The Gossip: New Wave Newsroom

by Jenny Holiday

  “I saw Professor Daniels from the communication department making out with an undergrad.”

  Adrenaline flooded my system. I wanted that. Oh, how I wanted that story. I’d been onto it a year ago. That was when I’d first started hearing rumblings about this prof coming onto students, but I’d never been able to come up with anything definitive. In fact, that had been what I’d been stealing the damned mascot for that day Officer Perez caught me. One of Royce’s buddies had been dangling hints—a lot of the Delta Chi boys were comm majors because the courses were so easy—and he’d told me to bring him Ace. That was actually when I had instituted the “I don’t pay my sources” rule. Once I thought about it, I realized I’d been scrambling around like a common criminal trying to steal a metal snake to give to a frat boy. No wonder Officer Perez had been so disgusted. It was unseemly. And ironically, like playing hard to get, not paying my sources—and not running every item that was brought to me—had only made me more popular. If anything, people sought me out more than they used to with secrets and tips.

  But this Daniels story would be huge. It would go way beyond gossip. If I had a source willing to go on the record, it would be front-page news. When I’d done a story about a football player who basically date-raped his way through the freshman class, Jenny had run Dish with Dawn on the front page. We had struck a bargain: I would get to keep the column’s branding and first-person voice, and she would help me edit the piece into more of a mainstream news story that would be serious and hard-hitting enough to justify the claims I was making. She had put me through the wringer, requiring documentation of sources and even consulting with a lawyer. But the story had been airtight. The school hadn’t responded very quickly or very rigorously, and that sparked protests. Eventually, the football player had been expelled. I’m not going to lie; it was a bit of a thrill to see Dish with Dawn on the front page—and then in the rest of the regional media outlets that reported on the story.

  A professor abusing his power and preying on students would be even bigger than the football-player story. I didn’t have mainstream journalistic ambitions, but, heck, maybe I should get some because the idea of taking down Daniels in a similar fashion was now all I could think about. It also hadn’t escaped my attention that breaking a story like that would really get my media mogul father’s attention. The football player had merited a brief mention. But this? He’d probably try to hand me the editorship of one of his papers, which was not something I was interested in, but at least it would mean he knew I was alive.

  Royce laughed. Crap. He could sense how desperately I wanted the story. On unsteady feet, he lurched toward me. “I’m not going to make you sleep with me, but you gotta give me something.”

  “Excuse me? I have to give you something?” Eff that. I was done with this conversation. I’d find another way to get to Daniels. If someone as dumb as Royce Waldorf knew about it, so did other people. And I would find them.

  “Yeah, you know, a little tit for tat.” He guffawed. “Ha! Tit!”

  God. Did the imbecile not see the irony in trying to blackmail me into sleeping with him as payment for information about a professor…blackmailing a student to sleep with him?

  “Show me your tits at least, and we’ll go from there.”

  We’ll go from there? Scoffing, but starting to get a tiny bit nervous, I made another effort to get past him. His arm shot out again, and he grabbed my wrist. Coming up here with him had been a mistake. “Let go of me, you dickweed!” I spat, twisting out of his grasp. I lunged for the door, but not fast enough, and now he was mad.

  “You fucking whore. You parade around in your little black dresses like you’re so mature. You think you’re too good for everyone.”

  I tried to brazen my way through the shock of his cutting words. “I’m too good for you, that’s for sure.”

  “You’ve been leading me on for two years. I’m not going to—”

  This was not going to happen. I thought I had been flooded with adrenaline before, but I’d had no idea. I retracted my leg and kneed him in the groin for all I was worth at the same time shouting, “Help! I need help!”

  “Dawn?” called an answering voice from the hallway, a low one I felt like I should know but couldn’t quite place.

  But it didn’t matter. Anyone was better than Royce. Out there was better than in here.

  “I’m in the first bedroom on the left, and I need help,” I yelled, even as I finally shoved my way past Royce, who was still writhing in pain and cursing me out. As I turned the doorknob, someone pushed the door in from the outside and I fell onto my ass—but only for a second because, almost fast enough to give me whiplash, I felt myself propelled upward and pulled into a strong embrace. At first I thought it was Royce, and I screamed.

  “Dawn! It’s me!” I struggled against the powerful arms that were holding me against an unyielding chest. “It’s Arturo Perez, Allenhurst College PD.”

  Officer Unfriendly. Of course. I should have known those arms.

  And as fast as my body had been deluged with adrenaline before, all the fight left me. It was like I was an overinflated balloon that sprang a leak. I started shaking—and crying—as I sagged against his chest. A small part of my rational mind that was still hanging on knew I was completely overreacting, but I couldn’t stop. It was like I couldn’t get a hold of myself—or of anything. Like I was the escaped helium from that balloon, floating uncontained into the atmosphere, losing more and more of myself with every second.

  Officer Perez kept repeating my name, and not the “Miss Hathaway” version of it he had used in the past. “Dawn. Dawn.” Then he pulled me off his chest, holding me far enough away from him that he could look in my eyes. “Dawn,” he said again, very low, almost whispering, but with an urgency that made it seem like he was shouting. “I see you, Dawn. I see you.”

  Arturo

  Hadn’t I just been thinking that I wasn’t one of those cops in it for power, for vengeance? Well, the joke was on me, because as soon as I knew Dawn was stabilized and unhurt—physically, at least—I jumped all over Royce fucking Waldorf like I was the one with cocaine whishing around in my veins. I called for Fuller and had Waldorf cuffed and on the floor under my knee before my colleague made it up the stairs.

  His eyes widened when he took in the scene. “Whatcha got here?”

  “Where’s the coke?” I asked Royce.

  “Do you know who my father is?” he shouted.

  “Save that shit for the judge,” I said. “Doesn’t work on me.”

  Fuller had started rummaging through the desk, and it wasn’t a second before he turned up a white-powder-filled baggie. “Bingo.” Fuller grinned. “You want me to take him back and charge him?”

  “Yes. We may also have other charges, too.” I glanced at Dawn. She shook her head. I wanted to urge her not to fold, but I couldn’t blame her. Attempted-sexual-assault charges were hard enough for the victim, and we all knew who Royce’s father was. But since she could always press charges later, I decided my priority was to get her out of there.

  Five minutes later, I was settling her into my car. We hadn’t been able to find her coat in the huge pile at the party, and she’d assured me she would be able to get it from one of the Alpha Phi girls. But she was only wearing a sleeveless black minidress, so she was shivering. It was September, but the nights were getting cool. So I shrugged out of my leather jacket and settled it over her shoulders. “Do you need me to, ah, take you to the hospital?” I asked gently when I’d come around and strapped myself into the driver’s seat.

  She shook her head as she stared out the window. “Nothing happened.”

  “Didn’t seem like nothing.”

  She huffed a bitter laugh. “My reaction was way out of proportion.” She turned to look at me, and I wanted to crumple when I saw how sad her eyes were. “I’m sorry.”

  “No.”

  I must have spoken too loudly, too decisively, because she flinched a little, which made me f
eel like absolute shit.

  I shook my head. “I only meant there’s no reason for you to be sorry. About anything.”

  Another bitter laugh. “Well, I wouldn’t go that far.”

  “Royce Waldorf is an entitled, cowardly bully of a simpleton,” I said, and that drew a small smile, so I went on. “So even if he didn’t physically touch you, it wasn’t ‘nothing.’ You can still press him on attempted assault.”

  “No way,” she said quickly. “I just want to forget this.”

  I nodded and pulled away from frat row. I almost lost control of the car when she said, “Thank you for rescuing me. I’m so lucky you were there. It was like he had superhuman strength or something.”

  “That was the coke, probably. But you were on your way out of that room when I got there.” It was true. “You rescued yourself.”

  “Still,” said Dawn. “I’m glad you were there. Glad it was you who was there.”

  My cheeks felt hot, and my collar was suddenly too tight. Jesus Christ, was I blushing? Thank God it was dark.

  “Wilmer Hall, still?” I asked.

  “Nope,” she said. “I’m in an apartment now. Two-fifty-two Marlin Street.”

  Her building was nearby, and we passed the short drive in silence. When I pulled up in front, I cut the engine and turned to her. “Is your roommate home?”

  “I live alone.”

  “Oh.” It was unusual for undergraduate students to live alone. They were like pack animals at this age. And Dawn was such a social creature. “Are you sure I can’t take you somewhere else? To a friend’s place, maybe?”

  She shook her head. “I’ll be okay.”

  I wasn’t convinced, but I couldn’t force the issue. For once, she hadn’t done anything wrong. So I pulled out a business card and a pen. “This is my card. I’m adding my home number to it. You call me anytime you need anything, okay? Anytime.”

  She nodded and took the card. She was being so agreeable. It was…unsettling.

  But not as unsettling as what happened next. She unbuckled her seat belt, leaned across the car, and placed her lips on mine.

  I should have pushed her away immediately. But I considered the fact that I remained still a small victory. Hell, sitting there impassively while she brushed an almost-chaste kiss across my lips while my body burst into flames wasn’t a small victory. It was a huge one. I wanted to grab the sides of her face. I wanted to push her mouth open with my tongue. I wanted…things that I couldn’t want. Things that were impossible.

  Her lips were soft and tentative as they opened slightly, and her tongue came out and tested the seam of my lips.

  I groaned, but I did manage to push her away then, and I did so as gently as I could. She was in shock. She didn’t know what she was doing. She was acting out. I told myself all those things. I told my dick all those things, because it, too, was acting out.

  I would have expected her to be embarrassed, to apologize, or blush, or…something. But she gazed at me evenly, sad hazel eyes searching my face like it held answers. Then she finally said, once again, “Thank you,” got out of the car, and walked up the path to the front door of her building, dwarfed by my too-big jacket.

  Chapter Five

  May 1983

  Arturo

  I saw her the moment we set foot in the bar. I’d recognize that teased blond hair anywhere, the signature black dress—this one was sleeveless and decorated with zigzagging zippers across the bodice. Dawn was small, but at the same time, she was impossible to miss. She was huddled at the bar with a girlfriend, a barely touched pint of beer in front of her. I wondered if she was “working.” I thought about her living alone and wondered if she had any genuine friends or if she was too busy maintaining her “social power” for that.

  Dawn didn’t see me, but I drew more than my share of glances as I made my way through the dim bar.

  This was why I made a point of never going to campus bars. If I wanted to drink, I went to a watering hole the next town over, I held out until my weekly poker night with a bunch of guys I knew in town, or I made the ninety-minute drive to Boston to hang with my high school buddies and crashed at my parents’ house. It wasn’t like I was a celebrity on campus or anything, but enough people knew me that I preferred to keep my personal shit out of sight in Allenhurst.

  But I’d come home earlier that night to a blinking answering machine full of messages from my brother Manuel. He was driving up to meet me, said the first one, which was weird. Manny and I were close enough—hell, I’d take a bullet for any of my siblings—but we didn’t go out of our way to see each other. The second was from a pay phone outside my apartment, the third from outside the campus police services building. We’d kept missing each other. Well, he’d kept missing me—until I got home, I didn’t know he was looking for me. The last of the four messages proclaimed that he was settling in at the Allenhurst Tap Room and instructed me to come meet him as soon as I could. And leave it to Manny to gravitate to the grungiest, cheapest watering hole on campus. There was a reason everyone called this bar “the A-Hole.” I had been here enough times breaking up fights that I generally saw no call to darken its door as a patron.

  But family first. That was the unofficial Perez family motto, drilled into us by our father. And to be fair, it had served my brother and me and our two sisters well growing up. As one of the only Puerto Rican families in our working-class Irish neighborhood, we were sometimes out of our element, so we’d tended to stick together. Family first. And there was no shaking it now.

  Realizing I’d been so caught up in looking at Dawn that I hadn’t found my brother, I scanned the bar more purposefully.

  Manny was sitting a few spots down the bar from Dawn. Of course.

  They both turned as I approached.

  Dawn threw her hands in the air like she was a bank teller and I was a thief. “I’m legal now!” she shouted, louder than was necessary, because it was early and the bar wasn’t buzzing yet.

  I had to suppress a grin. “And I’m off duty now.”

  Her mouth fell open as she took in my street clothes. Ha. In the same way that little kids think their teachers sleep at school, she had probably never thought of me as a civilian. I edged in on Manny’s other side, leaving two empty stools between her and my brother. I hadn’t had any run-ins with Dawn lately. Well, not any run-ins where we talked. But I’d seen plenty of her. More than she knew, in fact. If I’d looked for her before, at parties and games and campus events, I was even more vigilant since the night Royce Waldorf attacked her, scanning every crowd for the black-clothing/blond-hair combination that was her trademark.

  My vigilance wasn’t about Royce himself, though he was back on campus. He’d slithered out of the drug charges—no surprise there—and was finishing his fifth year. He had done enough partying that he hadn’t graduated in the usual four. I could only pray that this year would be his last. Still, I had a hunch that Royce was done with Dawn. She’d shown him up—she’d won—and I somehow knew he wouldn’t be bothering her anymore. So I wasn’t protecting Dawn from Royce, exactly. I was protecting her from…everything. Or trying to, anyway. Which I realized made no sense, but it was what it was.

  I’d even taken to driving the cruiser past her building at night. Once, I was driving by as she was coming home, so I was able to wait and watch and, when I saw a third-floor light flip on, identify which apartment was hers. Now, if it was off when I drove by on patrol in the evenings, I got antsy.

  “Hey,” I said to Manny, shaking myself out of my thoughts as I accepted a beer from the bartender.

  “Pops had a heart attack,” he said.

  I spilled my beer. “Jesus Christ, what?”

  “It was just a little one. He’s having an angioplasty tomorrow. It’s like they blow up a balloon in his vein or some shit.”

  “Fuck, Manny, why didn’t anyone tell me? When did this happen?”

  He held up his hands like Dawn had a minute ago. I was aware that I was yelling, which wa
s ironic because I’d purposely sat on this side of him—the non-Dawn side—to give us some privacy. I didn’t need the denizens of Allenhurst knowing my business. I had a reputation of omniscience to maintain.

  “Yesterday. And I’m telling you now. We didn’t think you should hear it over the phone.”

  I heard what he wasn’t saying. You weren’t there.

  “Anyway, he’s going to be okay.” Manny grinned. “Well, he’s going to have to stop smoking and start eating vegetables and shit, which he is not happy about, but they say with lifestyle changes and some medicine, he should make a decent recovery.”

  I started pulling paper napkins from a dispenser on the bar and using them to try to mop up my spilled beer. Manny stopped me by putting his hand on my arm.

  “I was scared out of my mind for a moment there, Art. We were sitting there watching the Red Sox beat the shit out of the Tigers, and he stood up and started clutching his chest like in the movies.”

  My throat was thick, and I had to swallow to get any words out. “I’m sorry,” I said, though I wasn’t sure what I was apologizing for—for not being there like I should have been, I guess.

  “The last thing he said before the ambulance took him away was to tell you to come home.”

  “I’ll get some time off and come tomorrow.” Hell, I’d come tonight. “I just need to call my sergeant and throw some stuff into a bag.”

  “No. He meant come home, come home. To Boston. To—”

  “A real police department,” I finished, trying to keep the bitterness out of my voice. I had heard the refrain so many times, I could finish my father’s sentence for him.