The Journalist

by Dan Newman

  “I would have brought it back today, but my hand…” I say, raising my cast.

  “Never mind about that.” She picks a speck of lint off my sweater and then brushes my shoulders in an oddly maternal yet sensuous way. “So what happened out there? You’re a regular celebrity!”

  I pause for a second, reaching for my prefab story, but Rhona takes it as some difficulty on my part, as if I’m not ready to talk. “Look at me, prying already.” She moves off in a near-graceful waddle, her feet tortured in three-inch pumps.

  It’s a Friday and traffic is light at Dory’s, and my mood is good. The air in my lungs seems to exist only in the very top of my chest, and it makes me feel quick and new. I will prep for my interview over the weekend, but with any luck, Colin Dysart’s call to the Star-Telegraph will make my new position a slam-dunk.

  The door chimes and a group of young, upwardly mobile professionals comes in, momentarily distracting me from giddy thoughts of my future. I greet them warmly; after all, I’ll soon move among them.

  • • •

  “Tell you what: you and me, up at the cottage. You’ll love it. What do you say?” Warren’s voice is warm and I’m glad he called. He feels like a safe distraction from everything swirling around me these days.

  “You mean your place upstate?” I ask.

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “Will there be cold beer?”

  “Does Dolly Parton sleep on her back?”

  It’s my turn to laugh. “Really? It’s pretty swanky for a guy like me. It’s all movie stars and millionaires, right?”

  “Nah, don’t worry, you’ll fit in. There’s lots of guys like you up there. Pool boys, maintenance people, that sort of thing…”

  “Okay, I guess I asked for that.”

  “Yes, I believe you did,” says Warren, and I can hear his smile right through the phone.

  “All right, then, I’m in.”

  “Lemme see when the old man’s not using it; I’ll set it up.”

  The drive to cottage country in Warren’s Beemer comes the very next weekend. It’s easy and relaxed, with the conversation meandering through sports, movies, and the various personalities that will be showing up at the little get-together later. Two hours north of the city we leave the main highway and wind our way through a birch forest, cutting gently down toward the lake. The road is barely more than a track, two bare ruts really, and as we sweep through a final bend the forest gives way and opens to a wide grassy hill tumbling down to the water. The Barton cottage sits midway down the hill, facing an open arc of water with a boathouse and an elegant dock at the center of a wide private bay.

  Of course, to call it a cottage is something of an understatement: the structure is wide and low and follows the slope of the land. It’s all glass at the front—to take in the wide expanse of the bay—and elegant stone with dark wood accents at the back and throughout the supporting pillars. There is a series of decks and landings at the front of the structure, servicing rooms that fall at different levels as the house blends into the curve of the hillside. As the day turns into evening a series of soft lights twinkle on, skillfully hidden beneath stone landings and wooden walkways, casting a soft glow that seems to raise the structure lightly from the manicured lawns.

  From where I sit now, nestled in a deeply padded lounge chair on the dock, a cold beer in my hand and a comfortable buzz running through me, the building looks more like an exclusive resort than a private home. I glance at my watch and see it’s a little after three in the morning. The folks at the little get-together—all sixty or seventy of them—have somehow evaporated into the night. All that’s left is the moody drone of The Dark Side of the Moon coming from the main house.

  I look up the lawn and see a few last souls, stragglers left up there at the house, passing it around and searching the walk-in pantry for Cheetos. But down here at the dock, beside the twenty-foot Chris-Craft hoisted out of the water, high and dry in its nightly berth, I am alone but for the gentle sound of the lake lapping at the dock beneath me.

  My eyes track a path along the gorgeous lines of the Barton cottage and on up into the stars. They are so bright up here, so silvery against the perfect black of the sky. I think hard but can’t remember seeing any stars in the city; it’s all too bright, too busy.

  “There you are, Roly.” It’s Warren, and he’s carrying a pair of beers in each hand. “I was wondering where you’d got to.” He settles into the next lounger and sets two of the beers beside me. “Reinforcements,” he says, hoisting a bottle in salute.

  “Well, I’ll tell you something, Warren, you know how to throw a party up here.”

  “Yeah, it’s a good spot, isn’t it?” He tips the beer to his lips and then, “I told you that cast would work for you; Margo was circling you like a frikkin’ shark.”

  I think back but I can’t remember Margo, or any of Warren’s friends’ names for that matter. Jeez, I suspect I’m a little more trashed than I thought. “Nah, I was just enjoying the party. Wha’bout you?” Yup. That was a slur all right. I try to think how much I’ve drunk, how many beers, but I can’t recall.

  “Nope. Same as you. A few beers, a few laughs. That’s about it.” Warren finishes his beer and grabs another. We fill an easy fifteen minutes with chatter about the resource center, the characters that populate it—like the sad posters (Your Career Is Waiting!) that seek to project hope but say something entirely different with their curling corners. Eventually we fall silent and sip at our beers, watching the night sky wheel past us.

  Up at the house the music has stopped, and it’s hard to tell if anyone is left up there. We sit quietly for what feels like a long time, staring off at the house, at the night sky. In another situation the moment might have been uncomfortable, requiring conversation, filler. But not now. Not with the post-party yawns and the bloop of cold beer running the length of a tilted bottle and back again.

  “Man. Lotsa stars up here,” I say. It’s official, I’ve drunk way too much.

  Warren says nothing, but looks up into the night sky along with me, drinking his beer and letting time wash over us. Finally he lolls his head toward me. “Hey, man. When all that shit went down with Chloe, you know, the shooting and all that. I want you to know I called, you know, after. But your line was always busy.”

  For a little while there she was somewhere else, busy with other pressing matters of the dead. But now, with Warren’s simple comment, she is once again beside me, close enough to touch. “No sweat, buddy,” is all I can say.

  But Warren is not to be dissuaded; he has a few beers in him, too. “How are you with it all, man? I mean, it had to be pretty scary.”

  Warren’s tone is caring, and while I know the subject is a dangerous one it cuts through me with remarkable ease. He might be the closest thing I have to a friend right now, and the thought quickly wilts my resolve to avoid the inevitable conversation. Still, I give it my best shot. “It was. It was scary, but it’s in the past now, you know?”

  “Aw, shit, Roly—I didn’t mean to…”

  I feel immediately guilty. Warren is one of the purest people I have ever met. He’s never crossed me, never criticized me, and he has no reason to pal around with a penniless guy like me—other than the fact that we seem to laugh at all the same things. I feel the need to backpedal. “No, no, it’s not like that. It’s okay, I mean, I’m okay talking about it.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah, sure I’m sure. And in answer to your question, yeah, it was scary. But mostly afterwards—when it kind of dawned on me that I was well on my way to being a dead man. If they hadn’t found me there… I was bleeding buckets, man. It could have easily been two of us there.”

  “Fuck.” There is wonder in his voice, but I know it’s not the voyeuristic kind. Empathy is washing off Warren in sheets. Maybe it’s the beer, maybe the weight of Chloe pressing down on me anew, but somewhere inside me I yearn to tell, to unload this secret and confide in someone who will say Yeah, I understa
nd. It’s not your fault. You had no choice—even if none of it’s true. I look at Warren and wonder if he could give me that. There’s relief in telling someone, I know. What’s the old adage? A problem shared is a problem halved. And then there’s the truth shall set you free. I look at Warren again. Would he understand?

  And then he begins to speak. “Man, what a fucking nightmare. For you, the Dysarts, everybody. You think they’ll ever catch the guy? I mean, did you get a look at him or anything?”

  My head bows slightly even though I don’t intend it to, and I look down through the neck of the bottle, spinning the amber contents around and around. I don’t want to drink any more of it. I don’t want to think about the answer to Warren’s question. Instead I just shake my head gently.

  He goes on. “I tell you, if her dad ever gets hold of that fucker…”

  A cold sweat rises in prickles at the back of my neck. The truth shall set you free suddenly morphs into the truth shall put your ass in jail. Telling Warren—shit, telling anyone—is a thought that suddenly terrifies me. And even more frightening is that I considered the option at all, no matter how fanciful the thought.

  No one can possibly understand what happened. How it happened. And certainly not how I’ve managed to move on, and actually benefit from this wholesale tragedy. Chloe is dead and decomposing—despite her little incursions into my life—and I’m sitting on a two-thousand-dollar lounge chair sipping imported beer on a dock bigger than my apartment. There’s not an explanation in the world that could cover the gulf between us.

  I must stop it here. I can’t risk another moment like that, another little stretch of weakness where I start wondering about understanding and forgiveness—from anyone.

  I don’t know a better guy than Warren, but I have to remind myself that he knows more than just the facts of the shooting. He has other strands of the story, other threads he can tug at and worry.

  No, I have to stop hard, turn and run. Warren is too close, too tied to the Dysarts, to Chloe. I suddenly understand that I have to disengage, distance myself, and let Warren sink quietly into my past. I guess in a way, I’m killing him, too.

  I sit up from the lounge chair and swing my legs to the floor. “I’m shitfaced, man. I gotta go to bed.” I nod once, set down the bottle, and leave Warren alone at the dock.

  12

  My first impression of Ed Carroway is, forgive the pun, that he’s a seedy little man. In another life he would have been a bean counter in the Wild West, with a green visor and black bands around the arms of a shirt that was once white, and a dead cigarette hanging from his permanent scowl. But today he’s a long, meatless man in a very tired cardigan. His face is tired, too, but his eyes are sharp and miss nothing. His first glance at me, brief and almost dismissive, cuts deep. I see that he is immediately suspicious.

  He talks quickly about nothing, everything, expertly rifling the stack of yellow-jacketed files on his desk, moving from one to the next with a practiced tempo: a note here, a circle there, the occasional head shake of exasperation. His chatter is about the business, the pace of it, the unrelenting lava flow of events that surround us and demand reporting. Finally, he turns his focus to the business between us, but his transition is so seamless that it’s a moment before I realize the subject matter is now me. “So, I’ve read the pieces. Some promise there. What kind of journalism are you hoping for? Investigative, hard news?”

  His questions are obvious and on some level embarrassing. He means to test me from the very get-go, checking to see if my journalistic credo is borrowed from some Hollywood version of what it means to be a newsman. But I’m ready for him. “Look, I’m as green as they come,” I say, realizing with some small splinter of surprise that while my route to this meeting was contrived, my response is not. I believe what I’m saying. “I’d just like to learn the trade—a cub reporter. The most I can offer is maybe some modest writing ability. That and the fact that I really want to do this.” My lowball has silenced the yellow jackets; his pencil is still.

  Carroway’s eyes dart at me for only the second time in this meeting. Something in his manner changes, and he leans back into the leather of the seat, suddenly a little more human. I see a tired man now: a man driven to do what he does, and with no say in the matter. Perhaps there’s something of me in there.

  His glasses ride up to his forehead as he pinches at the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry about the whole mess with Dysart’s daughter. That must have been difficult.” I nod, still uncertain of how to deal with the strange apologies I have been receiving daily. “Let me be frank,” he continues. “Dysart put a call in here, so you’re hired—that’s the bottom line. There’s a lot of people clamoring at our doors, so make the best of your good fortune—this is the what have you done for me lately industry, got it?”

  I nod again, thrilled at the admission that there’s a job for me, but struggling to look suitably distressed at the circumstances surrounding my appointment.

  He presses on and I listen gravely. “You’ll be in the general pool, which means stories will be doled out at the beginning of your shift, and that’s what you cover. Do it quickly, do it right the first time, and do whatever it takes to make friends with the editors. That’s the sum total of my advice to you. Take it to heart—especially with the editors. Bring them coffee, shine their shoes, babysit their kids, hump their wives—whatever it takes. Am I making myself clear? Think of it as the sole purpose in your life at the moment.”

  I nod again, this time a laugh tickling the back of my throat.

  “Any questions?” he says, and as I open my mouth to ask, he says, “And no, you won’t get your own byline. But that’ll come with time—if you turn out to be any good.”

  • • •

  Day one—hell, month one is mostly about fetching coffee and doing other people’s research. But I don’t mind. It’s a kind of penance, a time-honored internship for those who are willing to kill for a career in journalism. I commit to memory important information for a rookie like me: who likes lattes or long blacks, the difference between a Reuben from Findlay’s and one from The Lunch Pale, and when to hold the mayo or ask for pickles on the side. I do it cheerfully, knowing full well that I have nothing real to offer this group of professionals that I so badly want to be part of.

  At first they just nod at me for the most part—“Put it there,” they say, pointing with an elbow at some spot on their desk where the coffee should be left. There’s barely a thank you, just a grunt and then back to the screen. I learn to move quickly among the low cubicle walls, among the clutter, the paper piles, the TV monitors and hat stands laden with sports jackets and ties for those occasions when reporters need to look something akin to businesslike. I stop only briefly, weaving through the wide expanse of the open-concept newsroom that stretches the length and breadth of the entire floor, setting down cardboard cups and plastic sandwich boxes with a here-you-go and a this’s-for-you. I learn names, schedules, and habits, make mental notes of kids in picture frames or dogs on screen savers. I study the seemingly haphazard layout of the vast newsroom, a place that appears to have taken shape organically, creating a maze of desks and cubicles that seems to detest straight lines and clear walkways.

  But in time, after enough coffees and sandwiches have been delivered, someone asks my name. They ask what school I went to, and, eventually, if I can proofread a story here, verify a fact or two there.

  I stay connected to Dory’s, but my shifts get fewer and fewer; it’s a cord I’m not willing to cut quite yet. But at the Star-Telegraph I rack up the hours. I fact-check like my life depends on it, knowing full well it’s a dying service among the journos. In the golden age of broadsheet newspapers, subeditors would comb through stories submitted by reporters and check, correct, and confirm all manner of claims. But today the reporter is largely on his own, writing frantically against a pressing deadline to feed the insatiable machine. I know the reporters eating their Reubens and sipping their grandes have little
time for the fact check, vital as it is, and I know I can offer real value here.

  I call offices and confirm titles, verify attributions with named sources, reach out to the police services and get ranks, names, and dates confirmed. I trawl the web for background, authenticate place names and street addresses, pore over public records, comb through government websites, validating, corroborating, and attributing as I go. I do thorough reads, find typos and spelling errors, but I’m careful to touch nothing related to style: I want to add to their work, not criticize it.

  The experienced reporters on the floor learn to use me, hell, abuse me, but I don’t mind. The tradeoff is a slow death of my coffee duties: Hey, Stan, go get your own goddamn coffee, I need Roly on this. Eventually someone tosses me a recorder and asks me to do them a favor and cover an insignificant announcement going down at City Hall. They know, as do I, that the formation of some inane subcommittee will never make the day’s paper. But it has to be covered, written, submitted to the editorial meeting, and, predictably, killed. But I relish the moment. And while I sit in the media room at City Hall covering a story no one will ever read, I am absolutely thrilled. This is the thing I have been chasing. This is journalism.

  Once my first couple of paychecks clear, I hustle down to Union Station to put a small wad of cash into Trots’s meaty fist. This is a nervous moment; he knows me as Joey, some insignificant kid in a hoodie, but my face has been plastered about in the media ever since Chloe. I tell myself that the photo they used—the Faculty of Journalism brochure picture—was from years ago, and I looked different then. Clean-cut. Preppy. And the name with that photo is Roland Keene. Not Joey. I tell myself that Trots doesn’t strike me as a current events kinda guy, but it doesn’t matter. It’s a chance I have to take. I know he’ll be looking for me soon if I don’t start paying—something I can finally do now with my new and steady income.

  Trots is not there but Bosco is: taking cash, paying wins, and selling a little of this and that. As he looks at me I feel a sense of relief—there is no telling reaction, no sudden realization; he has no idea it was me he shot that night in the alley.