A Life-Saving Idea

Vivian

I pulled up my silver Audi at the parking lot, took a few deep breaths, and checked my make-up in the rear mirror. Thank heavens, I didn’t put mascaras on, otherwise my face would be mottled. I got off the car and blend in the sea of business men and women in formal attire or trendy designer dress. DanLes was located in Barnet, one of the tallest buildings downtown, occupying ten floors from the sixtieth to the top. I wiggled my way through the crowd and slipped through the turnstile with my pass. People in the lobby were piling themselves into the elevators like sardines in a can; no one wanted to be late. 

The carriages full of human odor promised no pleasant ride, but I dove onto one of the elevators at the last second nonetheless. Marley would surely be riled up if I was late again. As the door slid shut, I squeezed my hand over to press the button for the sixty-fifth floor. 

“Excuse me,” I uttered. 

Everyone in the elevator moved by tiny increments to make room for me. The girl standing next to the button panel glanced at me up and down with a scowl. I lifted my brows and said, “Thanks.”

Most of the employees here didn’t know who I was. I meant, they probably knew my name is Vivian Cunningham from a glimpse of my work card, but they had no idea of me being the daughter of Daniel Cunningham. 

Dad wanted me to stay in low profile and work hard from the ground up. And though the wedding made a stir in this city, there weren't any front photos of me being disseminated around the tabloids. It was even a piece of cake for Mr. Cunningham to let me remain anonymous and invisible. All they knew was that the young, prestigious bachelor Nathan Sadoc was married to Daniel Cunningham’s daughter. That’s all. Anyway, I found it not bad to stay low-key because I absolutely took no interest in bossing around like a bitchy princess. 

The elevator was gradually emptying as the carriage moved up. The last few occupants in their late forties glanced at me through the mirror wall while we reached the sixty-fifth floor. The doors parted. And before I stepped out, I noticed the condescending smile on their faces from the corner of my eyes. I took a deep breath and smiled, resisting the urge to make a snarky face. 

That’s how the business ran. The higher your office was located, the higher you got yourself accepted in the pecking order. The first five floors in DanLes were occupied by workers – from interns to senior editors – while the other belonged to the managers. 

I walked through the long row of offices and reached the bottom of the hall. Pushing open the door, I was greeted by Patricia with a relieved smile. “Gosh, I thought you were going to be late.” She exhaled, lowering her voice with an alert expression as I walked over, “Marley is in her bad mood today.”

“Oh no. Not again.” I rolled up my eyes and huffed. 

Marley was our immediate boss and the chief editor of Blazer – the worst-selling magazine in DanLes. 

Patricia shrugged. “Yah. So you’ll be dead if you’re late,” she said with her fingers together up on the nape of her neck and gestured as if cutting her throat. 

I giggled at her funny expression. “What’s wrong this time? She seemed to be alright yesterday.” I tilted to glance at Julia who lifted her head above the huge screen and blinked her eyes behind her heavy, black-framed glasses. “Not me.” She muttered. 

Marley was a moody woman, like most artists, she’s sensitive, even edgy. The last time she flew off the handle was simply because Julia, our clumsy assistant, mixed up her mugs and poured coffee into the one she used for sparkling water. Her mood was unpredictable.

“Ugh, it’s not Julia,” Patricia sighed, “it’s the general meeting.”

Oh, I see. 

DanLes held a general meeting near the end of each month where each department needed to make a quarterly report for the executives to judge whether we were doing our best or not, and no wonder, we ranked at the end of the company. Why wouldn’t we? Blazer had been letting staff go every week in the past three months for the tightened budget. Now, there’s only Patricia, Julia, and me plus some flexible student interns in this department, and we had an office at every end of this corridor, seldomly visited, like the tech geeks in The IT Crowd. 

It wasn’t like this twenty years ago. Blazer had been an ace in fashion industries during the late 90s. At the height of its popularity, you’d see girls queue up early at Newsstands on its release dates, emptying the inventory in a second. But the rise of digital devices destroyed everything, and Blazer, thanks to its stale branding strategies and stubborn management team, suffered greatly from the scandal last year. Not trying to be a Monday morning quarterback, but the failure of Blazer was foreseen. And I was convinced that if DanLes kept being bullheaded and refused to change, the decline would not stop there. Not only Blazer but the whole company would suffer from its outmoded system. However, Dad wouldn’t believe me. He was that kind of person you called a stick in the mud. He put me here in Blazer and requested a renewal of its golden 90s. But he refused to grant me any rights. He insisted that if I want to make a change, I had to work from the ground up. That’s bullshit, though. What he said was possibly true, but there was no way he did it for the good of me. The age of building up your fortune from blood and tears had passed long before capitalists took the world. I meant, look at Nathan Sadoc. He never had to work in a neglected department and prove what he was capable of. It was just that Daniel Cunningham, my sullen Dad, would never make me the heiress if he had other options, I knew it.

We looked at each other when the internal phone on Julia’s desk rang. She gulped before picking it up. 

“Hi, Marley.” She said, glancing between me and Patricia. “Yes, Marley. Absolutely.” She hung up with a deep exhale. 

“Vivian, Marley wants you in her office.” Julia turned to me and said. 

“Me?” My eyes widened. I didn’t do anything offending her, did I? “What’s it about?” I asked.

“I have no idea.” Julia shrugged and spread her hands. 

Patricia patted me on the shoulder. “Poor girl.”

I huffed; my shoulders slumped. 

Okay. It wasn’t that I hated Marley; I admired her for being one of the few women leaders in this chauvinist-dominated company. But she was sometimes unreasonable, and exquisitely hard to communicate. Take this for an example, three months ago, Blazer decided to feature Venus’s products on its front page, which was possibly going to pull Blazer out of the mud with a promising amount of advertising money. But the problem was, Venus was way too expensive for our audience. 

So, I interrupted her vehement statement and put forward my concern at that meeting. “I think we need to include more affordable brands if we want to win the market from our rivals such as Beauty Angles, Sissi, or Daphne,” I spoke. 

These were trending fashion magazines favored by indie fashion influencers. 

“Rivals?” Marley said with a little drone in her voice. “I don’t think so. What will Blazer be if we include cheap products?” she questioned, her nose wrinkled up. 

Marley insisted that Blazer was about high-end beauty, like the other outlets owned by DanLes. It needed to focus on the elites, instead of demeaning its value to cater to the public. “We’ll lose our faithful fans,” she said. Well, I doubted it. I doubted if we ever had any fans. 

I took a deep breath before knocking on the door of Marley’s office. It was located on the forty-eighth floor. Despite the downfall of Blazer, Marley was still one of the most prestigious operation officers in this company. 

“Come in.” She answered. 

When I walked in, she was busy with her laptop. 

“Hi, Marley.” I greeted. 

“Hi, take a seat. Give me one more minute.” She took an unhurried up from her screen and said with an impassive face. 

Great. She seemed to be under control. 

I waited at the desk until Marley closed her laptop with a deep exhale. She stretched herself before lifting from the chair and walked over to the pantry cupboard. “Tea?” she glanced over at me and asked.

“Not, thanks.” I twitched my lips. 

She nodded and got back to her seat with a white porcelain mug in her hand. “Yesterday was a nightmare.” She said as her head tilted to one side with, fingers rubbing her temple.

I rolled my lips and said, “I heard about it.” 

“You did?” Marley raised her brow and gazed at me in surprise. 

“Patricia told me. It was the general meeting.”

“Oh, of course she did.” She sipped her tea. “Tell me what you think about this, Vivian. I rebuffed your proposal and now I have to take my own medicine. You were right. Readers hate we are working with Venus, and the sales declined sharply. You must think I screw it up.”

Oops. 

“No.” I denied, “Absolutely not.” 

“Oh, come on. Vivian,” She swatted the air dismissively. “Be frank, there’s no need to hold back, anyway. Blazer will stop publication at the end of this year, and the whole department will be cut down.”

What? I didn’t expect that. 

“Unless…” She paused before continuing, “The turnover improves.” Marley stared at me. 

“Is there anything I can help?” I asked. 

“Yes, there is.” She put down the mug on the desk and sat forward, “You see, Vivian, I really like you. You are intelligent and candid, and that’s why we hired you. I didn’t mean to disappoint you the last time. But you have to understand things wouldn’t change by some low-priced items.” 

I pursed my lips with a hesitant nod, not quite agreeing with what she said. At least we could have a try. 

“My point is,” she steepled her hands on the table and said, “We need something more exciting. More sensational, and more surprising. You understand?”

“I get what you mean, Marley.” I moistened my lips before speaking. “But we’re a fashion magazine. I wonder how we are gonna make this exciting?” 

Marley chuckled, tilting her chin to the sky as she sat back in her chair with a casual gesture. “That’s pretty much easy,” she said, “Celebrities. The public craves celebrity stories. Billionaires, royals, pop stars…That’s why tabloids always sell.”

I was deeply confused. “You want us to be paparazzi?” 

“Nah, of course not.” Marley said with a confident smirk, “What we are going to do is official interviews. And we will only pick on the prestigious guys. Hot guys in different professions. What do you think?” 

“Plausible? I suppose.” I wasn’t sure. This was going to be a bold move for sure, but Marley got her point. I agreed that girls would be definitely hooked if we could bring this out. “But I’m afraid it’ll be difficult to find the right guys for an interview.” I raised my concern. We had never done anything like this before. We did do a few interviews with fashion designers or key beauty influencers, but with businessmen. Never. 

Marley seemed to be prepared for my doubt. “I’ve already got a perfect nominee. Do you know that Nathan Sadoc married, not long ago, to the princess of our company?” 

“Um..y-yes, it’s big news.” I stammered. What’s that to do with Blazer? 

W…wait! My jaw sagged; my eyes widened as Marley gave me a sly smile. 

NO WAY.

She showed me a ‘Bingo’ face. “I want you to do the first interview with him,” she said in a confident tone, “talk about his family, his wife, his taste. Girls will desperately want to know.”

NO FUCKING WAY.

I bit my lower lip and took a few breaths to get myself calm down. “But he never accepts interviews, doesn’t he?” I argued. 

“He did.” Marley said, “But that’s the point. We can get the exclusivity, and guess what …” She deliberately paused, and smiled proudly. “He agreed to have a meeting with us and talk about this. That’s our chance.”

He agreed? Was he out of his mind?

“What? When?”

“Friday, I suppose.” 

No. Hell no. 

“That’s…” I felt my emotions bubbling in my throat. “I don’t it’s a good idea.”

“How come?” Marley raised her brow. “Don’t you think it is going to be a good chance for us to transform? If we succeed this time, we will not only save Blazer but also lead to its resurgence. Plus, it will be an official interview focusing on Nathan Sadoc’s family fashion.”

I muttered under my breath, “But it’s still digging out people’s privacy.”

“I beg your pardon?” Marley was irked. 

“Nothing.” I said, “But I’m afraid I don’t want to be involved. Ask someone else, Julia or Patricia.” 

“Stop acting like a child, Vivian.” She said, “They will help you. But it’s you I want to put in charge. Don’t put that face on. I picked you because you’re the best in my department. You graduated from the same college as Mr. Sadoc, so I bet you share something in common.” 

We didn’t. We never did.

Marley softened her voice and exhaled. “You said you want to get promotions and impress your parents, right? I presume that’s your best chance.”

I lifted my gaze at Marley who smiled at me assertively. 

Oh, screw it.