MacArthur Polk has been ailing since 1983, which is one reason I haven't bothered doing a canned obit. The old bastard isn't really dying; he just enjoys the fuss made over him at hospitals. For about the eleventh time he has been admitted to the ICU at Charity, so Emma is jumpy. Although Polk no longer owns the Union-Register,he is a community icon and, more significantly, a major shareholder of Maggad-Feist. When his obituary finally appears, it will be read intently by persons high up the management ladder, persons who might hold sway over Emma's future. Consequently, she feels she has a stake in the old man's send-off. She wants it to be sparkling and moving and unforgettable. She wants a masterpiece, and she wants me to write it.
So I've deliberately shown no interest whatsoever. My own stake in MacArthur Polk's death is nada.I could sit down with a stack of clippings and in an hour knock off an obit that was humorous, colorful, poignanta gem in every way. And it would be filed in the computer until the day the old man finally croaked, when it would be electronically shipped to another reporter for freshening. The story would appear under his or her byline on the front page. At the very end, in parenthesized italics, I might or might not be given credit for "contributing" to the research.
That's how it goes around here. The moment Page One becomes a possibility, it's not my story anymore. Nonetheless, I always make sure to type out my byline in boldface letters:
By Jack Tagger Staff Writer
To delete my name from the top of the story, Emma must first highlight it with the Define key. I like to think it's a chore that afflicts her with a twinge of guilt, but who knows. She has her orders. She's heard about me and Race Maggad III; everyone in the building has.
The fact that I haven't resigned must chafe Emma, except on those rare days when she needs a first-rate obituary writer, as she does for MacArthur Polk. One measly fact error, one misspelling, one careless turn of a phrase could jeopardize Emma's career, or so she believes. Old Man Polk is like a god, she once said to me. He wasthis newspaper.
Which he greedily sold to Wall Street heathens, I pointed out, causing Emma to cringe and put a finger to her lips.
Every morning she asks how the old man's obit is coming along, and every morning I tell her I haven't started writing it yet, which drives her batty. Today I'm still in bed when the phone rings.
"Jack, it's Emma."
"Morning, sunshine."
"Mr. Polk took a turn for the worse," she says.
"Me, too. What a coincidence."
"I'm not kidding."
"Neither am I. Some sorta stomach virus," I say. "I won't be coming in today."
Long pauseEmma, grappling with mixed feelings. As much as she would revel in a peaceful Jack-free morning, she needs me there. "Did you call a doctor?" she inquires.
"Soon as I get my head out of the commode. I promise."
The unsavory image provokes another pause at Emma's end.
"Talk to you later," I say.
"Jack, wait."
Here I moan like a terminal dysentery victim.
"They put Old Man Polk on a machine over at Charity," says Emma. "They say his heart and lungs are failing."
"What kind of machine?"
"I don't know. For heaven's sakes."
"Emma, how old is he now? Ninety-five, ninety-six?" I picture her seething because she thinks I don't even know the old geezer's age.
Tersely she says: "Eighty-eight."
The same as Orville Redenbacher when he died!
"And how old is the new Mrs. Polk?" I ask. "Thirty-six, if I recall."
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying the old man isn't going to die at Charity with a tube up his cock. He's gonna die at home in the sack, with a grin on his face and a jellybean jar full of Viagras on the nightstand. Trust me."
Emma's tone turns cold. "You don't sound very sick to me, Jack."
"Oh, it's quite a nasty bug. I'll spare you the grisly details."
"You'll be back in the office tomorrow?"
"Don't count on it," I say. "Gotta run!"
St. Stephen's is the trendiest church on the beach. I arrive early and sit in a pew near the door. In the front row I spy a snow-white noggin that belongs to either Cleo Rio or Johnny Winter in drag. Propped on a velvet-cloaked table in the center of the stage are a red Stratocaster and a small brass urn.
I count five TV crews, including one from VH1, hanging around near the confessionals. It's an eclectic, funky flow of mournerssunburned dock rats and dive captains; pallid, body-pierced clubbers too young to be Slut Puppies fans; chunky, gray-streaked rockers from primeval bands like Styx and Supertramp; anonymous, half-stoned studio musicians with bad tattoo jobs and black jeans; and a sprinkling of pretty, unattached women in dark glasses, who I assume to be admirers and ex-lovers of the late Jimmy Stoma. One person I don't see is Janet Thrushmaybe Cleo told her not to come, or maybe Janet felt she'd be uncomfortable. Another person not in attendance is the tall, shimmery-haired guy from the elevator at Cleo and Jimmy's condo. It makes me curious; if he were a family friend, wouldn't he attend the funeral?
The church is nearly full when the notables begin arrivingthe Van Halen brothers, the wild percussionist Ray Cooper, Joan Jett, Courtney Love, Teena Marie, Ziggy Marley, Michael Penn and an auburn-haired beauty who was either a Bangle or a Go-Go, I'm not sure which. It's a colorful group and the TV guys are hopping around like meth-crazed marmosets.
The last to enter St. Stephen's are the surviving ex-Slut Puppies: bass players Danny Gitt and Tito Negraponte, followed by Jimmy's keyboardist and diving buddy Jay Burns, who in midlife has come to project an unsettling resemblance to Newt Gingrich with a ponytail. Missing from the gathering is the band's notoriously moody lead guitarist, Peter P. Proust, who three years ago was fatally stabbed in a bizarre confrontation with a sidewalk Santa Claus on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. As for a drummer, the Slut Puppies went through a dozen and, according to the trades, not one departed on amiable terms.
Jay Burns and the two bass players walk stiffly up the aisle and file into the pew where Cleo Rio waits. Scanning the crowd, it occurs to me that this doesn't look or smell like the funeral of a man who turned his back on the record business. The church is packed with musicians and ripe with reefer.
As the priest instructs us to rise, two more women slip in the back door. They sit near meone is black and one is Latin, both in their early twenties. Pals of Cleo, I'm guessing. The black woman notices the notebook in my hand and reacts with a shaded smile. "I'm with the newspaper," I whisper. She nods, and passes the information to her friend, who is mouthing along to the Lord's Prayer. Afterwards, the priest, an earnest Father Riordan, begins reflecting upon the short but full life of James Bradley Stomarti. It is painfully obvious to the whole assembly that Father Riordan never met the deceased, but he's giving it the old college try.
I lean over to the two women and ask, not too smoothly, "Were you friends, or just fans?"
"Both," the Latin girl says, flaring an eyebrow.
"Can I get your names?"
Maria Bonilla and Ajax, no last name.
"We're singers," Ajax says.
"Backup singers," Maria adds. "We worked with Jimmy."
I'm skeptical, since neither one could have been older than fourteen when his last CD came out.
"No kidding? On which album?"
The women glance glumly at each other, Ajax saying: "The one nobody's ever gonna hear."
At the podium, a former A&R man from MCA is telling a humorous anecdote about Jimmy blasting a mixing board with an Uzi during the recording of A Painful Burning Sensation.Normally I'd be taking down every word, but today the notebook is a prop.