Cover story after bedroom ‘mishap’

Chris is on the line. He’s not mad at me. He buys the doctor’s story about my fake condition. In the midst of all this commotion, I had forgotten about his wife and what she thought about all this.

“She doesn’t know it was you. Let’s keep it that way,” he says.

“Ok… What does she think happened?” I ask.

“Well, I was obviously with someone. I just didn’t mention who it was,” he says.

That’s a relief. On top of everything else I’m not interested in facing a very angry wife. And she introduced me to her husband. I will die if she tries to discuss this with me. As if reading my mind, he adds:

“She was brought up in the type of home where dirty linen is not aired in public.”

Yes, I suppose she was. But you know what? I get the premise. Every family has its issues. Adopting a stiff upper lip and sweeping it under the carpet, at least publicly, is a wise move. Because 90 per cent of people don’t care about your problems and the other 10 per cent won’t help. So why bother feeding the trolls gossip?

“I’ll talk to you soon, Samantha,” he concludes and hangs up.

Should I call her? She knew I was going to meet Chris, would it be weird if I didn’t let her know how the meeting had gone? I dial her number. It rings for six to seven times unanswered. Does she know what I did?

Why is it that the guilty are always so afraid? Of course, she doesn’t know. How could she? She has a lot on her plate. That’s why she isn’t answering the phone.

I crawl into bed and check my email. It seems that while I have been holed up in recovery, the world has stopped with me. People now have restricted movement because of Covid-19. My boss has instructed everyone to work from home. Maybe he’ll allow me to get some work done now.

I answer several pending emails and ask to see the cover story for the next month’s edition. My deputy sends it and informs me they have decided to only do an online version until the pandemic is under control. Makes sense. But I’m a little irritated she made a decision like that without consulting me.

“I cleared it with the chief first,” she adds, as if reading my mind. “He thought it was a great idea.”

“What about subscriptions?” I ask.

“We are carrying them forward to the next year. Any monthly publications that our annual subscribers miss will be made up to them in 2021,” she says.

She has thought of everything. The irritation I mildly felt early is increasing by the minute. “Good job,” I reluctantly type. 

I open the attachment she has sent and the cover has a rapper by the name of Tory Lanez. ‘Innovative Marketing’ is splashed across his name. Since when did we start putting rappers on our covers?

I read the story and I must say, I’m impressed. With new music dropping, Lanez has taken advantage of social distancing to create hype surrounding his mixtape release. He calls it ‘Quarantine Radio’ and has gotten girls to twerk on his Instagram Live feed, with celebrities watching alongside everyone else.

The result is a strip club with no entrance fee or overpriced drinks. The girls are tipped by the public and Lanez himself when the show is over. He has so far reached 350k views — an Instagram Live record — and at some point, the social media site blocked him.

He immediately started a new page and was blocked again after getting 100,000 views in minutes. As a result, he trended with #FreeTory. His music streams doubled, he got another 2.2 million followers and a 90 per cent boost in YouTube followers. Instagram yielded and he’s back on air. That’s genius.