“DeeDee, would you walk out to my truck with me?” Sam interrupted. I looked up at him in surprise. “I have something I need to give you before I take off.” Sam got to his feet and smiled quite charmingly down at Meryl. “Thank you for the coffee and for being such a delightful subject. It was a pleasure meeting you.”
“The pleasure was all mine,” Meryl told him, still gazing at him like he was a combination of Warren Beatty and Liam Neeson all rolled into one delicious package.
I followed Sam down the porch steps and to his truck which was parked about a hundred feet away. I couldn’t imagine what he could possibly have in his truck that he would want to show me. “What is it?” I asked. “What did you want to give me?”
“Listen,” he spoke in a quiet voice, “don’t let that woman talk your ear off. I’ve met a million broads like her and she’ll be dragging out her baby albums and showing you her first teeth and locks of hair when she was still a natural blonde if you let her. You’ve got to take hold of the interview, DeeDee. Get what you need and then get out of there.”
“I don’t want to be rude,” I began but Sam cut me off.
“It’s not being rude. It’s called saving your life. That woman is obviously starved for attention and if you let her, she’ll be yakking from now until sunset. Believe me, DeeDee, I’m telling you this for your own good since you obviously have zero newspaper experience. You need to grow a pair.”
“Ahhh…” Not knowing quite how to respond, I finally said, “Well. Thank you, Sam. I’d better get back to Meryl.”
“I mean it,” he said as I walked away, “do what I’m telling you and save yourself.” With that, he climbed into his truck, threw it into gear and roared down Meryl’s gravel driveway leaving me behind wondering how I’d ever manage to ‘grow a pair’ on the short walk back to Meryl’s front porch.
Three hours later, I wished that I’d listened to Sam. “…and that’s when I got my very first role in our local community theater.” Meryl had barely paused to take a breath since she’d started her monologue. I didn’t even need to ask questions. She had already provided more than enough information for a three-part, hardcover biography with barely any prompting from me. Finally, I broke in. “Well,” I said, “I think I have enough information for our article.” Kate only wanted 800 words. I was sure I had at least 8000 words written down in my notebook. My hand was killing me.
“But we haven’t covered my latest play!” Meryl said. Thankfully, my cell phone rang. Peeking at it, I saw that it was someone calling from the paper.
“Excuse me. I really have to take this.”
“Of course,” Meryl pouted. “Do what you have to do.”
“DeeDee Pearson,” I said, feeling relief as my right hand slowly began to uncramp.
“Where the hell are you?” It was Kate and she sounded more than a little peeved.
“At Meryl’s house,” I said, wishing I had a better answer.
“Still? I told you I wanted a short piece on her upcoming play and you’re still there? What are you doing, writing it in longhand and then having her correct it? Get your ass back to the paper now. That story was due an hour ago. You’re only paid until noon, DeeDee. It would behoove you to learn how to work more quickly.”
“I’m on my way,” I said. Hanging up, I turned to Meryl. “That was my editor. I’ve got to get back to the paper and write this up.”
“Of course! I’m sorry if I ran on a bit. You know how it is…I start talking about my love of the theater and time seems to disappear.”
Maybe for her it had disappeared. For me it had stood still. “Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed.” I got to my feet.
“Anything for the press,” Meryl said airily.
“One more question—is Meryl your real name or your stage name?”
Meryl’s eyes narrowed. “It’s my real name. I was using it far before that Streep woman came along—not,” she added as she quickly backpedaled, “that I’m older than she is. I’m a little younger, actually, but I have been going by Meryl forever and in my opinion, she might be a well-known movie star—although some of her pictures from the last few years have been real dogs—I’ll always be the First Lady of Community Theater.”
I nodded. “Well. All right, then. I should be going. It was a pleasure meeting you, Meryl.”
“When is this story running?”
“Tomorrow, I believe.”
“Wonderful!” Meryl followed me out to my car. “I wish we’d had more time to chat, dear. Are you sure you have enough material?”
“Positive,” I assured her.
She was still talking as I drove away and although I felt more than a little rude, I also felt as if I was escaping from a human volcano that was spewing sentences—all beginning with the word “I”—instead of lava.
“Phew. Thank God that’s over,” I said out loud as I drove back toward town. The clock on the dashboard told me that it was close to noon. I still had to write up the story so it looked like I’d be staying late at work that day. Well, that was all right. I didn’t mind staying late since it was really my fault that the interview had taken so long in the first place. I was sure that as I got more experience I’d be able to time things a little better. It was like cooking. When Steve and I first got married, I could never figure out how to time meals so that the potatoes were done at the same time as the meat and the vegetable. Journalism had to be pretty much the same thing.
Shaking out my right hand as I held the steering wheel with my left, I sure hoped that I was right.
Chapter Six
Kate was standing by my cubicle when I got back to the paper. Arms on her hips, lips a thin bright red line and her right foot impatiently tapping inside a most unattractive taupe-colored sneaker, she wasn’t exactly the Welcome Wagon. “Look who’s here,” she drawled as I tossed my purse on my desk.
“Hi, Kate,” I said breathlessly. The reporters’ room was located on the third floor of the newspaper building and there wasn’t an elevator. Climbing up the steps reminded me daily of how out of shape I was getting but if I lasted at the paper, I was sure to get toned pretty fast.
“’Hi, Kate,’” she mimicked in a high squeaky voice, an action that immediately set my nerves on end and brought back too many memories of mean girls who mocked my athletic skills during junior high gym class. “Do you have any idea of what time it is?”
“Um…” I glanced at the clock on the wall. “Twelve seventeen.” Wow! Twelve seventeen? I’d made great time coming in from Meryl’s house.
“You should have been back here by nine-thirty, ten at the penultimate latest. What took you so long?”
“My subject was sort of long-winded,” I began to explain. “She had a little trouble getting to the point.”
“Well, for Pete’s sake, you should have cut her off! Sam came back here and told us how she’d cornered you. He said you looked just like a fly trapped in a spider web. You need to learn how to control these situations, DeeDee. I know you’re new to this game but come on! You aren’t some teenager. You’re an adult woman who should know how to say, ‘Thank you. I have all I need.’ You need to wise up!”
I shot a glance over at Sam Weaver’s cubicle and caught him leaning back in his office chair as he eavesdropped on Kate and me. So much for hoping he might keep his mouth shut as a professional courtesy. “I am sorry,” I repeated. “Next time I’ll know better.”
Kate waved my apology away. “Sorry doesn’t cut it in journalism. I wanted that story an hour ago.”
My blood was beginning to boil so I answered her a little more sharply than I normally would. “If you’ll let me get to work instead of wasting more time telling me how I messed up, you’ll have it before I leave.”
“You’re damn straight I’ll have it before you leave! That’s your job, cupcake, now get to it.” She slapped away from me, her skinny thighs swinging underneath the leggings she was wearing like thin twin metronomes as she walked and talked loudly to herse
lf. “Honestly! It’s like working in a damn daycare around here. What do I have to do? Babysit each and every single one of you so that you do what you’re supposed to do? We aren’t paying you to sit around with your fingers up your collective noses, we’re paying you to work!”
Thankfully she had reached her office by that point and went inside, slamming the door shut behind her and muffling the rest of her monologue.
For a moment or two I sat at my desk and quaked with anger. I simply wasn’t used to being spoken to that way. Kate acted like she was my kindergarten teacher and I had been tardy coming in from recess. It was not a sensation that I enjoyed reliving in the least.
“Don’t let her get to you,” a soft voice advised.
I looked up from my computer. A young man was leaning around the petition, pity in his large brown eyes. “I’m Ren Peterson. We haven’t met yet.”
Automatically, I held out my hand for him to shake. “DeeDee Pearson.”
“Nice to meet you, although I should have introduced myself sooner.”
“You haven’t been here while I’ve been here,” I pointed out, my nerves calming down a little. Ren had a soothing voice, like a radio announcer’s, that was quite welcome after Kate’s high pitched screech.
“True enough. They keep us so busy around this place that I feel like most of us are barely in the newsroom these days.”
“I’m sorry we had to meet right after I was scolded. I feel like I was caught stealing a candy bar or something.”
“Don’t,” Ren advised. “That’s her goal. Like I said, don’t let her get to you.”
“Is she always like that?”
Ren nodded. “Always. Kate suffers from a malady called DPD.”
“What’s that?”
“Defective Personality Disorder. There’s a lot of that going around here. I’m hoping it’s not contagious. The best thing you can do is try not to take it personally. Believe me, you’ll have to learn how not to take it personally if you want to stay here.”
I smiled. Ren seemed like a nice enough person although he was too young to have such dark circles under his eyes. I recalled that Caroline had said how overworked he was and I believed it. His cubicle was piled so high with papers that I could see stacks threatening to topple over the wall that separated his side from mine. “Thank you for the advice and I’ll try not to let my blood pressure get too high. Now I guess I’d better write this story before she comes back to bite my head off again.”
“Don’t worry,” Ren said before vanishing back into his cubicle, “if she doesn’t bite your head off about the story you’re working on now, she’ll find some reason to bite it off about the next one. Kate is never satisfied.”
Wonderful. Turning toward my computer, I began to tap out my very first story for the Kemper Times.
Writing up Meryl’s interview turned out to be far easier than the interview itself had been and as I wrote the last sentence, my self-confidence was slightly recovered although I realized that in spite of the fact that I’d learned who was Meryl’s college roommate back in 1978, I hadn’t asked about the dates and times of her upcoming play. A quick telephone call rectified that and I worked the information into the article. Finally satisfied with what I’d written, I rubbed my eyes. It hadn’t been easy but I’d written my very first story for the Kemper Times.
Now what?
I realized that I didn’t know what I was supposed to do next since on the job training seemed to be pretty much non-existent at the Kemper Times. “Ren?”
His head appeared around the cubicle again. “You rang?”
“I have a dumb question for you.”
“There are no dumb questions.” Ren grinned. “Actually, that’s not true. There are a million dumb questions but I doubt that yours is one of them. What is it?”
“What do we do when we’re done with a story? I mean, who do we send it to?”
“Who else?”
My heart sank. “Jeff?” I asked hopefully.
Ren shook his head sorrowfully. “Kate. When you’re ready, just send it to her as an email attachment.”
“DEEDEE!” Kate’s voice bellowed out from her office. “Are you done YET?”
Hurriedly I scanned the story one more time before sending it on to Kate. “Just finishing up,” I called back.
Immediately Kate appeared in her doorway. “There is no need to shout,” she snapped. “We work at a newspaper, not on a farm or in a factory. I’ll thank you to remember that.”
It was becoming more and more apparent that I couldn’t win with this woman and I was beginning to wonder why I would want to. “All right,” I said in the most pleasant tone I could manage between gritted teeth. “I’ll remember.”
“You just do that one little thing,” Kate said before going back into her office, her door slamming shut behind her.
“Charming, isn’t she?” Ren whispered.
“I think I’ve seen cobras that had more charm,” I replied.
With a barely suppressed sigh, I sent Kate my story and then got to my feet and walked over to her office. Time to make nice with the dragon lady. I knocked softly on her door.
“What?” Kate shouted.
I opened her door and stepped inside. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry about calling back to you,” I apologized in as friendly a tone as I could muster. Okay, I didn’t like the woman but she was my boss. I needed to figure out a way to get along with her. “I didn’t mean to shout. I just assumed that since you called to me that it would be okay for me to call back to you.”
Kate ignored my apology. “Did you finish your story?”
“Yes. I just sent it to you.”
“I’ll let you know what corrections need to be made.”
“All right.” I lingered for another moment or two to see if she had anything more to add. When she didn’t say anything, I turned to leave.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Kate instantly barked.
I turned back to face her. “Excuse me?”
Kate punched up her email and found the one that I’d sent her without bothering to answer me. I watched as she opened the attachment. A second later she looked at me triumphantly. “The story you just sent me is 778 words. I said it should be 800.”
“You wanted exactly 800 words?”
“You’ll find that I never say what I don’t mean, DeeDee. Now, you can wait while I read 778 words, can’t you?”
“I didn’t know that you wanted me to wait.”
Kate chuckled, showing off tiny white teeth that looked exactly like baby Chicklets. “I’m a pretty fast reader, DeeDee, but even a moron can read 778 words in a few minutes.”
“So you want me to stand here while you read my story?”
“How am I supposed to give you fresh feedback if you slink away from me while I’m reading?”
This woman was the limit. No, she was obviously from the outer limits. Job or no job, regular paycheck or not, I didn’t have to take that kind of crap from her or anyone else. “Kate, I’ve never slinked anywhere or away from anyone in my entire life.”
She wasn’t listening to me. “Your opening line is good but your overall style needs work,” she said, looking up from her computer. “Plus it’s too passive. Newspapers are all about action, DeeDee, action. Re-write it.”
“Now?”
“You’d rather wait until the play is over?” she questioned. “Re-write it in a more active voice and it will do. It’s not great but for a first crack, it’s not the worst piece of journalism I’ve ever read.”
“Kate?” Bob Meredith came up behind me. Right behind me. I was still standing in the doorway when he joined us, pressing his right hip against my left hip, a completely unnecessary move, I might add, since there was ample room in the doorway for both of us. “Got a sec?”
“Of course,” Kate replied, looking past me and beaming at Bob. “Always for our ace reporter. What’s up?”
Bob glanced over at me. “Are you done?”
“Well, that’s mighty decent of you, DeeDee,” Kate responded, “especially since that’s your job. And don’t put these hours down on your time sheet since you could have had this all wrapped up if you’d managed to conduct your interview in a normal amount of time.”
Not being able to come up with any kind of reply that would add to our conversation, I went back to my cubicle. I might even have slunk but I was too mad to be able to tell. As I left I heard Bob Meredith say, “Time sheet? She’s hourly?”
“What else?” Kate asked. “All of our new hires are hourly from now on. Saves the paper a ton of money. No bennies either.”
Caroline looked up as I blindly moved past her. “I can’t stand that woman,” I said through gritted teeth. “She’s awful.”
Caroline nodded her head. “To know Kate is to hate her and the worst part is that she’s such an idiot that she doesn’t even know how we all feel about her. She thinks she’s wonderful and that we all think she’s the greatest boss since Henry Ford, can you believe that?”
“Then she’s highly delusional.”
“You got that right.”
I gave myself an all over kind of shake. “All right. I’m okay now. I’d better get back to my story before she starts picking on me again.”
“Did she make you re-write it?”
I nodded. “It’s too passive.”
“Next time, turn in a kind of sloppy first story,” Caroline advised. “Kate never lets anyone get away with their first draft. She always has to criticize it, always wants changes. It’s a power trip for the old windbag.”
“I’ll remember that,” I said.
Once I was back in my cubicle, I got to work on my re-write. Re-writing the story didn’t take as long as writing it the first time had, especially since I was fueled with venom for my boss. My ire also helped me turn my passive writing into something that was a lot more active and, I must admit, more interesting. My finished product made Meryl Cunningham and her community theater group sound like they’d just blown into town from Broadway.
Black and White and Dead All Over: A Midlife Crisis Mystery (Midlife Crisis Mysteries) Page 8
