The Imperfectionists: A Novel

by Tom Rachman

  She always arrives early for her shift because the newsroom is empty then, except for Menzies, who seems never to leave. Regrettably, her colleagues on the copydesk eventually turn up. The first to do so today is the slot editor, Ed Rance, who barges out of the elevator, nose running, aerating a damp armpit with waves of his hand. He bicycles to work and sweats profusely, stains mottling his khakis. She won't allow him the chance to not say hello--she'll not say hello first. She rushes off to the toilets and hides in a stall, giving the finger to the door.

  She returns, late for the start of her shift.

  "Try to be here on time," Ed Rance says.

  She slams her ass into the chair.

  Ed Rance and the other copy editor on duty, Dave Belling, are proofreading the early edition. Ed Rance hands Ruby the last few pages--the dullest--to check over, then whispers something to Dave Belling. They laugh.

  "What?" she asks.

  "Not talking about you, Rube. World doesn't revolve around you, Rube."

  "Yeah, well. I seriously don't need this."

  In fact, they aren't talking about her but about Saddam Hussein. It's December 30, 2006, and Saddam was hanged at dawn. For amusement, they're hunting for footage of the execution on the Internet.

  Meantime, all the senior editors cluster around the layout desk to discuss page one. "We got art?"

  "Of what? Dictator on a rope?"

  "What are the wires offering?"

  "Him on the slab. His head is, like, all at an angle. Like, all twisted around to the side."

  "That's gotta hurt."

  "Can we do a frame grab off Al Jazeera?"

  Someone jokes: "Why don't we do a frame grab of the whole New York Times front page and just publish that? Then we can go home right now."

  This wins a ringing endorsement and a fast-dying chuckle--they don't like to laugh at each other's jokes.

  Dave Belling finds footage of the hanging online and calls over his friends, Ed Rance and Clint Oakley. The three men watch as Saddam refuses the hood. Executioners place the noose around his neck. They tighten the knot. The video stops.

  "That's it? No drop?"

  "Poor

  sweet

  Saddam."

  "Poor adorable Saddam."

  "Somewhere an angel just got his wings."

  "Somewhere an angel is shooting a rifle in heaven."

  Ruby wasn't invited to watch. "Jerks."

  They pretend not to hear her and hunt for fresh video, something smutty this time.

  She happens to like their infantile humor--it's her taste, too. But they never include her. And when she tells a joke they're repulsed. Why do they treat her like a freak? "Like I'm malignant."

  This coven of losers, ogling babes on YouTube--and they consider her a menopausal troll. But she's the same as them: middle-aged, pervy, bored. Why do they have to make her feel like some piece of crap. "They're infants is why."

  Copy for the late edition drizzles in. The room grows quieter. One can tell time by the noise level. Early, the newsroom is abuzz with humorless jokes. Later, now, a hush settles but for tapping keyboards and nervous coughs. At deadline, the outbursts come.

  Ruby stares at the blinking cursor. They've given her nothing, not one story to edit. And then they're gonna dump Saddam on her at deadline. "Assholes."

  But when the Saddam story does land Ed Rance assigns it to Dave Belling.

  "Jerks." Instead of anything important, Ruby is assigned a series of mind-numbing briefs: a Nigerian pipeline blast; skirmishes in Mogadishu; the Russian gas standoff. Then Ed Rance gives her a news analysis on nuclear arms in Iran and North Korea, with ludicrous headline dimensions. The story is huge, two thousand words, but the head is tiny: one column wide and three lines deep. How do you summarize all this crap in three words? They treat her like she's a goddamn slave or something. "Pricks."

  As is his habit, Herman Cohen pauses at the copydesk on his way home, standing behind each editor in turn, reading their screens. Dave Belling has a bag of sunflower seeds open and Herman digs in without asking, as he does whenever he spots open food containers. He orders tweaks to the Saddam headline, then thuds away.

  The senior editors call Kathleen on her mobile to discuss page one. They put her on speakerphone so everyone can go on record endorsing her, then hang up and mock her, as if to cleanse the air of their sycophancy.

  Minutes to deadline, Ruby has finished everything but a brief. She's struggling to fit "Mogadishu" into a one-column headline. Clint Oakley appears. "Who did the head on the Nigeria pipeline explosion?" he says. "Are you guys kidding me? 'Blast Kills People Again.'" He cackles with laughter. "What retard wrote that?" Ever since Clint was demoted from culture editor to obituaries, he has hung around the copydesk looking for easy targets--Ruby, above all. He knows full well it was she who handled the Nigeria pipeline story. "Who did that?" he persists. "Whoever it was should be fired. You're changing it, right? Ed Rance?"

  "Already changed, Clint Oakley." The guys refer to each other by full names, as if this were boarding school.

  "Cool, Ed Rance. Wanted to make sure." He walks away, sneering. "'Blast Kills People Again'! I fuckin' love it!"

  Ruby is trembling with rage. That headline was a one-column-four and Ed Rance was screaming at her to finish it. What's she supposed to do? Now it's minutes from deadline and the word "Mogadishu" stares insolently at her. "Can't concentrate."

  "I need that Somalia head," Ed Rance says.

  "I

  know!"

  "Now,

  Ruby."

  "It's not ready!"

  "We're at deadline. Put it down."

  "Gimme a minute!"

  "If you can't do it, put it down and I'll give it to someone who can."

  "Jesus Christ!" She closes the file.

  "Unprofessional," Ed Rance mutters.

  Soon, the inside pages are finished. Page one is double-checked and put to bed.

  It's 10 P.M., the shift is over, the staff are sprung.

  Tomorrow is New Year's Eve, so everyone has the day off. A few journalists and technicians linger to discuss party plans, but most slip out one by one; they stagger their departures to avoid having to share the elevator down. Soon the newsroom is empty except for Menzies, who is still at his computer, and Ruby, who packs up her tools: cushion, disinfectant wipes, RSI wrist braces, ergonomic keyboard and mouse. She locks her drawer and rakes a shivering hand through her hair, as if to dislodge spiders. "Such pricks." It'll feel good when she fucking quits. "Cannot wait."

  It's dark as she heads for the bus stop. To her surprise, the paper's young publisher, Oliver Ott, is walking his dog in her direction--why is he coming to the office at this hour? He is a tall man, blemished and ungainly, and stares down at his basset hound, which sniffs the sidewalk. Oliver and the dog pass right by--her own publisher seems not to have the faintest idea who she is.

  "Hello?" she says indignantly as he walks past her. She turns: "Am I invisible? Do you not see me?" He looks back. "Fuckin' asshole!" she shouts and storms away. "Good for you," she tells herself, continuing down Corso Vittorio, past her bus stop. "Good for you! Screw him!" Those weasels will use this to fire her now. "Fucking pricks. Hope they do fire me." Kathleen would love it--love to see Ruby gone. Almost worth staying just to spite her. " Almost worth it." Kathleen. "Bitch."

  Ruby and Kathleen joined the paper in the same crop of interns in 1987. Ruby arrived a week earlier, so was able to show the younger girl the premises, pointing out all the editors, presenting her around--even introducing her to the good-looking Italian intern, Dario de Monterecchi, whom Ruby had a crush on. Within three months, the editor-in-chief, Milton Berber, had hired Kathleen as a news assistant while he'd not even spoken a word to Ruby. And within ten months, Kathleen and Dario had moved in together. Over the following years, Kathleen became a hotshot reporter at the paper, a star, moving up the ranks, and finally jumping to a big-shot newspaper in Washington.

  Now, years later, Kathleen h
as returned triumphant, the boss, while Ruby--who never left, who was loyal--is a piece of dirt. "Which is exactly how they treat me." Kathleen included. "Cow." If these idiots won't fire Ruby for swearing at the publisher, she'll walk in and quit on New Year's Day. That'll be sweet. Get out of this lousy country. "Home, finally."

  She takes a seat on the bus home. The irony is that she's actually good at her job.

  "Not that they give a shit."

  The bus halts to allow New Year's tourists to flood across the intersection, then continues over the bridge toward St. Peter's, whose cupola is lit purple-yellow. As they drive past, she cranes her neck to keep the basilica in view until the last possible moment.

  Then it is gone.

  She lives in a modern building that overlooks the Porta Portese flea market and the dog pound. The barking never ceases, so she keeps her windows closed at all times.

  When she was new to Rome, friends from America used to come stay with her. But each visit proved tense. It's the design of this place, like a New York railroad apartment, every room feeding into the next. These days, it's strewn with dirty clothing--tangled bustiers, oversize T-shirts, banana hair clips. The kitchen is as jumbled, with torn muffin papers, empty milk bottles, used aluminum sheets, shopping bags. No outsider has visited for years, so what's the point in tidying?

  She changes into her Fordham sweatshirt, opens the refrigerator, and yawns into its white light. She cracks a Heineken and drinks it before the open fridge, her mind emptying with the can. The sharp corners of her day go smooth.

  She scans the fridge: a jar of black olives, no-name ketchup, cheese slices. To eat or to sleep--the perennial night-shift conundrum. She confronts her dilemma as always, with a tub of Haagen-Dazs on the couch and Tony Bennett on the stereo, volume low.

  The CD came free with a magazine and has become part of her after-work routine. She has the TV on, too, with the sound off. She watches Ballando con le Stelle without seeing, listens to Tony Bennett without hearing, eats Vanilla Swiss Almond without tasting. Yet the mix is the most splendid she knows.

  Next up, the silenced television has a documentary on the deposed Italian royal family. She changes to a news show, which is running clips of Saddam's career, from Halabja to Kuwait to the gallows. She switches back to the royals.

  Explosions go off down the street: adolescents testing fireworks for tomorrow.

  Her feet rest on the coffee table, beside a pile of family photos she brought back from New York after her father's funeral. She drapes the edge of a blanket over the pictures to hide them from view.

  She shuts her eyes, shakes her head. "Vicious place." That office. "Let them fire me." They'll do it by email: Ruby, we want to talk to you. "Performance review."

  Administrative probation. Fired for shouting at that idiot man-child Oliver Ott. Back to Queens. "What a relief that'd be." Seriously. "No reason to stay here." Dario? "He's not a reason."

  By 2 A.M., she is drunk. She opens her cellphone, smiling at Dario's name on the list of contacts. She'll invite him over, right now. Why not? She dials him, boozy, brassy.

  He doesn't answer.

  She closes the phone, wobbles over to the medicine chest. From a toilet bag, she retrieves a bottle of men's cologne, Drakkar Noir. She dabs it on her hands, breathes in, breathes out, eyes closed. She touches her palms lightly together, runs her fingers down her cheeks, around her throat, until she smells Dario all around.

  A pebble of melting Haagen-Dazs remains in the container. She slurps it and cracks the last beer, drifting off in front of the TV.

  The next morning, a grinding noise wakes her. A high-pitched drilling follows.

  Then hammer against stone. Construction? On New Year's Eve? "Must be illegal." Not that it matters here. Fucking Italians. She hides under the blanket but can't sleep. In the bathroom, she laps water from the open tap. Noise judders the apartment. She blinks murderously between the blinds at the workmen shouting over a blasting radio.

  She locates a plastic bag she has been saving for an opportunity like this, teases apart the knot, and recoils at the smell. She takes out a rotten tomato, a rotten egg, and a rotten orange and opens the window. With deliberation, she aims and tosses the egg, then ducks. No one howls--she has missed. Next, the orange. Still no bull's-eye. She hurls the tomato and it lands perfectly, splattering seeds and fetid pulp. She hides under her window ledge. The workmen curse for a minute, hunting around for their attacker. They turn off their radio.

  "Victory," she says.

  Then the radio comes back on, they are as loud as before, and she is wide awake.

  She sits on the toilet. "What kind of people are these?"

  The hissing shower fills the bathroom with steam. She strips, disheartened at the sight of her naked body. "It's like I'm melting." She scrubs herself roughly under the spray, then drips sullenly around the bathroom.

  She takes the bus to Piazza del Popolo and walks to the Metropolitan cinema, which is showing the latest James Bond movie, Casino Royale. She studies the poster outside. Is it worse to watch a movie alone in a packed theater or alone in an empty one?

  What if there's someone she knows? Someone from work? She recalls her tantrum at Oliver Ott. Should she go into the office and check her emails? He will have complained to Kathleen. This'll be it. They'll fire her. Imagine all she can do once freed from the paper. Only, she cannot imagine anything--she has hated this job for years, yet blanks at a future outside that newsroom.

  She glances around. What if Dario saw her in front of this cinema, alone on New Year's Eve? What if he's strolling along Via del Corso with his family right now? She escapes down Via di Ripetta, cuts down side streets, emerging finally at Piazza San Salvatore in Lauro. The winter sun reaches down here, its warmth spread across the piazza like a tablecloth. She shades her brow. Traffic whooshes along Lungotevere.

  Pedestrians pass, quietly, respectfully. She admires the broad-shouldered church there--it looks as if it had kicked aside all those grimy cars crowding its steps. A simple crucifix hangs above the pediment, archangels under the frieze, stone columns framing the sturdy wooden door.

  She walks peaceably away, gliding within tranquil thoughts, watching her shoes emerge one after the other beneath her. She crosses the Tiber and merges with the crowd entering St. Peter's. The square's curled colonnades embrace the pilgrims, the colossal basilica looms behind, a stone obelisk points to the clouds. However, the center of attention today is the Christmas tree and the Nativity scene, including a flailing baby Jesus picked out by spotlight. The throng pushes closer to the creche, and Ruby moves, too, studying not the tableau but the surging crowd itself: dads panning camcorders across the manger, nuns contemplating the Three Wise Men, teenagers whispering rude jokes about donkeys in biblical times. As everyone else angles for a clear view, Ruby closes her eyes and leans into them, brushing strangers' hands--not for long, not so anyone would notice, but in glancing strokes.

  Once home, she takes out her overnight bag, which she packed days ago, and places it by the front door. It's still too early to go to the hotel. She looks around for distraction and grabs the remote control and the blanket, inadvertently baring the family photos from New York: images of Pap, Kurt, herself. She collects them in her lap, reverse sides up.

  Work crosses her mind. Dave Belling. "Such a phony," she mutters. His down-home, Southern-boy country bullshit. Her jaw tenses. Clint Oakley. "Fucking asshole."

  Those guys will love it when she gets fired. "And I'll be over the goddamn moon." Never set foot in that dump again.

  She turns over the photos. The one on top is of Kurt, her brother, older by a year.

  He gave her the photos at Pap's funeral. "We should share them," Ruby told him at the time.

  "It's

  okay."

  "Keep

  some at least."

  He said that Pap, during the last seventy-two hours, had shouted a lot.

  "Saying

  what?"

  "That he
didn't want to die. Made a scene at the hospital."

  "I wish you didn't tell me that, Kurt."

  "But there was no point, really."

  "What

  in?"

  "In you coming back before he died."

  Indeed, Ruby hadn't returned from Italy while Pap was ill--she'd been waiting for a plea. She wanted Pap to express remorse. During the last days, Ruby kept phoning Kurt, hoping to hear Pap wasn't dead, hoping to hear he was. The funeral was at St. Mary Star of the Sea Cemetery, off the Rockaway Turnpike. It was July and hot, and Ruby was afraid everyone would notice how much she sweated. Instead, everyone hugged her: cousins and nephews and kids. She was the daughter of the deceased. Kurt sat next to her, and he squeezed her hand for a few seconds during the service.

  She had four days in Queens after that. Kurt took time off work and drove her around. They ate at the Astoria diner, as they had as kids, when they used to order fries and gravy and squirt on heaps of ketchup and vinegar, creating a mouth-puckering slop.