Chapter 10
Sometime during the weekend, Andy had sorted and archived the pictures from Friday night’s party without posting any of them online on the newspaper website. In case they might become useful in the future, he left me the daunting task of tagging them. I scrolled through the images, wishing I could steal them back. Some of them would have made great additions to my portfolio, and Andy wouldn’t use them anyway. The pics of Victoria Sedgwick were beautifully tragic but worthless to anyone trying to make a buck off her name. I jotted down the image numbers in case I caught him in a good mood. Maybe he’d let me have them.
Kristin and Jennifer argued loudly over who had aged better: Brad Pitt or Johnny Depp. Leonard threw out anecdotes about stalking each of them, saying Brad was nicer to him, slightly. The chatter became a kind of background noise I heard but wasn’t listening to.
When Derek sidled up beside me, I jumped at the sound of his voice close to my ear. “So, you’re Indian?”
I glanced at him but then went back to scrolling through photos. “My dad is. I’m actually American.”
He leaned an elbow on my workstation and openly scrutinized me. “ ’Cause you don’t really look Indian. I mean, I always figured you just tanned easily.”
Did he think he was complimenting me? I turned an arched eyebrow at him to let him see that I didn’t really care for the direction this conversation was taking. It opened up way more worm cans than Derek could ever imagine because I did look Indian—just not enough.
I inherited my spiral locks and sepia-toned skin from my dad, but the ash brown hair from my American-as-apple-pie mom separated me from an entire subcontinent. My hybrid coloring was only the most obvious indication that I never quite fit in.
It was the great curse of my existence that I was never enough. Not Indian enough. Not American enough. Not artistic enough. Not tabloid enough. Not healthy enough. Never enough.
This became apparent the summer my dad took me to India. One afternoon, after we’d been there for almost a week, my dad and grandfather argued. My dad, who rarely raised his voice to me, spoke so loud, I heard him from outside the house where I leaned against a banyan tree eating the coconut sukhiyan Acha-ma had cooked for me.
The words “ava malayi alla” carried out the open front door, followed by my livid father, who gave me one look and told me to go pack my bags.
I repeated the phrase: “ava malayi alla”—she is not Malayali. I didn’t know if my grandfather was talking about me or my mom. In any case, we left the house in a taxi, my dad talking to my mom about how his father could not decide his life. But when we got home, he and Mom argued, and he began to travel more often. And then he stopped coming home.
The kicker was that I’d always expected my Indian family to accept me since my mom’s mom had apparently taken one look at me and decided I was too Indian.
How could I be too much and not enough at the same time?
This memory flashed through my mind more as a fleeting feeling than a thought and disappeared in the blink of my bone-dry eyes. I turned away from Derek and swallowed down the stupid frog in my throat.
Derek attempted a course correction. “I mean, it’s cool if you’re part Indian. Kind of hot, really. I just didn’t know.” I ignored him, but he persisted. “Hey, if you’re free tomorrow night, I was wondering if you might like to go out and do something.”
“On a Tuesday?” I turned and leveled him with a what-kind-of-idiot-do-you-take-me-for look. He’d never asked me out before. Either he had an Indian fetish or he was after something. The trouble with working in the gossip industry was that everyone always had an angle. I trusted no one. Except Zion. I trusted Zion with my life.
He ignored my skepticism. “Yeah, there’s this club opening, and I’m on the guest list.”
“Sorry. I’ve already got plans.”
“Oh, yeah? Whatcha doing?” He was way too interested and not nearly disappointed enough.
“Washing my hair.” I threw him a withering glance. I wasn’t about to tell him I had tickets to Micah’s show. He could pry into my business the old-fashioned way, by rummaging through my backpack when I wasn’t looking.
The door opened and bounced hard against the wall. Andy walked through it before it could swing back and hit him. He slowed as he passed behind my desk. “Wilder. In my office. Now.” His pace picked up. He didn’t even check to see if I followed behind him.
I climbed from my stool and caught Zion watching me. I mouthed “What?” at him, but he shrugged, hands outstretched, palms up. I sucked in some air. Andy was no fun on his best days. He seemed to be riding a storm cloud today.
When I entered his office, he had his phone cradled between his shoulder and his ear. Clumped strands of unwashed hair striped his forehead. His right index finger scrolled across images on his tablet, making them careen off, chasing after each other. In his left hand, he held a pen over a temporarily forgotten copy of the competitor’s paper. I suspected it may be the paper featuring a photo of me.
He fluttered the pen at a futon chair and readjusted the phone on his shoulder. I shoved over a stack of week-old papers and took a seat, awkwardly eavesdropping on his phone call.
“I have to say I was pretty annoyed Friday night.”
I settled onto the seat and glanced up to discover the phone lay abandoned on the desk, and Andy now stared directly at me, waiting for a response. “Oh, uh. Friday night.”
His eyes bored into me. “I didn’t think I’d need to give you a deadline, but I also never expected you’d send in your work past midnight.”
My fists clenched, damp from the anxiety. “I can explain.”
Andy tsked. “Zion already filled me in.”
“Zion?”
“Right. He explained why you were so late.”
“He—” Zion wouldn’t have sold me out. I squirmed in my seat but resolved to wait for Andy’s explanation rather than undermine both of us with the wrong panicked guess.
“You need to be better prepared, Scout. You know there are things you can carry to recharge on the go.”
“Yeah.” I relaxed, relieved that maybe he’d become more understanding of my medical issues. “But that’s not exactly why—”
“You can borrow this for now, but you should invest in some.” He reached into a drawer and pulled out a rectangular white plastic box, the size of a cell phone. He tossed it to me, and I recognized it as soon as my hand wrapped around it. I had about six of them in my camera bag. “Next time, you won’t be stuck with a camera full of photos you can’t send in.”
I clutched the portable battery pack. “Thanks, Andy. That would have been a big help last weekend.”
He’d already forgotten me and started scrolling through the pics on the tablet. As I stood, he lifted his head again. “Those pics of you and Micah that Wally Stephens captured trumped your pics anyway.” He had to get that last dig in.
I laid my hand on the door handle and twisted it. “Right.”
A beat before the latch disengaged, he added, “Did you get pics of Eden on Saturday night?”
I released the door handle, blinking fast. How did he know about that? “I—”
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to ask you for your pics. That was on your time. Wally Stephens said he saw you there, though. Called to ask if there was something going on between you and Micah.”
“Between me and Micah?” I shock-laughed. “That’s preposterous.”
“Yeah. I laughed it off, too.” He froze, hand mid-scroll. His forehead wrinkled as his caterpillar-like eyebrows levitated. “You’d let me know if you had an in with Micah, right?”
“What?”
“Because if you do, I’d like to see you work that angle.”
“You want me to exploit Micah Sinclair?”
He set the pen down and placed his fists on the table to support his weight as he loomed forward, focusing now on nothing but me. “Josephine, do you know what you do for a living?”
“Of course.”
“Does Micah Sinclair know what you do?”
I swallowed. I didn’t like where this was going. “Yes.”
“Then who do you think is exploiting whom?”
I wanted to argue with him, but I had nothing to prove that Micah hadn’t been using me for free publicity. So why shouldn’t I use him back? We could have a symbiotic relationship. “You’re right. I forgot who I was dealing with.”
He waved his hand. “Rookies. You need to get a thicker skin.”
He was right. I nodded. “Sure. But I don’t know if I’ve got as much access as you seem to think.”
“With Adam out of the country, maybe you could buddy up to Eden. Information is currency, Jo. Befriend her. Try to find out if they’ve set a date for their wedding. Prove to me you’re more than just one more skilled photographer. Go after the story.”
I pictured her with Adam, happy about a pregnancy only one other person knew about—a tabloid journalist of all people. What would Andy do with that information? But I didn’t want to sell her out. I knew there was a line between public and private information, even if Andy no longer saw it.
But I said, “I think you’ve overestimated my connection with her. She only hired me for pictures. Since I sent them off, she’ll have no more need of me.”
“I think she will.” He maintained eye contact with me until I dropped my gaze. Then he returned to checking all the pictures his photographers had sent in, panning for gold.
I slipped out of his office, feeling the need for a Silkwood shower. Maybe I could apply for a position in another division. I caught Zion’s eye, and he tilted his head, “Everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine. Thanks for covering for last Friday.”
He nodded once. “Payback for Saturday night.”
I still couldn’t believe how fangirlish he’d been all weekend. After we’d returned home from the club, he’d watched videos of Adrianna and changed his ringtone to one of her songs. And now his screen saver was a picture of Adrianna.
I started to tease him for acting like a besotted teenager, but I knew that as soon as I pulled my stool up to my laptop, I was going to go through my Friday night pics for any shots of Micah.
And indeed, I climbed on my stool and played Where’s Waldo with the party pics.
In the first pic I found him in, he was talking to a group of people, smiling, wide-eyed, engaged. But after one or two shots, he inevitably locked in on the camera. It may have been my imagination, but he never seemed to look directly into the lens. His eyes were always a smidgen off to the left like he was looking past the camera. Like he was looking at me. I shook off a shiver and grabbed a sweatshirt from a hook on the wall.
Zion interrupted my stargazing with a “Whoop!”
I figured he’d gotten some pictures that turned out well, but when I swiveled around, he was staring fixated at his phone, his face contorted in uncontained glee. “Omigod!”
“What?” I slipped off my stool and tried to look over his shoulder.
He hid his phone against his chest, but I could tell by his shining eyes and pudding face that he would tell me. “Omigod. So this morning, I tweeted at Adrianna.” He turned his phone to face me so I could see his notifications. “Look! She just favorited my tweet.”
As I looked at his notifications, another popped up. “And she just followed you.”
“WHAT?” He fumbled the phone but caught it before it dropped to the floor. “OH MY GOD!”
“I hate to be a naysayer, but are you sure it’s her and not a bot? Or some auto-follow thing? Or her manager?”
His expression darkened, and I regretted my words, but I didn’t want his fawning to lead to disappointment. “It’s her. Look. It’s official.”
“Yeah. Okay.” I patted his back. “That’s awesome, Zion. How cool for you.”
I caught Derek watching us with a smirk on his face. He thought he was too seasoned to get excited over any celebrities. I pursed my lips at him, too grown up to stick out my tongue.
As soon as I was at my desk, I sneaked my phone out of my bag and searched for Micah on Twitter. When I found him, I followed him and wrote, It was good to see you last weekend. Thanks for the tickets to your show! I stared at the message for a minute and then hit Send. I didn’t expect to have the same luck as Zion, but it was worth a shot.
It had been a long time since I’d used Twitter in such a personal way. I pushed my phone into my pocketbook and scooted up to my desk. My laptop was docked. Three enormous monitors stretched across the workstation. On the left, a folder displayed thumbnails of the images from Friday night. A Twitter app dominated the center console, flashing constantly with new updates. The right monitor currently showed a map of Brooklyn.
I scrolled through various feeds on Twitter watching for any indication of a celebrity sighting. I’d hit the streets in the afternoon, but for now, I needed to tag any pictures Andy had missed. Halfway through the pictures, I’d started yawning so loud, Zion went and fetched me a cup of coffee. The groups of people repeated again and again in slightly different configurations. I’d been introduced to most everyone, but if nobody in the office could recognize them, they weren’t generally of any interest. But in a crowd like this, it had to be assumed that anyone could be someone or might one day become someone. Better to tag what I could.
Aaron Silver. I typed the name in, trying to recall when I’d taken his picture. How did I manage to get a shot of Aaron Silver without noticing that? Aaron had played the lead in an off Broadway production of Hair earlier in the summer, but I remembered reading in our own Arts and Leisure section that he’d recently taken a smaller part in a larger production. I could have asked him about that if I’d seen him there rather than here, through the lens.
The next picture clued me into why I’d missed seeing Aaron. Micah had stepped in front of the camera and walked toward me. That must have been right before he took me to meet those snobby old farts.
Zion snuck up behind me. “I’m heading out. Someone spotted Peter Dinklage walking his dogs.”
“Okay. I’ll see you at home later. I’m gonna go poach Andy’s turf later today.”
“Don’t work too hard.” He mussed my hair and left.
When I turned back to tag the next picture, I noticed Eden standing in the background, Adam’s arm wrapped around her, caressing her belly. She’d missed that one. The gesture could mean anything, but Andy missed nothing. I glanced over my shoulder, finger hovering over the delete key. But if a picture disappeared, Andy might ask why. So instead, I clicked on the tags and made sure Eden and Adam weren’t listed.