What Pretty Girls Are Made Of by Lindsay Jill Roth Page B

canceled, missed, or made a commitment without letting me know.
    Sally’s travel arrangements, whether personal or for business, weren’t a piece of cake, either. Like her long weekend to Florida, happening in three short weeks.
    “Alison, I only sit in business class, and only on an aisle,” Sally said.
    “I’m booking you on JetBlue, which you requested, and they don’t have business class. Would you like me to book you on another airline?”
    “Which airline is the cheapest?”
    “JetBlue,” I told her. A slight pause followed.
    “Then bulkhead and an aisle. And write a letter to JetBlue telling them to consider making planes with a business class section for people like me.”
    Um, seriously? Again? Yes, we went through this rigmarole every time a flight needed to be booked.
    Viral marketing, electronic outreach, and communicating directly to people really felt right to me but only exaggerated the contrast between my new responsibilities and the mundane assistant tasks that remained on my plate. I was juggling two full-time jobs.
    I boldly took some initiative and made the decision (probably inconsequential, but you never know) to have a travel agency book Sally’s next trip.
    “I’m just going to do it,” I told Jill one night after work during a Real Housewives of New York commercial break. “It sounds like the smallest thing, using the travelagency, but it’s not.”
    “Have you used them before?” she asked patiently.
    “We’ve used them before, but not regularly. They charge a fee per ticket booked, but not for hotels. It just seems like a no-brainer. Honestly, with my new schedule, time equals money, and with the time that I would spend on the Internet researching inexpensive air travel and hotels, I could get some of my other work done.”
    “I say go for it. Just take the risk. I support you.”
    I had been waiting for Sally to decide when she wanted to leave for London for QVC UK—the same Quality, Value, and Convenience, just across the pond and with lovelier accents—but Sally was in “no decision” mode as to her upcoming travel preferences (other than only business class and only on an aisle ). I had the travel agent come up with some scheduling options that might sway Sally one way or another. She’d decided that she wasn’t going to take her nine-year-old son, Elliott, with her. I had heard a lot about Elliott—small for his age, very verbally advanced for a boy, allergic to strawberries, phobic toward using public bathrooms—but we’d never met. I was eagerly waiting to form my own opinion. Elliott had been giving Sally trouble about traveling so often, and I knew that she was struggling to balance her business with her parental responsibilities.
    My timing for planning the trip was coincidental, because Giuseppe arrived at the studio in the midst of a heated telephone conversation with his partner, Roberto. I only heard Giuseppe’s end of the discussion but immediately knew what they were talking about—the UK trip.
    “It’s really unbelievable, Roberto, that I still have to argue with her about this. We’ve worked together for eighteen years here, not eighteen months. I said that I would use my miles to upgrade to business class, and she said that I could do whatever I wanted with my miles, as long as they weren’t miles accumulated while working for her.”
    Long pause.
    “Well, of course they’re miles from work travel! I’m like a puddle-jumper—I’m never home. You of all people know that.”
    Another pause.
    “And she’s going to sit in business class, stay in a suite, have me do her makeup and the makeup of all the models, and run to produce the show, and I’ll sit in coach ?”
    A longer pause.
    “You’re right. I get it that it’s her money and she watches what she spends, but I’m fifty years old, have had two hip replacement surgeries, and work my ass off for her. I mean, I love her to death, but this is unacceptable.”
    Short pause.
    “Okay,