The Journalist

by Dan Newman

  Seconds later Rhona’s face is on the screen, but she’s gone before I can find the remote on the floor and restore the sound. “…and it’s a tragedy that’s touched so many,” says the narrator, and my photograph once more flickers on the screen. I turn off the TV and snap on the desk lamp I keep on the floor beside the futon. The room is a disaster: bedding strewn all around, bowls of half-eaten cereal and Kraft Mac & Cheese, Coke cans, a pizza box, and magazines. I shuffle through it all and step into the shower, run the water as hot as I can stand it and sit. What I have done seems like news about someone else. The death of a media magnate’s daughter is too far removed an event to be part of my dreary existence, and as I run the scene in the alley through my head over and over, I slowly realize that, at least in part, I was a victim too. It is a weak and thready argument and I know it, but I tell it to myself over and over again, until steam is rolling out of my bathroom and into the apartment. Finally I allow myself the narrowest of spaces to slide through: what I did was wrong, but I never intended for Chloe to die. And with those words, I start to breathe.

  By the next day I am thinking straight again.

  • • •

  I know this part well. I have inside information and know how to build the effect.

  To complete the final stage of my plan, I must play this new role carefully. I reject the reporters with subtle comments, quiet words. Things like I’m not ready, I can’t talk about it, and the real gem, I’m so sorry I couldn’t help that poor family. Chloe is dead, and I can’t change that. And no amount of self-loathing can. And so I resolve to go on, to complete the play.

  Chloe is gone, and to fold everything now would be to make it all in vain, her death included. No, quitting now makes everything a waste. I think I even say to myself that if I stop now then Chloe died for nothing. It’s a lie I will tell myself for many years, and on occasion I will almost believe it.

  The phone rings and takes me from these heavy thoughts. I pick it up and know what to expect. I take a deep breath and put my persona in place. I am hurt. I am saddened. I am racked with survivor guilt. But this time the call that comes is not from a reporter but from a man with a quiet, soft voice.

  “Mr. Keene?” he inquires.

  “Yes, this is Roland Keene.”

  “Mr. Keene, my name is David Mahoney; I’m Mr. Dysart’s assistant.”

  It is the call I have been waiting for.

  10

  The man on the phone speaks with what I take to be breeding. His words are deliberate and well chosen, but his voice is rough with grief. He pauses often as he speaks, and I know without question that the gaps are handholds for composure.

  “Mr. Dysart—indeed the whole Dysart family—would like to meet you—if that would be all right with you.”

  “They want to meet me?” I ask humbly, my tone saying, why would they want to meet such an insignificant person as me?

  Mr. Mahoney is so eloquent it makes me actually smile on the phone, until he mentions Chloe, and I banish the smile and replace it with a clenched jaw. “Certainly, Mr. Keene,” he says, addressing me as if I were someone far above his station. “The family feels indebted to you. They would like an opportunity to meet the man who stood up for their daughter when they could not. It would really mean a great deal to them, Mr. Keene.”

  A short silence hovers between us, until Mahoney leaps in as if to up the ante on a decision that might go either way. “We would, of course, send a car for you.”

  “Are you sure they don’t just want their privacy right now?”

  “Indeed they do, Mr. Keene, but they explicitly asked if you could spare an hour.”

  “Well,” I reply, sounding flattered and nervous at once—with none of it faked, “okay. I guess that’d be fine.”

  • • •

  At eleven the following day the car arrives for me. The sun is burning with the kind of glare that forces your eyes closed, and the white of the limousine nearly blinds me. A guy my age pops out of the car as I approach, and asks simply, “Mr. Keene?” I nod and he smiles, then holds the door open. Inside there’s more room than in my apartment, and I shrink self-consciously into the corner, the leather seats grunting and muttering at me with every move.

  The glass divide slides down with a low-pitched, automatic whine, and the driver regards me through the rearview mirror. “If you’d like a drink, please feel free to help yourself, Mr. Keene.” I decline, even though my mouth has suddenly dried and my heart is racing.

  The driver swings off of First and in moments we are surrounded by treed-in mansions lined with BMWs and Mercedes. The quality of the air here is different, the light better, softer, although the biggest difference is the fact that I can see not a soul.

  Wealth, at least the kind of extreme wealth up here on The Meadows, means you never have to be seen. Cars slip into driveways that wind behind thick, well-established trees, or disappear behind gates that close so slowly they seem arrogant. On the streets themselves there are no pedestrians, only a lone jogger clad in running gear that probably cost more than I pay for a month’s rent.

  The driver slows and turns left, and stops as an enormous wrought iron gate swings back and opens. We glide through it, and I watch as the gates pause before closing. Anyone could run in now and be inside the estate—but the gates clearly believe no one would dare try. There are no streetcars here. No bus services that I can see. There is nothing to bring in the common folk, and any that dared enter would stick out like the proverbial lost fart in a perfume factory. No, this enclave just north of the city core is an invisible community.

  The limo crunches to a stop on crushed gravel, and the door is opened for me.

  “Mr. Keene,” says a man with his hand extended to me. His voice tells me this is Mahoney, but he looks nothing like I imagined. He is a short, rotund man, probably once well muscled, but now just plump. He smiles briefly to me, and I can’t help but smile back. “Mr. Keene, thank you so much for coming.”

  Before me is the Dysart home. It’s a new building, but one that has been carefully crafted to appear old. The structure is faced with stone, and ivy is carefully trained up and around the many window frames, each anchored with a solid plinth of polished granite. The windows are all darkened with heavy curtains, all drawn tightly save one directly above me. It pulls closed as my gaze reaches up to it.

  Mr. Mahoney smiles in that drawn-lip way that says smiling just now isn’t quite right, but here’s a close facsimile, and nods in the direction of the front door. I follow like a puppy, then thrust my hands into my pockets in a desperate grab for composure.

  I follow him through the double doors with their heavy stained-glass inlay: no thunder crash, no band of accusing fingers, just a slight pressure on my eardrums as the door sweeps closed behind me and seals me in.

  I am shown to a small library, where the furniture is the real deal when it comes to old. Shelves line three of the walls, ceiling to floor, and are filled with books. Old books, too, judging by the wide dark spines and faded lettering. Two graceful leather wingback chairs guard the window, where more stained glass catches the light and breaks it into shafts of gold, pale yellow, and green that tumble through the drifting dust onto the thick piling of the luxurious rugs. They are old and show some wear, but no doubt they are priceless imports from some exotic place a million miles from here. Across from the chairs and backed by one of the book-lined walls, a low desk polished to a high gloss sits piled with more tomes, some held open with heavy glass paperweights or carefully marked with ornate bookmarks. Its owner has left his scent all over this room.

  It’s a moment before I realize Mahoney has left without a word, and that he has somehow managed to close the door without my hearing it. After several minutes, I opt for a closer look at the books, rather than attempting something so irreverent as sitting on one of the wingbacks.

  The books, I realize with wonder, look to be first editions of classic works; Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, a host of Hemingway novels,
Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward, and many others I’ve simply never heard of. I pull a worn copy of Things Fall Apart and sweep back the cover. I’m correct. It too is a first edition. Behind me the door opens—this time audibly—and I turn, too quickly, caught neck-deep in my own treachery.

  “Roland Keene,” says the man before me. It is a statement, not a question.

  I nod yes, and he reaches for the book in my hands and takes it—not possessively, but collegially—like a man sharing a secret. We stare at each other for a finely stretched moment; he is drinking me in, I think. Looking for some quality that put me into his daughter’s life. Suddenly he is aware that the moment has been stretched to its limit, and he breaks away, dropping his eyes to the spine of the book in his hands. “Achebe,” he says. “One of the most underrated great ones.” His look asks me if I agree, and I nod again.

  “I hope I haven’t made you too uncomfortable—inviting you here like this,” he says, replacing the book and gently pulling it back to line up with its neighbors.

  I realize I have to say something now, no more nods. “No, it’s fine, really. I just thought that when you called, when Mr. Mahoney called, that you all might just want your privacy.” Dysart nods approvingly.

  He waves us into the chairs. Leaning forward, he peers into me, and for the first time I can see the hurt around his eyes. His face is a familiar one—to virtually anyone in the news business—but this close perspective reveals lines and bags that have never made it to the cover of Business Week. He shuffles further forward on the seat, hands clasped together. “Can I ask you about it? About that night?” He is aching for answers, and I have them. I have them all.

  “Sure,” I reply. “What do you want to know?”

  He stands and moves briskly to the desk. “When she was…when she was shot. Did she…”

  I know where he is going, and I can at least spare him the indignity of the question. “From what I remember, when the shot went off, she went limp right away—I don’t think she even knew what happened. And up until that point she was putting up a fight. I don’t even think she was scared—just, well, pissed off.”

  He half laughs and runs a hand through his hair. He spends another half hour with me, pitching questions—not probing me, but searching for something in her death that just isn’t there. It was an accident, something that just shouldn’t have happened—and even I believe that much.

  Finally, after settling back into the chair across from me, it comes. It is a half measure, an afterthought, but an opening I am ready for. “So what about you, how are you doing?”

  “The arm’s pretty good—I’ll be back out pounding the pavement pretty soon.” He looks at me quizzically, so I clarify for good measure. “Job hunting—that’s what I was doing when I came across your daughter.”

  “What are you looking for?” he asks, his eyes and mind somewhere well past me.

  11

  I answer the knock at my door with a no small degree of trepidation; in the time I’ve lived here, only one other person has ever knocked on my door—and that was the super looking for a late payment.

  “Mr. Keene?” The guy I see through the guarded sliver of an opening is dressed in bike gear, a satchel slung over his shoulder and half-moon sweat stains in his armpits.

  I let my defenses slide and open the door some more. “Yeah, I’m Roland Keene.”

  “Sign here,” he says. No small talk.

  I sign and he hands me an envelope, then turns away without so much as a see ya.

  I close the door and see that the envelope carries the Newsco logo, and a small butterfly bats its wings once in my stomach. It’s been weeks since I sent them my résumé, so if not that…

  I quit trying to reason my way through and shred the envelope open.

  Inside is a single sheet of paper, folded once and emblazoned at the top in a copper-colored ink with FROM THE OFFICE OF COLIN DYSART. The note is written in longhand—all swirls and loops—and signed simply: Colin.

  It is brief:

  Roland,

  I’ve made a couple of calls and set up an interview for you down at the Star-Telegraph. Give Ed Carroway a call—he’s expecting to hear from you. Best of luck.

  Colin.

  I read the message twice more, soaking it in. I hear the words in my head spoken clearly in Colin Dysart’s voice. His tone is authoritative, crisply delivered and leaving no room for discussion. I somehow know that I am not meant to contact him again. Ever. I fold the note slowly and slip it back into the mangled envelope, then lean against the doorframe and try to understand the magnitude of those words. The note feels almost hot in my hands, and I know with utter certainty that if it had elbows it would gently dig one into me.

  It knows, just as I do, that I’ve done it.

  Somewhere in the background, deep in the quiet spots of my mind, a dead girl is trying to get my attention. I ignore her. I have to make the best of it and push on. After all, I never shot her, and I did take a bullet trying to save her. A few more well-aimed chestnuts and she’s gone. For now.

  I sit on my futon and look at my world. The hotplate, shrouded by a dishcloth, is remarkably quiet. My magazines litter the floor, and Colin Dysart regards me from the heap, eyes wrinkled in a smile. There are clothes strewn everywhere, a pizza box, Coke cans, and shoes, and, on the single table, a notebook with all my sins. I thumb through its mad-dash handwriting, and on the last page of my notes are only two words, the destination that everything must come to. It is something that I have not yet achieved, even with Colin Dysart on my answering machine, but it is something that I am now rolling inexorably toward. Those two words: my byline.

  • • •

  The start of Dr. Coyle’s sessions are always weird. Maybe uncomfortable is a better word. Her opening salvo today is: “So. This whole thing’s a real shot in the arm for your popularity, huh?” I think it’s her idea of a joke, and she smiles through a cloud of smoke. “Funny,” I say.

  “Oh, come on. Gallows humor is a time-honored strategy for dealing with grim situations.”

  “I guess.”

  She shakes her head lightly—not so much at me, but at the world. “How many times have you had to tell the story so far?”

  “A bunch.”

  “Feel like telling it one more time?”

  And so I do—but of course it’s the version where I came across Chloe Dysart by fluke as I made my way home that night. I finish at the hospital, where I woke with a neat white cast on my arm and a chat with the local constabulary.

  “Wow,” she says, stubbing out another cigarette. “Heck of a story.”

  “Yeah, it was pretty unexpected.”

  “I bet. But, as great a story as it is, what I’m really interested in is the next part.”

  “What next part?”

  She lights another and nods as she draws the smoke in deeply. “Right after you got home. That first night after the hospital. What happened then?”

  I have to think about this. “Nothing special…”

  “So you saw a girl get murdered in front of you, then you got shot yourself and were almost killed. Just wondering how you’re doing with all that.”

  I’m unsure here. “Am I supposed to react a certain way?”

  “No, no. Now, if this were a Saturday afternoon made-for-TV-drama, then yes—you’d process this on day two, go through your grieving, rage a little, briefly cry why me with your fists in the air and then get right into survivor’s guilt. But here in real life people hold on to that shit for years.”

  The sarcasm is dripping and I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to say. So I just stare at her.

  “Roly—and this comes directly from the Shit We Already Know file—your brain marches to its own drum from time to time. Now, granted, any kind of clinical diagnosis is still a ways off, but we both agree that you perhaps trend toward the occasional extreme. That ‘clarity of thought’ you’ve talked about, and the other end of the spectrum—where you end up feeling hopel
ess—all that gets kicked off by a catalyst of some sort. By an event—a trigger. And my fancy education tells me that almost getting killed, and seeing it happen to someone else, that might qualify as a trigger.” The cigarette glows once more. “So I’ll ask you again: what was that first night home like?”

  I stare at her for a long time, and while I understand what she’s saying and fully agree, it’s with a small beat of astonishment that I finally tell her the truth: “Honestly, nothing special.”

  She pauses for a long time, the cigarette in her fingers burning away and sending up little swirls of blue smoke. “Okay then,” she says finally, the way people do when they don’t believe you. “But just be aware that these events may yet come home to roost.”

  • • •

  The following morning I start early at Dory’s. I arrive well before Rhona, clean the glass on the copiers, fill the paper drawers, check the toner levels, make coffee, and generally straighten the place up. I print off two fresh copies of my résumé on crisp white paper, along with five sample articles I’ve written and published in various less-than-mainstream publications. I place them in a large envelope with cardboard inserts to stop them being bent, and slip it all into my bag.

  When Rhona comes in I smell her, heavy on the perfume and hairspray. She glides over to me and smiles. “How you doin’, Roly?” Her hand flits across my shoulder and comes to rest on my upper arm. I wonder if she knows the effect it has on me. Her cleavage is ample as usual, and it is physical work to not let my eyes dart downward.

  “Good, all things considered. Thanks again for the TV and all the stuff in the fridge.”

  She waves her hand dismissively. “Oh, that’s nothing.”