Read I Think I Love You for Free Online

them thathe knew his stuff. If he were called upon in his first week to conduct an interview with, say, Keith Richards, he would be ready. Mind you, there was a rumor of this
NME
journalist who had gone to talk to Keith in March and not come back till August.
    The goblin, who turned out to be called Chas, ushered him through to what he called the innersanction. There was nobody there. Bill sat for ten minutes staring at the signed photograph of Tony Jacklin and two bottles of Johnnie Walker on top of the filing cabinet. Did he really want to work for a golf-loving dipsomaniac?
    “Don’t think we’ve forgotten you, dear,” said a large, flustered woman who had clearly forgotten him. Her long gray hair was loosely pinned up in a bun and she wore a garment that could have been modeled on a teepee. She introduced herself as Zelda. After her came a man wearing the largest pair of glasses Bill had ever seen: they were like two TV screens soldered together, and they magnified the man’s eyes, which were as blank and beady as a blackbird’s. He stuck out his hand. “Roy Palmer,” he said, as if issuing a threat.
    The Worldwind proprietor had slicked-back hair that was too black to be his original color and one of those rubbery comedian’s faces that immediately made you think he must be a friendly, likable guy. In this case, that was a mistake. Roy thought he was funny, but nobody else did.
    Bill should have walked out the minute he discovered that the magazine he’d be working on was targeted at girls aged eleven to fifteen. He’d done puberty already and done it badly. He knew absolutely nothing about the female version of it, and that suited him fine. Once, searching the bathroom cabinet at home for shaving foam, he had come across sanitary equipment belonging to his sisters. Some sort of belt affair with hooks and a box of Tampax. There was a puzzling diagram of a girl standing like a stork on one leg. Bill read the word
insertion
, shut the door and never opened it again.
    “Think of the teen-idol phase as a sort of corridor between girlhood and womanhood,” Zelda had said. “Our magazine’s role is to guide a girl on that journey.”
    “Our profit,” Roy interjected, “comes from targeting the girl and her pocket money between the cute furry animal stage and heavy petting,if you get my drift.” When he laughed, Roy’s mouth revealed a Stonehenge of ancient teeth.
    While Zelda examined his CV, Bill studied the highly polished shoes he had borrowed for the occasion from his mate Simon, a trainee accountant in a firm with three lifts. Bill had taken a few liberties with his details and was almost certainly about to be found out.
    “You seem to have done very well in your final college dissertation, William. May I ask what the subject was?”
    He coughed and covered his mouth. “Er, ‘The Romantic Sublime—Voice and Desire in English Love Poetry, 1790 to 1825.’ ”
    “Keep it clean, keep it clean,” snapped Roy.
    Swiftly, Bill changed the subject. “So what exactly would I be doing here?”
    “Well, dear, think of a thirteen-year-old girl in Manchester or Cardiff,” Zelda said brightly. “What are the things she wants to know as she lies in bed and stares longingly up at the posters of David on her wall? That’s where you come in with your romantic poetry and creative writing.”
    He did not hide his astonishment. “I’m supposed to make it up?”
    “Oh, not all of it. The record company PRs will provide certain materials of course. If D.C. comes over in person there’ll be a big press thingummy, you can go along and ask some questions, bring back as many facts as you can. Stock up the larder so to speak, then pad it out for the next few months. I think you’ll find it starts to write itself after a while, once you get the hang of the voice. And the desire.” Zelda smiled encouragingly.
    “Will I have the opportunity to speak to Mr.—David?”
    “Heavens, no, dear, but we can get all kinds