Riot Street

by Tyler King

  “So Ethan is a prima donna.” Which comes as a shock not at all. I wouldn’t describe Ethan as the preening-peacock type, but neither is he oblivious to his professional stature or the influence he can exert over a room.

  “I ain’t mad at him,” Addison says, quite happy to elaborate as long as I agree to ignore the tension around Vee’s name. “Hell, I’d take a few doting interns who wanted to pick up my dry cleaning and walk my dog, but Ethan tends to horde the eager-to-please. Don’t fall for the mysterious eyes and gorgeous hair—he’s a crafty one.”

  I like to think I’m a pretty good judge of character. At least so far as picking out the dangerous types: liars, manipulators, users, abusers. Ethan may have a few personality flaws, but he doesn’t trip my alarms.

  “Don’t get suckered into being nice to him as a gateway drug to washing his car,” I say. “Got it.”

  * * *

  Back at the office, Addison and I eat lunch at his desk while I get part two of my orientation to the newsroom landscape.

  “The eastern block is critic territory. You can’t play with them unless you like obscure bands from Sweden, eating foods you can’t pronounce, or only watching films with subtitles.”

  Addison keeps a bottle of sriracha in his desk drawer. Squeezes long ribbons of it on his pita and makes a pool for dipping chips. It’s more food group than condiment. Even puts the stuff in coffee. I’m getting a contact high just smelling it—sinuses cleared right up.

  “But that little poser”—Addison throws a surreptitious nod toward a short guy with a man bun and something written in French across his T-shirt—“blasts Fall Out Boy in his headphones like no one notices, so don’t let him fool you.”

  Next Addison points to the far south corner of the Farm. There two perfectly flat-ironed heads of hair sit among colorful mountains of cosmetic boxes. The fashion and beauty writers, in coordinating summer patterns and matching statement jewelry. I’ve never been that put-together in my life.

  “Don’t ever let them draft you as a test subject,” Addison says. “Those two go after fresh meat and virgin hair like rabid hyenas. Last year Legal banned any further testing on interns after one suffered a severe allergic reaction to lip balm.”

  “I’m starting to see a pattern. Interns have a short shelf life here.”

  “True story.”

  Cara struts down the aisle between two rows of cubicles. She could be no one, but that self-assured gait, her raised chin—they say she knows exactly where she’s going. She knows what she wants and she’s come to take it. The sight of her renews the sense of dread and anxiety I’d held on Pause until now. It’s not that I don’t think I can meet this assignment, I just don’t know where to start. Everything I was willing to divulge about Echo and Massasauga is in the essay. There’s nothing left to say. So how do I spin that story into a series with legs? How do I get the stink of failure off me?

  “Can I ask you something?” I say to Addison.

  He balls up his pita wrapper and tosses it in the trash under the desk. “Sure.”

  “How do you keep writing your essays? I mean, how do you find the inspiration to discuss the same topic week after week? Doesn’t it ever feel like you’re repeating yourself?”

  Addison’s lips part like he’s going to speak, then snap shut. A moment passes as he leans back in his chair and taps his fingers on the desk. Everything about him, his mannerisms, feels like a performance. Not in an affected, artificial sense, but like he’s aware at all times he’s starring in his own scripted series, cameras rolling.

  “I was in a very different situation,” Addison says. “When I started my column, I’d only recently come to terms with my gender identity. I was still exploring what it meant. I had this feeling of”—his eyes search my face, the wall behind me, the ceiling for the word until—“incongruity. Most of my life, feeling like everyone hears music when all I’m getting is static. I had more questions than answers. In my case, I fought to write those first essays. I needled Cara and Ed to give me the space to talk about this—without a format or a clear vision. Just to put my thoughts out there and see what the response might be and where it’d lead. It was an experiment that might not have lasted this long if the country hadn’t arrived at the same conversation at roughly the same time.” Addison sits forward and smiles in a sort of empathetic gesture. “But you’re a different story. I know you sort of got the bait-and-switch on this gig. I feel you, believe me.”

  “So what should I do?” Short of banging my head against a wall until the internal hemorrhaging sparks an idea or kills me, I don’t have a strategy.

  “The best advice I can give,” Addison says, “is to consider who you’re speaking to. Think of an essay as more of a conversation than a statement.”

  It’s good advice. If only I knew what to do with it. I take that thought back to my desk.

  Before I can wake my laptop, Ethan is hovering behind me.

  “Yeah?” I spin around in my chair to ask.

  What I’m met with sends a cold sting down my back. Ethan’s eyes are impassive in that eerie way a violent storm leaves silence in its wake. The first thought that comes to mind is that I’ve already been fired.

  “What?” I ask. “What’s wrong?”

  My brain jogs from one worst-case scenario to the next. My apartment blew up. Aster was nuked. Kumi threw herself off the Brooklyn Bridge. No, really, I’ve just been fired thirteen hours into this job. I wait for an answer, but nothing happens. Ethan just stares at me like I should read his mind. His motionless lips make we want to pry open his mouth and yank the answer out.

  “Ethan”—I get to my feet—“you’re freaking me out. Say something.”

  “Follow me.” He puts his hand behind my shoulder to push me down the aisle between the row of cubicles toward the hallway. Once we’re out of sight from the Farm, he stops me.

  “I got a phone call,” he says, tentative and slow. The way one tiptoes through a darkened house when a noise wakes them in the middle of the night.

  “Okay…”

  “They didn’t know how to find you.”

  So I’m not fired. “Spit it out.”

  “Your father died last night.”

  “Oh.”

  Barely a sound. Oh. It’s all I can muster before my throat closes and my chest constricts. This hasn’t happened in a long time. Years. The nearing rumble that shakes the ground beneath my feet. A building roar of thick white noise. A wave crashes over me, heavy and concussive. Pressure fills my head. Tumbling under the surf, weightless, everything blurs. Ethan keeps talking, but I hear only fragments.

  “…my source at the prison contacted me…”

  My eyes can’t focus on anything more than his hands clenching, flexing, gesturing through the air at his sides because no one ever knows what to do with their hands at a time like this. I’d reach for them if I could, anchor myself to something grounded and sturdy. I know what happens next. But I’m pulled down, down, lungs empty. The light on the surface dims.

  “…next of kin, so once they track down your forwarding address…”

  I blink, and it’s black.

  Gunshots. Quick succession of pops, impossible and unmistakable. Blood splatter on the walls and bodies sprawled in the mud. Breaking glass and shattered screams. Just run, and don’t look back. Shots snapping off trees. My mother, keys jingling in her hand. The metal-on-metal groan as I yank open the rusted door of the pickup truck. The engine grunting to life. Tires whirring in search of traction. Then she grinds the stick shift into gear and it’s all in the rearview mirror, bathed in the red glow of taillights.

  “Avery.”

  Blink again. Under the waves, climbing to the surface. White, wobbling circle of light just beyond my fingertips.

  Ten, nine, eight, seven…

  Breathe.

  Six, five, four…

  “Listen.” Ethan bends to meet my eyes. “They’ll need to know if you want to claim the body.”

  Bre
athe.

  I open my mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. I’m not in my body. It’s a limp, lifeless thing over which I have no control—disconnected and getting farther away.

  “Are you hearing me?”

  Three, two, one…

  “Hey, there you are.” Cyle comes charging down the hallway from the Cave. “Check your damn email.”

  Breathe.

  Ethan snaps upright. “Not now, Cyle.”

  “Hit on the new girl later,” he says. “I need her.”

  I plummet back inside myself. Can’t let Cyle see me flinch.

  “Yeah.” I cough and clear my throat. “What can I help with?”

  “No.” Ethan puts himself between Cyle and me, claiming the center of the hallway. “Now’s not a good time. She—”

  “It’s fine,” I say.

  Cyle shakes his head, like he’s already had this argument in his mind. “She’s been here for two days and done fuck-all. She needs to pull her weight.”

  Ethan steps forward until he’s all but standing on Cyle’s toes. “Fuck off, Cyle. Turn around.”

  Without making the decision to do so, I’m backing away. Toward the Farm and farther from these men. Somewhere else, dark and quiet. Because something’s going to come out of me, and I’m not sure what.

  “Dude, what is your deal?” Cyle takes two steps back, face turning red. His eyes dart to me, puzzled and angered. “What—”

  “Ethan. Avery.” Ed’s at my back. He stands a few feet outside his open office door. “My office. Now.”

  It’s the most volume or emotion I’ve heard out of Ed, and it isn’t good. I go inside and stand in the center of the room. Ethan storms in with Ed on his heels, who shuts the door behind them.

  “What’s going—”

  “Do you hear the shit that comes out of Cyle’s mouth?” Ethan says, trampling over Ed’s question. “That guy is a walking lawsuit. Why the fuck is he still here?”

  “I heard you,” Ed says. “The entire building heard you.”

  “She shouldn’t have to put—”

  “It isn’t your place to—”

  “—up with his condescension and—”

  “—interfere with other sections—”

  They go on like that so long I’m not sure I’m even in the room. And somewhere Cyle has already cornered Cara to spin another yarn about the slacker new girl. How he found me practically on my knees sucking Ethan’s dick. How I’ve got him fighting my battles, dodging work on my hunt for my MRS. I think I’d like to jump out the window now, thanks.

  “Her father died.”

  The hot spotlight of attention slaps me across the face. Ed stands arms crossed and mouth open, then his expression is something like contemplation. I glance at Ethan. He’s a big wet blanket of sympathy and sad eyes, and I don’t want to be in this room anymore.

  “I’d like to go back to work now,” I say.

  “Avery.” Ethan speaks my name in that delicate way you coddle a child who’s scraped their knee or ripped the ear off their favorite stuffed animal. Makes me want to rip his ear off. “You need—”

  “You have no idea what I need.” Then fixing my steady gaze on Ed: “I’m fine. I want no part of his pissing contest with Cyle, and I’d just really like to go back to my desk, please.”

  Sighing, Ed wipes his hands over his face of sagging clay. “Sit down. Both of you.”

  “Ed,” I say, “please, I—”

  “Sit.”

  It isn’t optional. Ethan and I plant ourselves in the chairs in front of Ed’s desk and he perches on a stool. A calmness comes over him. An ease a man like Ed earns after so many years. In a way, it calms me, too.

  “Avery,” he says. “Are you okay? Is there anything we can do for you?”

  I wouldn’t know how to answer that question if there was. So I bury my hands in the pockets of my cardigan sweater and nod my head. “I’m fine. Thank you.”

  “Here’s the situation,” he says. “We can’t ignore the story.”

  I feel Ethan staring at the side of my face, feel the words clawing at the tip of his tongue, but I can’t look.

  “Patrick Turner Murphy died in prison—that’s news. We can’t avoid the subject because a member of our staff is personally connected.”

  No, he’s right. If Ethan’s just the first to get wind of this, it is only a matter of time before every other outlet jumps on it. Good enough for a slow, midweek news cycle. Trot out the old archive photos from the trial and whatnot. It’ll play till the end of the week unless the president unloads on another Twitter tirade to threaten war with China.

  “Ethan,” he says, “you’ve got the lead on that. Give me cause of death, his last days, and a brief historical recap. I want quotes from prison personnel and his attorney, if he still had one.” He pauses on a breath. There’s something more he wants to say, but not in front of me. If I didn’t work here, they’d want my reaction on the record. My mother, perhaps. See if Ethan could track down any survivors or victims’ families willing to talk. Ethan knows the drill. Ed doesn’t have to say it out loud.

  “Got it.” But Ethan’s tone is almost regretful.

  I still can’t look.

  “Now, Avery…”

  What I like about Ed, I think, is his commitment to indifference. He isn’t rude, exactly. Not unkind or curt. Simply…dispassionate. I can appreciate that from a man in his position. At the moment, perhaps it’s exactly what I need.

  “Your affairs are your business,” Ed tells me. “I don’t need to know, and neither does Ethan. That said, I want you to take a couple of days off. If you need more time, just say so. But as of now, you’re off the clock. Go home.”

  My instinct is to argue. To insist that the best medicine is to stay occupied. That I can’t imagine being two days on the job and already taking time off. But Ed’s demeanor says I don’t have a choice. That this is the nice version of his offer. If I press, I might not get to come back at all. So I take it gracefully.

  “Thank you. I appreciate it.”

  Ed stands, and so do we.

  “That’s all,” he says, meaning, Now get the hell out of my office.

  I’m up and out of my seat, out the door. Ethan’s footsteps pound the floor at my heels. His presence presses against my back until I’m at my cubicle and he’s got me cornered in the tight little box. Storm-weather eyes, narrow and accusing; all six unyielding feet of the man, towering over me.

  “What are you going to do?” he asks.

  “Go home.” I turn away from him and wake up my laptop; start closing windows and quitting programs. “A couple means two, right? I’ll be back Friday. If Cara asks, I’ll check my email from home and see what Cyle needed.”

  “The prison—”

  I unplug my laptop and shove it in my messenger bag. “I won’t get in your way. Write whatever you want. Ed’s right.”

  “Do you want the phone number?”

  My bag slung over my shoulder, I squeeze past Ethan and head for the elevator, conscious of everyone conspicuously not looking at us. Not far behind, Ethan’s got his bag by the handle. I stab the Call button three times. Yeah, it won’t get here any faster, but it feels right.

  “For what?” I ask. It’s a rhetorical question and I don’t need the answer.

  “You have to speak with them. Tell them what you want to do with his body and personal effects.”

  The doors open and he follows me inside.

  “I couldn’t care less.”

  Ethan’s finger beats me to the button for the first floor. He stands just behind me as the doors shut. We talk to each other in the wavy, hazy reflection of the brushed metal inner door.

  “If you’re not going to claim the body—”

  “I’m not.”

  “You don’t have to, but—”

  “Didn’t Ed say something about not having to include you in this decision?”

  The doors part. I slip sideways out of that suffocating container and get a good
ten feet between us, quick short-person stepping to the lobby and front doors. Ethan’s soles clap double-time on the stone tiles to catch up, on my flank again as we pass Banana Republic Andrew waving behind the reception desk.

  On the sidewalk outside, the city noise is reassuring. Cars surging through traffic, cutting off cyclists, and changing lanes blind around metro buses. Distant sirens, and millions of passing pedestrian conversations. Big and busy and unconcerned with one girl.

  “Avery,” he says, sharp and scolding.

  “What?”

  “Stop. Just…” He huffs out a frustrated breath. “Take a minute.”

  “I don’t need a minute. I’m fine. You’re the one getting all worked up about this.”

  “You’re doing it again.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Lying to me. To both of us.”

  For fuck’s sake. “What do you want from me? Like, seriously, Ethan. What could you possibly expect from me, and why do you need to be part of it so damn badly?”

  He says nothing for a moment. So long that I almost walk away. Long enough that I watch the first, second, third way he considers answering my question play across his face. Then he glances down the street and sucks in a full, warm breath of the viscid air.

  “I want to help, Avery. Because I don’t think you have anyone else.”

  “That’s a real dick thing to say.”

  “Then tell me I’m wrong.”

  “Fine. You’re wrong.”

  Ethan whips a quarter turn away from me. His fist rises to his waist like wants to punch a wall, then thinks better of it. Now he knows how I feel.

  “Just…” Both hands weave through his hair. They grip the back of his neck while he closes his eyes to the sky. “Consider for a moment that this is a day you’re never going to get back. Take some time to think about it before you—”

  “Listen to me.” With all the composure I can muster, I calm the heat of adrenaline stinging through my blood. This man is impossible, and I don’t have the time or inclination to sort through his issues. “I don’t know what I’ve done to give you the impression that I need a savior or a big brother, or whatever role you’ve imagined for yourself here, but I don’t need your help. I don’t want it. Please, just leave me alone.”