Max's Folly

by Bill Turpin

  The newsroom is actually the front office of the paper’s print shop. The space is drenched with the odour of printer’s ink and pulp dust. It’s the building’s only redeeming quality. That smell has been the elixir of life since Max learned to read, which he did poring over the comics pages in the newspapers. He would spread out the broadsheet pages and kneel before them, examining every pen stroke, no matter how wispy, and sounding out the hand-drawn words of his superheroes. The dusty sweet smell of ink and paper that enveloped him was his invisible shield.

  Max now knows that being a newspaperman is what he always wanted. The Dancer was right: physics was a wrong turn.

  Five Months Before Now

  Loss of a Lifetime

  MAX AND THE Wife have decided against eating in front of the television and instead enjoy a meal sitting across from each other, drinking too much red wine. They are hopeful about his worsening memory problems, and talk honestly about his illness and how they’ll manage it. He thinks often about how little she has changed. The same brown hair, though now straightened, not curled, and shorter because she’d decided she’s too old for long hair. Her cheekbones are still strong. Her eyes say more about her kindness than her age. Her lips, as always, seem barely able to constrain some kind of secret inner mischief. Like the Mona Lisa after three tokes, he used to tell her.

  He joins her on the loveseat and they sit quietly for a while. The conversation is idle. She calls him “goatman” a couple of times, and he calls her “cactus.” They turn on the TV, but not long after, the Wife says she’s feeling tired and wants to go to bed early. Max wants more time to digest the meal and promises to be up soon.

  Two hours later, he kisses her cool forehead and goes to his own bed where the Son slept before he moved out. They miss sleeping together, but they have both become snorers.

  Max sleeps poorly. At four a.m., he awakens with the familiar sense of doom that troubled him for many years as a younger man. He used to call four a.m. the “hour of the spooks.”

  He’s awake again at seven and goes to check on the Wife. In the dawn light, he can see she hasn’t moved since he last saw her. He kisses her forehead.

  It is much, much too cool.

  1994

  We Have a Commodore Here?

  MAX HAS BEEN taking angry phone calls from Montreal all morning. It seems the Gauloise-smoking Night News Editor has been catapulted into the editor-in-chief’s chair. The callers are indignant employees, certain that this promotion is one of the worst travesties in the history of Canadian journalism. Pickup, an object of derision for more than a decade, has been fired and thus transformed into one of the greats of the newspaper business.

  Max suspects the clamour is originating in dayside’s charmed circle, a small self-reinforcing group that’s been preparing for years to see one of their number get the big office. But they were too busy preparing for power to see the Night News Editor outflanking them via the bargaining committee. Now they’ve awoken to find a philistine in charge.

  The phone rings and it’s the Night News Editor himself.

  “You’re doing a good job in Halifax,” he says. “A lot of people thought you’d fuck it up, but you didn’t.”

  “High praise indeed,” Max says.

  The Owner and the Night News Editor both want Max to return to Montreal and become the managing editor, the Number Two job. Max is not surprised. Plucking him from Halifax would be unexpected and therefore signal a brave new order.

  By way of preliminary negotiation, they go back and forth for a while about what the job would be like, the fabulous food in Montreal, low house prices thanks to the separatists, the effect on Max and his family, etc. Oh, and double his current salary and a reporting job for the Wife.

  Then the Night News Editor brings out the hammer. “When the Mother Ship threw you overboard, no one expected to see you again. Now we’re ready to take you back, which is unprecedented — unprecedented. But this is a one-time offer. If you let us sail by this time, we’ll never turn back for you.”

  • • •

  In the Canadian tradition, Max and the Wife take a walk in the snow that evening. The Wife listens and then walks on in silence for a long time.

  “You know what, Max? It doesn’t make any difference.”

  “You mean you don’t care?”

  “Sure I care. But stay or go, all three of us are going to be fine,” she says.

  But Max has been struggling to reconcile his passion for the Paper, the needs of his family and a chance to play with the big boys again in Montreal. He can’t see what the Wife is getting at.

  “Look,” she says. “We are three little ships travelling the ocean together. My job is to see that all the members of the fleet are as happy and healthy as they can be. I say we can take either direction and we’ll be fine. There are pros and cons for everyone, but they balance out.”

  The metaphor catches Max off guard. He chooses his words carefully.

  “But I’m the captain, right?”

  She brings them to a halt under a streetlight and turns to him. “Well, you’re the ranking captain, but I’m the commodore of our little fleet.” she says gently.

  The commodore role is news to Max, but he feels if there is to be one, it should be him. He test-drives a few arguments in his head. He is the commodore because he’ll be the top income-earner if they move? True, but right now the Wife is the top income earner. He is the commodore because he is the man of the household? Nope. That was the Father.

  “But am I not the commodore because my job is more important?”

  She demurs. Max is exasperated.

  “Oh, come on!” he says. “You’re arguing that being a flack is more important than news?”

  “Okay, I’ll give you that one, for old times’ sake, but that doesn’t make you the commodore. It’s a job where you are constantly making little adjustments that the other ships hardly notice. It’s a job you grow into.”

  Max protests: “But we decide things together, like we’re doing now.”

  “Max, you’re good at running a newsroom, but outside the office you’re not commodore material. For that, you’ve got to know what’s best for others, even if they don’t, and you have to know exactly when to take action. And you’re a bit passive. So, we’re a team of equals but . . .”

  “. . . but you’re more equal than me.”

  “Think about it, Maxie. We wouldn’t be married if I hadn’t seduced you. Are you happy with that outcome?”

  “Yes.”

  “We wouldn’t be standing here now if I hadn’t got you to man-up back when you were offered this job. Are you happy with that outcome?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, part of being commodore is knowing what’s good for your ships and then making it happen. That’s what I do.”

  “And me?”

  “You’re Captain Stud Muffin, as well as the officer in charge of morale and inspiration. And you’re responsible for keeping the Bad Man away from our ships.”

  They walk another block. In spite of himself, Max likes the Captain Stud Muffin sobriquet. It takes the edge off not being the commodore.

  “Okay. You are and have always been the commodore,” he says. “So what do we do?”

  “Just like I said. You decide where you want to work. The other two ships will follow your lead.”

  “Okay,” Max says. “I’ll make a decision tomorrow.”

  Max has the feeling that whatever he decides, it will turn out to be what the Wife secretly wanted. He pulls her close and nuzzles her hair, happy to be one of her ships. She kisses him and he likes the way it feels in the cold.

  He hears his own voice say “Stay here, Max.”

  “No,” he hears himself reply. “Not here.”

  He looks at the Wife, who is leaning her head on his shoulder and hasn’t heard a thing.


  • • •

  Max leans against the half-height cubicle walls of City Desk, watching the intense chaos that signifies the transition from dayside to nightside.

  Sports has arrived and has begun organizing the night’s work. Soon they will be loudly demanding to know why the City Editor has reassigned a photographer from one of their stories. There will be an acerbic exchange to iron out the priorities.

  The Entertainment Editor, as always, is cajoling the music/theatre writer to get her story filed by deadline. This is a process that will be handed off later to the Indonesian, who will continue demanding copy from her until 11 pm. Max, the Entertainment Editor and the Indonesian meet frequently to “crack down” on her, but they never succeed.

  Max suspects there is a good deal of “cross-pollination” occurring in the newsroom, but none of his staff will let him in on it when there’s a new affair taking place. How­ever, he can usually tell by observing increases in produc­tivity and creativity. There is a rumour, hotly denied, about the Cartoonist and a general assignment reporter. The rumour is persistent because their colleagues want it to be true.

  Bedsides romance, the other factor guaranteed to boost productivity from one end of the newsroom to the other is a juicy homicide. The police scanner blares all day atop City Desk. No one notices it until a note of tension creeps into one of the voices crackling back and forth. When that happens, the background noise in the newsroom drops off sharply and heads pop up, like prairie dogs sniffing the air. Usually it’s nothing, but every now and then they’ll hear something that cries havoc.

  Crime reporter: Where is it?

  City Editor: I don’t fucking know. Why don’t you make a call and find out?

  Crime reporter: I want a shooter.

  City Editor: You’ll get a shooter when I know what the fuck is going on . . . hold on . . . they’re looking for a white van. A lesbian abducted her lover and her child.

  Crime reporter: A lesbian kidnapping?

  Shooter: Are they movie lesbians or regular-looking?

  City Editor: Golly, I don’t think the cops have a radio code for “movie lesbians”.

  Crime reporter: Sarcasm is unbecoming to you.

  The Business Editor is polishing his outrage column for the next day. This usually means inserting the clause “and that really burns these business buns.” His readers love it.

  The copy desk is the domain of the Indonesian after 5 pm. He’ll command the group of copy editors, a.k.a “rim pigs”, for the next 10 hours as they organize all the stories and pictures into a coherent whole. He is talking to a dayside reporter who wants to know why his story was changed last night. “Because what you wrote was wrong,” the Indonesian says calmly.

  As Max foresaw, the sports editor has arrived at City Desk to complain about the loss of a photo assignment: “All I asked for was two pictures and you kill one of them. And that one is the HOCKEY GAME for chrissake.”

  “Use one from another game,” the City Editor says. “I keep assigning photos for you and all I see the next morning is the same homo-erotic clusterfuck after someone scores a goal.”

  “Those are jubilation shots. That’s what sports is all about. Max, help me out here.”

  “Schedule a freelancer for the game,” Max tells the City Editor, “but ask for a shot of a player scoring a goal or knocking somebody senseless against the boards. Readers have seen enough jubilation shots for a while.”

  “Good. Thanks, Max,” the sports guy calls as he walks away.

  “I want a moratorium on jubilation shots,” Max shouts after him.

  He turns to the City Editor, who has her head down and her arms up in exasperation, as if someone has just spilled a soft drink on her science project.

  “I’ll think of something,” she says without raising her head.

  Max steps back and soaks in the improbable harmony of the whole thing. People stomping back and forth with paper in their hands, pounding their keyboards, arguing, checking the clock or, in a few cases, quietly laying out the pages for the next day. Soon the news meeting will begin and the stories and photos for the day will be prioritized, only to be re-prioritized later should there be a murder or movie-lesbian-kidnapping during the evening.

  Somehow — it’s never the same two days in a row — all the chaos and strife will coalesce into the next edition of the Paper. The presses will run, trucks will drive away with loads of newspapers, readers will react, and then the whole thing will begin again.

  The MBAs and other corporate honchos beginning to take over the news business see only “process” and “product” in all this, but Max doubts any of them have run anything more complex than a lemonade stand. Max believes the jargon helps them sustain the mistaken idea that they belong in news. But you can’t monetize commitment. You can’t re-purpose mavericks into widget-makers. You can’t quantify a love affair.

  And Max can’t bring himself to leave the Paper, at least not before the corporate barbarians come over the walls.

  1986

  Bastards of the CBC

  THE SMILING COBRA ardently believes that he is the beating heart of the Paper; that he is adored by every single employee for his generous spirit and overwhelming but gentle intellect. Max knows this because the Cobra has told him so innumerable times, all the while urging him to try to see the Paper through the eyes of a beloved engineer.

  Moreover, the only belief he holds dearer than that of his own consequence is the contemptibility of the CBC, infested as it is with fairies, immigrants and haughty intellectuals. Defeat on the baseball diamond by these pansies would be tantamount to being spanked in public by Adrienne Clarkson.

  But that nightmare is, now, potentially real because Max failed to consider it when he unilaterally accepted a challenge from the CBC staff to a softball game.

  “The softball team is my domain, Max,” the Cobra says from behind his desk. “It wears the Paper’s uniform, so I make the calls. It’s about leadership and morale, also my purview.”

  “With respect,” Max says, “you made us pay for the uniforms and the field rental ourselves, so I don’t think that puts a lot of weight in your bat.”

  The Cobra reacts as if he’s been poked by a stick. Then he recovers and the skin of his neck flares into its hood configuration.

  “I’ll pay for all softball expenses from now until the end of time,” the Cobra says, “but there are three conditions: I get to play against the CBC; no women are in the lineup, and the Copy Boy sits this one out.”

  The negotiated rules require a minimum of three women on the field at all times, so there’s nothing the Cobra can do about that. And the Wife, who has been filling in, won’t care about giving up her spot to the boss.

  The Copy Boy, however, is another matter. He has been with the Paper from the beginning, doing odd jobs and helping out wherever he can. He is difficult to understand because he has cerebral palsy, which has also impaired his motor functions. But his determination to contribute has endeared him to everyone. None of Max’s crew would even think of ditching him from the team just to beat the CBC. Besides, the Copy Boy — actually in his mid-thirties — is strong. On those rare occasions when he actually connects with a pitch, the ball is gone, baby, gone.

  “Sorry,” Max says. “That can’t be done. It’s just not on.”

  “I’ve already talked to him and he agrees with me. This game is too important. He’s not retarded, you know, he understands.”

  “Who said he’s retarded?” Max asks, then kicks himself for taking the bait.

  “Oh, I think you and your staff patronize his intelligence constantly. Your belief that he can’t make decisions for himself about a softball game is another example of that.”

  Checkmate. Max’s distaste for the Cobra’s world-view has occasionally led him to underestimate the man’s cunning.

  “I’m sure you won’t mind i
f I talk to him myself,” Max says.

  “Not at all. In fact, I encourage it.”

  The implication here is that speaking with the Copy Boy is something Max rarely does. He leaves the office knowing that he’s just had his ass whipped in a game of wits.

  • • •

  Max finds the Copy Boy helping the Political Reporter retrieve a so-called floppy disc from beneath the heavy end of a steel desk. He does this by getting down on all fours, lifting the desk backhand with his left arm and reaching beneath with his right arm. The reporter, who somehow imagined he would be part of the process, is at a loss for words when the Copy Boy hands him the disc.

  “Hi Max,” he says, swatting dust from his trousers. “What can I do for you?”

  Max has more trouble than most understanding what the Copy Boy says, so they both have to put in extra effort to make their conversations work.

  “The Publisher says you don’t want to play this weekend,” Max says.

  “I’m a bad player, Max. We could lose because of me.”

  “We still win most of our games and sometimes you get home runs. Besides, it’s not like there’ll be big-league scouts in the stands.”

  The Copy Boy laughs: “More likely, there won’t be anybody in the stands.”

  “Exactly my point,” Max says.

  “But the boss really wants to win.”

  “It’s up to you,” Max says. “As manager, I’m telling you that we want you on the team, just like always. Just tell the publisher your decision, OK?”

  The Copy Boy brightens: “You bet!”

  Max experiences the full joy of righteousness on the drive home that evening, but finds the Wife surprisingly hesitant to join in.

  “I don’t know, Maxie. Not every little wrong has to be righted, you know.”

  “You’ve been in communications too long,” he says.

  But the Wife is unamused and sticks to her guns.