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buyouts, you know. They want to get rid of all of us old-timers and our inflated salaries.” Jenny made a disgusted face and air quotes around the word “inflated.” I don’t see any reason I shouldn’t take it.”
    For the next two hours Imogen’s only goal was to keep an anxiety attack at bay.
    As the clock struck six, her eyes blurring from working without her reading glasses, Imogen let herself stray to the website of
Women’s Wear Daily
to peruse a bit of industry gossip. She came across news that made her heart sink. Molly Watson, the woman responsible for her entire career in magazines, had been fired after forty years at
Moda
magazine, according to an article by the media columnist Addison Cao.
    “Ms. Watson will be replaced with a group of ‘pop-up editors,’ a rotating cast of iconic designers, stylists and former editors, who will each play the part of editor in chief for a month before passing the baton to the next boldfaced name.”
    Imogen’s big title, the one she’d coveted for so many years, no longer felt like such a big deal at all. Editor in chief was apparently something anyone could do for a month at a time.
    She spun her chair around to face the windows behind her desk in an effort to hide the swell of emotion brought on by the news of Molly’s termination. Molly, who always did the right thing. Molly, who always took the high road in an industry known for low blows. Molly was the reason she was here at all.
    Her mentor first spotted Imogen while she was working at the R.Soles cowboy boot shop on King’s Road in Chelsea, London, in the early nineties.
    Slightly gangly from a late adolescence, Imogen had dyed black hair then, back-combed into a beehive supported by heaps of hair-spray. She didn’t walk out of the house without her black liquid-liner cat eyes and Spice lip liner. Weighing nearly nothing, she hardly filled out a teeny-weeny vintage blue gingham minidress. White cowgirl boots over black fishnet stockings completed the look.
    Rusty, who owned the shop, gave Imogen the freedom to style it however she wanted. One cold January morning she dragged a redleather sofa in from the street. Rusty painted the floor black and made a nook in the corner to sell well-worn leather biker jackets, the really beaten-up, James Dean kind. She fashioned a collage of Elvis Presley photos—the little boy to the hound dog, all in black and white—no pictures after thirty allowed. Imogen sold truckloads of R.Soles cowboy boots to boarding-school brats with Mockney accents and beatnik uniforms. They walked in packs up and down the King’s Road during the summer holidays chain-smoking Marlboro Lights when they weren’t vacationing in Barbados. They adored Imogen’s real South London accent and would bring her single ciggies and cups of tea from Chelsea Kitchen down the street.
    Rusty was generally off his head and always dressed in Day-Glo sportswear with black high-tops. He danced around the shop listening to Paul Oakenfold trance music on his Discman, his arms waving wildly in front of him. That was how he nearly clocked Molly Watson when she walked in one sunny Saturday in July. She was American, cool and rich, and had her two young, handsome English nephews with her.
    “I’ll take two pairs for each of them, size two and three, and here’s my card,” she said to Imogen, all in one breath. “Who put the store together? I love it. Was it you?”
    From then on Imogen was under Molly’s wing. But where was Molly now?

<<<  CHAPTER THREE  >>>
    M ost of the young women were already in the office when Imogen arrived at nine the next day, hunched over their laptops and pecking away at keyboards while wearing giant headphones in varying colors of the rainbow like doughnut-shaped earmuffs. Aside from the tapping, the room was silent. Imogen wandered over to a setup of food that resembled a movie set’s craft services in the corner of the room. Her eye was first drawn to a Pepto-pink sign reading