to the desk. It was a long time before I learned what Robin’s words meant or understood how much I had revealed when I said I was on my own.
A personal secretary is not an assistant intent on moving up the ladder. A good secretary learns everything about the boss, becoming so essential that when the executive gets promoted, the secretary comes too. I had just admitted that I was a novice in this corporate world, and Robin was both relieved and elated. She would not only get to keep her job, but she could also show me the ropes. I know that now, but at the time I was convinced she was laughing at me, and I was determined to do something about it. Picking up the phone, I dialed the one person who would know the answers to all my questions. “What the hell,” I asked Donna Warner, the editor in chief of Metropolitan Home, “is an adjacency?”
Donna and I had few secrets from each other. She’d started out as the food editor of Apartment Life, and in the early years, when I was freelancing for the magazine, we came to know each other well. Gentle and easygoing, she was constantly coming to my rescue. In the early eighties, when I wanted to go to New Orleans for the American Cuisine Symposium, Donna said, “I’ll go too. Then you can save money and share my hotel room.” We romped through New Orleans, eating and drinking like lunatics, and finally, desperate for vegetables, ended up sneaking away from the symposium in search of salad. I knew she would never betray me.
“Take me to dinner,” she said now, “and I’ll give you a crash course in magazines 101.”
* * *
—
WE MET AT the restaurant I was currently reviewing, an ambitious place intent on introducing luxury health food to wealthy New Yorkers, and Donna got right down to business.
It wasn’t rocket science, although Donna laughed so hard when I told her that an editor had said she was “a wizard with inadequate sep” that people all over the restaurant turned to stare at us.
“She was bragging; nobody’s a wizard at sep. All advertisers want to go ahead of their competition, but there’s no magical way to separate them. You just have to work it out.”
“Does that have anything to do with the teeosee?”
Donna laughed again. “That’s not a word,” she said when she finally stopped. “It’s initials: table of contents.”
I felt like an idiot.
By the time Donna finished explaining the economics of the ad/edit ratio, we were on dessert and the “tea sommelier” was hovering over us, pontificating about “hints of smoke among notes of honey and sherry.” When he finally wound down, Donna turned to me. “Have you met your managing editor?”
I tried to remember the people Robin had introduced. “I think there was this pretty young woman with dark hair who had that title. She kept telling me how creative she was.”
“Then you’re in trouble. Creativity is not in the job description. You need a bean counter, a taskmaster, someone to make the train run on time.”
“Sounds awful.”
Donna nodded. “Most MEs are pretty grim, but they’re the bad guys, which means you don’t have to be. Believe me, you want such a person. If Gourmet’s ME thinks creativity is part of the job, get someone new. And don’t”—she held my eye, emphasizing the point—“hire someone you like. I know you; you hate conflict and you want everything to be nice.”
As I said, Donna and I have known each other for a long time. When I sighed she said, “Trust me, if you hire someone you like, they’re not going to be good at the job. And you’re going to need someone good. People all over New York are saying that Si’s done it again. He brings Tina Brown to The New Yorker, where she promptly loses millions. Now he’s handing Gourmet over to a restaurant critic. A colleague called today and said he’d bet me anything you’d be gone in a year.”
“Thanks for telling me that,” I said.
“And I said,” she continued, “that I’d bet him anything he cared to wager that he was wrong.”
We left the restaurant early. Donna had a train to catch and I couldn’t wait to go home and crawl into bed. I was glad Michael was out of town; I didn’t want him to know how demoralized I was.
But Nick was still awake, and I was absurdly happy to see him. A