by Dan Newman
This is it. This is where I will die for my sins. My mind tears off on an instant daisy chain: my sins, a dead girl. The dead girl, my career. My career, Rwanda. Rwanda, Donna Sabourin. Donna Sabourin, bullet story. In a flash, I recall why I am here, why I have placed myself in this predicament, and it gives me the presence of mind, if not the courage, to reach for the camera and slip out to the darkened roadside.
• • •
“Journalist!” I call out into the blackness, unsure of who I am addressing or where they are. I do a little circle with the camera, light off, sound wide open, trying to pick up whatever I can. There is nothing but complete blackness, save the pool of white from the headlights and the red dots that mark the tail of the Land Cruiser. “Media! Reporter!” I call out. “I want to interview you!” It sounds absurd even to me, and I snap on the light over the camera in some desperate effort to validate my claim. I turn the camera briefly on myself and repeat my entreaty, so that those in the blackness might understand that I am telling the truth.
It occurs to me that I am now a well-lit target, and I quickly swing the light toward the bush line, blinking madly and struggling to recapture my night vision. I wonder what people will say when—if—they see this footage. Do I seem scared? In control? I feel a sudden wave of self-loathing, as I realize that this little ending is a vanity of sorts—a last blast of ego. It seems I can’t even be honest at the very end. What an asshole. And in the space of a fractured second I see my psychologist, Dr. Coyle, a haze of blue smoke about her and a broad grin on her face. She’s not saying the words, but her grin is screaming it: I told you so! Then she chuckles briefly and is gone.
I pan the bush line on both sides of the road, and stop when I see what I take to be a man, a body anyway, just beyond the first line of low brush. The camera allows me to zoom in on it and expose it as a bloating animal carcass, not a man at all.
I blink away from the eyepiece at the sound of something metallic from the bush line behind me. I pan toward it, and the camera suddenly explodes into a shower of plastic and shattered lens glass. I drop the remains instinctively and hop backward, stifling the scream that’s clawing its way up my throat. Remarkably, the light has stayed on, beaming innocuously skyward.
A harsh voice bellows from the darkness, all syllables to my ear, and I immediately shoot my hands into the black night above me. “Journalist!” I shout again. “Media!”
From the bush line steps a small man in rags, a member of the Hutu Interahamwe, going by the black swatch pinned to his shoulder. Again he bellows, and I jab my hands even higher, yelling a chorus of “Journalist! Journalist!”
He thrusts his weapon at me and fires, casually. No opportunity for discussion, for pleading, for barter. He just fires and knocks me backward into a wet heap on the road.
I can’t move. I can only see what is directly in front of me, which is the Land Cruiser and a scattering of parts from the video camera. Several men climb into the vehicle with not so much as a glance my way, and begin pitching the contents onto the road.
And so this is how it all ends. It seems at least fitting. An eye for an eye, the Bible says, and as I think it, mine are snuffed out.
2
Seven years earlier.
I stare at the keyboard, and immediately Professor Bowman pops into my mind. He sits there in his tiny office on the fifth floor, surrounded by piles of paper and yellow Post-its scattered like dandelions across an unruly lawn. “There are two kinds of journalists, Roly,” he used to say to me, leaning back and lacing his fingers behind his head. “There’s Makers and Takers. The only thing you’ve gotta ask yourself is: which are you?” And then he would chuckle and tell me to get the hell out of his office.
But that wasn’t unusual, nor was it rude. One on one, the Professor was like that—straight to the point. That’s what I liked about him. If he wanted to talk, he talked. And if he was tired of it, he’d tell you to get the hell out. I suppose that’s why I chose to study under him. That and his contagious passion for the news business.
His question rakes across my mind now: Which one would I be? A Maker or a Taker? I’d heard the expression before, several times before, along with everyone who ever took one of his classes. Professor Bowman would puff up like a peacock right before he launched into it, and students in their second and third year of journalism would groan and slouch a little deeper into the hard seats of the lecture hall. His lectures were distinctly different from his office hours, where Professor Bowman would lay it on thick to the point of theater.
The Takers, he would lament, were the kind of journalists who let things come to them. They thrived on press releases, loved the wire service, and basically inhabited the newsroom just to rearrange someone else’s copy. Now, the Makers—that was where the real talent was. Those were the kind of journalists who went looking for the story. They frowned at releases and shook their heads in disgust at those who so much as skimmed what came in across the wire. Makers were professionals in an important field. Makers kept newspapers real, and saved them from being nothing more than billboards.
It was fascinating stuff—the first time. Around the third or fourth telling it got a little old, but you still had to respect the man’s commitment. He was seventy but still had an absolute conviction in the power of a good story. “You might write one in your whole career—if you’re lucky,” he’d say. If you looked through his fifty-three years of work you’d find all kinds of remarkable stories—any one of which I would have been proud to say I’d written. The man was a genius of his time, and it’s too bad that no one ever seemed to notice.
I look up from my keyboard. On the screen is my résumé, a static testament to my lack of achievement in life. Thoughts of Professor Bowman quickly depart, and I am alone again. I look at the résumé and hate it. I must have a thousand varieties, each one tailored to the specs of the job, then tweaked, tinkered, and shaped into something different again. Sixty-two applications, four interviews, zero jobs.
The people outside on Third Street all have places to go, scurrying with heads bent against winter’s last kicks. In the street, cars crawl by, inhabited by people who presumably have jobs. And good jobs, too—judging by the parade of fancy BMWs and Mercedes.
I push through the doors, into the street, dragging what’s left of my confidence a few feet behind me. I’ll try again tomorrow.
“Roly! Hey, Roly.” I turn and see that it’s Warren, exiting his Beemer and struggling to do up his nine-hundred-dollar leather jacket. He’s a good guy, but he gets on my nerves these days, what with his family money and his I can do it without them attitude. Somehow Warren doesn’t get it. He almost always comes to the resource center in his shiny Beemer—and worse still, parks right out front. He gets a lot of looks from people itching to give him the finger, but he’s oblivious to them.
He hunches against an icy city wind, a knifing cold that’s channeled perfectly by miles and miles of glass and concrete. But despite it, his smile is still perfect. “What are you up to, Roly?”
“Just heading home. Sent off a bunch of résumés.”
“Still nothing, huh?”
“More nothing than something.”
Warren chuckles at my sarcasm and it makes me more pissed off. I think I’m developing happiness issues—more fodder for Dr. Coyle. “You wanna grab a coffee before you go?” he asks.
I am about to shake my head—the truth is a coffee would be nice but I’m pinching pennies right now—but then Warren seals the deal. “I’m buying,” he says, raising both hands in the air.
I’m not normally a mooch, but I figure Warren owes me. I edit his cover letters—hell, I rewrite them most of the time, and help him with his job search whenever I get sick of my own. Which is a lot lately. It’s not that I’m any better than Warren, but he seems to think my input helps, presumably because I’m a journalism graduate, and therefore a capable wordsmith. Warren, on the other hand, is a vet graduate from some exclusive academy on the other side of th
e country—Seattle, I think. Somewhere much warmer, anyway. He says he put himself through the school without Mom and Dad’s money, but of course whenever he talks about that all I can hear in my head is, What about the Beemer, Warren? And I admit it, I’m jealous.
Warren seems to be picking up on my mood, so I make a conscious effort to lighten up. After all, he did spring for coffee.
“What about the interview with the Sun?” he asks from the other side of the little table in Starbucks.
“They said I’d more than likely get a call back for a second interview, but that was two weeks ago. Nothing since.”
“Why don’t you call them?”
“You think?” I’ve thought about this, but I’m paranoid about sounding desperate. Once you smack of desperation you’re dead. It clings to you and hovers around you in interviews, seeps through the phone and stains your résumé. It’s like getting sprayed by a skunk.
But Warren seems to think otherwise. “Sure. Why not?”
I explain my desperation theory and Warren nods in understanding. Great. I was hoping he’d debate me on it, but instead he’s confirmed my fears. Now the follow-up call is out of the question, and I wonder if I already have the stench of desperation. Warren pipes up again before I can ask. “Have you thought about other places? Getting the hell out of the city?”
I have, and discarded it. “It’s a money thing. Setting up in a new place costs big bucks.” Of course, “big bucks” is a relative term, and I am talking to one of the heirs to the Barton fortune. So I back out quickly. “What about you? Any luck yet?”
He drains his coffee and spins the cup on the table. “Couple of nibbles, nothing much.”
Warren, of course, is a lying sack of shit. He has at least two interviews set up. I know this because I pried it out of the aging administrator at the center. “It’ll come,” I remark with as much interest as I can muster, which isn’t much.
Warren and I shoot the proverbial shit for another half hour, until the atmosphere is thick with the realization that no, I am not going to spring for the next coffee. Warren offers another, but I decline, mumbling something vaguely apologetic about cash flow and owing him one. Warren slips across the road with a wave, and I hustle down Third just in time to miss the streetcar.
3
By four I am home. My apartment is probably not the best place to be for someone in my kind of mood. I have a futon on the floor, a card table and two foldout chairs, a bar minifridge, a tube TV with bunny ears and, worst of all, a hotplate.
Tonight I retreat to my futon with a Coke and a ham sandwich. I thumb through a stack of magazines on the floor beside me, flicking resentfully past all the bylines of employed journalists the world over.
On the front of a copy of Newsweek I see the smiling face of Colin Dysart, owner and CEO of Newsco, the media giant that owns three of the major national newspapers, along with several others scattered around the globe. The caption, leading a story on Dysart’s new sports magazine, is short and punchy, just the catchy kind of thing every journalism major learns how to do. Dysart and Newsco: Major League News.
Inside I find a story on Dysart’s rise to media magnate from hardworking farmhand, complete with tragedy, comedy, and high commerce. It’s a good piece, and I feel moderately pleased with myself that I can admit this without taking a cheap shot at the prick who wrote it. There are pictures with the article: his mansion in The Meadows, his wife Emily (his rudder, as he puts it), and his three kids—two sons and a daughter. All in all, a life that seems to be going well.
I toss the magazine on the floor where it lands beside a small pile of bills, some marked PAST DUE in bright red letters. It’s amusing, I tell myself. One day I’ll laugh about it all. In my pocket I find a five-dollar bill and a handful of change. Enough for a couple of beers. Also enough for about twelve boxes of Kraft Mac & Cheese, but I have little difficulty in convincing myself which is the priority. My nine bucks and I are going to the bar.
• • •
Dory’s Printing and Office Supplies is a little business on the corner of Third and Main that’s dying a slow and inevitable death at the hands of the big box stores. I work there for Rhona—hustling office supplies, printing and binding presentations, and running errands—and I should really be more grateful than I am for the few meager bucks it puts in my pocket. Without it I’d have nothing. I’m pretty sure Rhona employs me almost entirely out of pity—Christ knows she could handle the few customers she still has easily enough on her own.
But Rhona’s all right, and I think she has a bit of a thing for me, which I don’t mind. She’s forty-seven, blonde, heavy in the chest and tight through the waist. I think her cleavage is the only reason she’s still in business. She wears bright clothes and brighter lipstick, and calls everyone honey and sugar.
But the place is a hole in the wall and the job is the lowest rung on the “communications” ladder. I took it because I thought I could spin it into a perk in my résumé—that and the fact that it was all I could get. It sucks the life out of me. But it pays some of the bills.
Rhona reloads one of the copiers with her admittedly attractive hindquarters pointing in my direction—on purpose, I’m sure. “Hon, can you dash out back and bring in the case of toner from my truck? The keys are on the desk.”
I say sure and squeeze past her, barely able to avoid contact.
“Oh, and sweetie, bring in my lunch, too, will you?”
And that’s what my professional occupation is all about.
When I get back, Rhona yammers on about her date last night and I smile and nod in all the right places. Soon the doors are open and I’m given tasks by pimply-faced twenty-year-olds in suits, puffed up with self-importance. They smile at me condescendingly, then turn away with hands thrust impatiently in their pockets. I can hear their thoughts: I wish that boy would get a move on. Doesn’t that boy know we’re career people here? And so off I go to copy their little piles of paper, hating every moment of it, hating them and their puffed-up self-importance, and wishing I was one of them.
• • •
On Tuesday afternoon I get home and see the light blinking furiously on my answering machine. I slap the play button and wait as the little cassette rewinds, also furiously, and savor what I know must be an interview call. I know this because no one else calls me.
Hi, Mr. Keene, Irene Trent here from the Chronicle. We had a chance to review your résumé and were hoping we could set up a time to meet briefly. If you’re still available, please call me back on… I scribble her number down and clench my fists—this’ll be the one. I’ll nail it, ditch the copy shop, maybe nail Rhona on the way out, too. I call Ms. Trent back and set the appointment for the following day. No time like the present.
In the bathroom, before bed, I wet shave in the mirror. Long, even strokes, just the way my father would have taught me. When I’m finished, I regard the face in the mirror, and check for any shadows of desperation. I tell myself I’m not there yet, not touched with the skunk stink of the hopelessly unemployed. Tomorrow I will sell myself to Irene Trent. I’ll be the perfect interviewee. I know all the questions, all the answers. I’ve read just about every modern book about the hiring process, and I can almost predict the questions in advance. How do you deal with conflict? What do you consider your strengths? What was the best job you ever had? And my favorite, What one word do you use to describe yourself?
The face I see in the mirror now is sharp and prepared, honed to a fine edge by just enough rejection to make every chance count. I harden my eyes and set my jaw with conviction, and speak slowly to myself in the light of a naked sixty-watt bulb. Tomorrow I am going to start my own success… I’m going to invite it in.
4
My suit’s not a bad one. It’s only seen wear at my graduation and at interviews, so it still has a lot of life in it. In the mirror, I give myself a turn and I’m pleased with the results. My hair is getting a little long, but it’s still presentable. I look around my apart
ment and promise to start living better once I nail this job. My eyes fall on the hotplate and I know it will be the first thing to go.
At Union Station I move carefully. This is Trots’s stamping ground. Even though nine thirty is a little early for him, I still need to be careful. He has a few kids that work for him, taking bets and selling a little whatever-you-need on the side, and I don’t want to be spotted. I’ll clear my slate with Trots, just not today. By the ticketing booth, I see one of his lackeys, but the kid doesn’t see me—it must be the suit. I stand virtually next to him as I buy my ticket, but he never shows any interest, and this is a kid who’s taken my NFL bets before. I walk away—already liking the changes the news business has brought me.
In the train car I take a seat among people of every description and start my run to the north end of the city. I am alone in my suit; everyone else in a suit is already at work. Beside me is an elderly woman with stockings wrinkling at her ankles. She smiles at me, then gazes out of the window, watching as the bowels of the city flick by. I search my pockets for the gum I always keep there (always chew gum on your way into an interview—kills dry mouth and freshens your breath) and find instead a soft, folded piece of paper that I don’t immediately recognize. I take it out and unfold it.
The card in my hand is a gag graduation gift from the Professor—a PRESS card like the ones reporters would wear in their hats in the ’30s and ’40s. But the quickly scribbled note on the back of it is something more—a kind of permission slip, a joke that I have somehow clung to despite its transient nature in the eyes of the writer. It was after the graduation ceremony, in the campus pub at the tables along the back wall. Professor Bowman and I sat and shared a pitcher or two and a plate of wings, as we often did during something we came to call Thesis Strategy Briefings. My relationship with Professor Bowman was tighter than most. He knew my history, knew what I did and didn’t have, and in many ways I think he tried hard in those years to fill in the gaps. Maybe he was trying to play the part of those who couldn’t. I knew he felt an unusual responsibility toward me—unusual in that it went beyond his duties as an academic bringing along the student—and that was never so clear as it was at the end.
