The Bag Lady Papers by Alexandra Penney

imperative.
    I’ve always been ambitious. But I’m not competitive. Competitive, to me, means you have to win. For me, at the time, “competitive” was symbolized by the boarding school girls who battled on the hockey field at Smith. Those girls had to win even if it meant whacking someone in the shins with their sticks when they thought the coach wasn’t looking.
    I don’t need to win at someone else’s expense. But I’mgoing to try as hard as I can at whatever I do. There’s room for everyone, even at the top.
    My job at Vogue included shuttling papers back and forth from the Promotion department to the publisher’s office. At the time, the son of the owner of Condé Nast was the publisher of Vogue . In my mind I referred to him as the Boss of Bosses. He wore blue chambray shirts and gray sleeveless Shetland cardigans with brown leather buttons and never had his shoes on. His office was a third the size of Miss G’s and his secretary worked in his office at a desk less than a dozen feet from his.
    He had a great sense of humor and was a rare combination of informal and seemingly unapproachable. But I was never intimidated by him. One day, a book I had recently finished was lying on his desk in the spot where I normally deposited the copy for him.
    â€œI just read that book,” I said to him.
    â€œI did, too,” he responded, after a long pause during which he did not look up from his ubiquitous yellow pads, always full of numbers. Another uncomfortably long stretch of time passed and he added, “What did you think of it?”
    We talked for about thirty seconds at most. The conversation ended: he thought the book was mediocre. I disagreed.
    Over the weekend, while my son was napping, I started thinking about all the things I believed could be done to improve Vogue magazine. Impulsively I typed out—nonstop—a memo to the publisher with four single-spaced pages of ideas for stories for Vogue . The next time I delivered somepapers to him, I said that I’d written him a memo, while clutching it in my hand. Without looking up, he motioned me to put it in the in-box.
    The next day, after I dropped off more copy for him, he asked, “Do you have any more ideas where those came from?”
    â€œYes, many,” I replied, trying to look as unemotional as he always appeared to be. He said nothing and never raised his eyes from the numbers scrawled in black felt-tip pen on his yellow legal pads. I was pretty sure I had overstepped my bounds.
    A week later, I received a summons from Personnel.
    â€œPlease do sit down,” said the personnel director, Mary Campbell. If people were frightened by Miss G, they were absolutely terrified of Miss Campbell. Even the Boss of Bosses was said to be on his guard around her.
    She directed me to a down-filled loveseat upholstered in navy blue velvet. I sank into it and stared down at the chinoiserie rug, as something in me sensed it would be rude to look directly at her. Was I in trouble for writing that memo? Oh god, what had I been thinking? She rose from her desk and sat herself in a comfortable wing chair upholstered in deep blue silk. She looked at me and I looked at the gleaming antique English walnut coffee table upon which all of the Condé Nast magazines had been carefully fanned, Vogue occupying the top position.
    â€œWould you be at all interested in being the beauty editor of Glamour magazine?” she asked. I looked up at her perfect platinum coiffure and straight into her stormy, blue-gray eyes. I didn’t quite comprehend what she was saying.She must have meant to say did I want to be an assistant to the beauty editor. Why was someone with such an important position offering me an assistant’s job at a less prestigious magazine on a lower floor when I was a full-fledged promotion editor at Vogue ? This was my comeuppance for writing that memo.
    â€œDo you have any questions?” she