Busybody

Lilly stared at the jars of moisturizer standing like toy soldiers in front of her. She looked up from the copy she was reading, turned one jar around to read its ingredients, smiled sardonically, and with a red wax pencil made wide Xs marks on the paper.  “I knew she was making this up. There’s no ginseng root,” she said to no one in particular.

It was her day job, reviewing articles for a fashion publication. She long suspected that the writers, mostly overly pretty women in their 20s, were more interested in life in the big city than their careers.  Lilly would be there, to rescue the copy, check the facts, and scowl at an unsuspecting writer who dropped a piece off when she was in residence.

The girls who wrote called it the Death March. That was the 30-foot walk between the cubicles of ad sales and graphics that took them to Lilly’s isolated cubicle in a far corner of the Madison Avenue office.  Calls went around if Lilly was out of that cubicle, allowing the women to scurry to her inbox and retreat as quickly as possible. One newbie didn’t know the protocol – it was a rite of passage – and approached Lilly with a smile and a story about Neutrogena’s New Norwegian Face Lotion formula. Lilly looked over her half-frame glasses saying nothing, took the story and proceeded to use her red wax pencil with abandon.

The young writer retreated in tears moments later. It was said she eventually landed a job at Vogue.

Lilly had been at it for 30 years and, unlike the Seven Sisters’ crew, actually wanted to be what she was: a copy editor. Lilly was a stickler, which didn’t make her popular with anyone but the senior staff who appreciated how meticulous she was in keeping them out of trouble. They left her alone both professionally and personally.  

Lilly was content with that. To her they were just like those self-proclaimed journalists who left their finishing schools with some notion they liked fashion when all they really liked was buying things and needed an excuse to get into a job which they called career and would leave after shortly to get married to, usually, a lawyer or banker. A thick stack of wedding shower invitations, which she invariably said no to, may have proved her point.

Lilly thought their work was silly anyway. They’d go off to a fashion show, or a cosmetic convention, to write fluff pieces about some new face ‘crème’ with essence of stinging nettles or oil of sage or some such nonsense. In fact, 99% of the ingredients were the same in all the things being marketed. It was her job to read the labels, steam them off the jars, and glue them to the copy in case of legal issues. The anonymous jars she’d leave in the kitchen after writing in that red wax pencil “face cream” or a similar identifier on them.

The writers got big gift bags, giggled at the representatives of the various manufacturers, and then basically rewrite using slightly different words what the press releases proclaimed albeit with typos and errors for Lilly to fix.

Infrequently, reporters would get an extra bag for Lilly or, more often, give her samples they didn’t like, in an effort to ingratiate themselves. Lilly wasn’t buying into that. She wore very little make thank you very much. Her fashion was usually on sale which meant it was last year’s mode though she did, occasionally when no one was paying attention which was most of the time, rifle through the racks and bins of clothing the designers had provided (“bribed” was how Lilly saw it) to the writers for them to look over.  

She ate at her desk, in her cubicle, alone.  But occasionally, usually after she’d cut one of the gals to an appropriate size, she’d go out. Her favorite was the date-nut bread and cream cheese sandwich when Chock Full of Nuts was around, or on very special occasions a Chinese Roast Pork sandwich on garlic bread from a coffee shop.  

Nowadays she’d pick up something from one of the delis that frequently turned over and increasingly had a European name, though the offerings didn’t change much, and significantly higher prices. Lilly balked, “$r.95 for a blueberry muffin! Honestly.”

But occasionally does imply once in a while. On this particular day, she indulged in an almond croissant which, to be fair, Lilly had to acknowledge was quite large and smelled delicious. She even ordered a caffe latte, medium, because she was in a good mood. What put Lilly in such a mood was an encounter with one of the younger journalists whom she berated to the point of bringing her to the edge of tears. This was over an article that was poorly written, filled with typos, and which the girl (a recent Vanderbilt graduate) had cavalierly tossed onto Lily’s desk with an implied arrogance that especially provoked a more vicious editing even by Lilly’s demanding standards.  She felt very good about that.

So with pastry and coffee in hand Lilly intended to return to her cubicle but instead continued down Madison enjoying the cool sunny weather and reminiscing on the day’s achievement. Before she realized it she was several blocks south and felt her latte getting tepid and so she looked about for a place to stop – and why not? She rarely went out – and saw the awing for the Roosevelt Hotel. “Oh, I might as well,” she grumbled. 

The lobby was crowded with some large tour groups of jabbering foreigners, she couldn’t hear a specific language above the din. She espied the mezzanine and follower her instinct into the stairwell and to the second floor. There she found her comfort in the overstuffed chairs and the subdued lighting. She uncovered her at least still warm latte and croissant using the pastry bag as her placemat. Both were divine and bode well for the rest of the day.

It was then that she heard behind her two people speaking in very low voices. It was none of her business and she could care less but the low hum annoyed her so she listened, carefully, to see what topic could keep two people engaged in what was clearly, to her, supposed to be a quiet place. One voice was a woman’s, low, deep, confident. The striking element, however, was a distinct accent which sounded to Lilly like Russian, certainly eastern European, but to Lilly they all sounded alike. She was evidently the one in charge. The other was a man’s, also deep and rather masculine if that made any sense, but somewhat hesitant and quite anxious with lots of ‘buts’ and ‘I don’t knows’ involved.

The woman with the accent was more insistent, but patient, at least in tone. It was the tone that Lilly initially cottoned onto, more than the words themselves, because it did sound dramatic. While Lilly couldn’t stand drama and theatrics at work, in this setting with those voices, it was more authentic than the self-indulgent emotions of her work colleagues. No, this conversation was real; there was demand, fear, persistence, doubt, pressure.

Lilly wanted to turn around and see what the people looked like but she thought doing so would arouse their attention and cause them to stop their conversation. As a small, woman, slight really, they would hardly notice her enveloped in the big chair just sitting quietly by herself. She made sure not to crinkle the bag when she took a delicate bite of her delicious almond croissant.  Lilly had to admit to herself it was quite good, and far better than the dry and artificial imposters most shops sold these days. She listened further.

The woman kept pressing for information but the way she said it came across and ‘inforrrrrmazion’ with an intimidating roll of r’s. The man insisted that he had provided as much as he could for now and would try to get more but couldn’t promise much. “It’s just not there, or not as clean as you want,” he pleaded. Lilly could almost sense perspiration droplets collecting on his scalp. “Listen, we’ve been over this and the data is just too well…hmmm…implied for any of us to find. I think we have all we can get, and really all we need. We can make some conclusions based on all that, surely.”

“No, Victor. No. You can do better.” His name was Victor! Maybe he was a Russian, too.

Lilly glanced at her watch and saw that she was getting rather long into a lunch hour which she rarely ever took and got anxious for a brief moment. “Let them worry,” she said to herself. “Let them think I’m out interviewing.” Back at the editorial department no one seemed to have noticed she wasn’t there. Editorial deadlines were days away and in terms of social connections Lilly was, well, a person who didn’t nurture them. And besides, she was very interested in the conversation behind her.  

If they were spies surely they would meet in someplace other than a hotel, perhaps a park or a church pew where there’d be no one around. And there was her, after all. She slunk down deeper into her chair. Perhaps they didn’t even realize she was there. Or maybe, like those young stuck-up debutantes she had to edit, they couldn’t care less.

The woman laughed a little, or it sounded like a laugh but with a touch of, what was it, sarcasm or threat? That’s how Lilly heard it. “Victor, Victor, Victor. You try me so. Implied data? What does that mean? Is this all touch and feel, now? You’ve gotten a bit soft in your old age. You were hungry once, Victor. Are you still hungry?”

Lilly stiffened. This sounded like a threat the way a spy and his handler might speak. The droplets of perspiration now were her on. She’d been out of the office of a long while and felt that she was pushing her time off. Her latte had gone cold, and what if, what if, things behind her turned ugly? She looked over the other side of the mezzanine to the other tables. Empty. There was enough noise from the lobby, a real circus in fact, that might cover up the sound of a silencer and a man’s final gasp of life. And what then? What if the woman stood and saw Lilly in her chair?  

“Nadia,” said Victor. Surely that’s Russian, Lilly thought.  “Nadia,” Victor continued, “I ate before we got here. Took out sushi from that spot on 47th between Park and Madison whose name I can NEVER remember, damn it. I’m getting lousy with names. Early onset Alzheimer’s. Anyway, I could eat something. Are you hungry?”

“That’s why I asked. Passive aggressive as always. We can talk further about these matters at lunch,” said Nadia.  

“And I promise, absolutely guarantee, for the umpteenth time I’ll go over the data you are crazing me over. Honestly, I ask myself why we bother. We sell the top brand of vodka, add this and that flavoring to sell even more, and now you have this thing about vegetables: cucumber, pepper, tarragon….tarragon vodka for goodness sake!  I can imagine the people who came up with Clamato Juice did this much research. How much data could we possibly get on that? Anyway, let’s roll,” said Victor.

The pair of conspirators collected their things and rose to go off to whatever lunch place they had in mind to discuss, among other things, tarragon-infused vodka.

They didn’t even glance at Lilly when they walked past. How could they with her sunk so deep in the chair and she wasn’t a large woman to begin with?  Seconds later Lilly used her finger to collect the crumbs off the white paper, sipped the final now cold drops of her latte, swallowed a rare taste of embarrassment, and hurriedly left the mezzanine.  

She was twenty minutes late returning to her desk; no one would dare say anything and the girls were probably relieved by her brief absence. They were like that, those girls.  Always trying to cut corners and put in half-assed copy. Oh yes, they’d welcome every moment she was out. For a while. She brushed off some crumbs that had collected on her skirt and strode back towards her office with a renewed sense of determination.