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trade herdreams for compromises that may or may not work out. That past life regression conceit that might have led her to assume she was Cleopatra is fading. She’s starting to realize she was nobody, a nameless slave whose existence passed unrecorded.
    It’s an awful, uncomfortable thing to watch and I take the long way to the bathroom to avoid her cubicle. On late nights when the offices are almost deserted, I hear her on the phone with her best friend relating the day’s trespasses. There is a mystified quality in her voice as she explains how she wasn’t assigned the Girl Talk feature (“So tell me about your beauty regimen: Is it eyeliner mascara or mascara eyeliner?”) or even the Style Wise Man interview (“If you had to choose between leather and suede, which would you pick and why?”). In angry tones she tells Greta that she was given yet another advertorial piece that will be yoked together from industry press releases. This is not what she went to Columbia for.
    Allison blames Jane for her career’s inertia, which is a reasonably accurate assessment. Jane doesn’t make decisions based on skill and merit like other working professionals. She hires beautiful editors who can’t write and fires ugly ones who can. She chooses her assistants as if selecting a fashion accessory, and we are all a matched set: tall, thin, straight chin-length brown hair.
    The magazine is run like a seventeenth-century French court. You don’t speak unless spoken to. You avert your eyes in Jane’s presence. Her need for subservience is almost pathological, and if it weren’t against OSHA rules (see under “repetitive stress injuries”), she would no doubt have us genuflect. Her interest in Fashionista will last only as long as its growing readership does and the second there is a dip in sales, she will be gone. She will be off this leaky ship, and the magazine will start the long slide into insolvency. Witness the now defunct Voyager and the struggling Faces. Investing in good people and laying the groundwork for years of successfulmagazine publishing is not part of her plan. After Jane the deluge.
    It is little surprise that the peasants are revolting.

The Linchpin
    I ’m the linchpin for two reasons: Jane respects me and Alex owes me a favor.
    “No, he doesn’t,” I say.
    “Yes, he does,” Allison contradicts.
    “No, he doesn’t,” I say again. As a lowly associate editor, I’m little help to anyone, even myself.
    “Yes, he does. Last May’s makeover issue,” an unseen Sarah calls out from one of the stalls.
    “Last May’s makeover issue?” I’m trying to remember some fleeting interaction with Alex Keller but nothing comes to mind. Nothing comes to mind because we’ve never interacted.
    A toilet flushes and Sarah emerges, zipping up her ankle-length capris. “Last May’s makeover issue,” she says definitively, turning on the taps to wash her hands.
    The May issue featured a special make-over-your-life section, which ran alongside the regular assortment of bashes and balls, but Keller stayed in his corner and I stayed in mine. “He doesn’t owe me a favor.”
    “Carla Hayden,” Kate says, and looks at me expectantly.
    “Carla Hayden?” The name sounds vaguely familiar but I don’t know why. She could be a famous actress, a Tinseltown hairstylist or a new Fashionista employee. Names inhabit a small, rarely used portion of my brain.
    “Carla Hayden,” says Sarah with a nod. She dries her hands on a paper towel, tosses it into the trash and throws herself onto the couch next to me. I’m accosted by her perfume, a flowery confection that smells expensive.
    “Short, a little pudgy, dishwater-brown hair,” adds Allison, as if these details are the sort that will jog my memory.
    As far as I’m concerned this describes half the world. I stare at them blankly.
    “She was a May makeover,” Kate says.
    Sarah turns to me with a frustrated sigh. “You put her in a Chloe bias-cut dress and gave her