“You think so?” Sam beamed at the first compliment she had ever received from her boss.
“You definitely earned your advice column, Samantha,” Mr. Getty praised while leafing through the best book—and possibly only book—he had ever read.
Mr. Getty didn’t like to read, which made him the most un-ideal candidate for the job of magazine editor-in-chief. But he was a man with connections, so that was all that mattered.
“I delivered on my end, so I can write what I want?” Sam confirmed. “Including alternative medicine therapies?”
“After seeing this, you could write about the Apollo 11 moon landing last year not being staged and I’d approve it. Heck, you may have earned yourself a raise.”
“A raise?” she asked, nearly crying tears of joy.
“Well, don’t get ahead of yourself. Let’s see what we can do with this first.”
We meant he. Sam wondered what kind of something Mr. Getty planned to do. Blackmail? Bribery?
“But, and this is important,” Mr. Getty looked up for the first time since she’d handed the ledger to him, “this information has to stay between you and me. Do not tell a single soul, you hear? I don’t want this leaking to the public. At least not yet, and not without me curating the narrative.”
And there it was. He planned to steal her credit for exposing one of the biggest medical conspiracies in the nation. What Mr. Getty meant to say, but thought Sam too dumb to realize, was that he wanted control of this story. This was the kind of feature that launched an unknown women’s magazine editor-in-chief into pulling rank as a lead journalist at Newsbreak.
Only because Sam had no interest in being rejected by Newsbreak—so far they had only one woman junior writer on staff, only because her boss had tired of covering fashion—did she allow Mr. Getty to have his prized ledger and all of the fame that would soon follow when the story broke.
“I think we’re done here,” Mr. Getty concluded. “I’m busy.”
Busy listening to Myron Cope announce Steelers football stats from a brand new radio console in the corner that Sam was pretty sure the accounting department turned a blind eye to. Mr. Getty noticed her gaze and proudly stood up.
“This,” he grandstanded, “is a cassette deck. It plays cassette tapes.”
“What is a cassette tape?” Whatever it was, it looked expensive.
“It’s like an 8-track, but smaller. It plays music.”
Sam had heard of cartridge tapes, mainly used for recording and play-back purposes. But one that played music? Who came up with these newfangled inventions?
“Can you play a song?”
Mr. Getty shrugged. “I don’t have one yet. The only cassette albums available are Nina Simone, Eartha Kitt, and Beatlemania. But mark my words, cassette tapes are the wave of the future, Samantha.”
“You would know.”
Mr. Getty shooed Sam toward the door. “Anything else you need to bother me with?”
“You’re the one that called me to your office, sir,” Sam reminded him.
“Oh, right. I’m done with you. Now get back to work!”
A rap on the open office door dragged Mr. Getty’s attention from his prized stereo to a crystal vase full of red roses. Hidden behind the mass of flowers Betty Number Five peeked out. “These came for you.”
Mr. Getty’s face scrunched. “What would I want flowers for?”
“No, sir, they’re for her.” Betty’s eyes narrowed into a glare as she thrust the flowers in Sam’s direction. With the sun-kissed fingers of a girl who spent all her weekends baby oiling and laying out at the community pool, Betty held out a tiny card in a tiny envelope, already opened and Sam’s privacy breached. “It’s from a Dr. Thomas Cook,” she added coldly.
“For me?” Sam was shocked, having already written off Thomas Cook as a bridge burned.
“Thomas Cook sent you flowers?” Mr. Getty’s jaw dropped.
Sam was mildly offended that her boss found it so ludicrous, so abhorrent, that any man would send her flowers.
“In a Lalique vase, no less!” Betty exclaimed, eyeing the vase covetously, then Sam with disdain.
Neither Sam nor Mr. Getty understood the significance of Betty’s statement.
The poverty-level secretary who was intimately familiar with every wealthy label and brand scoffed. “It’s a very expensive French vase. Do you know nothing about housewares, Samantha?”
“A vase is a vase,” Sam answered.
Taking the card and flowers, she inhaled the sweet fragrance, already mentally cataloging a recipe that used rose petals for witch hazel.
Betty clicked her tongue. “That vase is worth more than you and I make in a year… combined.”
“Do you want it?” Sam offered.
Instantly Betty warmed up to her. “Really? You’d give it to… me? After what I said about you?”
“What did you say about me?” Sam inquired, her mind filling with at least half a dozen close guesses.
“Oh.” Betty stuttered, then quickly regained her composure while she quickly threw some pleasant-sounding words together. “Just that it was surprising you took the columnist job from Mel… and I was… speculating to the others what you had… done to achieve it, that’s all.”
“I didn’t take it, I earned it,” Sam clarified, “without sleeping with anyone. Anyway, I have no need for this nice of a vase, and you’ll appreciate it more than I would. I’ll find something else to put the flowers in and give it to you on my way out.”
