See Jane Date by Melissa Senate

often entrusted me to do preliminary line-edits on his projects. But would he ever look at me? I mean, really look at me? Sometimes I had the feeling that Jeremy felt sorry for me. And other women like me. Which didn’t include Morgan Morgan. Women who’d grown up on Thoroughbred farms weren’t to be pitied when their twenty-thousand-a-year salaries were subsidized by their parents.
    Jeremy knew I lived in a dumpy building and couldn’t take taxis because I couldn’t afford them. He’d seen me arrive at work every morning subway-sweaty in my Gap and Ann Taylor on-sale clothes. He knew I spent summers on a beach towel on the Great Lawn in Central Park, with a cooler of iced tea, manuscripts and tuna-fish sandwiches I made myself.
    And I knew he spent his summers in East Hampton, dining on fifty-dollar lobster caught that day from an ocean he sailed on.
    â€œMorgan!” Remke snapped, thumbing through papersas usual. “Where’s the P&L on the sex addict’s autobiography?”
    â€œIt’s the third from the last in your pile, Williaaam,” Morgan said, a satisfied smile on her flat face.
    Remke was trying to decide whether to do the sex addict’s memoir in mass-market size or trade. Everyone at Posh had made a copy of the manuscript to read. It was really steamy stuff.
    Remke pulled out the profit and loss statement and scowled at it. “Morgan, take this back to Ian, tell him to run it at three hundred pages, mass-market, at $6.99. The content justifies it. Plus, we’ll give it a really hot title.” Remke passed the P&L to Morgan. “Agreed, Black?”
    Jeremy nodded. He was leaning back in his chair as though he were at the dentist. Remke sat at the head of the table, as always. Jeremy sat at Remke’s left. The speakerphone was placed at Gwen’s usual seat, to Remke’s right. Paulette was next to Jeremy. I was in the chair next to Gwen’s empty seat. Across the table, Morgan sat in a chair next to the empty seat beside Paulette.
    We both knew our places. But I was moving up. Morgan would be busy for years trotting up and down the hall to the one-or two-person departments that made up Posh’s publishing empire.
    â€œHello,” Gwen snapped over the crackle of the speaker-phone, reminding everyone she was on the line. “William, we’re on your dime long distance, so let’s wrap up, okay? So, Jane, how’s the Nutley tell-all going, anyway?” She had on her phony concerned voice. “If there’s anything you need help with, you know I’m just a phone call away, right?”
    â€œRight,” I chirped. Yeah, right was more like it. Even if I had a problem with the Gnat’s manuscript, I wouldn’t call Gwen. I’d have to listen to The Baby stories fortwenty minutes first. What was it about new mothers? Why did they think anyone was interested in their Kegel exercises or the color of their infants’ excrement? New mothers never shut up. Everything they said was so scary and sickening, it was a wonder any childless woman ever got pregnant on purpose.
    Plus, Gwen was a major phony. She was okay as a boss, and she was really good at her job, but I couldn’t stand her personally. She sort of looked like Christine Lahti, minus the killer body, and she was married to an even bigger phony, a hotshot on Wall Street. They lived in Chappaqua, three streets away from the Clintons. During her pregnancy, Gwen had had the mistaken impression that I was interested in her sonograms, and now, when she called to check in with me privately, her endless nanny sagas. She’d been through two nannies already, and the baby was only four weeks old. Eloise and I had whittled away the time on many a stalled subway ride home from work coming up with baby names for Gwen’s kid. My personal favorite was Not. Not Welle. Eloise’s was Oh. Gwen had chosen Olivia, so Eloise had sort of gotten her wish.
    Jeremy