All for a Story

by Allison Pittman

  Her colleagues—including a couple of reporters she only knew from their bylines—sat in awkward silence as she shrugged off her coat and hung it on the rack by the door. The tam, of course, would stay.

  “Sorry,” she said, remembering to pluck her article out of the inner pocket. “Couldn’t catch a cab.”

  “Top o’ the mornin’, lassie,” Max said, running his eyes across her outfit and speaking in a deadpan brogue.

  Her mind raced through Shakespeare’s Scottish play in search of the perfect smart retort. “‘Thy letters have transported me beyond this ignorant present, and I feel now the future in the instant.’”

  “Romeo and Juliet?”

  “Macbeth. I played Lady Macbeth in my junior year.” She tapped her temple. “Still have it all right here.”

  “Well, why don’t you bring it and the rest of you over here and have a seat so we can continue?”

  Max pointed to a chair that would have been inaccessible for most people, but her dainty stature made passage possible, if awkward. She felt his eyes on her, and she tried to show her figure off to its best, sprinkling apologies and greetings as she made her way. When she finally arrived at her designated spot, Max was there, having pulled the chair from the table in a most gentlemanly fashion. The moment she sat down, however, she understood why this place hadn’t been claimed by anybody else, as the seat was embarrassingly low. While no one could deny Monica’s short stature, this made her downright childlike, with her chin mere inches above the chipped, dry surface of the table. Moreover, she sat a full head shorter than the snickering Tony on her left.

  “Can it, Manarola,” she hissed, not quite under her breath. “You’re probably sittin’ on a dictionary.”

  “Kids,” Max implored, having reclaimed his place at the head of the table, “the better we focus, the quicker the Chatter gets up and running again.”

  “I was only twenty minutes late, for crying out loud. When did we stop running?”

  “He’s taking us in a new direction,” Tony said, and from the sound of his voice, the direction wasn’t good.

  “I just thought we might want to sweeten some of our content with the milk of human kindness,” Max said over the disgruntled rumblings that erupted after Tony’s comment. To illustrate, he held up an issue from the previous fall. “For example. Here we have a story about a woman whose husband tied her to the stove after he suspected her of adultery. We have an interview with the husband and the wife. Very dramatic, true. But why not the story of the heroic milkman who discovered and rescued her?”

  “Because the milkman wasn’t talking on account of his own wife,” Tony said.

  “Point taken,” Max said. “This story, however, highlights the violence without ever calling for reform. It could have been used as a platform to call for stiffer prosecution of crimes committed against women.”

  “The guy spent the night in jail,” Tony said, “went home; two weeks later, wifey whacked him upside the head with a potato masher and ran off with the milkman. Excuse me—the hero.”

  “Maybe that wasn’t the best example,” Max conceded, “but my position remains the same. As editor in chief, publisher, and owner, I’d like to see us do something with less vice and more virtue.”

  At this, Monica snickered out loud. “Where does that leave me? Monkey Business goes to the ice cream parlor?”

  “Why not? This is a city full of history and museums and art. Why should we devote column space to what is essentially illegal activity?”

  “Because it’s fun.”

  “Lots of things are fun.”

  He tossed the paper he’d been holding onto the table and plunged his hands into his pockets. This, she recognized, was his victory stance. She was about to retort with a doe-eyed question about just what, exactly, he saw as fun, when the door to the offices of Capitol Chatter burst open, and two men brandishing pistols entered and stood—guns at the ready—on either side.

  The loudest scream was that of Zelda Ovenoff, who, within a hair of a second, dove underneath the table. The rest of them followed suit, with Monica feeling exceptionally grateful that her seat was already so close to the floor that she need only slouch a bit and slide off to safety. From there, she looked around at all of the terrified faces in the shadow of the secondhand table.

  Tony, ever the professional, already had his notepad and pencil at the ready, furiously scribbling. Trevor seemed to be working very hard at appearing brave, probably berating himself for playing hooky from high school to attend Maximilian Moore’s Morality Seminar. Zelda seemed to be reconciled with her fear, her eyes now narrowed as she summoned the courage of the Cossacks. Everybody else stuffed the semidarkness with imperfectly silenced whimpers.

  Monica scanned the faces, her own heart pounding. There was one notable absence. In the place where Max’s broad, affable—yet understandably terrified—face should be, there was only a pair of dark trousers, and with the unassuming tone of a store clerk, she heard him ask, “May I help you, gentlemen?”

  “We’re looking for a certain monkey.”

  The voice was cultured, almost courteous—like the kind of gentleman her mother would have loved. Perhaps this was her way of reaching beyond the grave to find Monica the perfect husband. Under any other circumstances, Monica might have giggled at the thought, but there were, after all, guns involved.

  “There must be a mistake,” Max said. “This isn’t the zoo.”

  Polite laughter followed, during which time Tony moved Zelda aside to look out from under the table. Immediately he ducked back down, grabbed Monica’s sweater, and pulled her to him.

  “That’s Jim King,” he whispered. “They call him Doc.”

  “Why?”

  “On account of he used to be a doctor before he started runnin’ hooch.”

  “I want an explanation for this,” the well-mannered voice said as two shiny brown shoes approached the table.

  “Cute,” Max said. “But as far as I know, we don’t have a regular cartoonist on staff. But then, I’m new here. You might have heard my uncle recently passed away. Natural causes.”

  More polite laughter. “We just want to talk to her.”

  “You are,” Max said. “We call it a pseudonym in the business.”

  “You’re the one running around in silky dresses and high heels?”

  “Like I said, I’m new here.”

  “I appreciate an honorable man, as am I, in most circumstances. This being one of them. I just want to talk.”

  “Then I’ll need to ask your friends to leave,” Max said, rising on his toes as he said so.

  “Gentlemen,” King said, before a shuffle of footsteps were silenced by the closing of the door. “Now, where’s my monkey?”

  Knowing it was quite possible that King had his own gun and that even the most refined man could be provoked to violence, Monica determined that Max would not be her hero anymore that day and slowly backed out from underneath the table to face her foe.

  He was, in a word, handsome. Edwardian, with a well-trimmed beard and short-cropped hair, both a perfected shade of brown. His face was broad—almost square—and his nose narrow. He stood like he had been planted to the floor, his hands posed in front of him, all ten fingertips touching, and he used this entire configuration to point toward the familiar yellow card sitting in the center of the table, from which her hastily sketched monkey smiled.

  Her scalp tingled icily beneath her tam, and she prayed for Zelda Ovenoff to grab and yank her back under the table.

  “Do you know where I got that?”

  Monica swallowed and nodded.

  His face completely placid, King reached into his jacket, at which time Monica scrambled along the back of the chairs and threw herself against Max, burying her face in his shirt, grateful for the strong arm which more than made up for the strength that had fled from her legs.

  “Are you a subscriber?” Max said, which prompted her to peek through her fingers and see King holding a fo
lded copy of the latest edition of Capitol Chatter.

  “Subscriber? No. I’m afraid my days allow very little time for leisure reading. But it was brought to my attention that my personal establishment held a prominent position in your latest edition.”

  King spoke like he belonged in a parlor, with a tiny pocket of air softening each syllable.

  “I wouldn’t call it prominent,” Monica mumbled, having always resented her tiny corner on page eight.

  “It is more prominent than I would like,” King said. “There are reasons we don’t advertise; wouldn’t you agree?”

  She nodded, feeling Max’s shirt against her skin as he drew her closer.

  “After all, you are careful to keep your identity separate from your shenanigans, aren’t you?” He paused, his mouth open slightly, indicating the answer to his question was understood. “And yet . . .” He positioned his copy of Capitol Chatter, scanned for a bit, and read, “‘You’ll be toe-to-toe with the king of the jungle.’” He looked up. “King?”

  She nearly dropped, but Max held her up. “I didn’t mean you. I don’t know you. I didn’t even know your name until Tony told me a few minutes ago.”

  “Is that so?”

  At that, Tony slowly stood, pad and pencil in hand.

  “Good morning, Mr. Manarola,” King said, greeting him as a peer.

  “‘Morning, Doc.”

  “You know I’ll insist that this visit be off the record.”

  “And you know I don’t make no promises until it’s all played out.”

  “Fair enough.” King turned his attention back to Monica, who by this time had taken a few deep breaths but had not released her grip on Max. “Reads like a puzzle, doesn’t it, with all the hidden clues and gobbledygook slang. So-called writers like you will be the death of the English language.”

  “Now just a minute—” This was too much, and she might have made a physical leap for him had Max not grabbed a handful of sweater to hold her back.

  King held up his hand. “I apologize, Miss, ah, Monkey. Sometimes it’s hard watching the world grow young around you. But let me understand—” he balanced a pair of thin-rimmed glasses on his nose and looked back at the paper—“‘big cats, donkeys, elephants . . .’ I assume you’re referring to our guests.”

  “You bet I am,” Monica said. “All those elected officials, breaking their own laws.” She twisted in Max’s grip to look up at him. “There’s the real story—what we should be writing about.”

  “You mean something like real journalism?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Well, maybe if we get out of this alive, we’ll talk. In the meantime, let’s listen to what the gentleman has to say.”

  Monica followed Max’s lead and turned her gaze back to Doc, who seemed pleased to once again be the center of attention.

  “I am sorry,” he said, “if I gave you all a fright. Please know that my intention was only to meet with you face-to-face to discuss these important matters. I am nothing if not a reasonable man. An honorable man. And I trust—” here he directed his attention straight at Tony—“this bit of ugliness will go no further than this room.”

  “What ugliness?” Max said with an air of confidence not even Monica believed.

  “Good boy.” A smile had unfurled beneath Doc’s narrow nose. “Now, if you’d like to bring your people out from their hiding.”

  “They’re not hiding.”

  Monica felt her chest swell with pride at the words. Never before had she felt herself standing beside a leader, and with those words, Max had become exactly that. A young patriarch, an untested general. She willed her fellow employees to emerge from their places beneath the table, not in obedience to Doc King but as a show of loyalty to the man willing to protect them. The response was slow at first—nothing more than the slight scooch of a chair, and another as Zelda, then Trevor, then Thomas Harper Jr. and those two other guys unfolded from the darkness like so many soldiers crawling from the foxholes in the cautious light of day.

  Slowly and—Monica thought—unnecessarily, Max dropped his hold on her, abandoning her to an equal standing with her fellow Chatterers.

  “That’s better,” Doc said in a voice as smooth as a cigar before sending out a piercing whistle that brought his armed companions crashing back through the door. Above their clatter, he calmly assured his host that, provided nobody moved, nobody would get hurt. And though she wanted nothing more than to be once again safely tucked up beside her new hero, Monica didn’t move.

  “I just wanted my men to have a good look at all of you.” Doc stood perfectly still himself, eyes panning from left to right. Behind him, his men expanded his study, using the barrels of their guns so that everyone—Monica included—had an opportunity to stare down those dark metal holes. “I want them to memorize your faces, as I am memorizing your faces, so that should I see you—any of you—near the door of any of my places, both they and you will remember this as the day I showed you mercy, though you gravely insulted both my patrons and my establishment.”

  “I said the music was wonderful, and the drinks—”

  Immediately both guns were aimed squarely at her, and the imagined rat-a-tat of their firing proved only to be the hammering of her own heart. Eerily enough, Doc’s expression hadn’t changed a mite.

  “Second warning,” he said calmly. “You—and all of you—stay away from what is mine, and I shall stay away from what is yours.”

  “Fair enough,” Max said, with the same ability to match the coolness of Doc’s tone.

  Doc acknowledged the agreement with the slightest nod. Presumably on the off chance that the staff of Capitol Chatter might make a dive for their own weapons, the three men took the first of several steps backward, never taking their eyes nor their guns off the assembled group. To be sure, nobody moved until the door was once again closed and their shadowy figures disappeared from the other side of the frosted glass.

  The only sound was that of Tony’s pencil furiously filling page after page of his little notebook. He glanced up. “What do you say, Bisbaine? Can I get a statement?”

  “No comment,” she said. “But a question—how am I supposed to know which joints are Doc’s and which aren’t? He doesn’t exactly have his name on the doors, you know.”

  “Easy,” Max said with the same authority he’d held when the gangster was in the room. “You don’t go into any of them. At least not officially, not for the paper.” He clapped his hands together as if to preemptively squash any protest. “Now, with the exception of Miss Bisbaine’s next column—and may I assume it’s one less likely to bring gangsters to our office?”

  “It is,” Monica said, hoping he would regret his condescension once he read her tribute to his uncle.

  “Then we have the next issue ready to go to press—am I right?”

  Hums and nods of agreement overruled Monica’s sulky glare.

  “Terrific.” He rubbed his palms together, looking like a man ready to work, and then surprised them all. “We’re shutting down for a while. No writing, no digging, no stories. We’ll meet here again, two weeks from now. Nine o’clock—” he gave Monica a soft punch on the shoulder—“sharp. I need some time to assess.”

  Monica assumed she spoke for each of her comrades when she asked, “Assess what, exactly?”

  “What you’ve done here,” he said. “And given the events of the last few minutes, whether or not we’re going to continue.”

  O Hope! Dazzling, radiant Hope!—What a change thou bringest to the hopeless; brightening the darkened paths, and cheering the lonely way.

  AIMEE SEMPLE MCPHERSON

  HE KEPT A FIRE constantly burning in the woodstove throughout the days. He might have spent his childhood in the equally bitter Philadelphia winters, but years spent in temperate California had thinned his blood.

  The first order of the day was breakfast, and as the bacon sizzled in the pan, he thanked God for the generosity of Uncle Edward’s neighbors. One by one they
’d trickled by, always carrying some grocery gift—pies, sausages, loaves of bread, jars of pickled beets.

  “We didn’t know your uncle well,” they’d said, bearing the burden for his misanthropic ways, “but we hope you’ll feel welcome just the same.”

  Always Max smiled, took the gift, and thanked them for their hospitality, though clearly the true motives changed depending on the giver. Matrons came with jars of hearty soups for the poor young transplant. Little boys, banded together in groups of three or four, had combined their pennies to bring him bottles of ketchup or Coca-Cola, and they contorted themselves to get a glimpse of the house behind him, no doubt allaying their fears that its previous owner was some kind of child-eating monster.

  And then there were the young women. Dolled up in coats and hats befitting an occasion of much more importance than a social call to a new neighbor, they came in pairs, arm in arm, offering tins of sardines and boxes of crackers. They giggled behind their soft, leather gloves phrases about not being able to cook—not in the kitchen, anyway—and knowing of some fun places where a fellow could go to make some new friends. These were, he assumed, the daughters of his neighbors, older girls living at home, maybe working in some of the local shops or even attending a local college, but some were clearly no more than sixteen years old. Between the bulkiness of their coats and the layers of makeup, it was sometimes hard to tell the difference. Both he and any one of the girls might have faced a world of trouble if not for the constant presence of Sister Aimee in his head.

  “Today’s young woman thinks nothing of the treasured gift she’s been given, and if we cannot train them up to prevent the mass suicide of their virtue, we will rely on godly men to protect it in daily battle.”

  Fortunately, it was a battle easily won. This morning it had been two sisters, easily in their teenage years, bearing a loaf of cinnamon bread and an invitation to accompany their family to church the following Sunday.

  “If that’s something you enjoy,” the older of the two added, leaving him no doubt that she held such convention in disdain. “But afterwards there’s lots of us who go to the pictures. Some even as old as you, and they don’t mind going around with a bunch of kids.”