Unlike Others by Valerie Taylor Page A

several good evasions. "I saw her at work Friday." she said. It was true as far as it went. Stan looked relieved. He said, "I just wondered." It always took him forever to get out of a room; be was the kind of guest who lingers at the door, saying good-bye, until a hostess feels like hitting him. She handed him a sheaf of papers to speed him up. One down, one to go.
    A few minutes later Gayle came in, bright-eyed and curious, to say that Betsy had called in sick.
    I’ll go and see her, Jo thought. Then she remembered that Betsy lived with an aunt who might be surprised at this show of solicitude. If she really wasn't ill at all—if she was out looking for another job, which she very well might be doing under the circumstances—it would be mean to give her away to auntie. The call was out.
    But she found Betsy's address and telephone number in the file and wrote them down. She tucked the slip of paper into her wallet, behind the bills. Having it there made her feel better. It was as though, knowing where Betsy lived, she had some assurance of seeing her again.

CHAPTER 11
    There's more to publishing than meets the eye of the casual reader, even when the magazine is a little throw-away that's not fisted in Writers Market . There are things like gathering material and verifying it, being sure that people's names are spelled right, writing items and fitting them so you have just enough fines and columns and pages, not too few or too many. There's selecting and scaling photos, choosing type faces, writing heads and decks, deciding on margins and department headings and a dozen other things. When the proofs are all cut apart and pasted neatly in place, when the dummy's done, then the gestation period is over. The book is ready to be born.
    "It's crazy," Jo said, "real crazy. No matter how many we put out, I get all shook up over every one."
    Stan grinned. He held the dummy sheets in the crook of one arm like a baby. His tie was wadded around under one ear, his crest of reddish hair stood up wilder than ever. There was a carbon smear on his upper lip and a blob of rubber cement on the front of his shirt. It was the twenty-sixth of September, time for the Novem ber issue to go to press.
    He said, grinning, "You don't have to be crazy to be in publishing, but it helps."
    "Who wants to be sane?"
    "You're a good kid, Jo. I wish you'd try to get along a little better with Betsy."
    Jo looked up sharply. "What's the matter with Betsy?"
    Stan moved uneasily. "Maybe you're a little sharp with her sometimes. I know, you have to tell her what to do. But try and go easy on the kid, will you?"
    "Why, I don't—"
    "She thinks you don't like her."
    Astonishment went off in Jo like a firecracker. She looked at him, without words for once.
    "She's just a kid."
    "She's almost as old as I am," Jo said, "and if she expects to hold a job she'll have to learn to work. I've never said a cross word to her, anyway."
    Tears came to her eyes. She turned back to her desk and began going through her recent correspondence. Stan stood there a moment, looking at her. He said, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to get you all riled up," and stepped out into the hall, still clutching the dummy sheets.
    The carbon copies didn't make sense. She laid them down, automatically evening the edges, and put a stapler on top so they wouldn't blow in the breeze from the open window. It was a fine late September day, the sky intensely blue over the tops of the many-windowed buildings, with a few plump white clouds drifting. It would be cold and blowy in another six weeks or so, but now the air was soft with late summer. Jo's suit coat hung over the back of her chair, her silver cuff links lay in a glass tray with paper clips and rubber bands. Now she shivered, as though a cold breeze had crept into the room.
    Sure, she thought, defensively, I've been telling the kid what to do. I have to. She types all right, but she can't spell worth a damn, and she might as well learn a little