Fifty Is Not a Four-Letter Word by Linda Kelsey Read Free Book Online

door wide open and in full view of Genevieve, I deliver
     my final insult over my shoulder, demonstrating my incontrovertible superior intelligence and sangfroid. “You, you, you complete
     and total fuckwit . . .” The Furies sigh in unison. Not a memorable exit line after all. I’ve disappointed them. They dissolve
     into the ether.
    Over toward the fire exit, stumbling. Clunk, clunk, clunking down all eight flights of stairs to avoid bumping into anyone.
     I wrench down the metal door handle at ground-floor level and turn sideways to heave the door open. Can’t catch my breath.
     Think I’m hyperventilating. How badly did I blow
that
? Telling the boss he’s a fuckwit and reminding him that he left school with one O level will not have helped my case. Not
     that it matters, I suppose; it’s all over anyway, bar the black bin liner.
    I’m standing in a grim alley around the back of Global’s glitzy offices, among the rubbish bins and broken glass. Cats are
     eyeing me suspiciously. Coatless, jobless, and too numb to feel the cold. But not quite so numb as to forget the effect the
     sleety drizzle will have on my eight a.m. pre-office blow-dry. I race back around to the revolving doors at the front of the
     building and try to compose myself.
    “Hi, Stan,” I say to Stan on reception. “Bit chilly out there, but I needed some fresh air.”
    I head for the lift and press the up button. It grinds its way up from the garage in the basement, where editors and publishers
     and the top-floor boys are allowed to park their cars. The lift shudders slightly as it comes to a halt, and the doors part
     dramatically like the Red Sea. Standing there in an immaculate lemon-cord Paul Smith suit with a pink shirt and a burgundy
     kipper tie with garish ruby lips printed all over it is my nemesis.
    Mark smirks. “Happy New Year, Hope.” Stepping to one side to make way for me is this boy—not yet thirty, prettier than I ever
     was in my heyday, and, loath as I am to admit it, talented, too. “Hope you had a good one. Little birdie told me you’ve just
     been celebrating a rather important birthday.”
    I want to say something clever and cutting and deeply homophobic. I want him to be struck down by AIDS and suffer a long,
     lingering death. I want to ask him what right he thinks he has to snatch away my beloved magazine and set about destroying
     it. I want him to explain how he can possibly believe himself qualified to know what women want. I want him to justify how
     he’s going to be able to live with himself when perhaps fifteen or even twenty of my staff get fired because of him. If this
     had been a month ago, I probably would have wanted to ask him where he gets his tinted moisturizer. Now I’d like to squirt
     a tube of it straight into his aquamarine eyes fringed by those unbearably silky black lashes.
    The lift is almost at the sixth floor, where I’m due to exit.
Exquisite Interiors
is on the seventh. In a few seconds I will escape, and Mark will continue his journey, unable to help admiring me for reining
     in all emotion. For a split second I am Katherine of Aragon, proud and indomitable at the court of Henry VIII, even after
     being dumped in favor of Anne Boleyn. So how come tears are suddenly gushing out of me like a geyser? How come my sobs are
     reverberating off the walls? Mark is no longer smirking. As the doors open, I shove my fist into my mouth to stifle the sound
     of my weeping. I head for the sanctuary of the toilets, lock myself into a cubicle, sit on the closed seat, and bury my face
     in my hands.
    • • •
    Time passes. I’m still sitting in the cubicle. Twentysomethings come and go, exchanging stories of all-night benders, one-night
     stands, and the hell of going home for Christmas. Animated talk of New Year’s diets and sales bargains in the stores. Little
     cries of “God, I’m humongous” and “I’m so fat I’m disgusting.” One girl is engaged, her temporary squirty