The Journalist

by Dan Newman

  Carroway nods once. “Personally, I think this—the international scene—is an important area for us, for the Star-Telegraph and other large dailies. It’s part of what defines us as more than a regional player. But I will tell you that you’re investing yourself in one of the areas of our profession that’s waning.”

  In my head, I hear Professor Bowman in the midst of one of his over-the-top and animated pleas to the first-year journo students. You must be guardians of the Fourth Estate! Emphatically define what it means to report real news—not the frivolous social meanderings of celebrities, their conspicuous net worth, and this week’s definition of high fashion. No. Defend the Fourth Estate or lose it to the gathering scourge of infotainment. I push the Professor roughly aside and nod in understanding. “You think it’s the wrong path, you know, for someone starting out?”

  “On the contrary,” he says. “Myopia is the death of this business. I think we need more than just the society page if we are to call ourselves real newsmen.”

  I relish the implied inclusion of his use of the word we. It is a subtle confirmation that I am indeed part of the tribe.

  “All right, then,” he says quietly. “I’ll speak to Sheila and ask her to keep an eye out for an opening on the international desk. For now you’ll stay under me, but I’m sure we can work something out.”

  And with that, I am a real reporter with a real beat.

  • • •

  I leave Carroway’s office feeling light. There’s no way I can work now—I’m too excited, too keyed up, and too much of a rookie to contain it. I slip out quietly and relish the two tasks before me—two tasks that I know will put that final stamp on my new life: quit work at Dory’s (although the shifts and hours I’ve put in over the last year have been lean to say the least), and leave my squalid little apartment—hotplate and all.

  In the street, the people walking about seem different. They are less intimidating in some way—hell, I think they might actually be smaller. These people are now at least my equals—or should I say, I am now theirs—at the very least. I felt great when the story broke, and I’ve been cheering secretly inside when people at the paper—people I haven’t even met—slap me on the back and say things like “Nice job,” and “Great piece of writing,” but now, here on the street surrounded by real people, I know that…

  That the man standing twenty paces ahead of me, the man wearing a murderous smile, is Trots.

  20

  My heart gives a single, massive thump, and it’s all I need to start running. I spin and cut immediately out into the street, right in front of a taxi whose fender clips my knee and sends me sprawling on all fours. My palms take the brunt of it, but the pain only serves to get me up and running once again. Tires bark and horns blare, but I make it to the west side of the street, hurdling the railing to the subway entrance. In midair, I flick a glance back; Trots has taken up the chase. I drop over the other side, landing partway down the steps, and realize immediately it’s a mistake.

  Already committed, I push on, jostling past others on the stairs with a flurry of Excuse mes and Coming throughs. I vault the turnstile and notice that there is no one manning the booth. There is no train at the platform, so I duck left and low, behind the booth and stop. I hear people objecting as another body forces through the pedestrian traffic. I watch frantically for Trots to pass, and he does, and I immediately sprint back the way I came, over the turnstile and back up to the street. Trots has continued through to the platform and has missed my departure. I have my opening. In moments, I am off the street, into a building and up the elevator. I have made good my escape again.

  I wait for an hour, loitering on various floors, trying not to draw too much attention to myself. Eventually I leave the building and after much paranoia, a few false starts, and a good deal of sweating, I realize Trots has moved on. It takes me another twenty minutes to get to Dory’s by streetcar—time enough to calm myself down—but as I enter, I realize that despite my near miss, I must still be wearing my news on my face.

  Rhona raises her eyebrows—just a shade—as I walk through the front door. The store is empty for the moment, and Rhona is seated at her desk, stabbing her long, painted nails at the unfortunate keys of her laptop. She drops her eyes back to the screen and lightly, almost imperceptibly, shakes her head. “You know what burns my toast?” she says, pushing herself up from the desk. “The people who make the software for accounting.” In her overly dramatic way, Rhona waves her hand dismissively at the screen. “There’s a group of people who should join the lawyers at the bottom of the sea.”

  “There’s always accountants, you know.”

  “The sea’s getting more crowded by the minute,” she says smiling, one hand running expertly along her bra strap and gently heaving her generous right breast. She knows exactly what she’s doing—I’m convinced of it—and it’s extremely effective. She smiles at me and it’s genuine. “I read your story in the paper. Got your name at the top and everything.”

  “A byline,” I reply, with as much self-importance as I can muster. Rhona laughs as she gives her left breast a similar adjustment.

  “I haven’t seen you for a while, so you’re either here to ask me for more hours or to dump me altogether.” The smile stays on her face, but I can tell she’s disappointed. She already knows.

  I spread my legs, put clenched fists on my hip, and cock one eyebrow sharply, ramping up the ham factor as far as it will go. “I’m afraid we have to stop seeing each other, dearest Rhona.”

  Rhona laughs again, this time reaching out and burying me in a hug. She smells of freshly cut flowers, and the soft press of her body gets an immediate reaction from mine. I pull away and she lets me go.

  “I’ll be sad to see you go, Roly, because I like you. I always have. You’re probably the worst employee I ever had. You know that, right?” she says, smiling. “I’m sad to see you go, but I’m sure glad you don’t work here anymore.” She’s saying it in good humor, but she’s dead right. We both know it. We laugh and I see her eyes are nearing the well-up point, but she pulls it back and turns a corner. “So, what’s the plan?” she says, flattening out her skirt.

  “Well, I’ve been given a beat now and I finally have some decent management.”

  Rhona flips me the bird.

  The door opens and customers enter. Rhona smiles and walks over to them, speaking to me over her shoulder as she goes. I know it’s a sound and sight I will miss. “Your last pay’s in the top drawer. And now that you’re a celebrity, don’t forget us little people!”

  As I leave Dory’s and Rhona behind me, I am torn between forgetting it entirely and cherishing it as a fond memory. Leaving Dory’s is, I imagine, like leaving home. I can’t wait to go, but I’ll miss the surety of it all.

  • • •

  Right now, the city is a renter’s market. Condos are going up like erections on prom night, and it takes little more than a deposit, a pay stub, and a handshake before I have the keys to a comfortable one-bedroom unit on the East Side at Eighth and Oak. All that’s left now is to pick up a few things from the old place and abandon it to my past.

  At my old apartment, I pause at the door before opening it. This is a moment I will never repeat. I will never open this particular door again, and never walk into a room that has a hotplate in it. Inside, I quickly realize there is little of value here. A few clothes, toiletries, a stack of bills, and my collection of pawn shop camera gear. The rest, including the hotplate and the black-and-white TV, can all stay.

  I take two small cardboard boxes—the kind photocopier paper comes in—and fill one with my camera gear and a few clothes, and the other with a raft of official documents—the kind that follow us around and prove we’re alive: birth certificates, driver’s licenses, school transcripts, tax returns—and of course, my notebooks. Not much else is coming with me. I roughly grab a few other things and stuff them in, but the boxes have had their fill and underpants and paper spill back out and onto the floor.
I snatch at the detritus of my life and stuff it in again. I stack the two boxes and heave them, anxious to make my way to the door, but the load shifts, spilling things once again. I mutter obscenities and take what I have and leave. The rest can all go to hell.

  I retreat from the room with my boxes, turn off the light and shut the door.

  On the ground floor, I push my key through the super’s mail slot and hope he doesn’t appear while I’m hailing a cab. I don’t want to get into the debate about who is going to clean out the crap upstairs. I know I’m wrong, but it has to be this way.

  Outside, where I’m waiting for a cab, I realize just how bad a neighborhood this is. No one does anything about the man who is standing over me. No one seems concerned about the straight razor in his hand or the blood streaming from my ear and puddling in my palm as I cradle my head. I catch a glimpse of an old man watching, but he quickly turns away and pretends not to see.

  21

  Trots drives his full 250 pounds into me through his knee, and puts the point of the blade to the soft underside of my chin. “You na runnin’ now, man” he says, with an almost childlike glee in his voice.

  I cannot speak, I am so afraid. The blade is cold on my skin, and feels as if even the slightest addition of pressure will send it sliding up through my tongue from below. “You wan’ die now? Right now ou’side you house?” Trots leans in close and I can smell the chewing gum clenched in his bright white teeth.

  Everything in me is now fully tightened: my jaw, my arms wrapped about my head, even my eyes are locked open, gazing widely up at him. “Trots, please.” I hear my voice high, close to begging. “I can get your money.”

  “Me already dun write off dat cyash, man.” He says, as if speaking to a simpleton, “I jus ’ere to make sure me business reputation nah damaged.”

  I hear the words but miss the meaning. All I can respond with is, “What?”

  He closes his eyes momentarily and shakes his head in mock frustration with the silly child before him. “I got to let folks know whappen when dem default on payment, man.”

  And then I understand. Trots is not here for money. He is here simply to kill me. Somehow, the realization of it forces me toward a response based in logic—a reaction that both impresses and horrifies me at once. “But the girl…the money…” I am amazed, again, that despite everything, my mind has somehow managed to cling to the big lie.

  Trots’ response is flat, emotionless, but his eastern Caribbean drawl comes through strong. “Girl dead.” He pauses. Then, “No cyash.”

  I wait for strike three—that I was the one who got in Bosco’s way—but it never comes. Somehow Trots has missed my little trip to the headlines. In a flash I recall the old picture of me they used: long hair, ratty goatee and captioned as Roland Keene. Trots only knows me as Joey—a faint sliver of hope rises within me.

  I take the chance and speak up, fear clawing at my voice and forcing it up an octave or two. “Please don’t cut me. I don’t know what happened with that girl. She had the money, I swear.”

  “Nevah mind she money, man. What ‘bout my money? De cyash you dun owe me?”

  The straight razor slips upward along my jawline, skillfully maintaining enough pressure to immobilize me, but not enough to draw blood. It finds its way to my ear. My voice climbs to new heights. “Listen, Trots—I have a job now. I can pay you.”

  And suddenly Trots is walking away. He is speaking to me over his shoulder without looking, sauntering down my street like he’s got nowhere special to be. “I be back tomorrow. Have it all ready. All of it. Or I gon’ kill you.” It is a plain, matter-of-fact statement.

  Only then do I notice the wetness at the side of my neck, soaking my right shoulder, trickling through my shirt, under my arm, down the line of my elbow before spattering the pavement below. I reach for the side of my head, then stop, scared of the void I will feel, the carved stump where my ear used to be. I am relieved to find it is still there, split in two near the top, but still there. The slice was so quick and precise that I felt no pain, not even a tug as the blade swept through the tough cartilage of that upper curve of skin.

  A sound beside me makes me flinch—Trots is back for the killing slice, a downward sweep of that shiny, quick blade. But it’s just the old man I saw earlier, this time kneeling and holding out a white handkerchief. He speaks but I don’t hear, and beyond him, paused halfway through the building’s front door, I see the super, his face a pinched mix of concern and frustration; it seems this particular miserable moment isn’t over yet after all. But a policeman and an ambulance arrive in that same moment, and soon I am riding once again to the hospital—again courtesy of Trots—and spared the confrontation with my super.

  Hours later, I emerge from the hospital with three new stitches and a gauze dressing about my head that makes me look like a wounded frontline soldier. An orderly places a single cardboard box beside me—someone must’ve taken the time to put it in the ambulance with me, although where the other one is is anyone’s guess. He also hands me a small white business card. It’s from the policeman who interviewed me about the mugging, the random mugging, and I am urged to call him if I should remember anything else about the attack. The orderly leaves and I’m once again alone at the side of the road, my life’s possessions in a box beside me and a world of possibilities ahead.

  There is no way I can repay Trots tomorrow. I have a half-decent paycheck coming, but even if I gave it all to Trots, it would just be the proverbial drop. And there’s next to nothing in the bank. The good news is that I won’t be going back to the old neighborhood—ever—and it’ll at least be a while before Trots can find out my new address. He can catch me at work, sure, but at least that’ll be in the city with lots of people about, and not on some curb in the low-rent, high-crime dump I’ve lived in until now.

  • • •

  Once again, I am the story. It’s not front-page news this time, just a few column inches buried on page five. The small headline reads, Would-Be Dysart Hero Mugged. It spends a few lines explaining the attack, then dedicates the bulk of the copy to history—a retelling of the shooting and the death of Chloe Dysart.

  And so I start to answer the questions of another interview, over the phone this time to a radio reporter, speaking about how amazingly quick the attack was, violent and sudden, and then I dutifully link it back to memories of the time I was shot. The reporter eventually asks about the Dysarts, about how they reacted toward me at the death of their daughter; it is a mutually understood and unspoken truth between us that the only real reason for this conversation is my oblique linkage to the Dysarts. I gently parry the question in a natural but prepared way. I tell them that the Dysarts have suffered enough and that they don’t need such a deep wound laid open once again. He asks me why I’m at work the day after such a traumatic event and I reply that there’s really not that much to it—just a cut on the ear. He thanks me for my time and I put the phone down, which rings again almost instantly. I know it will be another reporter, with the same questions.

  “Hello,” I say, wincing slightly as the receiver touches my ear.

  “Roly? It’s me, Donna.”

  It turns out hearts really do skip beats. “Donna?”

  “Yes, you might remember me: five six, brunette, from the Star-Telegraph?” She laughs and I feel a warmth rise up through my chest and into my cheeks.

  “Oh, hi.” My inexperience shows through and I am struck speechless. There is nothing. But Donna, true to form, saves me. “I heard about what happened. Are you okay?”

  “Oh, yeah, it’s nothing really, just a little cut on my ear.” I’m forced to stand and walk around; there is suddenly altogether too much energy inside me.

  “Is there anything I can do? Do you need anything?”

  “Uh, no, no. I’m good.” Swing and a miss.

  “Are you sure, Roly? You sound different.”

  “No, really—I’m absolutely fine. Honest.”

  “Well, then. I was t
hinking maybe you’d like to meet up later tonight, get a drink? If you’re feeling up to it.”

  “Tonight? Um, sure.” I’m still shaky but recovering—and not from Trots’s attack. “Where, uh, where?”

  “How about Ballaro’s, say six o’clock?”

  “Okay, six.” Silently I pray my conversation skills will improve by quitting time.

  “Roly, are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine. Don’t worry—I’ll see you at six.”

  I hang up the phone and sit in quiet disbelief. For the first time in my romantic life, I may have gotten it right.

  • • •

  The following morning I am struggling to refocus on the story hanging in electronic purgatory before me. There are words there, on the screen, but all my mind can process is the evening before. Drinks at Ballaro’s led to more drinks, and by the end of the night, giggling and able to laugh at almost anything the other said, we stole into the Ambassador Hotel and found ourselves in a quiet function room down behind a series of stacked folding tables. Donna pressed herself into me, and her kiss was so assertive, so demanding that I knew it went well past the alcohol that was certainly fueling us.

  It was quick, exhilarating, and when it was over there was no awkward rush, no backs turned and clutching at a tangle of strewn clothes. There was just a comical series of shushes and giggles, and a walk home with my hand comfortably in the small of her back. And this morning, when we met in the hall, we smiled, stopped and talked. The world was still normal, only better.

  But the story before me, on my screen, needs my full attention. I push thoughts of Donna aside but she cuts back in again and again. I see the pure alabaster of her breasts, her nipples taut and trembling, and the tiny, almost invisible hairs at the back of her neck. The images are difficult to shake, but slowly I deny them, and dip my head closer to the screen. The story. I must focus on the story.