“Living the dream, then? Country mouse here to dazzle us city folk with your incredible talent and woeful dress sense?”

“Hey, Sydney is no country backwater. I came here for a change of scene. And I’m making the most of things.” She aimed for nonchalance, but winced internally at how stiff it came out, like privileged apathy.

Bartell gave her an assessing look. “You sound like you’d rather be back home. Perhaps I should do you a favour and fire you now.” Her voice dropped to a soft, loaded tone. “You can scuttle back to Sydney in relief it’s all over.”

“No! I can’t!”

“No? Well then, Graveyard-Shift Girl, are you a good journalist?”

“I…” The elevator began slowing. Maddie scrabbled for an answer. Her university professors all said she had talent. On the other hand, she had nothing spectacular to point to that she’d done in the past eight months at the Hudson Metro News. Nothing beyond short police briefs and occasionally touching obituaries that probably no one read.

“If you can’t answer a simple question,” Bartell said, giving her a look so direct that it felt like an X-ray, “then perhaps your secret little fears are right: you don’t belong here. We’re done.”

Maddie stared at her as the doors dinged and opened. Was “drowning in New York” written all over her face?

“Oh, and improve your wardrobe. I don’t want to be looking at a deconstructed beat poet for the next six weeks.”

Bartell swept out of the elevator, leaving Maddie to grind her teeth. “Well, we can’t all afford yesterday’s steampunk, can we?” she said under her breath. She pushed off from the back wall and took two steps out of the elevator before freezing.

Bartell was standing just around the corner, staring back at her, hand inside her bag.

She’d heard?

Bartell’s expression was hard, as she plucked out her phone. She spun on her heel and pulled her shoulders back, with an insanely expensive-looking, Hermes-stamped handbag wrenched tight on her shoulder. She stalked through the foyer, pressing a button on her phone, and began barking instructions.

A blonde woman, all clopping heels and bony elbows, rushed forward to meet Bartell outside the building’s giant glass doors and pointed her to a chauffeured black BMW.

Way to go, Maddie thought. In a single elevator ride, you actually guaranteed you’d never get a job at another Bartell Corp masthead. Anywhere. Worldwide.

And that was a lot of newspapers.

She definitely should have stayed in bed.

* * *

That night, Maddie experienced Simon’s idea of a Fun Factory. It involved alcohol and lots of it. Specifically, bottles of strange colours, which her housemate mixed and matched and turned into exotic-looking homemade cocktails.

After drinking Simon’s third concoction—dubbed Car Seat Cover—Maddie confessed what had happened in the elevator.

Instead of being sympathetic, he laughed his head off. “Wha-did-I-tell-ya!” he said with a snort. “Stick a fork in yourself, you’re done. You’re cactus! I mean you did look like a death worshipper.” He slugged back something obnoxiously green.

“No, it’s she just has stupidly high fashion standards. I mean, I looked a tiny bit goth but not bad bad. I…it’s streetwear. I looked normal!”

“You looked like a death-cult member. But that’s okay, Mads. Look, let’s recap your day—Elena Bartell, world-famous media mogul, told you off for looking unprofessional, and then you sounded your usual underwhelmed self about your job, New York, and life in general. After that, you couldn’t tell her you were a good journalist when she asked, and finally…for the perfect cherry on top…you insulted her by telling her she was decked out in yesterday’s fashion.”

“Yesterday’s steampunk can look hot. Not my fault she took it the wrong way. It was kinda H.G. Wells if you want to know. Like, from that show, Warehouse 13?” Maddie slurped her drink.

He lifted his hands. “Her again—you and your posh British actresses.”

“Except Bartell isn’t posh, just cold.”

“So cold that instead of firing you on the spot, she just jumped in her car and drove away?”

“Uh. Yeah.”

“So stop fretting then. If she was as thin-skinned as you think, you’d already have your marching orders.”

“There’s still time. I’ll probably find them on my desk when I clock on tomorrow evening.” She peered at him and stuck out her glass for a refill. “The yellow thing this time.”

As Simon obliged with her cocktail, he asked, “Don’t you think a global media mogul has more things to worry about than the midnight-shift girl on a second-rate paper she’s thinking of gutting?”

“I guess.” She drained her drink in one hit.

“You guess? I bet Madame Slash-and-Burn has forgotten all about you by now.”

“Good point.” Maddie brightened. “Actually, great point! I’m, like, an amoeba in the scheme of Elena Bartell’s world. Right?” She felt a burst of hope and thrust her glass out again. “Some green with the yellow this time. The blue one makes my tongue look like some weird Outback lizard.”

“You may even be lower than an amoeba,” Simon agreed amiably as he poured. “Single-celled organisms probably get more thought than you. Fear not. Cheers.”

“Cheers.” She clinked her glass against his. “Wait, aren’t amoebas single-celled organisms already?”

“You’re asking the business studies major?” Simon squinted at her before slugging back his drink.

She laughed and, for the first time in hours, felt kind of positive.

BlogSpot: Aliens of New York

By Maddie as Hell

Today there was an old woman sitting on a garbage can outside my Williamsburg apartment building, next to the auto repair shop. She sang softly to her bags of junk, a chaotic pile of blankets, clothes, newspapers, and food wrappings. Off-key and missing some teeth, she swayed gently to the rhythm. A scraggly white dandelion dancing in the wind, hairless in a few places but undaunted nonetheless. The upturned hat in front of her gleamed inside with a few coins. As I passed her, I realised one of the bags was actually a small child. The girl, maybe aged ten or so, had old, old eyes. She didn’t smile at me or the woman beside her. She stared into the distance.

I swayed along with the song for a few moments, before dropping a few notes into the hat. That earned a wide, toothless grin.

Look after her, I thought.

As I walked away, I wasn’t sure which of them I’d meant.

CHAPTER 2

Tales from the Dark Side

Elena Bartell’s lips curled as she listened on her phone to the witless prattling of her allegedly top editor-in-chief of her Australian fashion magazine. It might be just after four in the morning in Sydney, but she had questions that needed answers. She was being whisked away in her car from the commuter rag to which she’d given a stay of execution. Although if that disastrously dressed reporter in the elevator was the standard of staff they employed, Elena probably shouldn’t have bothered.

Her gaze slid out the window, as she reviewed the odd meeting. The reporter had an expressive face beneath her pixie-cut titian hair. Elena had recognised the intelligence behind her intense, green eyes. They were also the only eyes that had lit with recognition at her choice of date on which she would announce the fate of the paper.

Still, it seemed the woman’s appreciation of history might be her only redeeming feature. In fact, Graveyard-Shift Girl was lucky to still be in her employ, but Elena had been too astonished at being insulted to do anything more than walk away. Not that it mattered. The insolent Australian would be unlikely to survive the axe any more than her underperforming colleagues would.

Speaking of cursed Australians… Elena pursed her lips and moved the phone away from her ear a little. Jana Macy was still jabbering away, trying to cover her ass.