“Careful.” Nicola smiled. “The beverage you’re about to enjoy may be hot.”
“Whatever,” muttered Gaynor, taking a sip. Her eyes popped open, huge and bloodshot, as the coffee scalded her tongue. She made a raspy moan. “This is good.”
“You slept here?” Nicola asked.
Gaynor stared at her and pointed a finger at Nicola’s desk through her door.
“What is that?” she said, still creaking.
Nicola turned and followed the direction of the immaculate red talon.
“Oh, I got a coffee, too,” she said.
“No, in the bag, what is it? ¿Qué es eso?”
“Oh, I got a pastry. I was hungry,” she explained.
“Give it to me,” Gaynor demanded.
Nicola sighed and went and got her pastry. She handed the bag containing her breakfast to Gaynor, who held it between two fingers as if it were a bag of dog shit. She dropped it into the wastebasket by her desk.
“I can’t teach you if you refuse to learn,” she hissed. “Look at this, look at this thing you buy, all the sugar, nothing but sugar. It will kill you, but worse, it will make you fat, and you will be like the rest of America.”
“Well, thanks for that, Gaynor,” sniffed Nicola. “I haven’t eaten a damn thing in twenty-four hours, so I think I’m still way under my calorie count for the day. And now I just wasted three bucks.”
“Oh, calm down, I’ll give you an Adderall,” said Gaynor, digging into the huge floppy Birkin purse on the edge of her desk.
“I’m okay, thanks. I’ll get a kale salad for lunch, if you promise not to throw that into the trash, too.”
“If you listen to me, you’ll be able to dress like a woman, not like something from the”—Gaynor paused and physically shuddered—“grunge era.”
Nicola pulled at her cute cotton black-and-orange plaid shirtdress.
“This is Zara,” she protested.
“Why must you make this so hard? That thing needs a belt, rhinestones, shoulder pads, and tights before it can even be considered peasant chic. Please never again remind me of the nineties. Now get out of here. The damn phones have been ringing like a cocaine hotline on Oscar week.”
Back at her desk, the red message light on the phone was indeed blinking. Not a good sign for 9:15 a.m. Nicola picked up her handset and dialed in to the company voice mail.
The robot lady voice inside the phone told her there were seventeen unheard messages. This meant something was up.
She pressed one to access the first message.
“Gaynor, this is Crystal. It’s urgent. Call me.” Click. Nicola noted the time stamp: last night at 11:54—and started a list of callbacks for her boss. She skipped to the next message.
“Gaynor, you fucking bitch, I told you to call me. I’ve called your cell, I’ve called your fucking house, and now this, your answering service isn’t even fucking answering. Call me now or I’m gonna stuff a burrito so far up your ass you’ll burp like a fucking wetback. Call me.”
Because Gaynor insisted that her staff use paper notes for all phone messages, Nicola wrote “CALL CRYSTAL. URGENT” on a slip of paper and took it into Gaynor’s office. Gaynor looked at the note, and her eyes widened slightly. Due to her Botox habit, this could have meant boredom or complete terror.
“What does that old puta want?” she rasped. “She left me a million messages last night. I don’t jump when she snaps her claws.”
“I don’t know, but she says she tried to call you on all your devices. She sounds pissed. I think she left a few more messages, at least.”
Gaynor mumbled something under her breath in Spanish, then added, “Try and figure out what she’s upset about before I call her. Por favor.”
Crystal was Gaynor’s former mentor, lover, and current nemesis. Their rivalry was legendary. There had even been a thinly veiled Lifetime movie about them that only the gays had loved.
Returning to her desk, Nicola started playing the rest of the messages. They were all Crystal. Each message was more florid than the one before it, the threats increasingly outlandish and more racist. It wasn’t until the twelfth or thirteenth message that Nicola froze.
“Gaynor, who the fuck is this Billy Kaye and why is he saying he is your client? The little twink has me in a world of pain and if you don’t call me back five minutes ago…”
The handset dropped to her desk, and Nicola never got to hear which traditional item of Mexican descent was going to be forcibly inserted in one of Gaynor’s orifices. Fucking Billy, she seethed, goddamn fucking Billy. Why the hell was he telling Crystal that Gaynor was his publicist? Why the fuck was Billy even talking to Crystal? Where the hell did they meet last night?