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Prologue
TAKING APPLICATIONS
Late Spring, 2005.
Luca Torres grimaced, hoping he’d heard the question wrong.
The office was exactly what you’d expect for the thirty-second floor of the Seattle Gazette—the most prestigious newspaper on the West Coast. One which housed fifty Pulitzer Prize winners and knew it.
Three people loomed opposite. On the left was Jackson Bennet, politics editor—a middle-aged face made pale by the daily grind of news, with a gaze made sharp from the daily grind of espresso. In the middle was Macy Jessup, editor-in-chief—a veneer-heavy smile beneath the eyes of a raptor. On the right was someone Luca didn’t recognize from his journalism classes. The man hadn’t spoken much, but everything from his thin lips to his thinner hair screamed Human Resources.
The twenty-three-year-old gripped his thick thighs hard, resisting his natural instinct to clap back. “You want me to write a weekly article copying Queer Eye for the Straight Guy?”
Jackson flicked through Luca’s folio of past articles, the same one that had accompanied his long-shot job application. “We obviously love the series you wrote for your college paper. ‘Heat & Hemlock: A searing take on sex and dating in the modern college campus.’ Well-written. Witty. Engaging.” Jackson swooped salt-and-pepper curls from his face, suddenly sweat-beaded. “But... Ah...”
“Not appropriate for a mainstream publication,” sneered the HR man. “Too much spice; not enough nice.”
Luca tried to hide his scowl, but it was a losing effort.
He knew he should suck it up. That an unemployed graduate—from the third best college in the state, no less—should consider it a miracle that he was interviewing with the Gazette at all.
But the way the man said mainstream boiled his blood. It was a code Luca had heard plenty during his degree, and plenty more in the thirty unsuccessful job applications that had followed.
It was a code that implied certain people had no right to be heard. That certain stories had no right to exist.
And Luca had no time for that kind of prejudice.
He’d devoted his life to fighting it, in fact.
“Don’t blow a gasket, kid,” said Macy, sucking on a sleek menthol cigarette. “You’re a sex columnist. You know the score. We aren’t in the nineties anymore, and no one is churning out columns with all the squishy details. Not since Janet flopped her tit out at the Super Bowl. Everyone’s got to keep it family friendly unless they want the Federal Communications Commission or the Christian lobby breathing down their holes.”
She stubbed her cigarette the same way she spoke. Clear. Direct. Decisive.
Despite his growing frustration, Luca admired that. There was a frankness there that he could respect.
It was the kind of frankness he usually spoke in.
Usually.
But not today.
The stakes were too high for that.
No sooner was Macy’s first cherry crushed, than a fresh bolt was drawn from her quiver. “Here’s the reality, kid. We want a gay lifestyle column in the Gazette. Seattle’s a liberal city, and our readership hates the Red State garbage. Your work’s good. We think you could nail the assignment. But it isn’t going to be buttholes and blowjobs. It’ll be fashion advice and celebrity gossip and tips for what wallpaper is popular this season. That’s all we can get away with right now.”
On command, the man from HR laid a series of news clippings on the table. “Harry Starks, the Chicago shock jock. On a recent show he interviewed three ladies of questionable conviction about their nocturnal employment. The FCC fined him half a million dollars, and now his radio show is overseen by three live censors. Last month the Miami Observer printed an advice column about a housewife fantasizing over her gardener. The cable news conservatives ran with the headline, “Porn Over Your Pancakes!” They suggested the newspaper should be sold in an opaque envelope, out of the reach of children. The backlash has already cost the Observer a third of their advertisers, and they’ve had to cut two-dozen journalists.”
Luca flinched as each nail to his ambition was hammered onto the polished walnut.
Macy was silent, but her steely glare spoke loudly: You graduated a year ago and there’s no professional experience on your CV. No newspaper in the county is printing your fuck fables, kid. No paper in the country can print them. Not in this political climate. So if you want a job at my paper, you’ll play by my rules.
The three men around the table had greatly contrasting responses to the situation.
Jackson laughed. “Yeah, it’s been a rough few years. Every journalist in the country has become celibate. In their writing, at least.”
The HR douche sniffed judgmentally.
And Luca’s heart sank.
