I could tell that several people were listening because they gave the subtle hint of leaning back in their chairs and folding their hands behind their head, waiting for my answer. “Can we go into your office?” I said, wishing now that Romano would take his arm off my shoulder. Inside, Romano sat down and crossed his feet on top of his desk. If it wasn’t a smoke-free building, I swear he would have lit up a cigar.
“This story is too big for one reporter,” I said, coming right to the point.
To my relief, Romano said, “You might be right. Who did you have in mind?”
Thinking quickly, I said, “I need someone who’ll take assignments, and not go off on their own agenda. I don’t want one of those crusty old fossils out there who will come in thinking they need to teach me something. I’m not in the mood.”
Romano’s eyes narrowed. “I think I know where you’re going with this.”
“How about Remington? I think I can work with her.”
Romano chuckled. “You can work with her, all right—with your weenie. Are you sure you’re not thinking with it, as well?”
Romano was a total pig, which means it had taken him only two seconds to understand my motivation. I guess I had to respect that because I was a pig too. “Of course not,” I said.
“Right.” Romano took his feet off his desk, and looked me straight in the eye. “The girl can write, you know.”
“I’m well aware of that. That’s why I want her.”
“She might be a better writer than you.”
That took me by surprise. “I don’t think so,” I responded, turning toward him so he’d see what big balls I had.
“What about Morgan, or someone from the news service? They would have a lot more experience.”
“No way,” I said, feeling now that I needed to dip-stick my declining confidence level.
“I think you should—”
“Hey,” I said, taking the paper off his desk. “These are my words, and my sources. I want Remington because I think she’d do what I asked her to do, and then spit it out with some style. I don’t want some over-the-hill know-it-all who is going write pages of clichés and call it investigative reporting. You gonna free her up for me, or not? This is… my… fucking… story—boss.” I stood my ground.
Romano seared me with a stare, but said nothing. Then, he picked up the phone and punched in three numbers. “It’s your ass, Pappas. I hope you know what you’re asking for.”
* * * * *
Remington took a seat and crossed her legs. High heels and skinny jeans: I loved that look. Romano coughed, getting my attention.
“I’m assigning you to Pappas,” he said to Remington right off, which I didn’t expect.
She sat there a moment, her straight blonde hair falling over the shoulders of her crisply starched, incredibly white, cotton shirt. She looked at me, and said, “I don’t get coffee, and I’m not going to bed with you.”
I saw Romano shove his fist into his mouth. I didn’t blink an eye. “Can I call you Kelli?”
“And, I want my own byline.”
“Of course.”
“And editorial control.” Romano cleared his throat, maybe because his fist got stuck. Remington said, “I meant apart from your input, of course, Mister Romano.”
With the way she said mister, I was ready to gag on my own fist. “But you take assignments from me,” I said with authority. “You interview who I tell you to interview, and you keep me posted on everything.”
“I’m not going to snake your sources, Pappas.”
All right, I could see where this was going. “Let’s get something straight. This is my story. I live in that town, I was part of Lost Friday, and I have a stake in how the story is handled. This is the biggest media event since an asteroid killed the dinosaurs….” I looked at Romano.
“Huh? Yeah, it’s pretty big, all right.”
“Thanks, boss.” I turned back to Remington. “And, I’m not going to get beat on this. There are twenty other reporters out there who’ll be happy to take this assignment. You want in, or not?” Like I did with Romano, I showed her my balls, but she didn’t look at them. She knew I was right, of course.
“Why me?”
“I don’t think they have the energy for it,” I said, jagging my chin at the newsroom. “And—you can write.” That got a smile out of her, but barely. “Can you handle it?”
“Don’t worry about me, Pappas. I’m the Ever-Ready bunny; I’ll still be going when you’re dozing over your keyboard—and I’m still not going to bed with you.”
“Is that a yes?”
“Hey, you’re sharp. It’s a yes.”
She held out her hand. I shook it.
“Give me what you’re working on so I can reassign it,” Romano said.
She said, “Will do,” and turned toward the door.
“Remington, one more thing,” Romano called out. “This is only temporary until I see what comes of it.”
She got the message, and went back to the newsroom.
Romano and I both watched that spectacular ass of hers as she left. “I think you can forget about her going to bed with you,” he said.
* * * * *
“I need to bring you up to speed.”
Remington was sitting in my chair and had seemingly memorized every word of my last story, along with every other story in the six papers strewn across my desk. Shoving one end of a giant Jersey Mike’s sub into her yap, she bit off a huge piece and chewed it like a Rottweiler.
“Do you always eat like you’re gnawing off someone’s leg?”
“Only when I’m nervous.”
Funny, when I was nervous, I hardly ate anything. “What are you nervous about?”
“Most of this stuff is bullshit,” she said, ignoring my question.
“I wrote that,” I said, thinking she could be a tad more diplomatic. Insulting one’s work like that could get one bitch-slapped, or something.
She caught my tone, and indicated, “Not your stuff, Pappas. I meant all this other crap. No way is all of it for real.”
I reread some of the headlines in front of her, which were upside down to me. “I especially like the one about the polar ice caps drifting down to New Jersey,” I said. “Who do you think the source was on that one, Frosty The Snowman?”
Her sandwich was dripping. “Which makes my point,” she said. “How is a reader supposed to tell the difference between the legitimate stuff, and the drivel? Look at this: sources close to the investigation; what sources? Little, tiny moon-men? We need to stand out.”
“I guess the words as reported by the president don’t clarify it,” I said sarcastically.
“Been there, yesterday’s news, heard it before,” she said just as sarcastically. “Now, for our next trick….”
I thought: okay little Miss Smarty Pants. “Not our next trick, Remington, your next trick.” Her sandwich was still dripping, right onto the New York Post.
“What’s that supposed to mean, Pappas?” She took another two-handed mouthful.
I’m not sure I liked the way she said Pappas. It didn’t quite ring with respect. “I want you to follow up on that end of the story.”
“Which end is that? The shit end?”
Now I knew what Romano meant by getting what I asked for. “So, having the president of the United States as your source, and investigating the abduction of two scientists from NASA is a shit assignment? What, isn’t the source reliable enough for you?”
She kept chewing, not even bothering to look up as she scanned another newspaper. This chick had some big, honkin’ gonads, all right, thinking everyone else’s stuff smelled, but hers didn’t. I was thinking about going back in to Romano and telling him I’d changed my mind on Remington before we got too far into it. I mean, he was entirely right when he implied that I was thinking with my own gonads when I’d asked for her to be assigned to me. Suddenly, she put down
her sandwich, right on the drippy spot in the middle of the New York Post.
“What did you say?” she asked.
“About what?” I snapped, not thinking too clearly since my mind was cruising into pissed-off overdrive.
“The president, scientists… what?” Her face kind of lost its color so that her eyes were like blue dots on a bed sheet.
“I want you to follow up and handle that end of the story. I want you to find out who those scientists were, what they were working on, and anything else that might give us some insight into their abductions. I’m talking right down to their favorite color, Remington. If you get any resistance about it being classified, I want you to find a way to get to our source and let him know that you need the truth on what happened. Otherwise, given the fact that the story is already out, who knows what kind of conjecture those other rags will print?” I pointed to the newspapers underneath her sandwich.
“Our source is the president of the United States,” she said, seeming to suddenly realize that I was in the same room with her.
“Hello? Is there a problem with that?”
“I think I’m going to puke.” She sat back in the chair, and started sucking down air. “Our source is the president of the United States,” she repeated, looking up at the ceiling.
I was suddenly enjoying myself immensely. “He’s your source, Remington, not mine.”
“Oh, God!” she said, getting up and running toward the restroom.
Okay then, I felt much better. I got up and wrapped her sandwich in the rest of the New York Post, and threw it into the trash. That’s all that rag was good for anyway.
Chapter 11… Gone For A Ride
Monday, September 27th, was almost into the history books. I didn’t get home until after ten that night, and I thought I heard something as I walked through my front door. Oh, I thought as I looked back, it was just my ass dragging behind me. I mean, I was just dead, beat, worn-out tired. I suddenly realized I was hungry, and I wondered if I had anything in the fridge that I wouldn’t have to shave before eating. I looked in and saw some leftover pizza that looked a little parched. Trying to remember how old it was, I said, “What the hell,” and I unglued it from the box. I popped it into the microwave, and went into the bathroom to throw some cold water on my face. My eyes looked like road maps. I went for another splash when, suddenly, I thought I saw something behind me. I wheeled around, flinging water droplets off my face like a salad spinner, but there was nothing there. The first thought that popped into my head was that another reporter had broken into my apartment to steal my story notes. Talk about being wrapped into a story… how sick was that? Anyway, I didn’t own a gun, so I grabbed biggest thing within reach, which was the toilet brush. Armed to the teeth now, I tippy-toed out of the bathroom, toilet brush at the ready to spread toilet germs and cause instant death. Nothing. My place wasn’t that big—four rooms that made up the back of a double bungalow on Warren Street—so it didn’t take long to go through it. I rented the place, the owners being weekend people from Philly that I hadn’t seen since Labor Day. Perhaps it was one of them, I figured, but I remembered that there weren’t any cars in the driveway when I pulled in.
The microwave beeped, and, satisfied that I was seeing things, I put the killer toilet brush back, making sure to take another tour of the place before I got my pizza. Again, I found nothing. My stomach settled and I grabbed the pizza, parking myself on the couch so I could vegetate in front of the TV while I ate. I mean, what a day: dealing with Romano, and Kelli-with-an-i Remington, plus talking to seemingly every newspaper and TV station in the country all day; my mind was mush. I took a bite of pizza and got up for something to drink, remembering that I had some imported brewskis on the second shelf in the fridge. I snagged one, drinking half of it in one pull as soon as I popped the cap. I stepped out of the kitchen and stopped dead in my tracks. A woman I’d never seen before was sitting in the leather chair next to my couch. I actually closed my eyes and opened them, figuring I was having bathroom hallucinations again, but this time it was for real.
“Hello, Mister Pappas,” she said huskily.
My eyes narrowed and I looked around, wondering where she’d come from. “Who are you?” I asked, forgetting about my pizza.
“I’m a reporter,” she replied.
I thought: my instincts were accurate once again. I detected a monotone quality to her voice, but she’d only said three words. Still, something about her wasn’t right. Sitting with her legs crossed, she was dressed in a leotard, or something, but I don’t think it was meant to be a sexy thing; it was more like a leotard uniform. Even in her seated position, however, I could see that she had quite the hefty rack on her. I’m sure that got her in the door for her share of interviews, then I thought: what kind of news organization puts their reporters in a uniform? In skin-tight leotards, no less? It had to be one of those semi-porno news rags from London that always have pictures of bare-breasted women on page three. Or, Mexican maybe. They liked hot tamales. I was going to ask how she got in, but a boy scout with a penknife and some sharp fingernails could have broken into my place. “Who do you write for?” I asked in my manliest tone.
“I’m not that kind of reporter. It is simply my function.”
That was an interesting way of putting it. Again, the voice. “Well, it’s my function too, lady, and I don’t appreciate you coming in here like this. I ought to call the cops on you.”
“Do as you wish. I will be gone by the time they arrive.”
That much was true, unless I felt like stopping her. I gave her another once over, and even though she was sitting down, I realized: this chick was huge, six-two at least. “Where were you, under the bed?” It was the only place I hadn’t looked, and I had the odd thought that with that body it must have been one hell of a tight fit.
“I have been here the entire time, Mister Pappas.”
I thought, where? I looked away for a second, thinking I wasn’t entirely crazy in that I had seen something in the mirror after all, but, how did she evade my search? I looked back—and she was gone, as in ffffhhhttt! I mean, I looked away just long enough to put down my beer. I suddenly felt something on my neck, like someone breathing on it, and I whirled. Nothing. I turned back, and there she was again, right in front of me. She was every inch of six-two, and those big chacka-nackas were staring me right in the face. The rest of her was rail thin, and the leotard thing had to have been baked on.
She must have seen where my eyes were focused, and she said, “Our research indicates that both men and women in this time period are obsessed with large breasts. We have been bred to be attractive to you.”
Bred? I froze as I started to put it all together: the invisible act, the monotone voice, the humongous air bags, the space-age jumpsuit. “You’re not from around here, are you?”
“On the contrary, we were cultured and programmed only ninety miles from here.”
Again, it was we. I looked around. Were there more of them? “But 190 years from now. Isn’t that right?”
She smiled and said, “That is correct, Mister Pappas.”
I suddenly felt myself getting very angry. I walked up to her and eyeballed her face at close range. I didn’t see single blemish, or mark, of any kind, sort of like one of those perfect apples you see in the supermarket. I touched her skin, and it felt like skin. “Is this real?” I asked.
“I am of human origin, Mister Pappas.”
I wondered what mom looked like. “Do you have a name?”
“You may call me anything you like.”
“How about Barbie?” I asked, thinking if there ever was a grown up Barbie doll….
“As you wish.”
“What is your mission here?” I asked, my anxiety mounting as I remembered the scientists’ abductions.
“As I explained, I am a reporter. My function is to observe and report my findings to my project manager.”
I suddenly had a million questions, but I didn’t get to ask any of them as her hand clamped down on my arm. Suddenly, she was gone, and I was gone with her.
* * * * *
My alarm went off at its usual time the next morning, and I got up feeling like I’d been asleep for years. I rubbed my eyes, wondering if I’d even rolled over the entire night. Walking into the kitchen, I put on some water for the single mug of instant coffee I drank every morning to hold me over until I got to the Wawa for some of the real stuff. That’s when I spotted the half-empty bottle of beer sitting on my kitchen counter. When did I put that there? It wasn’t like me to waste good beer like that. I must have been pretty tired. I looked for the remote so I cold flip on CNN, and I spotted the two slices of pizza sitting on a plate on the coffee table. One of them had a bite out of it. Jesus, I must have been really tired. I ss&s’d quickly, finding it odd as I took my shower that I couldn’t remember my assignment. I mean, maybe I was getting senile, or something. Usually, my brain was burning rubber first thing in the morning, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember what I was supposed to be working on that day.
Once in the car, I turned the radio on, totally flabbergasted by the fact that every single station I turned to was talking about something called Lost Friday. Even the wise-ass DJs on the classic rock station were talking about it. Once again, I figured I was brain dead because I had no clue as to what they, or their callers, were talking about. I stopped at the Wawa as I usually did, almost afraid to walk over to the newspaper rack and look at the headlines. Preoccupied, I hadn’t bothered to look at the papers sitting outside my door earlier, and I almost choked when I saw the lead story with my byline beneath four-inch headlines.
“Hey, Johnny,” the owner of the Wawa, Norm, called over to me. “Can’t get enough of your own work?”
I gave Norm a lame smile, and turned back to the paper. Well, now I knew what I was working on, but I didn’t remember writing a single word of what was in front of me. The story next to mine was Kelli Remington’s, with yet another piece about Lost Friday. Kelli Remington? With a lead byline? When did she come out from behind the local desk?
I paid for my coffee, and immediately dialed Romano’s direct number when I got back in the car. He answered on the first ring, as if he was waiting for my call.
Lost Friday Page 8
