CHAPTER 1

Three steps inside the cluttered room stacked with old magazines, ours and our competitors’, and my breakfast—coffee with two sugars, and strawberry jam on whole-wheat toast—turned into a stone inside my stomach.

Without even looking up from the folder in her hand, Brenda signaled to the chair across hers.

“Vicki, sit down.”

I sat silently, a thousand things leaping to my tongue: I can do better; I can do more; let me do more, two articles a week rather than one. Even: I will work for free until we can find our feet.

I couldn’t afford to work for free. I had to pay my rent, I was still paying off my college loan, and I had a mother I loved with a health condition and no insurance. But I also loved my job. I didn’t want to be let go. I had never wanted to be anything else other than what I was now, at this moment, as my fate rested in her hands.

So it was with dread and an impending sense of loss that I sat there and waited for Brenda to finally lower that folder and look at me. And I wondered, as our eyes met, if the next story I have to tell in my life is the one of her firing me.

I was in love with stories. How they shape our lives. How they mark people who don’t even know us. How they can impact us even when an event didn’t exactly occur in our own lives.

The first things I ever fell in love with were the words my mother and grandmother told me about my dad. In those words I got what I didn’t have in real life—a dad. I would collect them into groups, memorize the stories they formed. Where he’d taken my mother on their first date, if his laugh was funny, what his favorite beverage was. I grew up in love with stories and with all the facts and details that enabled me to shape, in my mind, memories of my father that have been with me for life.

My aunts said I was dreaming when I said I wanted words to be a career, but my mother kept quoting Da Vinci’s mother. “Da Vinci’s mother told him if he got into the army, he’d be a general. If he became a monk, he’d be the pope. Instead he was an Inventor and became the great Da Vinci. That’s exactly how I feel about you. So do, Vicki, what you love.”

“I would do it more happily if you were doing what you love too,” I always replied, miserable for her.

“What I love is taking care of you,” she always came back with. She was a lovely painter but nobody else thought so but me and one tiny gallery that went bankrupt months after its inception. So my mother had a normal job, and the Picasso in her had quieted.

But she had sacrificed so much to give me an education and more. Since I was actually a little shy with strangers, I didn’t have encouragement from a lot of my teachers. None of them believed I had the stomach for hard-core reporting, so I ran with the only thing I could: the sole motivation of my mother and her belief in me.

Now I had worked at Edge for almost two years, the job cut started over two months ago, and my colleagues and I havd all been afraid we’ll be the next. Everyone, including me, was giving 110 percent of what we’ve got. But to a flailing business, it was not enough. There didn’t seem to be any way of salvaging Edge except with a huge investment that didn’t seem forthcoming, or with stories much bigger than what we’ve been running.

The moment Brendaa opened her mouth to speak, I dreaded hearing the words We’ve got to let you go. I was already thinking of a story, an idea, I could pitch for my next column, something edgy that could put our name out there and somehow allow me to hang on to my job a little longer.

“You’ve been on my mind, Vicki,” she said. “Are you currently seeing anyone?”

“Um. Seeing anyone? No.”

“Well, that’s just what I wanted to hear!” She shuffled her paperwork to the side and pulled out one of the magazines from the shelf, dropping it on the desk between us. “See, I’ve got a proposition for you. It might require you to bend your morals a little bit. In the end, I think it will ultimately be rewarding for you.” She showed me an old magazine, a rueful smile on her lips. “This was our first issue. Fifteen years ago.”

“I love it!” I said.

“I know you do—you’ve always taken an interest in how we started. Which is why I like you, Vicki,” she said without any warmth at all. Just a fact, it seemed. “You know, Edge used to stand for something. All those years ago, we weren’t afraid of breaking rules, venturing where other magazines wouldn’t. You’re the only one who seems to have preserved that. The Sharpest Edge is always our column with the most comments. You focus on the trends and give your raw, unfiltered opinion. Even when people don’t agree with your opinion, they respect you for the fact that you share it so honestly.

“This is why I suppose you’re in my office now, instead of Cynthia.” She jerked her chin in the direction of outside where my greatest competitor, Cynthia, must be busy in her cubicle.

Cynthia. She was the only other overachiever at Edge and somehow always lucked out at overachieving more than me. I didn’t want enmity with Cynthia. But it still felt like there was a popularity contest here I didn’t sign up for. She always seemed so damn happy when Brenda wasn’t pleased with what I wrote, and sometimes I couldn’t write a word simply because I was worrying about what Cynthia would come up with.

“See, I’m thinking of ruffling some feathers. If we want to stay in business, it’s becoming clearer and clearer we need something more drastic. Something that will make people take notice of Edge. Are you with me?”

“I agree. If there’s anything to breathe new life into Edge—”

“We’re doing so poorly, we’ve all grown so scared; we’re all reporting from safe, scared places, afraid to push the button in case we explode. We’re already withering here. We need to write about the topics that scare us, fascinate us . . . and nobody fascinates this city more than our billionaire bachelors. Do you know who I’m talking about?”

“The playboys?”

Her lips twist. “The worst of them all.” She pulled out another magazine. I stared at the cover, which said Angel or Devil?

“James Godfrey,” I whispered.