The Wedding Beat

by Devan Sipher

  He leaned into her. Again with the whispering. “It wasn’t Bandipur,” she laughed. “It was Gorkha.”

  I had very little to offer in the way of romantic memories of Nepal. I needed to switch subjects fast.

  “What’s your book about?” I asked.

  “Nepal,” she said. I wanted to shoot myself. “It’s not going as well as I want. Someone once said a writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”

  “It was Thomas Mann,” I said, convinced I had found my soul mate.

  Her eyes widened and she seemed to look at me with new appreciation. “The problem is, I want the book to be about more than just my experiences. I want it to be about what it means to travel someplace as a person, both internally and externally.”

  We had arrived back at the staircase, and Jamie headed down first. I still couldn’t figure out whether they were a couple. His willingness to leave her alone with me suggested supreme confidence—or disinterest.

  “You may not know this,” Melinda said, “but the word ‘travel’ comes from the word ‘travail.’ And ‘travail’ comes from the Latin word ‘tripalium,’ which, surprisingly, is the name of a three-pronged instrument of torture.”

  Speaking of torture, Jamie rapped impatiently on the metal banister at the bottom of the stairs. Melinda seemed reluctant to end our conversation, yet she moved toward the lip of the roof. The terrace was beneath us, and beyond that a patchwork of illuminated windows and gray slivers of the Hudson River.

  “So travel,” she continued, “was initially conceived of as a painful and arduous experience.”

  “And that was before Homeland Security,” I quipped, wanting to make a move and finding it hard to believe anything could be more painful or arduous.

  She laughed as she tentatively took hold of the banisters. She was trembling. “Going down’s the hard part.”

  “Turn around,” I said impulsively, and she did, gripping the handrails tightly. “Keep your eyes on me.” She did that as well, lifting her chin until it was parallel to my own. I held her gaze as she haltingly descended one step. Then another. I lowered myself in tandem, stair by stair, synchronizing my movement. Even my breath.

  “Don’t look down,” I kept saying, as if I’d done this a hundred times. Her hand grazed mine, and my heart stopped. Or it felt like it did. It felt like everything stopped.

  Then Jamie swooped in and lifted her off the stairs.

  “Thanks, mate,” he said as he carried her away. The Australian accent was the clincher.

  The Doobie Brothers were blasting from the stereo when I finally dragged myself inside. As I closed the glass door behind me, I felt depleted. It wasn’t possible that this year had 364 more days to go. I saw Hope eagerly waving at me from the kitchen, and the party had thinned out enough for me to weave my way over. She was wearing an emerald green knit dress that showed off her athletic frame, and she seemed rather cheerful for someone supposedly in the depths of depression.

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” she said with a big hug. “Conrad called.” Whenever she felt weak, she went running back to her commitment-phobe ex, who bore a more than passing resemblance to her estranged father. But we had a pact. She never mentioned Laurel. I never mentioned her father.

  “Conrad called?” I asked suspiciously.

  “Okay, I called him,” she said. “What’s important is I feel good about myself.”

  “Just how good do you feel?”

  “Good enough to see him Friday night?” she squeaked, anticipating my disapproval.

  “One phone call and leader board be damned?”

  “It seems to work better in theory than in practice,” she said.

  I had grown fond of the leader-board system, but who was I to judge? I was now measuring relationships in quarter hours. Hope picked up on my morose mood.

  “You’re going to meet someone perfect for you,” she said soothingly. Now that she had a date lined up, she had transformed into Our Lady of Tranquillity. “Someone who makes you entirely forget about Laurel.”

  Hope knew better than to use the L word, and I knew better than to go out when I had an article due. I was irritated with Hope for pressuring me to come to the party. Mostly, I was irritated with myself about falling so quickly for Melinda.

  “I met someone perfect for me, but I wasn’t perfect for her. I wasn’t anything for her.”

  “Do you want to tell me about her?”

  “No,” I said, before launching into a monologue about Melinda’s travels and quirky charm. “AND she went to Harvard. AND she’s a journalist.”

  “She must have been impressed when you told her where you worked,” Hope said. That shut me up. “You told her, didn’t you?”

  “I was asking her questions,” I said in my defense. “You always tell me that women like to be asked questions.”

  “How could you not tell a journalist that you work for one of the top newspapers on the planet?” I was better at asking questions than answering them. “Your problem isn’t meeting women. Your problem is you get insecure and sabotage yourself.”

  “If I were insecure, I wouldn’t have lasted one day at my job.”

  “You’re confident when it comes to work,” Hope said, “but when you’re around a woman you like, you regress to the age of twelve.”

  “I don’t do that, and if I ever did do that, I didn’t do it this time,” I said, sounding at least fourteen.

  Someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around, and it was Melinda. She was wearing a gray pea coat and a sweet expression. I saw the Aussie waiting for her by the front door, and a pubescent pang of jealousy burned beneath my rib cage.

  “I just wanted to say that it was nice meeting you,” she said, tilting her head up at me, her curly bangs spilling across her forehead. I wanted to take her in my arms and tell her how breathtakingly adorable she was. I settled for holding her slender hand.

  “Same here,” I said, wishing there was no Aussie.

  “Good. I mean, thank you. I mean, happy New Year.”

  I let her fingers go and watched her walk away. Then I turned back to Hope, mouthing, “That was her!”

  “She’s cute,” Hope said. “Did you get her number?”

  “I told you—she has a boyfriend.”

  “Then why did she come say good-bye to you?”

  “She was just being nice. Which makes her that much more amazing. She went out of her way to find me just so she could say—” I stopped myself midsentence as I had a horrifyingly delayed realization about why she would have made that effort. I whipped myself around just in time to see the door closing.

  “Gavin, you’re a fool,” Hope said in the kindest way possible.

  I bolted through the crowd, dodging and ducking and tackling one unfortunate couple that was standing between me and the door. I threw it open, hoping to see Melinda in the vestibule, but she wasn’t there.

  I banged on the elevator call button. The electronic display showed the single elevator was already down to the third floor. I couldn’t wait for it to make it back to the seventh. I flew down the stairwell, taking the steps two at a time and jumping over the last few before each landing. As soon as I caught up to her I would explain that I hadn’t been thinking. That of course I wanted her number. No, I didn’t just want her number; I wanted to kiss her. I wouldn’t say I wanted to kiss her; I would just kiss her. I couldn’t wait to kiss her. I stumbled into the lobby and out of the building, breathing hard. The dark avenue was deserted. But she couldn’t have gotten far. I raced north a block to Twenty-sixth Street and looked up and down the cross street. No one. I must have gone the wrong way. I sprinted back the other direction to Twenty-fifth. Then Twenty-fourth. Searching for a sign of her coat or her curls. I spun round. Still no one.

  She was gone.

  Chapter Five

  If Cinderella Were on Facebook, Would Jiminy Cricket Tweet?

  I didn’t have her number. I didn’t have her last name
. And the host of the party said he didn’t know any Melindas or Australians. My only lead was Lonely Planet, but the odds of them having record of a stringer in Nepal were minimal. The odds of them sharing it were even less. So I did what any self-respecting journalist would do. I Googled.

  I got 2,340,000 results when I searched for “Melinda” and “travel.” I added “Nepal,” reducing it to a relatively low 10,700.

  Melinda Shapiro posted a review of a hotel in Katmandu.

  Bob and Melinda Blanchard wrote a book called Live What You Love.

  Melinda Windsor was the Playmate of the Month in February 1966. Wasn’t sure what the Nepal connection was, but I was briefly diverted. The eBay listing for the Playboy issue didn’t show any pictures, but there was an extracted quote: “I never go out with married men, so won’t you please come in?” I wondered if someone had fact-checked that.

  I had promised myself that I would take only a ten-minute break before finishing my column. After an hour of clicking on unpromising links, I had my first lead when I came across an article about low-cost flights to Nepal by Melinda Adams on the Travel Channel Web site. There were also blog entries. But no picture.

  It was a long shot, but I tried Google Image search. I typed in “Melinda Adams” and “Nepal.” And there she was in a photo on AdventureTraveler.com. A blue-eyed redhead who looked about nineteen.

  I was at a dead end. I pictured Melinda’s face tilting up toward mine as her fingers slipped through my grasp. There were nearly ten thousand remaining results from my initial Google search and no guarantee that any of them would be the right Melinda. Just thinking about reading through all of them was enervating. So I didn’t think.

  Melinda Lopez was looking for a bi-curious Buddhist woman for travel and other explorations.

  Melinda Davis was protesting Chinese policies in Tibet with a Himalayan-themed sorority party at Tulane.

  And Melinda Finn wrote an article about trekking with a Nepalese Gurkha for the New York Observer. More than one article. My pulse quickened as I perused the articles. The Observer described her as a writer in New York. Nothing came up when I did an image search, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me. More perplexing was the fact that there weren’t any Melinda Finns in New York registered on Facebook, and Yahoo’s People Search didn’t show any living in New York under the age of fifty-three. However, there were phone numbers listed for twenty-seven M. Finns.

  As I began dialing, it occurred to me that I was potentially becoming a stalker, but I preferred to see it in more chivalrous terms. There is a long literary tradition of enterprising gestures by romantic heroes, and compared to going door-to-door with a glass slipper, I was behaving quite rationally. I didn’t really see a problem until I found myself explaining to Sheldon Finn why I was calling his ten-year-old daughter, Madelyn.

  Afraid I might trigger an AMBER Alert, I reconsidered my approach. I read the Observer articles in more detail, looking for clues to assist me. In one of the pieces, she mentioned a boyfriend hiking with her. I pictured Jamie standing in silhouette on a granite outcropping, and then I saw him turning and sneering at me. I shuddered and kept reading. In a more recent story, she specifically referred to traveling alone. Other than that, there were no identifying characteristics. Nothing about her height or hair color or a predilection for Australian imports.

  Then I noticed something that made my stomach do a somersault. There was an e-mail address printed at the bottom of one of the articles. It was an address at the Observer. But it was still an address, and it was hers. She was just a click away.

  I boldly typed my business e-mail into the sender field. It was a subtle but effective way of letting her know where I worked. Hope would be proud of me. Plus it would look professional—just one journalist contacting another—in case someone else at the newspaper had access to her e-mail. I figured I would keep the message professional as well.

  It was a pleasure conversing with you.

  There was professional, and then there was stiff.

  I really enjoyed our conversation, and I sincerely hope I have the opportunity to continue it.

  Sounding awkward and insecure was not the way to get her to give me a second chance.

  Your incandescent smile short-circuited my brain. I can’t stop thinking about you, and I will be eternally grateful if you agree to have dinner with me.

  I hit SEND before I had time to change my mind.

  Chapter Six

  The News Zoo Revue

  By morning light, my impetuousness seemed more self-destructive than seductive.

  As I hurried to work, I realized I had no way of knowing if the Melinda I e-mailed was the Melinda I was seeking. Even if she was, she might not appreciate an amorous missive sent to her workplace. And if she was a freelancer, which was likely, the odds were good that she wouldn’t even receive the e-mail. My message was going to end up in some general-delivery account read by an overambitious, undercompensated peon. My best hope was that said peon would then forward it to Melinda. As opposed to reading it aloud for his coworkers’ amusement before deleting it. Or, worse, he might notice the sender’s address, which would not be good. Well, not for me.

  If I had used my Hotmail address, I would have remained anonymous. Instead, I had chosen to broadcast that I worked at The Paper. I might as well have sent naked photos of myself to the National Enquirer. Actually, that would have been a safer choice. The Enquirer wouldn’t have much interest in a mere journalist. The Observer would. I could see the next day’s headline: WEDDING COLUMNIST IN WOEFUL NEED OF ROMANCE TUTORIAL.

  If it’s possible to cringe and run at the same time, I was doing it. I wanted to get to The Paper as soon as possible. Or, more specifically, to my message in-box.

  The state-of-the-art, glass-and-steel headquarters towered over the eastern edge of Midtown. Draped in a gray, gridlike sheath, its facade resembled soaring pages of colossal newsprint with The Paper’s name spelled out like a fifty-foot-high banner headline along the top floors. Even in my rush, I experienced a surge of pride. At a time when the Internet was threatening The Paper’s existence, the newly completed, sixty-one-story building thrust itself onto the city’s skyline, defying gravity and globalization in a physical declaration of relevance. Newspapers were not going anywhere, the edifice seemed to attest. Or at least not this iconic newspaper.

  It wasn’t a place of work so much as a system of beliefs. When people talk of the press as a fourth estate, the implication is that journalism rivals the three branches of government—and at The Paper, you were expected to act as if democracy itself were at stake with each deadline. You didn’t take a job there to punch a time clock but to devote your life to a larger purpose: the pursuit of truth and excellence. I dodged the remaining construction crews and breezed into the vast lobby. My back instinctively straightened at the security check as I brandished my identification card, my proof of membership in an exclusive fraternity.

  My pride diminished somewhat when I hit the crowd of people waiting at the elevator bank. Unlike the neo-Gothic building we’d recently vacated, there was no stairway access from the lobby, yet there was increased demand for elevators, since employees were now spread over forty floors rather than twenty. It could have been worse. The company had planned to inhabit additional floors of the new building, but as revenue forecasts trended groundward, so did real estate aspirations.

  The high-tech, “smart” conveyor system eschewed standard up and down buttons, replacing them with a computerized panel. I punched in my desired floor, 5, and endured the requisite delay for the screen to display my assigned car. Except it didn’t. It said ERROR. I quickly tried again and received the same message. Frustrated, I stabbed at the panel a third time, and I was directed to elevator F, where I joined a dozen type-A journalists queued up like passengers on a Disney theme-park ride. Like our tourist counterparts, we relinquished all control upon finally entering one of the transport vehicles. Woe be he who changed his mind about his destinati
on, because there were no floor buttons. Apparently, real reporters don’t have senior moments.

  I tapped my foot restlessly. The waiting was making me agitated. I pictured a flashing red light on my desk phone and anticipated a voice mail from the ethics and standards editor, asking me to meet with him. I could hear his gravelly baritone stating, “I have some questions about a call I received this morning from the Observer.” I wondered what, precisely, constituted sexual harassment.

  The elevator doors opened. “What floor are we on?” asked a woman in the back, since floor numbers were not displayed. (Real reporters trust their instincts.) Someone near the doors said, “Five,” and I darted out.

  The terrariumlike two-story newsroom buzzed with countless hushed conversations as I briskly traversed the football-field-sized space. Managers huddled with senior editors in small, glass-walled offices, while reporters hunkered down at their desktop computers with phone cords dangling from their less-than-cutting-edge headsets. There were poker-faced clerks pecking away at their keyboards and art directors fixated on their oversized monitors. Though the newsroom was the nerve center of The Paper’s output, what went on there didn’t look that different from an advertising agency. Or an accounting firm. Sunlight flooded the cherrywood-paneled cubicles as I turned left at a hallway on the far side and made a beeline for my desk.

  There was no red light. I was safe. For the moment.

  “This is a newspaper, not the Good Ship Lollipop!” my editor bellowed from over my shoulder. I whipped around, worried what that portended. Renée Brodsky, a five-foot dynamo, was standing in the cubicle behind me with her headset in place over short, spiky, gray hair. Her steel blue eyes had narrowed behind her chunky black frames. She was gazing directly at me, but, thankfully, she was focused on a phone conversation.