"Well, take care then," she says.
"You only had carry-on?"
"Always."
"Where you staying, by the way?"
"I forget. Some hotel."
"Which one?"
"Can't remember. The Intercontinental, possibly."
"Maybe we could share a cab."
"Don't you have to get going to wherever it is you have to go? Your hometown? Anyway, I'm expensing the ride, so I'll get my own. Otherwise, the receipts get too complicated."
"Oh," he says. "Well, hey."
"Yup. Take care."
He leans in to kiss her cheek.
She pulls back. "Don't want to give you my cold." She shakes his hand.
At the Intercontinental, she lays out her work on the desk. She wasted too much time yakking to that idiot. She keeps yawning. She needs to stay up, to adjust to the time difference immediately-it's the only way. She checks the clock. Too late to call the kids. But how can you not mention that your new job is in San Jose? Whatever. When's the first meeting tomorrow morning? A breakfast thing. Welcome back to the land of bad coffee and doughnuts the size of toilet seats. What was the point of him flirting the whole time if he lives in another city? Her desk in the hotel room is backed by a mirror. She catches sight of herself. She'd kill to have a chat with Henry. Travel coma is making her weepy.
A ringing. She opens her eyes, disoriented. It's dark. What time is it? The alarm is blinking. Has she missed the meeting? Fuck! That ringing. It's not the alarm, though. She reaches for the phone. "Hello?"
"Finally, I get you!"
"Hello?" she repeats.
"It's Dave Belling. I'm downstairs. I'm being real rude here. Taking a chance. But I decided, you know, my folks can wait a few hours. I didn't want us to not see each other again. I was all the way down at the bus station. Then I was, like, this is too dumb. So I came over here. I hope you weren't sleeping. And listen, if this is an imposition at all, please just say so and I'll be on my merry way, no problem. But if it isn't, I was figuring on maybe buying you a drink or something. Even some dlunch. Or a spot of slupper."
She laughs, rubbing her eyes. She flicks on the desk lamp, blinking. "What time is it?"
"Slupper time."
"I think I dozed off. I thought it was tomorrow."
"If this isn't good for you, I can get going. No problem."
"Hang on, hang on, wait. Can you stay there a minute? I'll come right down. Don't come up. Where are you?"
She hasn't got time for a shower, so she freshens up as best she can in the bathroom, working in the skin moisturizer as if kneading dough. She should be preparing for the board meeting. She should be getting an early night.
"Hey," she says, tapping his shoulder from behind.
He is by the concierge desk, flipping through a magazine. "Hey there," he says, his face lighting up. "Sure I'm not imposing?"
"Of course not."
"What do you feel like? A drink? Something to eat?"
"After that pink mystery cake on the plane, I'm off food until October."
"I hear that. A drink it is."
They take a booth at the hotel bar. A television mounted on the wall is showing CNBC, with a headline that reads, "Markets Crash Over Fears of China Slowdown."
"It'll go fine tomorrow," he tells her. "You're obviously going to be the smartest girl in the room, so don't sweat it."
They talk and talk, him about his divorce, her about hers. After three Bacardi Breezers, she tells him: "It's like you were saying on the plane. I'm too romantic for my own good. And okay, you get kicked in the butt sometimes. But, frankly, I'd rather have, you know-actual sentiments. Than. You know? You know what I mean?"
"I hear that."
"Well, hey," she says.
"Hey," he says.
They laugh.
He says, more softly, "Come here," and leans across the table. He kisses her. He sits back slowly, as if he hadn't been expecting to do that.
"Well," she says.
"Well then," he says.
"No kidding."
They go up to her room. She rushes into the bathroom, mouthing at her reflection: "You're nuts."
When she emerges, he reaches out for her. She moves into his embrace, expecting a kiss but he only hugs her, tightening, then slackening as he breathes out serenely. He leans back, looks into her eyes.
"Mmm," she says. "I needed that."
"I needed that," he says.
She kisses him, tenderly, then with passion. Lips locked, they lumber to the bed, tripping, giggling. She flops onto the mattress and hits the remote control, turning on the television. "Oh God, I'm sorry!" she exclaims, suddenly serious.
He turns it off, tosses aside the remote. He unbuttons her top and pulls it off. He unzips her trousers, tugs them down and off. She's wearing only the funereal black bra and the blue granny panties. She folds her arms to cover her chest and crosses her legs. "Can we turn off a light?"
"Let's leave it on a second," he says.
"But aren't you getting undressed?"
"Hey, don't cover yourself."
"It's kinda bright in here."
"I want to look at you," he says.
"But you're still dressed. And I'm in my, in my, in this bra and these." She laughs uncertainly.
"Wait, wait, hang on. Don't pull up the covers."
"How come? Can't I?"
"One point of order first." His tone changes. His voice goes cold. "One small thing." His eyes track down her body. He proceeds, "Tell me this, Accounts Payable."
She freezes at the name.
"Why," he says, "why of all the people there, Accounts Payable, did you go and get me fired?" He stands at the foot of the bed, staring. "So?" he says. "Explain me that."
2004. OTT GROUP HEADQUARTERS, ATLANTA
Newspapers were spiraling downward.
Competing entertainments abounded, from cellphones to video games, from social-networking sites to online porn. Technology was not merely luring readers; it was changing them. Full printed pages didn't fit onto monitors, so portion size shrank, dicing news into ever-smaller morsels. Instant updates on the Internet bred contempt for day-old headlines in ink. Even the habit of exchanging money for information dwindled-online, payment was merely an option.
As readership plummeted, advertisers fled and losses mounted. But, doggedly, the pay-per-view papers kept at it. They made their daily judgments, produced their digests of the world, laid them out across pages, printed tonight and delivered tomorrow, to be flapped open before bleary breakfast eyes. Fewer eyes, each day.
Despite all this, Boyd was not about to let his father's paper go under. He had rescued it once before, when he'd hired Milton Berber. The trick was to find the right leader. This time, he chose Kathleen Solson, a former protegee of Milton's. Kathleen had risen through the ranks in Rome, then jumped to Milton's old newspaper in Washington, progressing fast. She covered a suburban beat, joined the Pentagon team, became national reporter for the Southwest and then national editor, all in less than a decade.
But at that level in the Washington hierarchy, competition stiffened. To climb the masthead, she'd need to play politics for years. Or she could gamble, jump to the top job at a smaller newspaper, and use it as a proving ground. She flew to Rome to meet with the current crop of senior editors, a sparse breed by then, their numbers diminished by years of attrition.
If she was to take the job, she told Boyd, much would have to change. The paper needed to fill those empty cubicles, buy new computers, bulk up its coverage abroad: a Chinese speaker for Shanghai, an Arabic speaker for the Middle East, and so forth. This was too critical a time in history-the war on terror, the rise of Asia, climate change-to be reporting about the fat folds of celebrities at the beach. "We can leave that to the Internet," she said.
Boyd agreed, and she made the move back to Rome, bringing along her deputy from the Washington national desk, Craig Menzies.
Soon she had cause for concern. The Ott Group-despite Boyd's promises-proved reluctant to fund her plans. She found herself hamstrung by increasingly restrictive budgets and Boyd himself ignored her, leaving everything to underlings-above all to the swinging ax of the paper's chief financial officer, Abbey Pinnola. First, Abbey ordered yet another hiring freeze. Then she abolished merit raises. Then she demanded layoffs.