The Announcement

Lana returned to her desk 15 minutes later. This was, without a doubt, the meekest I'd ever seen her. And frustrated too. She kept fidgeting on her seat, shooting glances at me every 5 minutes. I returned none of them. This time I wanted to really edge her. How far would she go to get my attention? What would she do? The burning in her groins was going nowhere, sooner or later she would beg me to do anything. And that was fun to think about. But now it was time to shift my focus again.

It was 12 o'clock. Gretchen came in and gathered all of us.

Time to enter this big meeting.

And soon we were all there. The whole main staff.

And it wasn't a really big bunch. Most of our work was done by freelancers. Freelancer photographers, freelancer writers etc. I guess that was the cheapest option. Only a few select of us worked here fulltime. Me being one of them. Seriously, how to fuck I got this position? Did I used to be good or something?

But yeah, basically Ulla, Lana, Sophie and me were the main writers, the only in-house writers. Everyone else was a freelancer. As for photography, yes we had lots of photographers on payroll, but they were always away in whatever fashion shows in Europe usually. And that's were most of the other freelancer writers were too. Living the life, going to parties etc. Lucky bastards. Anna-Marie was the only photographer who was located here, the one taking the most advantage of our studio. And I guess you could say she was our "official" photographer, if we had one. She was here too, of course. Still looking quite disturbed about this morning.

Then there were three people I rarely, if ever, had reason to talk to.

First of all, Noriko Suzumiya, the head of marketing and advertising.

Yes, she handled both departments. Only one of those was usually more than enough work for one person, but she bitterly held on to both posts. And I guess she did a pretty good job, because nobody really challenged her on that. Real number crusher.

Her score was -61. I think we've talked only like three times the whole time I've worked here. Each time she made it clear she was way too busy to spend one more second with me. Both departments were in a different floor from ours, so we rarely ran into each other.

Then there was the "art director", Teresa Bolling.

...What could I say about her? I thought she was weird. First of all, she held the title of "art director", but it didn't mean the same thing here as it did in most magazines. You see, usually art director is in charge of the whole look of the magazine. And she was, but the role was very reduced. There was very little communication with the creative. Our magazine had a unique set-up in that sense. Gretchen was the editor, but also sort of the art director. In a sense, she was in charge of how the whole thing would feel and look like. Teresa was in charge of making her vision happen. In a nutshell, Teresa was the boss of the photo editors and layout people. Some of them worked in the house too, but I guess they weren't important enough to be called to this meeting.

Usually the art director would be the boss of photographers too, but not in our case. Gretchen had insituted a method where both the writer and the photographer would work together on the article, and she would approve or disapprove the design. Teresa took no part in that.

In actuality, Gretchen was our editor-in-chief. She was in charge of everything, unless Maria said otherwise. Maria was the chief in title, and in the fact she owned the damn thing, but as long as things were running smoothly, she rarely interfered.

I think the consensus about Teresa was that she lived in her own little world. She very rarely talked to people, and when she did, it was usually something weird. Like you had just walked in middle of a conversation she was having with herself. But hey, artists are weird, and she more than proved that case. It was sort of infuriating working with her, and happily it was kinda rare that I had to.

Her score was -33.

Then there was our corporate lawyer, Hayley Joan Marino.

She came by the office when we had legal issues, with copyrights and stuff. But I of course knew her better from the time she defended me against that one intern who accused me of sexual harassment. Thinking of which, I really needed to find her too. She no longer worked for the company, but she definitely needed to pay for her former sins.

Hayley was nice enough, I guess. But as lawyers go, not much sense for humor. I guess she and Sophie had a lot in common. But then again, not really. Sophie seemed to have a very dark sense of humor, while Hayley was nothing but business. Hayley felt much more like a robot.

Her score was -49.

Oh. And did I even need to mention, that all of these women were fucking hot? Like ridiculously so? If anybody ever asked me why I wanted to hang on to this job for dear life, they only needed to look at this room right now. Just the idea, that maybe some day all of them were taking orders from me? Oh God... I had a route to my personal paradise right in front of me, and I would fight for it like a mad dog.

If I did everything correctly, man, the rest of my days will be filled with nothing but enjoyment.

As we all settled into her office, Lana sort of perked up. Like she always did around Maria. She immediately welcomed her back, asked about London, sounded really excited to hear Maria's answers... I was sort of amazed that Lana's brown-nosing quality hadn't changed at all. She still treated Maria like a celebrity, a genius who she really wanted to work for. I could see the pain of everyone's face as she did this. Wish I could just gag her again.

"...but I think we should really get to the point of the meeting?", Maria finally seemed to realize.

"Oh yeah! Of course! I'm really intrigued!", Lana said and stepped back.

"Yes, if we can save the small talk for later, I'm already running late." Noriko said with her patented rudeness.

"Of course. You see, what I'm about to say, will not be very easy. I've gathered you all here, because you are not only the staff of my most successful magazine, you feel more like family members to me." Ugh. Yeah right. "And some of you are even stock holders." I, sadly wasn't. I think I was offered once. Turned it down, too costly. Of course the value of that has shot up like ten times since.

"But... The meetings in London... They were about selling this magazine. And we got a buyer. The Remington Group."

There were huge gasps in the room. Me included.

The Remington Group... I think we had all heard about them. They bought companies, and basically sold them for parts. First they suck them dry, and then throw them in the garbage. That was their business model, and it seemed to work for them.

Which meant... Oh God. What... What about my paradise?

"The deal will be finalized this friday. But I thought all of you deserved to hear it if from me before it happened. Naturally, none of this will be leaked out. If it does, and it makes me sad to say this, but Hayley here will not only destroy you, but your family too."

"That is correct."

So much for us being like family members, I guess.

But while almost every one in the room began speaking loudly at the same time, asking "why", "when" and "where"-types of questions, there was only one thing I was thinking about.

I had until friday.