“No one that’s credible.”
“This,” she said, picking up the paper and shaking it in my face, “is what I wrote, not that tripe they printed.”
Confusion.
“You’re saying the article that was printed wasn’t what you wrote?” I shoot back, disbelieving, wanting to disbelieve. “So … who wrote it?”
Heather pushes back from the table and studies me. “I explained all that in the very long phone message I left on your machine after the article came out,” she says.
“Phone message … yeah—”
“You deleted it without listening; Diane told me.”
“I was mad.”
“You were stupid.”
I’m speechless a moment, then my fingers reach out for the papers, and I pull them close, like a drowning man hugging a life preserver. “So who did write the article, if it wasn’t you?”
“My no-talent editor. She stole my notes and hijacked my story. I quit the next day.” She pushes back from the table and stands.
“Where are you going?”
“The ladies’ room to check my lipstick.” She smiles. “You don’t need me staring at you while you read, do you?” Without waiting for a reply, she spins and walks briskly down the aisle, dragging my captive eyes with her. I shake it off quickly and turn my attention to the worn pages of the article—and devour it. It’s good, really good, the whole piece, and nothing like the published version.
Guilt washes over me; I should have known. I’ve read much of Heather’s work, and the published piece lacked the luster and compelling prose, it lacked the picture-perfect detail and the heart, delivering instead the hurried, banal, and sophomoric sentences and paragraphs of a mediocre reporter on a deadline.
I’m a fool.
Before we agreed to let Heather embed with the team, we’d done our research. Jimmy was impressed with her interview style and the way she could ferret out the truth—we didn’t find out until later that she could read body language like others read poetry.
For my part, I set out to read two or three of the articles from her blog—to get a feel for her writing ability—and ended up devouring everything I could find: hundreds of blog pages, articles from her college newspaper, even several short stories, one of which won the H. E. Francis Short Story Award.
She’s a natural; Jimmy and I both recognized it and agreed that if the STU was going to get some media attention, as the director intended, we wanted Heather to write it.
I look up just as Heather turns down the aisle toward me. She’s walking slowly, gracefully, and I have a hard time taking my eyes off her. I glance at the menus standing upright on the inside end of the table and wonder aloud if they offer crow as an entrée.
I may need a double serving.
More importantly, my excuse for not seeing Heather is gone, and my heart isn’t eager to find a replacement. Why not just tell her? I think as she approaches the table. What harm could come from four people knowing my secret instead of just three?
I give her a conquered smile when she takes her seat, and say, “I owe you an apology. I should have known.”
“You should have,” she jabs back playfully.
I hesitate. What harm could it do?
“I have something to tell you; a confession, I suppose.” My chair is suddenly uncomfortable and I fidget forward, then back again, but there’s no good position. “I have this…” Secret. Just say it! “I have this problem with commitment.” Coward. “It’s because of the job,” I add quickly.
Heather leans forward and just smiles. “Who would have guessed?” she says in the most serious of tones, giving her head a little shake of concern.
Tell her; it’s not too late.
TELL HER!
I ignore my screaming inner voice and push it back into the id where it belongs. Right now I don’t know if it’s a foolish decision or a wise one; only time will tell. Time is an impartial judge.
We sit and stare at each other in silence; not the uncomfortable silence of strangers but the silence of kindred spirits reunited. The world continues on and passes by outside the window, unnoticed and unmissed for the moment.
“What now?” I say at length.
Heather picks up her glass and swirls the ice. “I’d say you owe me a walk along the water,” she replies.
Her grin is contagious.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
June 26, 9:37 A.M.
“I’ve told you this before.”
“I know, I just want to hear it again—it’s interesting,” Jimmy says.
I sigh, not impatiently, just in resignation. Betsy is at a cruising altitude of forty-one thousand feet, or “flight level four one zero,” as Les and Marty would say. Her nose is pointed toward Redding, where a serial killer awaits.
We still have an hour before we start our descent, so Jimmy and I kill time the way we always do; it’s routine … ritual. We call it Plane Talk; not plain, as in normal or usual, but plane, as in airplane. Plane Talk is reserved for Betsy, for those times when we’re just trying to get through the hours that occupy the space between airports, between home and the job. Plane Talk includes everything under the sun but usually tends toward the more bizarre or unusual.
Kopi Luwak is a good example.
It’s a type of coffee.
Jimmy calls it monkey-butt coffee. It’s a rare gourmet variety from Indonesia made from beans that have allegedly passed through the digestive system of a monkey. I say allegedly because, in truth, it’s not a monkey, but a catlike creature called the palm civet that digests the meat around the beans and then excretes the beans whole—minus dung.
They say it’s the best coffee in the world.
I’ve never tried it.
Then again, I’ve never licked the back of a Colorado River toad, either. The psychoactive toads and the associated rumors of people licking them to get high was another subject of our midflight conversations.