Эбби Луби - Nuclear Romance

“My own take,” she said. “I did the math. The cubic volume of water in the underground lakes is close to the amount of water in the reservoir.”

“No kidding. I like the spin. Okay, look. We’ll take the story, but you have to rewrite it tabloid-style. Do you know how to do that?”

“Think so.”

He rattled off a few ideas for the lead sentence and told her to cut about three hundred words. He wanted lingo that was more charged, sensationalist. For Chrissy, it was a whole new vocabulary. If she could revise within ten minutes, it could very well land in tomorrow’s paper.

“And Chrissy—anyone else running this story up there? Or anywhere?”

Up until that point she had completely forgotten about her own paper—about Al, her boss.

“Chrissy? Hello?”

“Yes. Sorry. No. No one else has the story. It’s an exclusive for you guys.” Her confidence surprised her, but wasn’t she doing business with a top city paper. She was so very professional.

She looked at the clock and started the rewrite. She agonized over the details of the math, kept them in, then took them out. Metro Record articles were shorter than she had ever written. It was known as the picture paper and always had much more space for large photographs than for the copy. Her time was running out. She quickly scanned the story and clicked Send.

The story was on page seven in the upper right corner, the spot where your eye automatically landed right after turning the page. Under the headline it said “Lakes the size of Central Park Reservoir” and then “Metro Record Exclusive.”

But the byline was the best part: By Chrissy Dolan, Metro Record Writer.

The first line was completely rewritten, as was most of the story, with only some of Chrissy’s sentences left untouched. Radioactive water leaking under the ALLPower Nuclear Power plant just 24 miles from Manhattan, has grown to roughly the size of the Central Park Reservoir, plant officials told Metro Record.

Chrissy woke up early, anxious to see if the story ran online. It was there, large as life, with a picture of the sprawling plant on the river. She ran down to her corner deli and bought six copies of the Metro Record , hardly able to contain herself. When she got back, the phone was ringing.

“What the hell do you think you are doing?” Al screamed over the phone.

“Hi, Al. Oh—you mean the lakes? I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t know they would really print it. I—”

“Look, Bitch, I gave you every opportunity to become a decent reporter, and what do you do? You get a story like this and sell it to another paper? You screwed me and my paper in the process! Is that your way of saying thanks?”

“I’m sorry, Al. Mea culpa—”

“Mea culpa, my ass. Clean out your desk and get out. I don’t want to ever see your face again.”

She went blank. The exhilaration of getting a story in a big city paper suddenly soured. She realized that her inflated ego and drive to make it big had blinded her, that she had shown blatant disregard for her boss, the guy who gave her a break, taught her real reporting. The guy who finally hired her full-time. All she wanted to do was get ahead. Wouldn’t other reporters for a small-time paper do the same?

Should she beg for her job back? Wouldn’t he want her, now that she had had a byline in a popular city paper? But who was she kidding? Working at a little weekly paper was like moving backward. After all, she had made it to the Metro Record . She was a real pro now and couldn’t turn back.

Stella heard about the underground radiated lakes on the radio, an AM news station that picked up stories from the papers. The announcer credited the Metro Record , paraphrasing the story in three brief sentences.

It was early, and Bob wasn’t up yet. Stella threw on her clothes and scampered down a few blocks to the newsstand and scooped up the tabloid, a paper she’d never usually buy, but this was an exception. She had the New York Times delivered, formerly her paper of choice before the Daily Suburban and Lou Padera. When she got home, Bob was up, sipping coffee, still in his pajamas.

She flipped to page seven.

“See this? You guys are making the tabloids now. Impressive.”

Bob glared at the headline. “What the…?”

“First heard it on the radio. Is it true?”

Bob reddened when he saw Chrissy’s byline.

“No, no, no,” he said in disbelief. “When did she start writing for this paper?”

“Robbie, is the story true or not? Did she speak to this guy at the plant or not?”

“Yeah, she spoke to him. But she got it all wrong. There aren’t any lakes. They are plumes, not lakes.”

“What the hell is the difference? They sound like lakes to me, and not the kind you want to swim in.”

“Bitch.”

“I beg your parden?”

“Not you. Chrissy Dolan. What a bitch.”

“Looks like this little chickie has you over a barrel. Wonder how Lou Padera will write this up. Him I’ll believe.”

“He’s not getting this version, Ma. He’ll get the real story, if he gets it at all.”

“Oh yeah, Mr. Nuclear Power? Is this the scenario where you hold back information from the press?”

“Look, Ma. It’s unfathomable that Chrissy Dolan compared these plumes to the size of the Central Park Reservoir. More incredible that the Metro Record editors believed her.”

He grabbed the paper and stood up to get ready for work.

“You going to talk to Padera and dish out another ‘no comment.’”

“Don’t worry. I’ll have plenty to comment on.”

“My guess is he’s chasing after the story as we speak.”

“Keep guessing, Ma. Padera’s byline may become obsolete.”

“Oh yeah? You heading up a nuclear posse to hunt down the outlawed journalist? Or something along those lines?”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

Lou lounged on the bleachers under a bright sun at the county baseball park, home playing field to the local minor league. He watched the newest addition to the team, a young, sturdy pitcher who was creating a buzz. Lou was composing a hard-hitting profile of the kid in his head.

His cell phone rang. It was Owen.

“Where are you?”

“Baseball park. Need me?”

“You see the Metro Record ? That little Ms. Dolan has defected to the tabloids. Get back here ASAP.”

Lou stiffened. He looked at the players getting ready for batting practice and briefly longed for the simpler days when he was just a sports reporter.

When he got back to the office, a copy of the Metro Record story was on his desk. Since when was Chrissy Dolan writing for a big city paper? He heard Owen’s footsteps coming up behind him.

“How come she got it and we didn’t?”

“I have no idea. The real question is why did she scoop her own paper? That’s if she’s still working there.”

“It doesn’t matter who she’s writing for. This is a story in our own backyard, dammit. How did we miss it?”

“It happens, Boss, you know that,” he said, sitting down calmly at his desk. “And you’ve been yanking me off the nukes for more sports stories, remember?”

“Drop the complacent crap. You need to do both—all the time. Get your act together, call ALLPower, the NRC, the experts. Push the story forward, get new information. Write something better than this tabloid shit. I want a full spread by five tonight.”

He marched back to his office and slammed the door.

Lou read Chrissy’s story. There wasn’t much to it, and there were a lot of unanswered questions, as if stuff was left out. He pulled up his contact list on the screen. He’d write a reaction piece, a response to Chrissy’s story. A weak premise, but it could work. It had to work. Just as he was about to make his first call, his phone rang.