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coming up zilch at the gala, he gave me another shot and made me a sometime stringer. When I did well, he printed my tidbits. “Inside Line” under Bernie wasn’t true gossip, but rather a stargazer travelogue of celebrity spa treatments, club sightings, and sunbathing shots on million-dollar cruises. So while I worked with Bernie, I took notes on how the column could be improved. I had a plan brewing: once I had enough ideas about remaking “Inside Line,” I’d find a way to sell the idea to an even glossier mag.
    It wasn’t just career ambition that kept my fire fed. I alsohad a secret plan—to find my family, my father’s family, and to secure my spot in my own blue-blooded lineage. If I could find them, I wouldn’t be on the outside looking in anymore. I’d be more like My Man Godfrey, the society escapee who returned in the form of a butler and taught his society peers to see how the other half lived. Well, more like him, anyway.
    But even with my private study, I still got it wrong. My schoolmarm asked me, Who’s on top? And I didn’t know. Because all I had were charts and maps and facts and lists. I was nowhere near the door.
    Until one day—the day Bernie Wabash keeled over at his desk while he was eating a fistful of fries. Zip Winkle called me into his office and told me the news, saying he didn’t have anyone else to replace Bernie, so until he could find someone permanent, I would need to keep the column afloat. Before he handed over the keys to Bernie’s office, he said, “Trouble is, we can’t have any Sunburst Rhapsody anything as a byline for a gossip column. You need to change that. Think of a name that will look swell in print.”
    I stayed up all night, pacing, trying to come up with something that would make Zip make me Bernie for good, and not search for another replacement. My plan: to scrap “Inside Line” and rename the column “Inside and Out.” Instead of paparazzi shots on the Law and Order set or pillow talk from the masseurs at Bliss, I would dish out “power gossip.” Who was an insider and who was still pressing against the glass? Who was getting a raise and who was getting the boot? I wanted to make and break Manhattan. I spent the wee hours jotting ideas for my new name. I wanted it to have the ring of an old-time starlet, to honor my father; it had to feel quick on the tongue. But mostly, it needed to be the kind of name that would make anyone famous in a day.
    The next morning, I dropped some Visine in my eyes,dressed in my best knit suit, donned a black felt cloche, and I went straight to Zip’s office, looking like a cherry-blond Rosalind Russell. I introduced myself all over again. That was the last day of the Oregonian wildflower, and the first day of Valerie Vane. Zip leaned back in his massage chair and nodded. “Sounds about right,” he said. “Sounds about right. You’ve picked the right time to do it. The city is on fire out there. I want you to show me every flame!”
    Back in Bernie’s musty office, I wiped down the coffee stains and flipped opened the Rolodex, containing the names of every has-been and never-was in Manhattan. I started punching numbers into the phone, knowing that I had to refresh that Rolodex fast, and if I could, I wouldn’t be subbing for long. I needed sources in the worst way, and all I had for leverage was an expense account.
    “Hello, this is Valerie Vane, the new columnist for Gotham’s Gate ’s ‘Inside and Out,’” I said to the booker at Picholine. “I’d like to reserve a table for two for lunch each day this week.” There was nothing like free urchin panna cotta and wild mushroom rabbit risotto, gratis, to make a source spill.
    Next, I dialed Penny Highgrass, the city’s top flack, and invited her to lunch. I told her about my new position at Gotham’s Gate , and I said I was willing to place a few of her clients on the high board if she could get me victims for the ramp. She agreed. I called other flacks and