S Rozan - Absent Friends

Toward the end of her second week at the paper, as she was typing a fast e-mail confirmation of a meeting finally agreed to by a reluctant source, a quiet voice in her ear made Laura jump: “You're driving me crazy.”

She spun around, and Harry Randall was leaning over her, cockeyed sardonic grin, blue eyes, shirtsleeves and all.

“I-but-” In her mind Laura had been rehearsing approaches to the great man since the moment she'd started. Now, one hand on the back of her chair, the other on her desk, he was bending to talk to her as though they already knew each other well.

“It's hard,” he said, “for an ancient beached whale such as myself to continue doing as little as possible, in order to avoid disturbing the balance of the universe, in the face of Leo's insistence on introducing a tiger shark such as your self to disrupt what small tranquillity I've been able to create in this goldfish bowl.” He waved his arm to show her reporters rushing in and out, or creating private tempests at their desks. “But do I complain? No, I do not. I try to go on. At least at first. But more and more, each day, my peace is destroyed, my meditation upon the great nothingness interrupted. And finally, I must speak.”

Laura, realizing her mouth was open, closed it. The only coherent thought she had was: He has freckles.

“Every time you check your e-mail”-he stabbed an accusing finger at Laura's monitor-“your screen flickers, a great wave crashing onto the peaceful beach of my thoughts. And you do this every five minutes.”

“Fifteen,” Laura sputtered.

“Aha! So you admit it, then?”

“I- Of course I do! In case something's come up. In case someone-I'm sorry. I don't mean to disturb you. What if I tilt it?”

“Don't tilt it. Turn it.” Harry pushed Laura's monitor a quarter of an inch with his fingertip. He went back, sat at his own desk, shook his head, came back, and pushed it again. This time, back at his own desk, he nodded happily. “Thank you.”

“You're welcome,” said Laura. She turned back to her work, and, ignoring the heat in her cheeks, tried to remember what it was she'd been doing.

Fifteen minutes later she checked her e-mail. The only new message was from Harry Randall: HAVE LUNCH WITH ME?

And so yesterday, as always, Laura had clicked on her e-mail every fifteen minutes. Routine; nothing interesting. Then, midmorning, this, from Harry: Subject Line: WOO-EEE! Text: I'M ONTO SOMETHING, MY LITTLE TIGER SHARK. MCCAFFERY LEFT PAPERS! HOT STUFF. OR SO I'M TOLD. ON MY WAY TO GET A GLIMPSE-MORE LATER. H

What had she done, when she'd read that? Smiled, probably. Seen in her mind the gleam in Harry's eye, the predatory glint he got. (They all got it, people like Harry and Laura, and though others had long said gin had dulled Harry's eyes and the glint was no more, Laura knew that was wrong.) And-oh God, this came back to her now, how was it such small things remained?-she'd hoped, before he'd gone to see his source, the person who was offering him this treasure, that Harry had remembered to shave.

A thunderclap. No; Leo's voice. “McCaffery?”

The glint in Harry's eye, his note on her computer screen, both vanished, and Leo's office swam back into view. The thunder had been a question, so Laura answered it. “Yes.”

“You have these papers?”

“No.”

“You saw them?”

“No.”

“Randall had them?”

“I don't know.”

“What's in them?”

“I don't know. Hot stuff, Harry said.”

“How do you know about them?”

“He e-mailed.”

“Yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“Where'd they come from? Where are they now?”

“I don't know. But I can find them, Leo. So you see-”

He waved a hand, as all gods do to silence mortals.

Leo sat unmoving as a boulder. Laura prayed for Leo's phone to stay silent, for all the reporters typing and talking and buzzing around the coffee machine to be satisfied with their sources and their assignments and not need anything, right now, from Leo.

The boulder finally stirred. “Three days,” a rocky voice rumbled from its depths. “Bring me something that says you're right. No extension, no maybe. Show me there's a story.”

Laura, ready with her next argument, a fresh assault of convincing words, tossed away those words and grabbed some new ones. “Thank you.” She stood quickly.

Leo had no more to say. Laura, afraid something would occur to him, turned and hurried away, resisting (as she was sure everyone always had to) the urge to back out of Leo's presence, bowing.

October 31, 2001

Pedestrians were no longer required to show identification at the Canal Street barricades. Police sentries still stood two to a block, but their job now was to prevent vehicles from entering, to answer questions from the public when they could (although what answers did anyone have?), and to keep an eye out (for what, no one knew). They generally ignored anyone who neither spoke to them nor appeared suspicious according to whatever private formula for suspicion each officer used. Still, Marian offered a smile to the young policeman standing by the blue sawhorse she passed. He nodded but did not smile back, his eyes old and wary in his impassive face. The gold numbers on his collar showed him to be from a precinct far from Lower Manhattan. Marian wondered whether he was glad to have been assigned here. Was he grateful to have a useful role to play? Or did he desperately want to be home, reporting at his usual time to his usual captain, patrolling streets he knew, on the lookout for crimes he could understand?

Through the late morning sun Marian carried coffee and the morning Times. She had never had much faith in the Tribune, even before, but she used to buy it every day. Sam, back when they were together, had put forward a theory.

“Too much meditation,” he declared, rising from the breakfast table to fetch the coffee press, “lowers your blood pressure. The Tribune raises it again.”

“You can't read just one paper,” Marian countered. “Even if it's the Times. Thank you,” as he poured coffee first for her, then for himself. “You need different perspectives. You're old enough to know that.”

“I thought I wasn't old enough to cross the street by myself.”

“If you look both ways.” Marian shook the paper out and turned the page. This was the way they dealt with the difference in their ages, making a joke of it between them. Marian believed in keeping issues in the open. Then nothing could be slowly turning bad, rotting where it couldn't be seen. “Anyway, you should try meditating. Maybe you wouldn't get so upset when you're running late to meetings.”

“My boss would fire me if I didn't get upset when I ran late.” On his way back to his chair Sam leaned over Marian, parted her hair, and nuzzled the back of her neck.

“Ummm,” said Marian; but she leaned forward, reached across the table as though she needed the milk pitcher, though her coffee was already pale. “Oh my God, listen to this!” she wailed, and she was off again, incensed at the Tribune for the same quality she admired: fiery muckraking.

Tribune reporters tore into corrupt politicians, drug-dealing rock stars, millionaire athletes who beat their wives. They pounced with conviction and courage, and of those things, Marian approved. The problem was a lack of balance. Everyone had a story; every story had two sides. At least; at least that. But you never saw the other side of a story in the Tribune. Only the Tribune 's passionate indignation, its outraged cries for justice.