Brad Parks - Faces of the Gone

As Cody Risien drifted off into a contented slumber, Bernie Kosar informed me I was allowed to come and go as I wished, provided I swore to uphold the secrecy of Brown Town’s location. I consented, allowing me to stumble out of the Browns’ secret hideout without my blindfold.

It turned out the house was right in front of where I had parked. I was still stoned, but deemed myself sufficiently sober to drive, which was only the first of several bad decisions that night.

It was, by this point, completely dark. I wasn’t sure how much more I was going to be able to get accomplished on the story given my condition. And I was getting a killer case of the munchies.

All of these were perfectly good reasons to call it quits and head back to my Nutley bungalow and dim-witted cat. But somehow, in my mentally diminished state, I convinced myself I should make an appearance at the office. All I had to do was keep a low profile and avoid Szanto.

Right. Low profile. I was invisible. Like Wonder Woman’s airplane. The only way the viewers at home could see me was because of the pencil-thin outline drawn for their benefit.

I crept back to the office, going five miles under the speed limit the whole way. I parked (crookedly) in the far corner of the company garage. I moseyed my invisible self toward the front entrance, kept my head down. .

. . And damn near barreled over Harold Brodie.

Luckily, it was enough of a glancing blow that it only knocked the old man to the side. The Eagle-Examiner ’s executive editor looked appropriately startled. I guess it wasn’t every day one of his reporters hip-checked him. But as my mind started racing -how did Wonder Woman get the invisible plane to work if she couldn’t see the controls? — Brodie, to my horror, had recovered and seemed to want to stop and chat.

“Good evening, Carter,” he said. Brodie’s voice was this pleasant, grandfatherly falsetto. “In a hurry?” he asked.

Words started pouring out of my mouth without stopping to check in at my brain.

“Yes, sir. Time is money, you know. And money makes the world go round. And the world wasn’t built in a day. And you’ve got to take it one day at a time. Which brings us back to time being money. So I guess you could say I’m trying not to waste money, time, or the day.”

Oh, God, I began to think, I’m going to get myself fired.

“I thought it was ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day,’ ” Brodie said, still pleasant, still grandpa.

“Well, that’s true, too, but Rome is part of the world. And I don’t want to single out Italians as being slow builders. I mean, frankly, who would even want to live in a city that had been built in a day? It’s like those suburban tract houses that get tossed together in a week and a half-they’re always crap.”

Okay, not fired. Worse than fired. The high school sports agate desk.

“I suppose that’s true,” Brodie said, as if I had just offered some piercing philosophical insight. “So how’s that bar story going?”

Oh, crap. Oh, crap. Oh, crap.

I was certain things couldn’t get any worse for me, but then they did. Because instead of answering him, I started laughing.

Actually, not laughing. Laughing merely would have been awful. I was acting like a twelve-year-old girl reading the sex column in Cosmo. I was giggling.

“What’s so funny?” Brodie said, looking confused. He had been the paper’s executive editor for the last quarter century. I’m pretty sure no one had giggled in his presence before.

“Oh, nothing, sir,” I said, and only giggled harder. “Well, gotta go!” I said, and tried to make for the front door.

“Wait a second,” Brodie said, grabbing my arm and sniffing loudly. “Why do you smell like you’ve just been at a Grateful Dead concert?”

“Uh, I’m working on this Jerry Garcia retrospective. .”

“Son, don’t give me that poppycock. I was born at night, but not last night. Have you been smoking marijuana?”

“Carter Ross, 31, of Nutley, committed career suicide yesterday. .

“Yes, but I can explain,” I said.

Brodie stood there with fists stuck into his hips. Grandpa was pissed. “I’m listening,” he said, his helium-sucker voice managing to take on an ominous tone.

“Oh, you want the explanation now ?” I asked.

. . He left behind no note. Police said there was no sign of foul play. .

“That’s the general idea,” Brodie said.

“Well,” I said, trying to wrest the story from my racing mind. “It started when Tee said there wasn’t a UPS truck at DeeDub’s shrine-you know, the whole ‘What can brown do for you’ thing? And then he told me to stand on the corner, where gangbangers blindfolded me and took me for a ride around the block and around the block and around the block. We were in this van.”

. . He is survived by the world’s dumbest cat. A funeral service for his dead career will be held every day between now and his retirement from some sad-sack PR firm 25 years from now.”

“And then,” I plowed ahead, “and then they took me into this room where I had to toke up with the Cleveland Browns so they knew I wasn’t a cop. And then they were cool with me and we talked. And then I knocked over the boxes of the Adam Sandler movie? And then I decided to come back to the office like I was in Wonder Woman’s plane, except apparently I’m not in it anymore, because you can see me.”

I stopped there, because somewhere in my head there was this tiny voice telling me I had said enough. Brodie fixed me with a hard stare from underneath his overgrown, Mr. Potato Head eyebrows.

“So, what I think you’re saying is, you smoked marijuana with some sources to get them to trust you?” Brodie asked.

“Well, actually, so they wouldn’t shoot me. But yes.”

Brodie lifted his hand, and for a second, I thought he was going to smack me right across the face. I flinched, except he was. . patting my shoulder?

“That’s fantastic!” Brodie shouted with a high-pitched hoot, his eyebrows waving at me from above his delighted eyes. “Well done, Carter! Very well done, my boy! You did what you had to do to get the story. That’s the kind of dedication I want to see in all my reporters. I’m proud of you. Keep up the good work, son!”

Brodie charged down the steps, still cackling.

“Smokin’ pot to get the story!” he exclaimed as he walked away.

“Reports of the demise of Carter Ross’s career were greatly exaggerated. .”

Having gained the endorsement of the executive editor, I felt emboldened as I entered the newsroom and flopped noisily into my chair.

“I am so high, ” I said, and laughed when I realized I was talking to myself.

I tried to look at my e-mail, but the words kept floating off the screen and freaking me out. So I decided to relax and savor the feeling of being utterly baked at the office. I’m sure that was by no means a first in the Eagle-Examiner’ s illustrious history. But it was a first for me.

Still, for as much as I was enjoying myself, there didn’t seem to be any point in being stoned alone, with no one to play with. I gathered my things, and went to the elevator, where I was joined at the last moment by Tina Thompson.

“How come you’re grinning like the cat who ate the canary?” she asked.

“To be honest, I’m a little stoned,” I said. “Actually, I think I’m a lot stoned.”

“Really?” she said. “You mean, for real?”

“I kind of had to pass the peace pipe with the boys from the Brick City Browns to convince them I wasn’t a member of the law enforcement community,” I said.