Diary of a Working Girl Read online

  DIARY OF A WORKING GIRL

  Daniella Brodsky

  Second eBook Edition Feb 2011

  Published by DB Co

  New York, New York

  ISBN 978-0-615-44525-0

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2004 by Daniella Brodsky

  eBook design by Bob Mehta

  Cover design by Della Jacobs

  Cover art by Michael Langhoff

  All rights reserved.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book

  via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher

  is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic

  editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted

  materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  License Notes

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please alert daniellabrodsky.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  First Edition April 2004

  Originally published by The Berkley Publishing Group

  A division of Penguin Croup (USA) Inc

  New York, New York

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data for First Edition

  Brodsky, Daniella

  Diary of a working girl/Daniella Brodsky/.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0425194221. ISBN-13 978-04251942251.

  Freelance Journalism—Fiction. 2 New York (N.Y.) —Fiction. 3. Mate

  selection—Fiction. 4. Single women—Fiction. I. Title

  PS3602.R635D53 2004

  813’.6—dc22 2003070389

  eBooks created by www.ebookconversion.com

  Other novels by Daniella Brodsky:

  Princess of Park Avenue

  The Velvet Rope Diaries

  Fear of Driving

  One Trick Pony

  Vivian Rising

  For Aunt Tiny—

  on behalf of everyone she inspired

  One

  Once Upon a Time

  I am turning over a new leaf in life. Starting right now—at this very second in time—three p.m., March fifteenth, I will get out of my work rut and stop allowing fantasies of finding Mr. Right (and bouts of depression about not finding him) to invade every second of my life. I will start down the road to award-winning, top-notch freelance writer, rather than third-rate, barely-paying-the-rent freelance writer—as I have formerly been.

  I know very well that I have said this before. And the reason I know this very well is because when I called my friend Joanne a moment ago she reminded me of just that. She called off specific dates and everything. “Well there was September fifteenth, and then October fifteenth, and then of course you swore this exact thing to me on November fifteenth …” and by the time she got all the way through to last month, she said, “Darling, isn’t that the day you get your rent bill every month?” Okay, so there’s a pattern. But what she doesn’t realize is that this time is different.

  I. Am. Going. To. Change. My. Life.

  I am ready.

  Perhaps it took me a while to get here.

  But, now, I’m ready.

  I can feel creativity and energy oozing from every single cell in my body.

  I’m fully equipped with the essentials for embarking upon the path to success. My tools, as I sit down with them at my couch, are one brand-new red suede-covered journal, a purple gel pen, and my sharp-as-a-whip journalistic mind. You need a new notebook if you’re going to begin your career anew. You can’t very well start fresh on a crinkled page in a notebook that has served as the palette for hundreds of rejected article ideas. For someone who does this for a living a notebook like this is an investment. You need to surround yourself with beautiful, creative things if you ever hope to write beautiful, creative things. The government agrees with this because you can even write those beautiful, creative things off on your taxes.

  Gently, I turn back the spine to the first crisp, gold-leafed page to begin brainstorming article ideas. I breathe in. I breathe out. I pick up my pen and sit poised, like that famous statue, The Thinker, but with a pen—I am The Freelance Thinker. No. The Creative Thinker. Perhaps I am not The Thinker so much as The Writer. Yes, that’s it exactly. I’m The Writer. I love the way that sounds.

  I have to say that everyone loves the way that sounds. When I meet people, they are uniformly impressed with my profession. And then, of course, they ask me exactly what I write, and this is where the men drop right out of the conversation. This is because they are completely uninterested in the new spring fashions, the fact that big belts have made a comeback, or that pink is the color for lips this season. But the next question is even worse, because that is inevitably, “So which magazines do you write for?” It’s not that I write for Penthouse or something you need to be ashamed of in a moral way. It’s just that nobody has ever heard of” the magazines I write for, like Love Your Hair, or For Her.

  I’m sure you understand, then, that sometimes—not very often—I find myself embellishing the truth a bit. That is to say, rather than name the magazines that I actually write for, I name the magazines that I have most recently pitched for. But I always follow it up with. “Freelance writers are constantly pitching. You never know what’s just around the corner.” This makes me look like a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants girl, rather than a how-sad-she-can’t-give-up-the-ghost girl. And then I can just go into all of the cool people I’ve met along the way, and men, especially (if they’re still there by now), get drawn into the exciting lifestyle I (supposedly) lead.

  But after today’s work, I will never have to embellish again. I begin by marking today’s date at the top. Surely, when I look back at this page, from my new desk, in my new SoHo loft, which I will buy the moment Vogue hires me on as a permanent columnist, I will sit back, a vision in preseason Prada samples and custom-designed Manolo Blahniks, and remember this day with joy.

  I peruse some old magazines I keep on hand in hopes of stirring the creative juices and lose myself in admiration of a stunning charcoal bias-cut gown. The girl in the picture is draped over a velvet sofa, a mass of pearls twisted around her neck, one black beaded pump dangling from one very elegant foot. I can’t help it. I picture myself in the dress, only with crystal-beaded sandals to match (I think that would go much better), my highlights glistening in an explosion of paparazzi flashbulbs. I’m waving and smiling in that polite way I’ve noticed royalty do all these years. It’s all coming clear: My purse will be one of those Lulu Guinness flowerpots, with the adorable sayings embroidered inside like a little secret only you know about.

  My breath quickens, grows shallower; I can’t get enough air. My eyes go fuzzy. All at once I feel it, that overwhelming urge in my gut to know just how I can have this dress. Because if I get it, I’ll feel different than I ever have before. I’ll be glamorous in that everything-in-its-place way that has always managed to elude me. When I open my silky flowerpot, I’ll know exactly where my lip gloss is for the first time in my life, and it won’t be that play-it-safe pink I always
wear. It will be red, because once you’ve become that woman in that dress you’ll be that woman who can pull off crimson lips, too. If I want to pass a business card to someone, it will be precisely where it should be. I’ll be taller, more slender when I wear it; my eyes will somehow look greener than they have before. It’s as if my whole life has been one big training session leading to this one purchase. Now I feel this dress and everything it will mean so close in my reach, I am suddenly positive it will actually be mine—was destined to be mine—because I want it that much.

  I turn ravenously to the back of the book for the buying information. I estimate with sharp, rapid breaths of the sort only have-nots with serious have tastes are familiar with, just how much the dress will cost with a description like “price available upon request.” I figure in the mile and a half of silk, and embroidered roses on every inch. Finally, I conclude I could definitely afford it if I exist on a diet of ketchup packets and free drinks and sell all my possessions on eBay. I begin tossing said possessions into a “sell” pile. It is only after I estimate the value of most of my belongings that I realize the magazine is two years old.

  Devastation overtakes me and I’m ready to call it quits on the changing my life thing when it hits me. This sort of experience could make for a fantastic personal essay for a magazine like, say, Bazaar. “In Search of the Charcoal Gown,” I could call it. I begin writing, “When one woman falls for Badgley Mischka vintage, absolutely nothing less will do.” Those are the sorts of brief, enticing descriptions you need to write with your pitch to explain what the article would be like and in what style you would write it. I leave out the part about the slight heart attack I suffered at learning the price was “available upon request,” as Bazaar readers somehow always have budgets for such things (I bought one in every color!”), and instead take on the air of a wealthy society woman as I always do with such sophisticated publications.

  These things come to me instantaneously. All I have to do is look at a pair of shoes, watch a television show, overhear a conversation and—poof!—there’s my idea. This is why I am positive that I will make it. But then I send out the ideas and nothing ever comes of them and then I am even more positive that I will never it. Depending on the day, my outlook can vary drastically. Mysteriously, the outlook pattern has an inverse relationship to my chocolate intake pattern: outlook up, chocolate intake down, and vice versa.

  I make mental notes on the cute adjectives used in lipstick descriptions; slick, pouty, glossy, shimmery—words that lend themselves to magazine writing, but most definitely not for everyday banter. Imagine being greeted pre-caffeine by some coworker with, “My you are looking so slick-lipped today!” It’s no mystery what you’d think of that person. Still, they are my words and I absolutely love mastering them despite how dorky that is.

  Twenty minutes later I’m engrossed in a story of romance on page eighty-seven in the June issue of Vogue. It turns out this stunning princess (who can really pull off that tiara look) and her debonair shiny husband have been married for fifty years and wanted to share their story with the world. Theirs—like all true loves—was born of the most star-crossed circumstances. She was meant to have tied the knot with some highly decorated, scarcely interesting older man from a neighboring nation. Her now-husband was merely a dressmaker. For years and years, the princess had come to his atelier where he would admire the curve of her spine, the angle of her shoulder. With every pin inserted, every tape measure pulled taut, she would shudder. Never a word was spoken between princess and dressmaker—yet he knew exactly which dresses to bring her each and every time. She loved what he put her in—simple, long silhouettes that paid homage to shoulders, neck, long slender arms—because he lovingly designed each with her in mind.

  “Cutting patterns, slicing through the most rare crepe de chine with the precision of a surgeon to perfectly envelope a hip, a breast, I felt I was with her; we were making love in the most magical, mystical way. We were always together that way. There was never another.”

  He had no need for measurements or even to see her; these were merely excuses to be near her. He knew the dresses would encase her ins and outs, rounds and straights with the delicate intricacy of a glove, as each was crafted from love and knowledge of her each and every inch. After fifteen years of silence, they fled to Madagascar and have lived there ever since.

  Under one photo in which the couple sits before a sparkling blue sea, the caption reads: “We love the mussels there!’ they declare in unison. The ex-designer turns to the princess and with one brow raised in mock-suspicion admits, ‘But we cannot share because she eats them up so quickly I never have a chance!’ The princess’s smile betrays her.”

  This story holds me in a trance. I read it once. Twice. Three times. It strikes me as the most beautiful magazine article I’ve ever come upon. I search to find something about bronzing powder that could inspire so much passion in readers. Although the right shade could revitalize a winter-worn complexion, or for that matter, give a girl the beauty boost that might help her survive a lethal bout of PMS, it doesn’t provide the same high as the princess love story. I should just breeze past this story and onto safer territory—how to wear floppy hats, new fragrances to enhance yoga practice—but I can’t untangle myself from the idea of romance. It yanks me in, beckons me to follow.

  I’ve always dedicated the lion’s share of my personal time to thoughts of romance, lately at an increasing rate, since my youthful ideals seem to be weathering and decaying and daring me to abandon them. I have spent the better part of the month mourning my breakup up with James—a ritual that has mainly consisted of drinking cheap red wine, and, well, whining—to anyone who’ll listen—about my hopeless, lonely, boyfriend-less existence.

  Unfortunately for her, my friend Joanne just happens to be “anyone who’ll listen.” Most of my other friends have quickly tired of my treatment of Bridget Jones as an actual human being, and as such, a bona fide benchmark to my own predicament: “I can’t believe she (wine slurp) wound up with a rich lawyer with a great personality (wine slurp) and an English accent and he truly was her Magic Man (failed attempt at wine slurp as no more wine to slurp).”

  “Her what?” Joanne had asked.

  “You know, her Magic Man. There was something there and, of course, it was there all along, but it took them a while to work it out and so she almost lost him, but then they realized it and he was perfectly magical.”

  “Oh dear,” Joanne says.

  “Sure, it sounds stupid when I have to say it twice.”

  “Right, saying it twice is what makes it sound stupid.”

  Well, over time (and wine slurps) Magic Man became MM and eventually, the similarities between the perfect man and the perfect candy of the same initials (you only need a couple every day to get your fill; melts in your mouth, not in your hand) were discovered and MM became M&M and he name is perfect as it represents comfort and happiness, simplicity and sweetness. And if you eat enough of them—the candies, that is—and chant “I want my M&M, I want my M&M,” while crunching, it eventually starts to sound like “mmmm” which is exactly the cry of (ahem) satisfied. Which is why that tiny ancient woman next door has been looking at me strangely.

  James is the most recent of a long line of men who turned out not to be my M&M, and instead to be another ideal-weathering beckon towards reality. Needless to say, I have been eating more than my fair share of M&M’s—the candy—to make up for my lack of The M&M—the man.

  So, now, in addition to receiving blubbering I’ll-never-find-my-M&M telephone calls that can only be classified as pathetic attempts to get her to spend some time with me (ironically they were more than likely the actual reason she “couldn’t” come over), Joanne now receives blubbering you’re-my-only-friend-in-the-world phone calls from me, too.

  I need to get back to the more practical matters of Mediterranean-inspired lipsticks and the benefits/hindrances of high waistlines on variously flawed figures (and, of course, that
most tragic of all categories, “thin”), and so I turn to a British magazine, Beautiful, which is famous for never addressing anything of a serious nature (and would in fact encourage Badgley-Mischka-induced heart attack chronicles). Here I am inspired to pitch “Beauty on the Go: What to Take, How to Pack; Hairstyling and Makeup How-to from the Jet Set.” After exhausting the host of related themes: “Beauty in a Flash,” “The Spring Face,” and “Facial Index,” I once again find myself paging back to that princess love story.

  Was there something in the eye of the princess that could teach me to find true love? Her face had a supreme strength (in a strictly Katharine Hepburn not Hulk Hogan way) in just about all of the accompanying photos. If you looked at her with your head cocked to the right, turned her portrait ninety degrees to a horizontal position, and squinted your left eye, she definitely appeared in possession of a wise secret. Why had the secret evaded me?

  Outside my window it appears everyone but me is qualified to write a story about love. I count thirty-five happy couples engaged in menacing behavior such as handholding, talking, and even laughing—all of which are obviously efforts exerted for my benefit.

  “People can see you!” I scream because, well, I can’t exactly say why.

  And that’s when I hear the cry, “What?”

  Taken off guard. I quickly withdraw my head from the window and begin to feel an intense blush from the sort of mortification. But when my doorbell rings and my upstairs neighbor Chris screams through the door, “Are you sitting by the window counting couples again?” I rip myself from my embarrassment coma with the comforting knowledge that Chris is already well versed in my weakness in the rational arena.

  “No, absolutely not! I’m working!” Was there not a notebook lying open on my table? Had I not come up with lots of great ideas?

  “Well, then let me come in and see what you’ve done.” I scan the room. The bed is unmade. There are junk food and candy wrappers where there used to be the top of a coffee table. Blankets I had piled around me all morning are still strewn about the couch. I panic, lest Chris think I have somehow sacrificed another day to The Young and the Restless. I have to act like I’ve been working hard for hours. Otherwise, I’ll never hear the end of how “resilient” I am. Chris can be rather sarcastic, especially when it comes to my breakups and the idea of M&M’s. (“They’ll just make you fat.”)