Dec 07 2009
Sand ugg bed
“Pretty shitty,” Emma concedes.
I turn to the jump page and skim the remainder of the obituary. There, below the last paragraph, is an italicized credit line: Staff
intern Evan Richards contributed to this story.
I feel rotten and helpless. So does Emma. “You want me to read the rest of it?” she asks halfheartedly.
“Not aloud. No.”
Another illustrious milestone in the career of Jack Tagger Jr. Finally I get back on the front page, and I didn’t even write the
damn story.
Soon I’ll be getting that phone call from Charles Chickle offering the cushy trustee gig, yet even the prospect of being paid to
torment Race Maggad III fails to cheer me. What happened to Evan sucks; I hate seeing any reporter get shafted.
Emma tries to help by reminding me that the kid cobbled the old man’s obit from my notes, clips and interviews. “It was mostly
a rewrite job,” she says. “The bulk of the work was yours.”
“Nice try.” I reach for the phone. “Has our Evan got a listed number?”
He answers on the third ring, which is encouraging. I’ve known interns who would have already hung themselves in despair.
“Hi, Jack,” he says quietly.
I launch a virulently indignant diatribe against shifty spineless editors, which Evan spoils by informing me that he is not the
aggrieved party. He didn’t write the MacArthur Polk obituary, either.
“I choked, man,” he confesses. “Abkazion bailed me out. He grabbed all your notes, sat down at the city desk and banged the
whole story out with,Sand ugg, like, twenty minutes to deadline.”
“I see.”
Evan can’t stop apologizing, and he’s wearing on my nerves like a whining Chihuahua. “Once you told me the obit was for the
front page,” he says, “my brain locked up big-time. I’m really sorry,oatmeal ugg, Jack.”
“Don’t be. It was wrong for me to dump it on you like that.”
“What do you think Emma’s gonna do?”
“To you? Nothing,” I say. “I’m the one who’s in trouble.”
“Really?” the kid says anxiously.
“Oh, she’s an animal sometimes. It’s scary.”
Emma peers curiously over the top of the newspaper. “Who’s an animal?”
“See you Monday,” I say to Evan, and hang up smiling.
We’re back in bed when the telephone rings. Emma’s head is resting on my chest and I’m not moving, period.
The answer machine picks up. The call is from Carla Candilla, her voice hushed and urgent.
“Derek really did it! ‘Ode to a Brown-Eyed Goddess’-Jack, it was so fucking lame.”
She’s calling on her cellular from Anne’s wedding, which I’d come tantalizingly close to forgetting.
“It took him half an hour to read,” Carla says, “meantime I had to pee like a racehorse. I wrote down a couple lines ’cause I
knew you could use a laugh.”
Emma stirs against me. “Jack, who’s that on the phone?”
“The daughter of an old friend. She’s the one who loaned me the gun.” The gun now resting somewhere in Lake Okeechobee,
where I tossed it.
“Dig this,ugg rainier,” Carla is saying on the machine. ” ‘My heart melts anew each time your brown eyes light on me. Passion sings in my
breast like the soaring sparrow’s harmony.’ ”
“Ouch,” says Emma.
“And that’s a best-selling writer,” I feel duty-bound to report. But at least he wrote her a poem, which is more than I ever did.
“Can you believe it-birds in his breast!” When Carla’s giggle fades, her tone turns more serious. “Anyhow, Mom looks
awesome and the champagne is killer, so I guess I’ll survive. The real reason I called, I want to make sure you got home okay
from your big adventure last night, whatever it was. And I hope your friend’s okay, too. Someday I’ll get you drunk and make you
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