How to Sleep with a Movie Star (2 page)

Thankfully, the atmosphere wasn’t anything like that of the high fashion magazines where a few of my classmates from college worked. They had all been promptly assimilated and now had matching haircuts, matching Fendi and Louis Vuitton bags for every season, and wardrobes that consisted only of the most expensive and trendy designer clothes. Margaret just asked that we look presentable, polished, and stylish, which I usually didn’t have a problem with, even on my admittedly meager salary.

After all, I had to look the part if I was going to interact with the fabulously wealthy A-list set. I’d made the mistake my first year at
People
of dressing professionally but without much of a stylish edge, and I’d quickly learned my lesson. Spending a bit more on designer items—even if I could afford just a scarf to pair with less impressive non-designer threads—would go a long way. When you were an actress decked out in tens-of-thousands-of-dollars of diamonds, strutting down the red carpet, there was just something about a reporter wearing a Gucci scarf that made you just a bit more likely to stop and chat. Sad, right? But those were the rules of the game.

And the articles. Sheesh, the articles. Don’t get me wrong—I love what I do. I love getting inside people’s heads (even if those heads often belong to vacuous celebrities) and finding out what they’re thinking, what they’re worrying about, what makes them tick. So the job as senior celebrity editor of
Mod
fits me with a perfection that might surprise you, considering I originally had my sights set on the lofty literary world of
The New Yorker.

But it’s the other articles, the in-between assignments that a Prada-clad Margaret dumps on my desk at the last minute, that drive me crazy. I mean, there are only so many ways you can address your readers’ “Most Intimate Sex Questions” (clue: they’re not so intimate anymore when 2.6 million women are reading about them); the truth behind “How to Drop Those Last Five Pounds” (um, exercise and eat less—duh); and the ever-popular “How to Know If He Likes You” (well, men who like a woman usually want to sleep with that woman—wait, should I be taking notes here?).

Even the celeb interviews have their moments, when I wish I could just bury my head in Jane Austen and slink back to my college English class with my tail between my legs.

I became an editor because I love to write. And I took this job at
Mod
because I really like one-on-one interviews and profiles. As a little girl, I loved reading my grandmother’s celebrity magazines:
People, The Enquirer, Star
. The lives of the beautiful people in the pictures seemed so glamorous, so exciting. Perhaps that was what had drawn me to celebrity journalism to begin with, although after several years of working in the field, I knew better than to think that everything was as it appeared to be.

At
People,
where I worked before I started at
Mod,
I’d made a name for myself in the business by breaking two major stories in the same year: the biggest celebrity breakup of the decade, the split between movie star Clay Terrell and pop princess Tara Templeton (thanks to the friendly relationship I’d developed after numerous interviews with the down-to-earth Clay); and the story of musical diva Annabel Warren’s breast cancer diagnosis. (I had also interviewed her numerous times, so when the cancer rumors broke, mine was the only call she decided to take.) As a result,
Mod
had come looking for me. Margaret dangled a higher salary—and much more important, the chance to work on lengthy honest-to-goodness human interest profiles—and I was sold. And just like that, I became the youngest senior celebrity editor in the business.

I loved the job, but the move had made me some quick enemies. In the ever-gossipy world of magazines, a rumor had circulated (and lingered for six months) that I’d slept with Margaret’s boss, Bob Elder, the president of Smith-Baker Media. Of course I hadn’t, but professional jealousy tends to rage when someone several years shy of thirty snags a dream job that scores of women a decade older were after. I saw the suspicious looks sometimes, and there were still editors out there who refused to speak to me, but I was over it. I hadn’t done anything wrong to get here. I certainly hadn’t slept with Bob Elder, who was pushing sixty and was easily three times my weight. I had just done my job. And ironically, this wasn’t
my
dream job at all, anyhow.

When I was an English major at the University of Georgia, analyzing Shakespearean innuendos, I wouldn’t have suspected that four short years later, I’d be enthusiastically asking pop stars whether they wear boxers or briefs. Or asking actresses whether they feel like Sevens, Diesels, or Miss Sixtys lift their already-perfect butts better (as if Gwyneth Paltrow and Julia Roberts
had
butts to lift).

Speaking of perfectly sculpted women poured into designer clothing, I was snapped out of my reverie by the approach of a heavy cloud of perfume as Sidra, Sally, and Samantha all glided by in the hallway, as if on cue, on three pairs of Jimmy Choos I couldn’t have walked in if I tried.

Wendy and I called them “the Triplets.” Somehow, miraculously, the three rulers of the fashion department roost all had names that began with an
S,
were pencil thin, abnormally tall, and had painfully pointy noses that seemed to match the painfully pointy toes of their stilettos. They all looked perpetually polished, as if they visited a beauty salon each morning before they appeared at the office, which was entirely possible since they normally didn’t grace us with their presence until after 11 a.m. There was never a hair out of place, never an inch of face without perfectly applied makeup, never a moment when their noses weren’t fixed permanently in the air.

I caught pieces of their conversation as they passed.

“Oh . . . my . . . God,” Sidra DeSimon,
Mod
’s coldly beautiful fashion and beauty director, said, sounding remarkably like Chandler’s ex-girlfriend Janice, from
Friends
. I wondered momentarily just how one managed to develop a voice that nasal. “She was carrying a Louis Vuitton bag from
last season
.”

Sally and Samantha both gasped at this apparent mortal sin.

“Last season?” Sally asked incredulously, scurrying after Sidra.

“Ugh.” I could see Samantha shudder in horror before they disappeared around the corner.

I made a face as I choked on the cloud of Chanel No. 5 they left swirling in their wake.

How they managed to afford the latest in designer fashions on editorial salaries was beyond me. I suspected that, like many of the stick-thin, model-tall fashionistas who inhabited the hallways and abused the expense accounts of the country’s top women’s magazines, all three Triplets were trust-fund babies. It didn’t hurt that their penchant for $2,000 pants and the latest Jimmy Choos, Manolo Blahniks, or Prada boots was assisted by their access to the magazine’s fashion closet and a ream of eager-to-please designers they probably had on speed-dial.

In fact, just last week when I cruised through the fashion department to pick up some copy Wendy was supposed to edit, I’d heard Sidra cooing into the phone, “But Donatella,
dahling,
I simply
must
have that suede skirt for my trip to Paris next week. . . . Yes,
dahling,
I’d really owe you one if you’d messenger it over right away.” The call was followed an hour later by the conspicuous arrival of a carrier case from Versace, which was whisked into the fashion department. The doors slammed shut behind it.

Sidra, the oldest of the Triplets and their fearless leader, was a bit of a legend in the New York editorial world. She claimed to have dated George Clooney for a month or so in the mid-nineties and had used that fact as a sort-of job reference throughout the rest of her career. She was known to frequently drop, “When George and I were dating . . .” into various conversations where the words really didn’t belong.

For George’s part, he denied that he knew her. That hadn’t stopped her from dragging his name through the mud to her advantage—and to the endless delight of the New York gossip scene. Her name was a Page Six staple.

For reasons I still hadn’t entirely figured out, Sidra had developed an instant dislike for me the moment I’d set foot through
Mod
’s doors as the magazine’s youngest senior editor a year and a half ago. The more I got to know her, the more I suspected it was a case of clear-cut professional jealousy. I was fifteen years her junior, and I was just one step below her on the editorial chain. I’d done some checking up on her, and at my age, twenty-six, she had still been an editorial assistant at
Cosmo.

My few attempts during the first month to ingratiate myself with a quick chat were met immediately with a cold shoulder, and to date, we’d never even had an actual conversation. Half the time she refused to even acknowledge my existence, and otherwise she badmouthed me around the office. My coworkers, thankfully, knew her well enough that her complaints tended to go in one ear and out the other.

Unfortunately, she also loved badmouthing me to people at other magazines who didn’t quite know how catty and bizarre she was. Once, at a Fashion Week celebrity fashion show, I even overheard her telling a senior editor from
In Style
that I was a delusional intern who liked to pretend that I was
Mod
’s celebrity editor, and it was best to just ignore me and play along.

As the director of fashion and beauty for
Mod,
Sidra oversaw Sally and Samantha, who were clearly being groomed to become her clones. So far, it was working out. Sally, the fashion editor, didn’t yet understand that dressing models in Gucci and Versace couture didn’t quite fly with Margaret, who was—wonder of all wonders—smart enough to realize that most
Mod
readers didn’t make enough money in a decade to buy the clothes that Sally would order for one shoot. Not exactly the best way to compete with
Cosmo
in the circulation trenches.

Samantha, the beauty editor, was responsible for the magazine’s makeup tips. She was apparently equally confused, failing to realize that not everyone had the high cheekbones, full lips, and flawless complexion that she did. Of course, not everyone had the good fortune to be sleeping with Dr. Stephen McDermott, Manhattan’s premier “Dermatologist to the Stars,” either.

The only way to tell the Triplets apart, I sometimes thought, was by the fact that Sidra was the only one who had already invested $20,000 in breast implants by Dr. David Aramayo, arguably the best plastic surgeon in Manhattan. I was sure that the others weren’t far behind. They were doubtlessly working out payment plans now.

I wished that Wendy hadn’t gone home already. I would have loved to end the day by trading one-liners about Sidra. It was a favorite pastime of ours. And it was completely harmless, because Sidra liked to pretend, for whatever reason, that she had no concept Wendy and I even existed, despite the fact that we had attended editorial meetings together for the last eighteen months. If we didn’t exist, then I figured our derogatory comments didn’t matter much.

I looked back at my computer screen, which still appeared to be taunting me. A one-night stand actually sounded frighteningly good at the moment. Hell, even Sidra, who had all the warmth and sex appeal of the iceberg that took out the Titanic, was probably getting laid more often than I was. Maybe some men—apparently including George Clooney, if you believed Sidra—found that Fran Drescher-esque twang to be a turn-on. Maybe I could try holding my nose and squawking nasally at Tom tonight. Maybe that would unlock his chastity belt.

Was it possible I was grasping at straws here?

On that note, I printed out the two thousand words I’d managed to choke out throughout the day so that I could do a first edit at home that night, then I clicked on Save, closed the program, and shut down the computer. It was 6:30. On the off chance that Margaret was lurking somewhere in the nearly empty office, I knew I’d better get home before she could blindside me with another ridiculous assignment.

How to Live Together Happily Ever After

O
kay, day 30. I was getting worried. And this
Mod
assignment was starting to make me just a little desperate.

“Is there something wrong with me?” I whispered to Wendy over the wall of my cubicle the next morning. “I mean, there’s obviously something wrong if my boyfriend suddenly stops wanting to sleep with me.”

“No way,” Wendy said, just like I knew she would. “My question would be, is there something wrong with him? What red-blooded American man doesn’t want to have sex?”

Okay, so she had a point.

“Tom,” I muttered. But it wasn’t exactly like he was
refusing
to sleep with me. It was just that he always seemed to be too busy or asleep when I was ready to go. Our timing was off. That was it.

Last night, day 29 had turned into night 30 with Newly Celibate Tom. That’s two-and-a-half-dozen sexless nights for all of you who are keeping track. I’d even pulled out the big guns, slinking into the bedroom in a red teddy and a garter belt, feeling ridiculous.

“You’re going to be cold in that,” he’d said briefly, glancing up from the television for a millisecond before refocusing his attention on a rerun of
Gilligan’s Island,
which, as you can imagine, created quite the conundrum for me. Was he into Mary Ann or Ginger? Pigtails, or evening gowns? You’d think the teddy would trump both.

Apparently not.

“You’d better put something on, sweetie,” Tom added a moment later without glancing up. I gulped and tried again, leaning seductively into the doorframe, wobbling a bit in my stilettos.

“Tom,” I’d said in my best sexy Ginger voice (he’d probably pick Ginger over Mary Ann). I’d paused, unsure of what to say next. “Uh, I have something I want to show you,” I said throatily. I batted my eyelashes at him flirtatiously as he looked up.

“Do you have something in your eye, Claire?” he’d asked before turning his attention back to the Professor’s latest ingenious invention, which Mary Ann appeared to be giggling about. “There’s some Visine in the medicine cabinet if you need it,” he’d added helpfully.

I’d heaved a sigh, stomped back to the bathroom, and changed into a T-shirt and sweatpants while Tom sang along with the
Gilligan’s Island
theme song in the other room. He hadn’t even looked up when I stormed by him and threw myself into bed, huffing and puffing pointedly.

It hadn’t always been this way. Tom and I had chemistry from the beginning, which I suppose led to my willingness to tumble into bed within a week of meeting him at a writers’ seminar in the East Village. Okay, I know, I know, you’re judging me. I don’t usually sleep with guys after knowing them for only a week. But with Tom I felt something instantly, something between an animal and an intellectual attraction, which I didn’t know could coexist. He had this gorgeous, kind of tousled floppy hair that seemed to scream “struggling intellectual writer” and the way he kissed always left me breathless.

The seminar, a free program put on by the Eastside Writers’ Group, had been about how to write a novel. I was impressed that Tom was already halfway through a draft of what he called “a slice of Americana mixed with a slice of suspense and a slice of intellectualism.” All those slices left me a bit woozy, more than a bit awed, and hungry for more. After all, the closest I’d come to writing anything fictional was a short story I had to write for a college lit class. I’d gotten a C+. Here was this Prince Charming who gave great massages, could talk about anything from politics to poultry seasonings, and he was doing the one thing I’d always wanted to do with my life.

I was instantly in love. I stood by him a month later when he decided to quit his job peddling medical supplies in order to write full-time, and I’d been only too happy to let him move into my rent-controlled apartment a month after that so that he wouldn’t have to worry about making ends meet while he wrote the Great American Novel. Sure, I was a bit hurt that he still hadn’t let me read any of it. And I was a bit surprised that it was taking so long to write, but we were in love. And the sex was great. Or it
had
been, before it started to decrease in frequency a few months ago. Then again, he seemed more and more worried about his book. And I figured it probably bothered him a bit that he had lived with me for almost a year and hadn’t been able to contribute to the bills at all. The few times we’d gone out to dinner and he had offered to pay, his credit card had been rejected, and I had to pick up the check. I didn’t mind, though. I knew he’d pay me back when he sold the book.

“You deserve better, you know,” Wendy said gently, breaking into the slow-motion replay in my head. “I’ve always said that. But I know you think he’s right for you.”

“He
is
right for me,” I said. He was, really. He was cute, and smart, and nice. He made me laugh. “Maybe he’s just going through a rough spot or something. I’m sure it’s just our timing, you know? He’s always up late working on his novel, and I’m fast asleep by the time he comes to bed. And I’m up hours before he is in the morning.”

I paused.

“Unless . . .” I sighed. “You don’t think I’ve put on a lot of weight recently, do you?”

“Are you kidding me?” Wendy asked, rolling her eyes at me and grinning. “You look gorgeous, as usual.”

“I don’t feel very gorgeous,” I mumbled, looking down at my stomach, which wasn’t nearly as flat as I remembered it. I shuddered and tried not to picture Tom raptly staring at the television while I tried to gyrate sexily against the doorframe.

“Jeffrey thinks you look just like Christina Aguilera,” Wendy said triumphantly. I wrinkled my nose. I didn’t quite know how to take the comparison from
Mod
’s art director.

“Pre- or post-‘Dirty’?” I asked skeptically.

“Pre-,” Wendy reassured me. “Like from her
Mickey Mouse Club
days. You know, when she was cute and thin, and had all that long blond hair.”

“So you’re saying I look like a sixteen-year-old
Mickey Mouse Club
kid?” Hmm, this was not so good for the whole sex appeal thing.

“First of all, Jeffrey’s saying it. Not me.”

“But you agree?”

Wendy paused.

“I think you look like Christina from the ‘Lady Marmalade’ video.”

Hmm, this was a bit better. But not totally.

“Just because I have a bit of a frizz problem with my hair?”

“No,” Wendy said with a laugh.

“Is it because I wore those slutty boots last time we went out?”

“No.” Wendy giggled. “But that
was
kinda funny.”

“Glad you were amused.” Actually, my one public attempt at sexy in the last few months had ended in disaster, when I got my heel stuck in a subway grate and smashed face-first into the sidewalk.

“Whatever it is with Tom, it’s not you,” Wendy said firmly. She hesitated for a moment, then added, “Maybe you’re right, and it is just bad timing.”

I shook my head and sighed.

“I bet Christina Aguilera never has this much trouble getting laid,” I muttered.

Note to self:
Learn to dance like in that “Dirty” video. And if there’s time, start a public feud with Britney Spears.

*

Having a live-in boyfriend was a bit like high-stakes poker, I figured. The similarities had begun to dawn on me one insomniac night as I blearily watched three hours of a six-hour
Celebrity Poker Championship
marathon on Bravo.

See, that was the great thing about my job. As
Mod
’s celebrity editor, I was supposed to keep up with what was going on in the kingdom of celebrity, at least to some extent. And I figured that if I couldn’t sleep, watching Ben Affleck, Matthew Perry, and Rosario Dawson battle it out in a Vegas casino was
sort of
like working. At least that’s what I told myself the next morning, when I hit the snooze button six times in a row and rolled into work an hour late.

Of course, no one noticed. That was the other great thing about my job. People are always late. No one ever notices. If only I didn’t guilt-trip myself into arriving at the crack of dawn most mornings.

Anyhow, I figure in high-stakes poker, you’re supposed to put everything on the line, do your best, and hope that you win. It’s kind of the same situation when you take your relationship to the next level and agree to live with a person. You’re giving up your independence and your solitude, putting all of your effort into making it work, and hoping for the best. Also, if you’re not dealt exactly the hand you expect, you’re not allowed to just get up and move to another table.

So I figured I was in it for the long haul with Tom, even if it wasn’t going so well now. I mean, sure, I was being dealt a hand full of low cards at the moment—but in gambling, your luck changes all the time, doesn’t it? And sure, I was betting everything I had—my heart, my future—but it had worked out so far. I mean, it had been a great year.

Tom had swept me off my feet (full house!), sent me roses every week (straight!), told me he loved me after just a month and a half of dating (three-of-a-kind!), and moved in a month after that (straight flush!). He was a good guy. He loved me. So what if the sex had dropped off? It was only temporary, I was sure. And any day now, I was sure he’d come up with the royal straight flush: the engagement ring he had hinted at a few times.

Come to think of it, maybe that’s why he was acting so strange lately. Maybe he was planning to propose. Maybe he was just nervous, trying to find the right time.

That would explain a lot.

*

I turned back to the computer and tried to focus. Already, the office was buzzing with activity. Telephones were ringing, editorial assistants were running copy back and forth between editors, and Maite Taveras, the managing editor, was moving from office to office, chatting with senior and assistant editors about the September issue. I’d already told her that we’d have to put off our conversation until Monday.

“You have to turn your full focus to one-night stands, hmm?” she had asked with a laugh, pushing her shining black hair over her shoulder. I knew she shared my low opinion of Margaret and her inexplicable whims.

“Ugh,” I’d moaned, rolling my eyes as she winked at me.

Maite held the third-highest editorial position at the magazine, after Margaret and the executive editor, Donna Foley. Fortysomething and beautiful, Maite had ascended the ranks of women’s magazines by being a creative editor, a stickler for detail who always stuck with her writers’ original tones. I’d liked her from the day we first met, and since then we’d had a comfortable rapport.

I turned back to the computer and tried to concentrate, but I was having trouble shutting out the rest of the office. Two of the copy desk assistants, both clad in Earl Jeans and black Bebe tops so similar I could hardly tell them apart, swapped dating stories over the desk in the office they shared, emitting high-pitched sonar giggles every few moments. Anne Amster, the wiry-haired senior features editor, argued with someone on the phone, and a group of senior editors clustered around a bulletin board, one of them jabbing her finger pointedly at a blown-up mock-up of the August cover, saying something insistent in an annoyed squeaky voice.

Then of course there was Chloe Michael, the television and music editor, who was always blasting the latest in pop music from inside the walls of her cubicle. At least she
claimed
it was the latest in pop music. I swore I’d caught her sneakily listening to New Kids on the Block when she thought she’d turned her stereo down low enough to get away with it.

In fact, come to think of it, a song that sounded suspiciously like “Hangin’ Tough” was currently wafting down through
Mod
’s halls. Yes, I know, I should be ashamed that I even know the name. But hey, I was eleven once too. And I
may
have had more than one Donnie Wahlberg poster on the walls of my sixth-grade bedroom. I
may
have taken up playing the drums in middle school simply because Donnie played the drums. And I
may
have been to two NKOTB concerts where I sat in the nosebleed section, miles from the stage, convinced that Donnie was looking at me—and only me. But that’s beside the point.

Jeffrey Zevon, the magazine’s art director and the sole male on the editorial staff, had been pacing the hallway for the last fifteen minutes, and his nervousness was starting to rub off on me. As always, he was impeccably dressed—a tight black Kenneth Cole ribbed tee with gray Armani slacks that fit his perfect curves like they’d been made for him. “‘Buns of Steel,’ girl,” he’d confided to me once. “I swear by those DVDs.” He looked like he belonged at a fashion shoot for
GQ.
His dark hair was speckled with gray, but on him it was salt-and-pepper that said distinguished and sexy.

Unable to concentrate on the silly one-night-stand article, I watched him as his eyes followed Marla, the fashion department’s summer intern. She shuffled down the corridor toward the fashion closet with her eyes downcast and her shoulders slumped. Marla looked like she wanted to disappear. She twirled a finger through her stringy brown curls, her slightly heavy frame covered in a balloon of fabric.

“Poor girl,” Jeffrey murmured mid-stride, finally ending his impatient pacing at the entrance to my cubicle. He shook his head from side to side. “Tsk, tsk, tsk. Those princesses in fashion do it every time, don’t they?”