Been There, Done That

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Book: Read Been There, Done That for Free Online
Authors: Carol Snow
Tags: Fiction, General, Contemporary Women
might not like it.”

five
    “I love it,” Richard said. “I LOVE IT.”
    “Is it really us, though?” I asked desperately. “We’ve got to keep our identity consistent.”
    “Sex in higher education.” He walked to his window, looked out at the traffic, strode back to his desk. He was too excited to keep still. “This will get Salad the recognition we’ve been looking for. This will sell magazines. This will sell ad space!”
    Sheila backed Richard up, of course. “Don’t be afraid of a challenge, Kathy.” She squeezed my arm in a show of sisterly support. This was what Sheila did every time she wanted to be convincing: she touched you and she inserted your name into conversation. “Kathy,” she continued. “You’ve got to be willing to stretch sometimes, Kathy.”
    “It’s not my ability I’m questioning,” I hissed, suddenly wondering if I should have gone to law school like most of the other English majors I knew. “It’s the magazine’s reputation.” Actually, Salad didn’t have much of a reputation, good or bad, which was its real problem.
    Only Jennifer was on my side. “Call girls? At college? That’s, like, so Inside Edition .” Jennifer, clad in a turquoise spandex mini dress and silver spike heels, was looking a bit like a professional herself today.
    I tried every defensive tactic I could come up with. The advertisers might be put off by a story that revolved around illicit sex, I said. “Then why do advertisers pay so much to advertise in People ?” Richard roared. “In Cosmo ? In U.S. News and World Report, for Chrissakes? Because sex sells!”
    I defended some of the important stories I had in the pipeline and expressed my concern that they might be neglected. “Nobody gives a rat’s fuck about Shakespeare in the elementary schools!” he yelled. “What kind of a jackass really thinks a bunch of ten-year-olds are going to like Hamlet ?”
    “Richard, honey,” Sheila murmured, rubbing his thigh. “You’re a passionate man, and I love that about you, but think if this is the kind of language you really want to be using, Richard.”
    I couldn’t talk my way out of it. It was settled: I was to make the coed call girls story my top priority, spending as much time in Western Massachusetts as needed. Richard’s main concern revolved around Tim, whom I’d described as “an old friend from college,” and the collaboration with his on-line publication. Richard said, “We don’t want to get lost in this deal, leave all the credit to New Nation .”
    I didn’t care about any of that, of course. “What about the stories I’m working on? I can’t just abandon them.” I was feeling very defensive on the bard’s behalf.
    “Jennifer can help with the filler pieces,” Richard said, brushing the air.
    “But I need her as my sec—” I caught myself just in time. “As my assistant.”
    “She’s still your assistant,” Richard said. “She’ll do both.”
    “She’s up to the challenge,” Sheila chimed in.
    Jennifer looked up from her nails, which appeared to have been decorated with glitter glue. “This is so going to cut into my novel,” she muttered.
    I called Tim to give him the good news. “I knew you wouldn’t pass this up,” he said. And I wondered, yet again, if he knew me at all.
    Once I’d thought Tim knew me better than anyone else on the planet. After we met for the second time, in the lecture hall, he offered to buy me a cup of coffee, and I said yes even though I hadn’t started drinking coffee yet. I said yes because he was sophisticated enough to “need a shot of caffeine.” He drank his coffee black, which I found impossibly worldly.
    I don’t remember everything we talked about in the snack bar that day, but I remember how he looked at me, like there was no one else in the room. I’d had a couple of boyfriends in high school, gone to formal dances, made out in the back seat of a few station wagons. But no one had ever looked at me like that

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