“You’ve got lots of healing to go still. The major doctor told you some of the skin grafts aren’t taking hold. You’ve got to prepare yourself. They can’t just keep operating.”
Weeks later, when the letters stopped, he realized what she was trying to tell him-that his nose itched because the new skin grafted on to it was dying. But he wasn’t listening to it this night.
Angel slipped out of her shoes and sat on the bed. From the basket she pieced together a meal fit for the Emperor-seafood, rice, and roast duck so tender it barely had to be chewed. Deftly handling chopsticks, she carefully fed him the softest foods. It was a turning point in his recovery. His days on a liquid diet came to an end.
What he did drink that night was a bottle of wine she popped open. She said it was supposed to be good stuff. At that age he knew little about the fine taste of wine, but it was delicious, and he sipped as much as she allowed. Years after the war, after he had fallen in love widi great books and plays, when he came to appreciate classical music, dead poets and dead painters and the work they left behind, when he began to respect opera and ballet and other things he didn’t really care for, he took a wine-tasting class. He bought books on wine. He subscribed to a wine magazine. Over the years he became a connoisseur of sorts. He could easily have become a wino searching for the magic nectar they shared that night. But he never tasted that wine again.
When they were done eating, she took up nurse duty and cleaned the bed. She wiped his mouth, straightened the sheets, and fluffed the pillow. The saddest feeling came over him: the feeling she was leaving. But she didn’t leave. She lay down next to him and rested her head on his pillow. In the hour that followed they talked in whispers, the most intimate conversation of his young life. He told her of Minnesota, of lakes and trees and the extremes of the changing seasons. She told him about the Texas heat and the beaches and storms of Corpus Christi. When the conversation graduated from weather to boys and girls, as it always does, he confessed the sins of a midwestern boy.
In high school he waited until the last minute to lose his virginity. It was graduation night in the backseat of her daddy’s new Chrysler. That summer they enjoyed sex on the grass of the valley floor beneath the Soo Line Bridge. He didn’t love her in the least, but the sex was good. Then he was off to boot camp on Parris Island. He had sex with one of the teenage barflies that buzzed around the base in Seattle before they shipped out. In Da Nang he paid for sex twice. But both occasions left him feeling shamed, cheated, and wanting his money back. He vowed he’d never pay for it again.
When he’d finished talking, saying much more than he should have said, there was the longest silence. He was sure what little remained of his face had turned even deeper shades of red. He could feel her near him. Her warm breath smelling of sweet wine swept over his eyes and touched his heart. Then she sat up on the edge of the bed. She had the most slender back. She stood as if to leave.
The dress had loops that looped around the buttons that ran up the side. She undid them, not the least bit selfconscious, peeled open the front, and let it drop to the floor. She was not wearing a bra, and her breasts were larger than he had fantasized. She slid off her panties. Angel pulled back the sheets and gingerly laid her beautiful black skin over the charred Marine and covered them both with the white sheets.
He was glad his hands had mostly healed. His fingers were well enough to run the length of her back and touch and caress every soft curve. He would have been content if that was all she allowed him, but she pressed her lips over his and he embarrassingly wished that they were as healed as he had claimed. She’d left the candle alive. If the scars and scales bothered her, she did not let on. When they kissed he tried to press harder, but it hurt his face. She sensed this and went on with the softest kisses a woman can give. When the kisses were done, she buried her head in his shoulder and seemed to fall asleep on top of him. So he too slept.
Sometime in the night he awoke and she was still there, lying across him, and he knew he wasn’t dreaming. She was awake and her hands were inching his hospital gown over his hips. Then she had him in her hand and she was teasing him. She arched her back, putting him inside of her. They may have done it a second time that night. In his memories maybe even three times.
She dressed before the sun came up. They were both crying.
“Who’ll be around to … to … to tell me to st-stop it?”
“You will,” she answered. “Whenever you’re feeling sorry for yourself, whenever your hurt and frustration start to get the best of you, you just gotta say, ‘Just stop it.’ ” She ran her fingers over his scorched lips one last time, and, as he remembered it, she whispered that most of his healing had to take place in his mind.
His letters to Germany began the day she left. He thanked her in a thousand different words. He wrote of his feelings about their time together, avoiding the word “love” as best he could. Every day he grew stronger, and every day he wrote to her about another reflex, another muscle returned to life. He passed on to her scuttlebutt that he’d been put in for the Cross. She was military. She could appreciate that. And though he didn’t know it, his letter writing was seminal-because along with the reading he was doing, he was developing into a fine writer.
Her letters back to him were sweet and funny, but they were filled with warnings he was too in love to understand. Advice about living with the scars we gather as we go through life.
In his last letter to Angel the emotions and overwrought memories of a wounded soldier overran common sense. The Marine wrote of his love for her, promised her that after his discharge he would come to Corpus Christi. The letter was written in Minnesota smug. He would rescue her from Texas. They would move to the north country, where she would fall in love with the land and the weather, and him, and they would live happily ever after in a house on a lake. All of this was written still believing his face would heal. Still denying burning realities.
Angel didn’t write back. He never heard from her again. More than any letter it was this lack of a letter that finally delivered the ugly truth. Forced him to face a faceless life.
But over the years no trace of bitterness could ever be traced to his heart when it came to the angel from Corpus Christi. She came to mind whenever he saw a nurse in uniform. He dreamed of her one night after again reading Fitzgerald’s “The Ice Palace.” The night she laid her warm, tender body over the charred Marine and took him deep inside her remained the most beautiful and everlasting memory of his life.
Just stop it.
Twenty years would go by before he would have sex again.
“Hi. My name is Stephanie. I’m a new intern.”
“Hi, Stephanie. I’m Rick Beanblossom. I’m a burn victim. Vietnam. That’s why I wear this mask. You’ll get used to it. In fact, if you hang around here long enough you’ll find I’m the best-looking guy in the newsroom. Where are you from?”
“Des Moines.”
“Is that in America?”
“Yes. It’s the capital of Iowa.”
“I see.”
“They said I could work with you today.”
“Sure. I’ll tell you as much as I can. A lot of it is my personal opinion. Take it for what it’s worth.”
“All right.”
“Do you know who Thomas Edison was?”
“Yes. He invented the light bulb and the phonograph.”
“Who was Alexander Graham Bell?”
“He invented the telephone.”
“Marconi?”
“Invented the first radio.”
“And who was Vladimir Zworykin?” Rick asked her.
“Who?”
“Vladimir Zworykin. A Russian immigrant. In 1929 he invented television. Do you get the point?”
“That the invention of television is nothing to celebrate?”
“I’m a field producer, Stephanie. I research and write stories for the reporters and the anchors.” “I heard you’re really good.”
“I’m token quality around here. Viewers tune in to see the fluff, then I sneak up and hit them with the news. Half my stories are quasi-investigative, half are feature essays. The reporters like to work with me because I make them look good.”
When Clancy Communications bought Channel 7 it was in sad shape. Though a network affiliate, it had such a poor reputation that an independent station in town was pulling in more viewers with reruns of “The Flintstones.” The company decided on a quick fix. Cash. Some of that cash went into big fat contracts. They stole Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Rick Beanblossom away from an investigative team at the Star Tribune with the promise of a free hand. They brought in Ron Shea from their station in Richmond and paired him with tall redhead Charleen Barington, an aging but still attractive beauty queen from Texas who’d managed to lose her accent. For reporters they recruited a corps of young, aggressive, well-educated beauties. Even the guys were pretty. Almost as an afterthought, and because he came cheap, they hired the weekend weatherman from their station in Memphis. His name was Dixon Bell. Channel 7 News became Sky High News, with Weather Center 7, Sky High Sports, and a red, white, and blue Skyhawk helicopter. As one cynical columnist wrote, “You’d have to be Sky High to take these bimbos seriously.” But it worked.
“So if your kind of stories are so good, why don’t they do more of them?”
“They should,” Rick told her. “Now that the beauty queens and our psychic weatherman have hooked the viewers, we should be moving to harder news. We have the people to do it. But don’t hold your breath. How long is your internship?”
“I don’t know. How long do they give us?” “Honey, what television news calls interns, mentors, and volunteers, others call slave labor. They use the euphemisms to skirt the labor laws. Newsrooms are all take and no give. As long as you are willing to work for free, they’ll let you work here forever. Make yourself a schedule, set some goals, and stick to them.” “My goal is to be an anchor.”
“That’s fine, but learn reporting. Anchor is the last job on the way out the door. The more diverse your background, the more valuable you’ll be to a newsroom.” “What do the anchors do?”
“Very little. Do you see that man over there, the one strutting around like Supercock? That’s Ron Shea, our main anchor. They brought him in from Virginia to boost our ratings. He’s done that. But the only thing he knows about Minnesota is how to get to work and how to get to the airport. He’s not a bad guy, but he doesn’t work on a news story unless there’s a free trip involved. He does promotion and he reads the news. His beauty-queen co-anchor is on maternity leave. When she’s here she does even less.”
“Is news a good career?”
“No, it’s a good start. Don’t make a career of it.” “Why are you still in it?”
“For now, money. I got lucky. There are a hundred people who work in this newsroom. Four or five of us make big bucks. The notion that people who work in television get paid well is one of the biggest myths in America. TV doesn’t pay shit. They expect you to live on the perks, not the paycheck. Benefits are nonexistent. There is no security. That’s why it’s a young people’s business. Our news director is thirty years old. The executive producer is twenty-eight. The ten o’clock producer is twenty-six. That’s not unusual. The smart ones get their credentials before they burn out, then move on to a real job. If I left this newsroom today and came back in five years, I’d be lucky to recognize ten people.”
They were standing at his cluttered desk, but there was a sloppy organization to it all. The desk was in a corner, tucked away from other desks, and it had more work space. Where others had only desktop computers, Rick Beanblossom had the computer and a laser printer. His twelve-button speakerphone looked like a mini communications center. An electronic Rolodex stored a thousand phone numbers. Next to it was a bottle of prescription painkillers and an open can of Pepsi. A crystal vase held a brilliant array of flowers. He had a fresh bouquet of flowers delivered to the newsroom every week. A monitor on the upper shelf was tuned to Channel 10, which was a four-way split screen displaying four different channels. The sound was mute, and he wasn’t paying any attention to the pictures. “Let me give you the tour. It starts here at my desk. This is a telephone.”
“I know. We have them in Iowa.” Stephanie smiled at him. She was short and girlish, so young she looked more just out of high school that just out of college. On television she would come across naturally cute and perky.
“Ninety percent of the research I do, I do over the phone. Learn how to work the phones. Friendly and persistent will get you a lot more information than pushy and rude.” Rick moved on. “This is a computer. It’s connected to the mainframe, and its research capabilities are invaluable. If you’re going to work in news, learn how to use a computer. Besides a writing tool, this gives us four wire services-AP local, AP national,
UPI
, and a PR wire.”
“What’s AP?” “What did you major in?” “Speech Comm.”
“I see.” Rick tapped at the keyboard in a slow, deliberate style. “Associated Press. United Press International. And Public Relations … corporate bullshit.” News stories in phosphorescent orange began breaking across the screen. “The news rolls on these twenty-four hours a day,” he told Stephanie. “Somebody should be checking computers every fifteen minutes. If you hear them beeping, that means urgent-a breaking story coming across for the first time. Give it to the assignment desk.” “So these stories are already written for you?” “No, these are written too well. We have to trash them for TV.” “How so?”
“Make it simple. Write down to the viewer. Never confuse them. Don’t use synonyms. Don’t use quotes. Use short words whenever you can. Gasoline is gas. Automobiles are cars. Stick with one-syllable words. Use short sentences. No commas. Fewer words are less confusing. Write to the video. No pictures, no story.”
“And this here is all the latest news?” “Yes. If you’re going to work in news, learn how to steal.”
“From who?”
“From whom,” he said, correcting her. “Newspapers are your best source. Then the news magazines. Watch the networks and the competition. Despite what they say, you can’t copyright news. If it’s an investigative piece, start with public records. Most people would have a heart attack if they knew how much of their private life was available to the general public.” “Okay.”