Imaginary Lines (6 page)

So instead of dealing with the uncertain combination of hair and humidity, I tucked it into a sleek roll and wrapped it into a well-behaved prisoner of pins and elastics. Then I slipped on my Payless pumps and headed out the door.

Sports Today
was part of a whole family of papers and websites that made up Today Media
.
The organization had started out as a monthly magazine fifty-odd years ago, but was one of the first to jump from the print ship to the digital bandwagon when magazines started tanking. Back then, Today Media had been only three magazines, but now they’d broken out into six different specific brands. Each maintained an extensive website and released an expensive, shiny magazine every quarter, which collected their best online stories as well as including special in-depth features and interviews.

Today Media owned a very large and intimidating building bordering Madison Square Park and when I reached it, I paused for a moment and stared up. It was giant and glossy and terrifying and beautiful.

Someone clipped my shoulder as they passed me on the sidewalk and shot me a dirty look.

I took a deep breath and went inside.

The lobby was shiny and sleek and filled with professionals in black and white and gray. I started toward the elevator bank, and then a large woman sped into my purview. “Hey. Hey!”

I stopped, terrified that I had somehow messed up before I even started. “Hello?”

She nodded at a black box on the wall I’d barely noticed. “You have to sign in.” When I looked at her blankly, she asked, “Are you an employee?”

“This is my first day. I—I don’t have an ID yet.”

She waved me over to the front desk. “You’ll have to sign in there.”

Taking a deep breath and trying to calm my heart, I headed over to the desk and presented my driver’s license, which a second security woman studied for an unduly long time before handing it back. “Who are you here to see?”

“Tanya Jones.
Sports Today.
”

The security woman made a call, nodded and then typed furiously on her computer. A moment later she handed me a sticker printed with my name and
Sports Today
. “You’ll have to wear this until you have an employee ID.”

I nodded, plastered the pass against my cardigan and then walked a little nervously past the first guard. At least the people now waiting for the elevator hadn’t seen her accost me. We all loaded inside and pressed various buttons. The seven was already lit, so I faced forward like everyone else and looked at the little screen in the corner that announced it was 77 degrees out and 8:53 in the morning. My little mess-up had put me back three minutes from my planned arrival time.

The elevator let me out into an open lobby. I faced a guy not much older than me, who sat behind a long desk. To the left, windows let in orange autumn light, while behind him blocky red letters printed SPORTS TODAY on a black wall.

“Hi,” I said when the guy looked up. He wore the collar of his sweater-vest almost as high as Regency gentlemen. “My name’s Tamar Rosenfeld? I’m new. I’m here to see Tanya Jones?”

Dammit, I hated using upspeak. It meant I felt uncomfortable or nervous.

“Yeah, all right.”

Yeah, all right? I swallowed. “Okay. I’ll just stand here.”

He looked at me funny for a second, and then turned back to his computer.

Cool.

After a few excruciatingly awkward minutes, a guy rounded the corner. He was tall and skinny as a beanstalk, and his black hair rose in uncombed tufts in all directions. “Hi. Tamar?”

“That’s me.” I shook his extended hand.

“Carlos Fernandez, assistant editor. Come on, I’ll show you your desk.”

He brought me past the wall and into the open floor of the newsroom. I paused for one overwhelmed second to let it sink in. During the interview, I’d only seen meeting rooms on another floor, so this was my first real look. Desks and computers and people filled the entire space, messily organized into streamlined chaos. Tables, maybe three and a half feet long each, were pushed together in clumps of four or five. Half the people wore brightly colored headphones; others laughed with their neighbors. Computers covered every surface; small laptops and extra monitors and tablets. Large screens were mounted to the walls, interspersed with enlarged photos from some of
Sports
Today’s covers.

“Hey! Hey, everyone!”

Every occupant swiveled to stare like they’d been primed for the invitation, even those with headphones. Carlos gestured widely at me. “This is Tamar. She’s joining editorial, covering football.”

The room chorused a welcome back at me, which was slightly terrifying. I raised a hand. “Hi.”

Near fifty people worked here, which was absolutely
massive
compared to the small weekly newspaper I’d worked at before. Editorial numbered over a dozen, and covered not just different sports but different teams. I’d probably be spending most of my time with them, and in my interview I’d learned that we also had several columnists who didn’t work in the office.

The art department, marketing and programming were also large, though not as much as combined editorial. Carlos gave me a quick rundown of their names as we walked around the room, though they quickly blended together, as did the many faces. Everyone, despite race and sex, seemed oddly similar; youngish—Tanya and the arts director were the oldest, in their late thirties—very well dressed, and exuded this cosmopolitan vibe that I was certain didn’t extend to me. They all seemed cool. How did one become cool? A baffling concept.

“And we sit over here.” I followed Carlos across the room to a clump of four tables grouped near the wall of windows, and the spectacular sight of sky and—actually, all the other buildings kind of blocked out the best view of the city, but it was still imposing and impressive.

Carlos was gesturing at a wheelie office-chair. “All right, this is you. These are your neighbors, Jin and Mduduzi. Both mostly cover the Leopards, though you’ll all pitch in with the Jets and the Giants from time to time. Tanya and I will also occasionally be at games, especially when you’re starting out.”

The two guys looked up. I made the snap judgment that Jin was the Asian American with muscles I didn’t usually associate with journalists, and Mduduzi was the tall African American in a crisp button-up and fashionable glasses. They were both a couple of years older than me, and both looked more attractive than I’d expected my coworkers to be. I wasn’t sure yet if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

They both nodded and said hello.

Carlos tapped a beautiful, shiny, brand-new laptop on the empty desk across from Jin’s table. “This is yours. You’re lucky—they rolled out the new model right before we ordered it. Supposed to have great battery power.”

I tried not to salivate. I’d bought my last computer—okay, the only computer I’d ever owned myself—six years ago, right before college. It still worked, but it was a little tired sometimes. Poor baby.

“Come on,” Carlos said. “Let’s find Tanya.”

He led me to a corner office and my nerves came back in full force. Tanya Jones was the thirty-nine-year-old editor of
Sports Today
. She graduated from the Columbia J-school and got her start at one of the popular blogging platforms before landing a writer position here six years ago, and she took over the editor-in-chief position last year. I’d met her last month, and until she’d offered me the job, I hadn’t the slightest idea if she liked me or not.

Come to think of it, I still didn’t know if she liked me. Maybe I was the only viable candidate able to start so quickly.

Carlos showed me into her corner office. Tanya had the largest office on the floor. Her ultimate boss, Stuart Kingsley, the CEO of Today Media and its six separate magazines, worked on the twelfth floor, and while I’d seen pictures, I’d never met him.

Tanya stood and came over to shake my hand. She was tall and strong-boned and casually dressed. “Good to see you again. You’re the only new hire this week, so we’re going to do a seat-of-our-pants orientation. You don’t mind, do you?”

“Um. No.”

“Good.” She led me out of her office and back onto the open floor. Carlos kept pace. “Let’s start with coffee. Do you have a mug?”

“I don’t.”

“Then you need a mug.” We entered a brightly colored kitchenette. Boxes of snacks and candies lined the counters. I saw a bowl filled with dark chocolate squares and wondered if it was too early to snag one.

She pulled out a ceramic mug for me and filled it and her thermos with fresh coffee. She kept moving before I had a chance to doctor mine. I tried to keep pace without letting the liquid burn my hand, while Tanya managed to authoritatively gesture with hers. “You’ll have noticed. We have more than our fair share of testosterone in the office. Don’t let that bother you. If they bother you, report them to HR. I’m not interested in people who don’t treat everyone like humans.” We passed by the desk of a guy my age. “Right, Billy?”

He looked up with puppy-dog adoration. “Tanya, I love you, I would never betray your trust.”

She
hmphed
and we kept going, past the desks and along a wall of conference rooms. “Two things to remember. First, deadline’s not flexible. Second, you’re not Lois Lane.”

Carlos leaned close to me. “She’s Lois Lane. Doesn’t want you to steal her thunder.”

“I heard that.”

He just grinned. “Also, I’d add a third rule—fact-check your stories to death.”

That made sense, but the gravity he used unnerved me. “What if I miss something?”

Tanya didn’t break stride. “We’ll feed you to the wolves.” She paused for emphasis. “The wolves are the commentators on our website.”

“Don’t read the comments,” Carlos said helpfully.

I looked back and forth between them. “Why not?”

“Because internet commentators are the scum of humanity and they will tear you apart.”

“
Our readers
,” Tanya said forcefully, “are a wonderful community that we encourage and respect. However. They will tear you apart.”

People don’t tend to tear you apart when you work at a little weekly newspaper in the town you grew up in.

After she wrapped up the widest scope of my position, Tanya leaned back in her chair and studied me intently. “We’re doing things a little differently this year.”

“Oh?”

She nodded. “Part of what I liked about you during your interview was that you’d written an article about a topic that’s often considered taboo, and you didn’t back down. That’s what I want to do this year. Do you know the reputation of sports journalism?”

I nodded. There used to be an unspoken law not to rock the boat. Sports journalists were dependent on their contacts—coaches and players—to get scoops, and if they ruined relations, they could be kicked out of the press box and the story.

Sports Today
had proved itself ready to rock the boat a little bit, and given my brief impression of Tanya, I could only assume she wouldn’t mind sinking it in a blaze of fire. “I know it.”

“Good. Well, this is the year people start taking us seriously. We get a good story, we’re keeping it. In the past, if drugs or rape or murder turned up, they were almost uniformly handed off to the news beat. But we are the news, and if anything happens this season, I want you on it like glue.”

“Um...”

She scowled. “What, you have a question? You can ask a question.”

This woman terrified me. “Won’t that jeopardize our relationship with the teams?”

“I don’t give a damn about our relationship with the teams.” I stared at her, and she sighed. “Sorry. Basically, it’s great that we have a relationship and we can talk to them, but that’s not the most important thing. I value truth and accuracy above buttering people up. We’re not in this to churn out cutesy interviews or glowing features. We’re reporters.”

After an hour, Carlos picked me up and ran me over to HR to get my pic taken and ID badge printed. After that, I got a brief tour of our building before Carlos brought me over to our desks. It turned out he had the one beside me, across from Mduduzi. I sat down with a sigh of relief. “Now what?”

Carlos smiled. “Now I’m going to forward you a bunch of stories, and you’re going to write them.”

I tried not to gape. “Just like that?”

His smile widened. “Just like that. Don’t mess up.”

Not two hours later, I picked up a phone and dialed a number Carlos had forwarded. “Hi, this is Tamar Rosenfeld, calling from
Sports Now
... Can I talk to Dennis Gardner?”

And just like that, some fool receptionist put me in touch with an assistant coach of the Leopards.

Chapter Six

A week and a half later, Tanya strode by my desk. “Rosenfeld. You’re with me.”

I almost tripped as I shoved my phone and recorder into my purse and caught up with her. “Where are we going?”

She ignored me, instead snapping her fingers at Carlos. “You have her badge?”

“Yes, Tanya.” Carlos fell in beside me and we flanked Tanya all the way to the elevators.

I turned to him. “Do you know where we’re going?”

Tanya didn’t look at either of us as she responded. “Open locker room.”

“Wow—does that mean we’re going to the Leopards Stadium right now?”

Carlos leaned over and muttered out of the side of his mouth, “Be grateful it’s not the MetLife. The commute to Jersey’s a bitch.”

I was grateful to be headed to any stadium. I’d spent the past few days refusing to drown in all the information, but rather trying to absorb it, and a change of pace was welcome. Not that I didn’t like my new job—far from it. My first articles went live on Tuesday, after taking a beating and a half from Tanya’s editing wand. I almost cried the first time they came back drenched in red, but quickly figured out the preferred style. After all, my first three stories weren’t really that: one was to deliver snark on an inane tweet one of the New York Leopards had made; one was basically a rewrite of a story that another publication ran; and one was a three-paragraph write-up on a video that was making the rounds online of Jensen Clay being an ass to a reporter.