by Tom Rachman
She reaches the new millennium: "Dow Tops 11,000" (Jan. 15, 2000); "Milosevic Quits Amid Protests" (Oct. 6, 2000); "Iraq Rejects New Inspections" (Nov. 2, 2000).
The headlines from 2002 perplex her: "Trade Center Debris Cleared from Ground Zero" (May 31, 2002); "Bomb Attack in Bali Leaves Dozens Dead" (Oct. 13, 2002); "Bush Establishes 'Homeland Security' Agency" (Nov. 26, 2002).
She tunnels down to 2004: "Scientists Clone 30 Human Embryos" (Feb. 14, 2004); "Putin Wins Re-Election" (March 15, 2004); "U.S. Transfers Power to Iraq Interim Leaders" (June 29, 2004); "Islamic Extremist Kills Dutch Filmmaker" (Nov. 3, 2004).
She skips ahead to 2006: "In His First Veto, Bush Blocks Stem-Cell Research" (July 20, 2006); "North Korea Claims First Nuclear Test" (Oct. 10, 2006).
And then 2007: "Amid Fanfare, Apple Introduces iPhone" (Jan. 10, 2007); "Bush to Send 21,500 More Troops to Iraq" (Jan. 11, 2007); "Humans Are Cause of Climate Change, Panel Finds" (Feb. 3, 2007); "In Historic Bid, African-American Senator to Run for President" (Feb. 11, 2007).
With that, she is done. This, approximately, is the present.
She stands amid all the papers and thinks about Marta, who comes tomorrow. Ornella could clear up beforehand. Then again, Marta will be impressed--no more nonsense about old papers on one side, new papers on the other. And no more technology bans--no drama if Marta's husband calls her cellphone while she's here.
The next day, Ornella races to the door. "I have something to show you. Come, come!" She tries to take Marta's hand, but the cleaner is still removing her coat. Ornella waits restlessly. Marta has today's paper hidden in a plastic bag, as per standing instructions. "Come!" Ornella says. But midway down the hall she pauses.
"What?" Marta asks.
"You're going to think I'm stupid." She takes the cleaner's hand. Marta doesn't grip back but allows herself to be drawn forward.
"Oh dear," Marta says, seeing the mess. "It break?"
"Did what break?"
Marta is already on her knees, tidying up this paper catastrophe.
"Nothing's broken. I did it on purpose. Nothing to worry about. I threw them down there myself," Ornella protests. "I spent all night reading. Till four in the morning. I'm still nowhere near caught up. I have all sorts of questions. You're going to have to help me."
Marta, interpreting this as a request to tidy more quickly, responds, "Yes, yes, I do it, I do it."
"Stop--listen a moment. Leave it. Tell me, where did we put today's paper?"
"Which today?"
"This today." Ornella points her finger downward, but that only indicates several thousand todays beneath their feet. She adds, "The today you brought in. The one in the plastic bag."
Marta is hesitant to hand it over, as if this might be a test.
Ornella settles on the living-room sofa, tense with the excitement, pulse elevated. She flaps open today's paper and shifts her backside about on the cushions. She clears her throat, blinks as if to clear her view, and surveys the front page. She turns to Marta who, having been ordered to keep her mistress company, has set up the ironing board in the living room. Ornella asks, "Don't you want to read along with me?"
"No, no."
"There's a lot I'm confused about. I'm counting on your help. Like, who is this Britney Spears, and why has she shaved off all her hair?"
"I don't know," Marta responds, her answer punctuated by a hiss of steam from the iron.
"Here's one: the silly pope made nasty comments about Muslims and now they're threatening to blow up churches." Ornella looks up. "It's not dangerous for you to go to your church, is it? Marta?"
"No, no."
Ornella turns the page. "Seems like everyone is blowing themselves up. And all these computers--do you understand this computer business?"
"What business?"
But Ornella knows too little even to frame a question. "Just in general."
"Not so much."
With a rush of affection, Ornella pats the sofa cushion beside her. "Why don't you stop for a minute and join me! Let me make you some coffee! We can discuss the news. Don't you think that'd be nice for a change?"
Marta, her face strained, looks around at the apartment, at all the floors that need sweeping, all the surfaces that require wiping down. And the dust under the beds?
When Marta's work is done, Ornella walks her to the door. "See you tomorrow?"
"Yes, okay," Marta replies, looking down. "Tomorrow."
1994. CORSO VITTORIO, ROME
By the early 1990s, the success of the paper under Milton Berber was beginning to abate, reflecting declining readership across the industry. Television had been eating away at papers for years, and the rise of twenty-four-hour news channels had dealt another blow. Morning newspapers, written the afternoon before, seemed increasingly out of date. Circulation dipped back under twenty-five thousand.
Of greater concern was Milton himself. Though he remained intellectually robust, his body failed: diabetes, hypertension, weakened vision, hearing loss. In 1994, he gathered the staff.
"Why does the paper exist?" he began.
A few reporters smiled nervously. Someone whispered a wisecrack.
"Seriously," Milton went on, "I've wondered a few times. Why did Cyrus Ott come all the way out here to found this place? Why would such a rich and powerful guy bother? The story is that Ott had a righteous passion for news, and he believed that the world needed a solid publication. I don't buy that. I'm a journalist--temperamentally opposed to noble motives. The truth is, the guy came out here for the pizza."
Everyone laughed.
"As for me," Milton continued, "I can't pretend to any higher motives myself. I just love putting out a newspaper: headlines and deadlines. Nothing noble. But, folks," he concluded, "this is the end of the line for me. It's time to step down."
A few editors gasped.
Milton grinned. "Oh come on--don't act surprised. In a rumor mill like this newsroom, don't pretend you clowns didn't know."
Milton lost his voice then. The room stayed silent, awaiting his next word. He grabbed a copy of that morning's edition, raised it hurriedly, and made for his corner office. It was his final day at the paper. Three months later in Washington, he died of a stroke.
Replacing Milton was not easy. Boyd slotted in a series of middling managers, each of whom lasted a couple of years before retiring on a cushion of Ott stocks. But this did nothing to halt the slide in circulation. The staff was trimmed by attrition; the style pages closed altogether; the culture and sports sections in particular became wastelands.
The paper still filled twelve pages a day, but the proportion of original stories plummeted and wire-service copy proliferated. While other newspapers had been battling the incursions of TV news by adopting color and splashy graphics, the paper remained stolidly black-and-white.
The next challenge was to prove even more formidable: the Internet.
At first, many publications set up websites, charging for access. But readers simply shifted to free content. So media companies slapped more and more online for nothing, expecting that Internet ads would eventually catch up with hemorrhaging print losses.
The paper, however, had an idiosyncratic response: it did nothing. The corrections editor, Herman Cohen, nixed all talk of a website. "The Internet is to news," he said, "what car horns are to music."
"MARKETS CRASH
OVER FEARS OF
CHINA SLOWDOWN"
* * *
CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER--ABBEY PINNOLA
ONCE AT THE BOARDING GATE, ABBEY FALLS INTO HER CUSTOMARY travel coma, a torpor that infuses her brain like pickling fluid during long trips. In this state, she nibbles any snack in reach, grows mesmerized by strangers' footwear, turns philosophical, ends up weepy. She gazes at the banks of seats around the departure lounge: young couples nestling, old husbands reading books about old wars, lovers sharing headphones, whispered words about duty-free and delays.
She boards the plane, praying it won't be full. The
flight from Rome to Atlanta is eleven hours, and she intends to stretch out--she'll work and sleep, in that order. From the corner of her eye, she spots a man pausing at her row, consulting his ticket. She glares out the window, imploring him away. (Once, she allowed a fellow passenger to engage her in conversation and it became the longest flight of her life. He made her play Scrabble and insisted that "ug" was a word. Since then, her rule has been to never talk on planes.)
The man says, "Well, what d'ya know," and sits beside her. The plane has not even taxied and already he's attempting conversation. She twitches in his direction and offers a faint "Hmm," but does not turn from her window.
He falls silent.
The force and tilt of takeoff awaken her. She was dreaming. About what? Can't remember. She needs her files from the overhead bin, but the Fasten Seat Belts sign is still lit. She drifts back into her travel coma, staring vacantly out the window as the clouds below sink into an infinite mattress.
She studies her fingernails, worrying about Henry, who doesn't want to visit his father in London over the school holidays and is about the age where she can't force him. Is he snubbing his dad out of loyalty to her? She hopes so, and she hopes not. She'll force Henry to go until he reaches a set age. Sixteen, say?
For God's sake! Enough! She has been trying to ignore it, but if this idiot beside her doesn't cede a corner of the armrest, she'll suffocate him with the vomit bag. She makes her elbow as pointy as possible and, very gradually, digs it into his forearm. How long before he gives in?
But he doesn't seem to notice and she is disgusted to touch him, so she gives up. He is picking the skin around his thumb, working free a strand of cuticle. Repugnant. She wants to see what this guy looks like, to attach a face to her loathing, but she can't turn to him without attracting notice. So she imagines him: American, fiftysomething, a loser. Cellulite, dandruff, thyroid on the blink. Works at Office Depot selling industrial ladders. Or does tech support and plays video games after work. Fanny pack, sweat socks, high-tops. What was he doing in Rome, anyway? He'd heard it was full of culture? Had himself photographed at the Colosseum, arm around a rent-a-gladiator?
But this is ridiculous--why should she be uncomfortable for eleven hours because of this idiot? She launches another pointed-elbow assault on the armrest, ratcheting up the pressure on his bone.
"Here," he says, pulling away. "Let me give you some space."
"Oh, thanks," she responds, ears blushing, crimson rising from lobes upward, and she hates him more.
"Sorry," he says. "I'm bad about hogging. Do it without realizing. Just holler if you don't get enough space. I'm kinda gangly." He jiggles his arms to make the point. "Least we got the emergency exits. You can always tell the smart people by who asks for them. Emergency exits are practically first-class--not that I sat there before, but I figure it's the same--and all for the price of cattle class."
"Listen, would you mind doing me a big favor and waking me when they serve lunch? If you're awake, obviously. Thanks." She says this with her attention fixed on the seat-back in front of her, then returns to the window and pulls down the shade. She has done something stupid, though. She doesn't want to sleep. She wants to work. Now she'll be forced to fake it. She despises him.
Seven minutes pass--all the pretend sleep she can bear. She half rises from her seat, jaw compressed in cordial smile, and reaches for the overhead bin. "Just need to grab something."
He jumps up, drops his book on his seat, and makes way.
With difficulty, she squeezes out into the aisle.
"Can I help you get something?"
It happens in two stages. First, he looks familiar. Second, she realizes that she knows him. Dear Lord. What a nightmare. "Oh my God," she says. "Hi, hi. I totally didn't recognize you." Indeed, she still can't place him.
"You didn't know it was me?"
"I'm so sorry. I was completely spaced. I get in my own little world when I fly."
"No problem at all. Can I get something down for you?"
Her brain clicks: it's Dave Belling.
She wants to die. This is copydesk Dave. Newly fired Dave. Dave, who was laid off to cut costs. Dave, whom she ordered fired. Eleven hours beside him. Worse still, she has been caught in travel mode, in sweatpants, hair in pigtails. (At the paper, she's all suits and boots, eyes cold as coins.) As Henry would say, Che figura di merda.
"I think I can reach it," she says. "Thanks, though." But she can't quite get it. Her ears boil. "It's that blue bag. No, dark blue. Yup. Yeah. That's it. Great. Thanks. Thanks so much."
He steps aside gallantly to let her retake her seat.
She does so with a light smile and lead in her stomach. "I'm sorry if I seemed rude before. I really had no idea it was you." Stop babbling. "Anyway, how are you? What's going on? Where you headed?" Where is he headed? He's on a plane to Atlanta. And how's he doing? He just got fired.
"Good, real good," he replies.
"Great, that's great."
"You?"
"Good, good. Heading to Atlanta--obviously. I have this meeting with the Ott board. Our annual reckoning."
"You're the one who has to do that?"
"Afraid so. Our benighted publisher refuses."
"So the mud pie lands on your plate."
"Yup, yup. That's my plate all right. Though I must admit," she says, "it is interesting going to headquarters. We all have this tendency in Rome to think we're the center of the Ott world. Then when I go to Atlanta it really puts everything in perspective. Just how small we are."
"Not 'we' anymore," he says good-naturedly. "Not for me, anyhow."
"Yes, yes, right. Sorry."
"There was no movement at the paper, so I figured it was time to leave."
He must not realize that she knows the truth. More important, he must not realize her role in his dismissal. "That sounds wise," she says, filling the silence. "What's that you're reading?"
He retrieves the paperback from under his behind and shows the cover.
"Oh wow," she says. "I'm a huge Jane Austen fan."
"Oh yeah?"
"I haven't read Persuasion," she says. "But Pride and Prejudice is probably--no, definitely--my favorite book of all time. I'm trying to get my girls to read it, but I think they're a bit young still."
"What age?"
"Ten and eleven."
"I hadn't read anything by her till a couple of months ago," he says. "But now I'm on, like, a kind of mission to read everything she ever did. Which is not all that much. This is the last on my list." He studies the cover. "This wasn't her title for it--she died before it came out. The publisher called it Persuasion."
"Great title, though."
"It is, isn't it."
"What's your favorite of hers?" she asks.
"Mansfield Park, maybe. Maybe Pride. The only one that didn't do it for me was Sense and Sensibility."
"I've actually only read Pride and Prejudice."
"I thought she was your favorite writer."
"I know, I know. But I'm a terrible reader. Three kids. The job."
"Three kids?" He makes a face.
"What's that mean?"
"No, I'm impressed. You seem young to have three."
"I guess. Though I'm not that young. Anyway. Sorry, I should let you get back to your book."
"No prob, seriously--it's good getting a chance to talk. Nobody talks at that office. You notice that? Weirdest thing when I started there--I was, like, is there some kind of clique out here or do I have a real bad odor or something? It's like a veil of silence in there."
"That's the paper all right."
"You practically feel like everybody hates you."
"That's how I feel all the time there." Her colleagues don't even have the respect to use her name, referring to her as "Accounts Payable." She hates the nickname. They can't accept that she's young and a woman and above them in the food chain. But she's the one keeping them employed. Those guys--glorified stenographers, pontificating about prer
ogatives of the press--as if the paper were anything more than a business. Not when we're losing this kind of money. And that champion of pontificators, the insufferable Herman Cohen, constantly forwarding her articles like "How Bean Counters Are Ruining the Media." As if she were running the place into the ground. It's he who blocked the paper from starting a website. In this day and age, we still have no Web presence! But those who call her Accounts Payable don't think about this stuff. They don't think about how much money the paper drops each time they're late in closing the edition (forty-three thousand euros so far this annum). Or how much she battled against layoffs. (She got the Ott board down from sixteen to nine, with just one coming from editorial.) Without her, the staff would be on the streets in a month. And they slag her off.
"That is so sad," she continues. "It takes an intercontinental flight to actually exchange words with someone in the office."
"Although we did talk once, when I started."
"Right, my welcome-aboard chat. Was I a total cow?"
"Not a total one."
"Oh no! Really?"
"I'm kidding. No, you just seemed real busy."
"I am. So, so busy. The board won't pay for an assistant. And why would they, quite frankly? They're getting three employees' work out of me. It's my own fault. Sorry, I shouldn't vent. And a retroactive sorry if I was a bit of a you-know-what back at work. Just a strange atmosphere at the paper sometimes, as you know." She angles herself toward him. "So you like to read?"
He ruffles the pages of his book. "When I can." He rests the paperback facedown on his thigh.
"You shouldn't spread it out like that."
"Like what?"
"Bending your book. You're gonna break the spine."
"I don't mind."
"Sorry. I'm being bossy. I should let you read."
"Don't worry about it."
"I should probably do some work myself." She opens the tray table but hesitates. Is there anything in her files that mentions Dave? Anything he shouldn't see? She opens her binder a crack and extracts a few innocuous pages but is furtively studying him. He turns a page of his book. He seems engrossed and not remotely curious to peek at her tedious charts. What page is he on? Eighty-three. She makes a fake shuffle of her papers, a meaningless check mark, but in fact she is reading Persuasion over his shoulder. He turns the page. He goes faster than she does. That's sort of annoying. But it's to be expected--he already knows what's going on in the story. She makes a few more spurious shifts of her papers. He turns another page and, after perceptibly holding his breath, spreads the book wider, for both of them to see. She has been caught again. Ears burning, she turns back to her work.