Tom Rachman - The Imperfectionists

He sits up in bed.

"I didn't see your story, babe," she says. "Not running today?"

He scans the page-one headlines: "Blair to Step Down in 12 Months;" "Pentagon Forbids Cruelty in Terror Interrogations;" "Gay Marriages Roil America;" "Australia Mourns 'Crocodile Hunter';" and finally, "Bush Slumps to New Low in Polls."

His Gaza story didn't make the front. He flips through the inside pages. It's nowhere. Cursing, he dials Rome. It's early, but Menzies is already at his desk. "What happened to my piece?" Lloyd demands.

"I'm sorry. We couldn't use it. That French flack friend of Kathleen's called back and denied it all. Said we'd be screwed if we went with it. They'd issue an official protest."

"A flack friend of Kathleen's pisses on my piece and you guys buy that? Anyhow, why is Kathleen re-reporting my work? I told you, my son works at the ministry."

"Well, that's kind of weird, too. Kathleen mentioned your son's name to her friend."

"She identified him as the source? Are you out of your mind?"

"No, no-hang on. She never said he was your source."

"It's not going to be hard to figure out. Jesus Christ!"

"Let me finish, Lloyd. Let me finish here. No one called Jerome Burko works there."

"You morons. He goes by his mother's maiden name."

"Oh."

Lloyd must warn his son, give him time to come up with an excuse. He calls Jerome's cellphone, but he isn't picking up. Maybe he's at work early for a change. Jesus, what a disaster. Lloyd rings the ministry switchboard.

The operator says, "I'm looking at a list of all the people in this building. That name is not on it."

Lloyd hurries down to Boulevard du Montparnasse, raises his arm for a taxi, then drops it. He hesitates at the curb, squeezing his wallet, which is thinner than ever. Then again, if he's going to go bankrupt this is how he should do it. He waves down a cab.

At the ministry building, the security guards won't let him inside. He repeats his son's name, insists that it's a family emergency. This gets him nowhere. He shows his press accreditation, but it expired on December 31, 2005. He waits outside, phoning Jerome's mobile. Functionaries stroll out for cigarette breaks. He searches among them for his son, asking if anyone here works in the North African and Middle Eastern directorate.

"I remember that guy," a woman says. "He was an intern here."

"I know, but what section is he in now?"

"He's not in any section. We never hired him. I think he wrote the exams, but he couldn't pass the languages part." She narrows her eyes and smiles. "I always thought he was lying about having an American father."

"How do you mean?"

"Just that his English was so hopeless."

She dredges up an old address for Jerome and gives it to Lloyd. He takes the Metro to the Chateau Rouge stop and finds the building, a decaying chunk of plaster whose main gate is broken. He scans the list of residents at each inner courtyard, hunting for Jerome's last name. He can't find it. Then he spots an unexpected last name, his own. The buzzer reads, "Jerome Burko."

Lloyd presses it, but there is no response. Residents come and go. He sits at the edge of the courtyard and gazes up at the shuttered windows.

After an hour, Jerome appears through the main gate but does not immediately see his father. He opens his mailbox and, flipping through junk, weaves down the passage.

Lloyd says his son's name, and Jerome starts. "What are you doing?"

"Sorry," Lloyd says, standing sorely. "Sorry to appear like this." He has never spoken to his son in this manner, with deference. "I just turned up-is that okay?"

"About your article?"

"No, no. Nothing to do with that."

"What, then?"

"Can we go upstairs? I'm cold. I've been out here a while." He laughs. "I'm old, you know! I might not look it, but-"

"You're not old."

"I am old. I am." He reaches out his hand, smiles. Jerome moves no closer. "I've been thinking about my family lately."

"Which family?"

"Can I come inside, Jerome? If you don't mind. My hands are ice-cold." He rubs them together, blows on them. "I had an idea. I hope you don't take offense at this. I was thinking maybe-only if you wanted-maybe I could help you with your English. If we practice regularly, you'll pick it up, I guarantee."

Jerome flushes. "What do you mean? My English is fine. I learned it from you."

"You didn't have that many opportunities to hear it."

"I don't need lessons. Anyway, when would I do them? The ministry would never give me time off."

To make a point, Lloyd switches to English, speaking intentionally fast: "I'm tempted to tell you what I know, son. I don't want to make you feel lousy, though. But what are you doing in this dump? My God, it's incredible how much you look like my father. So strange to see him again. And I know you don't work. Four kids I've produced, and you're the only one who wants to talk to me anymore."

Jerome hasn't understood a word. Trembling with humiliation, he responds in French: "How am I supposed to know what you're saying? You're speaking so fast. This is ridiculous."

Lloyd reverts to French himself. "I wanted to tell you something. Ask you something. You know, I'm thinking of retiring," he says. "I must have done, what, an article a day since I was twenty-two. And now I can't rustle up a single new idea. Not a one. I don't know what in hell's going on anymore. Even the paper won't publish me. It was my last-my last string. Did you know that? No one prints my stuff anymore. I think I'm leaving my apartment, Jerome. I can't pay for it. I shouldn't be there. But I don't know. Nothing's settled yet. I'm asking, I guess-I'm trying to figure it out. Quite what's the thing to do. What would you say? What's your opinion on the matter?" He struggles to ask this. "What would you advise that I should do? Son?"

Jerome opens the door to the building. "Come in," he says. "You're staying with me."

1953. CAFFe GRECO, ROME

Betty rattled her highball glass and peered inside, seeking a last dribble of Campari under the ice cubes. Her husband, Leo, sat across the marble cafe tabletop, hidden behind an Italian newspaper. She reached over and knocked on his page, like the door to his study.

"Yaaahs, m'dear," he bellowed, the great wall of newsprint having rendered him insensible to the fact that he was in public and that shouted marital chitchat could be heard by all; after years in Rome, he still assumed no one overseas understood English.

"No sign of Ott," she said.

"True, true."

"Another drink?"

"Yaaahs, m'dear." In his cupped hand, he planted a kiss and lobbed it at her like a grenade, tracing with his eyes the parabola up and over the table, down onto her cheek. "Direct hit," he declared, and disappeared behind the newspaper pages. "Everyone's so stupid!" he said, giddy at all the wonderful reports of chaos. "So amazingly stupid!"

Betty raised her arm to hail a waiter, then caught sight of Ott, just sitting there at the bar, watching them. Her hand drooped at the wrist and she cocked her head, mouthing "What are you doing over there?," small muscles tugging at the sides of her mouth, smile rising, then falling, then rising.

Ott observed Betty and Leo an instant longer, stood from his bar stool, and made for the seating area at the back.

He had last seen her twenty years earlier in New York. She was in her early forties now, a married woman, her black hair a little shorter, her green eyes softened. Still, Ott glimpsed in the tilt of her head, in her hesitant smile, the woman he had known. By fading, the past seemed only to sharpen before him. He had an impulse to reach across the table and touch her.

Instead, he took the extended hand of Betty's husband and gripped the man's shoulder, expressing toward Leo-whom Ott was meeting for the first time-the warmth he could not appropriately express toward his wife.