Randall #01 - The Best Revenge

by Anne R. Allen

  Camilla was trying to remember how to get to Sea World. She had no idea how she could write a story with “political implications” on the subject of penguins, whether they were being held hostage or not.

  “Yes, Mr. Gordon?”

  “Stuart,” he said, with his face closer to hers than was proper for a person of such recent acquaintance. “And if you’re free for dinner tonight, I’ve found a little place in Hillcrest that serves some almost passable veal—”

  “How sweet of you,” she said, pulling away with an exaggerated smile. “But I’ve already made plans.”

  ~

  As she dashed down the stairs, she felt some pleasure in knowing that she had dismissed Stuart without having to resort to an actual lie. She had indeed made plans for dinner this evening—with Violet. Or rather, Violet had made plans for both of them. She had promised to cook a “comfort feast” if Camilla lost her job today, but insisted that if she still had a job, she must fix dinner for Violet “on account of the bus thing was her idea.” Camilla was not exactly looking forward to another evening of Violet’s rambling monologues, but she knew it would be preferable to an evening with Stuart, who reminded her of every bad date she ever had while a student at Rosewood.

  ~

  The penguins’ names were Fred and Ginger, and they had been held hostage for nearly three hours in a wing of the not-yet-open “Penguin Encounter”, the newest exhibit at Sea World. Their captor, a machete-wielding Mexican national named Luis Martinez, released them after that interval because, he said, he was “freezing his ass off”.

  Mr. Martinez was a sad-looking man of about fifty. Camilla felt sorry for him, despite his threats to use his dangerous-looking knife to make Fred and Ginger into “penguin sushi”. The poor man was facing deportation after eighteen years in the U.S. because of irregularities in his immigration papers. He said he was protesting the fact that the citizens of San Diego were spending millions on the housing of feathered immigrants from Antarctica, but would do nothing about the squalid housing for hard-working human immigrants. He asked several times to see Fred and Ginger’s Green Cards.

  ~

  As Camilla climbed back up the stairs to the Sentinel office, she was actually looking forward to writing the article. She hoped she’d have a chance to finish it before having to deal with Stuart or Jonathan Kahn again.

  However, when she reached the newsroom she saw Stuart hovering near her desk.

  “Genghis is out for blood. He wants to see you right away.” He gave her a pat. “The offer is still open for dinner, if you need a shoulder to cry on.”

  Camilla’s knees felt rubbery as she knocked on the glass door. Mr. Kahn was not talking on the phone. He was reading copy. Hers. She took a deep breath.

  “Come in, Randy.” He didn’t even look up from the typed pages. His dark curls shadowed his eyes and the stark light from the overhead fluorescent fixture made his cheekbones look especially prominent.

  “Are you aware,” he said, suddenly glancing up from her story, “—that your assignment was to cover a computer fair in Rancho Bernardo?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “But you decided you’d rather write a piece on public transportation?”

  She kept her hands clasped to stop them from shaking. “Not exactly—you see, I had trouble with the bus, so I didn’t get to the fair until it was over, but I thought I should write something, and Violet said everything has a lesson if you look for it, so—well, I wrote that.”

  Mr. Kahn studied her story again. “I see.” He flipped over a page. “Well, even though your research is worse than skimpy, I think I see what you’re trying to do. But listen—if you want to be a political satirist, you’re going to have to be a lot more hard-hitting than this. Don’t be afraid to mention the mayor’s name. Call him out and tell him he’s a big, shiny, empty fraud, just like his buses. You can’t be this subtle. Hit us over the head with it.”

  “So—you’d like a rewrite?” She tried to remember the mayor’s name.

  “No.” Mr. Kahn leaned back in his chair. “I’ve already run two articles on Mayor Wilson this week, and most of our space is going to Bob’s Nicaragua article.” He dropped her story into the wastebasket next to his desk. “I suggest that in the future you write the stories assigned to you.”

  “Yes, Mr. Kahn” she took one last look at her rejected work—already soaking up grease from the gooey burger box in the wastebasket.

  “You look familiar to me, Randy,” he said. “Where have we met before?”

  Uh-oh. Here it was. Her eyes focused on an ink stain on the green linoleum floor. She felt her cheeks burning as she tried to think of a plausible lie. Any lie.

  “Good God!” he said. “You’re that air-brained little debutante, aren’t you? H. P. Randall’s daughter. What’s your name—Pamela?” He grabbed her greasy story from the basket and read her byline, which she had typed as “C. S. Randall.”

  “C. S? Camilla. That’s it. Camilla Randall. Are you aware, Ms. Randall, that your family had me blacklisted with every major news agency in this country?”

  “I’m afraid I am, Mr. Kahn.”

  “Then would you mind explaining what you are doing here?”

  She said “um” twice as she continued to stare at the ink spot. No words came. She didn’t even have the will to run.

  “Wait a minute,” Mr. Kahn said. “I did that interview less than a year ago. You were going to some finishing school in Virginia. How long did you work for the Union?”

  He tossed her story back in the trash and picked up the telephone.

  “Julie, get me the San Diego Union personnel department.”

  “Please! Don’t bother,” Camilla said. “I worked there for two months—in classifieds. I wasn’t very good at it, and they were getting ready to fire me anyway, and then I missed a day by mistake, so I just—never went back.” She clutched her shaking hands together and summoned the bravery to look Mr. Kahn in the face.

  “Cancel that, Julie.” He put down the phone and leaned back in his chair with a mocking half-smile. “So, you got a fun summer job you didn’t bother to show up for?”

  She looked back at the floor.

  “You still haven’t answered my question, Ms. Randall. I’m not going to ask you how you conned Angela into recommending you for this job. I’ve conned her myself plenty of times. But I want to know why a spoiled little socialite with the political consciousness of a toy poodle wants to work for me?”

  She could say nothing.

  Mr. Kahn leaned forward. “You’re working for a left-wing newspaper in a southern California slum, Ms. Randall—a newspaper that happens to be run by a man who once wrote an awfully unflattering article about you for a major New York daily. I’m having trouble understanding why.”

  The ink spot on the floor started looking like a severed head, with blood dripping from the neck.

  Mr. Kahn’s voice got louder. “It’s obviously not the money. Eight hundred dollars a month is hardly an attraction to a woman whose mother just married the Grand Dragon of the fast-food industry. And God know it’s not the politics, so what is it?” His eyes flashed icy blue. “Is it revenge, Ms. Randall? Wasn’t blacklisting me enough for you? Is that angelic face hiding the soul of a vindictive bitch?”

  This last speech had an odd effect on Camilla. She stopped wishing for the floor to swallow her up. She didn’t feel like crying, or even getting sick. Well, maybe the news that her mother had indeed gone through with her plans to marry Lester Stokes did make her queasy for a moment, but Mr. Kahn’s nastiness, and his use of the vulgar word, made him nothing but a twin of Lester Stokes, and she knew she had to fight him—the way she wished her mother had fought Stokes.

  Taking a deep breath, she drew on her mother’s most powerful weapons: a steady smile, and a slow, calm voice.

  “Mr. Kahn,” she said. “I do not intend to get into a contest of bad manners with you. Bad manners are your field of expertise, not mine. In answer to your que
stion, I came to work here because I needed a job and I studied to be a journalist. If I had known that you were editor here, I probably wouldn’t have taken the position—not because I had anything to do with your blacklisting, but to save us both embarrassment. I assume you were embarrassed about that dreadful Guardian article, and the awful way you told me about how my father died. I will accept your apology for it. If you will accept mine for trying to pass myself off as an experienced journalist.”

  Mr. Kahn said nothing.

  She reached into her purse for her notebook and put it on his desk. “My notes on the penguin story,” she said. “I hope you find them legible.” She started toward the door.

  “Ms. Randall, I want that story today. Where do you think you’re going?”

  “I assumed I’d been fired, Mr. Kahn,” Camilla said.

  “You assumed wrong. You’re educated. You know how to put together a sentence, and you have a good, clear style. If you’re serious about this job, and you write the stories assigned to you, there’s a place for you on this paper. I’ll give you a month. If you can’t cut it by then, you’re out. Got it?”

  “Yes, Mr. Kahn.” She kept her hand on the doorknob to hide the shaking.

  “Don’t forget your notes,” he said, gesturing at the notebook. “I want to see the story as soon as it’s finished.” He looked at his watch and reached for the telephone.

  Camilla hoped Violet would enjoy a dinner of chocolate pudding. She’d never had a chance to tell her it was the only thing she could cook.

  Chapter 15—New Furniture and Old News

  “So, Camellia, how did it go?”

  Violet peeked out of her apartment as Camilla was putting her key in the lock of her own door.

  “I still have a job, at least for a month. Mr. Kahn said…”

  Camilla stopped as she opened the door and saw her little home was not at all as she left it. Her bed had been moved to a dark corner at the other end of the room. In its place was a large Naugahyde couch of an emphatic shade of turquoise, patched here and there with strips of silvery tape. Next to it was a wing chair covered in a faded green fabric printed with American eagles. The chair seemed to be missing a leg. In front of the couch was a wooden industrial spool, roughly of coffee table height, with numbers printed on its rough surface in purple ink.

  “All six of my husbands loved my pot roast,” Violet said. “So I went ahead and put the roast on, even though I knew you weren’t going to get fired. A man likes his meat and potatoes, and I didn’t see anything like that in your refrigerator. He liked the story, didn’t he, this boss of yours?”

  Camilla tried to focus. “I wouldn’t say he exactly liked it…Excuse me Violet, but what is all this furniture doing here?”

  “He brought it. Your boyfriend Jamey. Mrs. R. let him in. He tried to fix the chair, but he didn’t have the right kind of leg, so he went to the hardware to get one. I told him he might as well have dinner with us. You two might patch things up. Seems like a nice boy, really.”

  “You invited Jimmy to dinner?”

  “That’s what I’m telling you, Camellia, if you’d just pay attention. That’s why I’m cooking the pot roast. I figured you could make dessert.”

  “I can make chocolate pudding.”

  “Pudding is all right. Cake would be better, but I guess you don’t have time. You’d better get started right away. And change your clothes, Camellia. Put on something more feminine. And take your hair down, for goodness’ sake. Are you trying to look like an old maid schoolteacher? Don’t dawdle. Dinner’s in an hour.”

  ~

  When Camilla knocked on Violet’s door, carrying her Tupperware bowl of pudding, she had to suppress a giggle. She realized that she had just spent an hour following the orders of Violet Rushforth as if they had been a royal command. She had put on the pink calico Jessica McClintock that she bought for the Mayday fête at school, curled her hair, and tied it with a pink ribbon. Jimmy would probably think she looked like Little Bo-Peep.

  Jimmy, wearing an ancient tweed jacket over a T-shirt and jeans, opened the door. He held a small crystal glass of what looked like sherry and did not look comfortable. He put the glass in her hand and gave her an odd peck on the forehead.

  “The old lady told me to do it,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.

  Camilla sipped the sherry. “Thank you so much for all the, um, useful furniture,” she said. “It certainly…fills up the apartment.”

  “It’s unbelievable the stuff some people put out for garbage collection,” he said.

  “Unbelievable.” She surveyed Violet’s apartment. “But obviously Violet doesn’t have that problem.” The apartment, a mirror-version of hers, contained what appeared to be the contents of a well-furnished house. In fact, there was hardly enough floor space to walk to the kitchen, where Violet, wearing a lavender organdy apron over her jogging suit, was stirring gravy in a large pot.

  “Here’s the pudding,” Camilla said. “The pot roast smells wonderful.”

  Violet accepted the pudding.

  “Camellia, what did you wear that for? You look like Little Bo-Peep. Go light the candles while I get Jamey to help me with the roast.”

  Camilla found some matches and lit the candles on the beautifully set table. The candlesticks look like antique cut crystal, and the china was Royal Doulton. She picked up a fork. Sterling. Violet was certainly full of surprises.

  “ Jamey, you sit at the head of the table and serve,” Violet said. “That’s a man’s job.”

  “Uh, is this beef?” Jimmy said, after heaping two plates with food.

  “Of course,” said Violet.

  “I don’t eat red meat,” Jimmy said.

  “Don’t be stupid,” Violet said. “Men love red meat. Help yourself to some. Our dinner’s getting cold.”

  Jimmy obediently filled his plate.

  Camilla tried not to look like a starving animal as she attacked her dinner.

  “Now, isn’t this nice?” Violet said. “Finally seeing you two young people together. There’s nothing like enjoying a good meal together to patch up a quarrel.”

  Jimmy coughed.

  “There wasn’t any quarrel,” Camilla said. “Really.”

  “Then how come you two aren’t talking to each other? Jamey, say something to Camellia.”

  Jimmy finally said, “I hear you’re having some trouble with your new job, Cammie. Sounds like your boss is a real assho—sonofabitch.”

  “The other reporters call him Genghis Kahn,” Camilla said.

  There was silence for few moments.

  “Genghis?” Violet said. “That’s a funny name. Is he a foreigner? I knew a man named Gengris once. Charlie Gengris. Ran a tavern outside of Dayton, Ohio. That’s where I met husband number three. Oh, he had an eye for the ladies, that one. Not Charlie Gengris—my third husband. Charlie had only the one eye. Lost the other in the war. My husband ran off with a dancer from Cleveland. Don’t ever marry a man you meet in a tavern, Camellia. You didn’t meet Jamey in a tavern, did you?”

  “No,” Camilla said. “We were introduced at a party. At my house. My old house.”

  “Oh, I almost forgot,” Jimmy said suddenly. “I have a letter for you. It came to the Ocean Beach house. I’ve been kind of keeping an eye on the place. Wave’s afraid somebody might come around looking for you two.”

  “You’ve seen Wave?”

  Jimmy grinned. “Yeah, I made a deal with a guy on her collection route.”

  “Well, where is it?” Violet demanded. “The letter. Where is it? Nothing brightens up a day like getting a letter.”

  Jimmy reached into a pocket and pulled out a slightly crumpled envelope of familiar Eaton’s parchment vellum, engraved with a New York return address.

  “Open it, for goodness’ sake,” Violet said. “You know who it’s from?”

  “Yes,” Camilla said quietly as she obeyed Violet’s command. Inside, she found a short note in her mother’s handwriting along with a cl
ipping from the Guardian. It showed her mother looking stunning in a white Givenchy suit, on the arm of a smiling Lester Stokes. The word “wedding” was in the caption. She couldn’t bring herself to read the note. She stuffed it, with the clipping, back into the envelope and forced a smile.

  “Nothing important,” she said. “Jimmy, I’d love more of that pot roast.”

  “Looking at the expression on your face, I’d say it was real important,” Violet said. “I bet it’s your parents bawling you out for not writing.”

  “My mother,” Camilla said. “Bawling me out for not showing up to watch her get married to a slug.”

  “You missed your mother’s wedding?” Violet said.

  “Yes Violet, I did.” Camilla knew her voice was too loud. “I didn’t want to see my mother get legally bound to the most disgusting ball of slime on this planet. And I don’t want to see her again as long as she’s married to him. Please don’t talk about it any more.” She stabbed a piece of pot roast.

  Violet laughed. “Oh, Camellia, you are a spunky one. You remind me of myself. That’s just the way I was when my daughter married that Jewish fellow. Not that I was bothered he was Jewish—or a Communist, but he was so high-and-mighty that my blood would start to boil every time I was in the same room with him. Acted like everybody around him was stupid. Said he was some kind of doctor, but he couldn’t make you well, and I knew he’d never make any money, even though he was Jewish. Not like my friend Sol. And I was right, too. He never did have two dimes to rub together—my son-in-law, not Sol—but there’s no satisfaction in knowing you’re right when you end up losing your only daughter, now, is there?”

  “You lost your daughter?” Camilla said.

  “Yes. I was just like you. I refused to go to the wedding, and said I’d never talk to her as long as she was married to that man, and just when I was beginning to get lonesome for her and decided to see her anyway, she died having that baby. Now tell me I wasn’t stupid for being so stubborn.”