NEW YORK--Carey Lorenzo was just a few weeks into her new job at Enron Corp. last fall when she started getting signals that job security might be an issue.
Working out of a 20-person office in the landmark Chrysler Building, Lorenzo, 31, sold electricity in the state's newly deregulated energy market. Although she usually could offer small businesses a cheaper deal than they were getting from old-line utility Consolidated Edison, some customers balked at signing four- and seven-year contracts with a company that looked like it might not survive that long.
"Enron? No way!" Lorenzo recalled one businessman telling her. "Do you watch the news, honey?"
Lorenzo, whose job evaporated when the scandal-ridden energy company declared bankruptcy Dec. 2, has no regrets about her two-month fling with energy deregulation. After all, it gave the New Jersey native her shot at celebrity: She is one of 10 Enronites chosen to pose naked for Playboy's "Women of Enron" issue, hitting the stands Monday.
The women, including Maya Arthur of Tehachapi, were selected from more than 300 current and former Enron employees who sent in photos after Playboy announced in March plans for the pictorial. Playgirl magazine has already published its own peekaboo feature on Enron men.
Lorenzo and two fellow posers, who made TV appearances Wednesday, will also be on Wall Street today for a press conference and autograph session playing on Enron's notoriety as a stock-market fallen angel.
One of them, Cynthia Coghlan, 28, had a four-month stint in an Enron unit in Toronto. After the U.S. bankruptcy filing, however, Canadian workers were in limbo awaiting a court ruling on whether their division could operate independently. The answer was no.
"We couldn't really do any work," Coghlan recalled during an interview this week at Playboy's 5th Avenue offices overlooking Central Park. "We sat around playing euchre tournaments in the board room."
For Oregonian Christine Nielsen, the August issue's cover girl, the Playboy promotional tour is her first visit to New York. Like Coghlan and Lorenzo, she said she's had only positive feedback about Playboy from her former co-workers at Enron. "They just laugh when they hear about it."
Nielsen, 28, said she could see cracks in the Enron facade well before Wall Street did. The project manager at Portland-based Enron Broadband and hundreds of co-workers were laid off in May 2001, months before the parent company started unraveling amid allegations of document-shredding and accounting fraud.
