Pete Hamill - Tabloid City

Josh wheels away, going back to where he came from, down by the river. Down there, after breakfast on two slices of pizza, he asked a man to buy him a blanket in some dump of a store. Told him he would pay. Held out two twenty-dollar bills. The man was maybe fifty, smooth face, overcoat with a velvet collar. A black leather briefcase. Surely a Jew.

— How’d you get into that wheelchair, fella? he said.

— Iraq.

— Wait here, he said and went into the store. He came out with a blanket, thick and dark.

— Want me to do it for you, soldier?

— No, no. How much was it?

— Forget it, he said.

He laid the blanket on Thompson’s lap. And walked away without saying another word.

Don’t go soft now, Josh Thompson thought. You ain’t a charity case. Still…

He struggled to pull the blanket over his upper body without showing what else was there. Nobody seemed to notice. Not the blanket. Not the MAC-10. Just another loser in a wheelchair.

Now he moves through all the others, winners and losers, small kids and nannies, more old ladies, a security guard eating cake, another homeless woman with empty eyes. Then he sees a man in full Muslim gear. The little Muslim hat. The flowing robe with a jacket over it. Thick black beard. Holding a book. The only book. God’s book. Remembered seeing guys like him on CNN at Walter Reed. Muslims in New York! He wants to ram the motherfucker. He wants to be challenged by him. His hands feel for the gun. For the trigger. But the man moves on without looking at him, and Josh does nothing. Telling himself: Wait. Wait until nightfall.

He crosses an avenue, cars and buses and trucks idling at a red light. His feet feel cold now, although he has no feet.

He passes a store for rent. Lots of stores for rent down here. An awning. Sees steps to a basement. Nobody inside or out. He thinks: Maybe I could crash here. Maybe I could get down the stairs to the basement. Six steps. Nah. He moves on, sees a place called Passion, selling adult videos for $1.99. Recession special for jerking off. And next door? Are they kidding? Village Kids Nursery. Next door to the jerk-off store! Josh laughs out loud. Then sees that little girl near Fallujah, the blood erupting from the hole in her chest, like a slow pump, her eyes very still, someone screaming. Maybe it was me shot her. I’ll never know.

He hears a siren. An ambulance or a fire engine. And he stops, leans back, facing the dark sky. Josh Thompson starts to scream. No sound leaves his mouth.

12:05 p.m. Sam Briscoe. His loft.

He’s in a gray sweat suit, white socks, slippers. He is fresher after the shower and has made some of the calls. Matt Logan again. Janet. Helen Loomis. But he doesn’t want to call all of them, one by one. He doesn’t want to call anyone. There is one more call he must make. The one he planned to make first, except that the newspaper, as always, got in the way. He goes to the desk, where the important numbers are written in large printed letters on a three-by-five index card. He lifts the phone and dials his daughter in Paris. A framed color photograph of her is beside the printer. Eighteen. The two of them in Monte Carlo that time. She’s smiling, but her eyes, as always, are wary. A different photograph of that same scene is in his office at the newspaper. The photographer was Cynthia Harding.

Two rings. Three. Five. Then her recorded voice in fluent French, followed by English. Please leave a message. The voice cool and smooth in both languages.

— Nicole? Dad. It’s almost noon in New York. I have some dreadful news… Cynthia Harding… and her secretary… were murdered last night. In the house on Patchin Place… And a separate matter, nowhere as terrible. The World is dead, as a newspaper. On Monday morning, it’ll be a website… Without me. Which was my choice… I didn’t want you to read either story in the Herald-Tribune. Or Le Monde. Call when you can and I’ll explain. I’ll be at the paper later in the day, to say good-bye to the troops… I don’t know how to say good-bye to Cynthia. It’s a bad day. Love you, baby.

He hangs up. Then walks to the window. No sounds penetrate the special double-thick glass. Some gulls circling. Gray sullen clouds. It feels like snow.

He goes to the couch. The morning papers lie on the low table. Delivered to the lobby each morning. The television set is dark. He can’t look at the papers. Not even his own. And doesn’t have to anymore. From today he no longer is required to pay attention. A kind of relief, maybe? No more fucking deadlines.

He dozes but is too tired to sleep. He drifts to that time in Monte Carlo. Cynthia Harding’s idea. Nicole a student at the Sorbonne. Cynthia arrived by airplane from New York and went directly to the hotel. Big place. Marble corridors. Black-tie casino. He and Nicole took the train from Paris. The girl was glum, either dozing or staring out the window all the way south to the Mediterranean. On her vacations in New York, Nicole had met Cynthia at parties, fund-raisers, dinners, horseshit events, one trapped weekend at a friend’s house in Southampton. She seemed to like Cynthia, and Cynthia was sweet and smart and never treated her like a child. Certainly not Sam’s child. But in Monte Carlo, Nicole was bitchy to Cynthia, playing an adult, not a teenager. Cynthia smiled a lot, in an amused, patient way, and her cool made Nicole angrier. Finally, in bed in her room, Cynthia said: Sam, don’t you see? She’s got a guy in Paris. Why would she want to be here with us?

They all left in the morning. Briscoe didn’t own a black-tie costume, and Cynthia was never fond of shooting craps. Nicole was clearly happy, so Cynthia was right. She usually was.

She ends up with her flesh pierced, her blood on the floor, not far from Mary Lou. Gotta find Ali Watson. We both need consolation.

Briscoe sits up abruptly, staring at the rows of books, the paintings. The Mexican girl by Lew Forrest. Her glistening black eyes, her luxurious golden flesh tell him again that the painter must have loved her. A gift from Cynthia. When I turned sixty-five. Cynthia’s flesh was not this flesh. It was ivory. The sun could redden it, but she could never tan. And yet in the dark, with light seeping in from Greene Street or the hills of Tuscany, her flesh was golden too.

Nicole’s guy in Paris was a Spaniard, from Barcelona. A medical student, who spoke Catalan, French, English, and some Italian. Cynthia said, Don’t worry, Sam. She won’t marry this guy, he’s too pretty. She was right about that too.

The evening before he and Cynthia were to leave for New York, he went to a bistro with Nicole. They didn’t sit on the terrace. Too cold. Instead, they found a table deep inside. The waiter brought the coffee. She was silent. And he can still hear what she asked when they were settled.

— Dad, why did Mom kill herself?

He squeezed her hand.

— I don’t really know, Nicole.

She stared at him, while he stared at his own coffee. Seeing the troubled face of Joyce Miller. Mom. His wife. Nicole finally asking the question that she must have wanted to ask for years. Her silence demanding a reply.

— She didn’t say anything to me, Briscoe said. She didn’t leave a note.

— How did she do it?

The ice in her voice. Stabbing him still.

— Pills.

Now remembering Nicole’s puzzled squint.

— That’s all?

— No, there were plenty more things that happened. But that was the finale.

Wanting to be honest at last. Wanting to tell Nicole. To unload. To say the unspoken things. But giving her only a dreadful highlight film. Sitting there in the bistro while tweedy academic tourists looked for Jean-Paul Sartre or the ghost of Albert Camus. He told her about the reefer. Acid. Smack for a while. Freebasing cocaine mixed with ammonia. Then angel dust, which made her insane, even dangerous. With booze lacing it all together. He told her about his calls to Joyce’s father in Ohio, pleading for help. Hearing indifference. Joyce in rehab. Then rehab again. Then rehab once more.