The voice was redolent with sarcasm and Sarah felt even more like a recalcitrant schoolgirl caught cribbing at an exam. Some of the faces around the table grinned expectantly as the prospect of some entertainment loomed.
'I haven't had time to study the mock-up in any detail—'
'Even better. Your regular readers won't get time to study it either, before they're presented with the fait accompli. What are your first impressions?'
'Well . . .' she pretended to look down at her nonexistent notes to give herself time to curb her wayward mind. 'I did think the changes a bit dramatic, especially, as you said, the typeface . . .'
'I think I can guess that you would prefer to retain the status quo. But putting the preference aside for a moment, what about some constructive comment,' came the dry response.
'That is constructive,' Sarah protested. 'Our circulation figures are holding steady, surely that's a vote in favour of the status quo.'
'Holding steady is another way of saying remaining static. You're keeping your hard-core readers but not acquiring new ones.'
'But we can only expect to hold a certain percentage of the market.'
'A percentage you haven't quite reached yet. And there's the floating buyer, the one you have to grab at the magazine stand with an eye-catching cover and the promise of good, readable, varied material within. Rags has been on the market long enough to be secure, familiar. Now is the time to stimulate the reader by adding a little unfamiliar spice.'
'Why not herbs instead of spice? They have a more subtle flavour.' One part of Sarah's mind noted that he had stopped fiddling with his pen. Was that a good sign or bad?
'Specify.' That singular challenge he was so fond of issuing: explain yourself, talk, convince me. Now she was started she would not retreat. She might be wary about caring for people, but she cared about them, about Rags and its readers and contributors.
'I don't like Male of the Month,' she said baldly to a chorus of disapproval.
'It's a great idea,' cried Chris. 'It'll be tremendous fun to do.'
'Don't be such a stick-in-the-mud, Sarah,' said Julie. 'Everybody's loosened up these days. It's really just male fashion shots with a bit of personality thrown in.'
Backed into a corner Sarah came out fighting.
'It's not the idea that I don't like,' she told the room at large. 'It's the way it's presented. It's the worst kind of sexism.'
'I might have known you were an ardent women's libber,' came from the head of the table.
'If that means I have confidence in our women reader's intelligence and taste, yes I am,' Sarah shot back.
'What is it precisely that a woman of intelligence and taste would object to?'
The dry cynicism infuriated Sarah. He had asked for her opinion, hadn't he?
'The whole tenor of the article. The captions are pure cheesecake. It may be fun to write, but I think it should be more than just a stereotyped joke.'
'You mean . . . take it seriously?' asked Julie sceptically.
'More or less. A sophisticated version. A mood interview piece. There are plenty of attractive men around—' she ignored the laughs and whistles, '—from entertainers, to politicians, to businessmen, to the stranger in the next car at the red light. Each month let's get a guest columnist to take out the man of her choice and do an impressionistic story about the evening. Team it with one big colour shot and a few black and white and you have . . .' she searched for the words as her enthusiasm for the idea outran itself.
'The ultimate female fantasy,' Julie finished for her. 'Sometimes, Sarah, you really surprise me. I like it! I like it very much. It could be very sexy.'
'Bags I go first,' laughed Chris. 'The perfect excuse to ask a man for a date, and on expenses too!'
A light-hearted squabble broke out, relieving the strain of the past hour or more of vehement discussion. Even Max Wilde relaxed, as much as he was able, chin resting on his steepled fingers, looking every inch a candidate for Male of the Month. Maybe she should suggest it, thought Sarah with an inward giggle, knowing he would detest the very idea. But what a scoop it would be! She was very, very tempted, thinking of all the times he had been provocative, but bit hard on her tongue. Giving in to impulses like that to annoy him invariably got her in over her head, he merely took it as a sign that he was succeeding in getting under her skin. Which he was dammit! She already spent too much idle time thinking up crushing remarks with which to slam the stable door after the mocking devil had bolted.
Back at her desk after the meeting had broken up, Sarah quickly searched out some documents, intending to slip along to Tom Forest's room at the end of the corridor and inveigle him out to a conveniently early lunch. She was not fast enough, however, because when she looked up Max was standing in front of her desk. He was only half a head taller than she was but he always seemed to loom. Come to that he loomed even when he was sitting at his desk which had been placed for his use several- paces away. It was most unnerving. Sarah was used to meeting men on her own level, often looking down on them. It was easy to be firmly off-putting to a man who was shorter than you. This one was not only tall, but tenacious, with a visible aura of masculinity that offended Sarah as much as his on-again off-again charm did.
Simon had had charm; getting his own way was easy. Until Sarah discovered that he used it the way he used everything—temper, depression, jealousy—as therapy. He worked out his moods by manoeuvring people into responding in a certain way and then attacking them for it. It gave him a sense of power when his own self-respect was at its lowest ebb. Only when Sarah had refused to play the game, had been angry at his charm, laughed at his depression, shrugged at his jealousy had the real person begun to emerge. But by then it was too late, Sarah's emotions had been exhausted into apathy. Charm was merely one of the trappings of personality, no guarantee of inner warmth or depth.
To Sarah's dismay Max Wilde leaned over until his face was only inches from hers. He spoke with a slow precision that was more alarming than his fiery spurts of temper.
'Just once I would like to see you react to me naturally, and smile as though you mean it, not just out of politeness, or as a weapon. I don't like it when you're polite and silent. It makes me curious to know what is going through that oddly constructed brain of yours.'