The Fixer: New Wave Newsroom (11 page)

“Are they still going to tear down the building?” Jenny called down.

Curry shrugged as he lit a cigarette. “One miracle at a time, Miss Fields.”

“Emmanuel Curry knows my name?” she whispered.

I laughed, and as she tried to pull away from me, I kept hold of her hand.

“What?” She pulled harder on her hand, but still I didn't surrender it. “I'm not going to just sit here and gaze at you adoringly while you paint. I have shit to do.”

“What shit?” I said, laughing as I raised her hand to my mouth and pressed an openmouthed kiss to it.

“Well, for one thing, I'm pretty sure I need to brush my hair.”

I just raised my eyebrows, because that
was
true.

“And I also need to go pay some attention to my poor, neglected newspaper. Make sure the editor in chief–elect has done a suitable job curating the editorial cartoons for the next edition.”

I started to try to say that she didn't have to run that cartoon on my account, but she kept talking over me.

“I also need to go get a new phone number.”

I winced. “I'm sorry.”

She shrugged. “Eight-six-seven-five-three-oh-nine was overrated.” Then she smiled a wicked little Cheshire cat smile. “But I might keep it long enough for you to call me and tell me when you're done here so we can meet up later.”

“I'll just come over.”

“No way.” She swatted my chest. “All those times I called you and left messages that you ignored. I want you to call me back!”

Instead of answering, I lowered my head and kissed her again. This time, no one was laughing. I was dead serious, nudging her lips open with my tongue, stroking her hard and deep. I wanted to mark her, to make her remember what was in store for her once I was done with this goddamned painting.

She sighed into my mouth and sagged against me, all soft curves and rainbows.

The thought came back. It had never left, really. But this time, I could think it without fear, confident that it was the simple, powerful truth that would change the rest of my life.

I was made to kiss Jenny Fields.

O
ne year later
.

When the pebbles hit the window, I knew I was in trouble. There had been no pebbles for a good three weeks now, so I thought I had made my point.

I heaved open the sticky, ancient window in our microscopic living room and leaned out.

“Hi!” Jenny called up. She was dressed in her pink hoodie and, standing next to the graffiti-covered (and not the good kind of graffiti—the “artist” clearly had very little respect for his medium) Laundromat at the foot of our Avenue A walk-up, she looked like a happy flamingo in a war zone. It had been a little over a year since we'd arrived in New York, and my breath still caught when I saw her like this, all vibrant in the face of the gritty, unforgiving city.

“Whatever that is, it's not coming up unless something else goes,” I said, even though I knew it was futile.

Jenny worked in the classified department at the
New York Daily News
. According to her, it was a shitty entry-level job, though the assignment desk had started letting her write the occasional low-level obituary and once, when there was no one else around, they'd sent her to cover the opening of a mall in Queens. The only perk of the classifieds gig, she said, was that hers was the first set of eyeballs on each ad, so she could cherry pick “the good stuff” for us—which was pretty much how we had furnished our tiny fifth-floor apartment.

And furnished it some more. And some more.

But three weeks ago, when a stack of Culture Club cassettes fell off an overpacked shelf and bonked me on the head, I proclaimed that there was no more room at the inn. We struck a deal, in fact. She would stop bringing classifieds stuff home, and I would stop insulting Culture Club.

But there she was, smiling at me from five stories down, and I knew that whatever that shelf-thing was, I would haul it upstairs for her and move shit around until she was happy.

And then I would show her today's mail, and she would be
really
happy.

So I just shook my head, shut the window, and hoofed it down four flights of stairs. When I emerged through the heavy metal door of the building, she was sitting on the aforementioned shelf thing talking to our neighbor: Alejandro Vega by day, “Hairy Debbie” by night in his drag persona. Alejandro and Jenny's shared love of Blondie had made them fast friends, and Jenny dutifully attended every one of Debbie's shows at Pyramid, dressed in her blue bubble dress, which, after years of being mothballed, was now seeing a lot of action. She was so consistently herself that once you spent any amount of time with her, you wanted more.

I still couldn't believe she'd chosen
me
.

“It's a flat file,” she said, springing off her temporary seat and holding her hands up as if to fend off criticism. “The seller was a map collector, but I thought you could use it to store finished paintings. You're always saying how you hate rolling them up. I was thinking that we could move the record player into the bed nook, or even get rid of it. Cassettes are taking over anyway, and—”

I cut her off with a kiss. Just walked right over there, Alejandro and substandard graffiti be damned.

A lump appeared from nowhere in my throat when we separated. I still wasn't accustomed to people caring about me enough to do thoughtful things for me out of the blue. “All right. Let's get this sucker upstairs.”

Alejandro helped us wrestle the bulky flat file upstairs, and after he had left, I popped a couple beers, flopped back on the ratty loveseat that was the sum total of our “living room” furniture, and patted the spot next to me.

She sat and took a long pull from the beer I handed her.

“I have something I think you're going to want to read,” I said, taking her beer from her and handing her one of the letters that had arrived today.

“Oh my God! It's finally here!

“It's not what you think.” She had been waiting on pins and needles for weeks from word from Columbia about whether she would be accepted to the graduate journalism program. “Go on,” I said, nodding at it. “I opened it because it was addressed to both of us.”

She pulled out the brightly colored flyer, looking at it with the same confusion I had when I'd first opened it. As understanding dawned, a smile blossomed.

“It's from Officer Artie!” she said, turning the paper to me so I could see the hand-drawn image of the Allenhurst College Art Building—the
newly renovated
Allenhurst College Art Building, to be more precise. Below the picture, it said, “Grand Re-Opening Reception” and gave some information about where and when. Artie had written a note in the margin.

“Eeeee!” she screamed. “I almost couldn't believe it when they said they were going to reno instead of demo.”

“Looks like it's a done deal,” I said, grinning because her enthusiasm was, as always, infectious.

“You did it!” she said.

“No,
you
did it,” I said.

“
We
did it.” She waved the flyer back and forth. “Anyway, can we go?”

“Of course. We just need to make sure it doesn't conflict with anything.”

“What could be more important? I'll take a vacation day, and they won't give you any trouble at the store, will they?” I shook my head. I was working at an art supply store, which, in addition to providing me with a discount on supplies, had helped me get in with a community of artists, including my boss, a cool woman who was great about accommodating her staff members' schedules.

“I mean, I guess if you sold a painting,” Jenny said, “and, like, the buyer had to see you on that day.” Curry had put me in touch with some gallery owners in the city, and a couple of them were showing some of my stuff. No sales yet, but I had faith that they would come. Well, Jenny had faith—enough for us both.

“Yeah,” she went on. “Selling a painting would be the only excuse I would accept. Otherwise, nothing is keeping us from this re-opening.”

“Well, nothing, except you'll want to make sure you don't have any conflicting commitments”—I produced the second letter I'd been hiding—“involving Columbia.”

“Oh my God, it
is
here!” She punched my shoulder before scrambling for the letter. My heart thudded as I watched her open it. I was almost certain she was going to get in, but I also knew she was going to be okay regardless of what that letter said. Jenny was going to be a journalist no matter what. Hell, she already was. I smiled to myself because in this case, the tables were turned.
I
had enough faith in that fact for both of us.

“Ahhh!” The Columbia shriek was louder than the Officer Artie shriek. But then she burst into tears. I was stunned. What the hell was wrong with Columbia?

But then, just was I was about to wrap my arms around her, she whispered, “I got in. And I got a scholarship.”

That was more like it. I was so proud of her, I wanted to bust.

She climbed onto my lap and threw her arms around me. I tried to shift her a little. She was basically straddling me, and my body was having its typical reaction to her proximity. I didn't want to mar her victory with a boner. It seemed wrong, somehow.

But she wiggled until she was back on top of my poor cock. “Let's celebrate.”

“What did you have in mind?” I said, getting a sense of what kind of party she was talking about.

“Hmmmm.” She performed an exaggerated shrug. “I don't know. Maybe we should go out and do some graffiti?”

“Nah.” I hadn't done a graffiti run since college. I was busy with work and painting. But also, I just didn't feel the need anymore. It was like Jenny and Curry had unlocked something inside me. I wasn't happy all the time—this wasn't a fairy tale, after all—but I was able to use my art to get the same sense of relief that graffiti used to give me.

It was my turn to tease her. “I bet you want to call your dad.” But as I said it, I ground myself against her, relishing the little whimper I got in return.

“I don't think so,” she said, nuzzling my neck. I was proud of the way she was handling her dad. It wasn't easy, but she'd reached out to a few of his neighbors and told them about the situation. They looked in on him from time to time, so the burden wasn't hers alone anymore.

I unzipped her hoodie and snaked my hands under the hem of the shirt she wore beneath it. “Well, crap, I'm out of ideas. I guess your triumph will just have to go uncelebrated.”

Laughing, she levered herself off me. Well, she tried to, but I held tight.

“Let me go!” The wriggling she did as she tried to escape my clutches pretty much ensured that I would not be obeying that particular directive.

But then she said the one thing guaranteed to get me to do her bidding. “I just need to run to the bathroom and grab my sponge.”

I threw my hands in the air like I was being robbed, and she laughed harder.

“Stay there,” she said, pointing at me and trying to look stern. “Don't go anywhere, okay?”

I grinned. “You got it, Rainbow Brite.”

A
super
-duper enormous shout out to my friend Audra North. Audra organized the anthology that this story first appeared in,
'80s Mix Tape: A Romance Rewind Anthology
. The New Wave Newsroom Series would not exist without her. What I thought was going to be a fun, nostalgic one-off ended up being book one in a new series, which I decided to make my first foray into independent publishing. Audra had invaluable feedback at every step in this process, starting way back when I was first imagining the characters and extending to explaining pretty much every aspect of indie publishing to me.

My agent, Courtney Miller-Callihan, provided great feedback on the first draft of this story, even though she wasn't going to get to sell it. If that isn't a full-service agent, I don't know what is.

Gwen Hayes, fellow daughter of the 1980s, improved this book immensely. Her comments helped shape this book, and reading her own totally tubular contribution to the original anthology really helped get me in the mind-set.

My oldest writing friends, Erika Olbricht and Sandra Owens, provided commentary on an early draft, and, as always, much-needed cheerleading.

Copy editor extraordinaire Polly Watson saved me from myself about a billion times.

Michele Harvey helped me figure out how common telephones would be in the dorm rooms of the era.

This was my maiden voyage into the uncharted seas of independent publishing, and boy, oh, boy was the learning curve steep! I benefitted immensely from advice from many writing friends, particularly Audra North, Sandra Owens, Zoe York, Deborah Cooke, and Melanie Card. Thank you for being so generous with your expertise.

Dani and Jasmyn at Barclay Publicity were an enormous help in helping me get this newbie indie effort off the ground.

Finally, I have to tip my hat to Tommy Tutone. All the books in the New Wave Newsroom series are inspired by a single song from the 1980s (not necessarily a New Wave song, if you're gonna get technical… But I'm not gonna get technical). This book's inspiration was, of course, “Jenny/867-5309.” (I wasn't actually naming the main character after myself, y'all.)