Thread: Four Letters (Ariamella and Dane Stalling)

James still had his eyes on the screen. He hit the print button and looked up. It was a full ten heartbeats before he could say anything. The others had been plain by choice. He expected no different today. A very intelligent, very angry, aggressively plain woman. In fact, he wouldn't have been surprised to see one of the last two columnists in front of him. What he didn't expect was this Marisa looking good enough to walk right into a modeling shoot on the forty first floor. The color of her hair was striking. Auburn dye jobs were a dime a dozen in the city and they were all trying- and failing- to look like Marisa. Walker had asked Catherine to include photographs of job applicants, but she said she couldn't require that because it could cause unfair hiring practices. He hated it when she was right. He smiled, stood and reached over his desk to shake her hand. You have a very impressive resume and a little bird tells me Heidi had her sights on you too. I have to say I'm pleased that you're in front of my desk instead of hers. He pulled the paper out of the printer and looked at it for a moment, wondering if he really needed to dump this particular set of jobs on this particular woman right now. With her qualifications, she could just walk upstairs to Allette... or downstairs to Marc Taylor's studio to get another job if she didn't like it here. The magazine needed a loyal writer in the position, though, and he couldn't think of a better way to test that loyalty. All right. You understand that you will be writing the Women on Sex column. Walker steepled his hands. I'm not under any illusions that what we do is journalism. What we do is entertainment that looks like journalism. That doesn't mean that we don't check our facts and get our stories as right as we can, but this isn't a newspaper. Your column is among our most popular, both in the print edition and on alphazine.com. Smart men know that they don't understand women very well. They have questions they can't ask their wives or girlfriends... or their mothers. Your job is to try to get into our readers' heads, anticipate their questions, and answer them in your column. He took a breath and let it out, then he handed her the paper. Here are the first four columns you'll write for us. After that, you'll be expected to come up with topics on your own and run them through the editorial team. You'll report directly to Hank , our Executive Editor. I'll introduce you when we're done here. Walker found that he was reluctant to cut the interview short like he had intended earlier. Let me tell you a little about why we want to do these particular stories now. One of our competitors, Player Magazine, ran a series a little bit like this, with one big difference. They used one of their staff writers, a man under a female pseudonym, who plagiarized heavily from online erotic stories written by amateur writers. One of the writers recognized his own writing in the magazine and ran it back through the site, which sued the magazine for copyright infringement on behalf of not one, but fifteen different writers. The idea was a good one, but they took a shortcut and ended up folding and liquidating to pay off the suit. I want these stories done right. They have to be forthright, honest, believable, and they have to kick so much ass nobody will want to compete. He put his hand on her personnel file. If I'm reading this right, you could be the right person to do this job. If you aren't... well, Heidi likes her nonfat decaf lattes served at exactly 175 degrees. Do you have any questions?