Tabloid City

by Pete Hamill

  She did know some things, which is why she didn’t care about biography and other details. He was clean. Start with that. He took a shower when he got up and before he left his office and before he said good night to her. She knew his body was flat-bellied and hairless and free of marks. No scars. No tattoos. He ran his fingers over her butt one night and asked where the fine scars came from and she told some lie about a fall in a playground when she was a little girl, and then he caressed the scars, and kissed them and then oiled them.

  Oh, my.

  She knows he did everything she wanted him to do in bed and didn’t do what she did not want him to do. She knew he loved her neck, the lobes of her ears, the curve of her back, and the delicate biting she would do when he was in her mouth.

  She knew he liked her black skin, blacker than a cave at midnight. He might even have loved it. He would stand behind her facing the bedroom mirror and place his hands on her belly or fondle her breasts and kiss her neck. Her blackness made his own skin whiter. And she could feel his rush of arousal, the exhaling, the quickening of breath. Even in the second year with him, one trip to bed was never enough.

  He did ask for the résumé-style details of her life, Jamaica and then Columbia and then Harvard Business School. He always said he was impressed. But he never matched that information with information about himself. They had places, uptown and down, where they met for lunch or dinner, but they were never places where photographers might show up. Early on, she asked him if this was because she was black and he said no, no, it’s because I don’t want my face around anywhere. Celebrity is a killer. He talked about a shipping guy named Ludwig, one of the richest guys of his day, and how nobody had ever seen his face in the Wall Street Journal, or Forbes, or the Economist, or the Time business section, and that allowed him to live and work more freely. Ludwig could never live in the world now, he said, with all these scurrying rodents holding camcorders, trying to get on YouTube. Or be crowned as “iReporters” on CNN or Fox. Staying out of certain places is better for both of us, Myles said. That makes sense, Sandra said. She even wanted to believe it.

  One night he did ask her how she started writing copy for an agency and she told him that she wanted first to write stories. About what? he said, his brow furrowing. About Jamaica, she said, and my coming to New York, and, well, all sorts of things. His face looked puzzled, as if she had told him that she wanted once to start a colony on Mars. And what happened? he said. I had to eat, she said. And he smiled in a relieved way.

  Sandra Gordon never mentioned this again, never told him that she wanted to write about the things that truly mattered, to make sense of them, to make sense of herself. Above all, to freeze on paper the way chance is almost everything in life. Or at least in Sandra’s life. If my father had not abused me when I was eight, my madda would not have hit him in the head with a club and gathered me with her to set off to a kind of freedom. She might not have found work in the kitchen of those two gay guys in Montego Bay, in a house full of books that neither she nor Sandra could read. One of the guys, a very kind man, found the girl a tutor, and she started reading, and then there was a big party and they bought her a pink dress and new shoes and showed her how to carry a tray of appetizers and how to curtsy.

  Sandra Gordon, aged nine, was a nervous wreck. But at the party, chance expanded its role. One of the guests was Cynthia Harding, who was there with the Briscoe guy, from the World. Her beloved Sam. In the library of the house in Montego Bay, Cynthia talked to Sandra about how books were the true food of the big wide world, and when she went home to New York, she sent Sandra copies of two Babar books and The Little Engine That Could. Stories too young for me, maybe, but I was only reading for about five months, and they were stories. Made of pictures and those little squiggles called words. Years later Cynthia explained that she was touched by my joy in reading. That I reminded her of why reading mattered. After those first books, she returned to Montego Bay once a year to visit, sometimes with Sam, sometimes without, and she kept bringing books. And sending them from New York. Right up the scale. From Little Women to Dumas. To Stevenson and My Friend Flicka. And when Sandra turned seventeen, Stendhal.

  I have them still. All of them. And the letters that came with them. Full of counsel. Full of encouragement. Full of the future.

  The year Madda died, Cynthia came to the funeral in Montego Bay and brought young Sandra home with her to New York. Arranging her first passport and a student visa. Placing her in a special cramming school in New York. A school so good, she was accepted at Columbia. And a month later Cynthia arranged to have all her books, all those letters, shipped from Jamaica to New York. They are here now, in the other room, the one Sandra Gordon calls the studio. Four shelves of treasure from Cynthia Harding. From Babar to Zola. The legacy of sheer chance. If Madda hadn’t hit my father, if she hadn’t found her way to Montego Bay, with me in hand, if Cynthia Harding had not come to that party, I’d have had a different life.

  Cynthia became a permanent part of her private résumé. Her second mother. She encouraged Sandra’s writing, but also supported her decision to go for an MBA, her passport to the real world. To have a choice. Over those years, Cynthia spoke to her about boys, about sex, about putting first things first. Reminding her never to accept the feeling that she could not live without a certain man. “If you can’t live without him,” Cynthia said, “you can never live with him.” Telling her never, ever to surrender pride. Encouraging her to be free for all the days and nights of her life. To stay away from men who are too dumb, or too vain, or too hungry. To always be independent in matters of money. “Establish your career,” Cynthia said, “before you join yourself to any man.” These were all more sophisticated variations on what Madda had told Sandra in her own clipped, stoic Jamaican way. “Depend on no man.”

  And Cynthia reminded her, more than once, “As long as you can read, you’ll never be lonely.”

  They discussed movies too, and painting, and clothes, with Sandra explaining computers to Cynthia, and unraveling hip-hop for her. When Sandra began earning money, rising swiftly in one agency and then hired away by another, with more money each year and more power, she began taking Cynthia to dinner in various places, from Harlem to Brooklyn, places that her American mother had never heard of. She now bought books for Cynthia too and they talked for hours around those tables or walking on summer streets. Just the two of them. Sam was still in Cynthia’s life. Sam would always be there for Cynthia as Cynthia would be there for Sam. By her example, Cynthia taught Sandra there were many ways to love someone. That didn’t save Sandra from making her own mistakes.

  Now, with another man gone, Sandra Gordon turns in her bed. She thinks about Myles. And she wants to weep. And tells herself: no. Not over him. Whoever he is. She turns, gripping the pillow. And at last the tears fall.

  When they stop, and she wipes her eyes with a bedsheet, she thinks: Tomorrow, I’ll call Cynthia. As I always do.

  And falls at last into sleep.

  1:31 a.m. Sam Briscoe. City room of New York World.

  He knows he looks tired, because he is tired, but at least now he has the Friday wood. A MOTHER WEEPS. Maudlin, yes, unless you look at the mother’s eyes, full of waste and loss and the dark invincible suck of the ghetto. Maudlin, yes, unless you look closely at the photograph of the smiling young boy and the letter from Stuyvesant on the wall behind him. Maudlin, absolutely yes, unless you look at the second front-page photograph. Of the young corpse in the street. Citizens forever of the tabloid night.

  Or if you read the story by the Fonseca kid, spare and hard, with all mush words sliced away. The kid was deft too, with the way he folded in the unseen story: the foreclosure sign out front, another symbol of things ending. The piece was so good, Briscoe gave Fonseca an early slide. By now, he’s almost certainly in a saloon.

  Now I can pack the briefcase, Briscoe thinks, and take my own early slide. Go home and try to sleep a few hours before heading uptown to meet the F.P.
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br />   First, a final look. On the computer he scrolls through the day’s package. The Doom Page. A hard-news follow about torture tapes. A grand jury reporting on some Wall Street swindle, with some Bulgarian as one of a dozen victims. On the world spread, an AP report from Pakistan about the muscular rise of new battalions from the lunatic armies of God. One of them blew up a school full of little girls, guilty of the sin of learning to read. And, of course, fear for the security of nuclear bombs. People are starving and these pricks spend money on bombs. His eyes glaze, then he forces himself to focus. A global-warming piece from Australia, where drought was destroying food supplies and there was great fear of wildfires. They can cut that for space… A two-graf bus-plunge story from Peru, no Americans on board… In sports, Knicks lose. Nets lose. The fans in the arenas sure to skip purgatory. More rumors of steroids in baseball.

  Briscoe sighs and glances at his desk. He sees the invitation from Cynthia Harding. Ah, shit. And goes to e-mail. He clicks on the address book, punches in her name, starts to write.

  Dearest C:

  Sorry this is late. I’ve been too goddamned busy with my wife, Miss World. I hope it went well and that you raised a few kilos of dough for the library. These days, they need every dime. I’ll call you tomorrow (Friday) and we can try to catch up. Dim sum? I miss you.

  Much love, para siempre, Sam

  He reads it over, exhales, then hits “Send,” and shuts down the computer. He puts the folder marked “Newspapers” in his briefcase, along with others, maybe to prep for the morning meeting, dons jacket, coat, and a fedora lying on the floor behind his desk. He turns out the light. He locks his door and walks into the nearly deserted city room, saying his good-nights, and promising Matt Logan to call if there is any news in the morning.

  –May the wind be always at your back, Logan says, and smiles. The old Irish farewell. The one Briscoe’s mother always used when he went off to school. Or to the navy. The wind at his front includes the morning meeting.

  He notices that Helen Loomis is already gone.

  Then he walks down the long hall to the elevators. He passes the row of typewriters he had installed on low glass-cased tables during the first year of this brave new World. They had belonged to people he had worked with or admired: Murray Kempton and Jimmy Breslin, Peter Kihss and Abe Rosenthal, Paul Sann and Buddy Weiss, Gay Talese and Meyer Berger, Eddie Ellis, Joe Kahn, and Carl Pelleck, Jesse Abramson and Frank Graham and Jimmy Cannon. Bill Heinz was there too. Remingtons, Smith Coronas, and hell, someone had even produced an old Royal that once belonged to Damon Runyon, and that led to a portable used by Hearst’s favorite assassin, Westbrook Pegler, who once worked in this building. And on the walls, there were great World front pages, and a section of cartoons by Willard Mullin and Bill Gallo, Leo O’Mealia and Johnny Pierotti and, of course, Rollin Kirby from the original World. All originals, right off Briscoe’s wall at home. The kid reporters don’t know much about any of them. If Briscoe sees a kid in the hall staring at a certain typewriter, he always tells the kid to check the clips. Or Google the guy. He hopes the ghosts will rise from the typewriters and touch the kids as they rush off to a good murder or a terrible fire or some gigantic calamity.

  And thinks: If the news ahead of me this morning is bad, where will they all go? The typewriters, the cartoons, the framed front pages, the kids. And, shit: Where will I go?

  Out on West Street, the wind is blowing hard and cold from the harbor as Briscoe looks for a cab heading uptown. No limos for the New York World. Almost no cabs either. Sparse traffic moves out of the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel off to the left. No taxis. He begins walking to stay warm. The wind is at his back. He can see the glow of Battery Park City. The sprawl of apartment buildings did not exist down here when he started at the old Post. There were banana boats at the piers and in August the cargo included immense mosquitoes—migrants from Honduras, all without visas—and the sound in the sweltering city room was punctuated by people slapping them dead while typing their stories. No air-conditioning. The windows open. Much laughter. Always laughter.

  Then he sees a taxi with its roof light on, steps into the street and hails it. As he slides in, he gives the address, explaining it’s in SoHo. The driver says nothing, and starts moving. Briscoe feels a dull ache in his lower back. Not pain. An ache. He looks at the driver’s name in the plastic slot.

  –You from Pakistan, driver? he says.

  –Brooklyn, he says curtly.

  –Originally Pakistan?

  –Eh.

  That could lead to more talk, maybe, but Briscoe thinks, Ah, hell, just get me home. The driver makes an abrupt turn off the highway, as if closing the conversation. Briscoe accepts his dismissal, leans back, aching now for the cabbies of his youth, and their soliloquies on life and death, men and women and baseball. Gone forever. Maybe that’s causing the ache in his back too. The ache of losing too many things. And people. Then thinks: Stop. That’s like nostalgia for the clap. He watches a knot of drunken kids lurching from a club with an unreadable sign. Up the block, three very young women are also tottering toward Sixth Avenue on high spiked shoes. To be up this late on a Thursday night, none of them must have day jobs. Or they’re college kids spending their fathers’ dwindling money. Which is the same thing. Do they know how to sign up for unemployment? How many of them? Gotta tell a reporter…

  At the corner of West Broadway and Spring, he overtips the surly driver, because he always overtips cabbies, steps out, and walks east toward Greene Street. Two blocks. A counterfeit of exercise. Cold air for the aging brain. He sees more stragglers from the saloons. In twos or threes. He glances up Wooster Street and is sure he sees a man in a poncho glistening with rain. Maybe even a combat poncho. Seated in a wheelchair. A glance. A freeze frame. Then the man is gone. What the fuck? And thinks: Another member of the VFW. The Veterans of Foreign Woes. Or Foreign Whores. Roaming around SoHo like it was the Ia Drang Valley. Or maybe just coming from a costume party. If he has a gun, someone might be in trouble.

  Briscoe crosses Wooster and remembers walking here one spring night long ago with Cynthia Harding, the two of them joined by anticipation. She would stay the night. Or maybe a week. Everything seemed possible. Until later, when she turned to him.

  –What do you want, Sam? What do you want out of this life?

  –Nothing, he said.

  She took this remark as a dismissal and a month later she married her second husband and moved to Switzerland for two years. Married the old guy with all the money. Cynthia thought Briscoe meant he didn’t want her either. And maybe she was right. He felt then, and feels now, that he has no talent for marriage. For the compromises and little lies that made shared lives work. He had tried it once, and that was enough. He had no talent for the mutual invasions of privacy. Laughter was never enough. At least not then. And maybe not now. After that night when they crossed Wooster Street, he didn’t see Cynthia until after her second husband’s funeral.

  By then he knew that Cynthia was the one woman he could not live without. Life, he had learned, was a series of mistakes, delusions, and stupid losses. Not just for him. For most people. It’s fourth and two and you don’t score. Down by three runs, you pop up with two out in the ninth and the bases loaded. He said out loud: Stop with the fucking sports metaphors. And thought: If the Fonseca kid ever said such things, I’d cut them off his tongue. But one thing is sure: All true wounds are self-inflicted. Aside from his daughter, Nicole, Cynthia was now the only woman in his life. Yes, their lives were separate and private. But who said the sentence that has been moving in his head? You are who you are when you’re alone. Even when he was alone, he was with Cynthia.

  He stops at his building, glances warily around the wet cobblestoned street, then opens the outside door into the bright small lobby. He checks the mailbox. Grabs some envelopes, most of them junk mail, 50% OFF! TWO SUITS FOR PRICE OF ONE. The same as the signs now in all SoHo windows. Except for the signs saying TO LET. A few bills. He turns the key i
n the elevator slot for his floor, pushes the button, starts rising. Uses another key for his own door. On the third floor. Only one above him.

  On the wall of the vestibule is a framed poster from the Picasso retrospective at MoMA more than twenty years ago. He saw it twice with Cynthia Harding. He unlocks the door to his loft, flicks on the light switch, locks the door behind him. And sees the framed photograph of Willie Mays playing stickball on St. Nicholas Place in 1951. The picture always makes him smile. Welcome home, it says. Say hey. Joy lives.

  On the street end of the loft, a desk lamp glows upon his large computer table, which is littered with folders and paper. To the side, a stack of old newspapers rises two feet off the polished plank floor. A computer rests on its own small table, and beyond it is an HP color printer. Small green lights blink in welcome. Not tonight, boys. Gotta get some sleep.

  He removes hat, coat, jacket, tie as he walks deeper into the loft, dropping each upon the couches and chairs of the living area, and goes into the bathroom. He thinks: Been here so many years now. Since they were just starting to use the word “SoHo.” Wasn’t even legal to live here. His loft had been an old metalworking shop and the bare polished wood floors were gouged where machinery had been torn out, probably for shipment to South America. They all laugh at him now, his few living friends from those years. Briscoe had combined the luck of the Irish and the chutzpah of the Jews. They know he bought the loft in 1974 for fifteen thousand dollars borrowed from a bank, where he knew the vice president from the Lion’s Head, then wrote a fast thriller under another name to pay off the mortgage and do the work the place needed, and now it’s worth almost four million. Or was. Before the Fall. He thinks: I gotta fucking laugh. Four million, and I never even considered selling. Even after Joyce died. My only wife. Even after I went to Europe. He rented the place to a director friend from the Public Theater who was getting divorced. A friend who wouldn’t steal the books. He’s dead too.