The Last Magazine: A Novel

by Michael Hastings

  Janet starts to respond, “You’ve been on the show for three years and—”

  Sanders cuts her off. “Let’s make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

  He sweeps the conference room.

  “So, our new policy. We’re not going on Imus anymore. And we’re going to address the issue of his comments in the next issue. I’d like you four,” he says, pointing at the four African Americans on the staff who are sitting at the table, “I’d like you four—Charlotte, Sammy, John, and Lucas—to take the lead on this reporting.”

  “I don’t cover media,” says Charlotte.

  “It’s okay, and I think we really need your perspective. And if you have any problems, or would like to discuss this further, Delray is going to talk to each one of you individually. Obviously, this is not how I wanted my time as acting EIC to go, but Henry supports, and the Dolings support, my position to boycott Imus completely, and I support all of you to do the best damn story we can about it.”

  I go back to my cubicle. I figure I’d wait an hour before posting anything about the meeting on Wretched. Things are getting way too close to home. I have to tell Grove that I can’t be guest editor the rest of the week—he has to take over the site himself.

  I send him an email.

  He responds.

  “That’s fine, but you did sign a weekly contract with us, but I see how you are in a bind, so just give me updates on what’s going on inside your magazine. You don’t have a choice, otherwise I’ll do a post now saying you were the one who started this whole controversy.”

  Fuck.

  “Mike, Nishant wants to see you,” Dorothy calls out to me.

  Shit.

  —

  I walk into Nishant’s office. He’s sitting there, reading the new issue of the New York Herald, its distinct pink paper standing out against the other papers on his desk.

  “Have you read the Herald this week, Hastings?”

  “Not yet, didn’t know it was out yet.”

  “You’re in it. I didn’t know you were friends with these bloggers.”

  That Jonathan Lodello. He’d put me in his story. I wonder if he’s mentioned that I’m guest editing under a pseudonym. If so, my career at The Magazine is about to end, and fast.

  “Oh yeah, what did he say?”

  “Nothing, except that you are dating a girl named Sarah Klein. Wasn’t she the blogger who started this whole controversy?”

  “I’m really sorry, Nishant. I’m no longer having anything to do with that crowd. It was a mistake being there, and it was a mistake guest editing this week—”

  Nishant isn’t listening.

  “So, your girlfriend, don’t you think she might find our meeting this afternoon with Sanders interesting?”

  I suppose she would, but I don’t know what Nishant is getting at right away.

  “She’s not my girlfriend, but—”

  “I mean, to have the four African Americans reporting this story, doesn’t that also have the faint stench of racism? After Berman laughs—scoffs—it seems rather clumsy to then have four blacks at The Magazine do the black story. You don’t think so? Perhaps I’m mistaken.”

  “Oh yeah, I guess that could look bad.”

  “Hastings, you sent me that email, I don’t think I ever responded, about you guest editing Wretched. Is it this week you’re doing that?”

  “Nishant, yes, but I’m not doing it anymore.”

  “And I never gave you permission, and you didn’t ask Berman or Delray about it either?”

  “I thought you knew, you were cool with it, no news is good news, and everything—”

  “I would suggest you not doing it from this point on. That being said, I would not object to any further communication that you might have with Ms. Klein.”

  He turns back to his computer. I’m dismissed.

  Back at my cubicle, I compose an email to Sarah Klein. I cc Timothy Grove. This is all I can give you, I tell them. He writes back, “Perfect.”

  This is how the scandal is propelled to the next level, wishing for another victim, full saturation, because this is a scandal that has started to drag others down with it, amplifying speculation, its tentacles grappling more boldface names into the abyss, into that area that got other boldface names to start speculating and hiding and focusing on survival—somebody is going to have to pay for Imus’s comments, and if it is more than just Imus, all the better, as long as it isn’t you.

  There doesn’t need to be any official words or messages; the instinctual calculations have been made—to risk a career and a family and a paycheck and a well-crafted brand name and status to defend Don Imus? Not likely. The indignation that can be found in the talking heads in the media elite is not so much over Imus’s comments—after all, who truly gives a shit—but the indignation of almost getting dragged down too by his careless remarks. This feeling of a near-miss sparked the true outrage, which is expressed in comments about racism and demands for apologies, but it is truly just a cover for the outrage over Imus’s misstep, and while making that gross misstep, to have threatened their own careers.

  Danger looming, the momentum building up, an epic fall approaches. The knives are unsheathed, incisors sharpened, and enemies and targets of his scorn in the past are making phone calls, remarks on television, coming out of the media landscape, electronic specters with Rolodexes and grudges and access to editors, nudging the story along. Silently building, it expands and expands and by nightfall, the name Sanders Berman is on every Movable Type page and every gossip columnist’s screen—will he go down too?

  40.

  Wednesday

  I pick up the slow mumble of Berman’s drawl as he leans up against the wall down from my cubicle. Delray M. Milius stands with his arms crossed. I figure they would have learned not to talk important business in the magazine hallways by now, but the crisis has made them more unsure of themselves, and they fall back into old patterns.

  “Who’s the leak? Who’s the leak? . . . I can’t even talk in my office because it could be her, my assistant . . . Lawsuits . . . I don’t hate African Americans . . . You’re right, we can’t say that in a statement . . . All the advertisers have boycotted his show . . .”

  “We need to change the subject,” Milius says. “We need to change the subject soon. We don’t want this to go on another week.”

  “How are they taking it?”

  “Not well. Charlotte has offered her resignation, citing racial prejudices.”

  “Christ. This, this is bullshit—this is reverse racism. Just because I’m from Alabama, I’m a racist? Just because I laughed at a joke? And now that I’ve seen the clip of that basketball team, I can’t deny that they do look like nappy-headed hos, one of them even has a tattoo that says ‘ho,’ I mean, this is just so incredibly unjust—”

  “Sanders, Sanders, please, this isn’t the time. Stay on message, and we’ll change the message soon. We’ll change the conversation.”

  “How?”

  “. . . A.E. Peoria . . .”

  I’m surprised to hear A.E. Peoria’s name.

  Should I warn him? But warn him of what?

  Three hours later, A.E. Peoria rushes in.

  “Mike, fuck, hey. I’m meeting with Milius. They don’t want to run the story this week, do they?”

  41.

  Wednesday, Continued

  A.E. Peoria sits for a full five minutes without saying a word. He’s sworn to himself that he is going to do a better job at listening. Receive mode. He is in receive mode, sitting in a chair across from Delray M. Milius. It is an accomplishment that he is even back in this office after the mistakes. At first, he wants to start apologizing for the pencil incident, to tell Milius about his transformation, to tell him about Norm and his iced coffees and self-acceptance, to tell him again about how he has changed and learned to
love himself, somewhat, how it’s a struggle he’s working on every day. But then he thinks, No, I won’t apologize, no need for me to bring up old news, he’s probably forgotten about it anyway. I will just sit and listen and absorb and show that I have changed, that I am reliable, that I am a good citizen of the magazine.

  “So, can you give us a draft of the story by tomorrow night,” Milius says.

  “The story?”

  “About the transvestite.”

  “Transsexual.”

  “Right.”

  “Of course I can, no problem at all.”

  A good citizen of the magazine, he does not want to express any reservations; just say yes, agree to anything. Yes, that is his new philosophy of success, and this is the first time since his suspension that he is able to test it out.

  So he says yes, I will do the story.

  “All I have to do is get permission from Justina, you know, and then we should be okay.”

  “Permission?”

  “Yes, need to get her approval, you know, so I can write the story.”

  “You haven’t told her you’re going to write a story about her?”

  “No, not yet, you know, I was waiting, you know, but it’s helped because I’ve gotten really good stuff, you know.”

  “Get her permission. We need this story. I don’t have to mention that this is really your last chance.”

  A.E. Peoria leaves the office and walks out onto 57th Street. He has thirty blocks to go to his apartment on the Upper West Side. It is a fall day in New York, a beautiful fall day, and passing by Columbus Circle he nods happily at the immigrants waving laminated maps of the park and offering guided tours and he feels the need to walk. A walk in the city, what a pleasure, what a time to think, how amazing he feels, a man in the big city with a sense of purpose, with a renewed life. Is there any other street to have been walking on than Broadway with a view of Central Park, life, hustle, neurosis, energy, and attractive people? And it is only twenty minutes later that it sinks in what Delray Milius had actually said; he had said it so softly, with a strange inflection, that the offense wasn’t processed at the time.

  This story is his last chance. A threat, really.

  Of course, he tells himself, Justina will be happy to help me tell this story. She’ll be totally psyched about it, you know, I think she is going to be totally psyched. He has a date planned with her that night—he’ll tell her after they see the movie.

  He goes back to his apartment and starts to write. Where to begin?

  No, I won’t make this about me, he says. I will start with her, with Justina. I will start the story where it all began, back in Iraq at the invasion.

  From memory he writes, chronology his friend, starting with the anecdote of the ambush, then her descriptions of her stay in the hospital, then her recovery process—the surgery, the day that she sat in her bedroom and realized looking downward that she was no longer a man and didn’t want to be a man—then he writes about the GI Bill, and how it doesn’t cover sex changes, and how that is unjust, and that she got into Barnard even though the documents on the GI Bill said she was a male. But that kind of subterfuge is for civil rights, heroic, and previously never disclosed—this is breaking news you are reading here people, this is a test case, this is a story generated and produced and distributed underneath a great brand by the great A.E. Peoria, Magazine Journalist. This is the story that will spark debate and conversation and change policy—yes, this is a great story.

  All he needs is his last step. To tell Justina.

  He emails Mike Hastings. He sends him what he’s written so far. I need your files, he says, by tomorrow morning, the story is due tomorrow, and I need your files and you need to be ready to fact-check this fucker by Friday.

  He closes his laptop. Tomorrow he will wake up and crash the rest of the story. The hours had disappeared as he’d entered his writing space, they’d just flown by, and the film he is scheduled to see with Justina starts in fifty-five minutes. He hopes they can still get seats.

  He waits for her outside the theater on 68th Street, a massive Loews Cineplex, and he stands in front of a movie poster that has the tagline “Sometimes, it’s only once.” Apparently a love story, and this makes his eyes wet on the edges, thinking of Justina, the gift that has been brought into his life. He saved her life, and now she is going to save his career. An equal trade in his world. He got tickets out of the electronic kiosk—two adults for the film, a romantic comedy, that year’s installment about a holiday get-together gone horribly wrong, dinner sequences with turkeys and cranberry sauce and accidentally offensive remarks and humorous, lighthearted, hilarious violence.

  It is New York, so other pretty girls pass on the street, but he doesn’t watch them with desire, which is his usual fallback position. He doesn’t compare them on tiers or rank them with numbers; he feels no need to do that anymore. He has accepted himself, and yes, when he sees her, he thinks, Wow, this is the first time that I have waited for a girl outside the theater and felt lucky when she actually appeared. How strange is that? What am I to make of the fact that this feels so right?

  Justina appears in a navy peacoat over a dress, her thin legs in black stockings coming out underneath. She has, out of self-consciousness, kept her female style quite simple, wearing knee-length skirts, pearls, peacoats, one season’s worth of outfits from J.Crew—and yes, for a former man, she looks quite good—you can’t tell.

  “Popcorn?”

  “Put extra salt on it.”

  After the film, they go to the Italian restaurant, only five blocks away, where they had their first date not long ago.

  “I have really big news, so big I can’t believe I was able to keep it in this long,” he says.

  “I can’t wait to hear it,” she says, squeezing his hand, in between a dish of olive oil and a brass candleholder.

  “The magazine wants me to do a story for them this week,” he says.

  “That’s so amazing. I’m so proud of you.”

  He waits. This would be the moment.

  “I’m going to tell our story, your story,” he says. “Isn’t that great?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I think we can get the cover, you know, I’m writing it, it will be your picture. I mean, it’s going to be huge. You’re going to be famous, and maybe we can get a book deal and a movie out of it too. I mean, I think it’s that big, you know?”

  Her face does not change into the shape he expects. It does not glow. He recognizes a kind of pained anger, and for a moment he sees the same face that had rested beneath the Kevlar helmet years ago, in Iraq. A masculine face, a face of rage.

  “You can’t do this. You can’t write about me. I’m not ready, I’m not ready for it.”

  “But I thought you’d be cool with it. It’d be doing me a huge favor.”

  “Not yet. Can’t you wait?”

  “No, it really can’t wait—the magazine asked and I said I would deliver. I mean, I’d been talking about it with them for months, you know.”

  “You’ve been talking with the magazine for months about this? And you haven’t told me?”

  “Uh, yeah, I mean, didn’t I mention it?”

  “I’m a fucking story to you,” she says. “I’m a fucking story.” She stands up from the table.

  “If you do this, if you do this story, you will lose me.”

  “No need to be so dramatic—I know you’re Latin and all—”

  “Latina! A story! Throw our love away for what, for printed pages!”

  She leaves the restaurant.

  “But I saved your life,” he yells.

  “Fuck you!”

  “Don’t get in the cab.”

  “I’m getting in the cab, get away from me.”

  “Don’t get in the fucking cab.”

  “I’m getting
in the cab.”

  He withdraws his hand before the yellow door slams on it, and he looks to see her through the window, but she has turned her head away. The only face he sees in the cab is on the small and newly installed video monitor, the face of New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, reciting a public service announcement.

  Relapse. Seven months of sobriety gone, just like that.

  A.E. Peoria, magazine journalist, turns and walks into a bar, puts his credit card down, and starts to drink. Sober, yes, only drinking wine, which doesn’t count, and now he knows that the only response is to get totally fucked-up, totally wrecked, to embrace that abyss that had been missing from his life. Justina’s rejection has brought it back to him in full—oh, how good it feels, the beer and shot then another beer.

  At 123rd and Lexington, three hours later.

  “Put your fucking shirt back on, motherfucker,” the drug dealer says.

  “I saw the shoes up the telephone line, and I know that that means you sell crack, right?” A.E. Peoria says, putting his shirt back on. “See, I don’t have a fucking wire.”

  “Shut the fuck up, man! Give me the cash.”

  “Give me the stuff.”

  “Shit, hold on.”

  The dealer goes over to a payphone.

  “You still have payphones? That’s so strange—isn’t that, like, bizarre? I guess it’s a class thing. But it’s strange, I mean, even in Africa and shit, everybody has cell phones—they call them mobile phones, you know, because ‘cell phone’ isn’t really accurate. They took the cells out of the phone a long time ago. And it’s strange that only in America they still call it a cell phone.”

  A teenager runs down the street. He hands a small packet to the dealer, who goes up to A.E. Peoria and slaps his hand. Peoria takes the packet and kneels down.

  “What the fuck you doing?”

  “Oh, I keep my money in my sock when I come up here, but I guess I shouldn’t have told you that.”

  “Man, just leave that shit on the ground and get the fuck out of here before I beat your ass.”

  “Okay, okay.”