I needed to sleep. I’d been up for days, trying to dream up a lead for the paper. Whatever I would write would happen. There was no way round it, once it appeared in print, it happened. With the advent of the internet, it was instantaneous.
Once I had written that Mount Everest had moved. It wanted a summer vacation and decided to go to Miami Beach. I wrote that “M. E. wanted to sample a little of the gay life down in South Beach and grab a pastrami sandwich on Collins.” Must have been some typos and Evie went in ass-backwards, landed one hundred yards east of the Eden Roc. Quite the splash it was. I knew this was going to happen and had a documentary photographer waiting. He didn’t believe me...but couldn’t pass up the chance. “Just in case…” Well, it was the case and now he owes me big time.
There was quite a hullabaloo. Nothing to do but retract the story the next day. I put a small disclaimer in with the obits. “We regret that it was just a toy duck that fell from a passing plane yesterday that caused the splash outside the Eden Roc.” I was going to add that the duck looked strikingly like a certain president, but the editor warned me off.
So, for three days not an idea came into my head. Sure, there were fewer COVID deaths in some countries, but India was still going strong. I didn’t want to touch that, no pun intended. I just wanted to sleep and then Daisy pounds on my bedroom door yelling that the editor sent a car. “Said he needs a story for page one. Otherwise, they can’t go to press. There’ll be no weather report, and the sun can neither rise nor set.”
Daisy tells me they sent a chauffeur and sure enough there’s this big blond guy with blue eyes like sapphires standing behind her. Guy could have been a model for Paul Bunyan. Instead of black boots, he’s got on a pair of lumberjack lace-ups with leather laces and steel toes. I look; he’s dressed in plaid flannels and has a heavy belt around his middle. Instead of a chauffer’s cap he’s wearing a pile of wool balls in all the colors of the rainbow on his head.
Daisy’s at the side of my bed, pushing me. “Did you see his hat?”
Of course I saw his hat. The red nearly blinded me.
Now she’s whispering. “The cross goes round and rises up all the way to the other side; you know what that means?” I didn’t see any cross.
Daisy’s determined. She lifted one end of the bed, and dumped me on the floor, flipping the mattress on top of me for good measure.
I yelled at her to get out of the room. She flipped me the bird, turns, wagged her butt at me, and exited slamming the door, yelling, “You got two minutes!”
Two minutes should be easy enough. All my clothes are stacked neatly under the bed – directly underneath where I would be lying had I been in bed like I should have. On one side are my T-shirts up near the headboard, below them are my belts – I don’t wear braces like some Englishman singing “Ho-ho-ho and a bottle of rum” – and pressing up against them are the elastic bands of my briefs. Below are my black socks. If you move to the other side, you’ll find shirts and pants. My shoes are lined up with the footboard. Of course, Daisy dumped me on the wrong side of the bed. I had to squirm across for my underwear.
When I opened the bedroom door, there’s Daisy.
“Paul’s waiting.”
I’m thinking Daisy’s banged her head. Paul, or whatever his name is, has got to drive us downtown to the paper so maybe it’s safe. At least that’s what I was thinking.
Daisy pushed me down the hall and through the kitchen. She swiped a travel mug of old coffee and my laptop from the table. But later I went back and wrote that the laptop was hanging in its carrier from a hook in the hall where I left it three days ago. So that’s what happened. Like I said, nothing happens unless I write it. Then she pushed me out the door.
A long black convertible was waiting at the curb. The top is up and I imagine a ten-cent despot riding in it, a smug grin on his face. It’s a large Mercedes, a 770.
Paul opened the back door. Get in!”
I ignore his order and push my way into the driver’s seat.
He glared at Daisy. “You go around the other side.” He saw the look in Daisy’s eyes and started sweating, stammering something about regulations. Daisy countered. “He can write them anyway he wants.”
“Maybe he doesn’t have a license?”
“He can write that too.”
Paul wiped his hand across his forehead. “What if he gets into an accident?”
I cackled. “We’ll be all right. I’d have to write my own obituary first!”
Paul knew at that moment that he was doomed. He slid into the back seat and grunted, “Drive yourself.” He handed me the keys. “Don’t worry. This is a smart car; it’ll drive downtown and pull into C. K.’s slot. Perry’s waiting.”
Not very funny. My editor’s name is Terrie Black; he never liked Superman.
I slotted the key and the car took off impatiently for the excitement of downtown. In the rearview screen I watch Daisy mauling Paul.
Twenty minutes later the Mercedes pulls around a corner and there, with a big globe on top, is the paper’s building – really brick, I was only reaching for a joke that wasn’t there, it’s made of brick, with the big globe on top. We park in C. K.’s slot with Terrie’s to the right.
There’s a gofer waiting and I’m whisked into Terrie Black’s corner office.
She’s not wasting any time. Launches into me.
“You know I’ve a paper to run and papers need news to sell. You haven’t given diddly since they snuck in your Everest story. Now that was lame-brained. Remember what sells – lies, tragedies, death, and pestilence…and more lies. And I’m not going to let you off easy just because you’re some white male. That’s not going to happen. Never mind C. K. – you got three days!”
Two of her goons come up to me and march me off to the press room. It’s uncannily quiet, a whole block of silent presses. I can see down into the reel room – nada in the best of my Spanish. I turn when I hear the door behind me click. A brief smile from one of the goons and then the other tapes a sheet of paper across the glass: W R I T E! The dot for the bang – that’s what printers call the exclamation point – is a smiley face.
Write? What am I supposed to write locked in here? I spent the next hour prowling the floor, and there were a lot of floors, hoping to find a PC or better yet, a way out. Nada, I used that word before – nothing.
In the office, I rummage through the desk. Maybe this is supposed to be like Alice in Wonderland, Terrie’s perverted sense of humor. Find the White Out to get out! Sounds like I’d have grounds for a discrimination suit if that were the case.
I’m getting tired. Remember, Daisy dumped me out of bed early and now she’s jumping all over Paul. I’m cold. I make my way over to the ink tanks. These I know they got to keep at a certain temperature, keep things flowing. I squeeze into a corner and close my eyes, drift off to sleep and have the most wonderful dreams in technicolor. I pull a Rip van Winkle.
I don’t know how long I slept. I’m hurting but I dress and head back to the office. The key to the bathroom’s tied to a chopstick stuck in the bucket of pens and pencils on Terrie’s desk.
Feeling relieved, but only in that primitive sense, I decided I’d search the press room once again, but more carefully.
Must have taken me a day. I don’t give a rat’s ass about Paul anymore – he can figure out for himself – she loves me, she loves me not – that’s Daisy. I’m going to pedal softly on that one, it’s going to take more than the luck of the Irish to get me out of here.
Been to the water fountain often enough; I’m no dummy – I keep hydrated. Slap my pockets to find the key to the can. This time standing there I look up above the WC and there’s a vent window with a latch. Light bulb goes on, goes off, goes on again. I close the seat and climb up. I carefully measure. If I can knock it out, I may be able to squeeze through but not fully clothed. Looks like the window opens onto the bottom level of the parking lot. The wheels are turning. I may have a car key!
Well, enough’s enough. It’s June, not terribly cold even in the subbasement. I strip down to my briefs and wriggle through the window, clenching the key with my teeth.
I found the gestapo car where I left it. The top’s down and I’m exhausted. I climb over and drop onto the leather backseat, fall asleep and dream of WWII. When I wake up my nose’s in a bullet hole. I’m thinking this is some diabolical plot just to get me, meant for me to dream about the war and rewrite the ending. I ain’t saying, but I start to sweat and my undies have found themselves in places where they ain’t supposed to go.
Meanwhile in the corner office, Terrie Black has been informed of the great escape. She paces from the windows to her desk, back and forth. Plants both hands on the back of her chair and yells at goon #1. “Well, he has no right to do that to me! It’s not as if I treat him as if he’s just another dumb white man!”
She goes back to the window and returns once again to her desk. This time addresses goon #2. “Well, what have you got?”
“Hand-delivered just before you called us in.” He hands her a plain envelope with her name written in a large flowery script. She recognizes the handwriting. It’s her city reporter’s, the one they now tell her is missing.
She skims it twice and then goes back to the beginning, muttering, “It’s an obit written by our star reporter four days ago. Looks like he wrote it before I sent the limo; he must have smuggled it in. Damned if it doesn’t sound like he lifted it from Kafka’s “Country Doctor.” Maybe he’s planning to get us sued for plagiarism. I’ll read it to you.”
The City Reporter was found in the back seat of an
old Mercedes at first purported to have been used by
Goering but now known to have been used by Hitler.
He has been taken to the hospital since there were
no signs of violence and it is not clear if he is dead.
A clever medic shined a black light on the back of the
front seat and was able to read: Paul’s the victim.
There’s snow everywhere. Betrayed! Betrayed! My clothes
are behind the WC. I hear the press bells. Daisy, I miss Daisy.
When Terrie is finished, she snarls. “My driver is named Herman!” She snatches the obit from her desk, crunches it into a ball, and throws it out the window.