I finished off the Santa Claus. “She had more than one?”
“Whatever worked.”
“Like the Lust Boat cruises.”
He held up his hands. “You’ll get nothing from me about Debbie’s dealings. And Phil doesn’t know, either. We operated on a need-to-know basis with Debbie, and our position was the less we knew, the better.”
I picked up my cup and finished off the tea. It was delicious, perfectly brewed, flavorful and comforting. Why didn’t I drink tea more often? It was so much more tolerable than coffee. A much better way to start the day than with Diet A-Treat.
“One last thing,” I said. “Before she died, Debbie was in the salon loudly telling of a Marguerite calling her house at three a.m. and of being in love with Phil. But if you’re Marguerite, then that doesn’t make sense.”
“Then maybe the story wasn’t meant for you,” he said. “Maybe the story was meant for someone else in the salon to overhear. Did you ever think about that?”
“The only other people in the salon were Sissy Dolan and Tula Kramer, two grandmothers who’ve been Sandy’s clients since she opened the House of Beauty about twenty years ago.”
Mark shrugged. “Then you never know. For some women, the only reason to be married is to have a husband to show off. It’s kind of sad, when you think about it. But that was Debbie. She had no inner life, just an external one. She was like a Christmas ornament, shiny and fragile and completely hollow inside.”
Chapter Thirty-one
I
t turned out that my Thursday was to be a day of surprises. First, Jane declared her independence from Dr. Caswell. Then Dan forced me into marrying him once and for all. Marguerite turned out to be Phil Shatsky’s gay lover. And when I walked into the newsroom I discovered that, lo and behold, I no longer existed.
“I’m sorry, Miss Yablonsky,” Veronica said in perfect innocence, “but unless you have an appointment, I can’t buzz you in.”
I regarded the swinging half door that separated the reporters at the
News-Times
from the people they were supposed to be writing about. I could leap that sucker, even wearing this black knit dress.
“Cut it out, Veronica, and let me in.”
“Honestly, Dix Notch has declared you don’t exist. We’re supposed to pretend like you never worked here. All your stuff has been packed in boxes and has been sent to your house, except for your extensive nail-polish collection. That I threw out.”
“Threw out!” Okay,
that
was over the line. I had over twenty bucks’ worth of Sally Hansen in my upper-righthand drawer.
“By the way, you never did do my nails for free like you promised.”
Oh, brother. As though I hadn’t had more pressing issues. “If you’re not going to let me in, then at least let me talk to Mr. Salvo. He’ll take care of it.”
“Mr. Salvo and Mr. Notch are out with the other editors at the Union Club for their annual holiday lunch. They won’t be back for hours and I’m to call security if you so much as touch that door.”
This was nuts. Not Notch banning me from the newsroom. There was nothing new about that. He was always finding one way or another to get me canned. And I’d assumed my days were numbered when he exiled me to the corner of lifestyle. But throwing out my nail-polish collection? That smacked of pure vindictiveness.
I searched the newsroom for an ally, someone to rescue me from this manicure-craving Cerberus, and spied Lawless crossing to his desk from the cafeteria. I waved to him.
He completely ignored me.
“Lawless!” I shouted.
He sat down, opened his brown paper bag, pulled out a sandwich and popped open a Coke.
“LAWLESS!”
Nothing. He was pretending not to hear me, the scum.
I watched as Alison carried over a salad in a tidy Tupperware container. She sat next to him at her—my—desk, stirred the salad with a fork and took a long draft from a water bottle. And then, much to my horror, she leaned over and offered Lawless something. He smiled, nodded and took a bite of her tomato.
Lawless eating a vegetable. I felt the Earth move. It was clear they were now much, much more than simple coworkers.
He was in love. He and Alison had been conducting an affair behind my back.
Without waiting for Veronica’s meaningless approval, I snatched up her phone and dialed 215, Lawless’s extension.
“Lawless,” he answered.
“So,” I began, “Alison is an untalented rookie, is she? Taking your spot and stealing the stories that are rightfully yours, eh? Looks like you two are cozier than you let on.”
Lawless turned his back to Alison and covered the phone. “Will you chill out?”
“No, I will not chill out. What happened to all my notes I took yesterday? Where are my computer files?”
“Shhh. You’re going to ruin everything.”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass.” Suddenly, I was furious and only part of my anger had to do with Lawless. It was Notch who’d had me exterminated. It was Dan who was forcing me into marriage. They were the ones I wanted to throttle.
But Dan and Notch weren’t on the other end of my line. Lawless was, and like it or not, he was going to have to bear the brunt of my fury.
“I knew I couldn’t trust you. I just knew it. I confided in you and you’ve been running into Notch’s office and feeding him everything I’ve said. Then you’ve been canoodling with Alison, the young and pretty college grad.”
Lawless glanced at me and turned away. “Did Veronica hear you say that?”
I did a quick check of Veronica, who was playing at sorting the afternoon’s mail, her ear tuned for maximum information retrieval.
“I don’t care.”
“She’s the one you’ve got to watch out for. She’s his snitch.”
“Bull. You’re the one who finked to Notch, Lawless.”
He let out an exasperated sigh. “She’s going to repeat everything to Notch when he comes back, so shut your pie hole. Now let me explain something to you and then you can go.”
Go? I hadn’t planned on going anywhere.
“You know that so-called star file you’re so eager to get? I think Notch is in it somewhere. That’s why he wants this story off page one. That’s why he fired you today. He’s got something to hide.”
“But—”
“No buts, Bubbles. He’s also got a rock-solid case for firing you. You knew that Sandy had gone on the lam and yet you didn’t tell anyone here.”
“I told
you
.”
“Which should prove that I haven’t been snitching to Notch. The point is, you didn’t tell Alison, who was writing a story that made us look like idiots when it said Sandy was not a suspect. Turns out, there’s a goddamn warrant out for her arrest.”
Only for questioning,
I thought.
“And there’s something else. Notch received a call today from a woman named Tess Montague.”
Oh, no,
I thought,
Tess
.
“Apparently you interviewed her extensively in the bathroom of the Masonic temple about Debbie Shatsky and you never identified yourself as a reporter. You told her you were a beautician, nothing more. That’s grounds for immediate termination and you know it.”
“Bull. Tess is friends with Dan’s ex-wife, Wendy. She knew full well I was a reporter.”
“Not until after she’d answered your questions did she find that out. That’s what she told Notch.”
He was right. I hadn’t been up-front with Tess and that was grounds for immediate termination. It was in the ethics handbook. Thou shalt not misrepresent. Though I’d had my reasons and they’d been valid ones.
“I have to say, Bubbles, as much as I’m on your side, misrepresenting yourself was really dumb. What were you thinking?”
“I don’t know,” I said glumly, massaging my temple. “It’s so much easier sometimes. Whenever I say I’m a reporter, people either tense up and shut their doors or they burst out laughing.”
Lawless was silent.
Suddenly, I was overcome with exhaustion. Stupid Debbie Shatsky and her big boasts. Things would have been so different if I hadn’t volunteered to help Sandy in the salon on Monday, or if Debbie hadn’t been desperate for superhigh hair.
To think my career at the
News-Times
had been done in by hair extensions. Not by all the bigwig steel lawyers who had tried to cut me at the knees, but by latex and hair, the death knell rung in the women’s room of a Masonic temple.
Ironic? Uh, yeah.
“It’s over this time,” Lawless said softly. “I’m afraid you’ve run out of second chances.”
“I know,” I said, and thanked him for his kindness. One more touché to irony that, in the end, Lawless would be my only remaining friend.
Yes, it was over. My career at the
News-Times
was done. I hung up the phone and managed a forgiving smile at Veronica. Then I took one long, last sweeping glance of the newsroom, the cubicles, the papers piled high and the reporters hunched over their keyboards.
I’d invested so much hope, so much of my time trying to be an award-winning reporter. I’d written about strawberry-picking festivals and Fourth of July parades and finally worked my way to exposing corruption at every level, especially at the Steel.
But in the end, I had lost the brass ring on a technicality. Yet it was an important technicality. If reporters demanded reality from their subjects, they must demand it from themselves.
Then I saw Alison, her fork stuck in her salad, her phone tucked under her jaw, her fingers tapping wildly on the keyboard. So confident in her prospective success and yet so unwilling to leave the isolation of her desk and the security of this newsroom.
I voted her most likely to start fabricating her sources.
Enough. No more. It was not as fun as it was before.
The
News-Times
and I were through. Forever.
Chapter Thirty-two
J
ane was bent over her laptop when I got home carrying whatever my Visa had room for. That was the one benefit of getting fired right before Christmas, a two-week severance check and a self-destructive impulse to spend oneself into a mad spiral of bankruptcy.
For Mama, I’d bought the bread maker she requested. For Genevieve, a new pair of night-vision goggles, as her old ones had been run over by the ATV she’d been riding at the time. (Long story. Let me just say that it involved a survivalist named Lebron, the FEMA mission statement and a townie bottle of Mad Dog 40/40.)
Jane had been much harder to buy for because I wasn’t sure what personality I was dealing with. I mean, should I have bought her the complete series of
The O.C
.? Or a complete set of Jane Austen? Or were they one and the same and I hadn’t been swift enough to pick up on that?
In the end, I broke the bank on a Red Hot Chili Peppers CD and stereo hookup for her iPod. Then I threw in a copy of Betty Smith’s
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,
because Jane likes trees. Dan calls her a tree hugger.
I plunked the groceries on the counter and tried to hide my other shopping bags as I tiptoed upstairs to shove them under the bed. Being curious and greedy like most teenagers, Jane should have been trotting after me or jumping around asking nosy questions.
She wasn’t. Instead, she was intently poring over a book, an old encyclopedia she used to love to read before she got kidnapped.
“What’re you doing?”
Jane flinched. “Ohmigod, Mom, you scared the shit out of me.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be hanging out with friends at the mall or whatever it is you and Jason do?”
Jane gave me a look. “Jason and I are split. As a matter of fact, I’m killing time waiting for G to pick me up. Says he’s taking me someplace special, whatever that means. Most likely a bowling alley.”
It took all the muscles in my mouth not to smile.
She gestured to her laptop. “I opened that file on Excel. I’m not sure it’s worth anything. It looks like maybe the person who gave it to you copied the wrong thing.”
Damn. I knew it was too good to be true. I reached into the refrigerator and pulled out a Diet A-Treat, popped it open, grabbed a bag of Christmas Doritos from my groceries and went to the table. Lunch as I knew it.
“What’s it say?”
“Not much.” Jane dug her hand in to the Doritos and pulled out a fistful of chips. She was wearing a supertight BEATLES T-shirt and tight, ripped jeans. There were at least three earrings in every ear and we were engaged in an actual conversation that didn’t involve weight, the state of that day’s complexion or how little to eat.
It was a miracle.
“The file is called STAR, like you predicted. But then when I open it, there’s just a listing of four names. Ada, Esther, Ruth and Martha.”
“Sounds like the entire blue-hair client list at the House of Beauty,” I said.
Jane half laughed. “Right. Well, they also could be some kind of code or combination. Computer passwords, I’m thinking. Other than that, the only thing they have in common is that they’re from the Bible. That’s why I’m looking up their origins.”
I tried to think if I’d come across any Adas, Esthers, Ruths or Marthas during my investigation. Nope. A Tess and a Zora. A Vern. A Marguerite and a Fiona. Debbie was Debbie. I didn’t know if that came from the Bible.
“Do you know if those are the names of Debbie’s mother? Her sister? Maybe Phil Shatsky can help us?” Jane asked.
Good idea. While Jane continued to read up on the women in the Old Testament, I went to the phone, my favorite source of all knowledge, and called Phil. The phone rang and rang.
“Where’s Sandy?” I asked, waiting for Phil to pick up.
“Getting ready for your big bachelorette party.” Jane ate another Dorito. “You are still getting married, aren’t you?”
“Of course. Why would you ask?”
Jane shrugged. “I don’t know. There are some evil rumors going around.”
“Hello?” It was Phil, sounding rushed.
I told him who I was and apologized for this being a bad time. “Hey, listen, you don’t happen to know if in Debbie’s family Esther and Ruth, Martha and Ada are significant, do you?”