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.Nico knew that behind her back, he called her the Nico-tano Bomb, and she’d thought about firing him several times.She had done that in the past—fired employees who’d bad-mouthed her excessively—her thinking being that if it got back to her, it had to be extreme, and if they had that much of a problem with her, they would undoubtedly be happier someplace else.She picked up one of the stories and began reading, but put it down again after a few seconds.She couldn’t quite concentrate.She got up and went to the window, looking out over the view, which contained a sliver of Central Park.Mike’s office, which was two floors up and in the front of the building, had a full view of Central Park, and so, for that matter, did Wendy’s.Editors in chief weren’t quite as high up on the totem pole as presidents of entire divisions, and the fact that Victor Matrick was even considering her for Mike’s job was unusual.Normally, editors in chief could go no higher—once you became an editor in chief, you could only move laterally, becoming the editor in chief of another magazine.But she didn’t care about precedent.If someone said something couldn’t be done, it seemed like something worth trying.And she was clever, she thought.Why allow herself to rot in a dead-end job?Listen to her! she thought, smiling.Dead-end job.Ridiculous.She already had a job people would kill for.Women were always telling each other to be happy with what they had, that it was the small things that mattered most.And she was happy and appreciative, but that didn’t mean that the big things weren’t important either.It didn’t mean that the big things in the outside world weren’t worth going after.Excitement, drive, success—these were the things that fueled a woman too.They gave her gravitas—weight in the world.How could a woman really be content unless she knew that she’d lived up to her true potential, or at least given it her best shot?She turned and looked back at the clock on her desk.Thirty minutes now until her meeting with Victor.She walked to her door and poked her head out.“I’m going to be unavailable for the next few minutes,” she said to her assistants.“Do you mind holding my calls?”“Sure,” they said.They were nice girls, agreeable and hardworking.Nico made it a point to take them out to lunch once a month.When she moved up, they would move up too.She would take them with her.And now she did shut her door.She needed to think.She sat down in an armchair covered with a lambskin throw—Victory’s idea, she remembered.Victory had helped her with her office years ago, and she’d even found a place that had made the furniture, the desk and two armchairs.And now she had to thank Victory again, for she’d gotten the information needed for the coup from Glynnis Rourke.But that was how it worked.She’d helped Victory years ago with her career, by lending her money for her business.And now Victory had helped her, by setting up those secret meetings with Glynnis, which had taken place at Victory’s showroom.But was it right? she wondered.There was something about what she was about to do that was so juvenile and petty.But maybe that was just her own conscience.Recently, the papers had been filled with a story about a politician who was not going to be getting a government position because of what people at first thought were “nanny problems,” but later turned out to be an affair with a high-level attorney at a law firm.Why this woman—Marianna was her name—had had an affair with Sam, the politician, was beyond Nico.Sam was old, bald, and pickled.But Marianna, who was in her mid-fifties, was the old model of the “powerful” woman—the woman who became successful because she loved being the only woman in a room filled with powerful men.She was the woman who didn’t trust, or like, other women; who still believed that the only way a woman could become successful was by being a bitch.But women like Wendy and Victory and herself, Nico thought, were a new model of powerful women.They weren’t bitches, and they weren’t enamored with that old-fashioned idea that being with powerful men made you more important.The new power babe wanted to be around other powerful women.They wanted women to be ruling the world, not men.Nico absentmindedly rubbed a little piece of the lamb’s fur between her thumb and forefinger.Success in life could be boiled down to two things: having the courage to hold passionate beliefs, and being able to make commitments.Her passionate belief was that women ought to succeed to the very top, and she’d made a commitment to do it.But the tricky part was how you went about it.And being a courageous person, she had to ask herself, one more time, if she was going about this in the right way.The strategy was simple, and Victory had dropped the plan in her lap that afternoon when Seymour was winning Best in Breed at the Westminster Dog Show.As Seymour was trotting around the ring in his dark blue velvet jacket with Tunie prancing by his side, Nico had received a text message from Victory: “Important info re: work.Top secret.Contact immediately.” After Seymour had collected his ribbon and she’d congratulated him, she’d slipped off to the bathroom to call Victory.The short version was that Glynnis Rourke, who had signed on to do a magazine with Mike Harness in conjunction with her talk show, was planning to sue Mike Harness and Splatch-Verner for breach of contract.Nico knew something about the project, but the first issue of the magazine kept getting delayed, and Mike had been secretive about it.“He’s a sexist asshole,” Glynnis had exclaimed, during her and Nico’s first meeting.“You can’t talk to him straight.I told him his ideas were bullshit, and he got all huffy and walked out of the room.I’m sorry, but am I wrong about this? We’re doing business.It’s my name on the magazine, not his.Why should I have to coddle the guy’s ego? I mean, hello? Isn’t he a grown-up?”“Not really,” Nico had murmured.The upshot was that, while contractually obligated to consult Glynnis on all decisions regarding content in the magazine, Mike had not.He wouldn’t take her phone calls and refused to meet with her in person, hiding behind e-mails.Glynnis had asked him repeatedly to scrap the project, but he’d refused, contending that they “owned” her name, and could do whatever they wanted with it.This had gone on for two months, and she was now going to sue for $50 million—“I’ll never get that, but you need a big number to scare these idiots,” she explained—and was planning on filing the legal papers any day now.Corporations like Splatch-Verner had lawsuits all the time, but Nico knew that this situation was different: Glynnis was a public figure, and highly vocal.It would be all over the papers.And Victor Matrick wouldn’t like it.She stood up, crossing to the window again, and drumming her fingers on the radiator.Victor was of a different generation.He would consider it unseemly for his top executive to be engaged in a public brawl with a celebrity
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