Dr. Stud

“Of course I wrote about it. That's my job. My life.”

She clears her throat. “And what did you… write? An article?”

“About a hundred thousand words, Hannah,” I inform her triumphantly. “I didn't have an ending, but now I do! So thanks!”

She steeples her fingers and leans back in her chair, regarding me shrewdly. All the mirth and bubbly excitement seems to have gone out her, replaced by this sharp shard of woman.

“I look forward to reading it. That’s a lot more than I was asking for. Maybe we can talk about… installments or something. A serial column?”

“No,” I blurt out defiantly. “I don’t want it chopped up into pieces or given to one of the copy guys. I don’t want to have to run it past an editor. And I don’t want to reshape it or cut it for space or any of the other things we do to serials. I think it's a book. That's how I see it. On shelves, in bookstores.”

“A book,” she repeats coldly. “I'm not really sure that we want to publish a book? I think that your column on TurnPost is probably the right place… the only place for that sort of work. If I decide to go with it.”

I just shrug, trying to be as breezy as possible. She stares me down but I hold my ground, keeping Emmet and Dillon in the back of my mind, pretending they are backing me up, standing behind me, thick arms crossed.

“No, I don't think so,” I finally say. “I think I am going to do it my way.”

“You can't.”

I stare at her, noting the squared position of her shoulders, the icy chill of her gaze.

“Excuse me?"

“Any work that you've done while under my employ is work product. It belongs to me. If I say it's not a novel, it is not a novel.”

“I wrote it!” I huff, incredulous. “It's mine.”

“So, I will put it out in hundred word increments… maybe at the top of the home page… maybe at the bottom of the page. Or I might do do nothing with it. That's my option.”

The room sloshes back and forth again, threatening to tip me out the window and down forty storeys into the river.

“You can't have it!”

She opens her palms again as though revealing a chess move. Her voice is slow and calculating.

“Are you seriously saying that?”

“Well... yes,” I stammer. I’m not entirely sure what I'm agreeing to, but I’m certainly not just going to give it to her.

“Then you’re fired.”

My mouth drops open.

“Theft of company property, by my reckoning,” she continues coldly. “Pity. You won’t even qualify for unemployment. That will be so weird. It’s a tough life. Unemployed writers are just about everywhere, aren't they?”

“Jesus, Hannah. Do you have to be such a bitch?”

She grins, her smile cruel and dry as she slowly stands up and picks the phone up from her desk.

“Security? Please accompany Ms. Cage out of the building. Retrieve her ID as well. Her employment here is terminated. Thank you.” She returns the phone to its cradle and regards me.

My head is spinning.

“I just… I can't…”

I try to think of something to say, but there's nothing left. She looks so different than the picture that's on my cell phone, the one with the freckles and big smile, but now I see this is really her. I don’t mean anything to her. And it dawns on me that I probably never have. Somehow I made up this whole fantasy world we were such good friends, that all seems totally fabricated now.

I'm a writer. That's what we do.