Creamy White Thighs

Pondering it now, home early and watching the ghostly daytime moon, the bottle of beer sweating in his palm, he felt again the fury rise in his throat at Kyle “Spock” Harpinger, the “blogger” who had so blithely announced Garrick's potential unemployment. Harpinger hadn’t been in the press room when Garrick had left for the day, to his disappointment. He’d hoped to talk with the blogger: to first ask politely whether he had any more information about the rumored layoffs at the Peoria Post, and then, once that question was answered, to ask, less politely, whether all the people in Harpinger’s Internet world were smug heartless assholes, or if it was just him. Garrick’s theories about what was on that framed scrap of newsprint that stood on Harpinger’s desk had taken on decidedly darker themes, to the point that Garrick was now sure that, whatever it was, it would surely confirm the blogger’s smugness and general asshole-ness.

What Garrick had found instead in the press room on his way out was a half-hearted going-away gathering for Larry O’Shaughnessey, who Garrick had been unaware until that moment was going away. It wasn’t overly surprising to him. It had been clear to everyone that the young wire reporter’s nerves hadn’t recovered from the experience of having Tim Flynn’s gun held in his face.

What everyone didn’t know was that “Shiny” O’Shaughnessy was done with this job and this place and with all of them. The idealistic young man who’d come into their midst some months earlier was leaving jaded and bitter about what he’d learned of these people and their profession. It had come together so quickly, the job in the public relations firm. He hadn’t told any of the denizens of floor two-and-a-half and didn't intend to, he was that done with them. It was one of the top firms in New York City. Thanks to his wife’s uncle’s former college roommate, Larry had landed a salary that would take their breath away. He would occupy an office that would put to shame not just their press room cubbyholes but even the more stately offices of the politicians they covered—an office with an aerial view of the world’s greatest city that would allow Larry to forget everything he’d suffered here in this prairie slum, the low pay and the brain-dead readers and the lazy cynical colleagues and the crazy man’s gun in his face and the nickname “Shiny,” which he was making sure to leave here with his discarded notebooks and his stupid cheap multi-colored dress jacket and the rest. During the job interview in New York, he’d been so enthralled with the view laid out before him from the upper heights of the World Trade Center that he finally had to stop looking and concentrate on the interview. He didn’t plan to think about these small, small people anymore once he was safely ensconced in his new life high in the crisp blue sky over New York.

Garrick muttered a congratulations to Shiny—though no one seemed to know in any detail where he was going, and no one seemed to think it an urgent enough question to press—and he eyed and then passed on taking any of the cake. And he decided just like that to go home, though it was just one-thirty. Why not? His story, such as it was, was done, his editor had been demoted, his job was possibly ending. And it was a cloudless day. The sky beckoned.

On his way down the marble stairs he came upon Claire Ottoman, stopped at the landing, staring up at the Mural, her majestic eyebrows arched in thought. He paused and turned and looked with her. He hadn’t studied it in awhile, the Mural, and he was surprised to find that the woman with the baby was once again the center of the painting to him, the men by the fire receding back into the scenery.

Claire tipped her chin toward the painting and said: “I've never paid much attention to it before. I like it.” Garrick nodded and said nothing, aware that he wouldn't even know where to start. Claire said: “That sister with the baby. I never noticed her before. She’s beautiful.”

Garrick thought: Sister? He looked again. Why had he always assumed the woman was the baby’s mother? But, yes, she looked young—maybe too young. Sisters had cared for their siblings throughout history and across cultures, including, presumably, Native American culture, right? She was singing to the baby, singing to her sibling—he was sure of it now. The sweetness of it seized him hard. He felt a sting behind his eyes. Did they ever play the game of “island,” or something like it, the Indian baby and his sister?

“So are you being laid off, or what?” asked Claire, as casually as if she'd asked the time.

Garrick expelled a short, shocked laugh and said: “Well, happy Thursday to you, too!”

Claire, smiling: “Sorry.” She didn’t look sorry. She looked as untroubled as Garrick had ever seen her look. Her eyebrows, so often pinched in tension, were now two gentle arches serenely framing a creaseless face.

“I don’t know if it’s me or Colleen,” said Garrick. “But one of us, apparently.” And he waited for an expression of sympathy, and it still didn’t come.

Claire said: “Well, either way, we should have dinner some time.”

He studied her face, this woman who had turned down more date invitations from him than he could count. “I thought you didn’t date competitors,” he said. Then, the implication dawning on him: “You’re that sure I’m getting fired?”

Claire smiled. “No idea,” she said. “It just seems silly to not have dinner.”

Now, on Mrs. Janovik’s roof, Garrick took another swig of the beer and tried to savor the anticipation of it—dinner, with Claire—but Kyle “Spock” Harpinger kept getting in the way. He couldn’t stop pondering the snark of Harpinger’s “blog” post: I guess it takes more than kicking some old judge in the balls to stay employed these days, guys :) Was this the future of journalism? Reportage as playground chatter, complete with obscenities and taunts? The waving of blithe, smirking words in the face of something serious? Someone’s career was ending—possibly Garrick’s, but in any case, someone’s—part of a bigger story about an industry ending, a legacy ending. That was proper fodder for what amounted to street-ball trash-talking? And from someone with whom Garrick had no conflict, no history, had barely ever had a conversation? There wasn’t acid or anger in the blogger’s report, just cold cynicism and an utter lack of respect for a topic that deserved some. It was increasingly clear that what was happening to Garrick or Colleen—what was happening to newspapers across America—was a tragedy. Is this how the “blogger” would treat other tragedies? Is this how he would cover a murder? I guess it took more than that for you to stay alive, suckerrr! :)

Maybe it was the beer, but Garrick suddenly felt a sadness so heavy that he wanted to sit down. With nowhere to sit on the flat roof, he just stood and felt the weight of it. It wasn’t about the blogger or about Mrs. Janovik or about Alice or even about the possible impending loss of his job. It was about The Story—not that it had ultimately collapsed, but that it had been built so shoddily in the first place. He’d gotten the thing wrong, and then his colleagues had gotten it wrong on top of his wrongness, and now they were all moving on to the next thing as if the thing they'd just built together hadn’t tumbled down like a poorly constructed treehouse. Maybe it was right that he might be leaving the profession—leaving it to, what, stare at the stars from the faculty of some small college science department? Someplace where he couldn’t do any more damage? This was important work after all, and he’d blown it. They all had. Maybe they all deserved the fading extinction they now so clearly faced from the rising digital tide. Maybe they were, indeed, the dinosaurs that their online competitors so cruelly labeled them.

It was a tempting metaphor, the dinosaurs, but one that only worked if the dinosaurs had been replaced by something meaner, uglier and stupider than themselves. The idea that journalistic evolution might be crawling in the direction of the “blogger” down the hall—to the smirking, snarking, unaccountable, untrained-and-proud-of-it “citizen-journalism” he so blithely practiced—made Garrick's throat tighten. His proud old profession had its warts—he’d done more than his part to display them during these past weeks, he knew—but it also had a towering legacy and a crucial duty that the Kyle “Spock” Harpingers of the world didn't appear to recognize, or maybe just couldn't have cared less about. Were they going to look over the shoulders of the people of power, keeping them honest, through the numbing grind of day-to-day governing, these lounging, slovenly “bloggers”? Were these sneering part-time students and half-employed artists and self-styled social commentators going to untangle the deliberately dense and impenetrable labyrinth of American politics and spell out, nice and slow, what was really happening for citizens who needed to know it? Were Harpinger and his ilk going to uncover Watergate—perhaps over pizza, during pauses in their raucous on-line game marathons? And if they didn't, who would?

:)

That sandal-wearing sonofabitch.

Garrick could feel the mist from the beer thickening in his brain. It mingled with his anger. He looked at his watch: five-thirty. He might still be there.

The press room lobby was empty when Garrick arrived. Harpinger’s terrarium of an office was vacant as well. Garrick stood in the open doorway, breathing his frustration. The small glass frame holding the piece of torn newspaper stood there on the desk, taunting. He looked around, then gingerly stepped into the office. Open door or not, entering someone else’s cubbyhole when it was empty was an indefensible breach of decorum. But he was owed something. At the very least, he was going to know what was in that damned frame.

He picked up the glass-covered scrap of sepia-yellow paper and peered at it. The light script along the top border of the brittle page said: The Brooklyn Daily Eagle—October 28, 1929.

Under it, in the unsteady block letters of old typeset, the small headline: Ice Association Reports Small Loss of Business.

Garrick peered in closer to read the black, splotchy typeset words below it:

He glanced once more at it. Then he set it back on the desk and muttered: “Freak.”

It was after nightfall and after visiting hours when he reached the hospital. He twisted his face into a show of panic for the receptionist, gave her the constructed story about the flat tire and his travel schedule and how this was likely his last chance to see her—technically his aunt, he said, but more like a grandmother, a close one—and he managed the tremor of grief in his voice that he’d practiced on the drive over. Yank their chains. The receptionist deliberated with herself, then led him up. Mrs. Janovik was awake in the bed, propped up and staring toward the chattering television that hung high in the corner. He paused at the door, stricken by the empty look in her face, the one that had kept him away this long. He thought: Where are you? She turned her head toward him and smiled vacantly, and he smiled back. He stepped toward the bed and sat in the chair next to it. He said: “Hi, Mrs. Janovik. How are you?”

Mrs. Janovik, still smiling, answered: “Hello.”

The anonymous politeness of it stung him. He said: “It’s Garrick, Mrs. Janovik. Do you remember me?”

Mrs. Janovik thought about it, then, apparently deciding it was the safest answer, said again: “Hello.”

“How are you feeling?” Garrick asked gently.

Mrs. Janovik’s face suddenly scrunched into a mask of emotional agony. She said: “Those poor squirrels are dying!”

It took Garrick a long moment to realize that she was talking about what was on the television screen mounted up in the far corner. He turned and looked, right into the frowning face of Cole “Tooth” Smiley. Tooth was doing a standup in front of the large road sign: Welcome to Olney, Illinois, Home of the White Squirrels! It was daylight where he stood. The upper edge of the screen announced: Earlier today. The bottom of the shot was framed with the superimposed words: Is the end near for Olney’s famous white squirrels?

Tooth was saying into his microphone, with gravity: “City officials here in the small southern Illinois town of Olney, Illinois, fear the end of an era. The town has long been home to a rare population of albino white squirrels—chattering little mascots, whose . . . creamy . . . white . . . thighs . . . have climbed these local trees for almost a century . . .”

Tooth said the three words with such outsized emphasis that it must have sounded weird to his viewers and to his bosses. Smooth!, thought Garrick. He looked for, and found, the edge of a triumphant smile on Tooth’s otherwise grim mouth as he continued: “Now, their time might be over, because gray squirrels are interbreeding with them at an alarming rate . . .”

Mrs. Janovik pointed at the television screen, worry pinched into her face, and said again: “Those poor squirrels! Look, they’re dying!”

“They’re not dying, Mrs. Janovik,” said Garrick, “they’re just changing.” He picked up the remote from the side table and, with a point and a click, muted Cole “Tooth” Smiley in mid-sentence. He marveled at how satisfying it felt. Mrs. Janovik continued watching the screen with deep concern and listening, as if she still heard sound. Garrick pulled his chair closer and cleared his throat, then cleared it again. She finally turned her head and looked at him, and again smiled vacantly.

Garrick said: “Mrs. Janovik, do you remember Albert?”

Mrs. Janovik repeated, politely: “Albert?”

“Your brother, Albert?”

“I have a brother?”

Garrick nodded, and he smiled warmly, and he said: “Yes, you do. He lives in Poland.”

Mrs. Janovik’s face went bright with recognition, and she exclaimed: “Poland! I’m from Poland!”

Garrick, frozen, absorbed this new breakthrough, wide-eyed, as she demanded: “Where in Poland does he live? Can we talk to him?”

Garrick, scrambling now to improvise: “I’m—I’m not sure where he lives, Mrs. Janovik. It might be hard to talk to him.” Then: “But he’s your brother, and I wanted to tell you about him.”

He leaned closer. He said: “He had blond hair and a small nose, and he followed you everywhere. When you were little, the two of you used to play a game you called `island.’ Sometimes with the other kids in your neighborhood, or just the two of you, if they weren’t around. You would spend whole days on that island . . .”