Jan Burke - Goodnight, Irene

Long silence.

He studied me again. “I’ll be honest with you, Irene. I knew the minute I heard about O’Connor that you would go after this guy. I’ve known you too long. I’ve also known that you haven’t been happy here…”

I started to object, but he cut me off.

“Hear me out. It’s true. You’ve done everything I’ve asked of you and more, and I’ve asked a lot. O’Connor used to take me out to Banyon’s or Calhoun’s and tell me how I was never going to take the black ink out of your veins. He’d kid me about how I was trying to harness a racehorse to the plow, and while a racehorse might pull steady, it would always be looking over the fence at the track, longing for a good run for the money. ‘One day, she’ll bolt the harness,’ he’d say.

“Well, he was right and I knew it. I hope you don’t mind my extending the analogy, but I told him you at least were making hay, more hay than the Express offered. But, to my advantage, this day took longer to get here than even O’Connor imagined.”

“Kevin, I know I’m leaving you in the lurch now, but it’s not because I’m not grateful to you. I always will be. I could be slinging hash if it weren’t for you.”

“You underrate yourself. And don’t feel guilty. There never would be a good time to leave, and we both know it.”

“You’re being very understanding.”

“I can’t keep you here if you want to go. Your work would suffer, you’d resent me, and I’d probably end up resenting you. Not worth it. O’Connor would haunt me to no end.”

“I owe you, Kevin.”

“Well, leave that sort of thing to people who keep such accounts. Anyway, before you go, there’s something else you should know. Someone has been very curious as to when you’ll be coming back to work here. I was just talking to Clarissa about it. I don’t like it at all. The caller won’t leave a name or number, but he called several times yesterday and he’s already called twice today. What would you like me to have her tell him?”

“Tell him I’ve gone back to work for the paper.”

“You in a hurry to have someone harm you?”

“Look, they’re going to find out the first time I have a byline, the first time they call the paper, or the first time they bend an ear to conversations at Banyon’s or Calhoun’s. The Express staff loves to talk about nothing so much as the Express staff. This won’t be a secret for long.”

“Okay, Irene. But keep in mind that you’re worried after. It’s okay to help, but let the professionals go after the criminals.”

“Don’t worry, I’m cooperating with the police on this. I’m not as crazy as I sometimes seem.”

“One other thing-speaking of crazy people-how the hell did you ever get Wrigley to ask you back?”

“Kevin, if she ever gets tired of the newsroom, hire a woman named Lydia Ames. I’ve never seen so great a PR job done on anybody.”

“She’s your school chum, isn’t she? Well, I’ll keep that in mind. And don’t forget, there’s always room for you here if you want to come back.”

We shook hands warmly. On my way out, I said good-bye to Clarissa and Don, and then left for the grand old offices of the Express . As I drove along, I had a feeling that O’Connor was watching over me. He might not be the only one, but together he and I had the luck of the Irish.

COMING WITHIN SIGHT of the newspaper meant coming within sight of the hospital, and I wondered how Kenny and Barbara were doing. I decided I would stop by there after I had done some work at the paper.

As I walked up to the double glass doors and went into the marble-and-brass entry of the Express, a great sense of anticipation filled me. I hadn’t been inside those doors since I marched out two years before.

I couldn’t take in enough of the place. In the center of the room sat Geoff, the reedy gentleman who served as our security man. Geoff was so old and had been with the paper so long, we used to say he was put into the foyer by the architect and greeted the original Wrigley when he first came through the door. A big smile lit his face.

“Welcome back, Miss Kelly! You’re a sight for sore eyes!”

“And you are, too, Geoff. It feels good to be back. Are they running now?”

Geoff laughed his wheezy laugh and said, “I told myself this morning, when Mr. Wrigley said to send you right upstairs when you came in, I said to myself, ‘Miss Kelly is going to want to go downstairs before she goes upstairs.’” He wheezed and shook in glee. “And I was right, wasn’t I? Yes, ma’am, they are most certainly running. Special sections right now, I believe. So you go right on down, and if anybody asks, I ain’t seen hide nor hair of you yet.”

“Thanks, Geoff.”

I went down the stairwell and through a maze of doorless hallways. The building was laid out by someone whose previous work was in rabbit warrens. But through the ancient walls I could already hear the rumble of running presses. A sound I loved almost as much as the smell that permeated this basement area-ink and newsprint.

Overhead the open ceiling was crisscrossed with wires and rollers which would later carry finished papers to the machines that would bundle them for distribution. I turned a corner and stepped into the main press room. I grabbed a pair of “visitor’s” ear protectors and listened through them to the magnificent roar of rolling paper and press. Coburn and Parker, two of the operators, saw me and waved, grinning from ear to ear.

Straight ahead was the tall black housing of the Motters, our newest presses, which had color-printing capabilities. The older, green Goss presses surrounded the two Motters. Newsprint rolled into them and streamed from them in a blur of speeding print. Eight pages at a time, cut, rolled, turned, folded, and moving, moving, moving in a web of fantastic design. I stood and watched for a while.

Coburn walked over and shouted, “Good to see you back!” It was a greeting I would hear again and again as I made my way upstairs.

Wrigley was smoking a cigar in his glass-paneled office. We called this his “God office,” which was one of two he had in the building. The God office was the one he sat in when he wanted to watch what was going on in the newsroom, or hold conferences with the editors. He had another one upstairs that he spent most of his time in; that one commanded the much more attractive view of the skyline and was more impressive to visitors.

I knew that he had watched as I made my way over to the office, stopped every few feet by an old, familiar face, or to be introduced to someone new. When I stepped into his God office, it was as if we were in a glass cage-I realized that every face was watching from the other side. I also realized that Wrigley had orchestrated our first reunion as employee and employer in this manner to make a point to the staff. Bygones were going to be bygones.

“Irene, dear!” he beamed and stretched out a hand. “Come in, come in.”

What the hell, I thought, and shook it. He glanced out the windows behind me and the staff went back to work. He didn’t say anything for a while, just sat there grinning like a fool. It was a scary sight.

Finally, he said, “Well! I guess you’ll want to get going. Your, ah, old desk-” He floundered, circling the cigar in the air as if it would help him speak. “Your old desk is in use. But I want you to take O’Connor’s desk. I think it’s-it’s appropriate. It’s just the way he left it-well, except for what the police took.”

I had wanted to work with whatever O’Connor had left here, but I guess I hadn’t considered the possibility of being given his desk as my work station. It was crazy, of course, to think that no one would be using my desk over a two-year absence-after all, I had quit and refused to come back. But so much at the paper had seemed to stand still in time, I suppose I had figured that would too; now I saw the nonsense of it.