The Knockoff Read online

  Everyone in the room pecked away at the small screens of iPhones and tablets. Imogen felt strangely naked and lacking without her own device, which she had left idle at her desk. She had never once brought a phone into a meeting. It was rude.

  The tip-tapping slowed but did not come to a complete stop when Eve clapped her hands together.

  “Let’s do this! As all of you can see we have a new addition to the meeting today.” Eve smiled over at her. “Some of you know Imogen Tate, our editor in chief, but many of you don’t. She has been out on sick leave for the last six months.” Imogen winced at those words. “Sick leave.” That wasn’t what she wanted to call it. She’d been on sabbatical, or hiatus. “Now she is back just in time for the launch of Glossy’s amazing new website and app. Let’s all make sure to give her a warm Glossy.com welcome this week!” Before Imogen could even rise out of her seat to make her speech to the staff, the meeting moved forward at a rapid clip. This was a completely new Eve from the one who had sat outside her office and answered phones. This one fired on all cylinders. She appeared more clever, brighter and funnier than Imogen remembered.

  A woman Imogen recognized as a booking assistant gave a brief rundown of a photo shoot scheduled for later in the week. Eve went through a complicated series of statistics: unique page views, organic traffic, referral traffic, cross-channel insight. Imogen wasn’t quite sure what to make of any of it. She wrote the numbers down on the first blank page of her Smythson notebook along with the few words she was able to decipher, keeping a smile on her face throughout the entire ordeal. She was Imogen Tate. She was still the editor in chief. She had been one of the first fashion magazine editors to lobby for her magazine to have its own website, but she had never actually worked on it. Who was going to teach her how all this worked?

  The moment Eve finished talking about something called the conversion rate, she let loose another clap and yelled with intense urgency:

  “Go, go, go!”

  Everyone pushed clear of the table in tandem and, in silence, darted back to their desks balancing their MacBook Airs on one hand like waitresses carrying trays. Imogen walked over to Eve, but too late realized that Eve was already speaking into earbuds plugged into her phone. Eve pointed at her wrist, which had no watch, and mouthed the words “just a minute” to Imogen.

  She would just nip into the loo for a second to get her bearings. Sitting in the stall, Imogen rubbed her temples. What the hell was going on? This was an entirely new office from the one she’d left behind. Eve didn’t seem to know her place in the pecking order of this magazine anymore. Where was the respect? Imogen’s staff was nowhere to be found.

  From twenty feet away Imogen could see a crowd in her office. Now, that was a nice touch. A small welcome back party, perhaps?

  Drawing closer, she could see the new girls perched on every available surface in the room while Eve furiously drew a grid in purple marker on a whiteboard behind Imogen’s desk.

  She cleared her throat loudly, but it did nothing to slow the momentum of the meeting.

  “Eve!” Imogen said, even louder than she had expected.

  “Imogen, hey. Join us. We are just jamming on some new ideas in here.”

  Jamming on ideas? “Do you usually jam here in my office?”

  Eve nodded earnestly. “We do. The engineers were up all night. They’re napping in the conference room.” She shrugged her broad shoulders. “You weren’t here so we’ve been using the space.”

  Who just waltzes into someone’s office and begins doodling on a wall?

  “How about we jam later, ladies? Let me get up to speed a little?”

  The young women in the room swiveled their heads between Imogen and Eve, unsure who had the authority in this situation. Eve raised an eyebrow, perhaps considering putting up a fight before thinking better of it.

  “Sure thing.” She snapped her fingers three times into the air. “Let’s huddle by my desk.” She looked over her shoulder as the staff fell in a line behind her. “Come over if you want, Imogen.”

  “Eve,” Imogen called out. “Please take this with you.” She hoisted the pink monstrosity of a beanbag chair out of the corner and into Eve’s arms. It was heavier than it looked. “It doesn’t belong in here, darling,” Imogen said firmly.

  When Imogen made it into to her seat she saw her lonely iPhone was still perched at the top of her handbag. It squawked at her as if it knew that all of the other devices had been invited to the meeting. Sitting on the keyboard was a black bracelet like Ashley’s: “Good, Great, Gorgeous, GLOSSY.com!” Assuming it was some freebie from the marketing department, Imogen tossed it in the bin. Her computer screen was a mess of blinking notifications. She right-clicked her mouse and let out a small gasp. The monitor lit up like an arcade game, icons on the bottom bounced excitedly up and down and notification messages dotted the upper left side of the display, one after another. Her email in-box was at capacity. Imogen felt a distinct loss of control. Her eyes didn’t know where to look first. How could she reach Ashley, her new assistant? She needed someone to clear her in-box. There was no longer an assistant’s desk outside her office, and the exuberant girl was nowhere to be found.

  Quickly scrolling through the most recent ten messages, Imogen realized that everyone had worked through that morning meeting. During a time when she thought she was supposed to detach from her electronics, brainstorm with her colleagues and plan their day, everyone else had been sending “Reply All” emails.

  It felt as if Imogen had been in one meeting and the rest of the staff had been in another. An entire subtext was missing from her experience of the conversation in the conference room.

  The photo shoot they discussed was already scheduled. A photographer, not the one she recommended, had been booked. Hair and makeup were still outstanding.

  Wait.

  No.

  She scrolled up.

  Hair and makeup had been booked. The cost for catering was too high.

  This was déjà vu in reverse.

  She picked up the phone sitting on the desk and dialed Eve’s extension. It went to the voice mail of a man with a gruff Long Island accent. Of course Eve didn’t have the same extension she had when she worked for Imogen. Did Eve even have a phone on her desk? Where was Eve’s desk?

  Imogen depressed the receiver with her index finger, hit zero for reception and was immediately diverted to an automated system requiring her to enter the first four letters of a person’s first or last name. She typed in three-eight-three.

  “To reach Eve Morton, please press three or dial six-nine-six.”

  No answer. Imogen hung up and tried again.

  When she finally picked up, Eve’s voice on the other end of the line was cautious, surprised and laden with a hint of suspicion.

  “Hello?”

  “Eve. It’s Imogen. I wanted to ask you a few questions.”

  “Why are you calling me?”

  Was the girl daft? She repeated herself, slower and slightly louder this time. “I wanted to ask you a few questions.”

  “I can heeeeeeaaaar you. Why didn’t you just email me?”

  “It’s faster just to pick up the phone.”

  “No one talks on the phone. Email me. Text me. I am in the middle of, like, fifty things. Please don’t call.” The line went dead. No one talks on the phone? Eve behaved as though Imogen had just done something truly anachronistic, like send her a smoke signal or a fax.

  A blinking red dot on the upper quadrant of the monitor distracted her. She clicked. It was a notification that she had one of the company’s internal instant messages.

  Oh good. Her assistant, Ashley, had sent a message to check in.

  “You’re so cutez! ROFL!” That wasn’t exactly an offer of assistance. The message was followed by a short link to a site called Bitly. Bitly, Imogen reasoned by virtue of the adorable suffix, must be some kind of new kissing cousin to Etsy, the handmade crafts site that
the other moms in her school salivated over on their iPhones during drop-off, comparing notes on the latest macramé plant hanger they had shipped from an artisan in Santa Fe who was more than one-half Cherokee.

  Bitly was perhaps something similar, but for smaller wares—miniature macramé plant hangers?

  But the link didn’t take her to a site called Bitly. She was redirected to something called Keek.com. Imogen looked left and then right. Keek.com sounded vaguely like the pelvic floor exercises Imogen had learned in her prenatal classes. What exactly had Ashley sent her?

  Underneath the neon-green Keek logo was a video. Imogen made sure to turn the volume down on the computer before hitting play.

  She gasped again and held her breath.

  The video was of her.

  Oh no. There she was, yawning in the meeting. Yawning not once, but twice in quick succession. On the screen her eyes closed for a brief instant.

  Ashley had taken a video of her without her knowledge. In a meeting. And then posted it on the Internet. What a grand invasion of her privacy! Who just films someone without asking? Who just films someone when they are doing nothing at all but sitting in a meeting? She looked tired. Her sharp black crepe dress from The Row looked dull and old against the bright yellow hoodie of the woman sitting next to her. Ashley’s camera must have millions of megapixels. Imogen could see each and every last wrinkle fanning around her eyes as she opened her mouth wide. She couldn’t even remember yawning once, much less twice. There was a caption on the video: THE RETURN OF IMOGEN TATE to @Glossy. #Hurrah #Love #Bosslady #Shesback.

  She looked at the right-hand column on the Keek site. There were other videos. Imogen clicked the one at the top. It was Perry from the Marketing Department, the one wearing the short skirt, blazer and odd T-shirt with a cat on it, in the same meeting mere minutes later, looking right at Ashley and sticking out her tongue.

  The one below that was Adam in Accounting as he ran through potential costs for the shoot. He expertly rattled off the expenditures, but in between equipment and tailoring he ever so slightly glanced directly into the camera, winked and delivered an ironic thumbs-up.

  Everyone else in the meeting was very aware Ashley was documenting them and that after she took the video she would be sharing bits and pieces of their meeting. That meant Imogen’s yawns had certainly been shared with the entire office.

  Confirmation that all Imogen’s co-workers had seen the video arrived no less than thirty seconds later.

  Incoming message from Eve: “Are you sleepy? Let me know if you think you need to head home. We can regroup over a Google Hangout later if you want.” Imogen hit delete and looked up to see Ashley standing outside her office, a bundle of nervous energy, rocking back and forth between her toes and heels.

  “Do you like the keek?”

  Imogen vacillated between wanting to give the girl a stern warning about playing around during meetings and wanting to seem like she was a part of it. She opted for the latter.

  “I just wish I had been ready for my close-up. Let me know next time you are putting me on film.” Relief flooded over the girl.

  “Of course. One hundred percent. I’ll let you know next time.”

  “Ashley, where is Eve’s office?”

  “Eve doesn’t have an office. She doesn’t believe in ’em. You know how at Facebook no one has an office, like, not even Sheryl Sandberg?” Imogen had not been aware of that fact. “Everyone sits at desks on the floor. Everyone is the same.” Ashley looked around and lowered her voice. “Eve wants to turn your office into a nap room.”

  “A what?”

  “A nap room.”

  Imogen shook her head. What the hell was a nap room? “That’s not happening.”

  —

  Imogen was exhausted, but giving Eve the satisfaction of leaving early would be the equivalent of JFK showing his belly to Castro. Instead, she worked through the day, clearing her in-box, taking control of the photo shoot and ensuring they hired the right photographer, one who would make absolutely all the difference.

  Eve didn’t have an office, but she did have an area all her own carved out of a corner surrounded by windows. She worked standing up at a desk raised to chest height.

  At the end of the workday, Imogen compelled herself to visit Eve’s work area. “Do you want a stand-up desk, Imogen? I can ask Carter to order you one. Everyone at Google has them. Human beings are 79 percent more effective standing than when sitting. We make decisions faster, we keep meetings shorter. I love it. I feel like I’m burning calories all day long,” Eve said.

  “That’s okay, Eve. I feel like I am on my feet all the time when I am home with the kids.” What kind of badge of honor did one gain by standing all day long?

  Eve rolled her eyes, something she wouldn’t have dared to do years earlier. “I forgot about your kids.” She’s kidding, right? There is no way Eve could have forgotten my children.

  Imogen tried to remember back to her twenties, when having a child seemed like a handicap. Now Johnny was four, no longer a baby. At ten, Annabel did almost everything on her own, which made Imogen want to do more things for her, like braid her hair, help with a zipper she couldn’t reach, explain complicated math problems involving fractions.

  It pained her to think about the day Annabel would walk out the door without needing her at all every morning.

  Imogen forced herself to keep it light. “The kids are actually doing great. You wouldn’t believe how tall Johnny is getting. He is positively delicious right now.”

  Eve mustered a small smile. “I’m sure…. Sooo, what’s up?”

  “I just wanted to check in about the editors. Are they on a new rotating schedule? I didn’t see a lot of them in today. And there were so many faces I didn’t recognize. I want to meet some of the new girls.”

  Without even looking up from her screen, Eve explained to Imogen that staff head count had doubled while she was on medical leave. She didn’t have to add that the median age had also dropped by twelve years. Imogen could see that for herself.

  “We got rid of soooo much excess baggage,” Eve went on. It took a minute for Imogen to realize that Eve was referring to human beings, human beings she had hired, as wasteful luggage.

  “There were so many redundant staffers who had been on board since the seventies doing God knows what,” Eve said.

  With the salaries of the old staff now at her disposal, Eve had hired thirty content producers who could craft “traffic-driving” articles for the website (and soon-to-launch new app!) all day, all night and through the weekend, ratcheting up their numbers to get them the big digital advertising dollars and consumers who would click on the products.

  “Make sense?” she said in a clipped tone. She didn’t let Imogen answer. “It will. Let it marinate for a few days. You’ll get it.”

  Was that condescension in her voice? Who was Eve Morton to be patronizing to her?

  “I’ve been doing this a long time, Eve. It’s not rocket science.”

  —

  As with any transition of power, Imogen saw that allegiances had shifted to Eve the way ants swarmed a fallen piece of doughnut on the sidewalk.

  Managing editor Jenny Packer, a half-Japanese, half-Jewish beauty with a thick Texas accent who had ruled the roost long before Imogen was hired, had been annexed to what looked like a supply closet in a far-off windowless corner behind the kitchen. She hadn’t attended the morning meeting.

  Imogen stumbled upon Jenny by accident while looking for a new set of pads and pencils, which she was beginning to suspect she would never find in this new office of tablets, phablets and other smart devices. Her beloved colleague’s hair was disheveled and circles like two overinflated tires burrowed beneath her eyes. Imogen immediately hugged her in relief, noting that she could feel Jenny’s ribs beneath her silk Tucker button-down.

  “Welcome to my new digs.” Jenny spread out her arms, nearly touching each of the opposite wa
lls in the tiny space. Her old office had been just a couple of doors down from Imogen’s, not quite as large, but still spacious and with a view of downtown. They engaged in the requisite small talk. How was Imogen feeling? What was Jenny’s husband, Steve, the architect responsible for making Williamsburg in Brooklyn hip and expensive, working on now? Was Alex buried in the McAlwyn case? The answer to that question was indisputably yes. Imogen thought she would have heard something by now from her husband on her first day back at work, but Alex Marretti, assistant U.S. attorney, had been in his own office since six a.m. working on what was quickly becoming one of the more high-profile Ponzi scheme crackdowns in the past twenty years. Marty “Meatball” McAlwyn, the defendant, had been a stockbroker to the stars until the United States Attorney’s Office finally got a whistle-blower to reveal that his entire investment portfolio was a fraud. According to the indictment against McAlwyn, he created false trading reports, backdated trades, manipulated account statements and ultimately used other people’s money to pay out false returns. If Alex won the case it would mean big things for his career.

  Imogen looked around. Her hips had no choice but to brush against Jenny’s as they stood chatting in the small space. “Why are you all the way back here? Did she turn your office into a nap room too?”

  “Yup.” Jenny nodded as Imogen’s smile faded. She had been joking. “She has them working around the clock, but the girls need to sleep. I think they should sleep in beds at home! But, since she never lets them leave, they need somewhere to get some rest. It’s fine really.” There was a distinct resignation in her voice. “I don’t plan on sticking around much longer.” The “she” was very clearly Eve.