Rafael Yglesias - Hot Properties

David turned to Chico, who had paused in mid-step. “I haven’t been able to get a hold of her—”

“Okay, use my office. But just a few minutes.”

David took the number from the secretary and walked into Chico’s office, picking up the phone. The number looked familiar, but he couldn’t place it. Betty Winters answered the phone. “David? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“I’ll put Patty right on.”

There was hardly a pause. “David?”

“Hi,” he said, his voice drained of life. “I’m okay. I just wanted you to know I—”

“Have you been to the loft?”

“No, we came straight—”

“Oh …” she said in an interrupting tone, but nothing further came out.

“What is it? Something wrong?”

“I left,” she said, and then sighed. “I found the things— I couldn’t stay. Probably wouldn’t have …” She ran out of energy to speak. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “It’s bad …” She laughed, almost hysterically. “I guess it’s bad timing, but there’s no point in lying about it.”

“Things?” He had been standing, anticipating a quick conversation, eager to obey and appear before the tribunal next door. Now he sat down in Chico’s chair. When his automatic reaction to bow before the power structure flicked a warning light on, he coolly reminded himself he was through anyway. There was a kind of relief in that: lonely and flat though his landscape had become, at least there were no more cliffs to fall off. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“Hang on for a second.” she said nervously. He heard Patty speak in a muffled voice to Betty. “Hi,” her voice came back loudly. “I asked Betty to leave.”

“Are you staying there?”

“Yes. Look, I would have left anyway. Probably it was my fault too. I just didn’t want you to come home after”— again her energy depleted into a sigh—“and find them.”

“Patty, I’m tired. I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“The magazines,” she intoned dramatically. He heard her catch her breath as though she had frightened herself.

He shut his eyes hard, hoping to visualize what she meant. All he could see was the black covers on the airline magazines. The Newstime logo. And then he realized. “Oh …” escaped him into the phone.

“And the other things. I got nasty and left them out for you to find.” She began to cry. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m crying—”

“You can’t leave me because of that,” he begged. He felt short of breath, and bent over, covering the mouthpiece with his free hand, feeling as though he could hold her through the electronic line. “If that’s all it is — I can explain — I got obsessed with it. I can stop. Please, not over that. That’s not me, Patty,” he said, and found himself weeping. “It’s really not who I am,” he blubbered.

The Power Phone whooshed into the room. Chico barking: “David! Come in here!”

He looked up furiously at The Phone and saw that he had left the office door open. In the reception area one of the writers, Kyle Stebbins, a young star writer in the Nation section, was seated in line with the open door. He was looking down at some copy, but David knew he had been watching. Watching him plead and weep on the phone.

The Power Phone filled the room with sound: “David! Are you there?”

Patty’s voice, pitying, timid, spoke into his ear: “You have to go? Why don’t you call me when your meeting is over?”

The Power Phone honked: “David!”

“I’m coming!” David shouted, so angrily that Kyle Stebbins couldn’t help but look up. “What the fuck are you looking at?” David shouted at him. He brushed his wet cheeks with his hands. Kyle stared for a moment and then hopped to his feet, startled, and dashed out of sight. “Why did you do it, Patty?” He spoke into the phone, dabbing at his eyes, knocking his glasses askew with his sleeves. “It was stupid and nasty.”

“I know. I’m sorry, but it shocked me—”

“I’m sick and tired of what shocks people!” David yelled. “The whole fucking world is sick, Patty. Pretending it isn’t doesn’t make it the sweet sensitive world that you want. I’m glad you found it. Yeah, I had a better time paying for my ass to be whipped than I ever did with you!”

He slammed the phone down. His chest was heaving with despair and rage. He pushed his hands underneath his glasses and rubbed. “Fuck it,” he said aloud, knowing that nothing could conceal his red eyes. He walked into the reception area — Kyle Stebbins was practically hiding behind a plant — and walked into Rounder’s office.

All the Marx Brothers were there, the president, its two top lawyers, and Mrs. Thorn. Chico paused and said. “Ah! I got worried. I was telling them about Janet Halston’s outrageous question at the airport.”

The president, Mark Logan, spoke quietly: “Between the Jews who are outraged we are willing to pay Gott, and the people who believe we are responsible, in one way or another, for his assassination, we’ve got nowhere to hide.”

“Hide from what?” Chico said. He actually believes we’re all right, David thought, astounded. “Surely we don’t have to defend agreeing to pay for a story to CBS, or to New York Times, or anybody else. They’ve all done it.”

“Not a Nazi criminal,” Mrs. Thorn mumbled. The bitch, David said to himself. She approved this goddamn thing.

“What about Speer?” Chico pleaded.

“He was an architect, not a torturer,” the more senior of the lawyers observed with a dry smile. “Incidentally,” he said to David, “I assume you didn’t know her or tell her.”

“No,” David said. His voice was hoarse. Mrs. Thorn seemed to notice him for the first time. She squinted skeptically in his direction, almost as though she were wondering how someone like that could possibly be in her employ.

“The only approach to this is that we have a terrific story,” Chico pronounced with great confidence. “An exclusive eyewitness account of Gott’s death.”

“We’ll sell out.” Rounder said, nodding.

“But at what price?” Mrs. Thorn asked dramatically. “How long will it be before we’re thought of as responsible journalists again?”

“But we weren’t irresponsible …” Chico mumbled.

“That’s not the perception in Washington,” Mrs. Thorn said. The mention of Washington was always used to close any disagreement.

There was a silence. At least four of the men in the room knew their careers at Newstime were over: that the mark of this event would be there on their foreheads for any of the initiated to see — a lifetime of snickering behind the back. David looked down at the gray industrial carpeting, worn by the nightly vacuuming. He heard Patty’s pitying voice. It was then that he decided. His landsape had now flattened even more — squashed horribly. But there would be no more precarious wanderings. No more decisions. No more shame.

Garth returned and watched anyway. He stood in the door, his arms folded, his face expressionless, and stared with dull eyes while Helen, sitting astride Tony’s genitals, bobbed like a rocking horse on his prick. Tony ran his hands roughtly up and down her breasts, her belly, gathering the top rim of her pubic hair and tugging slightly, pulling on a nipple, watching it distend before he released it. He ignored Garth and stared angrily at her face. She averted her eyes or closed them most of the time. Neither of them felt much passion, although Tony enjoyed it immensely. Toward the end, the swelling heat of his lower body, drenched and pulled by her motion, overwhelmed his rage. He climaxed painfully, groaning as though he were a man passing a kidney stone, not consummating passion.