Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
Brinton inched up her rolling chair. The lip of Landmark’s black lacquered conference table cut into her belly as she summoned the strength to do the seemingly impossible. Annoyingly, her mom and Shay were right: she needed to stop languishing and turn things around.
Between floors fifteen and twenty on the office elevator, she had cemented her grand plan to beg Rich for another shot at a cover story, even if it killed her. Which, honestly, it might.
Inside the all-glass conference room in Midtown, she watched her co-workers awkwardly pretend not to glare back at her.
After the Grammys, Brinton learned about the office pool betting that she’d quit before the end of the year.
The prize was up to a thousand dollars, which was offensive.
She was worth at least twice as much. As Rich sat across from her, looking more than a little bored, she could guess how he had wagered.
Rich was in his early 40s and wore his short black hair perpetually tucked into a baseball cap. A Pittsburgh native, he considered himself a man of the people. Although, he wore limited-edition Jordans and dated influencers with names like Maddi and Ali and Charli.
Brinton met Rich through a Columbia University alumni mixer five years ago.
He liked her portfolio from freelancing at a few Black women’s lifestyle websites and took a chance on her when a music writer position opened up on staff.
She assumed he had only hired her to assuage his guilt of being a rich white guy with upward mobility.
Probably because there hadn’t been another Black person on staff in over five years. She had checked.
Rich, already on the offensive, adjusted the bill of his orange Supreme hat. “Are you happy here?”
A foolish question for someone who’d told her she wasn’t quite ready for a cover story, day after day, for four years.
“I could be,” she offered, “but I feel like you’ve pushed me into a box.”
He clasped his hands, unwilling to cede. “What kind of box?”
“Um, a Black Box, so to speak?”
At some point during her Landmark tenure, her colleagues had assumed she was the resident Black-spert. That meant doing sensitivity reads (i.e.: re-writing) on other people’s work to fill gaps for articles featuring Black artists she hadn’t already been assigned.
Of course, African-American artists didn’t get Landmark covers nearly as frequently as their white counterparts, a fact no one did anything about despite public outcry that spiked on social media every few years.
Ironically, on the rare occasion that Landmark elevated a Black artist to a cover story, Brinton wasn’t assigned those stories. Her value, it seemed, was adding telltale seasoning to staff photos the social media team posted to Landmark’s channels.
She’d become the hot sauce of workplace diversity.
Her stomach clenched. “I noticed a pattern with how you’ve assigned my stories and—”
His thin lips curled. “It’s because you’re so dialed into the culture.”
Rich emphasized the word culture, as if doing her a favor. As if she liked being reduced to a catchphrase.
Being the spokesperson for all Black people who had ever lived was exhausting. She had whiplash from the code-switching. Brittle bones from contorting into the version of herself that earned her colleagues’ acknowledgement.
“Look, you know I consider myself an ally,” Rich added lightly.
Brinton’s right eye twitched.
“And I think you should see this as a strength. I’m actually jealous.”
Because she was the Black-spert. She opened her mouth again, but he cut her off.
“Brinton, I like you. I gave you a break over the whole Grammys thing. But I called you in here because you haven’t pitched a banger since. And what you’ve written for the website isn’t driving traffic.”
“I know, Rich, but—”
He shook his head. “Media publishing has gone to shit—everyone’s facing layoffs. My bosses are asking who I can let go. I don’t want it to be you, but you haven’t given me anything to work with.”
She was proud of her recent articles: a PSA on the underrated genius of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car”; a review of Titles Ruin Everything, Drake’s poetry collection so petty it could have doubled as Regina George’s Burn Book; and a think piece exploring SZA’s unlikely parallels with Princess Diana after channeling the late royal in her SOS album artwork.
The latter was the most trafficked article on Landmark’s website at the time, and it was the reason Rich gave her the Grammys red carpet opportunity in the first place.
But now, she had to grovel, because she couldn’t start at the bottom somewhere else. Somewhere worse. “I want another chance to prove myself, because I’ve moved on from the whole Grammys…incident.”
“Go on.”
“I want to write something relevant and challenging. Something that could possibly be positioned as a cover story.”
“All right, so pitch me something.”
“When?”
“Now.”
Her eyebrows shot into her hairline
“Now?”
She’d hope to have more time to prepare, like other writers did before pitching what could be a career-defining story. But, of course, this was her luck.
He crossed his arms. “I thought you said you were serious, Shaw. So, let’s go.”
Brinton’s eyes darted to the massive dry erase board mounted behind Rich’s desk. It had all the staff assignments for the next issue mapped out. Most spaces had been filled in, but there were two openings: the untold history of Kidz Bop, which sounded about as exciting as an ear infection and…
Oh God.
No.
There, written in red, within the clean lines of the outlined grid: Jamie Crawford Jr. album review.
Next to it, an asterisk followed by the word “cover” and a giant question mark.
It seemed to taunt her. Shay would have gotten a kick out of the irony.
It’s pretty fucking impossible to avoid a man you actually need to save your job.
Brinton picked at her thumb’s cuticle bed. “The Crawford story,” she started, the words forming at a glacial pace. “I can do it.”
“Didn’t you just say you’d moved on from the whole ‘Grammys incident’?” He waggled his eyebrows. “What if you wrote something a little more…dialed into the culture?”
“Crawford and I already have an existing working relationship, and I think he’s more likely to open up to me.”
“It’s the funniest thing,” he said, cocking a brow conspiratorially. “About an hour ago, his camp called. They requested you write something about the new album. I said Agatha had more experience—”
“Not more than me. Not about this.” Brinton’s voice warbled, but she straightened her shoulders. This cycle of gaslighting couldn’t persist. She refused to give up because if she did, she might as well pack up her desk right then.
“But we need something more than an album review. Anyone could do that,” she added. “I say we do a character piece that pulls back the curtain, both on Crawford as an artist and the son of the most successful country music icon of our generation.”
“Interesting,” Rich said, studying her as if a rare species in an exhibit.
“The second album comes out at the end of June. Crawford’s team pitched sending a reporter down.
Two weeks at his family compound in Tennessee.
If I send you, you need to come back with something juicy.
Frankly, I think his good-natured Southern boy act is tired.
With a family like his, I wanna know where the bodies are buried. Get what I’m saying?”
Her palms were slick and her inner ears crackled.
She needed to calm down. It probably would have helped to stimulate her vagus nerve, as her mother often suggested.
She never bothered to look up what the hell it actually was.
The last thing she needed was for a horrified Rich to watch her violently jab at each of her crevices while he dialed building security.
“Yeah, I get it.”
She needed this job—she needed out of the proverbial Black Box.
“We’re projecting big numbers for this story. It would also include a pay bump. Might even be a cover,” he said.
Suddenly, her lungs swelled a few millimeters. “A cover story?” The elusive carrot dangled inches from her face. Validation she’d wanted for years tightly wrapped in a single answer. One moment.
“Might be a cover,” he reiterated, his smile inscrutable. “If you can deliver something juicy.”
Juicy. That word again.
Thrill snaked down her spine and she shuddered.
She considered herself an above-the-board kind of reporter, not a gossip monger or a user.
Jamie was attractive; that was obvious. And even as there were a handful of nights she’d thought about his hands still pressed into the small of her back, there would be no juice to be squeezed.
She couldn’t let whatever repressed tension—she refused to call it chemistry—throw her off.
Rich’s half smile faltered as he picked up on her apprehension. “I thought you said you wanted this?”
She nodded, but she wanted to say that she didn’t do “juicy.” She wrote pieces celebrating the humanity of her favorite artists, because they were people, like her, with hopes and dreams and fears.
There had to be some way to make this work.
Even if Jamie’s tongue wrapped around his vowels in a way that made her suddenly very thirsty.
Shit.
“I’ll do it,” she said instead. Yes, she would do this and salvage the hangnail of honor she had left. She would get in, and get out unscathed. She would win.
Rich leaned back in his chair, its squeaking gears a serrated blade through the silence. “Good. Remember, this article has to kill. I can’t give you another shot. Your future with this magazine is on the line, and possibly mine too. So, please, don’t screw me.”