolled over to look at her clock and see what time it was—past eleven.
“God,” she muttered to herself, then squeezed her eyes shut. After she allowed herself a few minutes to wake up, she turned on her bedside lamp.
She went into the bathroom, turned on the light and looked at herself in the mirror. Her face was puffy, making her eyes look smaller, like a potato she thought to herself. And then she realized—she had missed Friday night drinks at Roberto’s.
She went to her balcony and went outside, looking to see if he was home. His apartment was dark.
“Roberto,” she whispered as she leaned around the frosted glass partition. “Roberto?”
