Sam should have known better.
Dreams always ended in disaster. Life had taught her this lesson again and again, but blinded by love and consumed by happiness, Sam had momentarily forgotten. For several months she lived off of Raul’s kisses, her new promotion, and the magazine’s growing numbers, all thanks to her hard work.
Until now.
It was at the office Easter party when Mr. Getty made a surprise visit with a surprise announcement. Everyone was already boozy from Betty Number Five’s famous purple punch, and the snack table was mostly empty except for a few crumbs. Sam had been forced to dress up in a bunny suit, which she actually didn’t mind as she played the part well, handing out dyed hard-boiled eggs that she reminded everyone to eat for their daily dose of lean protein and calcium. But when Mr. Getty showed up, his mouth turned down in a glum frown, he ordered Sam to remove the bunny head and called the room to attention.
“Mr. Getty has some news!” Sam yelled over the din, but no one paid her any heed.
“As you all know,” Mr. Getty followed up with, and the room fell to an instant hush. Mel stood at his side in the bullpen surrounded by wavering writers, tipsy typists, and soused supervisors. “There have been some changes at Women’s House Magazine. Mel became my right-hand man as editor-in-chief when I got promoted to vice president of Cook Media. But over the past few months I was faced with some very difficult decisions. One of which is going to be especially hard to share with you today.”
Murmurs spread across the room as everyone speculated about the news. Mel’s face turned a pale shade of gray, and Sam felt her stomach drop.
“The owner of Women’s House Magazine has decided to shut us down by summer.”
The room erupted.
“May 1972 will be our final issue.”
“But our sales have been off the charts!” the marketing manager yelled.
“And our reader base has quadrupled!” the mailroom supervision added.
“I know, I’m as shocked as all of you are,” Mr. Getty said. “But that gives us three issues to give our readers our best work yet before we close up for good.”
“Why should we even bother?” Mel asked.
“Because that’s not all the news I have for you. For those who would like to relocate, the powers that be have offered jobs for all of you to work for the sister magazine Ladies Home Journal in New York City. So anyone who wants a job will automatically have one starting in September. Of course, they’ll be expecting stellar results like you’ve brought to our little rag, so bring your A game, people.”
“But why are they shutting us down?” Sam asked. “I did what you told me to do—proved that we could increase sales with our new content. Readers love us. The fan mail has been unprecedented. I don’t understand the logic when we’re profitable and growing. Why would they shut us down when we’re doing so well?”
“You can blame yourself, Samantha,” Mel grumbled.
“Me? Why is this my fault?”
“Do you know who owns our magazine? Cook Media, that’s who. And who owns Cook Media? None other than Thomas Cook. You sparked the fire that burned us all down.”
The company Cook Media had started out accidentally on purpose. When Thomas first started dabbling in media, he had no idea of the massive amounts of profit that all things publishing and television could tap into. He had only wanted to get his poems published, and no reputable publishing house or magazine would print them. So what does a rich man do whose heart is set on sharing his lyrical gift with the world, despite rejection after rejection? Does he work on refining his craft? Certainly not! Instead, he buys the publisher and then forces them to print his collection of poems.
But that’s not enough to tame that ego hungry for more. So he then goes on to place a bookstore order of 10,000 copies to ensure his little book of poems hits the New York Times bestseller list, even after a three-week newspaper strike. Despite the critics calling it “juvenile prose” and “barely worthy of my five-year-old daughter’s talents,” it wouldn’t matter because he had won. Thomas Cook was in the business of winning, and he was remarkably good at it.
When owning the media meant owning a woman’s magazine, he had scoffed and proposed a hunting and fishing magazine to replace it. Until his accountant pointed out how profitable vanity literature—especially smut aimed at women—could be. Give them their fashion magazines and romance novels and soap operas. It was a gold mine that Thomas accidentally tapped into, and planned to keep tapping as long as it brought in his prized cash cow.
Like any livestock owner, eventually the dying cows were sent to slaughter. That’s what Women’s House Magazine had been—a dying cow needing a good butcher to cut off of the rotting part and keep the filets. The plan to shut it down had been in the works for years, but then Sam happened. She resuscitated that dead cow beyond everyone’s expectations.
And then she had to go and ruin it all.
Despite her rejection of him, he couldn’t punish her by leaving her jobless, no matter how much she deserved it. He wasn’t that cruel, even though he did have her greenhouse destroyed and reputation ruined by a stint in jail. But when Sam made it clear he had no chance in heaven or hell with her, he decided maybe he should be heartless. It was better than suffering a broken one. And so he proceeded with shutting down the magazine.
“Well, Sam is not exactly to blame,” Mr. Getty shockingly came to her defense, which Sam surmised would probably revive the rumors that she had slept her way into her advice column after all. Not that it mattered anymore, considering she would no longer be working here in three months.
“What do you mean?” Mel probed.
“Apparently Cook had planned to shut down the magazine a long time ago due to…” he paused, choosing his words carefully, “budget issues.”
Sam knew exactly what kind of budget issues they were—the new console radio, the cassette tape stereo, the hidden telephone box, the video game, the state-of-the-art typewriters… No wonder they were being shut down when Mr. Getty had the fiscal responsibility worthy of the United States Government.
“He only kept the magazine up and running because of Miss Stanton…”
“You couldn’t take one for the team and sleep with him, could you?” Mel accused.
Usually scandals revolved around a woman sleeping with a man, not avoiding him like the bubonic plague. And yet here Sam was, caught in a scandal of Cook’s own making and paying the price for not being a slut. You were shamed for being loose, and shamed for not being loose enough. Women could never win, could they?
The following Monday morning Mel summoned Sam into his disaster of an office that smelled like rotten eggs, as there was no room in the budget for the janitor anymore. A new hire sat in one chair and Sam sat in the empty one beside him.
“I’m sure you saw this coming, Samantha,” Mel cut to the chase, “but you’re fired.”
“Fired? I still have until May, don’t I?” Sam had been relying on those last months of paychecks to cover her bills until she found something else. Something completely unrelated to journalism or holistic medicine, as both had caused her nothing but problems.
“No, it’s effective immediately.”
Obviously Sam had to go, the sooner the better. For Mel, that is. Mel had standards, no matter how low they were, as evidenced by the fact that he married a woman who daily reminded him why she hated him, and he stayed in a job beneath him. Sam was the reason the magazine was getting shut down because she couldn’t open her legs like any other woman who wanted to climb the ranks. But if Sam were to go, where did that leave him with Ladies Home Journal? Back to the grind with his mediocre column, that’s where. His promotion had only been due to his tight grip on Sam’s column’s coattails. Mediocre columnists didn’t inspire much in the way of climbing up the editor-in-chief ladder.
Mel hated to admit it, but Samantha was the key to their success. Publicly unrecognized, of course, but she acted as if she knew. Not a day went by when the mail staff didn’t drop a heaping bag of letters on her desk—along with a complaint from the typists who were forced to help sort them and bring Sam tea, as if Sam were better than them! What was she—British? Opinionated, feminist, tea-drinking Sam, the bane of their existence. And yet the magazine had only hung around for as long as it did because of her.
Fortunately, Mel had been studying Sam’s work, so he sent for copies of every column she’d written straightaway. Ladies Home Journal needed assurance that Sam’s so-called innovative approach could be mimicked without her. But as soon as the magazines were dropped on Mel’s desk, he knew he was in trouble. He didn’t know a darn thing about women.
