I felt I’d arrived, about to go on staff at DIC as an assistant story editor. Unfortunately, I had no idea what an assistant story editor did. For that matter, I had no idea what a plain old story editor did.

I was both happy and concerned to learn my weekly salary would be $1,500 when I was “working on a series” and $1,250 week when I “wasn’t working on a series”. Since I didn’t know what I was supposed to be doing when I was working on a series, I didn’t want to even think about what I was supposed to be doing when I wasn’t working on a series.

This would be the most money I’d make per-week as a salaried employee -- double what I earned in my father’s clothing business. It came out to $78,000 a year. Serious jingle. Jean and Andy were going to be writing me hefty weekly checks so I figured I’d better find out what I was supposed to be doing and find out fast. I decided to risk asking Lori to fill me in.

By now I was getting the feeling Lori had me under her protective wing. I realized she was doing this, at least partly, because it would eventually somehow benefit her, though I didn’t know exactly how it would benefit her. But I also thought she was doing this because she liked me and felt we might end up being friends.

So after I filled out my paperwork I headed back to her office.