That wasn’t even enough time to convince a woman to switch shampoos, let alone start a revolution. No, she needed time. Much more time. “How about thirty months?” she countered hopefully, then added between gritted teeth, “Consider the savings as they write the magazine for half the pay.”
A frown drooped across Mr. Dreyfuss’s face. One look at that sour expression informed Sam she had already lost as tensions rose around her. The congregating police were still searching for the leader responsible for the mounting chaos. And for the owner of the illegally parked red 1965 Chevrolet Impala SS.
“If one of you doesn’t turn herself in for starting this riot, I’m arresting the lot of you!” bellowed the loudest lawman of the bunch.
Judging by the wild eyes, flustered cheeks, and nervous twitches, one of the sisters-in-arms was about to throw Sam to the wolves, and she couldn’t blame whoever the Judas would be. This whole thing was her idea, after all. Fear flew like aimless darts:
“The pigs are here to arrest us!” the hippie declared.
“I can’t afford another bail after getting thrown in the slammer last year at Woodstock. I gotta skitty,” the pregnant mom-of-four surprised Sam with.
“Wait—we’re allowed to leave? Peace, love, and granola!” Argyle Gal realized aloud, weaving her way to the door. She halted at Sam’s side, then patted her on the shoulder. “It was an honor fighting alongside you, Sam. You’re the real deal. We did our best, but some battles just can’t be won. Not by us, at least.”
As Sam watched her leave, the cameraman hustled to catch up, aiming a harsh elbow directly in Sam’s eye as he carelessly passed. He paused only a moment to glace back unapologetically.
“Oh, that’s gonna leave a bruise.” With no further sympathy offered, he instead raised his hand, pointing a finger down at her. “Officer, here’s your culprit!” Then he scuttled away, camera and recorder bouncing off his legs, in pursuit of Argyle Gal while his mediocre hit-on trailed behind him: “Hey, gorgeous, wait up! Need a personal escort?”
Sam’s troops were steadily retreating. The police were encroaching. The door to negotiations was closing as quickly as the iron bars of that imminent jail cell.
Glancing at the panicked mom-of-four, Sam didn’t know what to do. Mom-of-Four earned the right to keep a job even when she was pregnant. Argyle Gal deserved the respect of her employers, no matter how beautiful she was. Hippie should be assured the choice to remain single and self-sufficient, with access to loans and reasonable pay. Sam couldn’t give up, not when she was this close.
“What do you say, Mr. Dreyfuss? Thirty issues to turn the magazines around. I’ll even put my job up as collateral.” At the time Sam offered this, she had no idea it would in fact cost her more than her job. It would cost her everything.
By now the bellowing bobby had arrived, whipping out his handcuffs. “Ma’am, you’re coming with me.”
“But sir—” Sam pleaded.
The cuffs clicked nonetheless. Sam could feel her eye socket purpling with pain and her neck pinking with embarrassment.
“There’s no need to arrest her,” Mr. Dreyfuss attempted a rescue. “Everything’s as sound as a pound, Officer.”
“Sorry, Mr. Dreyfuss, but we’ve been given orders,” he rebutted, dragging Sam to the door. “You can pick her up at the station and post her bail. Or not.”
One look at Sam’s pathetic surrender seemed to do the trick, because the last thing she heard as she trundled through the office doors was a frustrated but white-flag-waving Calvin Dreyfuss calling above the din:
“You win, Sam!”
They were the three most beautiful words she’d ever heard.
“You have until the May 1972 publication. That’s twenty-four issues to turn it around or you bow out and I never see your face again. Final offer!”
Sam enthusiastically accepted.
“If you fail,” he added a warning, “you’ll be blacklisted from every magazine in the country. I hope it’s worth it.”
“It’s worth everything, sir.” Her heart soared unlike anything she’d ever felt, those dormant emotions blooming. “I promise you won’t regret it!”
He would regret it the very next day.
While Sam was hauled off to the first of many incarcerations to come, she couldn’t have been happier. That happiness would eventually water down into despair and deliberation over where it had all fallen apart. Only in looking back did the realization punch her right in the gut, leaving her breathless.
Everything wrong always cycled back to one person, the only man who could mete out such a blow: Raul Smothers.
Chapter 5
It was too quiet. As anyone who has children—or normally noisy pets—knows, that unusual hush is not in fact tranquility, but trouble.
“Something’s wrong.” This was Sam’s first spoken thought in hours, as she swung open her front door after a long day in the slammer and a longer night driving home. Despite all the things that felt wrong about living in her dead grandmother’s mausoleum of memories, it was something else altogether that bugged Sam in this moment.
Heading straight to the fridge, she grabbed a bag of frozen peas and held them to her eye socket, while the other eye adjusted to the morning light that poured in through the kitchen windows.
The mid-century ranch house was nestled comfortably in a suburb populated by widows of a nearly extinct generation who wore flapper-dresses in the Roarin’ ‘20s and survived on giggle juice during the Great Depression. Alcohol seemed the only way to endure a dozen children sharing two bedrooms while living off of liver loaf and creamed lima beans.
“Hello?” Sam called out, waiting.
It wasn’t the mothball scent of her long-deceased grandmother’s wardrobe infusing the wall-to-wall shag carpet that bothered her. Nor was it the hideous checkered avocado green wallpaper that Grandma Stanton had claimed matched Sam’s eyes. No, it was the eerie quiet that shouldn’t have been there… along with the light on the state-of-the-art PhoneMate answering machine that Sam’s mother overpaid $300 for, which Sam swore she didn’t want and would never use, but was now announcing a message with that demanding red glow.
