But she didn’t break her stride. “Is he in?”
“He’s in, Maude, but you can’t go in there right now. He doesn’t want to be disturbed.Maude!”
The secretary yelled because Maude Drayton had already opened the door to the office of the managing editor and was hurrying inside.
Amos Forrester slammed the stack of files on his desk. “Didn’t I tell that gal I didn’t wanna be disturbed?!”
“A text message, Amos?” Maude made it up to the front of his desk. “You fired me bytext?”
He leaned back in his chair, closed his weary gray eyes, and then opened them back up and looked at the woman that had always been his favorite reporter hands down. Because she never got her due. She was smarter than everybody else on his staff, but all of her applications for advancement were turned down even after he approved them.
She was also the hardest worker on staff with the best story-to-byline in the business, but that never got her any accolades either. And if you asked a burnt out old newsman like him, she was by far the prettiest one in the building, too. But you could never tell her anything like that or she’d try to take your head off. He’d never met a woman so smart and feisty and confident, but who thought so little of herself.
But whether she liked it or not, she had a look about her that turned men’s heads. Then they’d wonder why were they doing a double-take on a woman who put no effort whatsoever in her looks. She wore little makeup. No extensions. And rarely wore a dress or high-heels. She had long, thick, wavy hair, yet she never styled it once in all the years Amos had known her. She always wore it in a ponytail. And often a messy one at that. And her clothes, usually slacks, a sleeveless blouse, and sometimes a blazer, were always neat and tidy on her slender frame, they fit her very well, but they were cheap as rags. He used to dream about her curvaceous little body in a skintight leopard dress. Then he’d wake up, knowing that she’d hate his guts if she knew he was dreaming about her, and he’d wrap his arms around his wife and go back to sleep.
Then he exhaled and rested his clasped hands on his stomach. “Believe it or not, there is such a thing as variety in wardrobes.”
Maude just stood there. She’d just been dropped by her boyfriend. She’d just been fired by her job. Her life was upside down. And this man was talking about herclothes? “What does my style have to do with what I just said to you?”
“You could wear a nice little black dress sometimes. That’s all I’m saying. You’d look fab in it. Or maybe even a designer outfit every once in a while.”
Maude stretched her already huge eyes and shook her head. She could not believe it. Was that all men thought about? How womenlooked? She rested one hand on her hip and the other hand on his desk, and she leaned forward. “If you ever see me in a designer anything,” she said, “kill me on the spot.”
Amos laughed. “Your sense of humor always slay me. I will definitely miss that sharp wit.” But he could see that it wasn’t funny in the least to Maude. He could see the hurt in her eyes. And the fear. She was bleeding over there, and he was making light of it?
His smile disappeared. “It was out of my hands, Maude.”
“Bullshit.”
“It was out of my hands! Real talk. I have defended you from day one and you know it. So don’t try to blame me.”
“But they fired me, Amos. No warning. No second chance. They just jumped up and fired me, Amos! Me! I woke up this morning very much employed. Now I’munemployed? This can’t be real!”
“I told you to leave it alone. I told you that you cannot piss off the entire power apparatus of this town and expect to keep your job. How many times have I told you that, Maude? How many times?”
“I haven’t even filed my story yet!”
“You didn’t have to file it! You were all up in their spaces asking all those questions. You were snooping all over this town where your nose didn’t belong. They’re crooked as curves, yesthey are. Every one of those jokers downtown are crooked as the day is long. But they aren’t stupid people. They get it. They know when they’re under siege. And that’s how you made them feel. Like they were in a little glass fishbowl and you had the bowl in your hand ready to smash that bitch to pieces. Real talk.”
Maude stood erect, folded her arms, and was shaking her leg nervously. She still could not believe it. “All I’ve given to this newspaper. I’ve been working here since I was eighteen years old. That was eleven years ago when I started working here, Amos. And you want real talk? Let’s talk real.”
She unfolded her arms and leaned even further over his desk. “I’ve taken pay cut after pay cut after pay cut when my white male counterparts were getting pay raises. You want real talk? Let’s talk real! And now I’m forced to work based on each story I file rather than an actual salary supposedly because of even more budget cuts.”
“Everybody has to work that way now and you know it, Maude.”
“But there’s no business stories out there for me to file, except for the ones I generate myself. Like the one I’m working on now. It’s big. I’m telling you it’s big. And you’ve done everything in your power to stop me from doing my job.”
“I was trying to stop you from getting fired. But did you listen to me?”
“I was doing my job!”
“I know that. And you think I wanted to cut your pay? No! That was out of my hands too, Maude.”
“I was making a third of what I used to earn. Barely surviving. But because I loved my work and believed in what I was doing was the right thing to do, I accepted those pay cuts. And now you’re taking that away from me too? After all these years this is how you treat me?”
“It’s not me. How many times do I have to tell you that? I’m the second most experienced person around here, second only to you, but I’m just a nobody who has to run everything by the executive editor before I can approve any major moves. That’s why all of your promotions were turned down. That’s why Hamp didn’t come to me when they were pissed off with your snooping around. Oh no. They went over my head. The powers that be in this town, and they are formidable whether you wanna believe it or not, went where they needed to go and I was ordered to fire you. Full stop.”
“But ordered by whom? You run it by the executive editor, but you make the final decisions on hiring and firing. He has the final word on promotions. You have the final word on hiring and firing. This isn’t a promotion we’re talking about. This is my job!”
