by John Jaffe
“Hello, Jack.” She stood in the doorway, her dark hair pulled up, a thin gold chain around her slender neck. She wore black jeans and a white shirt—a man’s white shirt. The sleeves were rolled up partway and the top two buttons were undone.
“Kathleen.”
“Can I come in?”
Jack remained at the doorway. “What are you doing here?” He stared at her without expression. Kathleen looked away.
“Well, you didn’t come to my room,” she said softly, “so I thought I’d come to yours.”
“Why would I want to go to your room?” Jack asked. He kept his voice as even as he could. The calmer he was, the deeper the words would cut.
“Don’t do this, Jack, please,” Kathleen said. “I just want to talk. After all that we’ve meant to each other, you have to talk to me.”
What had they meant to each other? After nearly four years, Jack still didn’t know and wasn’t sure he wanted to know. He’d kept his distance at the conference. Their paths had crossed, of course. They’d even talked politely between the “Jump-Starting the Staff ” and the “How I Stopped Hating the Budget and Learned to Live within My Means” seminars. But the urgency for her, the exciting deception, the yearning for the nights, had all been replaced with a mild numbness. His heart had stayed calm; his body had been quiescent. Was he surprised that she had come to his door? Probably not. But he hadn’t wanted it and he hadn’t waited for the knock.
Jack noticed that she was wearing the dangly coral-and-jade earrings he’d bought for one of her birthdays. She’d kept them in the box for a few months and then told her husband she’d bought them at the Baltimore Craft Fair. The white shirt, the coral-and-jade earrings—Jack didn’t know whether to laugh or bury his face in his hands.
He moved aside. “Okay. Let’s talk.” Kathleen stepped past him. The room had only one king-size bed. Kathleen hesitated a moment and then climbed up on it and sat with her back against the pillows, her arms around her legs like a little girl. Jack went over to a desk by the window, pulled out the chair, and turned it toward her.
“Do you have to be so far away?” she said. “Why don’t you sit over here?”
“I can hear you fine from here,” Jack said.
“Don’t be cruel. Come sit on the bed. Please. I promise I won’t touch you.”
Jack moved to the bed and lay on his side at the foot, facing her. “I don’t think we have much to talk about,” he said.
“We have everything to talk about,” said Kathleen.
For a half hour, Kathleen pleaded her case. She didn’t move much, she kept her arms around her legs, her chin on her knees, but her voice quavered with emotion. She said many things that he had been hungry to hear for a long time. He felt some guilt that they affected him so little. But on the other hand, he’d heard many of them before: I love you. You said you loved me. You said I was your destiny. I miss you. I miss your touch and your words. I think about you every day. I’ve never felt this way about my husband. For years I thought I needed you both, now I’m not sure. I can’t get you out of my mind. Give me another chance. You complete me. I need you. I want you.
Jack contributed only a few “ums” and “uh-huhs” to this long confession. Finally Kathleen unwrapped herself and came over to him at the end of the bed. “Please say something, Jack,” she said, on her knees, looking down at him. “I know you still feel something for me.”
Jack studied her face. Some curls of hair had gotten loose and hung at her neck. She was swallowing hard and holding back tears.
“Does this mean you’re leaving your husband?” “Do you want me to?” she asked.
CHAPTER 53
Oh, sorry, I must have the wrong room,” Annie said and was about to hang up the phone.
“Who are you calling?” said the female voice at the other end of the line.
“Jack DePaul. The operator must’ve rung the wrong number,” Annie said.
“This is Jack DePaul’s room,” said the woman.
There was a pause. Then Annie said, “May I speak to Jack?” “He can’t come to the phone right now; he’s in the shower. Who’s calling?”
“Annie Hollerman. Who’s this?”
“Kathleen Faulkner. Jack told me about you. You’re the book agent in Washington, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Oh, you’re the one he’s been writing all those e-mails to. He told me about that. He used to write me every day, too. He’s quite good with words, isn’t he? Did he write you about the moonchild in the apricot orchards? Were you his snake slayer, too?”
“I …” Annie couldn’t catch her breath. It felt like her lungs had collapsed and sealed shut tighter than a vacuum-packed bag. The phone fell from her hands and clattered to the floor. She could hear the faint voice of Kathleen Faulkner saying, “Hello? Hello?”
Annie sunk into a nearby chair and put her head between her legs.
CHAPTER 54
Hi, this is Annie, I’m out of town, leave a message after the beep.”
It was 10 A.M. on Saturday morning and Annie was lying in bed, listening to Jack’s voice.
“Out of town? I guess you haven’t changed your message since North Carolina. I can’t wait to see you tonight. Don’t go to too much trouble for dinner, I don’t think we’ll spend a lot of time eating. Sorry about last night’s missing e-mail. I went out with the gang and after my fourth margarita I could barely walk, let alone type. I owe you one.”
Click.
Annie watched the phone light start to blink and didn’t move. She didn’t move for the next hour, despite the growing pressure in her bladder. She just lay there, examining the patterns of light on the ceiling, hearing Kathleen’s voice, and thinking about Jack.
She should’ve known he was too good to be true with his romantic e-mails and his heartfelt assurances. She’d been out of the game too long. It had been more than fifteen years since she’d tangled with the lies of men on the prowl. And she was clearly out of her league with someone as smooth as Jack.
He was good—she had to give him that. Rewriting her past, calling her his angel, introducing her to his son. She felt sorry for Matthew.
The phone rang again.
“Hi, this is Annie, I’m out of town, leave a message.”
“Annie? What do you mean you’re out of town? You didn’t tell me you were going anywhere. Is everything okay? I’m going to call Laura to find out where you —”
Finally, Annie moved. She reached out her arm and picked up the phone.
“Ma, I’m here. Don’t call Laura.”
“You sound dead, are you okay?”
“It depends what you mean by okay,” Annie said, and then told her mother about Kathleen and Jack.
“Christ almighty,” said Joan Hollerman Silver. “First the Gonef, then the Cardboard Box, now the Romeo. You’ve got worse luck than I do with men. But listen, sweetie, it’s better you should know now what he is. And this way, you don’t have to worry anymore about telling him what happened in Charlotte.”
“Right,” Annie said bitterly. Then she told her mother about the Star-News reporter who wanted her to spill her guts for the betterment of mankind.
“I’ve always said reporters make us lawyers look like saints,” said her mother. “Anyway, it’s out now and that’s not the worst thing in the world. Now you can really start fresh. I know the perfect place. Meet me in Atlantic City next Friday. I’m going on one of those junkets. We can share a room; it’ll be like old times. You and me on the Boardwalk. We’ll eat saltwater taffy till our teeth hurt. Come on, Annie, he’s not worthy of you.”
CHAPTER 55
Jack called four more times on Saturday and four times again on Sunday. The message was always, “Hi, this is Annie, I’m out of town …” The only thing that changed was his concern. At first he wondered if Annie had suddenly gone away on business (was the She-Devil on the rampage somewhere?), then he worried that something had happened to Annie’s mother, then he moved
on to an entire encyclopedia of disaster scenarios, including kidnapping and serial killers.
When he walked into the newsroom Monday morning his first items of business were clear: call Annie at work, find out if Laura Goodbread had heard anything, get coffee. But before he could implement anything but the coffee part of the checklist, Arthur Steinberg appeared at his desk.
“You wanted to talk about the plagiarism story this morning, remember?” he said.
“What? Oh, yeah. Could we do it later, Arthur?” Jack was about to add, “I’ve got important things to do,” but realized how callous that might sound. He looked at Steinberg’s hangdog expression and the latest ugly tie drooping down over his wrinkled shirt. “You’re right, Arthur,” he said. “Let’s talk now.”
Steinberg started down his list of plagiarists, explaining in Arthurian detail who had talked and who hadn’t and why. When he came to the final name, he said, “I saved this one for last because I think she knows you.”
“You’re kidding,” said Jack. “What’s her name?”
“Hollerman.”
“What?” said Jack. Steinberg might as well have told him Elvis was dishing out string beans in the cafeteria downstairs. “Hollerman? Annie Hollerman?”
“Yeah. See? I told you. When I interviewed her Friday she asked me if I knew you.”
“Friday? You talked to her this past Friday? Look, Arthur, this is important, start from the beginning. Tell me everything.”
And that’s how Jack learned Annie’s secret. He uncovered her deepest trauma—the thing she had tried for so long to keep locked up in the stone tower of her past—from a guy wearing a frayed plaid tie with grease stains. Steinberg told Jack what he’d found out about the Commercial-Appeal incident, including some of the details from the Creative Loafing story, and described the meeting in Annie’s office.
Now Jack knew why Annie had disappeared.
“Anyway,” said Steinberg, finishing his story, “she turned me down flat. But I think we have enough people for the sidebar. Don’t you? Five should be plenty, shouldn’t it, Jack?”
“Sure. That’s great, Arthur. Look, I’ve got an important call to make. Let me talk to you later this morning, okay?”
But his second attempt to call Annie at work was stopped short, too, this time by Laura Goodbread.
“I need to talk to you. Now. It’s personal,” she said, her lips compressed into two thin lines. The tendons in her neck stood out as if she were steeling her body for a punch or about to deliver one.
“I need to talk to you, too,” said Jack. “Let’s go in the conference room. And Laura, don’t worry. It’s going to be okay.”
This assurance didn’t seem to make Laura any happier. She looked at him as if he were a virus she didn’t want to catch and preceded him to the room with the big table and glass walls.
“Jack,” she said evenly, “you’re a fucking asshole.”
“First of all, Laura, calm down. It’s not what you think. I had no idea Steinberg was going to talk to Annie about the plagiarism story. I had no idea that Annie had even worked at a newspaper. She never told me. How was I supposed to know?” He banged a fist down on the conference table. “Laura, I don’t care what Annie did twenty years ago. You’ve got to help me get through to her. Tell her I don’t give a shit what happened at the Charlotte Commercial-Appeal.”
Laura’s reaction to these heartfelt words was not what Jack had expected. She didn’t smile; there was no softening of the lips. The only thing that changed was the look on her face. He was no longer a virus, but a habitual child molester being questioned by a victims’ rights activist.
“I don’t give a shit, either,” she said. “Steinberg cornered me this morning about his damned ‘Thief of Words’ story and tried to pump me about it. As far as I’m concerned, it’s ancient history. And you know damn well that’s not what I’m talking about.”
Jack stared at her. He was dumbfounded. “This is about Annie, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Jack, this is about Annie,” she said in staccato, pounding each word as if it were a nail. “Next time you ask me to fix you up with someone, it’d be a good idea to stop fucking Kathleen Faulkner first.”
Jack pulled back in horror. “Wh—what are you talking about?” he stammered, feeling his face grow hot.
“Oh shut up, Jack. Everybody knows your little secret. Everybody knows you’re sneaking around with her. Shit, Jack, there was even an office pool going last year, betting on who you were boinking. Faulkner was the hands-down favorite.”
Jack sat down. He felt like his head was going to explode. “Okay, Laura, maybe we had a thing. I mean, yes. We had an affair. But I swear to you, I haven’t seen Kathleen Faulkner outside of the newsroom for six months.”
“Oh? How about Friday night at the Plaza? That doesn’t count because it was in a different state?”
“No!” Jack practically shouted. A dozen reporters, sitting near the conference room’s glass walls, looked up from their desks or stopped in the middle of phone conversations. “You don’t understand…”
Laura brushed away the beginning of his explanation with a sneer.
“You know, you are a true asshole. It’s bad enough to be fucking around with two women at the same time, but to write them the same love letters is beyond despicable. It’s weak and hypocritical. How many times have I heard you on your little soapbox preaching the gospel of truth and credibility? You fucking hypocrite. No, I guess you wouldn’t care if Annie plagiarized, would you? Tell me, Mr. Snake Slayer, who’s the bigger thief of words? You or Annie? You’re pathetic. From now on, we’re no longer friends. Stay away from me and stay away from Annie.”
Laura slammed the door behind her, rattling the glass walls. Jack staggered back through the Features department red-faced, leaving behind a trail of puzzled looks and whispered conversations. He sat down at his desk, his mind fogged with confusion. Love letters? Snake slayer? Kathleen? It’s not possible. He tried to sort it out, hands covering his face. Nothing made sense. It’s not possible. It’s not possible.
“Jack. You okay?” It was Mike Gray, the Arts editor, at the adjacent desk.
“Oh, man,” said Jack. He took in and blew out a couple of deep breaths. “Yeah, Mike. I’m…I just need… Look, I’m going to walk over to Donna’s for some coffee. I’ll be back in a bit.”
He was trotting across Calvert Street, against the light, when the answer came to him. He didn’t know what had happened, exactly, but he knew how it had happened. He turned around in the middle of the street and headed back to the Star-News building.
It was the laptop. He’d left the laptop on.
CHAPTER 56
Kathleen Faulkner was huddled with one of the cop reporters when Jack approached her desk.
“I need to talk to you,” he said.
She swung around in her chair. “I’m a little busy. Give me fif-teen minutes.”
“It’s either here, in front of everyone, or in the Metro meeting room.” It sounded stupidly melodramatic when he said it, but he didn’t care.
The cop reporter coughed nervously. “I’ll come back later, Kathleen,” she said.
When they entered the meeting room, Kathleen sat down, but Jack remained standing.
“You read my e-mails, didn’t you?” he said, leaning over the table toward her.
“What do you mean?” asked Kathleen.
“When I left my room. You read my e-mails, you fucking cunt,” he said, straining to keep his voice from trembling. He wanted to lash out at her, he wanted to hurt her, but he also wanted to stay in control.
“Yes, I read them,” she said, paling. No one had ever called her that before. “I didn’t know what else to do. You shouldn’t have left, Jack. You shouldn’t have left me there alone.”
“What the fuck does that mean? I asked you to leave my room. You wouldn’t. So that gave you the right to go through my things?”
“I thought you’d come back so I stayed for a few minutes
. The laptop was signed on. Yes. I read some of your e-mails. I’m sorry.”
“You’re lying,” said Jack. “You did more than that. You sent her a message, didn’t you?”
“Who?”
“Don’t fuck with me,” said Jack, his face ugly with anger. “You know who. You sent a message to Annie Hollerman.”
“No. I swear. I would never do that.”
“You’re lying,” he said again. “I know it. Tell me now or, so help me God, I will go to your house and tell your husband everything.”
Until those words came out of his mouth, it had never occurred to Jack to use their affair as leverage. Would he really have stormed over to Kathleen’s house? The answer was probably no, but the tone of his voice said yes. And that was enough.
Kathleen folded her arms against her chest. “She called,” she said, through clenched jaws.
“What?”
“The Hollerman woman. She called your room when you were gone.”
“My God. What did you say to her?”
“I told her we were there together. I told her I loved your words and I loved you. And that you loved me.”
“My God. My God.” It was all he could say. He turned away from her and looked out the glass walls of the meeting room. Half the Metro department was looking back at him. Well, he thought, there’s plenty of blood in the water today. This will keep the news-room gossip piranhas busy for weeks.
Behind him he heard Kathleen say, her voice finally beginning to break, “I didn’t want to lose you.”
He walked toward the door without looking back. “You lost me six months ago,” he said.
