Brad Parks - Eyes of the Innocent

Like I said, it was confusing. As was the fiercely territorial look she had on her face as she approached.

“Just stop it,” she hissed.

“Stop what?” I said, trying to summon my best innocent face.

“Oh, Carter,” she mocked Sweet Thang’s voice in a violent whisper. “You’re so wonderful. I want to write just like you.”

“What did I do?” I said, perhaps too defensively.

“Oh, Carter,” she continued in the voice, “you’re such a great writer. Why don’t you have drinks with me and then come over to my place and write for me all night long?”

“Oh, come on.”

“Writing is like a muscle, Carter? And which muscle is she supposed to think you’re bragging about? Your trapezius? Why don’t you just pull her into the supply closet and ask her to play Seven Minutes in Heaven?”

“Now you’re just being silly.”

“Am I? Or did I just see her give you the little wave ?”

“That? That was not the little wave. That was just … a wave.”

She closed in and clamped her hand on my chin, lifting my face for closer inspection.

“I thought so,” she said, the whisper getting even angrier. “You have glitter on your cheek.”

“So?” I said, wiping both cheeks quickly.

“So Sweet Thang was wearing makeup with glitter in it. Is that just a coincidence?”

“Glitter has been known to become airborne,” I pointed out.

Tina stuck her fists into her side, glared at me for a moment, then stomped off. Three strides into her stomping, she turned around and jerked her head, like I should have known I was supposed to follow her. I trailed after her. It was either that or get scolded in front of the entire newsroom.

She went into the (thankfully empty) break room and was ready for me with an ambush when I entered.

“She’s hitting on you,” Tina hissed.

“Is not.”

“And you’re flirting back!”

“Am not!”

“I heard her saying you gave her the first byline on that story. You want to tell me if she was dump-truck ugly with an ass she couldn’t fit through an elevator door you would have done that?”

“She earned that byline-”

“Liar!”

“And besides, if her ass was that big she never would have fit in the booth at the restaurant and we never would have gotten the interview.”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“I’m not sure I know what the subject is.”

“The subject is that every male under the age of ninety in this newsroom has been following that girl around with drool pouring out their mouths for the last month, and you, of all people, are not going to join them. It’s improper, it’s unseemly, and it’s gross. She’s a child.”

I raised my right hand like I was taking the presidential oath of office and said, “I have absolutely nothing but the purest of intentions toward that young woman. And I have no indication her feelings for me are anything besides professional admiration.”

“You are and always have been a dreadful liar, Carter Ross. You’ve been screwing her with your eyes ever since she got here.”

“I don’t even think I said hello to her until this morning.”

“And let me guess, you let her tag along with you all day long because, what, you’re deeply concerned about the quality of instruction she receives during her internship?”

“Szanto told me to work with her,” I said, still sounding far more defensive than I intended.

“Oh, sure. Did Szanto also tell you to jump in her lap the moment she asked you out for a beer after work?”

Couldn’t exactly dispute that one. Tina sighed and waved her arms in the air.

“Look at you! You can’t even defend yourself! Of course you want to have sex with her. She’s twenty-two. She’s got helium balloons for tits. I should probably be worried if you didn’t want to have sex with her, because it would mean you were dead from the waist down, which would mean you’re absolutely no use to me. All I’m saying is, if you sleep with her, don’t even think about sleeping with me. I’ll find some other guy with good breeding potential to get me knocked up.”

With that, Tina stormed off.

I looked at my only friend in the room, the Coke machine. “Did you get all that?” I asked it.

The machine hummed back at me.

“Just to review,” I said. “A woman who has expressed exactly zero interest in a conventional monogamous relationship just berated me for flirting with an intern. Can you figure out what to make of it?”

The machine hummed some more.

“Yeah,” I said. “Me, neither.”

* * *

Before I could make it back to my desk, I was interrupted by a strangling sound coming from Szanto’s office. It sounded vaguely like my name, so I stuck my head in.

“You looking for me?”

“Where is it?” he asked.

“By ‘it’ do you mean the beautiful story I have crafted that you cannot wait to put on A1?”

“Something like that, yeah.” Szanto said.

“Just about to file,” I assured him.

“Good. You got a quote from the mortgage company, right?”

I looked down at my shoes and tried desperately not to look sheepish.

“We, uh, had a little problem there,” I began.

Szanto didn’t wait to hear the rest. He burst out with a long string of language that would have made my grandmother cover her ears, finishing it with, “… and I told you to write it hard. We can’t tell this sob story where we make the predatory lender the bad guy and not reach out to the bad guy and give them the opportunity to tell the other side.”

“I know, I know,” I said. “I had Sweet Thang run up to the courthouse and pull the mortgage. But it was missing.”

“Missing?”

“Yeah. She said the computer file didn’t exist, and when she went to look for the hard copy, it wasn’t in the books. So we don’t actually know who the mortgage company is.”

Szanto considered this news for a moment as he gulped some coffee out of a large Dunkin’ Donuts cup he had been reusing for weeks, judging from the stains on it. He frowned at the coffee, like it had just told him to lose weight and stop smoking.

“This coffee is crap,” he said, then took another large swallow. He frowned again.

“Well, we can’t run the story without talking to the mortgage company, the broker, or someone to give it some balance,” he said. “I’m holding it.”

Holding a story means it’s not going to run in the next day’s paper. While that may not sound like such a devastating thing, it’s remarkable how quickly something that’s been held for a day becomes stale. It doesn’t actually lose news value to the outside world. But it does lose buzz within the building. By the next day, the cabal of editors who make the decision about where to place stories in the paper feel like they’ve already been hearing about your story for an eternity. And given their attention spans-think: salamander-they get bored quickly. So even though it would still be new news to readers, it’s treated like old news by the editors. What is surefire A1 material on Day One becomes back-of-the-book fodder on any day thereafter, and the next thing you know your brilliant narrative is just filling space above ads for assisted living facilities.

“Aw, come on, don’t do that,” I said. “What if I was able to find the guy who sold her the mortgage and get a comment from him?”

Szanto grimaced. “I told the future ex-Mrs. Szanto I wouldn’t be home late tonight,” he said.

There were already two ex-Mrs. Szantos. And with the way he treated his wives-giving them about as much care and attention as most people give their rental cars-it was pretty much assumed there would be more.