Free The Knockoff by Lucy Sykes, Jo Piazza Page A

Imogen replied, refusing to let a twentysomething antagonize her as she lost herself in a spread of “Hollywood Plastic Surgery Secrets.” She paused for a moment. Now could be a good time to try to reconnect with Eve. What sense did it make to start off on a bad foot? She folded her magazine onto her lap and placed a hand on Eve’s elbow.
    Eve pulled out one of her earbuds with great irritation and let it dangle like a loose thread down her neck.
    “What’s up?” she asked.
    “So, tell me all about business school?” Eve was startled, but once she got going she was more than pleased to talk about what a transformative experience Harvard had been for her.
    “If I had stayed at
Glossy
I would be just another lowly associate editor right now,” she said seriously. “Now look what I’m doing. I’m literally transforming this company. I mean, B-school was the best decision of my life.”
    With that Eve turned her attention back to her computer, effectively ending the conversation.
    Imogen gazed longingly toward business class. If she’d had more notice she would happily have used her own miles to be in those plush seats where they served actual food that didn’t come in rectangular boxes wrapped in plastic.
    “Business class is a little ridiculous for a flight this short, don’t you think?” Eve snorted with derision as she noticed Imogen’s gaze. “I mean, you sit at your desk working for five hours a day. Why can’t you be content sitting in this seat? I did the San Fran route back and forth ten times last year.”
    Imogen turned back to her magazine.
    Just after they landed, a little past nine, Eve revealed they would be sharing a room at a Days Inn near the convention center.
    “It’s like a slumber party,” Eve said matter-of-factly in the taxi.
    “How many beds are in the room, Eve?”
    “One king. We’re kind of like a start-up now, Imogen. We need to be on a start-up budget.”
    “And there is some kind of pullout sofa in the room?” Imogen breathed the words out with false hope.
    Eve stopped paying attention to her, focused as she was on taking yet another picture of herself, a copycat of the photographer Ben Watts’s famous “Shhhh” pose that all the models were doing. She sucked in her cheekbones and made the international sign for “be quiet” with the edge of her forefinger pressed to her painted lips. The intensity of Eve’s gaze was as though Ben Watts actually was on the other side of the smartphone camera lens. Imogen had to admit it was working for her.
    “Eve?”
    “You know the perfect selfie is all about the eyes, Imogen. People think it’s about the smile, but it isn’t. It’s about getting the eyes just right,” Eve said, completely ignoring Imogen’s question.
    “The bed?” Imogen repeated.
    “No. I don’t think there is another. No pullout.”
    Before Imogen could ask anything else their taxi pulled in front of the run-down little motel, a scruffy stray cat scowling into its headlights. Eve hopped out and sashayed into the building and over to the front desk, leaving Imogen to pay the cabbie. The manners of this girl! It was like she was brought up in a barn.
    She breathed deep into her belly. The night air was crisp here, refreshing and chillier than back home.
    Once inside, she tried to talk to Eve again.
    “So we will be sharing the bed?” Imogen asked.
    “Of course. Like sisters!” Eve squeezed Imogen’s upper arm too hard as she stood at the hotel check-in desk smiling her Cheshire grin at the spotty-faced overnight clerk who just wanted to get back to watching his episode of
Storage Wars
.
    Grown-ups who were not engaging in or planning to engage in sexual activity with each other did not share a mattress. Imogen hadn’t shared a bed with anyone except for her husband and her children in more than a decade.
    “We’re not sharing a bed.”
    Imogen had no say in the matter. To her amazement the hotel was fully booked, as were most of the nicer