"One of those 'boy bands.' I don't remember which." I roll the cool sweaty bottle across my forehead.
Juan looks a little uptight.
"You're how old now—thirty-four?" I ask.
"Not tonight, Jack."
"You should be on top of the world, man. You've already hung in there longer than Keith Moon or John Belushi." I can't help myself.
Juan says, "Why do you do this?"
I put a Stones record on the stereo because you can't go wrong with the Stones. Juan knows most of the songs, even the early stuff—he has fully acculturated himself since arriving in the 1981 exodus from the port of Mariel, Cuba. He was sixteen at the time, four years older than the sister who accompanied him on an old Key West lobster boat. They were with a group of thirty-seven refugees, among whom were a handful of vicious criminals that Castro yanked out of prison and shipped to Miami as a practical joke. Everyone at the paper knows Juan came over on the boatlift. What they don't know is what happened forty miles at sea in the black of night—Juan told me the story after too many martinis. One of the convicts decided to have some fun with Juan's sister and one of the others offered to stand watch, and neither of them paid enough attention to the girl's skinny brother, who somehow got his hands on a five-inch screwdriver. Many hours later, when the lobster boat docked at Key West, the immigration officer counted only thirty-five passengers, including Juan and his sister in a ripped dress. The others said nothing about what had taken place on the voyage.
Juan takes a slug of beer and says to me: "Good piece today."
"Come on, man."
"What?"
"It's a goddamn obit."
"Hey, it was interesting. I remember hearing the Slut Puppies on the radio," he says. " 'Trouser Troll' was kinda catchy."
"I thought so, too." I'm eager to tell Juan about the Jimmy Stoma mystery, but I'm wondering if he already knows. If he does, it means he and Emma are tighter than I thought.
"Did she tell you?" I ask.
"Who? Oh—Emma?"
"No, Madeleine fucking Albright." I set my empty bottle on the floor. "Look, I hope I didn't interrupt anything this afternoon. Normally, I'd never—"
"You didn't." Juan grins. "I was helping with her computer. She got a new browser."
"I'll bet she did."
"Honest. That's all."
"Then why didn't you pop out and say hi?"
Juan says, "She asked me not to."
That's just like Emma, worrying that Juan's presence as my friend and her potential sex partner would somehow undermine her primacy in the editor-reporter relationship.
"Hell," I say, "I thought she had you lashed to the bed."
"I wish." Juan, smiling again. Sometimes he's too charming for his own good.
"Did she tell you or not?"
"Why you stopped by? Sure, she told me."
"And did she tell you what she said?"
Juan nods sympathetically. "It really blows."
"That's why I'm drinking."
"Three beers is not drinking, Jack." He has counted the bottles on the floor. "Three beers is sulking."
"What should I do about Emma?" I rise out of a slouch. "Wait—why the hell'm I asking you?"
"Because I'm wise beyond my years?"
"Do me a favor," I say. "If you're screwing her, please don't tell me. Just change the subject and I'll get the message."
"Deal," says Juan with a decisive nod. "Hey, there's a rumor Marino's coming out of retirement!"
"Very smooth, asshole."
"Jack, I'm not sleeping with Emma."
"Excellent," I say, "then you're free to advise me. This woman intends to dump Jimmy Stoma on the Metro desk. Mystory, Juan, and this cold-blooded wench wants to give it away!"
"And I thought the Sports desk was a pit."
I hear myself asking, "What can you possibly see in her?"
Juan hesitates. I know he's at no loss for words because he is a fine writer, much better than I am, even in his second language.
"Emma's different than the others, Jack."
"So is a two-headed scorpion."
"You want, I'll talk to her."
"No!"
"Just trying to help."
"You don't understand," I say. "There's a complicated dynamic between Emma and me."
Juan's right foot is tapping to the music; Jagger, singing of street-fighting men.
"It's my story," I grumble, "and she won't let me do it."
"I'm sorry, man." Juan knows what happened to me, the whole odious business. He knows where I stand at the newspaper. He calls me "Obituary Boy" to keep things light, but he truly feels lousy about the situation. It can't be helped. He's a star and I'm a lump of jackal shit.
"Quit," he says earnestly.
"That's the best you can do?"
Juan has been advising me to resign ever since my demotion to the Death page. "That's exactly what Emma wants—didn't she tell you? It's what they allwant. So I'm not quitting, Juan, until the day they beg me to stay."
He's not up for one of my legendary rants. I can't imagine why. "Tell me about Jimmy Stoma," he says.
So I tell him everything I know.
"Okay," he says after a moment's thought, "let's say there was no autopsy. What does that really prove? It's the Bahamas, Jack. I'm guessing they know a drowned scuba diver when they see one."
"But what if—"
"Anyway, who'd want to kill a has-been rock star?" Juan asks, not cruelly.
"Maybe nobody," I admit, "but I won't know for sure unless Emma cuts me free for a few days."
Juan sits forward and rubs his chin. I trust his judgment. He would have made a terrific news reporter if he didn't love baseball so much.
"I've got something to show you," he says, bouncing to his feet, "but I left it in the car."
He's out the door and back in two minutes. He hands me a printout of the Jimmy Stoma obituary that will run in tomorrow's New York Times.The header says: James Stomarti, 39, Rambunctious Rock Performer.
Although the story isn't half as long as mine, I refuse to read it. The Timeshas the most elegant obituary writing in the world, and I'm in no mood to be humbled.
"Look at the damn story," Juan insists.
"Later."
"Yours was better."
"Yeah, right."
"Pitiful," Juan says. "You're a child."
I peek at the first paragraph:
James Bradley Stomarti, once the hell-raising front man for the 1980s rock group Jimmy and the Slut Puppies, died last week on a laid-back boating excursion in the Bahamas.
I mutter to Juan, "The lead's not bad."
"Check out what Pop-Singer Wifey has to say. Check out the premonition," he says, pointing.
"What premonition?"
Six paragraphs into the obit, there it is:
Mr. Stomarti's wife, the singer Cleo Rio, said she had been apprehensive about her husband's plan to explore the sunken plane wreck, even though he was an experienced diver.
"I had a wicked bad vibe about that dive," Ms. Rio said. "I begged Jimmy not to go. He'd been down sick with food poisoning from some bad fish chowder. He was in so much pain he could hardly put his tank on. God, I wish I could've stopped him."
I can't believe what I'm reading.
Juan says, "I'm guessing the lovely Ms. Rio didn't tell you the same story. You wouldn't have passed up a chance to work the phrase 'bad fish chowder' into an obituary."
"Or even 'wicked bad vibe,'" I say, indignantly waving the pages. "The girl never said anything about this. She said she was lounging around the boat, reading a magazine and working on her tan. Didn't sound the least bit worried about her old man diving a plane wreck."