The Last Magazine: A Novel

by Michael Hastings

  “Right, right,” Milius said.

  “I guess, because I don’t want this to hurt my career here at The Magazine, so if we could keep this confidential, that would be great, you know, between us.”

  “Yes, of course, it won’t go farther than this room.”

  “Thank you, I appreciate that,” Peoria said, mildly shocked. Was he really getting suspended? He couldn’t really believe it, and he felt like he wanted to do something—cry maybe, and if he were a girl, he probably would have started to cry, but Peoria really didn’t cry when he was sober.

  He got up and actually started to thank Milius for The Magazine’s generosity, for keeping quiet about his leave, and started to convince himself, feeling the bandage on his dick and the extra two Xanax in his pocket, that maybe taking a few weeks off to let this story die down wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. And as he left, he looked back to thank Milius one more time, and saw Milius had picked up his phone.

  Five minutes later, back at his office, he looked on the Drudge Report to see if the story was still getting top billing. It had been moved above the headline.

  There was a new headline, which said “RIOT JOURNALIST SUSPENDED.”

  Healy got suspended? Strange that Milius hadn’t mentioned it. He clicked on the story.

  He read it. He saw a quote from Delray M. Milius, a statement that said they had grown concerned with A.E. Peoria’s behavior and they were suspending him, pending further investigation.

  Peoria sat back in his chair, numbed, and took out a Xanax. He reached into his desk drawer and found a bottle of whiskey and took two quick shots. There must be some mistake. He started to feel a number of uncomfortable sensations that reminded him of the humiliation he hadn’t felt since Desperation Points West was reviled in a Booklist review.

  It was as if he’d been kicked in the nuts—and for some reason he thought of Chipotle for a moment, Chipotle squealing and bleeding from the groin. He thought of Chipotle and knew, or had some idea of, what it must have been like to get shrapnel in the balls, to feel like the world had betrayed him with a quick and unexpected blast to the groin—even knowing that these things happened and it was a cutthroat world and reputations rose and fell. Peoria had been lied to by the best of them over the years as a journalist who had been shot at, had been rocked by explosions, but none of it had felt personal, none of it had felt like he had been betrayed—politicians lie, people lie when they talk to journalists, bad guys and insurgents try to kill you, nothing more or less should be expected of them, but there was no sense in taking it personally.

  This, however, felt personal.

  His first instinct was to write an email, a scathing email, but he stopped himself, remembering a line he’d read in a business memoir: Make war by phone, make love by email.

  Okay, he thought, so maybe sending an email wouldn’t be the right move. Then how could he get proof that Delray M. Milius had lied to him?

  He would have to talk to him again, that’s how. He was a reporter and he’d go over there right now and get him to go on the record, get him to admit that he had lied.

  He grabbed his digital tape recorder and a notepad and a newly sharpened pencil, and holding them in his fists (the Xanax, or was it Percocet he’d been taking, made his hands feel heavy; he felt like he was in physical therapy, the way he was moving his hands around the pencil), and he took off down the hallway, choosing another route, past the cubicle area where the cool kids hung out, swinging past Sanders Berman’s office, until he saw Delray M. Milius standing at his door and talking to his secretary.

  And then Peoria tripped, stumbled over a man purse that had been left out in the hallway, and the strap, as if it were a bear trap, snagged his leg and he tumbled over, falling. He saw the corner of the secretary’s desk and jerked his head out of the way quickly. He felt a squishy feeling on his thigh and wondered if his pen had busted, then he stood up, rocked backward, and looked at Milius.

  “You said you were going to keep it confidential—”

  That’s when the secretary who hadn’t even smiled started screaming.

  Delray M. Milius had a disgusted look on his face.

  “What? What are you screaming at? I want you on the record. I want you to tell me that you lied.”

  With his left hand he grabbed the notepad and with his right he searched for the pencil.

  He put his hands in his pocket and it wasn’t there.

  Delray M. Milius was staring at Peoria’s lower half.

  Then Peoria looked down and saw that the pencil was sticking out of his leg.

  Perhaps it was the Xanax that hit him, or the Percocet, or the shots of whiskey he had taken, but he all of a sudden felt both heavy and light-headed and he fell backward, this time not missing the sharp edge of the desk.

  Peoria felt comfortable on the floor and closed his eyes. He heard shouts of “Nine-one-one,” and he felt he could open his eyes, but thought it was better to just lie there. His eyes were closed and Delray M. Milius moved next to him.

  He heard the southern drawl of Sanders Berman, and Milius saying, “We clearly made the right decision.” Fifteen or twenty minutes passed, and in that time he lost consciousness and started to snore, and he woke up with a paramedic looking down on him.

  “Are you Nicolas Cage?” Peoria asked.

  The paramedic pulled the pencil out quickly. The secretary screamed again.

  “We need to take your pants off to put the bandage on,” the paramedic said.

  “No, I need my pants,” Peoria whispered.

  “We need to take them off,” the paramedic said.

  “No, I already have a bandage on my dick,” he said. “Let me keep my dignity, let me keep them on.”

  Peoria grabbed hold of his belt, as if he were protecting his chastity, and closed his eyes. He was much drunker than he’d originally thought.

  “Okay, but that means I’m going to have to cut a patch out.”

  He felt the cold metal of scissors clipping away around his pants, and then he passed out again. He woke up on a stretcher in the back of an ambulance.

  He was released from the emergency room six hours later. He put his pants back on, a large hole in the leg, and on the subway, normal businessmen and good-looking women gave him space as he sat in the car, with his legs crossed, hoping that no one could see through the large patch in his left leg and up to the bandage. He should have taken a cab, he thought.

  He didn’t feel well at all, and everything that had just happened seemed like some kind of nightmarish dream—that dream where you try to confront your boss and end up impaling yourself on a pencil.

  —

  So there he is, back in his one-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side, staring at the screen at wd35.

  Reeled, reeling, slipping, sliding. He starts to write about how he has ended up alone, in his apartment, and almost out of a job.

  PART VI

  Disgruntled Employees

  INTERLUDE

  QUOTES I WOULD LIKE TO HAVE STARTED THE BOOK WITH

  “Never mistake the facts for truth.”

  —THOMAS JEFFERSON, 1803

  “Make love by email, make war by phone.”

  —K. ERIC WALTERS, FROM HIS 1997 BESTSELLER 21st Century Business: 101 Survival Tips

  “They say war is hell. I disagree. War is war. Hell is reserved for the folks who start wars.”

  —FROM THE UNPUBLISHED JOURNAL OF A REPORTER WHO WAS KILLED IN 1944 BY A SNIPER IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC

  “I had inflicted terrible violence on my body, on myself. I had only two things to show for my suffering, and both were double D’s.”

  —FROM AN ANONYMOUS SUBJECT IN A RESEARCH STUDY PUBLISHED BY THE American Medical Journal, “BECOMING ME: PLASTIC SURGERY IN PURSUIT OF GENDER-BASED WISH FULFILLMENT”

  27.

  February
2004, Continued

  I more or less forgive The Magazine for how they’ve treated Peoria. I’m not a suspect for the leak to Wretched.com, either. The Magazine is just relieved that Peoria’s later incident—when he fell on his pencil—didn’t make it onto the blogs.

  Maybe Delray M. Milius thinks it might have been me, but he can’t prove it. I’m starting to have second thoughts about the leak as well—was it worth the risk of getting caught just to try to defend A.E. Peoria (and my guilt is probably why I stop feeling bad for Peoria). I don’t know him very well, really, and though I admire the reporting he’s done—and Desperation Points West actually is a decent book—I also know he’s pretty fucked-up.

  Why so quick to risk everything to come to his defense? Especially now that I’m making some real progress in my career.

  I’m working eighty hours a week, in the office six out of seven days. I’ve started to write a few stories a month for The Magazine’s website.

  What I did realize about Wretched.com is that if I don’t start writing online on a regular basis, I won’t be very well positioned down the line as a journalist. The online editors at The Magazine really like what I’m doing for them, and so when an associate Web editor position opens up, I apply, and they offer me the job. The associate editor gig will finally make me a full-time staff member—I’ve been working full-time, but my title is still temporary researcher—and give me a salary, a job title, and benefits.

  Then Nishant Patel calls me into his office.

  “You’re better off staying here at the international edition,” Nishant Patel says.

  “I’d like to, I guess, but the Web is offering me a permanent position.”

  Nishant Patel leans back in his chair, glancing at his monitor to see if any critical emails have popped up, and shakes his head.

  “The Web is a black hole,” he says. “There’s not a future on the Internet.”

  You might think that this is a funny thing to say now. Maybe you would have expected a guy like Nishant Patel to say that in 1999 or 2000, or even 2001.

  “But the Web is offering me a permanent position,” I say, not wanting to get into the whole future-of-journalism debate. Maybe Nishant Patel doesn’t even really believe what he’s telling me; maybe he’s more interested in getting me to stay so he doesn’t have to find another research assistant.

  “No, no, I think, for your career, you’re much better off staying with the international edition. You can still write for the Web, of course, but it’s much better for you to stay here. I spoke to Sandra this morning, and she agreed.”

  That’s when I realize that I’m not really being given a choice. Sandra is the Web editor, and I had spoken to her yesterday, and she had been very excited about having me. Nishant pulled rank. I’m not going anywhere.

  “We’ll find a permanent position for you here soon,” he says. Then he goes back to checking email, and I know I’ve been dismissed.

  I’m pretty pissed off. On the one hand, I feel like Nishant Patel is really fucking with my career. I’d worked hard to get the job offer, and once I was in position to take it, Patel blocked it—more for self-interested reasons than anything about my future, I think. On the other hand, it’s kind of a backhanded compliment—they feel I’m so important that they don’t want to lose me. So I guess that’s a good sign.

  Sanders Berman is waiting for me at my cubicle.

  “Hastings,” he says.

  “Oh, I was just talking to Nishant,” I say.

  “How is the professor?”

  “He’s good. I think he’s doing The Daily Show tonight.”

  “The Daily Show? Good for him. I probably won’t be able to catch it, as I’m going to be filling in for Chris Matthews.”

  “Oh, that’s great. I’ll have to make sure to TiVo them both.”

  “I’m due in DC in about five hours,” he says.

  “Taking the Amtrak?”

  “No, that’s what I’m here to ask you about.”

  I’m wondering what research I’m going to have to do. Probably something for the news of the day because Sanders is filling in for Matthews.

  “Could you go pick up a pillow for me?”

  “Sorry?”

  “A pillow. One from Duane Reade would be fine. Just drop it off with my assistant.”

  I’m wondering why his assistant doesn’t go buy him a pillow, and as if he knows what I’m thinking, he says, “I asked Nancy to get it for me last time, and I don’t like her doing too many things like that. I don’t want to get a reputation as a prima donna.”

  “Okay, right. Um, why do you need a pillow?”

  “For the trip to DC. My car is picking me up in forty-five minutes.”

  Right: Sanders Berman hates to fly, and he also hates trains. He doesn’t feel comfortable waiting in Penn Station, his assistant told me. Too many people who could recognize him. So when he goes to DC, he hires a car service.

  Car services are the big topic of conversation around the office, especially for those editors who don’t get cars all the time. Jerry got all the numbers, and he likes to recite them. Nishant Patel’s car service bill: $7,323 a month. Sanders Berman’s: $9,356. Sometimes they take them five blocks. Five blocks! Do you know how many reporters we could hire for that bill, Jerry likes to say.

  “Sure, I’ll grab you a pillow.”

  “Thanks.”

  I take the elevator down, and I’m getting kind of annoyed again. If I were an associate editor, I wouldn’t have to be doing this kind of gofering anymore. As long as my title remains researcher, I’m more or less the office bitch. I have to figure out a way to get on staff, and I guess buying pillows is a step in the right direction.

  I pick up two pillows at Duane Reade—one is from this foam material, another is designed for people with bad backs. I want to cover my bases, do the job right.

  Sanders’s door is open, and he’s on the phone. I leave the two pillows with Nancy.

  “I’ll put this with his travel bag,” she says, tapping a pile of folded sweatpants and a blanket on the desk. “Sanders,” Nancy whispers, “likes to put these on in his car so it’s more comfortable.”

  “Oh, right.”

  I see Sanders hang up, and I think maybe I should ask him if he’d step in to talk to Nishant about letting me go to the Web.

  “Sanders, I just have a quick question. I applied for the associate editor job at the Web, and Sandra seemed really keen on having me there, but I don’t know if Nishant wanted me to go for it. But I think it would be really good.”

  “The Web,” Sanders says, like it’s something he’s never heard of.

  “Yeah, the magazine’s website.”

  “You mean Sandra the Web editor?”

  “Yeah, that’s who I mean.”

  “Oh, you don’t want to go to the Web. Nothing good is happening there,” he says.

  I go back to my cubicle and I don’t do much for the rest of the afternoon. I don’t feel like working. What’s hard work gotten me?

  I leave an hour earlier than usual and take the F train back down to my apartment on the Lower East Side. I go to the dry cleaners to pick up clothes I’d dropped off yesterday.

  In line at the dry cleaners, I notice a girl standing ahead of me. She’s cute, and I recognize her face because her picture is always up at Wretched.com. She’s the editor, and I know she lives in the neighborhood as well.

  “Hey,” I say to her.

  She looks at me like I’m a danger.

  “My name is Mike Hastings. I’m a writer for The Magazine,” I say.

  “Oh, okay, I thought you might be some crazy asshole stalking me. I’ve been getting a lot of that kind of email lately.”

  “No, I’m just a fan of Wretched.com.”

  “I’m sorry for you.”

  “Yeah, right. Actually,
you guys posted something I sent in—I probably shouldn’t bring this up—but yeah, I sent you guys an email about the Magazine riots and how they were, uh, blaming . . .”

  “Oh yeah, sure, I remember that. Uh, thanks.”

  I give the Chinese woman my dry cleaning ticket.

  “We should hang out sometime,” I say.

  “Yeah, that would be cool. Send me an email.”

  “I will.”

  She leaves the dry cleaners. And that’s how my relationship with Wretched.com begins.

  INTERLUDE

  TOWARD A MORE LIKABLE NARRATOR

  The disgruntled employee—it’s hard not to sound like a loser, a whiny bitch, ungrateful. Noticing it just now—rereading where we’re at in the story.

  What gave me the right, at twenty-four or twenty-five, to expect my goals and desires to be taken seriously at The Magazine? Why did I expect them to care or to give a shit? Let’s get my head out of my ass here: this is a magazine, part of a company that routinely hires and fires and thwarts much bigger plans than mine. Why would I expect anything other than frustration and dues-paying?

  Don’t they say that nothing in life is easy, and if it’s easy, it’s not worth it?

  Maybe they do say that.

  I read this book on twenty-first-century business survival tips, written by a guy named K. Eric Walters.

  Walters, see, he opens the book with an anecdote about Tom Cruise. Nothing beats the wisdom of celebrities, Walters gets that, and so he brings us to Tom Cruise talking on the Letterman show.

  Tom says: “People look at me now and think that my life has been smooth sailing. That I got everything that I wanted, and that my career just happened to take off. No. It didn’t. I had to fight to get my foot in the door, and every day, people tried to slam that door shut, right in my face. And finally I did get my foot in, and they tried even harder to kick my foot out of the door, to shut it tight. I didn’t let them. I kept my foot there. And one day, it opened. That’s my advice.”