Free Fairy Tale Interrupted by Rosemarie Terenzio Page B

answering service. We just dispatch calls and take messages. So if you want to leave a message, I can take it down and get it to the right person.”

    “No, that’s okay. Thanks,” the woman said, and then hung up.

    “Wow, you’re good,” Carolyn said.

    John, having returned to the reception area, found us laughing.

    “What are you two cackling about?” he asked.

    We looked up at him like two kids caught in the act.

    “Nothing,” Carolyn said.

    John and I didn’t talk about his personal life when I first began working for him. He was a typical guy with no desire to hash out with me the intimate details or thoughts about his dates. However, I knew Carolyn was becoming an important part of his life because whenever she phoned the office, he always took the call. The only other person he did that with was his sister.

    From the beginning of their relationship, it was obvious they were at ease around each other, the way friends are. Once we moved to Hachette in February 1995, Carolyn would come into the office and sit at John’s desk, making phone calls asif it were her own. Or she would go directly to see Matt Berman, whom she loved, and hang out with him for a while before she even said hello to John. She didn’t feel the need to run in to her boyfriend and announce herself. Carolyn wasn’t John’s shadow; she was his equal. He would ask her, a fashion insider who worked for Calvin Klein, about cover choices or get her advice on approaching designers and advertisers.

    From my point of view, John was happier when Carolyn was around. And Carolyn, like any smart woman, had a way of making John pay attention to things he didn’t necessarily want to even think about. She got him to differentiate between the people taking advantage of his generosity and those who needed a little extra attention from him. With those two circumstances alone, Carolyn made my life much easier.

CHAPTER
4

    Carolyn always made me feel attractive and smart. And according to her, there was no better self-esteem booster than great fashion. “Nothing feels better than new clothes,” she’d say. “That and vodka are your new best friends.”

    Carolyn had the best taste, so when she suggested a shopping trip—with her acting as my personal stylist—I was beyond excited. But I was also a little nervous. I pictured huge price tags and tiny sizes: way out of my league.

    So when John said he needed me in the office around noon on the Saturday of our shopping expedition, I was relieved. But when I called Carolyn to relay the news, I couldn’t talk her out of our plan.

    “No problem,” she said. “The stores open at ten o’clock. We have plenty of time. Just meet me,” she said. “We’ll shop for an hour, max. We need to get you a few good jackets and skirts.”

    When we arrived at Barneys, I was immediately overwhelmed by all the beautiful things. Carolyn knew exactly where to find outfits that worked for me, and she knew precisely what to pick out.

    “Try this on, Rosie,” she said, grinning, as she held up an eight-hundred-dollar Ann Demeulemeester leather skirt.

    She had found the perfect piece for me—the gorgeous, very expensive version of me. I immediately launched into the kind of fantasies that amazing clothes induce: I could wear it with combat boots for a romantic date or with a blazer to a high-powered work meeting. But instead of grabbing the skirt out of her hands, I said, “I don’t want to try it on.”

    Even though I was a size four from all the cigarettes I’d smoked and all the lunches I’d skipped, I was convinced there was no way I could wiggle into that slim leather skirt, and I didn’t want to put myself through the embarrassment of having to try a bigger size. It wasn’t just my size that bothered me; it was everything about my looks.

    For as long as I could remember, I felt ugly. When I was a child, my aunt Rita (who wasn’t actually my mom’s sister but, rather, her best friend from