Page 21 of The Change
“Why not?” Harriett probed. “Sex is natural. It’s a bodily function.”
“I’m too old for that bodily function,” Nessa said.
“Oh really?” Harriett snickered like a dirty-minded schoolgirl. “Who told you that?”
“No one had totellme.” Nessa was getting annoyed. “Some things you just know.”
“Youknowbecause that’s what women our age have been trained to think,” Harriett said.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Nessa demanded. “No one’s been training me.”
“Then you’ll do whatever you want,” Harriett said. “And you won’t give a shit what anyone says.”
“Damn straight I won’t,” Nessa told her.
“You’ll have sex with Franklin Rees if you feel like it,” Harriett said.
“Hell yes I will!” Nessa told her.
“Good,” Harriett said with a lighthearted shrug. “’Cause that’s all I’m asking.”
“Good,” Nessa repeated, suddenly aware of the one-eighty the conversation had taken. “Can we talk about something else now? Like blowfly larvae or serial killers?”
The Purification of Harriett Osborne
The office of the ad agency where Harriett had worked featured a central staircase that connected the company’s three floors. It was a gorgeous staircase, designed by a brand-name architect, with clear glass steps that made it look as if one were climbing through air. Though it was far less convenient, women in the office often opted to take the elevator instead. The staircase, which had been featured in countless design magazines, was also known for its spectacular up-the-skirt views. This, it was explained to Harriett when she first pointed it out, was a feature, not a flaw.
She happened to be wearing a skirt the day she returned from vacation. She hadn’t mentioned where she was going, but everyone in the office assumed she’d traveled somewhere exotic. That’s what rich women did when their marriages ended. They set off on spirit quests or death-defying adventures. They climbed Mount Everest. They ate, prayed, and loved. Now Harriett had returned, with the lean limbs and bronzed skin of an Aegean goddess. The huntress stalking a stag, perhaps, or an enchantress surrounded by swine. No one would have guessed that Harriett had acquired the tan while walking naked among the plants in her own backyard.
The skirt was a failed attempt to get back in the swing of things. She hadn’t worn clothes in two weeks, and she hadn’t missed them at all. That morning, she’d stood in her massive walk-in closet, looking around at all her beautiful things. Once Harriett had thought ofthem as her prizes. Win a new account, get a YSL Le Smoking. Convince a creative team to accept her ideas as theirs, collect a bracelet from Hermès. Shake a handsy client without pissing anyone off, take home a badass Rag & Bone leather jacket. Now she realized none of her belongings spoke to her any longer. She wasn’t sure if they ever really had. The skirt she chose to wear was vintage Tom Ford–era Gucci. For the life of her, she couldn’t recall why she’d bought it.
The skirt was the reason she was the last of her colleagues to walk through the door of the new creative director’s office. She’d been informed of his hiring at the beginning of the month, but he’d arrived while she was on vacation, and she had yet to meet him in person. She entered the room to find him already holding court. Chris Whitman was Scottish, like Max, the agency’s CEO. He and Max had worked together back in London, and now Max had brought his protégé to New York at enormous expense. The agency had been on a winning streak for two years, and after they’d doubled their billings, their holding company, which had previously squeezed every spare cent from them, decided it was best to let Max do as he liked. They and the press attributed the agency’s success to Max’s swashbuckling leadership. He was tall, dark, and rugged. No matter the setting, he wore the same uniform of black T-shirt and jeans. He fit the ad world’s picture of a renegade genius. The fact that the agency’s winning streak hadn’t begun until Harriett was brought on as new business director was deemed a coincidence. When Max decided he needed a “partner in crime,” it never occurred to anyone but Harriett that he might already have one.
Harriett took Chris’s measure from the doorway. He was attractive but short. Max liked to have good-looking people around him, but he was careful not to hire anyone taller or more talented. Chris didn’t share the CEO’s height or bombastic personality, but their egos appeared to be a perfect match. Like his boss, Chris seemedperfectly at home in New York with a group of American sycophants hanging on his every accented syllable.
There were four men in the room, all a few years younger than Harriett. When she appeared in the office, they glanced up with unease. Her presence always altered the energy of the room—like a teacher returning from a bathroom break or someone’s mom showing up at a keg party.
Chris paused in the middle of the tale he was telling and turned to Harriett. “So how long will he be?” he asked.
Movement on the couch caught Harriett’s eye. Andrew Howard, the head account guy, was squirming. “How long willwhobe?” she asked.
“Max,” the CD replied with a touch of exasperation, as though trying to make sense to a sweet but dim-witted child.
“Why would I know when Max will get here?” Harriett kept her voice cool and pleasant.
The creative director looked around at the men gathered in his office. Suddenly, none of them wanted to meet his eye.
“Who do you think I am?” Harriett asked. She knew. She just wanted to hear him say it. He thought she was an admin. If she’d played along, he might have asked her to bring him a cup of coffee.
Three months earlier, their exchange would have shaken Harriett’s confidence. What about her appearance made him mistake her for support staff? Did she lack gravitas? Did she look unsuited for her job?
The head of client services leaped to his rescue. “Chris, this is Harriett Osborne, head of our new business department. She’s been on vacation for the past few weeks.”
“Oh, of course!” Chris made a beeline for her, hand outstretched, no trace of shame or contrition anywhere on his face. He seemed to have no clue he’d committed a faux pas. “What an honor to finally meet you in person. I hear you were married to Chase Osborne.He does the Little Pigs ads. I’m a huge fan of his. The man is a genius.”
“I’m sure Chase would agree with you,” Harriett replied. “I’d pass on your kind words, but I don’t see him much anymore. He’s too busy fucking the head of his production department.”
The men in the room appeared to stop breathing. They all knew it. They would have filled Chris in the moment she left the room. But none of them expected her to beat them to the punch. Harriett grinned broadly. For years, veneers had disguised the natural gap between her two front teeth. During her vacation, she’d decided to get rid of them. Now they were all staring at the gap, struggling to remember if it had been there all along. It was fun, she thought, to keep them wondering.
