Obituary Writer (9780547691732) (23 page)

Thea had been quiet the whole time, leaning against a wall.

"You can stay with me, Lorraine," she said softly. I could tell that Thea wasn't happy, that she was having trouble buying my explanation. "It looks like our timing was bad."

It was ten-fifty. I had to get them out of here.

"No, no," I said. "I'm extremely flattered ... just surprised. I'm so happy you guys came early. It's just that my apartment's such a disaster."

"Well, it's a nice offer, Thea." My mother sat on the couch. "I don't see as I have much choice."

I was about to suggest that we all go out for a drink, that we figure out what to do next in a less cluttered setting, when Alicia burst through the door.

"You're back! What a night!"

She brushed past Thea into the living room and turned on the television, flipping to Channel 7, where a retired quarterback was pitching hassle-free loans.

"I'm on the news. And this time I got interviewed."

Alicia was flushed with excitement. She was wearing her khakis and white shirt and my baseball cap, with a gold
M
for the University of Missouri, turned backward.

My mother stood up from the couch, alarmed.

"Alicia!" I said, speaking loudly enough that I wouldn't be interrupted. "What a surprise to see you here! I didn't think you'd be back until
tomorrow.
You must have forgotten something."

She turned down the volume on the television.

"I was just telling my mother and my friend Thea that you're a new reporter with the
Independent
and you're working on a very important story."

Alicia turned around, noticing my mother and Thea for the first time, making no effort to acknowledge them.

"I said you've moved here from Texas and you're looking for an apartment in the city. It was the least I could do to provide storage for a few days while you found a suitable place to live."

Alicia brightened, seeming to recognize that she was in on a game.

"How's the Adams Mark?" I asked. "The hotel?"

"Oh, it's lovely," she said, not missing a beat. "I have quite a view."

She went into the specifics of her residence at the Adams Mark—decor, quality of service, convenience to downtown—showing remarkable skill at improvisation.

I introduced her as Alicia Whiting. Thea looked away.

"I prefer to be called A. A.," Alicia corrected me. "It's going to be my byline."

I was trying to figure how to get her out of the apartment and my mother and Thea to Thea's place without further trouble, but then the late news came on. The crime scene Alicia had come from was the lead story on the news, and she promptly forgot the game we were playing when the Channel 7 anchor cut to a multiple homicide.

"There I am!" She pointed at the television, giddy with excitement. "Look at me!" She was next to the screen, following her image as the camera panned around.

I tried to distract my mother and Thea with small talk, but they were watching Alicia.

"Listen!" She turned up the volume.

A reporter was questioning her at the scene.

"No, I didn't see it," she was saying, "but I was the first one here. These two were shot in the head. It was incredible. The backs of their heads were blown straight off."

My mother and Thea looked on in disbelief.

When Channel 7 moved to the next story, Alicia brought out some pictures.

"Lucas gave me these," she said. "It's that boy we saw the other day, the one with the hole in his chest."

She spread them out on the living room table.

"This one was done with a .38 Magnum. Look at that wound!"

She said she'd learned a lot about handguns in the past few days. She couldn't believe how fast and efficient, how powerful they were.

"My daddy kept guns. But I never knew what they could do."

"I don't like that woman," my mother said when I had finally managed to coax her and Thea out of the apartment and into the car. "Something's funny about her. I wouldn't trust her for a second. She's liable to keep explosives."

I was driving across town toward St. Louis University.

"She's a crime reporter," I tried to explain. "That's what they're like. They seem to enjoy it, but it's just a defense. It's the only way they can deal with the horrible things they see."

My mother was adamant. "I don't care what you say, Gordie. That woman's loopy. If I were you I'd have all the boxes removed and I'd sleep somewhere else. I can't believe you gave her a key."

I said it wasn't my idea. She got locked out while I was in Dallas and the building manager gave her an extra without my approval. "Dallas, by the way, was wonderful."

"We're not talking about Dallas!" My mother was leaning over my shoulder into the front seat. "We're talking about this crazy woman you just left alone in your apartment. Why didn't you kick her out when we left?"

I told my mother that I didn't need a lecture—I would have thought by now that she'd know enough about journalism to understand why Alicia was the way she was. Thea said nothing during the drive, and when I dropped them off, she wouldn't look at me.

"Happy birthday," my mother said quietly. It was a little after midnight. I had been born just before midnight of this day, twenty-three hours and some minutes from now, twenty-three years ago. I got out of the car and gave my mother a hug. Thea was already walking toward the building.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I'll see you tomorrow."

On the drive back to Soulard, dread set in. It dawned on me that my mother and Thea were good, that they had wanted to see me on my birthday, that this surprise they had planned was the most thoughtful and decent gesture. The closer I got to my apartment, the more alone I began to feel.

I took the elevator up to my apartment, and as the doors opened on the third floor, I watched myself appear, as I often did, in the full-length hallway mirror opposite the elevator doors—like an actor taking the stage.

Alicia was standing in the foyer of my apartment, a newspaper under her arm.

I braced myself.

"Happy birthday." She kissed me. "Did you look at the clock? It's after midnight."

I checked my watch, just for show. I was wondering what had gotten into her. Was this some kind of ploy?

"Did you think I'd forgotten?" She took both of my hands and held them out in front of her. "What's wrong? Are you mad at me?"

I let go and walked into the kitchen and began putting things away. "No, I'm not mad." I hesitated. "Everything's fine."

"You must be upset about something. You're not acting like yourself." Alicia put the newspaper down on the coffee table.

"I know why you're mad. I embarrassed you, didn't I? Your mother must think I'm a crazy person, bursting in here with all that talk of blood and gore. I guess I didn't make the best impression."

Before I had begun reading Alicia's journals, I'd often imagined how nice it would be to introduce her to my mother. I had even brought it up with her. But now this idea of making a good impression was ridiculous.

Alicia came over to me and rubbed my back. "You didn't tell me that your mother was coming."

"I didn't know she was coming." It was only partly true.

"Well, I hope you're not mad at me. I admit I've been distracted lately, running all around chasing down stories." She went into the bedroom and looked for her clothes that I had thrown in the closet.

I followed her, slid open the closet door.

"I'm not mad." I put a handful of her clothes in my chest of drawers. Alicia slipped on a pair of my comfortable pants.

"Tomorrow's going to be a busy day," she said. "I'm going to bed."

I turned out the light in the bedroom for her and finished cleaning up the kitchen and living room. Seeing her boxes scattered across the floor of my apartment, I imagined the new owners of the house on Dalecarlia Drive moving in their furniture. Alicia had not so much as mentioned the boxes.

After tossing and turning on the couch, I went back into the bedroom. Alicia was asleep. She rolled lazily away from me as I slipped under the covers. I tried closing my eyes, but my eyelids fluttered, letting in the moonlight.

For a while I followed the shadows of cars across the wall. I had work tomorrow. My job was on the line. I thought of Thea and the mistakes I had made. I would have given anything to tell her I was wrong.

WHILE ALICIA
was still in bed, I slipped out of the apartment the next morning, wearing the same clothes from the day before, and walked to work in the crisp fall air. It was my twenty-third birthday, and I had hardly slept.

The newsroom was empty. Jessie Tennant had signed off her computer. I looked over the faxes, glanced at the obituary page, then checked my mailbox.

Alicia had already called. "For Gordie Hatch, a.k.a. The Shadow," the switchboard operator had transcribed. "Imagine my surprise this morning to find that you had disappeared. How about calling me at the apartment and explaining yourself?"

A little later, Margaret called.

"That was quite a surprise," she said. "Why is Alicia answering your phone?"

I lowered my head into my hands.

"Remember how we talked about how she was ready to move? All those packed boxes?" I said. "Well those boxes have a new address. It's 2600 Missouri Avenue, Number 323 ... She moved into my apartment."

"She did, did she? I can't say
that
surprises me. In fact, it sounds familiar."

"Well, when I returned from Dallas last night, she had literally taken the place over."

"Do something for me, Gordon," Margaret said now. "Be careful."

Alicia wasn't home when I called back, or at least she wasn't answering my telephone. So I went about my daily chores. The two o'clock meeting was over and still I hadn't seen Ritger.

My mother called in the middle of deadline, saying she had picked a restaurant near me in Soulard for my birthday dinner. I suggested it might be better if we went somewhere closer to Thea's.

"Thea won't be joining us. She'll be with her father. He's had a setback."

I was pulling together an obituary and didn't have time to go into it. "I'm sorry to hear that. I'll call you when I'm finished with work."

When I had checked the page downstairs, I kicked back and watched the conference room. The door was wide open. The fan was taking a break. The newsroom had a post-deadline calm to it, so I could hear what was being said inside. A group of editors were talking about the paper's upcoming endorsement for a vacant school board chair. It wasn't so much what was being said as the clamor over the decision that got my attention. It seemed that no two editors could agree until finally St. John stood up and took charge, marching around the table, bullying his choice through.

I had noticed before that the most powerful editors were the ones who spoke the loudest: St. John had risen on the volume of his voice, just as Ritger had fallen, silenced by his jaw. The hierarchy of the newsroom, it seemed to me now, perhaps the hierarchy of anything, had all to do with how loud one could raise one's voice.

When the meeting was over, St. John headed straight for my desk. "Meet me in my office." He sounded ticked off.

Ritger was leaning against the floor-to-ceiling window that overlooked the city. For a brief moment, I imagined him crashing through it.

"Sit down, Hatch," St. John said. "I think you know why you're here." He closed the door, then sat down behind his massive desk.

He went over my offenses one by one: the hours I'd wasted doing advancer pieces "on the company clock," how I'd cut out of work early "too many times to mention," the correction they'd had to run the week before, the "general carelessness" with which I approached my job. He spoke of long-distance calls to "cities all over the country" and other calls that had nothing to do with obituaries. He told me I was insubordinate, that I didn't believe in paying my dues.

"After that business with Bette Davis, I put Dick on the watch," he said. "I don't know what scheme you've got going, but there's no place for it here.

"We know about your sick day," St. John continued. "I hear the weather is nice in Dallas."

I knew where this was heading, but just as I recognized that I was about to hit bottom, I believed, for the first time, that perhaps I had a story. By instinct or accident I had been following a story all along, and now the
Independent
seemed unimportant.

"You've had a number of warnings, but you've chosen to ignore them," St. John concluded. "By the end of the weekend, I need your desk cleared out and your ID card."

He handed me a termination letter.

When I left the building at a quarter past seven, Alicia was waiting at the curb in the Delta 88. I was delirious from the spin of events.

"It's you." I looked in the passenger window.

"I have a front-page story." She had a manic look in her eyes. "Notify everyone. We're going to the conference room."

She got out of the car.

"Wait a minute," I said. "This is a bad time." St. John was still liable to be there.

"I have my story. I've thought it all through."

"It's really not a good time." I was exasperated.

"But I want to do it now," Alicia insisted, the whine of a child in her voice. "I've already done all the other stuff. You and I are going to write this story, Gordie, and it's front-page news. I know what it takes to make big news, and now I've got it."

I was shaking my head, partly to say no, mostly in disbelief.

"This is the moment. This is it. We have to seize the moment," she said. "I promised you I was going to do a big story, didn't I?"

I told her that we just couldn't do it yet; I had some important business to take care of. "Why don't you go out and find another crime scene," I suggested in desperation.

She looked frustrated, angry. "I'm tired of the scanner. I've chased down too many of those kinds of stories. You might be happy on page seven, but I'm not." She began to make her way to the building.

"Wait. Stop." I grabbed her shoulder. "I'll meet you here at eleven o'clock tonight, okay? We can do the story then," I said. "I have dinner with the executive editor and can't miss it. I promise you we'll make the front page."