L.A. Caveman (18 page)

"Do you like it?" he murmured. He
stroked himself. She felt some vertigo --
is this really
happening?
-- but then the humor of it rolled over her. She
hadn't expected to find a pervert with captain's bars, was
all.

She smiled, which excited him
visibly.

"I love it," she assured him. "Pull
your pants down further so I can see it better."

He complied with a knowing smirk on
his face. It must have been awkward for him to do sitting down, but
he lowered his trousers and undies to his knees, all the while
stroking himself.

"Do you want to suck it?" he asked her
in a dreamy voice.

She responded, sultry. "Ooooh, I want
to get it wet." With one hand she emptied her Cosmopolitan on his
crotch, with the other she tipped the table over, exposing him to a
few more people than he’d intended.

Mortification flushed his face as he
emerged from his own internal world while frantically trying to
yank up his pants. The pink liquid made his wilting erection
shine.

"See ya, pervert," she muttered as she
walked away.

Definitely a strikeout.

Stanna sat staring at the altered
column Jake had dropped on her desk. He'd left that morning, so he
wasn't around to throw it back in his face.

It was horrible.

She knew what he was trying to do. He
thought her column was too negative on men. Too critical of nasty
little male habits like leaving the toilet seat up and belching in
public, as well as bigger ones like predatory promiscuity. But his
compromise of the week was awful. He’d edited until the column
essentially granted men the right to swagger, scratch, spit, and
screw to their heart's content -- and just to be fair, granted the
same rights to women.

It was a slap in her face.

If she changed the wording back, she'd
be betraying his trust.

If she let it go to press, she'd be
betraying her ideals.

The phone rang.

"
Men's Weekly
," she
answered.

"This is Eva Swanson from CBS news,
who am I speaking with please?"

"Stanna Whitland."

"Stanna a k a 'Stan'?" Eva asked
slyly.

Stanna stilled. Where was this going?

The woman continued. "I had a tip from
a reliable source that you were, in fact, the writer of 'Stan
Says.' Our viewers would be interested in knowing what it's like
for a woman to write as a man about such very masculine subject
matter."

Stanna felt cornered. If her identity
were publicized, she couldn't hide behind 'Stan's' name anymore
about those horrible columns. But if she denied it and the woman's
source was truly reliable, she'd be exposed for a liar and the
magazine would possibly suffer negative publicity.

Her identity was blown. What should
she do?

“
No comment,” she
tried.

The woman laughed. “Your prerogative.
I’ll just run the article without your input, then.” She
waited.

Stanna grimaced. She didn't have much
of a choice but to admit it. But she didn't have to admit to liking
it. Besides, didn't Jake want more publicity? He’d increased the
promotion budget. This was free promotion. Maybe this could be
good. She could do a little favor for the sake of the magazine, and
then maybe Jake would warm to her. Professionally, of
course.

"Okay fine. It's true. I'll give you
the interview if you like."

"Wonderful. What time's good for
you?"

After the interview, Stanna had
misgivings. Eva had asked her at one point "Was the 'Stan' column
your idea?" She'd answered with an emphatic no, adding that Jake
tailored each column to his needs. Maybe she shouldn't have told
the woman that. Her eyes had glinted shrewdly at that revelation.
Stanna had only told her that to reduce her responsibility for the
'Stan' columns, but she now realized the woman may have taken it
differently.

She didn't realize how differently
until the next night's news.

"...and from West Hollywood we have
another story of a gross abuse of power, this time directed at an
innocent young columnist. But the victims include everyone deceived
by the magazine's tagline,
'By, For, and About Men.'
Stanna
Whitland informed us about these politics of power at our very own
local
Men's Weekly
magazine."

Horrified, Stanna watched the clips
they showed of her speaking. They were out of context, strung
together in a way to slant Jake and
Men's Weekly
as a tool
of harassing, power hungry, chauvinist men, and herself as a heroic
victim.

"As you can see, this fragile but
determined young lady, when forced to write as a man on subject
matters personally repellent to her, did the right thing and came
forward to let us know what we were buying when we paid good money
for
Men's Weekly.
And for that we thank her."

Stunned, there was at first only one
thought in Stanna's mind:
What was Jake going to
think?

The next morning when she got to work
and her answering machine told her there were sixty-seven messages,
she realized there was more to worry about than just Jake's
reaction.

"Stanna, how about your column. We
need this week's." It was Corrinna, but her normally chipper,
friendly voice was missing. Her expression was pretty cold
too.

"Corrinna. I didn't mean to come
across like that on T.V. They took everything out of context.
Absolutely everything."

"That won't help us too much when we
all go out of business, will it?"

There was nothing more to say, and
Stanna handed her the column wordlessly. Corrinna didn't pause,
just turned and walked back to the production
department.

At lunchtime the gang departed without
her. Michael, Corrinna and the rest didn't even look at her as they
passed her desk on the way to the elevators.

She grimly watched their backs. She
couldn't blame them.

The messages on the machine were
mostly lawyers offering to represent her case, but also newspapers
wanting to interview her and women's groups wanting her membership.
Ian's was the very first message. And second, and third. His
heartfelt concern over her well-being and his sweet questions on
how she intended to handle the inevitable bad publicity touched
her.

She called him.

"Ian, how are you?"

"My dear, I should be asking that
question," he scolded. "Now. What have you done in the way of
damage control? You must immediately issue a statement saying that
Men's Weekly
is against discrimination of any kind, and in
order to prove it you'll publish only politically correct,
pro-women, non-inflammatory material henceforth. Do you understand?
If you don't, there will be boycotting and
Men's Weekly
just
isn't large enough or popular enough to survive that."

Stanna's head was spinning. "Ian... I
don't know. I don't think Jake would like it at all. That statement
goes against his new editorial angle."

"You don't have a choice, my dear."
His voice sounded almost oily in its excessive concern, and for the
second time, Stanna wondered at his intervention. "Ian, why are you
helping me so much? Jake let you go," she told him gently. Fired
was such a brutal word, especially to someone his age.

"Gone but not forgotten," Ian quipped.
Then, "I suppose a doddering old fool like me has nothing better to
do than concern himself with hobbies and such. You could say that
the magazine has become my hobby."

"That's very kind of
you..."

"Anything for you, my
dear."

She hung up the phone. Should she
issue a statement? Ian had the business experience to know what he
was talking about.

Plus, it was her golden chance to
force Jake to return the magazine to what it was before he arrived
and disrupted everything.

It was also exactly the opposite of
what Jake would want.

She sighed, rubbing her temples. She
needed lunch, she decided. To go for a drive, grab some food, and
then
think about all of it.

Down in the garage, as she swung into
her beat-up wagon, she almost didn't hear the woman's
voice.

"Stanna! Stanna Whitland?" A pretty
redhead trotted toward her.

"Yes?"

"My name is Judy Hadley. From L.A.
Ladyhawks."

"Sounds like a sports team." Tired and
grouchy, Stanna retained only the barest inclination towards
politeness. "If you'll excuse me, I was just on my way out to
lunch. Serious blood sugar low, you know."

The woman nodded. Her professional
short hair went well with her ethereally pale, sparsely made-up
face. "I know you've had a lot going on. Believe me, I understand.
We just wanted to be the first to offer you honorary membership in
the largest women's organization in the city. Here's my card.
Please call when you get the chance. I'd love to chat with you.
Anytime at all." The woman passed her card through the wagon's open
window with a friendly smile.

Looking at the silver-embossed card
over her solitary lunch, Stanna had to smile herself.

The stylized logo featured an Amazon
chieftess staring boldly out at her, black eyes glittering, her bow
held before her threateningly.

Nobody greeted her return to work that
afternoon. Michael even looked conspicuously away, whistling
tunelessly as she passed him in the hall.

What was she going to tell Jake? She
had to call him, get him in the loop on this whole mess, she
realized. He'd left her a number to contact him in case of an
emergency. She supposed this qualified.

To make a statement or not? "Damage
control," Ian called it. And a quick fix for her own ends, she
knew. A politically correct
Men's Weekly
would be very open
to her kind of writing.

Jake had told her she was the "best
man for the job." He trusted her. She couldn't betray
that.

Decided, she picked up the phone to
call him. A large hand reached from behind her, plucked the phone
away and hung it back up.

"In my office. Now." Jake's tone made
the blood freeze in her veins.

Numb, she followed him. He shut the
door behind them and began by saying, "What the hell have you
done?"

"I can explain." Just as soon as she
could breath again. "What are you doing back already?"

He pounded his desk with a hard fist.
"What do you think I’m doing?" He visibly strained for control of
himself. She'd never seen him so furious, and it shook her. "One of
our advertisers saw your little interview and kindly told me all
about it. Before they pulled their twelve-month ad contract with
us."

His face was grim. She strove to
placate him. "Someone told CBS that I was Stan. Then CBS called,
wanting an interview. I agreed in order to give the magazine good
publicity, but they turned everything around. Their own agenda did
this, not me. I was just now calling you to get your opinion on
what to do next."

His expression wavered. He wanted to
believe her, she could tell. Wanting to redeem herself, she added,
"I've been told that we should issue a statement promising to avoid
inflammatory, potentially offensive material."

He jumped on that, the angry
expression rising again. "Who told you such a terrible
idea?"

Stanna was quiet, suddenly remembering
how he felt about her conversations with Ian.

Brows furrowing ominously, he
approached her. "Stanna. Who?"

"Ian."

Jake felt punched. She’d been taking
magazine direction from Ian. After he'd told her not to discuss
business with him.

He observed the stiff way she held
herself. Her gaze rested steadily on his, but the dark circles
underneath betrayed the toll of the past twenty-four hours. He had
to force away his natural compassion for her. She'd mishandled his
business and betrayed him. She’d been communicating with
Ian.

This magazine was his project, his
investment, his baby, damn it. He’d invested more than just money.
Therefore, her actions were not to be forgiven. It didn't matter
that she looked like an exhausted angel. Like a certain other woman
in his past, she was not what she appeared to be.

Just like Jolene.

Stanna looked at him as if she felt
wretched with remorse. He knew better, of course.

The old, familiar numbness gave way to
a flicker of pain in the vicinity of his heart.

"That will do for now," he dismissed
her brusquely. "I'm back, so now you can tend to what you do best.
Phones and the paperwork." He turned his back on her and tried not
to hear her sharp intake of breath. Or her footsteps padding slowly
away.

She deserved it, of course, Stanna
told herself as the tears coursed down her cheeks. Despite her best
intentions, she'd royally screwed things up. She hadn't meant to.
At the time, it seemed like the right thing to do. And it wasn't
her fault that Eva had twisted her statements around!