Tom Rachman - The Imperfectionists

This isn't what she meant. "I'm tired of wire-service hackery," she explains. "It'd be nice to actually detach my ear from the telephone and go out and report once in a while. Even if it's just as a stringer for the paper."

"I didn't know you wanted this job."

"Well, I did."

"I guess it was even more generous of you to have helped me, then," he says, wondering suddenly how much she really had helped. "Why didn't you mention this before?"

"We were opponents."

"I didn't realize."

"So you're going back to your studies in Minnesota, then?"

"I have a plan," he responds archly, but goes no further. He isn't going to reveal himself to her. And, anyway, he doesn't have a plan. "You know," he remarks, "it occurs to me that I've been wrong about something: I always assumed that age and experience weather you, make you more resilient. But that's not true. It's the opposite." He turns to her. "Don't you think?"

But she's checking her cellphone for missed calls from Snyder and doesn't respond.

1963. CORSO VITTORIO, ROME

With Betty out of the picture, Leo assumed full control of the paper and declared that his first goal was to raise status. Whether he meant the paper's status or his own was a matter of debate.

His obsession was "marquee pieces," which he defined as articles to make you fall over at the newsstand. However, he distrusted his own staff to produce anything that good, so he purchased the stories from outside writers, which endeared him to no one at the office. The atmosphere grew increasingly toxic; the old collegial days were over.

Circulation declined marginally, but Leo claimed that the readership had merely grown more refined. When corresponding with the board in Atlanta, he pledged to cut costs, but privately he was cocky. After all, Charles had tipped his hand: he'd said the paper was untouchable.

In 1969, Charles stepped down as chairman of the board and Ott's son, Boyd, age twenty-seven, took over. Leo sent Boyd a letter of congratulations, with a hint that more cash would be timely-the paper could do with a few new hands. Instead, Boyd got rid of an old one: Leo himself.

The justification was that Leo had betrayed the paper and its late founder. Ott had left his family, had toiled day and night, to build a publication that served the world, Boyd said. But Leo had turned the paper into little more than a personal fiefdom. Boyd even alleged that Leo had altered the masthead to shrink "Founded by Cyrus Ott (1899-1960)" and enlarge "Editor-in-Chief: Leopold T. Marsh." A measuring stick seemed to prove the point.

Leo lingered around the capitals of Europe for a while, nosing about for a route back into the international press. In the end, he returned to the United States, taking home a before-breakfast Cognac habit and scant cash. He accepted a job in Pittsburgh running a trade publication on the coal industry and was lucky to get it.

Boyd pledged to lead the search for a replacement editor-in-chief but proved too absorbed by the rest of the Ott empire. He had grand ambitions and began by selling off many long-standing holdings, even the sugar refinery that had started it all, in favor of speculative investments overseas. It was audacious-just the sort of thing his father would have done.

Or so Boyd believed.

For he had barely known Ott, who left for Europe when Boyd was eleven. He had not even been born during his father's fabled early days, when Ott had built an empire from nothing. Most of what Boyd knew about those times came from sundry courtiers nibbling at the edges of the family fortune.

Still, these myths spurred him on. He was bold because his father had been, and proud because this, too, had been Ott's fashion. Yet Boyd's boldness lacked pleasure, and his pride lacked dignity. He styled himself a man of the people, as his father had been. But the people mistrusted Boyd, and he in turn despised them.

THE JERKS TOOK HER CHAIR AGAIN, THE CHAIR SHE FOUGHT FOR six months to get. It's amazing. Just amazing, these people. She hunts around the newsroom, curses bubbling inside her, bursting out now and then. "Pricks," she mutters. She should just quit. Hand in her resignation. Never set foot in this place again. Leave these idiots in the dirt.

But wait, stop! Yes, there it is: the chair-over there, behind the watercooler. She hurries over and grabs it. "Get their own damn chair." She rolls it to its rightful place at the copydesk, unlocks her drawer, and lays out her tools: a cushion for her lower back, an ergonomic keyboard and mouse, RSI wrist braces, antibacterial wipes. She decontaminates the keyboard and the mouse. "Impossible to feel clean in this place."

She adjusts the height of her chair, pats the pillow into position, and sits. "Disgusting." The seat is warm. Someone has been sitting in it. "Should just walk out." Seriously. Wouldn't that be rich. Never have to see these losers again.

The paper is the only place Ruby Zaga has ever worked. She started here after quitting a doctorate in theology. She was twenty-seven at the time and self-conscious about taking an unpaid summer internship. At forty-six, she's still at the paper, working on the copydesk, her temper shorter and her body stouter, though she dresses just as she did on her arrival in 1987: bangles, silver hoop earrings, sweaterdress cinched with an oversize belt, black leggings, white Keds. It's not simply the same styles but the same items in many cases, dotted with fuzzballs, colors faded.

She always arrives early for her shift because the newsroom is empty then, except for Menzies, who seems never to leave. Regrettably, her colleagues on the copydesk eventually turn up. The first to do so today is the slot editor, Ed Rance, who barges out of the elevator, nose running, aerating a damp armpit with waves of his hand. He bicycles to work and sweats profusely, stains mottling his khakis. She won't allow him the chance to not say hello-she'll not say hello first. She rushes off to the toilets and hides in a stall, giving the finger to the door.

She returns, late for the start of her shift.

"Try to be here on time," Ed Rance says.

She slams her ass into the chair.

Ed Rance and the other copy editor on duty, Dave Belling, are proofreading the early edition. Ed Rance hands Ruby the last few pages-the dullest-to check over, then whispers something to Dave Belling. They laugh.

"What?" she asks.

"Not talking about you, Rube. World doesn't revolve around you, Rube."

"Yeah, well. I seriously don't need this."

In fact, they aren't talking about her but about Saddam Hussein. It's December 30, 2006, and Saddam was hanged at dawn. For amusement, they're hunting for footage of the execution on the Internet.

Meantime, all the senior editors cluster around the layout desk to discuss page one. "We got art?"

"Of what? Dictator on a rope?"

"What are the wires offering?"

"Him on the slab. His head is, like, all at an angle. Like, all twisted around to the side."

"That's gotta hurt."

"Can we do a frame grab off Al Jazeera?"

Someone jokes: "Why don't we do a frame grab of the whole New York Times front page and just publish that? Then we can go home right now."

This wins a ringing endorsement and a fast-dying chuckle-they don't like to laugh at each other's jokes.

Dave Belling finds footage of the hanging online and calls over his friends, Ed Rance and Clint Oakley. The three men watch as Saddam refuses the hood. Executioners place the noose around his neck. They tighten the knot. The video stops.

"That's it? No drop?"

"Poor sweet Saddam."

"Poor adorable Saddam."

"Somewhere an angel just got his wings."

"Somewhere an angel is shooting a rifle in heaven."