Magnolia Wednesdays by Wendy Wax Read Free Book Online

like your kind of thing at all.” He was shaking his head, clearly getting ready to blow her off.
    “Oh, I’ve covered all kinds of things,” she assured him. “I enjoy investigative journalism, and I’ve worked in the broadcast field for a long time. But I’m a writer/reporter first and foremost. I started in print and I can cover anything and make it interesting.”
    “I’m sure you could.” His expression said, not . “But I seriously doubt you’d want to . . .”
    “Why don’t you let me be the judge of what I’d want to do.” She leaned forward, her words coming from between clenched teeth.
    “He’s already afraid of you,” the little voice cautioned. “If you scare him too badly, he won’t hire you to get coffee.”
    Vivien knew the voice was right. But just as her emotions had pushed her beyond control with Dan, her desperation was shoving at her now. She needed a job and she needed it right away. And given the fact that she was unmarried and pregnant, print would be a better choice for her now anyway. People didn’t really care about the personality behind a byline. There were no celebrity journalists on a publication like the Weekly Encounter .
    Vivien slid back in her chair and unclenched her jaw. “I mean, I can’t think of anything I’d be unable to research or unprepared to write about.” There that was better, calmer. More like a normal person. “And given the salary range you advertised you’re unlikely to get anyone with half my experience to do it.”
    “Yes,” he said. “That’s why it’s listed as entry-level. If I’d realized who you were, I wouldn’t have wasted either of our time.” He started to rise.
    “Wait! I mean, no. Please. Sit down.” She lowered her voice as he did as she asked, then drew a deep breath and let it out in an effort to remove the panic from her voice and her eyes. Later, much later, she’d let herself think about the fact that she was begging to be considered for a job so far beneath her.
    “Why don’t you just tell me what the job is? And we’ll decide together whether I’m right for it or not.” She spoke sweetly. While smiling. It was one of the most painful things she’d ever done.
    “Well,” he sat back and steepled his fingers, which made him look older—at least fourteen. “Our polls show that our readers are tired of all the celebrity articles. Oh, they want to know about Brad and Angelina and their kids, but they want to read about people like themselves, too. But maybe with some kind of kick to it, you know?”
    She nodded, smiling with intent interest, just as she would have for the cutaway close-up Marty always shot to cut into the interview.
    “What we’re envisioning is a weekly column from the suburbs. A sort of ongoing commentary on the current state of motherhood and apple pie with a few soccer moms beating the crap out of referees whose calls they don’t like thrown in for good measure.” He smiled, warming to his subject. “Snippets of real life as recorded in the real America.”
    Vivien stopped smiling and nodding, pretty much blown away that this child had managed to come up with the one topic Vivien was not even remotely qualified to or interested in writing about. She might have stood then and admitted defeat, except that she had a “bun in the oven” and she simply couldn’t afford to be without an income—even one as small as the Weekly Encounter was offering.
    So she stayed in her seat and arranged her features to telegraph abject admiration. “I think that’s brilliant,” she said. “We could call it Snapshots from the Suburbs. Or maybe Postcards from Suburbia.”
    He nodded, starting to unbend. Liking her for liking his idea.
    “Maybe it could be written with an insider’s knowledge but from a . . . newcomer’s perspective,” Vivien continued. “You know, like by someone just discovering the whole wonderful world of suburbia. As if an alien space-ship had deposited them in . . . east