The Imperfectionists

by Tom Rachman

  "So," Lloyd asks, "you still drawing?"

  "Drawing?"

  "Your cartoons."

  "Haven't done that for years."

  "Sketch me now. On a napkin."

  Jerome, looking down, shakes his head.

  This lunch will end soon. Lloyd must ask the question for which he arranged the encounter. He snatches the bill, rebuffing his son's outstretched hand. "Absolutely not. This is mine."

  Outside the cafe, he could still ask Jerome the question. The last moment arrives. Instead, he says, "Where are you living now?"

  "I'm moving to a new place. I'll give you the details then."

  "Care to walk for a bit?"

  "I'm headed the other way."

  They shake hands.

  "Thank you," Lloyd says, "for meeting me."

  All the way home, he curses himself. Around Les Halles, he stops on the sidewalk to count the money in his wallet. A teenager on a motor scooter drives down the sidewalk toward him, beeping maniacally.

  "Where am I supposed to go?" Lloyd shouts. "Where do you want me to go?"

  The boy slows, swearing, his machine scraping Lloyd's leg.

  "Fucking prick," Lloyd says. He never asked Jerome the question.

  At the apartment, Eileen says, "I wish you'd bring him by. I'd love to cook him a meal. Wouldn't it be lovely if he just dropped in sometimes?"

  "He has his own things going on."

  "At the ministry?"

  "I imagine. I don't know. I ask him questions and I get these vague--" Lloyd opens his hand searchingly, looks into his palm, unable to find the word. "I don't know what. You ask him."

  "Okay, but you have to get him over here first. Does he have a girlfriend?"

  "I don't know."

  "No need to snap at me."

  "I'm not. But how am I supposed to know, Eileen?"

  "Must be interesting working at the ministry."

  "He might be making photocopies, for all I know."

  "No, I'm sure not."

  "But I have to say, I find it pretty odd."

  "Find what odd?"

  He hesitates. "Just that he--knowing what I do for a living, what helped bring him up, what paid for his childhood--he knows that I'm a reporter, yet he's never once given me any sort of tidbit, any scrap from the ministry. It's no big tragedy. Just, you'd think he would have."

  "Maybe he doesn't have anything to give you."

  "I'm aware of how those places work. He has stuff I could use."

  "He's probably not allowed to talk to reporters."

  "Nobody is. But they do. It's called leaking."

  "I know what it's called."

  "I don't mean it that way. Sorry." He touches her arm. "It's okay," he says. "I'm okay now."

  The next morning, he wakes up furious. Something in his sleep enraged him, but he can't recall what. When Eileen comes over for breakfast, he tells her to go back and eat at Didier's. She leaves, and he wishes she had not, that she'd slept there last night. He opens his wallet. He knows how much is there but checks anyway. If he doesn't earn something soon, he can't stay in this apartment. If he moves out, Eileen won't come with him.

  Without her, where does he go? He needs money; he needs a story.

  "I'm waking you for the second day running. What time do you normally get up?" he asks Jerome over the phone. "Listen, I need to meet again."

  Jerome arrives at the cafe and shakes his father's hand. As rehearsed, Lloyd says, "I'm sorry to bother you again. But there's something important I need to check for work."

  "With me?"

  "A small thing. I'm doing a piece relating to French foreign policy. It's urgent. Deadline's today. This afternoon."

  Jerome leans back in his chair. "I don't know anything useful."

  "You haven't even heard my question yet."

  "I really don't know anything."

  "What do you do there?" Lloyd says, then reels in his temper. "I mean, you haven't even heard what I'm asking. You must have been there three years now. You won't let me visit, you won't tell me about it. So are you a janitor and you're afraid to admit it?" He laughs. "They do give you a desk, right?"

  "Yes."

  "All right, a guessing game. You keep giving me one-word answers. I'll get there eventually. Is your desk close to where the minister sits? Or far?"

  Jerome shifts uncomfortably. "I don't know. A medium distance."

  "Medium is close."

  "Not that close."

  "For God's sake, this is like pulling teeth. Listen, I need a story. Just let me pick your brains for a minute."

  "I thought you had a specific question."

  "But do you have any ideas? I did buy you lunch yesterday." He adds, "I'm kidding."

  "I can't."

  "I'm not going to cite you. And I'm not asking you to go in there and steal documents or anything."

  "What sort of thing do you want?"

  "Not sure. Something terrorism-related maybe. Or to do with Iraq. Or Israel."

  "I don't know," Jerome says softly to his knees.

  Lloyd's other children would have dismissed him by now. Only Jerome is loyal. All three daughters are like Lloyd--always striving, always driving at something. Jerome, though, doesn't push back. He alone is loyal. He proves it by saying, "If anything, it'd be this thing about a Gaza force."

  "What Gaza force?" Lloyd perks up.

  "I don't know all the details."

  "But wait, hang on. The ministry is talking about a force in Gaza?"

  "I think I heard that."

  "You think?"

  "I think so."

  Lloyd gleams. "We might have something here. We might, we might." He pulls out a notebook and jots this down. He teases out the nugget, tugs, tweaks, yanks at it. A shiver passes through Lloyd: this is what he's good at. But Jerome is clamming up. Too late--he's been opened. Out it comes. Come on.

  "You can't use any of that."

  "You're not going to get in trouble."

  "It's my information," Jerome says.

  "It's not yours. It's just information. Doesn't belong to anybody. It exists independent of you. I can't not know it now. You want me to grovel? I asked for a bit of help. I don't see what's so difficult. I'm sorry," Lloyd concludes, "but you gave it to me."

  He rushes home--he might still make deadline. He phones Menzies. Ha-goddamn-ha, Lloyd thinks, as he is transferred. "Well, my friend," he says, "I've got you a story."

  Menzies hears him out. "But wait--France proposing a U.N. peacekeeping force in Gaza? Israel would never go for that. It's a nonstarter."

  "Do you know that for a fact? Anyhow, I'm reporting that the French are floating the idea. What happens next is another matter."

  "We'd need this firmed up."

  "I can do that."

  "You've got four hours till cutoff. Look, report the hell out of it and check back in ninety minutes."

  Lloyd puts down the phone. He glances at his contact numbers. He doesn't even have up-to-date background on Gaza. He dials Jerome's cellphone, but it rings and rings. He finds a number for the foreign ministry. Maybe he can get details without revealing Jerome as his source. Of course he can. He has done this sort of thing a million times. He phones the ministry press office, thankful for the first time that crazy Francoise changed their son's last name to hers--no one will tie the name Lloyd Burko to Jerome.

  Lloyd poses a few introductory questions to the duty officer. But she's more intent on extracting information than on giving it, so he cuts the conversation short. The moment he hangs up, his phone rings: it's Menzies.

  "You're phoning me now," Lloyd says with a hint of triumph.

  "I mentioned your story at the afternoon meeting and Kathleen is excited about it," he says, referring to the editor-in-chief. "As you know, you don't want to get Kathleen excited."

  "So you're taking it?"

  "We'll need to see it first. Personally, I'd like to run it."

  "How many words you looking for?"

  "As lo
ng as you need. Provided it holds up. As I say, we'll have to see the copy first. You think this could be frontable?"

  If the story runs on the front page, it has to jump to the inside pages, too, which means it must be longer. And longer means more money. "Page one," Lloyd says. "Definitely page one."

  "You're hammering this, right?"

  "Just got off the phone with the foreign ministry."

  "And?"

  "More of the same."

  "But you're getting this confirmed--that's amazing. I haven't seen this anywhere."

  After they hang up, Lloyd paces around his apartment, stares out the window, scratching the pane, searching his memory for any useful source. No time. All he can do is work with what he has--finesse a single-source story, plump it up with background material, and pray that it slips through. He sits at his word processor and types out a story that, when he yanks the paper from the machine, is easily the flimsiest he has ever tried to flog. He places the sheet to one side. No quotes, nothing.

  He feeds in a fresh sheet and starts anew, writing the piece as it ought to have been: full quotations, dates, troop numbers, disputes within the cabinet, transatlantic hostilities. He knows his craft--all is couched in terms of possibilities, proposals, balloons floated. All the fabricated sources are "on condition of anonymity," or "officials close to," or "experts familiar with." No one is cited by name. Fourteen hundred words. He calculates how much that will earn him. Enough to pay the rent--a reprieve. Enough to buy Jerome a decent shirt. To take Eileen out for drinks.

  He reads the article, using a red pen to slice away what might be contested. This shortens the text, so he concocts a couple of repetitive quotes from "an administration official in Washington." He retypes it, makes amendments, and faxes it from a phone center down the street. He bounds back up to his apartment, pausing on the landing, out of breath, trying to smile. "Lazy bastard!" he tells himself. He bangs on Didier's door. "Eileen? You there?" He enters his place and locates a dusty quart of Tanqueray, pours himself a shot and swirls the liquor in his mouth, letting it burn inside his cheeks. He has never falsified a story before. "Feels all right," he says. "Shoulda done this years ago! Saved myself a whole lot of work!" He pours another splash of gin, waits for the inevitable call.

  The phone rings.

  "We need to tighten the sourcing," Menzies says.

  "Tighten how?"

  "That's Kathleen's say-so. Incidentally, this faxing stuff is a nightmare on deadline. We had to retype everything here. You really need to get your email working."

  This is a good sign: Menzies is counting on pieces in the future.

  "You're right. I'll get the computer fixed right away."

  "And sourcing. We have to be clearer. Like in the third graf, the quote reads weird. We can't identify the person as 'familiar with the report' when we haven't mentioned any report."

  "Did I leave that in? I meant to cut that."

  They make tweaks, work their way down the story, hang up in accord. Lloyd takes another sip of gin. The phone rings again. Menzies is still not happy. "This isn't sourced directly to any person or institution. Could we just say the 'French foreign ministry'?"

  "I don't see why 'an official' isn't good enough."

  "On the meat of the story, you have a single unnamed source. It's too vague for page one."

  "How is it vague? You run this sort of stuff all the time."

  "I thought you said the foreign ministry confirmed it."

  "They did."

  "Can't we say that?"

  "I'm not gonna burn my source."

  "We're near deadline here."

  "I don't even want you writing 'French' anything. Just say 'an official.'"

  "If you can't agree to more exact wording, we won't be able to run it. I'm sorry--I've got Kathleen right here telling me so. And that'd mean tearing up page one. Which means hell on earth this close to deadline, as you know. We need to decide now. Can you budge on this?" He waits. "Lloyd?"

  "A source at the foreign ministry. Say that."

  "And it's solid?"

  "Yes."

  "Good enough for me."

  But not for Kathleen, it turns out. She calls a contact in Paris who scoffs at the piece. Menzies phones back. "Kathleen's source is some top ministry flack. Is yours better than that?"

  "Yes."

  "How much better?"

  "They just are. I can't get into who."

  "I'm battling Kathleen on this. I don't doubt your source. But for my state of mind, give me a clue. Not for publication."

  "I can't."

  "Then that's it. I'm sorry."

  Lloyd pauses. "Someone in the Mideast directorate, okay? My source is good: policy side, not press side."

  Menzies conveys this to Kathleen, who puts Lloyd on speakerphone. "And this guy is bankable?" she asks.

  "Very."

  "So you've used him before?"

  "No."

  "But we can trust him?"

  "Yes."

  "Off the record, who is it?"

  He hesitates. "I don't see why you need to know." But he does see, of course. "It's my son."

  Their chuckles are audible over the speakerphone. "Are you serious?"

  "He works at the ministry."

  "I'm not too enthused about quoting your family members," Kathleen says. "Though at this hour it's either that or we run wire copy on Bush's plunging approval ratings, which frankly is no longer page-one material at this stage."

  Menzies suggests, "We could plug in the Five-Years-After-9/11 setup, which is pretty much done."

  "No, the anniversary is Monday, so I want to save that for the weekend." She pauses. "Okay, let's go with Lloyd."

  He's drunk by the time Eileen returns home. She left Didier with his friends at a jazz club and knocks at the front door. Why doesn't she just walk in? But he won't bring that up now. He hurries for another tumbler and pours her a gin before she can decline.

  "Make sure you buy the paper tomorrow," he says. "Page one."

  She rubs his knee. "Congrats, babe. When was your last of those?"

  "The Roosevelt administration, probably."

  "Franklin or Teddy Roosevelt?"

  "Definitely Teddy." He pulls her closer, a little roughly, and kisses her--not one of their normal soft pecks but an ardent embrace.

  She shifts back. "Enough."

  "Right--what if your husband turned up."

  "Don't make me feel lousy."

  "I'm only kidding. Don't feel bad--I don't." He pinches her cheek. "I love you."

  Without a word, she returns across the hall. He flops onto his bed, mumbling drunkenly--"Goddamn page fucking one!"

  Eileen wakes him gently the next morning and places the paper on the bed. "It's freezing in here," she says. "I put the coffee on."

  He sits up in bed.

  "I didn't see your story, babe," she says. "Not running today?"

  He scans the page-one headlines: "Blair to Step Down in 12 Months;" "Pentagon Forbids Cruelty in Terror Interrogations;" "Gay Marriages Roil America;" "Australia Mourns 'Crocodile Hunter';" and finally, "Bush Slumps to New Low in Polls."

  His Gaza story didn't make the front. He flips through the inside pages. It's nowhere. Cursing, he dials Rome. It's early, but Menzies is already at his desk. "What happened to my piece?" Lloyd demands.

  "I'm sorry. We couldn't use it. That French flack friend of Kathleen's called back and denied it all. Said we'd be screwed if we went with it. They'd issue an official protest."

  "A flack friend of Kathleen's pisses on my piece and you guys buy that? Anyhow, why is Kathleen re-reporting my work? I told you, my son works at the ministry."

  "Well, that's kind of weird, too. Kathleen mentioned your son's name to her friend."

  "She identified him as the source? Are you out of your mind?"

  "No, no--hang on. She never said he was your source."

  "It's not going to be hard to figure out. Jesus Christ!"

  "Let me finish, Lloyd
. Let me finish here. No one called Jerome Burko works there."

  "You morons. He goes by his mother's maiden name."

  "Oh."

  Lloyd must warn his son, give him time to come up with an excuse. He calls Jerome's cellphone, but he isn't picking up. Maybe he's at work early for a change. Jesus, what a disaster. Lloyd rings the ministry switchboard.

  The operator says, "I'm looking at a list of all the people in this building. That name is not on it."

  Lloyd hurries down to Boulevard du Montparnasse, raises his arm for a taxi, then drops it. He hesitates at the curb, squeezing his wallet, which is thinner than ever. Then again, if he's going to go bankrupt this is how he should do it. He waves down a cab.

  At the ministry building, the security guards won't let him inside. He repeats his son's name, insists that it's a family emergency. This gets him nowhere. He shows his press accreditation, but it expired on December 31, 2005. He waits outside, phoning Jerome's mobile. Functionaries stroll out for cigarette breaks. He searches among them for his son, asking if anyone here works in the North African and Middle Eastern directorate.

  "I remember that guy," a woman says. "He was an intern here."

  "I know, but what section is he in now?"

  "He's not in any section. We never hired him. I think he wrote the exams, but he couldn't pass the languages part." She narrows her eyes and smiles. "I always thought he was lying about having an American father."

  "How do you mean?"

  "Just that his English was so hopeless."

  She dredges up an old address for Jerome and gives it to Lloyd. He takes the Metro to the Chateau Rouge stop and finds the building, a decaying chunk of plaster whose main gate is broken. He scans the list of residents at each inner courtyard, hunting for Jerome's last name. He can't find it. Then he spots an unexpected last name, his own. The buzzer reads, "Jerome Burko."

  Lloyd presses it, but there is no response. Residents come and go. He sits at the edge of the courtyard and gazes up at the shuttered windows.

  After an hour, Jerome appears through the main gate but does not immediately see his father. He opens his mailbox and, flipping through junk, weaves down the passage.

  Lloyd says his son's name, and Jerome starts. "What are you doing?"

  "Sorry," Lloyd says, standing sorely. "Sorry to appear like this." He has never spoken to his son in this manner, with deference. "I just turned up--is that okay?"