IMPURE

Chapter 1

New York, February. 

The wind coming down from the High Line was a bullet of pure ice, but the air inside the office was even colder. The sound of keys being pounded furiously and the constant hum of ten different phones formed the soundtrack to my Monday morning.

The office had become a hyperbaric chamber ready to explode. I had arrived there at six in the morning, when the darkness over Manhattan was still dense and the lights of the Midtown skyscrapers looked like electric pinpricks driven into the sky. The TMZ scoop had ripped through the midnight silence like a sonic boom, and for four and a half hours my world had been a frantic, suffocating sequence. From the floor-to-ceiling window on the thirtieth floor, the New York skyline stretched out like a mass of ice and steel under a February sun that had no intention of warming anything up. The Empire State Building stood grey against a pearl-colored sky, surrounded by a forest of glass reflecting the frenzy of millions of unaware people who didn't know that, in this room, one of their icons was falling to pieces. Below us, the streets were a grid of yellow taxis trapped in traffic, tiny and insignificant compared to the magnitude of the disaster we were managing.

Inside, the atmosphere was saturated with static electricity. The elegant silence that usually reigned among the designer furniture had been replaced by a sonic siege. The phones rang with a syncopated, hammering rhythm. I was sitting behind my desk: an immense powder-pink glass table, a polished slab that seemed to float on the dark resin floor. In front of me, the 32-inch Apple monitor vomited an uninterrupted barrage of emails, while next to it, my aluminum MacBook Air remained open, the cursor jumping crazily between press releases and non-disclosure agreements. The landline — a Mouth Phone, the iconic scarlet lip-shaped device inspired by Dalí, with its sinuous and provocative line — wouldn't stop ringing, a sharp sound bouncing off the office walls. Beside it, my work iPhone vibrated with such violence it made the glass table tremble, lighting up in a sequence of non-stop flashes.

«No, Jennifer! I don't care what the legal department says! Sienna knew nothing about that budget hole, we are standing firm on our position»

I slammed the scarlet lip-shaped receiver onto the base with a force that made my arm vibrate up to the shoulder. I ran a hand through my honey-blonde hair, brushing it away from my face with a sharp gesture. My eyes felt tired, burning from hours of staring at pixels, but my reflection in the dark MacBook screen was still that of a professional who couldn't afford to give in. The features were those sweet but decisive ones I had inherited from my mother — the straight nose and full lips now clamped in a thin line — but my gaze, blue and clear as the ocean, shone with a cold, new New Yorker determination.

I needed to feel in control, and my outfit was the only armor that worked. I was wearing a very light chocolate-colored cashmere sweater, one of those sheer ones that caress the skin with a deep boat neck, glimpsed under a light blue shirt with orange stripes kept unbuttoned and loose. Over it, a decidedly oversize blazer with thin checks gave me that "power dressing" tone I was looking for. The jeans were a genuine denim wash, long but cuffed with obsessive care to leave room for the true stars: a pair of vintage pointed boots with a very thin stiletto heel and orange-tan leather that seemed to glow with its own light. Completing it all was the jewelry: a "chunky" and messy mix of solid gold chains and hammered silver rings that tinkled with every move I made, and a pair of tortoiseshell glasses with wide lenses — the blue light ones that had by now become my only defense against fourteen hours of daily screen-time. They gave me an intellectual air that perfectly hid the dark circles under my eyes.

My office was a soundproofed glass cube, bordered by large industrial paneled windows with dark metal frames. Thanks to "privacy glass" technology, no one could spy on the confidential documents on my pink glass desk from the outside, but I could see everything: beyond the glass, the shared workspace was a crazed beehive. I could see the long communal tables where the creative team kids were glued to their Macs, between fashion sketches and lawsuits, moving with a frenzy that bordered on collective hysteria.