*****
“Welcome to your first day, Olivia,” Gretta said when they were sitting in her office. “I've asked Mark to take you under his wing for the first few days. He'll show you the ropes and make sure you get off to a good start. I've prepared you a little welcome pack. There's some information about our company in there. Do you have any questions?”
“Not yet, but I'm sure I will,” Olivia said.
Olivia had been allocated a desk in a large, open-plan office alongside a few other more senior journalists. Mark introduced her to everyone and sat down with her to talk through what they would be doing over the next few days. After he'd briefed her, he told her she should spend the rest of the day reading the information Gretta had given her and familiarizing herself with company policy.
She got a coffee from a seedy looking vending machine and sat at her desk with a thick folder in front of her that read, “DR PUBLISHING - COMPANY INFORMATION.” She turned over the first page and began to read.
“Fuck me. You're joking,” she cried. Everyone looked at her quizzically.
“Are you okay?” her neighbor, a handsome young man, asked.
“Yes. I've just had a bit of a shock. That's all,” she replied. She thought for a moment. “What do you know about Daniel Raleigh?” she asked.
“He's the owner of DR Publishing, our parent company. I think in all, his company owns sixty other publications. He's a billionaire, well up in the Forbes rankings.”
“What kind of man is he?”
“I don't know him personally. I'm just a little fish way down at the bottom of his pond. I hear he's a generous man but that he can be ruthless if needed. Do you know him?”
“No. I just wondered is all,” she lied.
What an irony. She was working for the man she'd had sex with a few weeks earlier. A man she'd stupidly fallen for and who had never bothered to call her. All the feelings she'd tried to suppress over the last few days came rushing back to the fore. She'd thought she was over it, but just the sight of his name had torn her heart open once more.
She spent the next few days on the road with Mark, doing interviews. Their main story for the weekly magazine was an interview with a Somalian rock star who'd fled his war-torn country and landed in New York to great acclaim and instant stardom. He'd filled Madison Square Garden five nights in a row. He was a phenomenon the likes of which the States had never seen before. Why Americans had fallen in love with a Somalian rocker, nobody had a clue, but they had. Mark had made an appointment with him and was excited about being the only music journalist Haybee had agreed to speak to.
“What?” Mark shouted into his phone when they were standing outside the hotel they'd agreed to meet in. “You’re kidding, right? Well tell him we're here now.” When the conversation was over, Mark was so angry he threw his phone against the building.
“What?” Olivia asked, surprised by his sudden outburst.
“He's gone and canceled on us.”
“Who? Haybee?”
“Yes, Haybee. What an asshole. That's gonna leave us with a major space to fill in this week’s edition. These people never think. They just treat us like dirt.”
She could see the disappointment on his face. She too was disappointed not to get to meet the great man.
“He did what?” Gretta shouted at the top of her voice when they got back to the office. “That leaves us with a real headache. What the hell are we going to fill three full pages with at such short notice?” she added.
Olivia looked at the distraught faces and excused herself. She took a cab back to the Lavender Hotel and went inside. The young woman at reception wasn't at all helpful.
“You and thousands of others,” she said when Olivia asked to see Haybee.
“I need to see him. Tell him it's an urgent family matter,” Olivia said. The woman looked at her suspiciously but picked up the phone.
“A lady here wants to speak to Haybee. She says it's a family matter.” When the answer came, the woman scowled and pointed to the elevator. “Sixth floor. Someone will meet you.”
The elevator walls were mirrors, and Olivia looked at herself. She straightened her hair and pressed her lips together. The woman waiting on the sixth floor was a pretty Somali woman.
“What family business?” she asked.
“Sorry. I think the receptionist must have been confused. I'm here for the interview.”
“That has been canceled,” the woman said abruptly.
“Has it? Nobody told me. Shoot. And I made all this effort,” Olivia said, trying to make her lies as convincing as possible. “Why has it been canceled?”
“Because Haybee has discovered that your magazine isn't a small underground publication as he was led to believe, but rather part of a huge corporate conglomerate owned by a billionaire businessman.”
“Why does that make a difference?”
“You haven't done any research into Haybee's beliefs, have you?”