"This is not funny. You think this is funny? This is my career you're messing with."
"No offense, Jack, but—"
"Don't say it!"
With unnerving precision, Juan slices his bagel into perfect halves. "I'm sorry, Jack. I didn't know I wasn't supposed to mention Colonel Tom. But it's a helluva story, you've got to admit."
"And you've got better ones to tell," I say pointedly, "about yourself. You've got the kind of stories they make movies of, Juan."
His deep brown eyes flicker. "Yeah, well, maybe Emma's not all that fascinated with my life history. Half the time we end up talking about you."
I knew it. The shrew!
"She wants dirt," I explain to Juan. "She's building a case to nail me—see, the annual employee reviews are due soon... "
In Juan's expression I see the obvious but lacerating query, the one he's given up asking: What more can they do to you, Jack?
I float my latest theory: "She's trying to get me transferred, I'll bet, to Features or maybe the Business desk. What else did you tell her?"
"Nothing she can use against you. Promise."
"Don't be so sure. She's trickier than she looks."
"No she's not," Juan says.
"Listen to you!"
"A dead-lizard popsicle is not grounds for demotion."
"The offense of moral turpitude, my friend, is open to ruthless interpretation. Don't be so naive."
"Well, I think you're wrong about Emma."
I practically yowl with derision.
Juan coolly lathers a bagel slice. "Based on my knowledge of women—which is considerably more current than yours, Jack—I think you're mistaken. Emma's not out to destroy you. It's just that you're a problem in her life right now and she's trying to figure you out."
This is too much. How can I argue about women with a guy who's dating (in addition to my editor) a surgeon, a skater and a cheerleader? I lean across the table and whisper: "She asked me to lunch."
"So? Maybe she's trying to make peace."
"No way. It's gotta be a trap," I say. "You've heard of a Trojan horse. This is Trojan pussy."
Juan has the most impeccable manners of any newspaper writer I've ever met. The bagel is gone and not a single crumb is on the table, not a speck of cream cheese on his cheeks.
"Did you know," he says, "that she never took so much as an aspirin until you started working for her? Now it's two Valiums a day, sometimes more."
"She's in the wrong line of work, Juan. I'm trying to show her the way out." The pill-popping business makes me feel guilty; rotten, in fact. "I don't want to do lunch with her because I've got to keep a distance. For her own sake, I've got to stay surly and unapproachable." Juan smiles skeptically. "Sergeant Tagger's version of tough love?"
"Something like that."
"Naw, you're just scared. Obituary Boy is scared of little ole Emma."
"That's ridiculous."
"Don't worry, Jack, she won't bite," he says drily, "no matter how nicely you ask."
This is getting us nowhere.
"Do me a favor," I say, "don't talk about me anymore when you two are hanging out."
"Okay. But that'll leave us a lot of free time and not much else to do." Juan looks both amused and resigned.
"Oh, come on. You expect me to believe you and Emma still aren't humping like alley cats?"
He shrugs. "Like I said, she's different."
"Gay?"
"Nope."
"Frigid?"
"Don't think so," Juan says.
"Then what?"
"Picky," he says, rising, "or maybe just preoccupied. Thanks for the bagel, Jack, but now I've got to hustle back to the shop—the Dolphins just signed a running back with no felony record and no drug habit. That's big news."
"What should I do about lunch?"
"Put in a good word for your favorite Cuban," Juan says with a wink. "Tell her I'm hung like Secretariat."
When noontime rolls around, I pretend to be stuck on the phone in order to duck Emma's offer of a ride. I tell her to go on ahead and I'll catch up, thinking I can use the extra time to plot strategy. But my thoughts remain jumbled and I set off with no plan.
The restaurant is Mackey's Grille, not one of the usual newsroom hangouts. I'm surprised to find Emma sipping a glass of white wine. Daringly I order an imported beer. We make agonizing small talk until the waiter shows up—Emma asks for the tuna salad and I decide on a steak, medium rare.
Once we're alone again, Emma says: "I had an unexpected visitor the other day. Race Maggad."
"My hero."
"He came to talk about you, Jack."
"Well, I don't want to talk about him. I want to talk about you, Emma—in particular, your toes."
Carefully she sets her wineglass on the table. A flash of pink appears in her cheeks, but she says nothing.
"That afternoon outside your apartment, I couldn't help but notice your toenails. They were all painted up like bright little orange and red gummy bears. Frankly, it was a revelation," I say. "Made me think I've jumped to some unfair conclusions."
"Jack."
"Yes?"
"Why do you do this?" she asks. There's nothing weak or wounded in her voice; her stare is like a laser.
I've got no good explanation for my nettlesome banter. Nerves, maybe. Unease. Self-consciousness. But about what?
This is why I didn't want to be alone with her. This is what I was afraid of.
"It's a brutal occupation we've chosen, Emma, it takes a terrible toll. Look at me," I tell her. "Once upon a time I was tolerable company. I had my charming moments. I was not immune to empathy. Believe it or not, I could sustain healthy relationships with friends, co-workers, lovers. But not anymore—could you pass the banana nut bread?"
Emma says, "Race Maggad thinks you're a dangerous fellow."
"I would give anything to make that true."
"Yet he wants you to be the one who writes Old Man Polk's obituary. He came by the newsroom to tell me personally, to 'assure' me—his word, Jack—that there's no unspoken corporate directive to keep you off the front page."
"Which you know to be horseshit."
"Totally," Emma nods. "That's why I'm confused. And why I asked you out to lunch."
With relish I explain that MacArthur Polk wants me to do his obituary because he knows it enrages Race Maggad III, whom MacArthur Polk hates almost as much as he hated Race Maggad II.
"Why?" Emma asks.
"Have you looked closely at our newspaper lately? Or any of Maggad-Feist's papers? They're all dumbed-down crapola, fluff and gimmicks and graphics. The old man knows he fucked up his legacy by selling out. He's bitter and spiteful and rich enough to play chicken with these bastards."
"He told you all this?" she says uncomfortably.
"In language unfit for publication," I say. "But here's the glorious part, the real reason young Race Maggad took time off from his precious polo practice to visit you. He's determined to make sure MacArthur Polk gets the obituary he wants. Why? Because young Race wants the old man to sell his Maggad-Feist stock back to the company before he dies, or at least leave those instructions for his estate."
Emma stiffens in her seat. "There's been rumors that somebody outside the family is trying to get control of the chain."
"Bingo."
"Who?"
"A couple of foreign outfits. Polk says Maggad is pissing razor blades."
"So what's the old man want from you?"
"Besides a Page One obit that makes him sound like a cross between Ben Bradlee and St. Francis of Assisi, nothing much," I lie smoothly. "Not a damn thing, really."
"We're being used," she says dispiritedly.
"Me more than you, Emma."
"It's basically just two rich guys screwing with each other."
"Basically, yeah," I say.
A gloom settles upon Emma, affecting her normally flawless posture. She understands she's caught up in a squalid little mess that has nothing
to do with the practice of honest journalism. The fact I play a crucial role in resolving the situation only deepens her dismay.
"They don't warn you about this stuff in college," she says.
"Who'd believe it, anyway?"
"Right. Not me." Emma stares emptily at her salad.
"On the bright side," I say, "it might be another five years before Old Man Polk finally kicks the bucket. Both of us could be long gone by then."
She raises her eyes. "What?"
"To bigger and better things." A necessary elaboration.
"But in the meantime, you'll have his obit finished and in the can. Please, Jack?"
"Okay. You win."
Damn, I can't help it. I feel sorry for the woman.
We eat in affable silence. Afterwards we order coffee and Emma calls for the check; lunch is on the newspaper. She asks about the Jimmy Stoma story, and I tell her it's tough sledding though I'm making progress. I know better than to mention my scuffle with Jimmy's keyboard player, but I can't pass up the chance to recount the widow's balcony blow job.
Emma lights up. "So you were right—she killed her husband!"
"Very possible. But I still don't have enough to say so."
"Oh, come on. Obviously she had a motive."
"No, Emma, she had a cock in her mouth. That's not necessarily the same thing. Cleo isn't the type to murder for love; Cleo has a career to manage."
A peppermint candy has glommed to one of my dental crowns, impeding speech. Observing my not-so-suave attempts to dislodge it, Emma stifles a laugh.
I hear myself saying, "This is no good. We can't possibly be friends."
"You're right."
"The planks of this relationship are animus, mistrust and a mutual lack of respect."
"As it should be," Emma says playfully.
Enough of this, I'm thinking.
"How many Valiums have you gobbled today?" I ask.
She is floored.
"You took one before you came to lunch, right?"
"No... yeah, I had to," Emma stammers. "How'd you know?"
I reach across the table and grasp one of her hands. It's impossible to say which of us is more startled.
"You listen," I tell her, "I'm not worth it, and the job's not worth it. We get back to the office, you go straight to the ladies' room and flush mummy's little helpers down the toilet. A drug situation is unacceptable."
"You don't understand, Jack. You can't possibly."
"Take off your shoes. That's an order."
"I will not."
"Emma, I'm counting to three."
"Are you nuts?"
Next thing I know, I'm kneeling under the table and in each hand is one of Emma's taupe pumps. Her bare feet are drawn protectively under her chair, toes curling, but I can see how she's repainted the nails: miniature black-and-white checkerboards!
I pop out grinning from beneath the tablecloth.
"You're going to be fine!" I exclaim.
And Emma slugs me ferociously in the nose.
Emma asked me to steer clear of the newsroom until the bleeding stopped and the swelling went down. So now I'm at home, avoiding the mirror and noodling on my laptop. I see by the pop-up calendar that I've got eight days in which to avoid dying like Oscar Wilde, penniless and scandalized at age forty-six. Someday I must thank Anne for the warning. My forty-seventh birthday is a week from tomorrow. I have $514 in the bank and a nose the size of an eggplant.
My mother will phone on my birthday, but she'll keep it short. She is fed up with being interrogated about my father, but I can't stop thinking about what she sprung on me the last time—that she'd learned of his death "a long time ago" from a newspaper obituary.
Because nothing turned up in the data search I ran at the newsroom, I'm left to rely on my telephone skills and the kindness of strangers. First, I make a list of cities where my mother has lived in the forty-three years since Jack Sr. walked out. In order: Clearwater, Orlando (where I attended high school), Jacksonville (where my mother met my stepfather), Atlanta, Dallas, Tallahassee and, now, Naples. Unless my mother is fudging about the time frame, my old man's death occurred at least two decades ago. That automatically knocks out the last three cities. Twenty years ago, my mother and stepfather were living in Atlanta, so that's where I begin—with a call to the morgue of the Journal-Constitution.
As soon as I identify myself as a brethren journalist, I'm transferred to an efficient-sounding librarian with a honey-buttered Georgia accent. She puts me on hold while she manually searches the paper's old, alphabetized clip files, the stories that predated electronic storage. As I'm waiting, my palms moisten and my heart drums against my sternum and—for one fleeting lucid moment—I consider hanging up. Whether my father croaked at thirty-five or ninety-five shouldn't matter to me; I don't even remember the guy. We had nothing in common except for the name and the blood; any other attachment is illusory, coiled like a blind worm in my imagination.
Yet I don't hang up. When the librarian comes back on the line, she apologetically reports that she cannot find a published obituary for anyone named Jack Tagger, nor any news stories relating to the death of such a person. "It's always possible it was misfiled. I could crosscheck the daily obit pages on microfilm," she offers. "Can you guess at the year?"
"Till the cows come home," I say. "Thanks for trying."
I get the same discouraging results from the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville, the Orlando Sentinel and the Clearwater Sun. No obits, blotter items, no stories, no Jack Tagger in the clips. I wonder if I've overestimated my mother's integrity. Suppose she invented the bit about seeing my old man's obit in a paper. Suppose she contrived to send me off on some winding, futile quest, just to get me off her back.
If so, I went for the bait like a starved carp. Two hours working the phone and zip to show for it. Serves me right.
I dial her number and Dave, my stepfather, picks up. We engage in innocuous chitchat about the tragic state of his golf game until he gets sidetracked, as he often does, on the subject of Tiger Woods. While acknowledging the young man's phenomenal talent, my stepfather fears that Tiger Woods is inspiring thousands upon thousands of minority youngsters to take up golf, and that some of these youngsters will one day gain entry to my stepfather's beloved country club and commence whupping some white Protestant ass.
"I've got nothing against blacks," Dave is saying, "but, Jack, look around. They've already got basketball, they've got football, they've got track. Can't they leave us something? Just one damn sport we can win at? Don't read me wrong—"
"Never," I say. Arguing would be futile; Dave is old and dim and stubborn.
"—don't read me wrong, Jack, but what can they possibly enjoy about golf? For Christ's sake, you don't even get to run anywhere. It's all walking or riding around in electric carts in the hot sun—can that be fun for them?"
"Is Mom home?" I ask.
"Jack, you know I'm not prejudiced—"
Perish the thought.
"—and, as you're aware, me and your mother give generously to their college fund, that Negro College Fund. We never miss the Lou Rawls telethon."
"Dave?"
"But what concerns me about this Tiger Woods—and God knows he's a gifted athlete—but what troubles me, Jack, is the message that's being sent out to the young people, that golf is all of sudden a game for, you know... the masses."
"Dave, is my mother home?"
"She went to the grocery."
"Can I ask you something?"
"Sure, Jack."
"Not to change the subject."
"That's quite okay."
"She ever talk about my old man?"
"Hmmm."
"Because she told me he died," I say. "She said she read about it in some newspaper a long time ago. You wouldn't happen to remember when that was?"
Silence on the other end; rare silence, in Dave's case.
"Even a ballpark guess would be helpful," I say. "I'm just curious, Dave. You
can understand."
"Certainly. Him being your natural father and all. It's just... "
"What?"
He manufactures a cough. I wish I could say I felt lousy for putting him on the spot, but I don't. Dave sold Amway for a living so it's just about impossible to throw him off stride.