Natalie
I shift my weight from foot to foot, waiting as Ed takes a long drag out of his cigarette, wisps of smoke escaping from between his parted lips and climbing all the way up to the ceiling.
“I’ve been thinking about you, Natalie,” he starts to say, staring at me with his beady eyes in such a way that I can’t help but feel an ounce of disgust.
“Thinking… about me?”
“Yes,” he says, crushing his cigarette in the ashtray as he starts to cough, the hoarse sound of it making me wince. If I had to bet, I’d say he’s smoking his way into an early grave. “I want you to cover the fight.”
“The fight?”
“Yes, the fight. It’s yours,” he says between coughs, waving one hand at me as if he was offering me something tangible. “I want you to cover the fight for the Gazette. You want to do something important, don't you? Well, there you have it. You’ll be covering one of the most important sports events in history.”
“No,” I tell him flatly. I don’t care how good for my career this fight would be. I don’t want to make a profit off it. Two men I care deeply about will be fighting each other, and I’m supposed to help the Gazette make money while it happens? No way. Besides, Ed knows I’ve developed a personal relationship with Logan, and I bet he’s trying to exploit that.
“No?” he asks me with a deep laugh, looking at me through the clouds of smoke escaping from his nostrils. “I’d expect you to be thankful, not to act like a brat.”
“Have someone else do it. Like Michelle, for instance,” I tell him, standing my ground as I see the corner of his lips curl upward. The bastard’s grinning at me.
“No, the matter is settled already. You’ll cover the fight, or else you can start looking for a job somewhere else.” He doesn’t break eye-contact, nor does he blink. He just tells me what his orders are, like a general ordering his soldiers to march straight into the jaws of death. “Now get out of my office,” he finally grumbles, patting away the ashes that have fallen on top of his keyboard. “Go on,” he repeats, and I’m too stunned to reply to him. I just turn around and leave, ashamed at myself for not sticking to my guns.
“Jesus, Natalie, put on a smile,” Michelle asks me as she sees me walking inside the office. She’s nibbling on the end of a pencil, taking some notes on a big basketball game that happened the night before. Something I was supposed to be doing, but I was so distraught with the Logan/Hunter situation that she ended up covering for me… again. Soon enough I won’t owe her dinner; I’ll owe her an entire restaurant.
“Ed wants me to cover the fight,” I tell her with a sigh, sinking onto my chair and running both hands through my hair.
“You told him no, I’m guessing,” she whispers, never taking her eyes from the sheet of paper in front of her.
“I told him no, yeah,” I confirm, “but he wouldn’t budge. He even threatened to fire me if I didn’t do it! Can you imagine it?”
“Don’t worry ‘bout it. He has already threatened to fire me a hundred times at least. And I’m still here, as you can see.” She stops writing then, setting aside the paper and the pencil. Looking up, she raps her knuckles against the surface of her desk and then smacks her lips together. “He probably knows about your relationship with Logan, and he’s trying to play that up.”
“I know, I know…But this is horrible! How does he expect me to cover the fight when I’m worried about the men in the ring?”
“It’s not like you have a choice, Natalie…” she says, and I notice the worry in her voice. If she could, I know she’d take over for me in the blink of an eye.
“No, it seems I don’t…” I sigh, rubbing my eyes. Sitting down on my chair, I close my eyes for a long moment, trying to muster the necessary courage to accept the job I’ve been given.
I still don’t know how all this happened. Things were going so well… And then that damned leak. How could it happen? I don’t believe that Logan or Hunter would ever tell that story and I was the only other person that knew it. And I destroyed the recording I had. Well, I didn’t exactly destroy it; I threw it into the trash, but that’s—
Oh, shit. What if someone went through my trash and got the recording? But that doesn’t make any sense, does it? Why would someone go through my trash?
“Michelle…” I start, finally opening up my eyes. “At what time does the janitor come by?”
“Midnight? He usually comes at ten, but I heard that his wife was sick, and so he was doing the cleaning a bit later than usual. So he has been coming by at around midnight, I think.”
Midnight… But the day I threw the recording in the trash, the basket was already empty by ten. Which means that someone picked it up before the janitor swung by the office. I remember the way Fat Ed stared at me as he stepped inside the office, his beady eyes immediately drawn to the recorder in front of me. I tried to hide it, but I was too late… I wasn’t sure if he had seen it, but now I know. Not only did he see it, he also realized that I was hiding something. And, somehow, he managed to get his dirty hands on that tape.
“Motherfucker,” I growl, jumping up to my feet so fast that Michelle looks at me with an alarmed expression.
“What?” she asks me, a look of surprise on her face.
“I’m going to fucking kill him,” I hiss and, without an explanation, I march out of the office.