The jock on KFAB had just pronounced it 10:07 A.M. — "ready with more of the hits you want to hear"-when the man in the back seat of the Yellow cab realised that he had no idea who he was.
No idea whatsoever.
He leaned forward, trying not to show the least trace of panic, and said, "Excuse me."
"Yeah?" the cabbie said, his brown eyes suddenly filling the rear-view mirror.
And then the man realised: How can I say it?
Excuse me, sir, but I don't happen to remember my name. Do you happen to know who lam?
And realising this, all he could say, his voice nervous now, was, "I was just wondering if you had the time."
"Like the guy on the radio said, 10:07."
"Oh. Right. Thanks."
And slumped back into the seat that smelled vaguely of vomit and slightly more so of disinfectant.
This was impossible.
Impossible.
He was merely a man-a nice normal man-riding along in the back seat of a taxicab and he'd merely forgotten his name.
But only temporarily. The way you forgot who you were dialling sometimes. Or the date of your birthday.
Or-
"Here you go," the cabbie said.
"Pardon me?"
"I said here you go."
"Go?"
"This was the address you gave me."
"It is?"
This time the cabbie turned around. He was this little guy in a blue Windbreaker and a white shirt. Shiny bald with freckles along the ridge of scalp bone. "This is where you said you wanted to be left off."
"Oh."
The cabbie stared at him. "You all right?"
"Yes. Sure."
"Because you don't look too good."
"I don't?"
"Kinda pale."
"No, really, I-"
"Maybe you got a touch of the bug that's goin' around. My old lady's got it and-" The cabbie shook his head miserably. Then he put his hand out. "Ten bucks, please."
"Oh. Right."
For a terrible moment, he thought he might reach inside his pocket and find it empty.
But there was a small fold of crisp green new bills. He counted out twelve dollars and gave it to the cabbie.
"You take care of yourself," the cabbie said.
"Thanks."
He was halfway out of the rear door of the cab when he realised that he didn't remember giving the cabbie this address. But he had to have given him this address or else why would the cabbie have stopped here?
He said, "May I ask you a question?"
The cabbie regarded him in the rear-view again. "Sure."
"This address."
"Uh-huh?"
"This is the address I gave you?"
"Sure thing, chief. I always write 'em down. And I wrote this one down same as always."
"I see."
"4835. Ain't that right?"
"Uh, yes."
"So anyway, like I say, you take care of yourself."
And get the fuck outta my cab, asshole. I got other fares to worry about now.
So he got out.
And the cab went away.
And here he stood, sniffing.
Actually, it was a perfect morning for sniffing, and enjoying. This was the Midwest at its most perfect apple blossom weather, the temperature in the seventies even though it was still morning, and the wind at ten miles per hour and redolent of newly blooming lilacs and dogwood. Girls and women were already wearing shorts and T-shirts with no bras, breasts bouncing merrily beneath the cotton. Dogs appeared in profusion, tugging masters behind them; everything from Pekinese to wolf hounds were on parade this morning. Babies in strollers waved little pink hands up at him and a couple of college girls in an ancient VW convertible gave him mildly interested glances.
At one time the Italian Renaissance buildings of this area had been beautiful. This was back in the days when the neighbourhood had been largely populated with young middle class families who couldn't yet afford houses. These apartment buildings had shone with respectability, the pedimented windows and arcaded entryways not only fashionable but elegant.
Now the neighbourhood was given over to student housing, serving the sprawling university several blocks north. Middle class aspirations had long since fled, replaced now not only by students but by those who preyed on students-drug pushers, hookers, muggers, and merchants who automatically marked everything up 20 percent more for the college kids.
From open windows came a true cacophony of musical styles-heavy metal, salsa, jazz, and even country western. Students today were much more eclectic than his generation of the sixties had been when the official music had run to the up-against-the-wall lyrics of the Jefferson Airplane, the Doors, and the Stones.
If he couldn't remember his name, how did he remember music he'd listened to over twenty years ago?
Trembling, he started across the street.
He stood in front of the place, looking up at the arched entranceway and remembering… nothing.
He knew he'd never seen this place before.
Then why had he given the cabbie this address?
The front door opened. A young black woman, pretty, slender, came down the stairs carrying an infant. "Hi," she said.
"Hi," he said.
She saw the way he was looking at the entrance and said, "May I help you with something?"
He shrugged. "I just want to make sure I've got the right place."
She laughed. "It's the right place unless you're selling something." She pointed to a discreet sign, black letters on white cardboard, NO SOLICITORS.
"Oh, no," he said. "I'm not selling anything."
She laughed again. "Then this is probably the right place."
She hefted the infant and walked on, looking eager to be caught up in the green flow of the perfect day.
He stood there a few more moments and then went up the stairs.
The vestibule smelled of cigarette smoke and fresh paint. The hallway had been done in a nice new baby blue.
He went over to the line of mailboxes. He checked the names carefully. None looked familiar.
He tried once again-it seemed pretty ridiculous, when you thought of it: What's my name?
He dug his hand into his right pocket. He felt two quarters and a dime. He also felt a key.
When the key was in his fingers, and his fingers in front of his face, he saw the number 106 imprinted on one side of the golden key.
He looked at the mailbox marked 106: Mr. Sauerbry.
Who was Mr. Sauerbry? Was he Mr. Sauerbry? If he was, why didn't he remember?
The inner door opened. A fat man in lime-green Bermuda shorts and a T-shirt that read OLD FART came downstairs leading a pretty collie on a leash.
"Morning," the fat man said.
"Morning."
He could tell that the fat man was suspicious. "Help you with something, pal?"
He wasn't sure why, but it irritated him to be called pal. "No. Just looking for my friend's apartment."
"Which apartment is that?" the fat man said. The collie was yipping. He wanted outside with the green grass and yellow butterflies.
He said, too quickly, "Number 106."
The fat man lost his expression of suspicion. Now he looked curious. "You actually know him?"
"Who?"
"The guy who lives in 106."
"Oh. Yeah. Sure. As I said, he's a friend of mine."
The fat man pawed at some kind of very red, crusty skin disease he had on one of his elbows. "Nobody's ever seen him."
"Really?"
"Not one of us. But we've always been curious."
This time, the dog didn't merely yip. He barked. In the small vestibule, the sound was like an explosion.
"Needs to piss," the fat man said. Then he smiled. "Matter of fact, so do I. But I guess I should've thought of that sooner, huh?"
And with that, he nodded goodbye and let the collie jerk him down the vestibule stairs and outside.
Two minutes later he stood in front of 106.
The apartment was at the far end of the hall. Warm dusty sunlight fell through sheer dusty curtains. For a moment he felt lazy and snug as a tomcat on a sunny bed. He wished he knew who he was. He wished things were all right.
He looked both ways, up and down the long rubber runner that stretched from one end of the hallway to the other.
Nothing. Nobody coming. Nobody peeking out doors.
He inserted the key.
How had he come by this key, anyway? Exactly what was it doing in his pocket?
The key worked wonderfully; too wonderfully.
He pushed open the door and stepped inside 106.
The smell bothered him more than the darkness.
Unclean. That was all he could think of. His brother and he had once found a mouse that had died in the cellar. Over a period of hot sticky days, it had decomposed. He thought of that now. Of the way that little mouse with its innards all eaten out had smelled.
But if he could remember his brother… why couldn't he remember himself?
The second thing he noticed was the darkness.
You wouldn't think, on so bright a day, that you'd be able to keep an apartment this dark, even with all the paper shades and curtains pulled down.
But it was nearly nightlike in here.
He reached over to turn on a table lamp. The bulb blew, blinding him temporarily.
Shit. What the hell was going on here?
It took long, unnerving moments for his sight to return.
He felt helpless and stupid.
Gradually, it did come back, of course, his sight, and so he walked through the three rooms and a bathroom and all he could think of was Aunt Agnes, how even into the 1980s she'd kept her little tract home looking just like the 1950s, complete with blond coffee table and big blond Philco TV console and lumpy armchairs with those screaming godawful slipcovers with the ugly floral patterns.
This apartment was like that. And given the heavy layer of grey dust on everything, he doubted it had been cleaned since the 1950s, either… And then the thought: Who was Aunt Agnes? If I can remember her…
He had the sense that he'd just stepped into a storage closet that hadn't been opened since the last time President Eisenhower had been on the tube…
Why have I come here?
On one of the blond end tables there was a telephone, one of the ancient rotary models.
He went over and picked up the receiver and thought: Who am I going to call?
And then, automatically, he dialled a local number.
The dial tone was so loud it seemed to be digging a tunnel into his ear.
Four rings.
On the fifth a very pretty female voice said, "Hello?"
He said nothing.
"Hello?" she said again.
And again he said nothing.
Who was this? Why had he called?
"Hello?" she said. There was something desperate in her voice now. And then she said: "It's you, isn't it?" And her voice was softer. You might even call it tender. "It is you, isn't it?"
He wanted to say something.
He had this sudden, inexplicable urge to cry. To sob. He felt overwhelmed with grief.
But why? And who was this woman exactly, anyway?
"Richard," she said. "Richard, please just tell me if s you."
And then he hung up.
He sat down in a dusty armchair and put his face in his hands. Again, the urge to sob. It was almost as if he wanted to vomit. To purge himself.
He looked at the phone. In the curious brown curtain-closed darkness of the musty, dusty room, the phone looked almost alien. How queer, when you thought about it, that you should pick up this small instrument and a human voice would come through it.
He put his head back against the chair and closed his eyes. He thought of what the fat man in the OLD FART T-shirt had said. That nobody had ever seen the man who lived in 106.
Was he the man who lived in 106? Somehow he doubted it.
And then he saw the envelope.
It was a regular manila envelope, with a metal clasp close, an eight by ten.
He saw it in his mind.
And he saw what was inside.
That was when he jerked forward in the chair and opened his eyes.
He did not want to see, to know what was inside the envelope.
The only way to avoid this was to keep his eyes open. To somehow forget all about the manila envelope.
He stood up and started pacing.
He should leave this apartment. Leave quickly.
But go where?
If he did not know who he was, how could he possibly know where he was going?
In the cinnamon coloured darkness, he paced some more.
This went on for ten minutes.
Meanwhile, on the street, girls laughed and babies cried and cars honked and buses whooshed past.
If only he could be a part of that.
That bright, giddy flow of spring life.
Be gone from this musty smell of death; and the sudden queer chill of the living room as he turned and looked through the gloom at the bedroom.
Of course. That's where the envelope was. The envelope he'd seen so clearly in his mind.
In the bureau there.
Top right hand drawer.
Just waiting for him.
He tried not to go. He tried instead to go to the front door and put his hand on the knob and let himself out into the warm streaming sunlight and the sweet balming laughter of children.
But instead, he went farther into the odd darkness of this place, deeper and deeper till he passed the brass bed and the solemn closed closet, and walked straight to the bureau and put his hand forth and-
The manila envelope was there, of course.
Waiting for him.
He reached in and picked it up and then he gently closed the bureau drawer and walked back to the living room.
With great weariness, he went to the armchair he'd been sitting in and sat down once more, a great sigh shuddering through him, his blue eyes sorrowful, knowing the images they would soon fall on.
He made quick work of it, then, knowing there was no point in putting it off any longer.
He unclasped the envelope and slid the photographs out.
The surface of the black and white photographs was glossy, silken to the touch. Given the clothes the women wore, and the hairstyles, these photos had obviously been taken in the thirties. But that made them no less shocking.
He looked away at first.
They were even worse than he'd imagined them.
But once more, after turning his head for long moments, he knew it was no use.
He stared at the photos again.
Carnage was the only word that could describe what his eyes settled on now.
Two or three young women, naked, their faces hacked up-one of them had had her nose ripped away-and their breasts cleaved off, leaving only bloody holes.
In the centre of a stomach a hexagram had been bloodily carved, and in another an obscenity had been cut into a forehead.
Sickened, he sank back in the chair.
He knew better than to close his eyes. His mind would only conjure up the photographs again.
But he knew he was not done with the envelope quite yet. With the photographs, yes.
But waiting inside the envelope would be a sheet of paper… He had seen this in his mind, too.
And so once more, he sat forward, and jammed his hand inside the envelope and pulled out a small piece of white writing paper.
In the centre of it was writing in ballpoint pen.
He had to hold the paper close to his face to read it.
MARIE FANE
He knew instantly who she was, and why her name was here.
Despite himself, he raised one of the photos and studied it again.
Marie Fane was alive now, but soon enough she would be one of these dead and savaged women.
And he did not have to wonder about who her killer would be.
A sullen black youth in leg irons and handcuffs being led to a police car raised his left hand and flipped everybody the bird.
Cut to: Three SWAT team cops kneeling down behind a car as a beefy white man swaggered across a night-time parking lot firing two handguns at them.
Cut to: a pretty teenage girl sobbing about her addiction to crack cocaine.
Cut to: a mayor's aide running to his car obviously trying to outdistance the reporter who kept yelling questions at him about an alleged contractor payoff and cover up.
The one thing all these pieces of videotape had in common was the presence, at the end of each story, of a tall, redheaded woman in her mid-thirties. While nobody had ever called her beautiful she did have a vivacious intelligence that made her unabashedly sexy both on camera and off. Her full mouth was by turns wry and sombre, her green eyes by turns comic and vulnerable, and her voice by turns ironic and sad. She signed off each piece the same way: "This is Chris Holland, Channel 3 News."
Now, a Chris Holland four years older sat in a small editing room in the back of the noisy Channel 3 newsroom smoking one of her allotted three cigarettes a day, and editing a videotape.
What she was putting together was called an audition reel. Reporters take their best stories, edit them together, and send them out to potential employers, i.e., TV stations around the country. Maybe the reporter is a city type who suddenly longs for a few years in the boonies; maybe the reporter is trying to survive a bad divorce and feels a change of scenery will stave off putting the old head in the oven; or-and this is the most likely scenario-the reporter feels it's now time for him/her to take that shot at working in a bigger and better market-trade in Des Moines, say, for Chicago or Terre Haute for LA. Or, if you've just been fired, trade in your present situation for just about any place where the currency is American and the plumbing is indoors. At any given time in the USA it is estimated that more than five thousand newspeople are sneakily putting together audition tapes and another five thousand are at various post offices shipping their mothers off somewhere. While this is no doubt an exaggeration, it isn't an exaggeration by much.
Just now, watching her audition reel whip by, Chris Holland made a judgement. In her earlier days, she had definitely come on as a bimbette. Oh, nothing crass and obvious like blowing kisses at the camera or hanging an AVAILABLE FOR OCCUPY sign on her back. But little things, teeny tiny things, a fluttering eyelash here, a kind of sexy inflection there, had definitely been a part of her news presentation. And while she was not one of those feminists who wore cast iron chastity belts and threw darts at posters of Burt Reynolds, she did have enough self-respect to see what she'd been doing. Just too cute and too coy by half.
She rewound the tape, took the reel off the editing machine, put it back in its box, shut off the machine, shut out the light, and left the editing room for up front where, at this time of morning, the Channel 3 reporters gathered to get their assignments from Heinrich Himmler's illegitimate son, a fat Irishman named O'Sullivan.
O'Sullivan had been here six years, had survived three changes of management, two changes of consultant groups, an ex-wife who still believed that adultery was okay if you didn't get caught, a teenage daughter who was dating a biker she insisted on calling 'sensitive,' and a group of nine reporters who felt he was exercising a personal vendetta against each one of them.
Chris knew all these things because two nights a week she went bowling with O'Sullivan. Most of her co-workers saw this as nothing more than her sucking up to her boss, but in fact, she liked O'Sullivan and considered him one of the few men she could talk to. Behind the ketchup stained neckties, the dandruff flaked shoulders, the beard stubbled chin, and the extra thirty pounds was a man who knew about Baudelaire as well as boxing, about Degas as well as de Gaulle, and about Edward R. Murrow as well as MTV Early on-this was just after his wife had walked out on him and Chris's own main squeeze had started being unfaithful, too-they'd tried having an affair, but it had led to little more than some heavy eighth-grade-style petting, some dawn-sober admissions of loneliness and fear on both parts, and the awesome realisation that somehow, against all odds, a woman and a man had become very good platonic friends. Buddies, even pals, but not lovers. So they went bowling and got beer-drunk and O'Sullivan did the best he could to treat her just like all the other reporters on his news team- shitty.
As she approached O'Sullivan's office, she heard a male voice pontificating: "I'm saying we need Joe Six-Pack. Don't get me wrong, but the psychographics of bowling are very different from the psychographics of tennis, and our advertising base damn well knows it."
This could only be Ron Pendrake, the news consultant. To confirm this, she peeked around the door and there he was inside O'Sullivan's office, Ron Pendrake himself wielding a blue Magic Marker and drawing key words on O'Sullivan's stand-up easel. Every few seconds, Pendrake would throw back a page and start a new one, always being as dramatic as possible.
Now that he was aware of her in the doorway, Pendrake did what he always did, settled his beady green eyes on her breasts, which might have been flattering under some circumstances, but Pendrake always zeroed in on your breasts to the exclusion of everything else. He still wanted his mama.
This morning, however, there was something wrong with Pendrake because right after he wrenched his eyes from her chest, he looked miserably over at O'Sullivan. And then promptly quit talking. Ron Pendrake, news consultant, never quit talking.
It was as if she'd walked in on a private conversation that had been about her.
And so she knew, of course, that something terrible had gone on here, or was about to go on, and somehow it all had something to do with her.
"Well, if it isn't the best looking woman in TV news!" Ron Pendrake said as she came into the office. That was something else he never did. Flatter you.
Oh, my God, what was happening here this morning?
Then she saw O'Sullivan's face and he took away all her doubts. He kept his head down and wouldn't look at her.
Oh, yes; oh, yes: something awful was about to happen.
"Well," said Ron Pendrake, diving for his suit jacket and his briefcase, "I just remembered that I've got to go up and see Fenton."
He was a little guy, Pendrake, always dashing and bouncing and diving, and for some reason she'd always wanted to call him Sparky. In fact, all news consultants should be called Sparky. There was something callow and adolescent about them, as if they'd always remain the smartest kids in high school, but would never grow up beyond that.
"Well," Ron Pendrake said, managing to include both of them in the same glance. "You two have a nice day."
And so, even though his cologne was decidedly still with them, Ron Pendrake himself was not. Now, he was just quickly retreating footsteps down the hall.
She said, "So what's going on?"
"Nothing. Why?"
"I just get the feeling that something's happening."
"Why would you say that?"
He had yet to look up. He was pretending to be mightily busy looking for something in one of his desk drawers.
Finally, when he'd got all the mileage out of the drawer he could, he said, "You really look nice in that blue suit, Chris."
"How would you know? You haven't looked at me yet."
"When you came in I looked."
"Oh, I see."
He said, "Why don't you go grab us a couple cups of coffee and then sort of hang around my office awhile. I want to talk to you a little bit." He smiled. "You really do look nice in that suit. You really do, Chris."
By this time, she was trembling. Literally. And feeling a little queasy.
My God. What was going on?
Then he virtually jumped up from his desk-still not looking at her-flung an arm in the direction of the hall, and said, "Pit stop. Be right back."
"Can't you just tell-" she started to say.
But he'd already dived for the door very much in the manner of Ron Pendrake himself.
She spent the next fifteen minutes sitting like a dutiful woman in the pea green armchair he kept for visitors. In the meantime reporters, men and women alike, came and went. Those assigned to regular beat-City Hall, the police precincts, the school board-came and went without saying much. They covered the same people every day, knew pretty much what to expect, and only occasionally requested more airtime for a story they felt would be of wide public interest (airtime, the number of seconds a story is actually on the tube, is the most precious commodity a TV reporter possesses). Other reporters really needed to talk to O'Sullivan. These were the folks who needed permission to follow certain rumours down-hints of corruption or some new information about an unsolved murder or the spectre of hard drugs at a posh health spa. These required O'Sullivan's specific approval to pursue and, if pursued, had to be done so on the reporter's own time-the rest of the day being too busy with breaking stories-fires, terrible car pile-ups, missing children. On the rear wall of O'Sullivan's office was this giant sized blackboard. On this was a line for each reporter and the story he or she had been assigned to that day. Careers were made and broken on O'Sullivan's blackboard.
Some of the reporters who came and went spoke to Chris, some acknowledged her with little more than furtive nods; TV reporting being a singularly competitive enterprise, hard feelings in the newsroom were not uncommon. And it wasn't always just over who got the best story, either. A reporter named Dave Tuska, for instance, was still not speaking to Chris seven months later because Chris had requested Channel 3's neophyte camera person, Jenny Thomas. At the time, none of the other reporters had wanted Jenny and Chris was afraid that if no reporter requested her, the girl would get fired in one of the budget cuts always going on at the station. Well, Jenny proved to be the best camera person in the station-innovative, creative, fun to work with. The rest of the camera people were dull hacks by comparison. It was conventional wisdom that the most important single asset a reporter could possess was a good camera person-one who made you look good, not bad. Jenny became Chris's own camera person. So, Dave Tuska bore a grudge.
O'Sullivan finally came back. He sat down behind his desk.
"Maybe you should close the door, Chris."
"Will you quit calling me Chris?"
"Isn't that your name?"
"Not to you. To you my name's always Holland."
"Oh."
"May I have a cigarette?"
"How many does that make today?"
"One."
"Bullshit."
"Two."
"Bullshit."
"Please, Walter, I'm really nervous about this. Something's wrong and I can tell it. Otherwise you wouldn't be calling me Chris."
She went and closed the door. She came back and sat down across from him. On the desk between them was his pack of Camel filters. She pointed to the pack and he nodded. She took one and lit it and took smoke deeply and luxuriously into her chest. She could hear her lungs screaming mercy. She told them to be still.
She said, "Just say it."
"Just say what?"
He was actually, even despite the excess weight, a nice looking guy, prematurely grey hair, a noble nose, intelligent and wry blue eyes.
"Whatever's bothering you. God, Walter, you should see yourself. You look like hell."
"Thank you."
"You know what I mean. You look hangdog and afraid. You're not going to tell me my little puppy's been run over by a car, are you?"
"You don't have a little puppy."
"But that's what you look like, Walter."
He reached over and helped himself to one of his cigarettes and then he said, "You saw Pendrake?"
"Why doesn't he go over to Channel 5? They're not an empire anymore, in fact, they're a joke now. All those fat greasy salespeople and that joke of a production department. They need his help. We don't."
"Ron's been doing a lot of focus groups and-" He shook his head. "Well, you know how things can happen in focus groups sometimes."
There were maybe half a dozen television consultant groups in the country. They were hired by TV stations to improve the ratings, particularly in the area of local news, which is the single biggest money maker for most local outlets. Consultants are not a beloved group. First of all, management-only too eager to have supposedly wiser heads make the decisions-gives the consultants enormous power. Many times, consultants have the authority to hire and fire both on air talent and key administrative people such as news directors. They are constantly shaping and reshaping the look and substance of news shows in order to attain higher ratings. One of their primary tools in all this is focus group testing-taking a theoretically average group of people-and having them sit around looking at videotape of various on air news teams and making comments. Based on what they hear in these groups, the consultants then make sweeping recommendations to the stations about which air person is popular, and which is not. So not only do reporters have to worry about the regular TV ratings, they also have to worry about what a doctor or garbage truck driver or minister might say about them during the course of a focus group. It was widely suspected by reporters and media observers alike that these focus groups were often dishonest-you carefully select a certain group of people who will say exactly what you want them to say-but if management suspected anything, they kept their suspicions to themselves. They were too busy thanking the consultants for taking all this responsibility off their backs.
"And?" she said.
"And-" He looked at her for the first time. "And you're going to be reassigned."
"Reassigned?"
"We're starting a new segment."
"A new segment?" She realised she was repeating everything he said; she also realised she was semi-hysterical (her world was about to come crashing down) but she couldn't stop herself.
"Holland on the Town." He smiled but it was a sad and defeated smile. "I kind of like that, don't you?"
"What the hell is Holland on the Town?"
"Events."
"Events?"
"Yeah, you know, stuff that goes on in the day. It'll be on the six o'clock strip three nights a week"
"It's a community bulletin board, isn't it?"
"Huh?" he said, feigning stupidity.
"It's a goddamn community bulletin board. That's what you're talking about, isn't it, Walter?"
"Now, Chris, I wouldn't go that far. I-"
She stabbed out her cigarette. "Maybe you haven't noticed, Walter, but I'm a reporter."
"But this segment-"
"I report news, Walter. I don't report on DAR meetings or bake-offs or garden clubs."
"But, Chris, I-"
She held up her hand like a traffic cop in the middle of a busy intersection. "Don't say anything more. Please. Not right now."
So he didn't. He sat there and stared at her and looked ashamed of himself.
After a time she said, "You got me the Holland on the Town thing, didn't you?"
He said nothing, just stared at his folded hands riding on his stomach.
"The consultants told you that you had to fire me but you came up with this dipshit community calendar so you could save my job, didn't you?"
He still said nothing.
"I'm not going to start crying," she said.
He said, "Good."
"Look at me, Walter."
He kept his eyes down.
"Walter, goddammit, look at me."
Like a chastened little boy, he raised his gaze to meet hers.
"Now tell me the truth, Walter. You came up with the On the Town thing, didn't you?"
He just sort of shrugged. "Well."
"You came up with it so I'd at least have some kind of job, didn't you?"
"Well," he said again.
Abruptly she leaned over the desk and kissed him on his forehead. "I really love you, Walter."
And then she sat back down and put her head down and tried very hard not to cry.
"You okay?" he said.
"Uh-huh."
"You want a Coke or something?"
"Huh-uh."
"You want another cigarette?"
She shook her head.
"Why don't you cry?" he said.
She shook her head again. She didn't want to give the bastards the satisfaction.
"I really feel bad, Holland, I really do. If I didn't have child support payments and a big suburban house I can't unload, I'd quit and tell them where to put it."
She had composed herself again. She tilted her head up and looked straight at him purposefully and said, "How come they wanted to fire me?"
"They said you were too old."
"What?"
"They said the men in the focus groups all said they wanted a younger woman in your slot."
"With bouncing breasts and a wiggling backside, no doubt?"
"No doubt."
She made a fist and then lunged for a cigarette and lit it with almost terrifying ferocity. "Those sons-of-bitches."
"Absolutely."
"What do they know about journalism, anyway?"
"Not diddly shit."
She narrowed her eyes and said, "Are you making fun of me, Walter?"
"Nope. Just sort of saying that I have this same conversation every time I have to let somebody go. It's sad-the consultants don't know anything about journalism but they get to dictate to us how we should put our shows together."
"I won't do it. The On the Town thing."
"I know."
"I really appreciate what you were trying to do for me, but I won't do it."
"I don't blame you."
"I'm serious."
"I know."
"Just because I'm two months behind in my rent and because Gil pawned my colour TV set…" Gil was her ex-boyfriend, a would-be actor.
"He did?"
"Yeah. He needed a new suit for an audition."
"Tell him you want your money or your set right now."
"Can't."
"Why?"
"He's moved in with some new girl named Ricky."
He smiled with magnificent malice. "Gil looks like the kind of guy who'd end up with a Ricky."
She slumped in her chair again.
He said, "You all right, Holland?"
She said, "Any cut in pay?"
"In the On the Town thing?"
"Yeah."
"Huh-uh."
She sighed. "God, I'll have to take it, won't I?"
"If your finances are in their usual state of disrepair, yeah."
She sighed even more this time. " 'And on Friday evening, ladies, don't forget our city's first all nude bake-off.' "
He laughed and added his own lewd comment.
"I'm too goddamned old, Walter? I can't believe that. Aren't I attractive anymore?"
He smiled and reached across the desk. She put her hand in his. "You're a damn good looking woman, Holland, and you know it. But these consultants-" He shook his head.
She thought back to her audition reel. She automatically updated it every six months, which is what she'd been doing earlier. Now there was a good reason to box up several dubs and send them out. She'd just been demoted and was lucky she hadn't been outright fired.
"Too old?" she said again, her ego and her self-esteem both reeling at once.
He grinned, looking as he always did when he grinned, like a sarcastic little kid. "Haggard, Holland. Absolutely haggard."
When Chris got back to her cubicle in the newsroom, one of the Channel 3 sales reps was standing there putting the moves on one of the young studio production women. Like most TV reps, his high opinion of himself oozed from every pore in his body. Also like most TV reps, he was chunky, not very bright, and assertive enough to make most people cringe. O'Sullivan hated TV reps. They were always coming to him and seeing if he couldn't somehow plug one of their clients on the news show somehow; or if one of their clients was involved in some bad publicity, if O'Sullivan couldn't go easy on the guy. All this was particularly galling to news directors because station general managers were invariably chosen from the ranks of reps-meaning the same stupidity, the same used car dealer ethics that kept them in money as reps had now got them ensconced in the general manager's chair.
The TV industry was jam packed with former reps who'd taken over the management reins. This said a lot about why the level of programming was so low. (O'Sullivan's favourite joke was, "Know what the three lowest forms of life are? Wife beaters, child abusers, and TV reps." He never tired of telling this particular gag.)
Chris went to her desk and tried to read the morning paper. Thanks to her tears, she almost smeared the type. Also thanks to her tears, her lower lip was trembling. She sat scrunched up tight to her desk so nobody could see her face. When somebody would walk by and say good morning, she'd mutter something that sounded like "Mmwffffr" and hoped they wouldn't ask her to translate it.
She sat this way for fifteen minutes. Or mostly she did. Every other minute or so she'd have this little flurry of optimism and then she'd sit up straight, shoulders thrown back, and make a fist and say (to herself) Fuck TV news consultants; they're little no dick no brain wimps anyway. (She'd recently read one of those books that told you how to Take Charge of Your Life, and this was one of the 'Seven Dramatic Lessons' the back cover copy had promised-Lesson Three to be exact, 'Getting Pissed and Getting Even.')
And then the phone rang.
Her first inclination was not to pick up.
She'd just sound sniffly anyway.
So she let it ring.
Six, seven, eight times.
"Jesus Christ, Holland, are you fucking deaf or what?" somebody shouted over her cubicle.
Those were the dulcet tones of Mike Ramsey, Ace Reporter. He sat in the cubicle next to Chris's. He was living proof that men indeed had periods. Chris estimated that Ramsey was on the rag approximately twenty-nine days per month.
So she picked up.
"Chris Holland. Channel 3 News."
There was a slight pause, then an intelligent-sounding female voice said, "I guess I don't know how to start exactly."
"Start?"
"With my story."
"I see."
"So is it all right?"
"Ma'am?"
"If I just start in, I mean."
"Sure."
"It's about a murder."
And right then and right there, Chris forgot about all the morning's misery.
"A murder?" She was drooling.
"Several murders actually."
"Several murders?"
My God-several murders!
"But the man they accused-he wasn't really responsible."
"He wasn't?"
There was a pause again. "I'd really like to see you in person."
"In person?"
"I couldn't make it till this evening. And even then I'm not absolutely sure about that."
"Ma'am?" Chris said.
"Yes."
"Is this all on the level?"
"Why, of course."
"You know something about the man they accused of these murders?"
"Yes," the woman said.
"Would you tell me who this man was?"
"Of course. He was my brother."
"I see."
"Do you know where the Starlight Room is?"
"In Shaffer's Mall?"
"Right."
"Sure."
"Could you meet me there at six-thirty?" the woman asked. "Of course."
"In the lounge. We could have a drink."
"That would be nice," Chris said. Then, "Oh, wait."
"Yes?"
"How come you called me?"
The woman laughed softly, sounding almost embarrassed. "I like Channel 3 news best and I… I guess I just like your face. You don't look like a Dallas cheerleader. And that's nice."
"Believe me, there are days when I wish I did look like a Dallas cheerleader."
Like when no dick no brain TV news consultants are conducting focus groups, she thought.
The woman was back to sounding sombre again. "Tonight then. About six-thirty."
"About six-thirty. Right."
After she hung up, Chris called over the top of her cubicle wall, "Hey, Ramsey."
"Yeah?" he shouted back. "What?"
"Thanks for telling me to answer my phone."
"Huh?"
"Never mind."
She sat there exultant. Several murders, she kept saying to herself over and over again, thoughts of herself as the On the Town girl fading fast.
Several murders.
Wasn't life grand sometimes?