Sons of bitches

Every time we needed a contract to be signed, they’d send me. There was a rule imposed on us: every freelance fee over five hundred dollars needed approval from a supervising authority. This being a pretentious magazine generously funded by a Russian oligarch, we never paid our freelancers less than five hundred. So the aforementioned authority had to sign off on every freelance contract we had. Even though he actually played no part in our process. Besides, it was said that the authority tended to be rude for no reason. Our ladies were afraid of him and they’d send me instead. I obediently complied. Once I came to him with paperwork for a freelance author from Britain. As usual, I handed him the contract — completely standard. Those contracts only differed in names and amounts. It was pure formality. He had no idea what we were doing, so he always just signed whatever I brought. What the ladies were afraid of, I don’t know. Usually he’d still scan the document I’d given him before signing. “Sons of bitches,” he said this time, having glanced at the foreign name and the amount of money allocated to it. Then he spent a long time searching for where to put his signature, with a rather grim look. Finally he found the right place, signed. Handed the papers back to me. “Why ‘sons of bitches’?” I asked. “I have no idea,” he answered and smiled.