by A. C. Fuller
“Calm down,” Bice said, irritated.
“Am very calm. But you are not the one with your picture on the newspaper.”
“Things have not gone as planned.”
“No,” Rak said. “When we meet early in January, after the job on the professor, what did you tell me?”
“I don’t remember everything we said but—”
“You tell me that police are finding a suspect and they have good evidence. You tell me that your people in the police say he will be found guilty. Do you remember telling me this?”
“I do,” Bice said. “But we have bigger issues than—”
Rak interrupted, “And then, when you learned that a man might have a video—the black man—do you remember what you tell me then?”
“Yes, I told you that he must be taken care of and that this would end the matter.”
Rak pounded the counter with his right fist. “Well, it was not the end. Was it? Now we have a reporter and a woman, and who knows who else? And now we have my picture on the newspaper.”
“Don’t worry about the picture,” Bice said. “Only one paper ran it and the police haven’t found anything on you.”
“That’s good. Very good.” Rak smiled and turned toward the kitchen. The old man emerged and set down a paper plate of greasy pierogies and a bowl of yogurt sauce. The grease bled through the paper onto the cracked linoleum counter.
Rak dipped a pierogi in yogurt and moved it to his mouth. “Have you ever had pierogies?” he asked as he took a bite.
“No,” Bice said.
“Very good. You try mine sometime.” He spoke through his food, crumbs of pork and flecks of grease sticking to his mustache.
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
Rak put the pierogi down. “We both have make mistakes here,” he said. “If you are right this time, we have two more to deal with. You pay the regular price?”
“I’ll pay the regular price, but I don’t want Alex Vane killed. The girl, I don’t care.”
“Why not kill them both?”
“Make sure they do not have a copy of that video, hurt him if you need to,” Bice said.
“Mr. Bice, do you know how sensitive the flesh under a fingernail is?”
“What?”
“If the black man gave them the video, they will give it to me.” He picked the pierogi back up, dipped it in the yogurt, and stuffed it into his mouth.
“That’s fine,” Bice said. “Just make sure he lives.”
“What for?” Rak asked, but the line was dead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CAMILA WAS ON STAGE when Alex slipped in a side door and sat in the back row. She paced for a minute, then stopped to point at a graph of major media conglomerates on a projector screen. “If any of you end up working in the media,” she said, “you will probably work for one of these six companies. In 1982, it was fifty companies. In 1962, hundreds of companies. We have gone from hundreds to six in the last forty years. Now, there are some smaller, independent ones, but these six produce 90 percent of the news, TV, music, movies, and so on.”
She surveyed the class and pointed at a lanky boy in the front row. “Where are you from?”
“Me? Uh, Green Bay.”
“Good, Green Bay. Up until 1980, a company based in Green Bay owned the major paper there, The Press-Gazette. For a hundred years it had been locally owned and controlled. Maybe it wasn’t the best paper in the world, but it responded to the needs of the community. In 1980, Gannett purchased the paper. Gannett is the country’s largest newspaper publisher and also owns a dozen or so TV stations. Now, what effect do you think that purchase had on The Press-Gazette’s news coverage?”
The boy raised his hand. “Aren’t Gannett’s TV stations NBC affiliates? That would mean the paper’s more liberal now because NBC is a liberal station. Right?”
Camila smiled at him. “Okay, that’s a thought. Anyone else?”
A girl in the back with pink hair raised her hand. “Made it more conservative because Gannett is a big corporation and they’re, like, republican?”
Camila smiled again. “And that’s how it happens,” she said, looking down at her notes.
“From page 171 in the McChesney text: ‘Policy debates focus on marginal and tangential issues because core structures and policies are off-limits to criticism . . . ‘ Now, what does that mean? It means that we tend to think in terms of liberal and conservative, left and right. NBC is for the democrats and Fox is for the republicans, right? By splitting the debate this way, we give ourselves something to believe in, something to argue about, something to stand in opposition to. The fewer media options we have—the fewer voices we hear—the more we are structured by these small dichotomies.
“But there’s a fundamental misunderstanding here, which is that the media is a reflection of reality. It’s not. Imagine if six publicly traded companies owned 90 percent of restaurants. Would their main goal be our nourishment and health? Would they offer an accurate reflection of world cuisine?” She paused. “Or would they produce cheap food that appealed to a wide base of diners while trying to maximize profit at every moment?”
Alex smiled. He felt berated again, but in a way he was beginning to like.
“If you ate at those six restaurants long enough,” Camila continued, “you’d start to believe that they represented food. You’d begin to find significance in the tiny differences between them, forgetting that there is a vast world of flavors and textures beyond them.”
The lanky boy put up his hand. “What does that have to do with Green Bay and The Press-Gazette?”
“What happened in Green Bay—what is happening to the media and what it does to us—is much more complex than liberal or conservative.”
The pink-haired girl raised her hand again. “But what about the Internet? Isn’t that bringing the diversity back?”
“Quite possibly,” Camila said. “And we will get into all of that. But, I’m afraid, class is over.”
As the crowd thinned Alex made his way up the aisle and caught her eye.
“Sneaking in again?” she asked.
“We have problems.”
“We? What problems do I have? Other than all the ones I haven’t told you about.”
“Okay, I guess I have problems, and I’d like your help.”
Camila watched the last of the students file out. “Talk,” she said.
Alex told her about the story in The Post and his conversation with Lance as she packed up her papers.
“So your editor lied to you. Does he do that often?” she asked.
“Not that I know of. Honestly, I usually feel like I’m in charge.”
Camila smiled. “I bet you’re used to that.”
Alex sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “This is serious.”
“Maybe he was lied to or maybe a witness lied to the cops. It happens.”
“Yeah, but I already felt like he was pushing me off the story.”
Camila sat on the edge of the stage, leaned back on the palms of her hands, and stared at him.
Alex turned away. “You’re not feeling into me again, are you?”
“Just seeing what’s going on,” she said.
“And what’s going on?”
“You’re scared. You’re scared and excited.”
He was beginning to accept the fact that she saw right through him. “I don’t like all this uncertainty,” he said.
“You still didn’t tell me how I’m involved in this.”
“It just feels like you are.”
They sat in silence until his phone rang. “Hello? Yeah . . . 301 168th, apartment 3-A? Got it. Thanks, Lance.”
“Who was that?” Camila asked.
Alex smiled. “Want to take a trip to Queens?”
“I guess it’s that or Des Moines.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
OUTSIDE THE JOURNALISM building, they hailed a taxi in a light, warm rain.
“Queens, 301 168th,” Alex
said to the driver. He turned to Camila. “This is going to be an expensive ride.”
“My guess is that you have extra money somewhere. Trust-funder?”
Alex eyed a wet cigarette butt on the floor and ran his finger along a gash in the glossy plastic seat. “Not really,” he said.
“What do you mean? You seem upset.”
“My parents were beatniks. They had a little money but they didn’t give me much. I mean, they paid for college and everything.”
“What do you mean ‘were’—is that what you were talking about at lunch?”
“They died six years ago.”
“At the same time? How?”
Alex picked bits of foam from the seat cushion.
“I guess you don’t want to talk about it?”
He looked up at her. “What makes you think I have money?”
“Just the way you carry yourself. You look like someone who was raised in affluence.”
“We weren’t poor, but we weren’t rich either.”
“Where are you from?”
“Bainbridge Island. Near Seattle. I was born in the West Village and we moved when I was a baby. Maybe it’s all the fresh air I grew up with that makes me look rich. Plus, they did leave me a bit of money when they died. You weren’t wrong about that.”
His leg was almost touching hers and Alex felt an electricity surge through his knee, up his thigh, into his hip. He tried to pick up on her cues, but she didn’t seem to give any.
“I know Bainbridge Island,” she said. “A lot of writers out there.”
“My parents were two of them.”
“Writers? Both?”
“Yup, or trying to be. I think they might have liked the lifestyle more than the writing part, though. They lived in the Village in the early seventies. Dad was in the fancy paper business and Mom taught poetry at Barnard. After I was born, they fled the city. Traded in their two-bedroom apartment on MacDougal for a four-bedroom waterfront house.”
The taxi stopped abruptly and they both rocked forward, then sat back. Horns honked all around them.
“Lemmee guess,” Camila said, “wine and candles and poetry readings. A vegetable garden that ended up costing your mom three dollars per carrot, and a tweed jacket in a wood-paneled room?”
Alex laughed. “You’re pretty close. I lived there ‘til 1992, when I came back to go to NYU as an undergrad.”
“How long have you been a reporter?”
“When I graduated, I worked as an intern before I realized I wasn’t going anywhere. Went to Columbia Journalism School and was hired to do obits and other small assignments for The Standard when I graduated. Woulda been summer of ‘99.”
“So why do you want to be on TV?”
Alex pretended not to hear her. He leaned forward and spoke to the driver, “Can you take Queens Boulevard? It’s quicker this time of night.”
The driver mumbled something and Alex leaned back. “Are you ready to tell me why you and Martin broke up?” he asked.
She looked out the window. “He wanted to have a baby and I didn’t.” Alex didn’t say anything. “I miss him,” she added.
“Do you wish you hadn’t broken up with him?”
She turned to Alex. “No, I don’t wish I hadn’t ended it. I needed to do something different, to become something different. I don’t know. I just miss him.”
“Why are you helping me?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I did love Martin and I don’t want Santiago to be convicted if he didn’t do it. But I don’t know why I do half of what I do. I used to think I knew what I was doing, that things were under control. Now it’s like I’m standing on water but not quite sinking.”
Alex tried to think of a way to change the subject. He hadn’t wanted the conversation to get so personal. “Maybe you need therapy,” he said.
“You asshole!” She turned abruptly and looked out the window. “I don’t need therapy. Most therapists need therapy more than I do. I don’t need to rearrange my ideas about myself. I’m talking about things coming apart—the fabric of identity, of people, of matter . . . ” She sighed and rested her head on her knees, then sat back up. “A few years ago, I wouldn’t have come with you, I would have known what I was doing. But now, John is dead, I’m alone for the first time in years, and I have no idea what I am or what I’m doing. You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”
“I wish I did.” He dug into the hole in the seat, picking at the foam. “Why do you flip that coin?” he asked, then immediately regretted it.
Camila glared at him. “You followed me?”
Alex said nothing.
“Can you turn this up?” Camila asked the driver, tapping on the divider. He was listening to a local radio debate about what sort of tribute the Yankees should have at their September 11th game. “I just love sports talk radio.”
Alex nudged her playfully. “Look, I followed you just the one time. I was curious. It’s what I do for a living. I’m a reporter. I’m supposed to be an asshole.”
She looked at him with a look he didn’t understand. Staring at her, he felt like he was being pulled into a blank space where he could no longer see himself, where he disappeared. He leaned away but still felt like he was being pulled in.
“But you’re not an asshole,” she said.
“Yes, I am.”
“You’re not. You’re a decent guy pretending to be an asshole.”
Alex wanted to reach for her but he looked out the window instead. They both went quiet as the rain pattered the metal roof.
“We’re almost there,” he said, rolling down the window. The rain was coming in fat drops and the smells of the city wafted through the car.
Camila rubbed her hands together in her lap and Alex saw a tear roll down her cheek. She rolled down her widow and reached out. “I love how all the smells happen at once when it first starts to rain. Somehow the streets hold decades of smells.”
The taxi stopped in front of a tall, brick building.
“It makes me miss him,” she said.
“What, the rain?”
“Yeah, and the smells.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“You really think I’m not an asshole?”
“Yeah. I mean no, you’re not.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
THE DOOR TO THE APARTMENT building was closing slowly, but Alex reached out to grab it before it latched. It was quiet in the stairwell as they climbed to the third floor.
“It feels like no one lives here,” Camila said. “There are no smells.”
“Probably a gentrification building. They’re trying to clear them out so the owners can renovate and attract people like us to live here. You know, ‘young professionals.’“
“In my building,” Camila said, “each floor is a unique olfactory experience. You might get the smell of chicken on one floor, Indian spices on another, and, when you get to my neighbor Charlie’s floor, it’s always cakes and cookies. Sometimes all the smells waft together and I feel like I’ve discovered some new dish from a fantasy land—like curried chicken cookies.”
Alex chuckled as they came to the landing and knocked on a red door marked “3-A.”
“Let me ask the questions,” Alex said. “And tap your feet if you think she’s lying.”
“A signal? Are you serious?”
The door cracked and they saw a woman’s bright green eyes peering out over a silver chain. “Who are you?” the woman asked.
It sounded more like an accusation than a question. “Alex Vane from The New York Standard. This is my assistant, Camila Gray.”
The door slammed. “Wait,” Alex said, “I’m not here to do a story about your son.”
“He’s moved on,” the woman said from behind the door.
“We know. That’s why we’re here,” Alex said, directing his voice toward the crack between the door and its frame.
Even through the old, solid wood, the woman’s voice wa
s stern. “I do not wish to speak to a reporter.”
Camila tapped on the door. “Alex was with your son the day before he died,” she said.
The door reopened a crack.
“Your son told me about your husband,” Alex said. “About the basketball he gave Demarcus for his birthday. He may have left something here he wanted us to have.”
The door closed and they heard the chain slide against it. As it opened, the woman blocked the doorway and Alex thought he could see a bit of Demarcus in her. Her skin was lighter than her son’s and her black hair reached all the way down her back, but she was tall and lean and had the same long, narrow nose. She was draped in a long white sari. “Malina Downton,” she said.
“We’re sorry to show up so late and to interrupt your mourning,” Camila said.
“And we are so sorry about Demarcus,” Alex added.
Malina stared at Alex and, after a moment, led them into a large living room with clean, worn-out carpeting and bright walls. “Thank you, but we do not mourn,” she said. “He will be cremated tomorrow and will be back again soon enough.”
As they sat on the couch, Camila nodded at a silver statue on a small table against the wall. “Are you Tamil?” she asked. The statue was about twelve inches high—a man with thick shoulders sitting cross-legged, holding a trident.
Malina sat in a chair across from them. “Yes, we are. You are not Hindu are you?”
“No, but it’s beautiful,” Camila replied. “It’s Shiva,” she said to Alex.
They heard a clicking sound and saw a child playing behind a stack of wooden blocks near the kitchen.
“That is my great-grandson, little Tyree,” Malina said. “Demarcus’s grandson.”
“Demarcus never mentioned a grandson,” Alex said.
“Well, that is just like him. Demarcus never valued family.”
“The way he spoke about you,” Alex said. “I could tell he loved you and his father.”
“But he never learned responsibility. This one will be different.” She smiled at the boy, then turned to Alex and Camila and folded her hands in her lap. “So, why are you here?”