Not My Type (16 page)

“I was in the area and thought I’d pop in,” I said. I hovered near the door with a death grip on my purse strap, unsure if popping in was okay. “I’ve got some writing to do. Would it be cool if I set up in here to do it?”

“Uh, sure. Is it something for us?”

“If you want it. It’s not a big deal if you don’t,” I said.

“I’m intrigued. What’s it about?”

“A clothing line called Urban Grit. Did you guys already cover that?”

Her brow furrowed. “That doesn’t sound familiar. Tessa?” she called to a girl on the other side of the room. “Did you cover a company called Urban Grit?”

Tessa rolled her eyes. “They’re a little flash-in-the-pan start-up business, so no. I didn’t think there was a story there.”

Ellie quirked her eyebrows at me. “But you do?”

Tessa’s dismissive tone eroded some of my excitement, but I didn’t let it show. I nodded at Ellie. “I do.” Maybe I was wrong, but Kirbi’s story fascinated me, and I wanted to take a stab at telling it.

She shrugged. “Take Denny’s desk. He’s working from home today.” She pointed to the seat the pasty-skinned lone male had occupied on my previous visit.

I sat down and accessed the Wi-Fi connection then did some more research on Urban Grit and its owner, letting my thoughts coalesce as I worked. I paid attention to the chatter around me. Ellie schmoozed on the phone almost nonstop with advertisers. A couple of the other girls sounded like they were working on advertising too. The other three all clacked away at their keyboards. None of them came over to talk to me, and I felt the tiniest bit like an interloper, but I rationalized that they were probably busy with deadlines too. Only theirs were real, not self-imposed. About a half hour after I got there, the door opened and Chantelle walked in. I remembered her from my last visit. I’d taken concert reviews from her.

She stopped short when she saw me. “You’re Pepper, right?”

Hoping this was a good thing, I tacked on a smile and nodded.

“I liked your take on Sonic Machine. I hate that band.”

My smile turned real. “
Hate
is a strong word. I’m more on the could-do-without-them side.”

“I’m glad you’re on band duty now,” she said. “Music isn’t really my thing. I like it, but I don’t follow the industry enough to write credible reviews. And I’m getting too old to hang out at clubs in the evening. I’ve got two kids. I feel like an idiot backstage.”

“I’m relieved you’re okay with it,” I said. “Ellie said you were, but it’s nice to hear it from you.”

She skirted around a couple of other desks to take the one next to mine and dropped her cute handbag into the bottom file drawer underneath it. “If you start covering art galleries and new museum exhibitions, we’ll have a problem, but the bands are all yours.”

She powered on her computer and set about checking her e-mails. One of the girls who had been on the phone since I’d walked in pushed back from her chair and walked over. “I’m Janie,” she said. “I wanted you to know I love you.”

Startled, I stared up at her while another of the ad girls hooted. “Thanks?” I said, not sure how to respond to that.

“Seriously, ‘Single in the City’ is blowing up for us,” she said. “Don’t take this personally, but I hope you never have a good date. Your Tuesday posts are turning into advertising gold.”

I smiled and said thank you, but as I turned back to my laptop, I caught a scowl on Ellie’s face, which smoothed out when our eyes met. She rose and headed over to me. “I’m going to grab myself a soda from the break room,” she said. “Want to come with?”

Since it wasn’t really a request, I said, “Sure,” and followed her back. She grabbed a diet Dr. Pepper from the fridge and handed me one then waved me into one of the plastic folding chairs at the dinky table while she took the other one. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about ‘Single in the City,’” she said then paused for a drink. “It’s coming along well. I’m happy with it.”

“Good,” I said. “It’s only costing me my sanity.”

She grinned. “Hold on to enough that you can still write coherent articles, okay?”

I laughed. “Yeah, yeah. So Janie said something about my columns being advertising gold?”

“Yes. I meant to call and tell you that we’re logging more and more hits on your previous articles. We’ve picked up a couple new advertisers as a result.”

“That’s great, right?” I asked. “What does that mean for me?”
Please say more money.

“Right now, it means that I want you to know we’re thrilled with what you’re doing. We’re not in a position to pay you more for it yet, but I definitely want to acknowledge the response it’s getting. Thank you again for stepping up to do it.”

“You’re welcome,” I said, feeling deflated. I wanted to be much closer to getting out of Handy’s.

She stood, satisfied with our conversation, I guess. Definitely more satisfied than I was. “I’m looking forward to your review tomorrow.”

Did she really have to drag me back to the break room just to say thanks for still working for practically free? I took a swig of my drink. I guess the pat on the head and the soda were supposed to be enough reward for my column “blowing up.”

I followed her back out into the main office and took up my place at my laptop again. Chantelle shot me a curious look but said nothing, only typed until Ellie disappeared to the back to take another call. Then she tapped my arm and nodded at her computer screen. Clearly, I was meant to read it on the sly.
There’s the Ellie version of events and then there’s what actually happens.

I squinched my forehead at her to show that I didn’t understand. She typed some more, her fingers flying over the keys, and then I read,
Ellie has incredible ideas, and the magazine will do well, but she does it on her own terms
.

I took to my own keyboard and typed,
I know you’re literally spelling this out for me, but spell it out even more. What are you trying to say?

She shook her head at me and typed,
She poached me from the
Bee
. She got most of us there.
Real Salt Lake
pays well, so I don’t leave. But she’s underpaying you and a couple other people to meet my salary. She can afford to pay more. I’m only telling you because your dating column is driving more traffic than she’s letting on. In a couple of weeks, you’ll be able to bargain from a position of strength.

When she was sure I had read it, she erased the paragraph and went back to working on a story about a local artist. I stared at my screen while I processed Chantelle’s revelation. Now I had a . . . I checked an online thesaurus for the word I wanted. A
quandary.
A
dilemma
. A
briar patch
. If Ellie was underreporting the number of page views my article got so she could cut me a smaller check, how was I supposed to find the true number and get the money I deserved? I couldn’t think of a way to ask for actual documentation on my page hits that wouldn’t imply a lack of trust.

My mom had once covered a long-term sub assignment for a first-year teacher who raised such a stink about everything that she was fired midyear. While the teacher had been incompetent, my mom said it was the teacher’s complaints that made the principal unwilling to wait for her contract to expire at the end of the year. I remembered my mom’s advice at the time: let them pour cement around your shoes before you rock the boat. Same rule applied here. Ellie could replace me with another anonymous Indie Girl if I made too much of a stink. I needed to become indispensable.

How to do that?
I wondered. I drummed my fingers on the desktop, blindly rereading my last sentence over and over. “Urban Grit is as much about Kirbi Dawn’s grit and determination as it is about a fresh and edgy aesthetic.” Then it hit me that I was staring at the answer. I had to create more opportunities for myself like I had today. I would throw so many good articles at Ellie that she would have no choice but to keep printing them. I’d have to go after smaller news stories or find other human interest profiles that weren’t on the magazine’s radar. Then I’d have to write them so well she couldn’t resist them. When I became an integral part of their reporting team, I could ask for the truth on how many page hits my columns were getting.

The early May sunlight filtered through the front windows of the office, the angle telling me that it was close to the end of the work day. Within minutes, Janie and the other salesgirl began gathering up their stuff, sticking things in desk drawers, and rummaging in their handbags for car keys. It made sense that the ad people would go home first. I guess they could only sell advertising during business hours.

By five-thirty, only Chantelle, Ellie, and I were left. Ellie hung up the phone with what sounded like someone in a local congressman’s office. She scooped up her chic black trench coat and a shiny red bag with not-so-discreet Coach tags hanging from it. Maybe that’s where my extra pay went.

“Can you lock up, Chantelle?” she asked.

“Sure.”

Ellie looked at me. “You’re welcome to stay as long as Chantelle is here, but you’ll have to leave when she does because she has the keys.”

“I figured,” I said. My tone was pleasant, but I had experienced a paradigm shift during the course of the afternoon. I’d gone from desperately wanting to please Ellie to realizing I had more leverage with her than I thought.

When the door closed behind her, I turned to Chantelle. “Thanks for the heads up.”

She shrugged. “Ellie’s smart. She can write, she can edit, she has business sense and a good instinct for what readers want.”

“You don’t sound impressed,” I said, wondering how long I could keep Chantelle talking as I figured out the dynamics at the magazine.

“She lacks a little something,” Chantelle said. “Probably a soul.” She fell quiet for a moment and then sighed. “I’m only saying this because it’s the end of a long day. But watch your back with Ellie. She feels more beholden to the investors than she does to her employees. She doesn’t see her people as being as important as her investment capital.”

I studied Chantelle, trying to figure out her motivation for helping me. She was around thirty, maybe just barely past. She wore a wedding ring and a trendy outfit I’d seen in one of the upscale boutique windows at the mall. Her hair was perfectly styled in long, honey layers around her face, but the side-swept fringe of her bangs framed tired eyes. “Did you say you used to work for the
Bee
?”

She nodded. “I was on the city desk there.”

“Why did you leave?”

She shook her head slowly, like she wasn’t sure of the answer herself. “I’d been angling for the life and style section for months, but the
Bee
is kind of an institution, and institutions aren’t always open to change. The same old dried up prune of a little man that has covered their arts and entertainment for almost twenty years will not retire, I think specifically to spite me. And he more or less threw a fit every time the editor tapped me to cover something in his little hemisphere of the newsroom, like new artist exhibitions. When Ellie came calling with a job offer that increased my pay and let me write about the stuff I found interesting . . .”

“You couldn’t resist,” I finished for her, and she nodded. “Yeah, I’ve noticed she can be pretty convincing. Obviously, you’re not happy with the change.”

“I don’t hate it here,” she said. “We all work together pretty well, but I wish I hadn’t left the
Bee.
Ellie demands a lot for the paychecks she signs and I have two little kids at home. I think I’m ready to dial back on the journalism career, but then I look at our budget, and I have no idea how to do that. So I’m stuck covering all kinds of events at night, and I miss tucking in my little guys several times a week because Ellie calls last minute and wants me to check out a concert or a play or a dozen other things. And I have to do it.”

“Why not go back to the
Bee
?” I asked.

“I can’t,” she said. “I burned my bridge royally when I left. My editor told me he was working on making some changes and asked me to be patient, but I’d been hearing that for a year. I thought I was so cool because I already had a job offer lined up so I was totally snotty when I turned in my resignation.” She fidgeted with her mouse. “The
Bee
won’t want me.”

“Oh.” I didn’t know what else to say.

Chantelle shrugged and packed up her workspace. I took my cue to do the same. “Do you mind if I run back and change?” I asked her. “I have a show to go to tonight. I’ll finish writing at a Starbucks or something, but I’d rather not have to change in a public restroom.”

“Knock yourself out,” she said.

I grabbed my laptop bag where I had managed to squeeze in a thin, teal, graphic T-shirt and my faded black skinny jeans. I had Converse in the car, making it a passable outfit for going to hear Empires of Solace do their thing. A few minutes later, I was back out front, hustling to gather my other belongings so Chantelle could leave. When we reached the parking lot, I turned to face her. “I’m not sure why you’re helping me, but I can’t thank you enough.”

“Ellie is borderline ruthless when it comes to the business side of journalism. Everyone and everything around her is either a stepping stone or a pawn. You’re not totally caught in Ellie’s web yet,” she said. “I figure you should know that she’s trying to spin it around you.” She waved good-bye and climbed into her car. I threw my stuff into the back seat of The Zuke and pulled out after her, not sure where I wanted to go next. I drove aimlessly for a while, exploring more of the area while I tried to puzzle out the Ellie Peters problem. So far, I didn’t have much to go on. I knew Tanner seemed surprised that I was working for Ellie, and it could be because of her reputation as a poacher at the
Bee
. Janie had said my Indie Girl stuff was a hit with advertisers, but I didn’t have any actual numbers. And I had Chantelle’s suggestion that Ellie wasn’t on the up-and-up but no corroborating evidence.

My gut said that Chantelle had no reason to lie, yet I still didn’t have a reason to rock the boat. If anything, I needed to sit tight with
Real Salt Lake
and build up a great portfolio of work as fast as possible so I could jump ship to somewhere like the
Advocate.
With that in mind, I parked in front of a little café advertising free Wi-Fi access and pulled my laptop out of the car. I would grab a salad and a corner table and spend the next two hours until the show polishing my Urban Grit story.