James Siegel - Deceit

“Wow,” she said, lifting the wine glass to her lips, then placing it back down on the table with an awkward deliberateness, like someone relearning to use their extremities after a stroke. “When you said you needed a break, you weren’t kidding. Do you mind me asking… why you did what you did ? I won’t if you don’t want me to.”

I didn’t respond right away. I could’ve said yeah, I’d rather you didn’t, and changed the subject. I could’ve trotted out something tried-and-true and meant for public consumption only. I was wrong. I didn’t mean it. I was going through a lot of stuff at the time. I could’ve editorialized.

I told the truth.

How it began. The morning I woke up late. The little exercise in creative writing.

“How many times?” she asked me softly. “After that?”

“I don’t know. They ended up auditing every story I’d ever written. They said there were fifty-six of them. Where I’d either partially or totally fabricated a story. I didn’t think it was that much. Maybe it was.”

“ Why ? You were a good reporter, right? I mean, you had a respected career. You worked at a great newspaper. You didn’t have to.”

You didn’t have to. The great mystery of Tom Valle’s criminal life.

“Ever walk into a reporter bar?” I asked her. “There’s a hierarchy in those places-you’re either holding court or bowing down. Maybe it was nice being bowed down to for a change. Besides, when you’re a mediocre student, being teacher’s pet feels pretty good. Being on page 1 instead of section 2 feels even better. It was nice making the B-list of talking heads, too. I even did Larry King Live . Once-Ben Bradlee was on the panel. Interns from the Columbia School of Journalism sought me out for pearls of journalistic wisdom. Other reporters stuck pins into Tom Valle dolls, when they weren’t falling all over themselves to buy me a drink. Which turned out to be my downfall, actually-one of those reporters bought me several drinks. It’s hard to keep your facts straight on four margaritas.”

She asked me how I ended up here.

“Here’s pretty much the only place that would have me,” I said. “The week I knew the jig was up, that it was all going to come crashing down around my head-the editors were already circling the wagons, beginning to sift through the wreckage; they had forensic accountants checking my expense accounts against my bylines. I mean, if I had eggs and coffee in a diner in New York on the third, I couldn’t have been at a DNC conference in Washington, right? Anyway, I got wicked drunk and went up there at 3 in the morning. I must’ve had the vague intention of stealing anything incriminating, which in retrospect means I would’ve needed a forklift. I don’t really know what I thought I was going to do. I broke into the national editor’s office and tried to find his computer files; I ended up passed out on the floor. It gave them the excuse they needed to press criminal charges, as opposed to just a nice public firing. I got probation instead of jail time-they weren’t going to throw me in jail for that . For one year I did nothing much but hibernate. My PO is related to Hinch Edwards-he owns the Littleton Journal . Hinch took pity. End of story.”

“Yeah, he’s a nice guy.”

That’s when it suddenly occurred to me that Anna maybe knew things I wasn’t aware she knew.

“You know Hinch?”

“I knew someone who worked for him,” she said.

“Who?”

“John.”

“John who ? John Wren? You knew John Wren?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Why? We’ve had one dinner. I haven’t told you my middle name, either. By the way, it’s Alicia.”

“So you were friends or something?”

“Kind of. What’s so remarkable about that?”

“Nothing. Just kind of funny that you know two reporters who lived in the same house.”

“He lived in your house, huh? Of course, it’s a small town. Not that many houses.”

“Right.” I gulped down some wine, desperately trying to recapture a suddenly elusive high. “Do you keep in touch with him?” I asked.

“I’m not sure he keeps in touch with anyone. I came to visit my dad one time, and he was just gone. That’s where we’d met. At the home. He was interviewing people about that… flood… the one back in the fifties. You know about that, right? Horrible-a whole town went under. I think he went to the retirement home to try to scare up some memories.”

Scare . Good word, I thought.

“I don’t think he was very successful at it,” I said. “The story never ran.”

“Really?” Anna said. “He seemed pretty excited about it. He e-mailed me once after he left Littleton-my impression was he’d holed himself up somewhere to work on it.”

“That’s strange, considering he was no longer employed,” I said. “Anyway, word was he was pretty excitable in general around then. He went a little bonkers.”

“ Bonkers ? Is that a psychiatric term?”

“He locked himself in the newspaper offices one night and had to be forcibly removed. I think that constitutes bonkers. I ought to know.”

“Was that what they said you were? Bonkers?”

“Only the nice ones. Everyone else said I was the devil.”

“You don’t look like the devil.”

“Thanks.” I blushed, took another sip of wine. “Was your father living here? Back when the flood happened?”

“Yes. He wouldn’t be able to tell you much about it, of course. Not now.”

Silence.

“I just tried to call him,” I said. “Wren.”

“Oh? What for?”

“I want to ask him about something I’m working on.”

“I thought you said he’d lost his mind?”

“Maybe he got it back.”

I was tempted to tell Anna that the something I was working on was the same thing Wren had been working on. The aforementioned nut job Wren.

It might sound paranoid to her. It might sound like a desperate reporter trying to get his mojo back.

Not that it really mattered.

Dinner had become uncomfortably awkward. It was as if the stopper had been pulled out of the bottle labeled Anna and Tom’s Dinner Conversation; the contents had poured out onto the floor, leaving nothing but a few paltry drops.

I felt less than whole in her eyes, an ethical cripple. The whole mood had soured. She made a halfhearted effort to resuscitate things, but she seemed to be going through the motions.

When I paid the bill, when we walked outside and I escorted her to her car, I didn’t know whether to say good night or good-bye.

We lingered in front of her red Beetle-more maroon in the moonlight-and it was like that moment in front of a girl’s apartment door when you’re either going to get shot down or rescued and you don’t for the life of you know which.

She leaned forward and kissed me.

On the cheek.

“I’ll call you sometime,” she said. “Thank you for dinner.”

I wanted to say that’s it?

I wanted to take that butterfly that had begun flitting about my chest the day she fixed my car and never really stopped-I wanted to pin it down. To display it somewhere where I could hold it up to the light and stare at it.

She’d call me sometime. Then what? She’d call me as a friend or an acquaintance or something more? She’d call me because she wanted to, or because she had to, or she was never going to call at all?

“Don’t mention it,” I said.

The ride back was a journey into self-pity.

I was familiar with the terrain, having visited it on a number of previous occasions-mostly in that one-year period I spent holed up in my NoHo apartment like a prisoner in isolation. I journeyed frequently to Self-Pity then, sampling the local tequila and scribbling postcards to Dr. Payne: having no fun, wish you were here .