Chapter Thirty-Five
Zack
As much as I enjoyed my last few days at home, I was eager to get back to Manhattan. I missed the bustle of the city, the live bands, the rooftop bars, the parks and art museums. But somehow, Kelli had gotten tangled up in all that. When I thought of the city now, I thought of her. When I smelled the barbecue wafting down Harlem Street on my first night back, I was viscerally reminded of her.
I guess it sometimes happens that you meet a person in a certain place, and the two become linked in your mind ever afterward. Kelli was New York to me now. I couldn’t walk down the street without thinking about her. If I had wanted to get away from her, I would have had to leave the city entirely. And that wasn’t the sort of thing I was prepared to do just yet.
On that first night back in my apartment, I lay in bed for a couple hours listening to the steady drip of a drain pipe coming from behind the wall. More than once I was tempted to reach for my phone, but then I remembered Mama saying how much time I had been spending on my phone since Kelli left. I didn’t want to be one of those guys who hides in the Internet because the world is too much. So I lay there trying not to think about her, trying to ignore how alone I felt, and trying not to let my feelings sink me.
The next morning, I didn’t even bother making breakfast. Instead, as soon as I got up, I went over to Carson’s apartment.
“Get up,” I said, charging through the door without knocking. Carson, who was once again lying naked on the couch, scrambled to throw a blanket over his legs. “You and me have got things to do today.”
“What’s up?” asked Carson, looking slightly irritated. It was raining outside the windows, and the room was dark enough that he had to turn on a lamp to see me clearly. Rubbing his tired eyes, he said, “We’re not going golfing again, are we? In this weather?”
From the way he was clutching his temples, I suspected that Carson was suffering from a hangover. Either that or he really hadn’t gone to bed the night before, in which case being woken up like this was probably torture. His pants were draped over the arm of the couch; reaching into the pockets, he pulled out a cigarette and lit it, letting the smoke rise to his nostrils without once setting it to his lips.
“You know you’re not allowed to smoke in this building, right?” I reminded him.
Carson shrugged. “I’m not smoking.”
Eventually I was able to coax him off the couch and into his clothes with the promise of breakfast and coffee. It’s hard to explain how good it felt to be back in the city after hiding out in the boons for a week. I wanted to run through the streets like Gene Kelly marveling over every hydrant and lamp post. It was all so big, so magnificent. But we had things to do.
“So where we going?” Carson asked as we tore down Tenth Avenue. The rain was falling thick and fast, and I could barely see more than a few yards in front of me. On the sidewalk, a large Samoyed dried itself with a tremendous shaking motion while a couple of kids carrying subway sandwiches hugged them protectively to their chests like some treasured family relic. A girl in a short skirt and a blue sweater ambled idly over wet oak leaves and damp, discarded flyers, seemingly oblivious to the deluge happening all around her.
“We,” I said, “are going to have a chat with Kelli’s boss.”
Carson stared at me as if I had gone mad. “And by ‘chat’ you mean—”
“Exactly what you think I mean. This guy’s been giving her a hard time, so I figured it’s time we went over there and gave him a hard time.”
The car drove through a puddle, splashing a couple of pedestrians on the sidewalk who were crouched under an awning trying to get out of the rain. “You sure this is a good idea?” Carson asked. When I glowered at him he added in a meek voice, “I don’t wanna do anything illegal.”
“Carson, when you can explain to me why you thought it would be a good idea to stalk a high school girl who had stolen your wallet, then we can talk about the difference between right and wrong. Until then, spare me the lectures, please.”
Carson was silent for a long moment, as though trying to think up a counter-argument. But I was saved from ever having to hear it by our arrival at the Bugle’s offices.
“Stay close to me and don’t say anything unless I tell you to,” I said as we stepped out of the car into the pouring rain. “All you’ve really gotta do is look threatening.”
“This is where the Bugle is located?” asked Carson, staring in disbelief at the old and dilapidated warehouse with its peeling paint and torn awning. “Somehow I thought it would be better than this.”
“They don’t even own the whole building,” I said, leading him through the front door and down the hall. “We’re looking for a dank basement.”
“The way it’s coming down out there,” said Carson, “the basement’s probably flooded. We’d be better off coming back tomorrow or some other day when it’s not raining.”
“There it is!” I said, motioning to a steel door at the end of the hallway. When we opened it, we found a flight of stairs leading up and another flight leading down. We followed the descending stairs and within a few moments we had entered a dark room lit only by a dim bulb and the glow of a few computer screens. It smelled badly of mildew and cat piss, and there was a constant drip of water that was somehow louder and more insistent than the one in my bedroom.
Kelli’s boss was sitting at a desk in the corner of the room surrounded by pipes. I recognized him from the awards banquet, but he must not have remembered us because he stared blankly at us as we came in and tapped his pen against the desk in agitation.
Carson and I strode up to him with stony faces. “Mind if we talk to you for a minute?” I asked him.
“What do you need?” He didn’t look too happy to see us, probably because he sensed that we could break him just with our eyes.
“Heard a rumor you’ve been giving a friend of mine a hard time about a book I’m supposed to be writing.” I leaned against the desk with the easy confidence of a man who knows he can’t be bullied. Behind us I could hear someone playing “Fireflies” by Owl City, very loudly, from their laptop. Turning around and giving him a death glare, I said, “Do you mind?”
He shrugged and lowered the volume, looking irritated. I turned back around. “Let’s get a few things straight here. I’m not writing any book that you or your reporters need to be worried about. The Navy would appreciate it if you’d lay off of us. We got into enough trouble after your girl, Kelli, wrote that piece about us.”
“Did you not think she did a good job?” her boss asked.
“I thought it was excellent! That’s just the problem. You’re sending in brilliant reporters, like her, to expose all the rot and filth in the military. Some of that stuff don’t need to be talked about. Hell, she’s smart enough that you could promote her to an editor’s position and we wouldn’t have to worry about her no more. Next time you wanna do a piece on me, or one of my books, or the Armed Forces in general, send in one of your hack writers who takes shortcuts and don’t know what they’re doing half the time. Send in that kid.” I motioned to the guy who had been playing Owl City, who could sense he was being talked about and glared at us. “But don’t send in your best. Don’t send in Kelli.”
“But she’s my best reporter,” he said in an annoyed tone. I got the impression he didn’t enjoy having strangers wander into the office and make staff recommendations.
“And she’ll make a great editor. If I come back and find out she’s still writing about us, there’s gonna be hell to pay.”
The boss-man rolled his eyes. “And just what kind of hell are you planning to unleash?”
I nodded to Carlson, who picked up a loose tube of metal pipe and bent it in his hands like melted butter. Tossing it down on the desk, he said, “Now imagine that was your finger.”
The boss nodded, looking distinctly impressed and a little scared. “I’ll talk to her when she gets in and see if we can’t work out a compromise.”
By the time Carson and I emerged onto the rainy street a few minutes later, we were giddy with triumph.
“DID YOU SEE THAT?!” Carson shouted, punching me in the arm. “That was just about the coolest thing I’ve ever seen!”
“I’ve gotta admit I feel pretty damned good about it,” I said as we climbed back into my car. “Only sad thing about it is, Kelli wasn’t there to see it.”
“She’ll be hearing about it, I’m sure,” Carson replied with a smirk. “I hope she likes being editor.”