Little Pink Slips Read Online Free PDF Page A

and scrutinized the
    design, gathering behind Magnolia. They all waited for Jock's appraisal.
    "Impressive," he finally said with a nod.
       One by one, she turned around the remaining forty boards, showing how Lady' s columns, special sections, and the splashy pages in the middle—where no ads were allowed—would appear redesigned for a
    woman who didn't want to buy a magazine that looked like what her
    mom threw in her shopping cart with the mayonnaise.
    As she took her seat, no one spoke. Magnolia thought she could
    hear the head of marketing sucking an Altoid.
       "You've nailed it, Magnolia," Jock said. "This magazine is fresh, friendly, and modern—everything Lady should be."
       "Congratulations." "Great job." "I love it." The compliments
    popped like champagne corks.
    Magnolia felt like dancing on the table. She hadn't admitted to her
    top editors how nervous she'd been—only Abbey, her best friend, knew.
    Most editors in chief were years more experienced, and Magnolia always worried about making beginners' mistakes. Maybe now, finally,
    she could let herself relax. She smiled and thanked Jock and the group.
    "This magazine has Estée Lauder written all over it," Jock added.
    Omigod, sweet. That was truly high praise. The beauty advertisers
    were the most coveted—and cosseted—because they tended to have
    the biggest budgets, and their ads looked so good they gave a maga
    zine an upgrade. Half the time, readers couldn't tell the beauty ads
    from the magazine's editorial anyway. Among the dozens of big-name
    beauty advertisers, Lauder may as well have been named Leader.
    Every other company waited to see where they put their ads, and fol
    lowed their direction.
    "I appreciate the hard work you've done on this, Magnolia," Jock
    continued. He cleared his throat and fidgeted with the lapels on his
    Brioni jacket. "And now let's consider Darlene's idea."
        Darlene's idea? W hoa. This was her meeting, Magnolia's. Her head was suddenly full of noise. Her publisher's name wasn't on yesterday's
    e-mail that had confirmed the agenda. Why hadn't she known about
    this? This was reminding her of last summer, when Darlene sched
    uled a critical six-month review with Jock for eight A.M. on the Mon
    day morning when Magnolia would be returning, jet-lagged, from a
    two-week vacation in the Yucatán.
    Magnolia scanned the faces up and down the table. None of the
    others looked surprised.
    Darlene stood up, smoothing the wrinkles on her snug black pencil
    skirt. She walked to the door of the conference room and let in her
    assistant, who distributed a shiny red folder to each person at the table.
    Darlene turned to Magnolia and smiled. "Great design, really great.
    But what I'm going to show everyone today is a license to mint money.
    We have an extraordinary opportunity at hand, and I know you're all
    going to want to get on board." She grinned at the group, revealing her
    large, frighteningly white teeth. "You all know Bebe Blake," Darlene, a
    former Big Ten football cheerleader, said in her stadium-worthy voice.
    Who didn't? Bebe's name was in the tabloids every other day. She
    was always suing someone. After a career as a singer, then as an actress,
    she had a syndicated talk show, which Magnolia knew had been in steady decline. Somewhere in there had been one or two five-minute marriages. Bebe had been on Lady' s cover twice since Magnolia had taken over. Not only did neither issue sell especially well, both experi
    ences were odious. The last time, Bebe's publicist, the profession's head harpy, had ordered Lady' s art director Fredericka off the set because Bebe couldn't abide the woman's Düsseldorf diction.
       "Bebe wants her own magazine, and she'd be willing to take over Lady and turn it into Bebe. "
       She'd be willing ? Take Lady, where Eleanor Roosevelt used to write a column, and turn it into a magazine for show business's lead
    ing flake? Is Darlene smoking crack?
       "Trust me, Bebe