The Contemporary Adventures of Carter and Aria

Carter walked back to the office. She was a few blocks away but still managed to be late to the meeting.

Every Wednesday the magazine’s staff met for cheap coffee and decided what articles would make the next issue and which had to be revised. Carter’s articles always made the issue—she liked to think this was because she was a good writer, and not because the editors felt sorry for her because she wasn’t the one editing. This she was grateful for, but she was not grateful for how ungrateful her coworkers were. Everyone in the office voted for editor in chief every year, and Carter, despite always being a candidate, had never won the elections. How she hated politics. Apparently Sean, who looked younger and probably was, was a better choice.

Sean Davis was a Physics major, which made Carter even angrier. Who would’ve thought you had to study Physics in order to edit a fucking magazine?

“You’re late,” Sean said without even looking up. “I know, I’m sorry, I got held up.” Carter wasn’t that sorry. These meetings were almost torture, watching Sean doing what she was supposed to be doing. Shouldn’t he be at CERN or something? Writers, not to mention anthropologists, already had a hard time finding jobs. Fuck nosy scientists.

“I’m sure you knew we had this meeting, we have it every Wednesday.” Now Carter didn’t know what to say. The truth was she was never late because she hated being lectured in public, which was exactly what Sean was doing right now.

“We were discussing your article and it’s important that you’re always here for that. I was just saying I really liked your piece.” He smiled a little and Carter smiled back but destroyed Sean in her head. She noticed her newest piece was being shown on the big screen. “I changed your words a little bit here and there,” her boss said. She nodded and studied the few red marks, the crossed off words and the little arrows. “I changed a few more things this time since this is a scientific piece. I hope you don’t mind.”

Carter didn’t mind that her article had been revised by a science major, but she did mind it was Sean who had revised it. “Yeah,” she said dryly and looked inside her purse, pretending to be busy.

Alternative wasn't a scientific magazine, but a few days earlier Carter had felt bold after a few glasses of wine, and started writing about the public's reaction to the recent discovery of the Higgs Boson, which had excited the nerd inside of her. After a day of poor research she concluded not everyone was as excited as she was, and her article was now about a general unawareness for quantum physics and relativity and how this sucked.

“We’ve never published something like this before, but if I can work as editor you should be able to be a scientist.” Seeing how Carter had literally fucked the magazine’s policy and written about something completely unrelated, Sean was actually being very considerate.

For the rest of the meeting Sean complemented all of the articles that had been submitted and admitted. Everyone was happy, except Carter who was looking forward to another kind of Happiness.

“I need someone to help our designer tomorrow with the layout.” Before Sean could say any names Carter predicted he would call her. “Ms. Bixbaum,” he said mockingly. “You were late today.”

“I was late today, and I’d love to help but I can’t make it, I have this thing.”

“It appears you have a lot of things all of a sudden,” said Sean, but his face said he really didn’t give a fuck about Carter’s things. “It’s an art exhibition, a friend organized it and tomorrow is the opening night.” Sean raised his eyebrows so Carter suggested she could write about it and that way people would go. She would rather write about the exhibition than no go at all. Although she had never written about art it was probably very easy, being perhaps the most subjective thing ever.

“Great. So, meeting adjourned. See you tomorrow, preferably not late.” Everyone gathered their things and chatted while Carter sprinted away from the board room towards her cubicle. As non-editor in chief an average writer, she did not have an office, but a cubicle. She turned on her computer and felt like writing a murder Sean novel, but forced herself to start writing about that which she didn’t know of—art.