I Wish I Was Like You Page 14

  All the loner mythology, it was all crap. I finally knew in my bones how ignorant I’d been to think he only did this now and then, and with women he really liked. Lee Todd was an open bar with no waiting. Then he was dead.

  What bothered me was not knowing and not feeling the slightest instinct about his death. For months I’d walked through the deadening routine of my life and every time I thought of him I gritted my teeth and vowed I wouldn’t contact him because I had nothing to show for all of my time in Seattle. I had no proof of my significance, I couldn’t laugh in his face. I just kept going day after day, and I imagined his words taunting me. The idea that he might be dead had never crossed my mind.

  I found the obituary, realized he had spent his last weeks at Harborview, only a few miles from my apartment. He died in a hospital bed and there was no memorial service. His most popular novel was Whiskey Fever, now long out of print. He left a sister, two ex-wives, and a thirty-year-old son named Granger.

  I stopped to marvel at a man who would let his son be named Granger Butcher, and then realized Butcher wasn’t his real name. His son’s name was Granger Davis Jr., meaning the man who pretended to listen to me, and then slept with me, and told me not to write fiction, was named Granger Davis. Jesus Christ.

  Staff meetings were held on Monday mornings. The two hamsters who named Fucky-Face showed up together, smiling and chattering about hard work and bonuses for Thanksgiving. Moo brought her notebooks and silently made notations, adding stickers (stars, rockets) for emphasis. Once all the staff members were gathered in the reception area on cushions or in folding chairs or crammed onto the sofa, Charlie whispered in my ear, “This is going to suck.” Shelly slipped in, late, and wedged between the occupants of the sofa.

  Before Carl barreled up the front stairs three at a time and announced the latest ‘cool, super cool’ idea he had, and before Eve dragged herself in with a thermos full of coffee and a disgusting pastry slathered with frosting, the rest of us sat around the reception area making small talk, a cacophony of snarky opinions people probably should have kept to themselves.

  “My feature about the dog leash law got cut. Eve hates it.”

  “Well. What did you expect?”

  “I know. But it’s neighborhood stuff. This is what Carl keeps telling us to go for. What the hell is she thinking?”

  “Eve hates news. Did I tell you, she rejected my article on postering laws, for crying out loud. I mean, for anybody who plays clubs downtown or on Capitol Hill, this is important shit.”

  “Important shit!”

  “Shut up.”

  “She doesn’t care about Capitol Hill. She lives in Fremont, last frontier of the conscientious objector. Granola Town.”

  “Oh, is that why she’s late every day? I thought it was the midnight screwdrivers.”

  “I thought it was menopause.”

  “She’s not that old.”

  “She’s over 35! What is this, a retirement home for senior editors? This is why we can’t catch up. If Carl would let me recommend an editor…”

  “I liked that piece Eve commissioned from Natalie What’s-her-name, the Village Voice writer?”

  “Yeah. We need more stuff like that. Tone down the highbrow poetry junk.”

  “I hear Carl’s working on it. He’s fed up, you guys.”

  “Good luck. You know he fucked Natalie What’s-her-name, right?”

  “Is that why she won’t write for us anymore?”

  “Ha and ha. You’re such a dick.”

  “No, really, you guys, Carl mentioned a couple of hotshot writers, one of them is, like, twenty and he’s already published in Harper’s.”

  “Isn’t Eve supposed to recruit hotshot feature writers? Isn’t it part of her job?”

  “Like I said. Good luck.”

  “Where is Eve, anyway?”

  “Late, aren’t you listening?”

  “Probably holding court at Rosebud. I hear she’s setting up an office down there.”

  “You know what? I don’t give a shit about outside reporters. Why doesn’t she give us a chance at features?”

  “Promote from within?”

  “Yeah!”

  “Aw, poor baby want to be a real journalist…?”

  “Fuck off.”

  This is when Carl burst into the room followed by a draught of cold air. It was a measure of how quickly he moved, the way he drew the chill from the icy street below all the way up the stairwell and into the office. By comparison, Eve, when she shuffled in behind him in her coat and scarves, resembled a babushka bundled up against a record-breaking Russian winter.

  “Moy tovareesh!” Ed John Maynard shouted when she arrived.

  Eve grinned but I don’t think she knew why the greeting made us titter. Facing the group she remained taciturn, answering Carl’s questions with no enthusiasm. Carl paced and Eve stood behind him. When she forgot to create an expression her face tended to go blank, her eyes dead.

  “What have we got this week? Who’s on the cover?” Carl asked.

  “Call him Ismail…” Steve Billings offered with a furtive glance at Eve.

  “Um…”

  “He’s a brilliant literary…” Eve began, rousing herself for a second.

  “Not another Albanian poet?” Carl shook his head. “Jesus. We’ve got, I mean, okay, I’m not asking for Al Gore, you know, but can we get the fucking un-translated Albanian poets off the cover?”

  Ed was the only person in the room who couldn’t stifle a guffaw. I admit the ensuing silence was exquisitely awkward.

  “Yes,” said Eve, at last. “We can.”

  “Okay, good,” said Carl. “Good. Okay. Right. Let’s start this week. Because—I wasn’t going to say this with the holidays coming, but you might as well hear it now—our circulation numbers are down.”

  This caused a buzz. People shifted in their seats. Only Steve spoke up.

  “By how much?” he asked.

  Now Carl shifted his weight. “I understand it’s about, I don’t have the specific numbers but, I hear from the distribution crew and the printer, all together it’s about one percent.”

  No one laughed, not even Ed John Maynard. As I would learn in subsequent weeks, no one ever laughed at Carl’s announcements, however absurd, far-fetched, or maudlin.

  Eve kept her head down. Moo let out a sigh.

  “So,” Carl went on. “We’ve got our, you know, work cut out.” He pointed at the half-finished logo painted on the door. “It’s Boom City, people. This is the city and this is—it’s about to explode. We have to be ready when it happens. We’re going to be on the cusp, on the edge, on the cutting edge of all this—stuff.”

  I expected the meeting would return to the subject of the week’s content. Instead it degenerated into gossip about what the Stranger and the Urban Spelunker were running for the holidays.

  Standing before the entire staff, Eve seemed catatonic. In private conversation she was bolder. She did, in fact, like to schedule one-on-one meetings in the same back corner of Rosebud where she interviewed and hired me. There she sat for a couple of hours each day surrounded by manuscripts and paperback editions of poetry and short fiction. She built a comfortable palace of paper, and nested in it. I could only guess she found this public place more private than the office with its crummy open cubicles, constant traffic, and Shelly screaming phone messages from her desk.

  Following the staff meeting that morning Eve told me to join her. We walked to the coffee shop together, making uncomfortable small talk about weather and Thanksgiving plans. I had none. Vaughn was visiting a friend in Vancouver. Eve alluded to vague commitments with friends. We reached Rosebud before she could offer more specific details.

  Once we settled in at her favorite table with cups of espresso and croissants, she launched the subject of our conversation. “Vanessa says you didn’t get together with her for a debriefing over the weekend.”

  “Um, I w
asn’t sure how long I was supposed to shadow her,” I said, trying not to sound defensive.

  “More than one night would have been good,” she said.

  “Okay. I guess I could track her down today…”

  “On Monday?” Eve raised an eyebrow and laughed. “You won’t see Vanessa at the office until she hands in her text for the week. Then she’ll disappear again, crawling around in clubs for a few nights.”

  “Aren’t the staff meetings mandatory?” I asked, realizing for the first time she was the only absent employee.

  “Not for Vanderbilts,” she said, and moved on before my jaw could drop. “Vanessa turns in flawless copy and she knows what she’s doing. I expect to lose her to Rolling Stone one of these days. Well, never mind. We might as well get you started on your own, if you’re so confident.”

  She slapped a stack of manila envelopes on the table in front of me. A quick fan through them revealed they were press kits from theaters. Each envelope contained a press release and an invitation to call for complimentary tickets. Some also contained a couple of black and white production photos.

  For the first time, the reality of what I’d signed on to do took hideous shape in my mind. I recognized Vaughn’s company logo and flinched at the accompanying photo of two men wearing tight suits and an excess of makeup, pretending to laugh uproariously. One of the men held the strings to a batch of party balloons. I remembered what the Man of Misery wrote about the show, “…festooned with what appear to be the trappings of a children’s party…” and noticed the phrase, “Back by popular demand, just in time for Xmas!” I hadn’t seen a single show yet and I was dreading it like a U2 concert.

  I trudged back to the office hugging my stack of press kits to my chest. Charlie spotted me when I dragged ass through the door.

  “Here comes our critic of doom,” he announced with a grin.

  “Please,” I said. “Where is everybody?”

  “Excuse me!” Shelly growled from the sofa. “I am here, at my station, being professional. If anybody gives a shit.”

  We tiptoed away from the reception area. I followed Charlie into the production room.

  “After the staff meeting most of the drones go out to breakfast,” he explained. “I thought you joined them.”

  “I’m not worthy,” I said. “No one invited me.”

  “Ah, you’re a newbie. You are too slow and feeble. Don’t worry. Things will change. In another week they’ll take you for granted.” He sat at his desk and slurped coffee from a large mug shaped like a coiled snake.

  “So, where did you sneak off to?” he asked. He took a seat at his lopsided desk and began to move text around on his computer screen.

  “Rosebud.”

  “Eek! You really have to book, get your ass downstairs the second the meeting ends, if you don’t want Eve to get her claws into you.”

  “She clawed me pretty good,” I said. “Turns out, I was supposed to follow Vanessa all fucking weekend.”

  “Eek, Part Two. Here’s a tip. If you lose track of Vanessa, follow the trail of needles…”

  “Really?” I had to reconcile this with the poise and fashion sense I’d associated with our music reviewer. “She seems pretty, you know, together, for a junkie.”

  “I didn’t say ‘junkie,’ did I? For a user she’s a hell of a control freak. Just the right amount, at just the right time.”

  “Yeah, right!” I scoffed.

  “You scoff?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That was me, scoffing.”

  “Hacks aren’t allowed to scoff,” Charlie said, wagging a finger. He hit a button and a page of formatted text rolled out of the printer next to his computer.

  “Sorry. I forgot I’m a hack. In a few days I’ll turn in the worst reviews you’ve ever read. Then Eve will fire me and my hack career will be over.”

  “Aw, poor baby!”

  “Shut up,” I said.

  “You’re overestimating this dump. Boom City is garbage. We’re sixteen pages on a good week, and we never pull in enough advertising to get bigger. We never will.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked. “Carl’s out there all day, drumming up business. Moo and her sidekick—what’s that guy’s name again?”

  “Pfefferle.”

  “Is that his first name?”

  “No,” said Charlie. “I don’t think he has a first name.” He rolled the page of formatted text into a ball and tossed it into the trash.

  “Moo and Pfefferle are on the phone all week, making deals,” I said. “Trying to lure advertisers from other papers.”

  “Yeah. But. Most of the time they fail. You know what the Stranger does? They undercut the Weekly rates and throw in free ad design. You buy an ad with those guys, they make you part of the cool kids’ club. You want your business to look young and sexy? No problem. They resize images or replace them altogether, to fit their dimensions. Trust me, one day soon they’ll redesign the paper so it’s the same dimensions as the Weekly, and then it is game on, suckers!”

  “Why doesn’t Carl do that?” I asked. It seemed simple enough. But I knew little about the production process, at least the parts that didn’t involve me.

  “Because we don’t have enough staff, dodo. I’d have to work a hundred hours a week, instead of sixty, to keep up. Production only has two part-timers and I expect to lose one. Carl’s going to use the one percent drop to justify letting someone go. Merry Christmas!”

  “Why does the Stranger have so many more people? Are they rolling in ad dollars or what?”

  “Yes, yes they are. Also, if you’re really cool you can get people to work for pizza until you can afford a paycheck. Maybe you haven’t noticed. We’re not cool.” Charlie shrugged.

  “Why aren’t we cool?” I noticed how easily I’d slid into thinking of Boom City as ‘us’ and the bigger, better competition as ‘them.’

  “Want me to count the ways? We’re not cool because our content sucks. Our feature writers specialize in making one point—postering utility poles is good, for example—and then beating it to death instead of building on it. Our name sucks. It sounds like a 1980s roller skating rink. Our logo sucks, it’s complicated and trite, the Stranger logo is simple and badass. Some of the reviews are okay and the arts calendar is okay but nobody wakes up thinking they’ve got to read the new issue of Boom City before they buy movie tickets. We’re not funny enough. We’re not sexy enough. If there’s no cool factor, you can’t pull in the advertisers. Not enough ads, and pretty soon we hit the shitter like all the other tiny papers…”

  “Sell more ads.” Obviously, I didn’t get it.

  “But ads aren’t cool,” he said. “The kids don’t like ads.”

  “Well, then, leave out the ads. What are you saying?”

  “Okay, listen.” He started scribbling numbers on a piece of paper. “If you want to break even in this business you need at least 51% ads against 49% editorial including the graphics. Now you can go as high as 53% ads before the readers begin to notice but if you hit 55% they’re going to call the paper a sellout and stop picking it up.”

  “Where is Boom City?” I asked.

  “Are you kidding? This is the reason we can’t afford compatible hardware and full-time production help. The same reason we’ll all be collecting unemployment next summer. On a really good week, the sales team pulls in about 47% ads.”

  “But it’s a percentage,” I said. “So why not adjust…?”

  “Exactly,” Charlie replied, grinning like a teacher encouraging a slow student. “When we drop this low, Carl should respond by cutting the number of pages and the word count should decrease, to adjust the percentage. Go from sixteen pages to twelve.”

  “Why don’t we do that?”

  “Because Carl is married to the idea of sixteen pages and over,” he said. “Less than sixteen pages and his manhood might be challenged.”

  “The Stranger was putting out sixteen-pag
e issues earlier this year.”

  “They’re smarter than we are,” Charlie said. “They know what the fuck they’re doing. They took time to grow. They weren’t afraid to go smaller when they had a lean advertising week. Even now, the publisher would put out a twelve-page issue, if he had to. It isn’t the size of the paper. It’s the ad-to-editorial-content ratio. Every week I tell Carl not to fill the gaps with more comics and photos. He tells me I can go back to work at Wizards of the Coast any time I want. Then we put out another issue and lose more money.”

  “How does he pay everybody?”

  “You really don’t know anything, do you, dodo?” Charlie smiled. “Multiple trust funds.”

  “He’s making up the difference out of his own pocket?” I couldn’t believe anyone would spend his own money keeping a shitty newspaper alive.

  “Well,” said Charlie. “It isn’t like he earned it. His dad’s filthy.”

  “Is this going to be a long one, Grandpa Walton?”

  “Hush, child. Once upon a time Carl’s ancestors owned half of Portland and Vancouver, and most of Vashon Island. A thousand real estate deals later, they live like kings in Port Townsend and support about a dozen charities. Last year they donated a small island, thirty square miles, to the Audubon Society. They’re on the board of directors for half the arts organizations in Seattle. Preservation, conservation, giving back to the little people… Carl’s mom is singlehandedly trying to make up for the rape of old growth forest by supporting park ranger workshops for runaways.”

  “And his dad?”

  “He’s trying to make a man out of Carl. The paper was a gift, a business to practice on, like a Suzuki violin.”

  “A gift? It had a past life? Carl isn’t the founder?”

  “Correct. Boom City was the People’s Journal, back in the day, staffed by two reporters, a Socialist publisher, a columnist who also handled distribution by bicycle, and a chain-smoking Wobbly to do the cut and paste. They covered labor disputes and criticized the mayor for re-zoning and selling off parkland. They had a column on Duwamish news, a column on women’s rights, and a bi-monthly humor column written by a local curmudgeon called Cascadia Joe. They barely survived on subscriptions and donations. When the guy who held it all together died of a stroke Carl’s dad bought the paper from his widow.”