keyboard and squirted two pumps of $130 La Mer hand serum into her palms, as if that would help.
Wendy occupied the coveted southwest-facing office on the thirty-first floor of a five-year-old office tower near the World Trade Center, home to Fleurt, one of the few fashion magazines still in print. It had been her idea to move to New York, and she’d courted this job for eight months until she got it, sending witty, erudite emails to Lucy Fleur, its glamorously absent founder—who wore only pale yellow and seemed to exist exclusively at fashion shows—and completely abusing the privilege of being married to a well-known author. Roy had no idea, but he’d basically gotten Wendy the job. Finally, Lucy Fleur had caved, just as Wendy hoped she would. Lucy Fleur just had to have the features editor with the famous author husband, the editor who had once compiled the now infamous Brexit Suppers, a series of snarky, irreverent vignettes and alcohol-heavy recipes using only British ingredients, like “Gin and Ewe” and “English Sherry with One French Strawberry Found on the Floor of the Ferry.” Never mind that Wendy had always been freelance, with no office at all. Now she was a senior editor.
An excruciatingly uninspired senior editor.
A whole year had gone by. Wendy hid in her office, reading The Brookliner and shopping online, pretending to be extremely busy and acting overly curt and officious toward the assistants. Lucy Fleur hadn’t introduced herself to Wendy even once. Their communications had been reduced to Lucy Fleur’s cryptic, condescending emails: Cutoffs, cutouts, cowgirls. Take me to Texas. Or, Perfume. Grasse. Chanel. Roses. You know the drill. Make me smell it.
What kind of person sawed up another person? Was the woman dead when he started, or did he just knock her unconscious and turn on the chain saw? Did she wake up when he was sawing at her waist? Did she look down and see her bottom half fall away? Wendy exhaled noisily, well aware that there was no one to hear her. She didn’t know why she was so fascinated, but she felt connected to the drifting dead woman somehow.
Perfume. Grasse. Chanel.
Wendy pumped more hand serum into her palms and rubbed the excess on her neck, which could use all the help it could get. Why couldn’t she concentrate? Why had she been so fixated on getting this job and moving to New York when it was clear to her now that it was not what she wanted at all?
It made sense at the time. Roy was floundering. He hadn’t published a book in years. The older girls were almost finished at Oxford and Shy was only one year into high school. Wendy had been hosting the same dinner parties and game nights for the parents from her girls’ schools, cooking the same meals, complaining about the English winters, writing the same tiredly trendy copy for the same tiredly trendy magazine supplements for newspapers that no one cared about anymore. Roy’s longtime agent had died. Two of the couples they were friendliest with had moved away from their London suburb to South Africa and Australia. They needed a fresh start, she’d decided, in New York, where she’d grown up. And once she’d decided, she became fixated, spending all her time searching online for real estate, magazine jobs, and schools. She was going home, where she belonged. Where no one said “prawns and avos” when they meant shrimp and avocados, where virtually no one drank instant coffee, and where she wouldn’t have to take a bus to get a fresh bagel. The move had taken up all her time and planning and organizational skills. The new house had five bathrooms! But now that they’d actually moved and had lived in the city for a whole year, Wendy felt more restless and exasperated than ever. Roy still hadn’t written anything. Shy was struggling at school and hadn’t made any friends. There were no dinner parties or game nights to plan and host. And Wendy’s job, despite its title and salary and shiny trimmings, was painfully dull. Over the course of a year, all three of them seemed to have retreated into their discomfort and were more lonely and isolated than they had ever been before. Wendy had always maintained a certain bravado. She was Wendy Clarke. Editor of her Upper East Side girls’ school newspaper and NYU’s Washington Square News. Editor of Brexit Suppers. Mrs. Roy Clarke. Her bravado was what had gotten them here.