Fourth Comings_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [44]
The worst part about it? I actually like what I do. Think mixes reprints of journal articles and research abstracts with original essays and interviews. Since winning the National Magazine Award for general excellence in the small-circulation category a few years ago, it has had no shortage of A-list contributors. The other day I spent four hours painstakingly transcribing a ten-minute conversation between Bono and Bill Gates about the psychology of philanthropy. It’s my job to geek out on the readings and research that I used to follow as a hobby. Isn’t this the goal for any worker? To be paid for what one would do for free? I would happily take a full-time position as the lowest of the low on the masthead, if such a position were available. But it’s not.
Prestige doesn’t equal profits. I mean, we’re not talking Condé Nast or Hearst here, or even Time Inc. or Hachette Filipacchi. This is Plato Publishing, which specializes in niche periodicals that are hybrids of commercial magazines and academic journals. In addition to Think (“Pop Psychology for Smart People”), there’s Bio (“Every Cell Has a Story”), Theory (“Where Your Guess Is as Good as Ours”), and a few others. Since Think’s target circulation is less than fifty thousand, I can hardly blame my quasi-employer for the budgetary constraints. There aren’t enough laypeople interested in subscribing to a publication that proudly compares itself to Utne Reader and Psychology Today. Think’s tagline should be revised to “Deep Thoughts, Shallow Pockets.”
Think hires freelancers like me to do the work of an editorial assistant so the company doesn’t have to provide 401(k) plans or medical insurance. And though I could easily work eight hours a day, I can only bill a maximum of twenty hours a week because that’s all the budget allows. This isn’t enough to live on without the supplementary income from my sister. Thus, tomorrow’s job interview. It promises $32,000 a year with benefits, which might be enough to take me off Bethany’s payroll if all my meals come from a can. (More on this later.)
I don’t know why I’m so ashamed about accepting my sister’s money. I can only count one true trust funder among my circle of friends. (Author-turned-activist Miss Hyacinth Anastasia Wallace is rumored to have inherited roughly fifty million dollars when her dad died earlier this year. Imagine the payout if he hadn’t split when she was four, or sired ten half siblings with his next three wives?) Yet nearly everyone I know who is not in the financial sector—and certainly all of us living in Sammy—are or have been subsidized by a munificent patron of the arts.
Hope has an ancient benefactress from her Tennessee hometown, whom she refers to as the “Sugar Grandmama.” Manda’s parents paid her college bill, so she can sort of afford to put herself into debt for grad school. I have Bethany, of course, and if Gladdie hadn’t left me $50,000 when she died, I would now be in that much deeper to that hillbilly bitch Sallie Mae who bills me $437.25 a month …just on the interest. One simply can’t pursue a vaguely creative career in this prohibitively expensive city unless you’re independently wealthy or your life has been generously underwritten.
(I know, I know. Then why live here? Why live in a city that is systematically designed to undermine happiness and prosperity? Why not come to the land of peace, quiet, and opportunity, colloquially