Meg laughed, a short little maybe rueful laugh. “We’re quite the team.” She swirled her wine in the stemmed goblet. “Two thirtysomething women who—that’s right, isn’t it? You’re thirtysomething? If I’m not being pushy?”
Ellie nodded. “Thirty-one coming up in April.”
“Me too! Around that, at least. April. So funny.” Meg toasted her. “Here’s to us, the boring sisters.”
Ellie laughed along with her, then Meg looked at the screen of her phone.
“Jimmy. Finally.” Meg chugged the last of her wine. “Thanks, Ellie. You’re very kind. Don’t have to see me out, I’ll be fine. And glad to be in the neighborhood. Thanks for the welcome. My turn next time, okay? I owe you.”
CHAPTER 3
NORA
Nora burrowed into her pillows, punching the white-satin-cased feathers into place and trying to settle her mind. After they’d finished their crème brûlées, she’d dispatched the boozy Douglas with a chaste hug and a silky promise. Thank goodness for the existence of a Mrs. Hawkins, the doctor’s wife. The hovering specter of humiliation was always valuable, and she’d used the what-if-she-finds-out weapon with the skill of a practiced surgeon. Would they meet again? Oh, yeah. Nora had made sure of that. Of course, there were limits to how far Nora would go, but the good doctor didn’t need to know that.
She’d lull herself to sleep, as she did when she was revved up like this, by replaying her roles in college theater productions.
Her mother had explained how acting was the best con of all—people paid you to be someone else, and the more you hid your true self, the more successful you’d be. “Lord Olivier always said he had forgotten who he really was, honey,” her mother had instructed her only daughter. “And after all those acting years, he was simply a vessel. He’d wait for a role and whoever that was became his true self. For as long as he needed to be. That’s why he was so good at it, dear. Remember that.”
Her mother had performed in the theater too, in college, before she got married and played the lifetime role of mother—played being the operative word.
Nora’s pillow would not cooperate, and though all the wine and complications of the evening should have made her brain grateful to turn off the day, it continued to churn, looping as if on instant replay.
Her first day at Pharminex, three weeks ago. She’d shown up, as requested, on the ninth floor of the mirror-walled building in Boston’s financial district. Two weeks before, she’d passed the first hurdle there, a gut-churning interview that was more frightening in reality than in her imagination. She’d still aced that screening, knew she’d impressed them. Nevertheless, life being one big audition, it was a relief when they’d called her back.
“Nora Quinn? I’m Maren.” The haughty chignoned receptionist, hair belligerently silver and a smile like ice, had clipped out her name, then made Nora trot behind her long strides down a carpeted hallway. Photos on the walls showed shiny porcelain laboratories with white-coated scientists hunched over microscopes and watching incomprehensible digital readouts. One extreme close-up showed a purple and pink capsule so detailed Nora could see thousands of tiny multicolored spheres of medication within.
Maren stopped at an unmarked door, knocked, waited a beat, then opened it. Nora saw a fiftysomething woman standing in front of a sleek glass desk. Delicate half-open lavender roses, arranged in a crystal vase placed on a white lacquer console behind her, looked real. So did the Bearden watercolor centered on an earth-toned grass-cloth wall. So did a discreetly silver fur coat—lynx? chinchilla?—tossed casually across the back of a wing chair in the corner.
“Ms. Fiddler?” Maren spoke it as a question, though there was no one else in the room. “This is Nora Quinn, your nine thirty.”
Dettalinda Fiddler, because of course Nora had researched her, was the powerful head of human resources for Pharminex, had been climbing the ladder for ten years. In the early 2000s, and continuing its storied history of market-crushing success, the company had claimed a major market share in women’s antianxiety meds. Now a new drug was their star player. Pharminex loves women, a gushing online article in Pharma News had assured its readers. And Dettalinda Fiddler, who’d come to big pharma by way of humble beginnings in St. Maarten, was the poster woman for the company’s outreach and opportunity. Or so Nora had read.
“Please call me Detta,” the woman said, holding out a welcoming hand. “Maren, could you stash that coat? Haven’t had time to…” She looked at Nora, assessing. “Faux,” she explained, as the receptionist whisked it away.
It wasn’t. “Of course,” Nora agreed. She’d remembered to sit up straight, behave like she was supposed to behave. Become a job applicant. For that morning, at least, that’s what she truly was.
Detta swiveled into the chair behind her desk, crossed black-stockinged legs and jiggled a conservative black patent pump. Flipped through a manila folder, which Nora assumed held her carefully written application. “Your first pharma sales job, I see.”
Nora had been ready for that, prepared herself with a whole patter about sales experience and retail experience and the similarities of persuasion, but Detta had raised a hand.
“You’re gorgeous, let’s get that out of the way. And I’m told your pre-interview ticked all the other boxes. I’m sure your references and identification will continue to check out…” She’d looked up at Nora under long dark lashes, and Nora’s heart had lurched with anxiety at that hard-fought hurdle, just a beat, until Detta went back to the file. “You understand you’ll be on your own most of the time, correct? Work from your home or the car we can loan you if need be, set your appointments, check in via our sales-reporting system. You’ll have to know your stuff, Ms. Quinn. One training week, and if you last through the P-X tryouts, you’re in.”
That was fast, Nora thought. But she wasn’t about to question success. Or fret about auditions. P-X, Nora knew, was what insiders called Pharminex.
“Great. Thank you so much.” Nora had been so keyed up, so ready to joust and persuade and sell herself, that she’d almost not gotten the words out. This wasn’t a done deal. Just another audition. Nora was used to those.
“This is life and death, Ms. Quinn.” Detta stood with the air of a commander delivering a go-to-battle speech. “I’m not talking about for you, although your job is on the line every day. We’re here to provide groundbreaking alternatives to people’s lives; it’s no less than that,” she said. “You are the conduit between this company and the medical profession, to convince them, inform them, reassure them, that what we’re producing can change their patients’ medical futures. Am I clear? Do you care enough to do this?”
Nora almost laughed out loud as she punched her pillow yet another way. There was one streetlight outside her apartment window, persistent and annoying, that apparently was trying to keep her awake no matter how she adjusted the thin-louvered blinds. Nora flipped over, kept her eyes closed, trying to see herself as Detta Fiddler had seen her. Young enough, smart enough, attractive enough. Eager, clueless, malleable. Four out of six correct was a pretty good score.