Vig Morgan finally worked her way out of the assistant-for-the-bitch-from-hell trenches only to get stuck in a sea of editors. But Vig isn't like the other associate editors at the aggressively hip and overwhelmingly current Fashionista magazine. For one thing, she couldn't care less which star wore which designer to which party. Sure, she's clever and witty -- and just as ambitious as the next over qualified underpaid underling, but she would never get drawn into a plot to depose the evil editor-in-chief. Or would she?

Jump with Vig into the choppy waters of scheming, backstabbing, free speech, flirtation and fashion, as the lackeys at the bottom of the masthead band together to take down the queen at the top, with some unexpected -- but not necessarily unpleasant -- results.

"Vig, what does your roommate look like?" "She's tall and blond and has green eyes."

"Does she have a boyish figure like yours?"

"Uh . . ."

"Is she a stick, a lollipop, a drainpipe with no dents?"

"Uh . . ."

"We're talking completely flat. Not a curve to be found, even with surveying equipment and six of the Royal Cartographers Association's best men."

"Uh . . ."

"Because if she has any shape at all, it won't do. We need flatter than the salt plains of Utah. We'd use you, but company policy prevents us from employing our own employees. I could fire you, but then I'd have to go through the hassle of finding another assistant, which is twenty minutes I just don't have. Listen up, go down to the Ford Agency in Soho and tell them that we need a girl just like you for our story on bridesmaids with awful figures. Stress the fact that we need a model who looks real, like one of our readers but not as dumpy. And tell them we need a large girl, too. But only a plus-size model with a pretty face. Make sure her face is pretty. We are not in the magazine business to give airtime to ugly women. Go on, what are you waiting for? Shoo. Be back in thirty minutes and don't forget to pick up my lunch. I want tuna on toasted rye bread with one lettuce leaf on the bottom. Make sure they put it on the bottom. I can't eat a sandwich with lettuce on the top. Order it from Mangia. Their number is in your Rolodex. All right, stop staring and go do something. This isn't one of those jobs where you stand around the water cooler talking about must-see television. And don't forget my coffee. I like it black."

My 1,233rd Day

The offices of Fashionista are like the streets of San Francisco, only with microscent zones instead of microclimates. Every editor in every office is always burning some kind of candle -- lilacs, vanilla, cinnamon, multifragranted concoctions called Grandmother's Kitchen -- and if you don't like the smell, all you have to do is walk a few feet to the left and breathe different air.

But things are different today. Someone is burning incense. Its scent is heavy and powerful and floats down the hallway like a thick-soled phantom, seeping under doorways. Even the bathroom's ordinarily antiseptic aroma is undermined.

We aren't prepared to deal with incense. It is the heavy artillery, the big guns, and we have no place to take cover, We are exposed in the center, a shantytown of cubicles, and our only recourse is to breathe the cigarette-infused air outside the revolving door on the ground floor.

"It's frankincense and myrrh." says Christine, popping her head over the cubicle wall.

"What?" I'm trying to write an article about celebrity-owned restaurants, but I can't concentrate. The smell is too distracting.

"The incense. it's frankincense and myrrh," she explains. I'm surprised by her revelation and not quite sure I believe her. This is the twenty-first century, and we have all forgotten what frankincense and myrrh smell like.

"Myrrh has a bitter, pungent taste," says Christine.

"It's not myrrh" I say, my eyes focused on my computer screen. "Myrrh doesn't exist anymore."

Christine leans against the wall and it gives slightly under her weight. "Vig, you can't deny the existence of myrrh."

I look at her. "I can. I deny the existence of myrrh."

"That's ridiculous. The wise men brought it to baby Jesus as a birthday present."

"So?" I say with a shrug before making some comment about dodo birds. My point is only that dodo birds used to exist and now they don't, but somehow I've managed to suggest that dodo birds were another gift of the magi.

Christine's eyes widen as she misunderstands me. "The wise men didn't bring dodo birds to Bethlehem. What a ridiculous thing to imply," she huffs.

"How do you know?" I ask, because the vehemence in her tone is too strong. You should never be that sure about anything. "I mean, how do you know for a fact that they didn't also bring dodo birds?"

"Because it's not in the bible," she says with more insistence than the topic calls for. I'm only teasing. "There's no mention of dodo birds anywhere."

I don't have Christine's religious bent -- in fact, I don't have a religion at all -- and I'm amused by her vehemence. It's not my intention to upset her. The last thing I want is for her to clutch the thin thumbtack wall with clenched fists, but I don't apologize. It's my belief that myrrh no longer exists and even though I don't believe in much, I have the right to these thin convictions. I have no problem accepting the existence of frankincense, with its ugly f and traffic-stopping k, but not myrrh, something so light and airy that it is only a soft breeze on your lips.

"Besides," she says, "I know for a fact that myrrh still exists. We had some in my cooking class."

Christine is trying to get out of Fashionista and the route she has taken is aspiring food critic. She harbors dreams of being a food writer. She wants to be one of those people who is paid to detect the impertinent flavor of cumin in a spring roll. She wants to go to James Beard foundation dinners and sit next to Julia Child. She wants to work at a magazine that has a little more substance than seeping incense.

Fashionista

Fashionista is a magazine about nothing. It's aggressively hip and overwhelmingly current and every glossy page drips with beauty, but the nuggets of wisdom it dispenses are gold for fools. Despite what they say, you can't steal Gwyneth's arched brow or Nicole's flowing tresses. Copyright © 2003 Lynn Messina