Whitney's voice was almost inaudible now. "I told him you were hard-up for cash and he should keep his distance from you, because you had denied knowing him to the bosses. I also told him you said you were keeping an open mind about who had done it, and you wouldn't cut him any slack if you thought he was the one. But he wasn't, so what was the big deal?" She finished off her Scotch. "I think my confession slate is clean now. Am I forgiven? Do you want to assign me some form of penance?"
Tess felt dizzy, the way a child feels after turning in endless circles, staring up at the sky. Bad enough to have been used and manipulated by Lionel. But Whitney had been his willing agent, playing friend against friend in order to get the Tokyo bureau. It was one thing to use the elevator technique, quite another to have taken everyone for a ride.
"Why did you call me tonight? You could have handled this alone."
"Maybe I figured it was my last window of opportunity between boyfriends. Or are you double-dipping now, keeping the little boy at home while you let Sterling take you out on the town?"
"You're jealous."
"Of Sterling? No, losing to him at squash was as far as I was willing to go to advance my career. Not that he ever asked. But don't worry, Tesser, I'm sure you'll have another date with him. You always have another date. Me, I have my job. If I'm lucky, I'm going to have a foreign assignment, then come back to an editing position. Very few women run newspapers. I plan to be one of them."
"Why? So you can end up like Colleen in there, passed out on your sofa on a Saturday night, in an empty apartment, with no friends, no family?"
"Colleen is sui generis. The other editors have families, lives, outside interests."
"The other editors are men. Look around you, Whitney. It's not just Colleen. It's you, it's Rosita. Work is all you have. Jesus, you're still living at your parents' place because you've never taken the time to find an apartment of your own. Most of your relationships last about two weeks, when the guy realizes Friday night is reserved for Washington Week in Review, while Sunday mornings belong to Meet the Press. What are you going to do if you want to have a baby-ask Tim Russert to be the sperm donor?"
Whitney stood up, dusting cookie crumbs from the lap of her tweed trousers. "Look, I have to go. Do you want a ride back to your place, or do you want to walk?"
"I'll walk."
"Any more flaws of mine you want to enumerate, failings you want to catalog? I said I was sorry."
"No, in fact that's the one thing you haven't said this evening."
"Well, I'm saying it now. I'm sorry. Isn't there something you'd like to say in return?"
"Yes, yes, there is." Tess fluttered her fingers. "Sayonara, Whitney."
Chapter 26
Tess ended up staying at Colleen Reganhart's until dawn broke. She had postponed leaving after Whitney's exit, stalling to make sure there would be no awkward encounters at the elevator, or on the street. Then, just when she thought it was safe to go, Colleen began retching. Her old college instincts kicked in; it was inhuman to leave someone alone in that condition. Fortunately, tending to Esskay had inured Tess to cleaning up after others. It was almost refreshing to deal with a mess that required nothing more than paper towels and some Lysol.
She sponged off the sofa and Colleen's face, then helped her upstairs, to a bedroom as barren as the rooms below-a bed, a nightstand, and several stacks of newspapers. At least the plain white sheets felt expensive, and the duvet was real goose down. She tucked Colleen in, positioning a plastic wastebasket next to the bed, then went downstairs and made a pot of coffee, resigned to a long night. Luckily, Old Mother Reganhart's cupboard was not quite bare-she had a pound of Jamaican Blue coffee and ten packs of Merits in the freezer, an almost empty carton of half-and-half in the refrigerator, and an economy-size box of microwave popcorn on the counter.
Tess passed on the popcorn, finishing off the Milanos while reading one of Colleen's books, a collection of Molly Ivins columns. The Blight had never run the tart Texan's work, their loss. "Too funny and too smart about politics," Whitney had explained. "Women pundits are supposed to be uterus-centric. Besides, the problem with funny women is that the next joke might be about penis size, and we just can't have that, can we?"
She smiled in spite of herself, wondering how long Whitney's voice would live in her head, how many more times she would think of something funny or trenchant, then realize the observation belonged to Whitney. Maybe it was a good thing Whitney had sold her soul, throwing a couple others in for good measure, to get the Tokyo job. Baltimore was too small a town to hold two friends who couldn't be friends anymore.
"Any coffee for me?"
Colleen's voice had the rough-hewn rasp one would expect from someone who had been on both sides of a tequila bottle in the last twelve hours, but it was otherwise pleasant. Tess found a Beacon-Light mug in the sink, rinsed it out, and poured her a cup.
"I'm afraid I used the last of the half-and-half."
"That's okay, I take mine black." Cory gulped the coffee as if it were medicine she had to force down. "Where's Talbot? She contract this job out to you?"
"She left first and I was about to leave, but you-you weren't feeling very well. I thought someone should stay here, in case you did an Edgar Allan Poe. Although they say he died from rabies now, not in a drunken stupor."
"Kind of you," Colleen said, in a tone that made clear she didn't necessarily respect kindness. "But I don't remember much about last night, except for the quitting part. That was fun."
"Whitney said you threatened Lionel Mabry, too."
"Threatened him? All I did was rattle off a series of large, ungainly objects I wanted to insert into a particular orifice. I'm sure Lionel was shocked, but I doubt he actually feared for his life."
"You might be able to take your resignation back, under the circumstances."
"I don't want to. Better to leave now than wait until Lionel forces me out. The Washington Post has been flirting with me, maybe I can consummate the deal with them before word leaks out about my protégé's spectacular fall. I wouldn't be a managing editor, but I'd still be moving up, and on."
Colleen's face was streaked with make-up, her black hair still had traces of dipping sauce on the ends, and her red wool dress was so creased and stained that it was beyond the help of any dry cleaner. Yet she looked happy, as if giving up the fight for her job was a relief. She had been so lost inside protecting her position that she had lost sight of her other options. It was like watching a blind person recovering her sight.
"I guess I'll head on home."
"People are going to think you had a much more interesting night than you did," Colleen said, gesturing at Tess's Saturday night date garb. "Hey-did I say anything when I was out last night?"
"No, except for several exhortations for me to fuck myself."
"Did I…ask for anyone?"
"Whitney said you asked to speak to me, but you were beyond speaking when I showed up." Tess picked up the empty half-and-half container, shaking it in front of Colleen before pitching it into the trash. "But a black coffee drinker who keeps a carton of this around obviously has someone in her life."
"Could be for cooking," Colleen ventured.
"Sure, it makes a great sauce for microwave popcorn."
Colleen narrowed her eyes at Tess. "You are a pretty good little detective-even if you never did figure out who put that story in the newspaper."
"Everyone assumes Rosita did it."
"I know she didn't."
"How can you be so sure?"
Colleen opened the freezer and pulled out a fresh pack of cigarettes, bending over a burner on her gas stove to light one. A crack addict couldn't have looked much more blissed out at first puff.