“I’ve been checking your file,” he said. “I see you got a couple of vacation days from last year.”
“I know.”
“You should take them soon.”
“When I get a chance, I will.”
“Better make it soon,” he warned.
He nodded toward the room beyond the blinds. “Everything okay with that mob out there?”
“Same as usual. Everyone trying to get the hell out.”
“That so? Well, missy, they ain’t going to find any place better than The Best.”
“Probably not,” she muttered.
“What’s that?”
“I’m agreeing with you, Tom. They won’t find anyplace that’s any different from this.”
“Yeah, well, you’ve been around, haven’t you?”
“Yes, I have.” She looked up at the ceiling.
“Debbie Hanson called in sick today,” he told her. “You know anything about that?”
She gave a small sign of relief. She was right. Debbie was under the weather. Clifford had gotten crazy about the whole thing.
“I heard she had been having some flu problems or something,” he continued.
What was it he wanted?
“That better be all,” he added
“What?”
“I said,” he raised his voice, “that better be all it is. I don’t want no pregnant women in my newsroom.”
She stared.
“We ain’t that liberal here, missy. No unmarried pregnant women in this newsroom.”
She gave a short laugh.
“What makes you think she’s pregnant? She’s not pregnant. God.” She laughed again.
“Well, that’s not what I hear,” he leered at her.
Now her eyes were locked on his. Surprised, he thought, but not that surprised. So, there was something.
“I call ‘em’ like I see ‘em,” he said, “and it’s my business to know what’s going on out there.”
“First of all, if it were true,” she responded angrily, “it’s nobody’s business and second, you are all wrong on this one. Like the man said, consider your sources.”
“Where there’s smoke …,” he taunted.
“Tom, if you want to know anything about Debbie, you ask her, not me. And I’m telling you, it’s none of your goddamn business.”
“You watch that mouth of yours, missy,” he warned, pointing at her. “It is my goddamn business. If I’ve got a pregnant reporter, I’d better know it. And, I don’t want to hear talk about abortions either.”
“Abortion?” She shouted the word. “Who the hell said anything about abortion?” What did he know and how? “This is crazy, Tom. You are making something out of absolutely nothing and somebody could get hurt.”
“Yeah?” he smirked. “Well, I run this place and if you don’t like the way I’m doing it, there’s the door.” He signaled with his thumb.
A stab of fear kept her silent.
“You watch that mouth of yours, Peters, and you take those vacation days. You take ‘em soon. Take ‘em or lose ‘em.”
“Fine,” she said, getting to her feet. “I’ll take tomorrow off and Friday and Monday. That should make George happy.”
“Don’t tell me. I don’t keep the goddamn schedule. Gonna look for a job, Peters?” he asked as she reached for the door.
“I’ll give you a great recommendation,” he laughed.
She shut the door firmly behind her.
He reached for the phone. He was going to call that girl at home and she better be there, by God. He wanted to get this thing settled once and for all. He had other fish to fry.
42
She lay by the pool. A few people spoke to her as they passed her chair. Others sat down next to her.
“Nice day,” they said.
“Yes, it is,” she said.
“Been here long?”
“About a year.”
“I’m from Detroit. This is fantastic, swimming in March.”
“Sure is,” she agreed.
“Can’t wait to call home and tell them I’m down here by the pool.”
She could do the same, call her father and tell him she too was sitting by the pool. The last time they spoke, he asked her about taking a week off and flying up there, or he might fly down.
“Maybe in May,” she told him.
But, today, in the sun, she thought she could call him and tell him she was coming or, she smiled, tell him he should come here. He could come here and sit by the pool with the palm trees and the sound of people laughing.
The sun felt soft on her face.
“You like it here?” someone asked her.
“Sometimes,” she said, her eyes closed.
“God, I love it. It is so much better than where I came from. Do you know anything about Nebraska?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Well, if you did, you’d know what I’m talking about. Swimming in March. Who would believe it?” said the young woman’s voice.
“Boy, would I like to live here,” a male voice told her. “This is the life. Me and my wife are going to look at places this afternoon. I figure, what the hey. This is the place to be. This is the future. What do you do?” He stopped to breathe.
“I work in television.”
“Really? Could we see you on the tube? What do you do?”
“I do the news.” She opened her eyes and looked at him. “I’m a reporter.”
“No kidding?”
He was probably in his late forties. Black hair covered his chest and shoulders. He scratched at his belly.
“Me and the wife don’t like that Barbara Walters, you know?’
“Uh huh.”
“Nope, don’t like her at all. How much does a house cost out here?”
The sky was a sapphire blue and the breeze moved through the palms. Beyond the splashing of the swimmers she could hear that breeze.
It was perfect, like a beautiful resort where people lived and talked and moved at an easy pace. Maybe if she slowed down and took more time to sit by the pool and read in the sun, she would feel different about this place. Maybe she would see it like everyone else did.
She left in the afternoon, driving east on the broad avenue that ran along the side of the mountain. Old ranch-style houses sat at its base waiting for the developers to buy them up and knock them down. Dirt driveways led up the mountain to the memories of adobe hotels where dudes once warmed in the sun. Big new yellow-brown stucco houses with rust-red tile roofs flowed down from paved roads to the avenue below.
She turned north to the highway where the resorts came one after the other, surrounded by flowers and lawns and sprinklers shooting water diamonds into the sun. East again past the quiet streets of the desert homes with their lawns of manicured dust and cactus.
She reached the small community where houses clung to the desert and the sides of the small hills. She drove past the empty parking lot of the shopping mall that had never been built and past the pond with the fountain that sent up an hourly shaft of water high enough to be seen for miles. It held some title of being the tallest, the biggest, the everything fountain in the world. She made a half circle of the town and pulled back on the highway.
She crossed the small bridge over the river. She saw hints of green and felt the quiet of a good place to fish or sit or eat a picnic lunch. She stopped at the small store next to the road leading into the reservation. She bought a can of soda from the glass case. The Indian woman with the thick black hair smiled at her as she took her money.
“Can I drive in there?” she asked, gesturing in the direction of the reservation.
“What?”
“Can I drive onto the land, the nation’s land?” She was embarrassed by her words. The nation’s land, that sounded strange, uncomfortable.
“Sure, yes,” the woman looked confused.
“I can drive on it? No problem?”
“No, no problem,” she said and turned to wait on the tall Indi
an boy wearing a white cowboy hat with a single feather.
“Thank you,” she said.
The woman did not answer. She and the boy were laughing together.
Outside, she took a deep breath. The air smelled of trees and fields. It was so quiet, only the birds singing, only a car passing on the highway. She smiled. She was going to make it. Damn it. She was going to make it. She began the drive back.
The key was this land, this being out on the land, away from the city. That’s what she loved. Next week she would drive into the reservation, look at the small farms and the animals. Or, she would drive to the mountains, up to the small towns. She could stay in a little inn. She could do that. Yes, she could. She would be all right. She knew that now.
There would be no more doctor or group or drug addicts. Without all of that she would, for once, be fine. All of that craziness would be out of her life. She would clean it all out, get away from the bad things.
A car passed her, big, faded with the sun. It flew around her going seventy or eighty miles an hour. She thought the driver must be angry in his old rotting carcass of a car.
The job wasn’t bad, not really. She had to relax, not take it so seriously. Isn’t that what Jason told her, not to think so much about things? She could make sure to come out on the land, go to the mountains, get away from work every chance she got. That’s how you survived. Learn to love this place. It was a good place, warm and good. Everybody thought so.
The camper in front of her was going less than forty miles an hour. A Confederate flag covered the back window. She took a chance and pulled out. She saw him as she passed, an old man hunched over the steering wheel.
Maybe there was something else at the station she could do, another type of job. She gasped. The thought stunned her. She didn’t have to be a reporter. There were other things she could do, better things. Wow.
She could do some producing or work on the assignment desk. She had good story ideas, lots of them. This was a decision about how she was going to live, how it could all be better. She exhaled deeply. She felt wonderful with this new idea. Assignment editor. Why not? They were the ones who really made the news. They were the ones who picked out the stories to be covered.
Two cars were coming at her, side by side. She caught her breath, waiting for the car in her lane to make the pass or to pull back fast. At the last second, when there seemed to be no chance he could do it, he made the pass and as he flew by she saw him, a wild, death’s-head-grinning kid of a driver.
Tomorrow she would talk to Brown, to Carter. She would tell them her plan, tell them what she wanted to do. She wanted a career in television but no more reporting, not now, at least. Ellen was right. No wonder she was depressed. It was a depressing job.
Two cars sat crumpled and glass-strewn at the intersection that marked the end of the desert and the beginning of the city. An ambulance waited, doors open. A group of men had gathered. She could not see what was in the middle of their small circle. The cop in khaki and mirrored sunglasses impatiently waved her on.
All right, maybe in six months she could do a little reporting to keep her hand in. But right now, it wasn’t good for her. She’d forget that vision she had of sitting at a typewriter, smoking a cigarette. That’s what Ellen looked like, sitting in her cubicle, her sunglasses pushed on top of her head and her fingers flying across the keys, punching at the letters. She could be that later or never. Now, she needed a plan. Now, she had one.
The traffic rushed by. In her side mirror she could see the angry face of the man tailgating her in his black Mercedes. Suddenly he swung out, passed and pulled in front of her sharply as though shaking his fist in her face.
Tomorrow would be different. For the first time she knew that. Tomorrow was, what did they say, the first day of the rest of your life. And, it was, it really was. Gosh, she told herself, she was happy.
43
“Ain’t no flies on me,” he said out loud as he turned on the engine. “No flies on this black boy.”
He chuckled. Close to dawn and he was still running hard. His bags were in the back and his tapes on the seat next to him. He patted them. It took him only a few hours of editing and dubbing after the six o’clock news.
He did it fast, without thinking. He opened with spot news followed with a hard news package, sports footage, and a feature piece with some tricky editing. He closed with two of the medical stories he did with Ferguson along with a clip from the kidney transplant. The tape ran less than fifteen minutes.
A few people passed by the editing booth as he worked. He could see their shadows move to the small window, stop and move on. Steve was there, working late or coming in after a few beers to find some company. He knocked before opening the door.
“Late story?” he asked.
“Working on my escape tape.”
“Gotcha,” Steve said and closed the door.
He finished by midnight and went back to the apartment to pack his two suitcases. That’s what he came to town with, two suitcases, and that’s what he had now, and the stereo. He wrapped it carefully in his electric blanket and buffered it with his pillows. The whole muffled pile rested on the floor behind the front seat. The speakers went in the trunk separated by the suitcases.
He patted the tapes again, five tapes. He gave a laugh. That’s all he had after more than a year of humping that camera all over the desert, up and down mountains, in and out of vans. That’s all he had for all the heat and the sweat and the fifty-hour weeks and George mouthing off at him, telling him where to go and how to get there and expecting four stories a day and one at two o’clock in the morning, some house fire nobody but nobody cared about.
The rent was paid until the first. He had only used the oven a few times, not enough to eat into his cleaning deposit. He put a letter through the slot in the manager’s door to let him know he was leaving and would call in a week.
So what if they decided to screw him out of the deposit? A couple of hundred bucks, he’d eat it. It was worth a couple of hundred to get out of this town. Like he said, he was going to New York and he would sit in that NBC office until they gave him a job. If they wanted references, they could call Steve and Ferguson, even George. Not Brown. Brown would screw him. He knew that. Brown would screw him good.
He thought about calling Debbie or going by her apartment but stopped himself. He was done with that.
He’d call them from New York and he’d say, “Well, here I am here working in the big time. How’s it down there? A hundred and ten? My oh my.”
He laughed.
The Buick started with a hum. What he needed was a map, a big one. He knew he had to head north until he saw the signs for Albuquerque then hang a right. That was all he needed to know for the next few hours.
He pulled out of the parking lot. He tightened the muscles in his shoulders, pushed them back, sat up straight as he hit the street.
He gritted his teeth. In thirty minutes, forty, there would be one less nigger in this honky town. Hallelujah.
44
“George had to go to some sort of prayer breakfast,” Kim Palmeri told her.
“Where’s everybody else?” Debbie asked.
“It’s early. Can you do this?”
Debbie took the assignment sheet.
“It’s no big deal, but we need stories today.”
“You know what would make this good?” Debbie asked. “I could go out where people are dumping in the desert. Talk to these homeowners about people dumping in alleys. We could try to get an interview with the mayor.
“Obviously, if they are dumping it’s because there’s no place to put it or nobody is picking it up. We should ask him about that. Why aren’t there more heavy trash pickups? You think we could get to him on this?” She was excited now. This was the way stories should be done.
“Carter’s looking for you, Debbie.” Mary walked over to them. “He called a few minutes ago to find out if you were in.”
“Why?” she cried
out as though she had been punched in the chest.
“I don’t know. He didn’t say. Probably nothing to worry about,” Mary reassured her. “He’s on his way in.”
“Ah, no,” she moaned. “I’ve got to get out of here.”
“I already told him you were here. I’m sorry, but you know how he is.”
Debbie searched for hope, any hope there could be. “It might be nothing,” she told them. “And, I need to talk to him too.” She tried to make her voice strong.
Maybe she could get to Brown first. He would help her. She would tell him her plan, that she wanted to do assignments. He would help her.
“Is Brown in?” she asked Kim.
“Not yet.”
“Well,” she said, “it will be okay, won’t it?”
The other women didn’t answer.
Ten minutes later Mary called.
“He wants you in his office.”
She looked down at her hands. They were shaking. All the resolve, the joy that came with the drive yesterday had disappeared. She was filled with with terror. What was he going to do to her?
“I tried to get you at home yesterday,” Carter told her. “All day. Where the hell were you?”
“I wasn’t feeling well so I unplugged the phone, so I could sleep.”
“Listen, honey,” he sneered, “we’re on call twenty-four hours a day in this station. We don’t unplug our phones and we don’t take them off the hook. You got that?”
“Oh,” she said and gave a small smile of relief. “I am sorry. I wasn’t thinking.” Was that all it was? Okay, then.
He narrowed his eyes.
“And we’ve got another problem here too. I want to know what the hell this talk is about your personal life. I don’t like that going on in my newsroom.”
“I don’t understand.” She reached for the edge of his desk.
“You heard me. There is some talk about your personal business and I want it stopped now.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” his eyes narrowed, “this station is made up of ladies and gentlemen.”
The Best in the West Page 22