Pete Hamill - Tabloid City

Cynthia Harding and Mary Lou Watson were not part of A Chorus Line.

They were page 1, for sure, and Helen had to write the story. Called in after going home, told she could smoke, with Sam walking around from his office to the news desk to the photo desk and then the news desk again, looking at photographs, or possible wood, or glancing at television sets. She knows that Sam was in love with Cynthia Harding for many years. He told her one night in the Lion’s Head, when he was still drinking. He didn’t have to tell her again tonight. She worked on the story.

Then, twenty minutes ago, he called to give her the news. The paper was being murdered too. His voice down, exhausted, telling her in a few words about the city-room meeting in the afternoon. Five o’clock. Telling her she didn’t have to go. Someone there will be signing up people willing to work for the website. Sam said he would add her to the list if she wanted him to, but she told him she needed to think about it. That was a lie. She knew this was the end of all of it. For Sam. For her. For their whole goddamned regiment. And Sam has another task. Much more important than the paper. He will need time to mourn the woman he loved.

She knows that the gang is sure to go drinking after the meeting in the city room. But where will they go? There is no Mutchie’s anymore, down by the old Journal-American Building on South Street. There is no Lion’s Head on Sheridan Square. There is no Bleeck’s. There is no place left where they can bury their dead. Maybe they should rent a permanent suite at Frank E. Campbell’s funeral parlor. Wherever the drinking spot is tonight, she is certain that Sam Briscoe will not be there.

What did Sam say to her once? Night is for solitaries. The day is for other people. That is why the night has music. Billie Holiday. “In My Solitude.” There are no songs about lunch. Or shopping. Or meetings where everyone whips out laptops.

Today, for Helen Loomis, there can be no Billie Holiday songs. She tells herself, Get out of the house, girl. Maybe she can walk until she is exhausted. That’s the cure. Maybe hike as far as the Metropolitan Museum, where she can look at the new Vermeer, in residence for a while. Maybe find Federico the mambo dancer, in daylight, and just talk. Surely find breakfast. No Second Avenue Deli anymore, not down here, but the stars of the Yiddish theater are still cemented to the sidewalk. Maybe go the other way. Down to the South Street Seaport. To where Sloppy Louie’s was, the waterfront place where they all went after the shift ended at eight in the morning, ordering oysters for breakfast, and beer and whiskey, while the sanitation guys hauled huge garbage cans past their tables, reeking with fish heads and tails and bones. While everyone laughed or bitched or argued and then laughed again. Every one of them smoking.

Gone now.

The laughing boys too.

All of that was so long ago, her mother and father were still alive. Never comfortable with what she did for a living. Wishing she worked for the Times, not some low-life tabloid. Or better, taught literature in the Ivy League. Jane Austen: Myth or Paradox? She never did tell them what the boys in the city room called her column. “Vics and Dicks” they could never get. Mother and Dad. Nice people. And there were so many questions she never asked them, questions she never asked herself until after they were dead.

She gazes out the window at the busy avenue. Many Japanese students from NYU and Cooper Union, heading for the soba place on 9th Street, or the sushi joint, or the St. Mark’s Bookshop on the corner. Delivery men. Lone men in long rough coats walking separately into the old Ottendorfer Branch of the public library. Others hurrying west to the methadone clinic on Cooper Square. A traffic cop writing a ticket for a blue Toyota without a driver. Another old man with a plastic garbage bag slung over his shoulder. A young woman with her gloved hand in the crook of her boyfriend’s elbow. Another woman, alone, middle-aged, walking on the splayed booted feet of an old dancer.

The sky gray.

Desolate.

She thinks: I’m alone now.

At last.

11:50 a.m. Josh Thompson. Fourteenth Street, Manhattan.

He wheels on sidewalks cracked and split, across potholed streets, up tapered corner curbs. He pauses. He watches. An older woman looks at him with pity in her eyes. He pushes past her, thinking, Don’t pity me, woman. I’m here for payback. For me. For Whitey. For Langella. For… Most people move around him, with nothing in their eyes. They don’t know what happened to him, and don’t care. They definitely don’t know what is under his tarp, under his cheap new blanket. Fuck it: they are not his targets. A man comes along with a seeing-eye dog. Wearing a long heavy coat. A fat hat, shades turning his face to a masked blank. Is he a vet? From where? Desert Storm? No. Too old. Nam. Yeah. Gotta be Nam. He’s got a limp too. Maybe a prosthetic. Left a leg in some fucking jungle. Join me, man. For some payback. The dog leads the man away.

He sees a young guy, with a big bubbly maroon coat and a Mets cap. Like mine. A large pin above the visor. SAY NO TO THE NEW VIETNAM. Too young to be a vet. Some college asshole. Doesn’t give a rat’s ass for anyone except himself. Definitely not me. Or Whitey. Langella. Alfredo…

Josh pauses near the curb. A Chinese guy sits in a car, smoking a cigarette. The motor is running. The fumes rise in the cold air, heading for the gray clouds. He can see vapor, but can’t smell it. Now he sees a tall black woman, dressed like a boss, striding hard on high red heels. A thinner Michelle Obama. He sees her naked, except for the shoes, striding hard toward him, muscles tight in legs and belly, a triangle of black wiry pubic hair. She glances at him, her eyes cautious. He’s thinking: Don’t worry, woman. I got nothing to slide into you. I got nothing you can suck. I fought for my country, see?

He laughs a small bitter laugh.

The fumes are too strong now, making his throat sore. He starts again, moving on an angle to be closer to the wall. He sees a large concrete building, high, but not a skyscraper, full of contempt and power, like an officer. He looks up. Sees the sign. The Salvation Army. Two homeless women on the steps, one in flip-flops, her cold feet dirty as a sidewalk in this fucking city. The other one is toothless, talking to a third woman about four feet away on the sidewalk. This one is waving a bag of potato chips while she talks. Josh can’t hear what they are saying, except for one word. Motherfucker. They use that word everywhere in New York. Kids use it. Girls. Just like Iraq. Pass the motherfuckin’ salt, Private. Up the dozen steps behind the women, he can see a crumpled cardboard box with booted feet jutting out. The entrance to the building is sealed behind a huge gold-painted gate. There’s a cross on the gate with two crossed swords and a huge S and a slogan: DOING THE MOST GOOD.

Doing good? The most good? Hey, in there, do me some good. Get me a new prick. Get me my wife back. Get me my daughter. Tell God to get on it, okay?

On the side, he sees scaffolding. A good place to crash, maybe? No, one side is open. Anyone can see me. And call a cop. Wanting to know what’s under my tarp.

Josh sees words on the wall.

… While there is a drunkard left, while there is a poor lost girl upon the streets, while there remains one dark soul without the light of God, I’ll fight — I’ll fight to the very end!

It’s signed “General William Booth.”

General of what?

Did he work with Petraeus on the surge? Does he want to fight in Namistan? Or is he just a general in the Salvation Army? And if he is, why doesn’t God listen to him?