Ms. Scrooge Read online

  Ms. Scrooge

  a novel by

  Annabelle Costa

  Ms. Scrooge

  © 2019 by Annabelle Costa. All rights reserved.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever without express written permission from the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, incidents and places are the products of the authors’ imagination, and are not to be construed as real. None of the characters in the book is based on an actual person. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and unintentional.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  I’m so nervous, I could throw up.

  This is the first big meeting I’ve attended since I was hired by Janetta Advertising last year. It’s a brainstorming meeting to come up with ideas to pitch to Casey Cosmetics. They’re coming out with a new line of holiday-themed lipsticks, with colors including Mistletoe Berry and Rudolph’s Nose. Our job is to come up with a brilliant marketing campaign that will sell oodles of lipstick.

  My job at the meeting is to make sure everyone has enough coffee. This is an important job, because how can anyone really get any work done without coffee? Just try it—you’ll find it to be impossible. In that sense, it might be the most important job of all—or at least that’s what I keep telling myself. Anyway, that’s why I trekked all the way across town to that new coffee brewery and got the gourmet stuff. I feel like I really nailed coffee today.

  My other job today is to sit at this conference table with all the important people at our company and keep my hands folded and my mouth shut. I’m nailing that one too.

  “Here’s an idea I came up with,” says Richard Hall. “So tell me: why do women wear lipstick in the first place?”

  All eyes in the room swivel in his direction. Richard Hall is the newest rising star at Janetta. He personifies tall, dark, and handsome—all the women in the office are basically slobbering over him. I hate to admit it, but even I have done my fair share of slobbering. When he talks, everybody in the room listens. It’s amazing the way he commands the room, even though he hasn’t been here that many years longer than I have. Nobody would ever tell Richard to go get coffee for them.

  “To attract men?” suggests Doug Feinstein. He’s one of the vice presidents at the company, who has taken on Richard as his protégé. Everyone says he’s grooming Richard to have his job when he someday becomes CEO. The line of succession has already been determined.

  “Exactly!” Richard says. “Women wear lipstick to attract men.”

  I know my job at this meeting isn’t to roll my eyes, but I am incredibly tempted right now. As one of the only two women at the conference table, and therefore one of the only two people with any experience wearing or purchasing lipstick, I take offense at the assumption that the only reason I wear lipstick is to attract men.

  Here’s the thing: I love lipstick. You can’t have too much money and you can’t have too much lipstick. I don’t have much money, but I’ve got plenty of lipstick. I would be hard-pressed to give an estimate of how many tubes I own. Right now, I’ve got less than a hundred bucks in my bank account on top of crushing loans from college and business school. Every time I use my credit card, I’m scared they’ll confiscate it and cut it into little pieces. I commute an hour and a half every morning from Staten Island because I can’t afford anything closer to the office. The gray suit I’m wearing was purchased at a consignment sale, because sometimes you can get a name brand outfit at those places that doesn’t look as cheap as it actually is.

  But even though I’m dirt poor and I don’t have the Ivy League education of Richard and probably everyone else in the room, when I put on a layer of lipstick, I feel more confident—if that makes any sense. It’s like an immediate mood booster. It’s like a superpower. I don’t even think about the opposite sex when that rose-colored paint glides along my lips. During the last recession, lipstick sales went up even while appliance and clothing sales plummeted. And I believe that’s because when you don’t have money, you need lipstick even more to feel good about yourself.

  But of course, I’m not going to tell the vice president of my company he’s wrong.

  “So imagine this ad,” Richard says. “An unattractive woman is at a Christmas party. All the guys at the party are ignoring her and she’s miserable. Then she puts on some Mistletoe Berry or Snow Rose… and suddenly she’s the most sexy and popular girl in the room.”

  Doug mulls this over for a moment, rubbing his thumb against his lower jaw. “I love it!” he exclaims.

  What. A. Surprise.

  “I could just see the slogan.” Doug holds out his hands. “Casey lipstick—Become what he likes.”

  Oh God. Are they serious?

  I’ve got to say something. I can’t let them go ahead with this totally misogynistic campaign, can I? I know my job was to get coffee for the meeting and also to stay quiet, but they hired me to be an advertising agent, not a barista. I should be allowed to say something at this meeting, right?

  Right?

  “Um.” I clear my throat. “Excuse me?”

  Everybody keeps on talking like I don’t exist.

  “Excuse me!” I say, louder this time.

  That did the trick. Everyone pauses in the middle of brainstorming this new campaign to look at me. I’ve got everyone’s undivided attention.

  Oh God, maybe this was a mistake. Maybe I should have just kept my fool mouth shut. After all, these guys are experts. Doug has been working here since I was a kindergartener eating paste. And admittedly, I don’t know what every woman wants. Maybe there are a lot of women who only wear lipstick to impress men.

  But there’s no turning back now.

  “The thing is,” I say carefully. “Women like lipstick for… well, for lots of reasons.”

  Richard smirks at me. Even when he’s being a jerk, he’s still devastatingly handsome. I’ve been advised by several other girls at the agency that I should stay far away from him. I’ve also been informed that I probably won’t. “True, but we all know the main reason.”

  “There are lots of reasons,” I say again.

  Doug Feinstein raises his bushy eyebrows at me. “Do you have a better idea, Alisa?”

  “It’s Elizabeth, actually.” I force a smile. “And, well…”

  The truth is, I do have an idea. Everybody has been talking about Casey lipstick for weeks, so of course, I came up with an idea of my own. Which I had always assumed would go no further than my own imagination.

  “Well?” Doug says impatiently. “What is it?”

  I clear my throat. I can hear my heart beating in my ears. I’ll be lucky if I get this idea out without fainting. “So I was thinking,” I say, “what if you have a girl who’s a s
uperhero, but she’s in her civilian identity. So you have, like, Diana Prince—”

  “Who’s Diana Prince?” Doug interrupts me. “You mean Princess Di?”

  I glance around the room, observing equally confused looks on the faces of every single man.

  “That’s Wonder Woman’s secret identity,” I quickly explain. I had about a million Wonder Woman comics when I was a little girl. I used to do odd chores around the neighborhood to earn money to buy them. Often I wished I had the Lasso of Truth to use on my sister. (That was Wonder Woman’s magic lasso that could force villains to tell their evil plans or possibly make younger sisters admit they stole your Barbie doll.)

  “So… like Clark Kent?” Doug says.

  “Well… Right.” I don’t want to get into the differences between Clark Kent and Diana Prince. “Anyway, the woman goes into a room to change from her civilian identity into her superhero identity, and the last element is to put on a layer of Casey lipstick. That’s, like, what gives her superpowers.”

  Doug stares at me for a moment. At first, it looks like he’s considering my idea. But then after a few seconds, he bursts out laughing. He laughs so hard that his entire round face turns bright red. And soon after, everyone else in the room joins him until the laughter is deafening.

  “She needs lipstick to turn into a superhero…” Doug wipes a tear from his eye. “Jesus Christ. That’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard in my life. Alisa, you should stick with serving coffee.”

  At this moment, I wish I could duck down and hide under the conference table for the rest of this meeting. My cheeks are on fire. I knew I should’ve kept my fool mouth shut. I was doing so well at keeping quiet for the entire meeting. I can’t believe I made a fool of myself this way. I’m so stupid. I knew I wasn’t the creative type. I should have just stuck with accounting, like my mother told me when I was in college. It’s a practical career for a woman, she said to me. Why didn’t I listen?

  “You people have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”

  A sharp voice cuts through the laughter. We all turn to look at the source of the voice: it’s Marley Jacobs, another vice president at the company—and the only other woman in the room. She has also been largely silent during this meeting, but now she is commanding the entire room. Everybody is staring at her, and there’s no way they’re going to start laughing at anything she says. Nobody ever does.

  “I am so sick of your terrible ideas about products you know nothing about, Doug.” Marley focuses her sharp brown eyes on Doug Feinstein’s face. She has her hair swept into some sort of elaborate twist behind her head that makes her cheekbones look higher. I don’t recognize the brand of her suit, but it’s very clear she didn’t get it from the consignment shop. “Not one of you knows the first thing about why women buy lipstick. Elizabeth has made the first good suggestion I’ve heard during this entire meeting, and what do you do? You laugh.”

  A smile twitches at Doug’s lips. “A lipstick superhero? Come on, Marley.”

  “I think it’s brilliant.” Marley glances my way, a ghost of a smile on her red lips. It vanishes when she looks back at Doug. “And your idea is shit. If I saw a commercial like that, I wouldn’t buy the lipstick just on principle.”

  I’ve never seen anyone talk to Doug that way. But when Marley does it, he actually looks embarrassed.

  “Elizabeth.” Marley turns back to me. “Let’s talk more about this superhero idea.”

  We spend the entire rest of the meeting brainstorming about my idea. It’s so exciting! It’s my concept, but I love the way Marley is able to build on it. She’s incredible. I’ve been watching her from afar since I was hired a year ago, and she’s everything I want to be—confident and intimidating and successful and rich. That is, she’s everything I’m not.

  When the meeting comes to a close and everyone has filtered out, I stand up to collect the dirty coffee cups. But before I can start cleaning, Marley reaches out to touch my arm. “Elizabeth, I’d like to speak with you. Do you have a moment?”

  Do I have a moment to talk to one of most important people in the company? Yes, I think I do. “Um, sure. Of course.”

  I sit down across from her at the conference table. I’ll clean up the coffee after we’re done talking. Right now, I have to focus on being as professional as I can and playing it cool no matter what she says to me.

  A tiny smile lingers on Marley’s lips as she looks at me. “I loved Wonder Woman when I was a girl.”

  “Me too!” I gasp. So much for playing it cool. But I’m just excited to find out I have something in common with the most powerful woman at the company.

  “Wonder Woman is still one of the women I admire most.” She glances at the conference room door. “Sometimes I’d like to use the Lasso of Truth on Doug Feinstein.”

  I venture a smile. I think we can all agree that the Lasso of Truth would be extremely useful in a lot of situations. However, I have less use for a tiara that can serve as a boomerang. As for the invisible jet—I could go either way on that.

  “Elizabeth.” Marley’s own smile vanishes, and she focuses her sharp brown eyes on my face in a way that is completely unnerving. How does she do that? “Do you know why those men laughed at you when you told them your idea?”

  “Um, because they thought it was stupid?”

  “No.”

  “Because I talked about a comic book character?”

  Marley shakes her head. “They laughed at you because you looked terrified. You looked like you didn’t believe in what you were saying. And because you didn’t believe in it, they didn’t believe in it.”

  “Oh.”

  Marley continues to stare at me. She sits up straight in her seat with perfect posture and doesn’t fidget or bite her nails like I do when I’m nervous. Like I’m apparently doing right now. Damn.

  “Elizabeth, where do you see yourself in ten years?”

  Oh, I remember this question from my interview! “Well, I’d love to still be working here.”

  Marley snorts. “Please spare me your bullshit answer. I want to know what you really want to be doing ten years from now. Do you want to be hiking in the Himalayas? Do you want to be married with five kids?”

  “Oh God, no,” I say, too quickly. “Not married with kids. Definitely not.”

  When I was seven years old, my father took off with another woman and abandoned us. One night he was having pork chops with us at the dinner table, and the next night he was gone forever. The only thing he left behind was the sunken spot on the sofa where he used to sit, and the lingering scent of his cheap aftershave.

  My father taking off ruined my mother’s life. I mean, I’m sure she was glad she had us, but she worked two jobs for most of my childhood, never quite able to scramble out of the hole she had made for herself. It was rough. We never knew when the lights would get shut off or if there would be an eviction notice on our door. One night when I was eight, I got up at midnight to get a glass of water and found her sobbing at our kitchen table. I ran back to my room before she saw me.

  I vowed I would never be in a position to allow a man to do that to me. I made sure to get a good education, through some combination of loans, work-study, and scholarships. I rarely ever date and spend most of my waking hours at the office.

  “I don’t want children,” I explain to Marley. “It’s just a choice I’ve made. Not sure about the husband part either. I, uh, didn’t have a great role model in that department.”

  At first, I’m certain that I’ve shared too much, but then the left side of Marley’s mouth quirks up. “Yes, I can relate to that.”

  Seems like a lot of women can relate.

  Marley leans forward, her dark eyes intense. “So you’re focused on your career. That’s good.”

  I nod.

  She lifts an eyebrow. “So would you want to be a vice president here?”

  My mouth falls open slightly. “You mean like you?”

  “Well,” she says, �
�I would be the CEO by then.”

  And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a classic example of Marley Jacobs Confidence.

  She narrows her eyes, looking at me in a way that nobody has ever looked at me before. Like she really sees me—maybe not the person I am now, but the person I have the potential to be. I try not to fidget or chew on my lips or play with my hair—I try to show her the best possible version of myself. A person worth her time and energy.

  When she finally gets done with her scrutiny, she nods.

  “I’m going to help you, Elizabeth,” she says. “I am going to teach you everything I know.” She leans back in her chair and smiles. “In ten years? You’re going to be just like me.”

  Chapter 1

  Ten years later

  “If you haven’t made somebody cry by the end of the workday, you have not been an effective boss.” – Marley Jacobs, former CEO of Janetta advertising

  It’s only ten o’clock in the morning, and already I’ve got Roberta Craft on the brink of tears in my office, so I’m doing pretty good today. But to be fair, it isn’t hard to make Roberta cry. Roberta is the sort of woman who cries during advertisements for maxi pads.

  “The Danvier people didn’t get the fax you sent on Friday,” I say to Roberta, meeting her watery blue eyes. “So my first question is: did you actually send the fax?”

  Roberta’s lower lip trembles, and she tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear. Roberta is the only person at Janetta who has visibly gray hair. She’s in her early sixties, which I suppose isn’t that old in general, but it’s absolutely ancient in advertising world. This woman is a relic. Nobody here is over fifty. I’m still in my thirties. Marley was in her forties and she was the CEO of the whole damn company. Roberta should have been put out to pasture ten years ago. God knows why Marley kept her.

  And now that Marley is gone, I’ve inherited her.

  Lucky me.

  “I sent it, Elizabeth,” she says. Her voice is as shaky as her lower lip. “I promise you. It was my first priority on Friday.”