Pete Hamill - Tabloid City

I have them still. All of them. And the letters that came with them. Full of counsel. Full of encouragement. Full of the future.

The year Madda died, Cynthia came to the funeral in Montego Bay and brought young Sandra home with her to New York. Arranging her first passport and a student visa. Placing her in a special cramming school in New York. A school so good, she was accepted at Columbia. And a month later Cynthia arranged to have all her books, all those letters, shipped from Jamaica to New York. They are here now, in the other room, the one Sandra Gordon calls the studio. Four shelves of treasure from Cynthia Harding. From Babar to Zola. The legacy of sheer chance. If Madda hadn’t hit my father, if she hadn’t found her way to Montego Bay, with me in hand, if Cynthia Harding had not come to that party, I’d have had a different life.

Cynthia became a permanent part of her private résumé. Her second mother. She encouraged Sandra’s writing, but also supported her decision to go for an MBA, her passport to the real world. To have a choice. Over those years, Cynthia spoke to her about boys, about sex, about putting first things first. Reminding her never to accept the feeling that she could not live without a certain man. “If you can’t live without him,” Cynthia said, “you can never live with him.” Telling her never, ever to surrender pride. Encouraging her to be free for all the days and nights of her life. To stay away from men who are too dumb, or too vain, or too hungry. To always be independent in matters of money. “Establish your career,” Cynthia said, “before you join yourself to any man.” These were all more sophisticated variations on what Madda had told Sandra in her own clipped, stoic Jamaican way. “Depend on no man.”

And Cynthia reminded her, more than once, “As long as you can read, you’ll never be lonely.”

They discussed movies too, and painting, and clothes, with Sandra explaining computers to Cynthia, and unraveling hip-hop for her. When Sandra began earning money, rising swiftly in one agency and then hired away by another, with more money each year and more power, she began taking Cynthia to dinner in various places, from Harlem to Brooklyn, places that her American mother had never heard of. She now bought books for Cynthia too and they talked for hours around those tables or walking on summer streets. Just the two of them. Sam was still in Cynthia’s life. Sam would always be there for Cynthia as Cynthia would be there for Sam. By her example, Cynthia taught Sandra there were many ways to love someone. That didn’t save Sandra from making her own mistakes.

Now, with another man gone, Sandra Gordon turns in her bed. She thinks about Myles. And she wants to weep. And tells herself: no . Not over him. Whoever he is. She turns, gripping the pillow. And at last the tears fall.

When they stop, and she wipes her eyes with a bedsheet, she thinks: Tomorrow, I’ll call Cynthia. As I always do.

And falls at last into sleep.

1:31 a.m. Sam Briscoe. City room of New York World.

He knows he looks tired, because he is tired, but at least now he has the Friday wood. A MOTHER WEEPS. Maudlin, yes, unless you look at the mother’s eyes, full of waste and loss and the dark invincible suck of the ghetto. Maudlin, yes, unless you look closely at the photograph of the smiling young boy and the letter from Stuyvesant on the wall behind him. Maudlin, absolutely yes, unless you look at the second front-page photograph. Of the young corpse in the street. Citizens forever of the tabloid night.

Or if you read the story by the Fonseca kid, spare and hard, with all mush words sliced away. The kid was deft too, with the way he folded in the unseen story: the foreclosure sign out front, another symbol of things ending. The piece was so good, Briscoe gave Fonseca an early slide. By now, he’s almost certainly in a saloon.

Now I can pack the briefcase, Briscoe thinks, and take my own early slide. Go home and try to sleep a few hours before heading uptown to meet the F.P.

First, a final look. On the computer he scrolls through the day’s package. The Doom Page. A hard-news follow about torture tapes. A grand jury reporting on some Wall Street swindle, with some Bulgarian as one of a dozen victims. On the world spread, an AP report from Pakistan about the muscular rise of new battalions from the lunatic armies of God. One of them blew up a school full of little girls, guilty of the sin of learning to read. And, of course, fear for the security of nuclear bombs. People are starving and these pricks spend money on bombs. His eyes glaze, then he forces himself to focus. A global-warming piece from Australia, where drought was destroying food supplies and there was great fear of wildfires. They can cut that for space… A two-graf bus-plunge story from Peru, no Americans on board… In sports, Knicks lose. Nets lose. The fans in the arenas sure to skip purgatory. More rumors of steroids in baseball.

Briscoe sighs and glances at his desk. He sees the invitation from Cynthia Harding. Ah, shit. And goes to e-mail. He clicks on the address book, punches in her name, starts to write.

Dearest C:

Sorry this is late. I’ve been too goddamned busy with my wife, Miss World. I hope it went well and that you raised a few kilos of dough for the library. These days, they need every dime. I’ll call you tomorrow (Friday) and we can try to catch up. Dim sum? I miss you.

Much love, para siempre, Sam

He reads it over, exhales, then hits “Send,” and shuts down the computer. He puts the folder marked “Newspapers” in his briefcase, along with others, maybe to prep for the morning meeting, dons jacket, coat, and a fedora lying on the floor behind his desk. He turns out the light. He locks his door and walks into the nearly deserted city room, saying his good-nights, and promising Matt Logan to call if there is any news in the morning.

— May the wind be always at your back, Logan says, and smiles. The old Irish farewell. The one Briscoe’s mother always used when he went off to school. Or to the navy. The wind at his front includes the morning meeting.

He notices that Helen Loomis is already gone.

Then he walks down the long hall to the elevators. He passes the row of typewriters he had installed on low glass-cased tables during the first year of this brave new World. They had belonged to people he had worked with or admired: Murray Kempton and Jimmy Breslin, Peter Kihss and Abe Rosenthal, Paul Sann and Buddy Weiss, Gay Talese and Meyer Berger, Eddie Ellis, Joe Kahn, and Carl Pelleck, Jesse Abramson and Frank Graham and Jimmy Cannon. Bill Heinz was there too. Remingtons, Smith Coronas, and hell, someone had even produced an old Royal that once belonged to Damon Runyon, and that led to a portable used by Hearst’s favorite assassin, Westbrook Pegler, who once worked in this building. And on the walls, there were great World front pages, and a section of cartoons by Willard Mullin and Bill Gallo, Leo O’Mealia and Johnny Pierotti and, of course, Rollin Kirby from the original World. All originals, right off Briscoe’s wall at home. The kid reporters don’t know much about any of them. If Briscoe sees a kid in the hall staring at a certain typewriter, he always tells the kid to check the clips. Or Google the guy. He hopes the ghosts will rise from the typewriters and touch the kids as they rush off to a good murder or a terrible fire or some gigantic calamity.

And thinks: If the news ahead of me this morning is bad, where will they all go? The typewriters, the cartoons, the framed front pages, the kids. And, shit: Where will I go?

Out on West Street, the wind is blowing hard and cold from the harbor as Briscoe looks for a cab heading uptown. No limos for the New York World. Almost no cabs either. Sparse traffic moves out of the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel off to the left. No taxis. He begins walking to stay warm. The wind is at his back. He can see the glow of Battery Park City. The sprawl of apartment buildings did not exist down here when he started at the old Post. There were banana boats at the piers and in August the cargo included immense mosquitoes — migrants from Honduras, all without visas — and the sound in the sweltering city room was punctuated by people slapping them dead while typing their stories. No air-conditioning. The windows open. Much laughter. Always laughter.