Time: Thursday, May 25, 9:02 AM
From:
[email protected]
Subject: You don’t know me, but
Dear Miss Texas,
My name is Ronald Green and I have an opportunity for you. I have an idea for a novel based on my life and I think you are
the perfect person to collaborate with me on writing it. You have a pretty good style on this diary and I would like to see
my ideas told in this style. I will pay you a reasonable fee once my book starts making profit.
If you are interested, please contact me immediately. I’ll be waiting to hear from you.
T
he next day Sandy found herself sitting at yet another restaurant table alone. This time, at least, it was swanky. Luna de
Miel, the new tapas restaurant in the medical center, was a former house, now all done up in carnations and candles. Afternoon
sun slanted through the slatted blinds and onto the glossy walnut table where Sandy sat and resisted the temptation to pull
out her laptop and get some writing done. She wished she were home, working, or even at work, working. Her boss, Sandy knew,
rarely called one-on-ones in order to share good news.
Angelica was late, of course. By the time she strutted in, texting on her Zoom Phone and simultaneously talking on her old
purple cell, Sandy had already demolished a pile of lavash with its accompanying plate of spiced olive oil. She set down the
last corner of bread and waited for Angelica to give orders to the waiter. “Just a glass of chianti, please. Well, go ahead
and bring me the smoked scallops with chorizo, too. And bottled water, with lemon.” She turned to Sandy. “Have you ordered?”
Sandy requested the Moroccan chicken pie and an iced tea. The waiter swept away and Angelica, as always, got right down to
business.
“Did you talk to your goat man? Did he agree to do the show?”
“No, he wasn’t interested.” Sandy said it calmly. She’d learned over the months that Angelica preferred to deal with people
as direct as she was, and unconfident people made her suspicious. So she always told the truth without making excuses, whether
or not she had the answer her boss wanted to hear.
“Okay.” Angelica sank back into her booth seat with a sigh. “You’ll have to try again, then. You’ll have to convince him.”
Sandy said nothing.
After a few moments Angelica went on. “The issue is, Sandy, that we need content. And by content I don’t mean each of us sitting
at a desk reading aloud the posts we’ve written for the week. It
is
cable, but we can’t throw together just
any
thing.”
Sandy nodded. She’d been thinking along that line herself ever since Angelica had made the announcement about the TV deal.
“I’m really annoyed that George left.” The waiter appeared with their drinks and Angelica waited for him to pour a tiny decanter
of wine into her glass before continuing. “I’d been thinking that the two of you could do a segment where you argue every
week. You know how the readers were starting to pick up on the friction between you and liked to gossip about it. But then
he had to run off with Tony.” She meant the editor of Buzz News, the competition to which George had defected. “He’s e-mailed
me twice since we announced the deal.” She looked at Sandy suggestively.
“Why? Let me guess—he wants to come back, doesn’t he?” Sandy knew what a narcissist George was, and that he wouldn’t be able
to resist the opportunity to see himself on TV every week, as opposed to just seeing his own name in print. “
Would
you take him back?”
Angelica gave a ladylike shrug. “Possibly. It depends on what ideas he has to offer.”
Sandy frowned. The idea of working with George again, after a month of enjoying his absence, was annoying. But she had to
admit that since he’d left the site was missing a certain element that Philippe and Francisco had been unable to provide.
She got the underlying message in Angelica’s words, too. Her boss was looking for people with ideas for television content.
So far Sandy had provided none. Nothing out of the ordinary, at any rate. It was time for her to start brainstorming.
“Sandy, I’m sure you realize by now that you’re my favorite Nacho Papi writer.”
“I am?” Sandy was surprised. She’d always assumed Philippe was Angelica’s favorite.
“Yes. As I’ve told you before, you remind me of myself at your age. Just a little less ambitious.” Angelica seemed impatient
as the waiter showed up again with their food, interrupting her again. “And you have to be a little more ambitious, Sandy,
if you want to succeed. You have to stay one step ahead. Two, three steps. You can’t just sit around waiting for things to
happen to you.”
Sandy listened intently but couldn’t think of anything worthwhile to say. She wished a fabulous content idea would come to
her right at that moment. But her brain didn’t oblige.
Angelica leaned forward. “I’m being pressured to make choices I wouldn’t necessarily make on my own.”
Sandy held her breath. This was it, then. She was going to be fired. After all this time, she was finally losing the dream
job. Just as she’d feared, she hadn’t been able to measure up. She adjusted her glasses. She wondered if it was too late to
beg for her tech-writing job back.
“I have to hire another woman for the site. Someone sexy.”
“Sexy?” Sandy stared at her boss in surprise. “What happened to good writing? Did you tell them we’re writing cultural commentary
here, and not running an escort service?”
“I think if it were up to them, they’d prefer that we somehow do both.” Sandy was struck by the resignation on Angelica’s
face. The older woman sighed. “Like you, Sandy, I have bosses. And sometimes those bosses ask me to do things I don’t agree
with.”
Sandy exhaled audibly. She wouldn’t have imagined Angelica being pressured or pushed around by anyone, even by the people
signing her paychecks. But now that she thought about it, it’d been naive to imagine that Jacob Levy would let Angelica do
whatever she wanted with his site.
“We’ve narrowed it down to two candidates,” Angelica continued between bites of scallop. “One is a student from Houston, and
the other is one of our regular readers who’s willing to relocate from Boston.”
“What? Which one?”
“She went by the nickname La Sirena. If we pick her we’ll keep that name for her, because it’ll excite the other readers to
think that they might eventually be on the show, too, if they give us enough page views. But her real name is Tracy… Trixie
something. No—Trisha MacLeod, I think.”
“What? Is she even Latina?”
Angelica shrugged again. “I think her mother’s half or something. Who isn’t Latino, these days? Jacob liked her, though. Just
between you and me, that’s who I think they’ll end up picking.” She fell silent then and stared morosely at the window while
sipping her chianti.
Sandy was silent, too. At least she wasn’t being fired. Yet. She still had time to think up something fantastic in order to
keep her job. She cut up her chicken pie into smaller and smaller pieces and waited for Angelica to say more.
Finally she did. “Sandy, don’t lose this opportunity. I really want you to help prove what I’ve been working to prove all
along—that we can be smart and successful without having to be sexy, too. I mean, we as Latinas.”
Sandy raised her eyebrows at this. This was coming from the woman who’d made the two females on her staff undergo makeovers
in order to retain their jobs. Looking at Angelica’s bleach job, tightly fitted suit jacket, and long fake nails, Sandy wondered
if she really meant what she said. Or was she just saying what she thought Sandy wanted to hear? Needed to hear in order to
do what Angelica wanted?
“This is only between you and me,” she continued. “I hope you understand that. But I mean it—I need you to come up with something
good, as fast as you can. I’ll try to help, but it would be better if you were the one to do it. Try again with the Chupacabra
feature—the readers really love that and you’re the only one who could make that work.”
Not that again, Sandy thought. Like a recurring allergy, she was irritated by the fact that she’d never gotten Tío Jaime to
sign the release. She didn’t even have that part of it settled, much less any likelihood of convincing the old man to become
a regular guest on their show.
Sandy nodded, wanting Angelica to know that she was willing to do whatever it took to succeed in this situation, whether or
not it ended up involving the Chupacabra. Because she didn’t want to lose this job. Not with so many people dying to take
her place.
She put her mind into overdrive, grasping for other ideas. “Angelica, what if, aside from the Chupacabra thing, we do a charity
event? To win the public’s good opinion?” She thought of events she’d seen on television and remembered the yearly public
television auction. “What about an auction?”
Angelica took a sip of wine, making a face as if it tasted bitter. “What kind of auction?”
“You know, like the public television station does. We could get our sponsors to donate stuff, and viewers could call in to
bid on it. Then we’d make a big show of giving the money to some organization—maybe for Latino literacy or something.”
The older woman frowned. “Do you watch the public television auctions every year?”
“No. But I’ve seen them.” Sandy tried to keep her voice enthusiastic. “Once.”
“Exactly. You’ve seen them. But you don’t tune in specially to watch them. Why would you? They’re boring.”
Sandy felt herself slump a little in her seat. Angelica was right, of course.
“It isn’t a
bad
idea. It just isn’t very exciting. We’d need to think of a way to spice it up.” Angelica narrowed her eyes and peered into
the distance.
Sandy mimicked her boss’s expression, pretending to join her in deep thought. Really, though, she had nothing. How did you
make an auction exciting? With exciting donations, obviously. Maybe with… Lori in a sexy outfit, updating the bids? No, Sandy
told herself. That was crass.
Before she could get much farther than that, Angelica’s thoughtful face turned to a smile. “I’ve got it! We can auction off
dates with you and the other staffers!”
Sandy’s mouth fell open in horror. “What?”
Angelica hunkered down like a football coach issuing orders and gave Sandy’s arm one of her rough little squeezes. “We need
to present to sponsors right away, to pay for the dinner and whatever entertainment… maybe a hotel… maybe evening wear for
the staff. It’ll be you, Lori, Philippe for sure, maybe Francisco. God, it’s too bad we don’t have a lesbian on staff, too.
Although we
could
offer Lori to men
and
women. We could do that with all of you, actually. Yes.” Angelica sat back, her mind obviously rushing through steps far
beyond what Sandy would have been able to imagine.
“Angelica, no.” Sandy was surprised to hear herself contradict her boss outright like that. But she had to put a stop to this
before it was too late. “That’s not what I meant. I didn’t mean auctioning off ourselves.”
“What’s wrong, Sandy? It’s harmless. We’ll run background checks. We’ll send cameramen along to keep everyone safe.”
“It’s not that.” Sandy struggled to formulate the words that would change her boss’s mind. “It’s just—too personal. Some of
the commenters are already getting out of hand, constantly talking about the way we look and their stupid sex fantasies about
us.”
“That’s going to happen with any public figures, though,” reasoned Angelica. “They see you as someone above them, something
they can feel free to fantasize about. So winning an evening with you guys will be a fantasy come true for them.” She smiled.
Then, seeing that Sandy wasn’t convinced, she added, “If anything, it’ll make you more human to them again.”
Her words were obviously meant to be comforting, but they’d missed the mark. Sandy shook her head. “I just don’t think—I just
think this would be too much.”
Angelica leaned forward. Her expression teetered between sympathetic and exasperated. “Well, Sandy, I’m not going to force
you to do this. But I hope you’ll consider it. It would be disappointing to our audience if everyone but you participated.”
She was right. They
would
be disappointed. Because, Sandy realized, Angelica was going to go ahead with this idea. That’s how quickly she decided things.
And everyone else on staff would be more than willing to say yes. And they’d think she was being a big baby if she said no.
And then the readers would catch on. And they’d talk about it in the comments. They’d know she was afraid—afraid of
them
.
Sandy didn’t know which was worse, the constant comments about her or having the commenters know how much their words bothered
her.
She would just have to do it, wouldn’t she? If she wanted to keep up her front, she’d have to go along with the plan. If she
wanted to keep her job.
Angelica went back into mental overdrive, planning days and weeks ahead. “I’m going to have to get this to Legal as soon as
possible, but it shouldn’t be too hard because Banana Nation did something similar last year with a contest prize and a staff
dinner.” She looked back at Sandy. “Oh, and we’ll have to pick a charity to donate the money to. Do you want to handle that
part?”
“Sure.” For Sandy that would be the fun part—the only fun part, probably. And it would keep her mind off the frightening part:
going on a date with a complete stranger crazy enough to pay money for the privilege.
“Good, good,” Angelica said quietly, her thoughts obviously light-years away now.
Either because they were sitting in the afternoon sunlight or because the older woman had been working harder lately, Sandy
saw now that her boss really was the same age as her own mother. They had the same wrinkles around their eyes, and the same
eyes that seemed to guard against disappointment at every turn.
Seeing that made Sandy feel a little less dreadful about the situation for some reason. Angelica may have been a little manipulative,
with the tendency to twist Sandy’s ideas into something sensationalistic, scandalous, or downright scary, but she knew what
it took to succeed, and she was willing to share that knowledge with Sandy. It was better than being nagged about her hair
and her personal life by a woman who didn’t even read her work.