My boss was a nice person who had one of the greatest names I’ve ever heard, but for the purposes of her privacy, I’ll regretfully not include it here. I did the usual secretarial jobs, retyping corrected manuscripts, making phone calls, fielding phone calls, updating Roladexes which were filled with the names of famous media contacts, and making copies of this and that. I was standing in line at the copier one day, when a portly youngish guy with a Vandyck beard started exclaiming, “Zaftig! Zaftig! What is all this about zaftig?!!” No one, evidently, had an answer for him.

 

 

One day, the executive secretary phoned in sick, so I helped run things for her boss until a temp could be found. The poor woman, a famous dragon lady, was absolutely bereft without her assistant, and I found myself actually feeling sorry for her, even though she had of course completely ignored me every time she passed through the office I shared with her assistant. I brought her a cup of coffee when she asked me to, and saw that her office was extravagantly decorated with Laura Ashley. She was reclining on the ruffled, floral sofa, completely verklempt, and received the coffee gratefully. It was interesting to realize how much power a really good administrative assistant could actually possess in these environments.

 

 

Since this was winter, practically no one had them. I called and called and called. I literally spent the entire afternoon trying to track some down. I finally found them at a drug store that was more or less on my way to work, so I picked some up the next morning and proudly delivered them to my boss, more than a little relieved that I wouldn’t have to keep looking for them. Or be told to call the fucking company in Florida back and keep wheedling.

 

I had happily settled down to work when my boss came in to talk to me and laid the nose guards down on my desk. “She doesn’t like these,” she told me, referring to her boss. It was an interesting moment. We locked eyes in a silent battle of wills. If I had wanted a job there, I would have had to knuckle down. But I didn’t. And they didn’t have any power over me. What could they do, fire me? I only had two days left anyway. In the end, I refused to pursue it, and I could tell that my boss was disappointed but not surprised. And being a nice person, she didn’t hold it against me. I’m not sure what she told her boss. Maybe they found someone else to scare up the right nose guards.

 

At any rate, I was excited to have my freedom looming ahead of me, only two days away. My last day was also Richard’s last day, and since he had spent two months working in his job, he had earned the affection of everyone in his department. They wanted to give him a champagne going-away party (very big at Condé Nast, it would seem). He called to see if I could join him at the end of my work day, and I asked my boss if I could go. She asked her boss, and the woman came into the office to give her answer. She was about 4’11. “Tell the temp she can go to the party,” my boss’s boss told my boss, even though she was standing about four feet away from me. But she said it in a friendly way, nodding and smiling benevolently. It was funny, the whole hierarchy and who spoke to whom. I was very glad this wasn’t my life. But it was fascinating to get a peek of it.

 

Soon we were done and we were on our way back west. Richard and I had a couple of months to rest up and do a few odd jobs here and there—and then we were driving back to the high country of Colorado for another summer season.