Robert Tanenbaum - Resolved

She had, of course, no suitable clothes at the farm. Buy a new outfit? No, she had a closet full of costly garments from her brief stint as an IPO millionaire. But they were all at the loft, which meant she would have to go back there. Could she sneak in and out? No, the boys and Lucy were on winter break from school. Was she so low that she would buy an outfit she didn't need and would never wear again just because she didn't have the courage to face her children? No, that was lower than letting her dog boy fuck her from behind. She was mildly surprised to see that there were still some things beyond her.

So on the Friday morning she left before dawn, having slept hardly at all, and drove west in her truck. The weather reports the night before had been full of the massive storm that had socked Buffalo and smothered Albany and was now whistling down the Hudson Valley like the Twentieth Century Limited. There were only two inches on the ground when she got out of the tunnel, but traffic was already incurably snarled, even without the tunnel security delays. It was just past 8:30 in the morning when she came up into the gray daylight of Manhattan. The hundred-mile trip had taken her four and a half hours.

"She's been gone a long time," said Murrow. He was starting to feel the liquor, just a trace of blurriness, of fuzzy face, but he was far from drunk. Murrow was of the class, nearly extinct in the city, where children were taught to drink at their parents' table. He had been taking sherry or a light cocktail with his mother from the age of fourteen, and at Brown he had been famous for drinking men twice his size under the table. Karp was over twice his size, but not any kind of a drinker. He looked at his boss and regretted having brought the cognac, for he had not expected the arrival of the reporter, or that the afternoon would have, under her influence, degenerated into a debauch. Karp, he knew, had a tendency to be a little morose, even when cold sober. Murrow did not want to think about how he was going to get Karp into shape to meet the governor in the time remaining. He checked the bottle and glanced at his watch. He prayed for more snow, for blizzards, lightnings, earthquakes.

Karp observed Murrow glancing at his wrist. "Maybe she fell in. Maybe her bladder is the size of the Chrysler Building. Would you like to go to the ladies' and check?"

He spoke with unnatural slowness and deliberation. Murrow thought that Karp had no real idea how drunk he was. That could be a problem. He poured more cognac into his own glass, filling it over the halfway mark. It was one way to keep Karp from drinking much more. If that goddamned woman would just get back and absorb the rest, things might still be rescued.

"No, I think I won't," said Murrow. "She's a big girl."

Two minutes later she reappeared, brandishing a magnum bottle of Veuve Cliquot. Murrow's heart sank; the city was practically shut down by the blizzard and he couldn't imagine where she had found a liquor store open. He expressed this thought, somewhat sourly. "My child," said Stupenagel, "only four things are required of an international correspondent: accuracy, speed, courage, and the ability to find alcoholic beverages any place in the world at any hour." She yanked out the cork with a bang and a flourish.

"Some people think it's vulgar to make a loud pop when you open wine," said Murrow, but held out his glass.

"Well, they're not invited to our party, are they?" she said, pouring. "I was in the can, and I thought, Hey, it's a celebration, we require champagne. And also to wash the cognac out of the system, to clear our heads, polish our wits, so we don't disgrace ourselves when the governor arrives. Is he sleeping?"

"Stunned, I think," said Murrow. "You know, you really are a wicked person."

"Wicked?" she exclaimed. "Wicked. That's a word you don't hear much anymore, except as an intensifier in New England. Wicked good maple syrup. What else is wicked besides witches? I can't think of anything. You wouldn't say 'wicked empire,' or 'wicked dictator,' would you? Evil is the classier term, because it's about power, and whatever we say, we can't help loving power. But I like wicked, the implied cleverness in there, the delight in turning things to one's own advantage, outsmarting the goody-goodies, generating a healthy and renewing chaos. As here. Wake up, Karp, it's time for your champagne. Jesus, it's cold in this office. We won't need an ice bucket for the bottle. Is something wrong with the radiators?"

"They've been fixing the system for months," said Murrow. "That, or it's an experiment to see if criminal justice can be improved by rapidly changing the temperature of the courthouse. They've tried everything else. Last summer they actually had the heat on, or so it seemed. At least this building is old enough so that the windows still open. Why are you so intent on getting him drunk?"

"I'm not getting him drunk, Murrow. You can't get someone drunk nowadays like you could in Victorian novels." She added in an oily voice: " 'Have some Madeira, m'dear.' " Champagne splashed into the glass that Karp held out. He drank some, finding it cooling after the brandy and quite pleasant.

"See?" said Stupenagel. "He wants to get drunk. Why? Perhaps his life has gotten away from him. Perhaps things haven't worked out the way he planned, and he wishes a few blessed moments of oblivion?"

"Perhaps you're a pathetic, lonely alcoholic who wants company," said Karp.

"Oooh!" crowed Stupenagel. "A new side of Karp emerges. See, Murrow, I may be wicked, but that was cruel."

Karp was starting to feel queasy. He couldn't recall what he had eaten for lunch, but if the past was any guide, he would shortly learn what it had been in full Ektachrome. It was twenty years since he had been this drunk at an office event- that horrible, magical night when Marlene had helped him stagger back to his lonely apartment and his life with her had started. They had all been drinking Olde Medical Examiner then, a punch concocted by some wiseasses from the morgue out of fruit juice and absolute alcohol. The present drunk was rather more elegant. He wondered if he would be quite as sick. But other than the messages from his belly, he felt fine. He hadn't thought about Marlene, or what she was doing, or whether she was really going to show up here with his family or not, and he hadn't thought obsessively about his own future, either, for the better part of two hours. He felt enclosed in a comfortable blanket, the fuzz of it against his face, its warmth relaxing his limbs. Everything was going to be just fine. This was why people became drunks, he thought. If you could feel like this all the time, it might make more sense than he had previously imagined to live in a cardboard box and never bathe. He felt a sudden burst of affection for his fellow drunks.

"I'm sorry, Stupenagel," he said. "It was the liquor talking, not me."

"Oh, no offense, Karp," she said. "If I took umbrage at everything said to me during drunken bouts, I wouldn't have any friends left."

"Assuming you had any at the onset of the bout," observed Murrow in a not quite inaudible voice.

"Murrow, what is it with these little digs?" she said, fixing him with her eye. "Would you like a blow job? Would that calm you down? Excuse me, Karp, this will just take a second." She slid off her chair and stumped across the office on her knees for a few feet, with her mouth open, making vacuumlike sounds, and saying, "You know, some of these little skinny guys have the most enormous schlongs. I hope I don't crack my jaw. I hate when that happens."

"I'm sorry," said Murrow, "I have to have my special rubber underwear or it doesn't work."

When they had stopped giggling and Stupenagel was back in her chair, she said, "What were we talking about before Murrow got carried away by his disgusting lusts? Something important…"