The Imperfectionists (18 page)

"Actually, I can't expense anything. I don't have a job."

"Ohmigod, then that is even more cool of you to pay."

Snyder leads the way back to Winston's apartment, unlocks the door, and belly-flops onto the bed.

"Snyder?"

"Yeah?"

"What happened to my laptop?"

"What

laptop?"

"The one you took."

"Where'd you have it last?"

"
You
had it last."

"Don't think so, dude."

Winston sits up most of the night, conspiring to murder this usurping baboon. But the risk of jail time in Cairo is a powerful disincentive, so he shifts to planning all the cutting remarks he'll make the next morning.

Yet at dawn, when Snyder is up and leaping about, Winston only watches, half-asleep, silently loathing. Snyder says an aid groupie is getting him on a restricted flight to Darfur. "I'm in a failed-state of mind," he declares. He gathers his belongings and leaves without even offering thanks.

Winston stretches out on the still warm bed and shuts his eyes. He runs over his interactions with Snyder, condemning himself for cowardice. He flips about for a fitful hour, then rises, determined to leave this city.

The decision is deflating, then heartening--he has longed to escape Cairo ever since he arrived. Should he inform the paper of his departure? Do they even know he's here? He hasn't heard a peep from Menzies or Kathleen or anyone else since he arrived.

All that remains is to change his return ticket, pack, and get the keys to Zeina. He invites her for his last dinner as thanks, pledging to himself not to mention Snyder.

Nonetheless, the baboon keeps popping into their conversation.

"One thing I have to say about him," Winston comments, "is that he does get amazing quotes. In my minuscule experience at it, nobody said anything particularly interesting."

"Snyder's quotes? Some people claim they are, on occasion, approximate."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, do Taliban fighters really say things like 'That bombing was sweet, now let's kick ass on the Northern Alliance'?"

"I'm not sure. I've never met the Taliban."

"To be fair, he reports the hell out of stories, goes to the front lines--he is fearless in his own weird way."

"I know. I saw him talking to an interior ministry guy once at Khan el-Khalili.

Snyder just kept badgering the guy--pretty rudely, I thought. But he ended up getting a story out of it."

"Good reporting and good behavior are mutually exclusive," she explains. "I'm exaggerating, slightly."

She is a decade older than Winston, and he admires her--she's so collected and competent. He wonders if, after dinner, there might be an opportunity to kiss her. He has not seen couples kissing on the street in Cairo. Where would he make his approach?

Then again, if he were to launch himself at Zeina, what next? Already, with her clothes on, she scares him. Whatever narrow hope he has nurtured evaporates when she says, "You know that me and Snyder had a thing, right?"

"Really?" Winston responds nonchalantly. "What kind of thing?"

"A fling thing. Whatever."

That's a Snyder line, Winston realizes with a chill. "I wondered how you knew so much about him."

"Majorly bad move. But he's tempting."

"Snyder

is

tempting?"

"I told you," she says, "the man is sexy. But now tell me, young Mr. Cheung, looking back, has this journalism experience been a nightmare for you?"

"Not

entirely."

"Did you enjoy any of it?"

"I liked going to the library," he says. "I think I prefer books to people--primary sources scare me."

"Unless they're simian."

"Even then," he says. "Like one time, my thesis adviser was giving a tour of our lab to a bunch of undergrads. He was trying to demonstrate hierarchical dominance among macaques. On his cue, this male called Bingo started chewing on my thigh and corralled me into the corner of the enclosure. Before the entire class, Bingo showed that he, an unremarkable adolescent monkey, significantly outranked me."

She smiles. "Is that why you quit grad school?"

"The matters are not unrelated. The downside of studying primates, I realized, is that you grow overly conscious of rank, submissive behavior, alliance-forming. In academia, I was always going to be a low-status primate. But journalism seemed like an alpha-male profession."

"Journalism is a bunch of dorks pretending to be alpha males," she says.

"Speaking of which, did I mention that Snyder called me from Dar-fur?"

"What

for?"

"He wanted me to interpret something from Arabic. Had some pretty interesting material, too."

"Did you help him?"

"Why would I? Actually, I've been in touch with Kathleen at the paper."

For a chilling moment, he thinks Zeina has interceded to get him the stringer position after all, and that he might be compelled to stay.

This isn't what she meant. "I'm tired of wire-service hackery," she explains. "It'd be nice to actually detach my ear from the telephone and go out and report once in a while. Even if it's just as a stringer for the paper."

"I didn't know you wanted this job."

"Well, I did."

"I guess it was even more generous of you to have helped me, then," he says, wondering suddenly how much she really had helped. "Why didn't you mention this before?"

"We

were

opponents."

"I didn't realize."

"So you're going back to your studies in Minnesota, then?"

"I have a plan," he responds archly, but goes no further. He isn't going to reveal himself to her. And, anyway, he doesn't have a plan. "You know," he remarks, "it occurs to me that I've been wrong about something: I always assumed that age and experience weather you, make you more resilient. But that's not true. It's the opposite." He turns to her. "Don't you think?"

But she's checking her cellphone for missed calls from Snyder and doesn't respond.

1963. CORSO VITTORIO, ROME

With Betty out of the picture, Leo assumed full control of the paper and declared
that his first goal was to raise status. Whether he meant the paper's status or his own was
a matter of debate
.

His obsession was "marquee pieces," which he defined as articles to make you
fall over at the newsstand. However, he distrusted his own staff to produce anything that
good, so he purchased the stories from outside writers, which endeared him to no one at
the office. The atmosphere grew increasingly toxic; the old collegial days were over
.

Circulation declined marginally, but Leo claimed that the readership had merely
grown more refined. When corresponding with the board in Atlanta, he pledged to cut
costs, but privately he was cocky. After all, Charles had tipped his hand: he'd said the
paper was untouchable
.

In 1969, Charles stepped down as chairman of the board and Ott's son, Boyd, age
twenty-seven, took over. Leo sent Boyd a letter of congratulations, with a hint that more
cash would be timely--the paper could do with a few new hands. Instead, Boyd got rid of
an old one: Leo himself
.

The justification was that Leo had betrayed the paper and its late founder. Ott
had left his family, had toiled day and night, to build a publication that served the world,
Boyd said. But Leo had turned the paper into little more than a personal fiefdom. Boyd
even alleged that Leo had altered the masthead to shrink "Founded by Cyrus Ott (1899-

1960)" and enlarge "Editor-in-Chief: Leopold T. Marsh." A measuring stick seemed to
prove the point
.

Leo lingered around the capitals of Europe for a while, nosing about for a route
back into the international press. In the end, he returned to the United States, taking
home a before-breakfast Cognac habit and scant cash. He accepted a job in Pittsburgh
running a trade publication on the coal industry and was lucky to get it
.

Boyd pledged to lead the search for a replacement editor-in-chief but proved too
absorbed by the rest of the Ott empire. He had grand ambitions and began by selling off
many long-standing holdings, even the sugar refinerythat had started it all, in favor of
speculative investments overseas. It was audacious--just the sort of thing his father would
have done
.

Or so Boyd believed
.

For he had barely known Ott, who left for Europe when Boyd was eleven. He had
not even been born during his father's fabled early days, when Ott had built an empire
from nothing. Most of what Boyd knew about those times came from sundry courtiers
nibbling at the edges of the family fortune
.

Still, these myths spurred him on. He was bold because his father had been, and
proud because this, too, had been Ott's fashion. Yet Boyd's boldness lacked pleasure, and
his pride lacked dignity. He styled himself a man of the people, as his father had been.

But the people mistrusted Boyd, and he in turn despised them
.

"KOOKS WITH NUKES"

* * *

COPY EDITOR--RUBY ZAGA

THE JERKS TOOK HER CHAIR AGAIN, THE CHAIR SHE FOUGHT FOR

six months to get. It's amazing. Just amazing, these people. She hunts around the newsroom, curses bubbling inside her, bursting out now and then. "Pricks," she mutters.

She should just quit. Hand in her resignation. Never set foot in this place again. Leave these idiots in the dirt.

But wait, stop! Yes, there it is: the chair--over there, behind the watercooler. She hurries over and grabs it. "Get their own damn chair." She rolls it to its rightful place at the copydesk, unlocks her drawer, and lays out her tools: a cushion for her lower back, an ergonomic keyboard and mouse, RSI wrist braces, antibacterial wipes. She decontaminates the keyboard and the mouse. "Impossible to feel clean in this place."

She adjusts the height of her chair, pats the pillow into position, and sits.

"Disgusting." The seat is warm. Someone has been sitting in it. "Should just walk out."

Seriously. Wouldn't that be rich. Never have to see these losers again.

The paper is the only place Ruby Zaga has ever worked. She started here after quitting a doctorate in theology. She was twenty-seven at the time and self-conscious about taking an unpaid summer internship. At forty-six, she's still at the paper, working on the copydesk, her temper shorter and her body stouter, though she dresses just as she did on her arrival in 1987: bangles, silver hoop earrings, sweaterdress cinched with an oversize belt, black leggings, white Keds. It's not simply the same styles but the same items in many cases, dotted with fuzzballs, colors faded.

She always arrives early for her shift because the newsroom is empty then, except for Menzies, who seems never to leave. Regrettably, her colleagues on the copydesk eventually turn up. The first to do so today is the slot editor, Ed Rance, who barges out of the elevator, nose running, aerating a damp armpit with waves of his hand. He bicycles to work and sweats profusely, stains mottling his khakis. She won't allow him the chance to not say hello--she'll not say hello first. She rushes off to the toilets and hides in a stall, giving the finger to the door.

She returns, late for the start of her shift.

"Try to be here on time," Ed Rance says.

She slams her ass into the chair.

Ed Rance and the other copy editor on duty, Dave Belling, are proofreading the early edition. Ed Rance hands Ruby the last few pages--the dullest--to check over, then whispers something to Dave Belling. They laugh.

"What?" she asks.

"Not talking about you, Rube. World doesn't revolve around you, Rube."

"Yeah, well. I seriously don't need this."

In fact, they aren't talking about her but about Saddam Hussein. It's December 30, 2006, and Saddam was hanged at dawn. For amusement, they're hunting for footage of the execution on the Internet.

Meantime, all the senior editors cluster around the layout desk to discuss page one. "We got art?"

"Of what? Dictator on a rope?"

"What are the wires offering?"

"Him on the slab. His head is, like, all at an angle. Like, all twisted around to the side."

"That's gotta hurt."

"Can we do a frame grab off Al Jazeera?"

Someone jokes: "Why don't we do a frame grab of the whole
New York Times
front page and just publish that? Then we can go home right now."

This wins a ringing endorsement and a fast-dying chuckle--they don't like to laugh at each other's jokes.

Dave Belling finds footage of the hanging online and calls over his friends, Ed Rance and Clint Oakley. The three men watch as Saddam refuses the hood. Executioners place the noose around his neck. They tighten the knot. The video stops.

"That's it? No drop?"

"Poor

sweet

Saddam."

"Poor adorable Saddam."

"Somewhere an angel just got his wings."

"Somewhere an angel is shooting a rifle in heaven."

Ruby wasn't invited to watch. "Jerks."

They pretend not to hear her and hunt for fresh video, something smutty this time.

She happens to like their infantile humor--it's her taste, too. But they never include her. And when
she
tells a joke they're repulsed. Why do they treat her like a freak? "Like I'm malignant."

This coven of losers, ogling babes on YouTube--and they consider
her
a menopausal troll. But she's the same as them: middle-aged, pervy, bored. Why do they have to make her feel like some piece of crap. "They're infants is why."

Copy for the late edition drizzles in. The room grows quieter. One can tell time by the noise level. Early, the newsroom is abuzz with humorless jokes. Later, now, a hush settles but for tapping keyboards and nervous coughs. At deadline, the outbursts come.