“Samantha Stanton!” a voice boomed amid the bodies clustered like grapes in the Ladies Home Journal’s front office.
They were packed wall to wall in the bullpen, from the receptionist’s neat-as-a-pin desk to the lead editor’s slammed-shut door. Women of every age, dress size, and background—from homemakers to hairdressers, busybodies to businesswomen—angled for seats and standing room, talking excitedly about their petitions: Fair wages. Better jobs. And dare they demand daycare?
“Has anyone seen Samantha Stanton?” the voice repeated, louder and angrier.
Upon hearing the gravelly sound that all these years later still sent a chill up Sam’s suddenly-weakened spine, she ducked into the crowd. Chairs screeched against the floor as a man rammed through like a Spanish bull.
“I know you’re here!” His declaration bounced like a Ping-Pong ball against the chatter.
“Is this who you’re looking for?” the cameraman tattled, pointing Sam out.
If given the chance, Sam would have bashed the cameraman over the head with that hefty recorder attached to him like a backpack. Such a strong dislike of someone wasn’t typical for Sam, as she didn’t tend to make enemies—except for one. For a moment she forgot all about the pharmaceutical company responsible for her father’s death. Now she had a new nemesis, and his name was… well, she would call the small-time news station advertised across his Portapak video camera and find out.
“I see you, Samantha. Don’t you hide from me!” the voice thundered out a warning.
There was no avoiding the magazine’s head honcho, Calvin Dreyfuss the third, he always introduced himself as, clinging to the two former generations of publishing tycoons that had passed their mantels of greatness down to him, lest anyone doubt his qualifications. Which no one dared to do. He hadn’t acquired the nickname Callous Calvin for nothing. Luckily he had never caught on that Cal was short for his unlikeable personality, not his namesake.
As Sam spotted his bald head bobbing its way toward her, sensibility told her to run from her former boss. But she had already lost all sensibility when she hand-planted the cameraman, then stormed through the office doors, so her feet remained glued to the mustard-yellow tile as Mr. Dreyfuss lurched out of the crowd, huffing and puffing like he’d just finished a marathon.
“Hello, sir.” Sam stood, motionless, like an awestruck teenybopper at a Beatles concert. But Mr. Dreyfuss was no John Lennon, and Sam was no prepubescent girl. She was a grown woman with a mind of her own, and she would remind him of that, if need be.
“So,” he stated. “There you are. Always in the middle of drama.”
“It’s good to see you, sir,” Sam offered, though it was never good to see Callous Calvin, especially on a bad day. Today would prove to be the epitome of bad days.
“I can’t say the same for you, Miss Stanton. You look like something the cat dragged in.”
Shiny and rotund, Mr. Dreyfuss grumbled as his gaze wandered over Sam, her heart racing, lips chapped, and the scent of Ô de Lancôme fading amid the stench of too many bodies in too small a space. Unlike most women she knew, Sam was rarely plagued with nerves—or big feelings of any kind. She would simply logic her way through most problems, and leave emotions out of it. But today was different. Because it wasn’t only about her. The lives of all her sisters-in-arms were at stake alongside her. She feared not for herself, but for them.
“Uh, thank you, sir?”
“Enough pleasantries,” Mr. Dreyfuss barked, spittle spraying, although there was nothing pleasant about this conversation. “What are you doing back here in New York? I thought you moved to Pittsburgh.”
“I did, sir. I came back to support my former co-workers…” Then Sam remembered her father-avenging agenda. “And ask for a favor.”
“So you’re here to bring chaos to my doorstep, are you?”
“Chaos? No. We’re here to negotiate about—” Sam began, only to be promptly cut off.
“You call this negotiating?”
Behind her the cameraman chuckled with satisfaction. Sam didn’t like the way his glare dawdled on her as nearly one hundred women crammed into the offices where secretaries and publishing executives watched with helpless bewilderment as Mr. Dreyfuss took charge.
“I should have known you were behind this… whatever this is!” he yelled, even though she stood barely a foot away.
“Negotiations,” Sam reminded him, only making him angrier.
A haze of cigarette smoke veiled his ruddy face that looked like an infected zit about to pop, which a dab of tea tree oil could remedy. “One of these days you’re going to give me a heart attack from all the stress you cause.”
“That cigarette is more likely to trigger a heart condition than my being here. Might I suggest some hawthorn berries to lower your blood pressure?”
“Might I suggest you lose the know-it-all attitude?” he grunted back. “You always seem to attract trouble, don’t you, Samantha?”
“It’s Sam, not Samantha,” she corrected him, like she had done a million times back when she had worked for him.
The Twiggy-haired receptionist looked up from her blue typewriter, the clack of keys pausing. Mr. Dreyfuss shrugged and rolled his eyes, like he had done a million times back when Sam had corrected him.
“Whatever you say,” he said, the cigarette dangling precariously from his mouth. “You’re making me regret not firing you instead of letting you transfer to our Pittsburgh rag. Do you cause such problems for your boss at Women’s House Magazine?”
When Mr. Dreyfuss had agreed to transfer Sam to their smaller imprint after her father’s prognosis, she soon discovered the editor at the Pittsburgh-based publisher could have cared less about his magazine’s success. It was no secret he was simply counting down the days to retirement, so when Sam had approached him about taking over the neglected advice column, he sent her to the bigwigs in New York City to deal with her. So here she was, ready to plead her case and issue some ultimatums. Only, the ultimatums remained stuck in her parched throat.
“If you’d just listen, you’ll see I’m not causing problems. I’m fixing them.”
“Ha!” he huffed. “You started a riot that’s going to put a bunch of women behind bars.”
His sheer ignorance bolstered her confidence to say what she came here on this brisk March day to say. “It’s not a riot. All I’m asking is for you to listen to our requests.”
“Requests?” Mr. Dreyfuss coughed a cloud of smoke into Sam’s face. “No, you’re a herd of crazy feminists storming in here as if you own the place, making ludicrous demands! This is tyranny! Trespassing! And I’m pretty sure illegal!”
“We’re not storming anything, sir. It’s a sit-in.” Another of her corrections that she was certain he would shrug off and ignore. “What we want is simple: our voices to be heard—and read. In here.” She lifted the stack of Ladies Home Journal and Women’s House Magazine she had brought with her as evidence.
“You’re lucky I haven’t called the cops… yet. But when I do, you’re going to bring a lot more trouble on a lot more people, Samantha. Are you prepared to start a war?”
Suddenly uncertain, scared, and self-conscious, she smoothed her androgynous shag, tucking a few aimless hairs behind her ears. Her mother called it an “ape drape,” and credited Sam’s perpetual singledom to the haircut that would go out of style by 1972, since apparently every other woman could see just how tragic it looked except for Sam. But as she saw it, if the haircut was good enough for Jane Fonda, it was good enough for her.
“I’m not trying to start a war, Mr. Dreyfuss. Women simply want representation in the magazine, that’s all.”
