Most of the checkers, in those years, were gay. Ms. Dean would arrive, late, at her desk, in the large room the checkers occupied. She would begin with telephone calls to her friends. "I can't talk now," she would say, glaring at the checker nearest to her. "It is listening to me." After some years, she was fired—the first and only person, in Mr. Shawn's time, to be fired by the magazine.
