“No, I mean, the desk is yours to take home.”
“Oh, thank you. But how much-?”
“Not a cent.” He paused. “I was very fond of O’Connor myself. I know he’d want you to have it.”
“Thank you,” I said and couldn’t manage to say more.
He put a hand on my shoulder and said, “You let me know if I can be of any help to you. I mean that. We were always proud of the work you and your colleagues did. I’m so very sorry we couldn’t continue.”
And I knew, perhaps in a way I hadn’t known before, that he was telling the truth, that if he could have found a way to continue publishing the Express, he would have done it.
He told me he’d leave word with Geoff to let me into the building whenever I wanted to pick up the desk, provided I could do so within the week.
“You’re keeping Geoff on?”
“For as long as we can,” he said.
John walked upstairs with me. “Thanks for sticking up for me,” I said.
“What are editors for?”
I could hear the bitterness beneath that. “John-”
“Oh, never mind me. I should thank you for giving me a chance to light into him. Not one tenth of what I’d really like to say to him, but you have to take your opportunities where you find them.”
“Come to church later on,” I said. “I think there will be a choir there singing that same song.”
I heard laughter from the newsroom. Ah, gallows humor. I was going to miss that. As we walked in, I heard the tail end of the next rude joke, and more laughter.
“You guys should have been downstairs just now,” John said and told them how much Wrigley wanted for my desk.
That led to impolite speculation on what Wrigley planned to do with the money.
I finished packing up my desk. As I gathered my notes from unfinished stories, I found myself wondering who would tell the story of Las Piernas now. Who would write about Marilyn Foster, or the woman in the car trunk? Those stories were sensational, so maybe someone at the television or radio stations would. But sensational murders are a very small part of what goes on in a city of half a million people.
How would the people of Las Piernas find out about the high school baseball games, or how much the new school uniforms might cost? Who would warn them that a fee hike was being proposed for use of the biggest local park? Or tell them that the mayor was using taxpayer money for family vacations? That their state assembly representative didn’t really live in the district and had defaulted on the mortgage for his sham address?
And what the hell was I going to do with myself all day?
ELEVEN
Frank was enjoying his last day of his week’s vacation by doing some gardening. At least I didn’t walk in to find him surrounded by dancing girls, which would have been a real kicker to a day from hell. Apparently he heard my car, or the dogs tipped him off to my arrival, because he was coming into the house just as I opened the front door.
“Hi, honey, I’m home!” I called out. “Possibly forever.”
There was a brief silence while he processed that, then he said, “Fired or laid off?”
I laughed. A little hysterically, but I laughed. “When I go out, I do it in style. They’re shutting the whole place down. I would have preferred fired.”
“Oh, Irene,” he said and opened his arms. I went right into them, not caring if I got dirt on my work clothes. What the hell did it matter? Are they work clothes if you’re out of work?
After a while, he said, “We’ll be okay, you know.”
I did know. We had been preparing for this day for several years, and seriously planning for it financially during the last two. I was in a better position than most of my colleagues. My husband had a good-paying job that would provide health insurance, and enough time in with the LPPD to avoid any layoffs that might someday come to his department. We didn’t have kids who were depending on us. I had sold the house I owned before I met Frank, and managed to do that at the height of the Southern California real estate bubble, so we had savings. We didn’t owe anything on Frank’s house, and neither of us was the acquisitive type, so we didn’t have much in the way of other kinds of debt, either. We had enough for the upkeep and taxes on some mountain property Frank had inherited, and no other big obligations.
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “I know. But I also know that you have days when you want to leave the department, and now I’m afraid you’re trapped there.”
“No, don’t ever worry about that. I’m fine. If I need to change jobs, I’ll find a way to do it.”
“The universe is expanding.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“It’s something Ethan said to me. God. Poor Ethan. What’s going to happen to him?”
“Do you seriously doubt he’ll land on his feet?”
“No… I just hope he doesn’t get too bruised on the way down.”
We went through a litany of the people I was closest to at the paper. Stuart Angert had taken his retirement months ago. Mark Baker’s kids had just finished college, and I’m sure there was some debt there, but his wife had a good job, so maybe they’d be okay. Like the rest of us, Lydia had been expecting this possibility, but she and I-and many others-were without definite plans for future employment. Her fiancé, Guy St. Germain, was an executive with the Bank of Las Piernas, and since it was one of those local banks that hadn’t gone in for shaky lending practices, Guy’s job was secure. He made enough to support them both, but I couldn’t picture her being happy with idleness. I had no idea what John’s situation was. I’d asked him once, and he’d told me not to worry about him.
“A useless command,” I said now.
“Yes,” Frank said. “And I admit I’m worried about you.”
“Me?”
“Yes. You… In a lot of ways, you define yourself as a reporter, and I hope you’ll get to keep working as one. But what worries me is that you identify so strongly with the Express itself. You grew up reading O’Connor’s stories-”
“That reminds me, we’re getting his desk.”
“Your desk from work?”
“Yes. Is that okay?”
He smiled. It was one of those you-are-crazy-but-that’s-what-I-love-about-you smiles. I’ll take one any time.
“Sure,” he said, “but you’re proving my point. You’ve been doing this work for a long time-”
“Don’t remind me how long.”
“A long time now,” he said. “And except for a couple of years here and there, you’ve worked at the Express most of your adult life. Being a reporter for that paper was what you dreamed of doing as a little kid, and you got your dream. That’s not something a lot of people can say about their work lives.”
“No. I’ve always been lucky. Except at cards. So I won’t try to become a professional poker player.”
“What a relief. That was what I was working up to, of course.”
“Okay, I get it. I’ll stop trying to dodge the point you’re making. You’re right, but…” I broke off, tears finally threatening.
“Hey, it’s all right,” he said, pulling me closer. “My real point was, go easy on yourself. You’ll find what it is you’re going to do next. Or it will find you.”
“Aren’t you afraid I’m going to sit here eating bonbons all day?”
“I’m more afraid you’ll run yourself into the ground. Or decide to redecorate.”
That made me sit up. “You know, I do want to paint the guest room.”
He sighed dramatically.
“What? I’m just talking about painting.”
“It is never-never-just painting.”
He was right, of course.
Two weeks went by. I did some serious drinking with my fellow former co-workers that first evening, was given an unpleasant reminder about hangovers the next morning, and called it quits. I realized that Ethan-who went to an AA meeting that night-and most of the other people I wanted to spend time with weren’t going to step into the bar.