by Kim Ross
“It’s almost midnight in Korea,” Jeremy says. “I got a few calls in to some contacts a little while ago. It’s not amazing stuff but it backs up what you were already suspecting.”
I need to sit down. I clear a spot on my desk. “Thank you,” I say, finally. I can’t believe some of the things he’s managed to find – all of the things that my research had hinted at he’s found a concrete example of in a cite-able format.
“You really just expected me to take that article and run?” Jeremy asks.
“I thought you were an asshole,” I say.
He shakes his head. “Probably still am,” he says. “Phil says I’m going to be working with you for a while, though, so I need to stay on your good side.”
I’ve been trying to raise my guard up for this moment, for when he’ll inevitably try to convince me that we’re on the same side. When it finally comes all of my defenses melt right through my fingers.
“Okay,” I say. “I’m going to go grab a muffin. Do you want anything?”
“Coffee?” he says.
I’m so enamored of him right now that I go to the place across the street instead of the break room to get it, and when I get back, I refuse his offer to reimburse me. It’s really nice to have something go my way for once.
I can’t imagine that this will last.
8
“It’s brilliant,” Phil says.
I’ve finished the article in record time, thanks to Jeremy’s notes. It’s the sort of thing Phil likes to see first before I pass it on – he has this obsession with conspiracy theories, exposés and the like. There’s a whole cabinet in his office devoted to crazy stories that we didn’t have enough evidence to run. Every once in a while he gets this gleam in his eye that suggests that he might actually believe that there’s someone stopping us from printing them, that it’s not just an issue of credibility given that we can’t back them up.
We get stopped from printing things all the time, of course. Phil knows this . He doesn’t care about those kinds of stories – they’re inevitably boring reviews or critiques that we don’t run to avoid offending our advertisers. Whenever we have something negative to say about one of our clients, someone on the business end crunches the sales we’d gain from printing it versus the cost of losing the advertiser, and a decision is made. This basically means that the bigger the company, the more newsworthy something negative we print has to be.
The logical extension to this is that any of those stories that are interesting enough for Phil to care about are interesting enough to sell papers, so they get printed. Anything interesting conspiracy wise would get printed instantly if we could find evidence to sell it. Phil doesn’t care. He has too much fun living in this little fantasy world where the Rothschild family sends their kids to the Build-a-Bear group or whatever to control global politics, one where people beyond our advertisers actually care what we print.
So, of course, this is right up his alley.
“This was the sort of thing I hired you for,” he says, obviously to Jeremy.
“Jeanine did all the heavy lifting,” Jeremy says. “I just did a little research for her as a favor.”
“I didn’t see her here all night—“
“I was just investigating her leads across a time differential,” Jeremy says, cutting him off. “Really, it was all her.”
Phil shrugs. “Whatever. I’m just glad you two are working together – I thought I caught a whiff of something earlier.”
“No problems here,” I say. I mean it, too.
9
We go out to lunch, Jeremy and I. To say that he’s grown on me since this morning would be an understatement on the scale of ‘the holocaust was bad’ or ‘Skrillex has stupid hair.’ It’s almost unbelievable how much my feelings for a person can change in such a short time.
My phone keeps buzzing, interrupting any chance of me actually talking to Jeremy now that I don’t hate his guts. First it’s Renee, worrying about me having to work with that prick that I described last night. I’m surprised she cares: all my friends seemed to care about last night was my relationship with Max. I tell her that everything is working out alright, that I overreacted, and her next text is ‘please don’t fuck him’ in about as many words. Thanks, mom, wasn’t planning on it – but if I was, it wouldn’t be any of your business. She probably thinks I’m on rebound from Max still. I’m not. We broke up like civilized adults. Still, I’ve always been rather attracted to Jeremy, and now that I respect him professionally –
My phone saves me from finishing that line of thought. It’s Tiff, telling me she’s ‘there if I need her.’ I try to stay positive with my reply, but the degree to which my friends think I’m an invalid because Max and I decided to separate is ridiculous and I don’t really want the attention. Next, Alice is going to send me an offer to go clubbing or something – which would probably count as a rebound to Renee, so I wouldn’t even be able to take her up on the offer without offending my temporary landlord.
I’m wrong, thankfully – the next buzz is from Max, asking if I want to talk. This is handled more simply: the part of me that wants to move on texts ‘no thanks’ and hits send before I give myself a chance to think about it. I consider Tiff’s offer for another moment, longer than I’d like to admit. Sending those two words looses a whole spill of emotions that I’ve been trying to avoid for the last few days. Doesn’t matter, I tell myself. I can’t afford to dig a relief well right now. I need to move on with my life and not wallow in my feelings.
I turn off my phone.
It’s almost a pleasant lunch after that. We talk a little more about Jeremy’s former workplace and about Phil’s silly obsession. Jeremy says he was working on some ‘sensitive’ articles before he left , so Phil probably thinks that he got fired for uncovering a conspiracy. It lines up – Jeremy was laid off right before the last article in the series finished – but given that almost 20% of the rest of the staff got fired at the same time, he’s pretty sure he was just downsized.
“You gotta admit, it sounds like the perfect cover,” I say. “No better way to disguise firing a guy writing about something you didn’t want people to know. What were you writing about, anyway?”
He laughs. “Nothing exciting. I was trying to give the whole European debt thing a rock-and-roll spin, make it seem like there was some kind of conspiracy or narrative behind it all. It was all supposed to climax in some big reveal in the final article. Honestly, I’m glad I got downsized before I had to write it. All I had was some boring facts about physical reserves.”
“No actual conspiracy?” I say.
“None,” he says. “I guess I did a good job spinning it if I fooled Phil, but it’s all just politics as usual. Maybe a little lack of forethought or imagination regarding some specific issues – I tried to cast that as greed or malice where I could – but that only proves that the people leading our society are human and that’s hardly a story.”
“What’s so important about physical reserves? Why would Phil think they fired you to keep from writing about them?”
Jeremy smiles. “I purposefully saved that for last and alluded to it in a bunch of places because conspiracy theory people are obsessed with physical gold. There’s always a big theory about how much gold countries do or don’t have, about buying it unfairly from developing countries or selling them plated lead as bullion – if you googled ‘gold reserves’ right now I would be surprised you had to go further than a page down to find something about Cecil Rothschild’s supposed hidden vault, which is supposed to contain more gold than is publicly held by every Euro country combined. There’s absolutely no evidence of this gold existing – no records of vault construction, of transporting more than ten thousand tonnes – supposedly – and the records we have of mining gold, which are fairly accurate, don’t support the existence of even a hundredth of this magical unaccounted gold. People are obsessed with it, though – they think that the Rothschilds use it to control the IMF or some similar
rubbish, that it’s a giant axe hanging over the world economy. I took advantage of this and alluded to it where I could, but all I had to write about were some boring facts and the fact that this theory existed.”
“So you tried to write a conspiracy article.”
“I tried to make it look exciting. There was simply no evidence for any sort of conspiracy,” he says.
“That’s really boring,” I say.
He nods. “Yeah. Like I said, I wasn’t really looking forward to it.”
We sit in silence for a while. I manage a few bites of curry before he pipes up again.
“So you live in Point Loma?”
I wince. He’s asking about Max, indirectly, and as much as I hate Renee pretending to be my mother, this line of questioning won’t end well. “Used to,” I say.
“Had a fight?”
“Not exactly.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
It’s a genuine relief that he seems interested in my feelings about the situation instead of barging in with unhelpful advice like all of my friends. “Not really,” I say. “Thanks, though.”
“Do you need a place to stay?” he asks.
“What?”
“Do you need a place to stay?” he says again. “I’ve got a spare bedroom in the place I’m renting – two, actually. The unit I signed for ended up having a completely rotten floor so they upgraded me to a three bedroom two bath for free.”
“For how long?” I ask.
“The other unit will take at least three months to fix,” he says. “You can stay with me until then for free. It’s no trouble.”
“I, uh—“
“Where are you now?”
“With a friend,” I say.
“Bed or couch?”
“Couch.”
“My unit is furnished,” he says.
“Where is it?” I ask. It doesn’t matter, he’s won me over. As much as Renee says I’m not interfering I can tell that she wants to claim her place as her own again. Besides, I’ve got a crick on my neck from sleeping on her couch.
“National city,” he says.
I frown.
“It’s nice. You’ll be surprised,” he says.
“I can’t complain about a free bed,” I say.
Renee’s advice comes to mind, unbidden. Don’t fuck him, she said. Easier done than said, I tell myself, but I have been missing Max a lot at night, and Jeremy will be just a few feet away. Maybe he’s gay or something. Besides, why should I listen to Renee? I’m fully capable of making my own decisions.
10
I don’t make it to nightfall. Hell, I barely make it an hour past lunch before I’m sneaking Jeremy out of the building for a little investigative reporting of the most intimate nature. As much as I tell myself otherwise it’s all my doing – he’s the one putting up a token resistance and acting surprised. I’m calling the shots.
I’m not entirely sure why I’m doing this. Part of it is because Renee told me not to, undoubtedly, but I’m smart enough to realize that rebound sex isn’t usually a good idea. Maybe I just want to fill that sudden emptiness in my life, to feel wanted. Max dumped me, after all. I need to prove to myself that I’m desirable. This is why I’m ripping off Jeremy’s clothes on top of Renee’s couch (she lives like a block away from work) and forcing myself on top of him. To feel loved.
Predictably, he’s not quite as into the entire thing as I am.
“Look, this is great and all but can’t we wait until after work?” he says.
“Why?” I ask, slipping a hand in his boxers.
“Because… Phil… work?” he manages. I’m almost impressed; I can be quite distracting when I want to be.
“I wouldn’t worry,” I say, leaning in to kiss him in between sentences. “We just got done with a big article. We don’t need to write anything for another couple of days.”
“What if someone sees us?”
“Like who?” I ask. My hand clearly isn’t distracting enough, so I tug his boxers the rest of the way off and start teasing him with my mouth.
“That guy,” he says, pointing.
I turn to look. There’s a guy walking with a bunch of flowers in hand outside, visible in between the slits of the blinds. I can’t get a look at his face but there’s no way Will would wear that jacket, which means Jeremy and I are in the clear. He’s probably visiting the old lady next door.
“And why would he bother us?” I ask, redoubling my efforts to take Jeremy’s attention.
There’s a knock on the door.
Jeremy looks at me with an expression halfway between ‘I told you so’ and ‘oh my god I’m going to die’ which is honestly more insulting than anything else – if the Clinton administration taught us anything it’s that a guy caught in this position is hi-fived while the woman is called a slut. Still, we haven’t been caught yet. I throw Jeremy’s jacket over his crotch and adjust my blouse before getting up to answer the door.
It’s Max.
I slip outside and close the door behind me. “What are you doing here?” I ask. I try not to let my anger slip out.
“I could ask you the same,” he says. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”
“Something came up,” I say. Granted, I had to do a bit of coaxing to get it up, but I’m not technically lying.
He looks at me intensely for a moment. I’m torn between having too much to say and too little. There’s a mountain of words – La Mesa de Herveo, if I had to pick one -- bubbling up inside me but I’m afraid to unleash even the smallest one lest the resulting mess turn out like the Armero tragedy.
“I missed you,” he says.
“So did I,” I say.
“There’s a guy in there,” he says.
The unspoken accusation hangs between us, that slight pause before he spoke just as hurtful as if he had come right out. But, he meant to say. But there’s a guy in there. You obviously didn’t miss me that much.
I can’t look at him. I’m going to cry and my mascara’s going to run everywhere. “You broke up with me,” I say. “What was I supposed to do?”
It’s easier to act tough when I’m talking to a wall.
“I brought you flowers,” he says. “I still love you.”
I let a single sob slip out. Why couldn’t I have waited another day before stuffing another guy’s cock into my mouth? I don’t deserve this.
“I’m cooking dinner tonight,” he continues. “I’d love to have you over so we can talk. It should be ready around 7.”
I don’t say anything. I’m still trying to wrap my head around this.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I miss you.”
I don’t move for at least a minute after he leaves. When we broke up it was like he flipped my world over. Just when I started to get a lid on things again he shows up and tells me that he liked things better the way they were, before he ruined everything. I’m not sure I can take this.
It’s not like I didn’t have a large hand to play in our breakup. He basically just parroted back my opinions, ones that I’d drilled into him from day one of our relationship. Communication, honesty, and closeness. None of this distance crap, physical or otherwise. When he suggested we separate, I didn’t so much as hint that I wanted anything else. I could have told him we could work through it. I could have saved the relationship. But I didn’t. Because of this, I can’t even blame Max for his actions. It was a joint failure. I’m far more furious at myself than I am at him.
Jeremy is still inside, I remind myself. I still need to deal with him. I haven’t the faintest idea what I want to do here – I don’t know if I should go back to Max, if I’m even interested in Jeremy at all anymore – but I don’t want to burn any bridges here if I don’t have to. Thing is, I haven’t the faintest idea how to let him down gently.
I blot my eyes as best I can before heading in. Jeremy has put his clothes back on and he’s sitting on the couch, staring at the opposite wall. He looks up nervously when he hears the door
close, barely making eye contact before he goes back to intensely studying the space opposite Renee’s couch.
“Is he gone?” he asks, weakly.
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry for dragging you into this,” he says.
That’s not exactly the response I was expecting. “I think I did all the dragging,” I say.
“It was irresponsible of me to tell you what I did,” he says. “I just liked you a lot and you were smart and asking all the right questions and you weren’t an obvious nut like Phil so I decided to slip in a little more than the cover we agreed on. I’m sorry. I didn’t think they would be listening.”
“What?” I say. I run what he said back through my head a few times – the words are all there, but they don’t make any sense.
Jeremy looks up, panicked. “That man was here was about what I told you at lunch, right?” he says. He’s sweating far too much for a man in an air-conditioned building.
“No,” I say.
“Then who was it?” he asks. I don’t think he believes me.
Might as well lay it all out, then. “My ex,” I say. “He’s invited me to dinner.”
“So that had nothing to do with me?” Jeremy says.
“No?” I say. I’m beginning to get more than a little bit curious, but he seems to be in a fairly fragile mental state right now so I don’t want to push it.
He gets up and starts pacing. “Can we just forget about all of this?” he says.
“I think I would be okay with that,” I say, slowly.
“Just forget I said anything. Please,” Jeremy says. “Please don’t tell Phil.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
I don’t think I would have done anything to fuel Phil’s obsession in any case, but if Jeremy isn’t angry about me toying with him – and he seems to not care, for the moment at least – then I’m more than happy to do whatever favor he might want me to do. Not telling Phil something that I don’t understand myself is a really light price to pay.
