“What do you care about Congressman Farrell, anyway?” I asked. “He’s not exactly Britney Spears.”
“Politicians are big game this season. That ‘wide-stance’ senator in Idaho, trolling for gay sex in the bathroom, moved a bunch of copy, so now we’re doing a big exposé on shady politicians from all over, and your congressman is a sidebar. You know, your mother wasn’t the first or the last. Apparently he was getting it on with his campaign manager, too, and she’s talking to us. He dumped her when she started asking about a ring. Women scorned—half our sources.”
“Did you get a quote from Cora, too?”
“No. I called, but she just cussed me out. Your mom’s mean.”
Understatement, but I tried again. “If it’s just a sidebar, then why print it at all?”
“Because it’s the perfect sidebar for the news cycle, and sometimes perfect is just as good as big.” A few beats. “Okay, that’s not exactly true. Big is still better than perfect. So unless you’ve got something big I can swap out . . .” He trailed off to let me pick up what he was putting down.
But I had no idea what he was talking about. “Big like what?” I asked.
“Well, I heard a rumor that you were living with Mike Barker now and that his mother just fired his entire team—only thing is, Mike’s mother is dead. And the last time I talked to you, you were all tore up over James Farrell.”
Wow. So I guess this is where he had been going with this from the get-go. Threaten to publish the Congressman Farrell story, and then offer to kill it in exchange for another Mike Barker leak.
“So you’re saying that you won’t publish the Congressman Farrell story if I source another Mike Barker story?”
Russell let a few seconds of premeditated silence pass. Then came back with “Yeah, I guess I could do that. If the Mike Barker story is big enough, I can kill the other thing—I mean, since we go so far back and all.”
The thing was, I had caught Mike trying to step over my sleeping body two nights ago. When I woke up and caught him, he had begged me to let him go to the Hustler Casino, which was only a half-hour drive at that time of night.
“I just need a game. I just need to get my head straight—”
I slapped him hard across the face, like I was Cora. “If you have to gamble every time you get to feeling a little bad, then you’re not ever going to get your shit back.”
He cupped his cheek and pushed past me. “Bitch, don’t you ever hit me again.”
“Yes, Mike,” I said. “Get angry. Call me names. I don’t care. That’s healthier than walking out that door.”
He kept on going until I yelled, “I won’t be here when you get back. Even if you win tonight you’ll lose the only person who truly cares whether you live or die right now.”
Mike stopped. Seconds ticked by as he just stood there at the top of the stairs. Then he turned around and headed back to his room. “Don’t hit me again,” he warned, glaring as he passed by me.
“I’ll definitely hit you again. I’ll do whatever it takes,” I said.
He slammed the door behind him.
Really close call. And a smear article now would send him right over the edge.
But James was already so mad at me. What would he think of me after an article came out with Russell’s byline? He wasn’t a stickler for details, as we all know by now, but I was more than sure that Veronica would point out to him that this was same guy who had broken the Corey Mays, Mike Barker, and Erica London stories under my direction. She was real helpful like that.
Well, dang. Rock and a hard place didn’t even half describe this situation.
Russell and I would no longer be friends after this. I knew that. And I think he did, too.
But this wasn’t the Russell I used to know, anyway. He was no longer the kind, pudgy waiter with screenwriter dreams and a penchant for alternative bands that I had never heard of. That Russell had been replaced by a gossip writer who would do anything to get the story.