Homage

Rebecca had come to New York, to work for Scarlett and Dolce Diva monthly, because she had a little bit to prove. There was the notion that young ladies from downstate Illinois didn’t have style, wouldn’t know elegance from flintiness unless someone tied a gold bow on it. She would dispel that.

Her biggest surprise was to learn the lengths to which the magazine’s most popular models avoided food. As a rule, Scarlett forbade bulimia nervosa because, she said, she was in the publishing business, not the hospital business. But the cruel desires for unfulfilled appetites remained and when Rebecca heard, for the eighth time, that the feeling of being thin was so much better than anything could taste, she knew it was all a boney lie.

When Scarlett came to her fifth anniversary at Dolce Diva, corporate ordered a lavish party but hard trouble finding someone who would give testimony to Scarlett’s leadership. No surprise there. So Rebecca was asked, merely the day before, and she spent all but two hours of the night wondering just what she could say about Scarlett that hit the very narrow possibilities of being both kind and sincere.

It was a hard fit and Rebecca did as best as she could with her homage. She included just one little dig at Scarlett to ease the tension:

“We adore her down to her ruby pumps, even with her occasional impossibilities.”

It drew more laughter than Rebecca intended and afterwards Scarlett called her into her office and invited her to explain what she meant.

“Well,” Rebecca said, “this meeting for example.”

This beget a grueling silence.

“May I go?” Rebecca finally asked.

“Yes, you should go, because you’re being insubordinate. And I won’t have that. You’re fired.”

“Yes,” Rebecca said, half in shock and half in resignation. “Of course I am.”

The last thing she plucked from her office drawer was a black Sharpie. As she walked by the $11,000 oil painting of a pensive looking Scarlett gazing out over Central Park from her window, Rebecca stopped and calmly drew a devilishly pointed beard and sharpened ears on the painting. She then boxed Rebecca’s face, wrote out “Dolce Diva” across her foreheard, and then wrote, in smaller letters, “October” before snapping the cap back on the pen, and walking with grace and deliberate speed to the elevator.