Dave had apparently been introduced at a lunch meeting on Friday, two days ago, and offered his thoughts on the future of digital media, lamenting the magazine’s economic prospects, using investor jargon and social network data. Then he began criticizing editing choices from the past few months, including a recent cover story on Bobby Jindal’s faith that he found “tough sledding.” He criticized other sections of the magazine, and praised publications that had successfully moved into the digital age with lists and videos and hot takes. According to Adam, Dave didn’t say anything positive about the deeply reported, long-format journalism that had made the magazine necessary reading for U.S. presidents since Millard Fillmore and instead mentioned how much money the publication was losing every year. This bit of hand-wringing from Adam, more than anything else, struck me as worrisome. Adam said he knew that rumors were flying and people were panicking, but he told me not to take too seriously anything I read. He did concede that there would be changes and closed the note by asking me to call him at home.
On Saturday afternoon he’d written again—while I’d been playing softball, getting whacked on narcotics, and licking Amy’s coochie—to say that the Chinese factory story had been killed. “You’ve probably already heard,” he wrote, but the number of print issues would likely be reduced from twelve to maybe eight. Or six. Or maybe none. Although there would be an increase in “Web content.” A few of the monthly contracts had been canceled, but not mine, not yet anyway, “And I won’t let them cancel yours,” he wrote. “That’s how important you are to the magazine.” I should call him at the office, or on his cell anytime.
His third email had been sent late Saturday night. He explained that Laura had quit, although she’d already been fired, but she didn’t know that until she read it later on an industry blog. Apparently, surveillance cameras around the office had been vandalized, and several other people at the magazine had quit or been fired, and maybe those firings had been for the best, but for now the bloodshed was over. There were more assurances, uncharacteristically ungrammatical ones that even on a good day Adam would never be in a position to make. “I’m not going anywhere, I’ll die at my desk, and so will you.”
A last email had come in around nine this morning. “I’ve been lucky to work at an institution that remained true to its heritage and principles,” he wrote, sounding tired, or like a kidnapping victim being forced to give his own eulogy. He said he didn’t know what the future would bring.
I combed the Web for stories about the magazine’s implosion and found rants, paeans, and deep outrage from an endless supply of stuck-up former staffers who’d gone on to important careers in journalism and publishing, as well as heartwarming recollections of the good old days. I wondered if I’d get my next check, if it would be my last, and figured I was fortunate to be away from home, where no one would notice my chattering teeth and hollow-eyed, thousand-yard stare. The whole thing felt absurd, unbearably contrived, and way too real.
I’d gotten lazy and cocky, ignored phone calls and emails from other art directors; I’d shunned friends at other magazines, ad agencies, and design houses. I had nothing on the horizon, hadn’t attended an industry party or award ceremony or bothered to respond to invitations to join a panel or judge a contest since Kaya’s premature arrival. It would take weeks or months of begging, with backbreaking charm and jolly banter, to get the attention of anyone in a position to hire me, and how long after that to scrape together an assignment—at the given rate, no leverage—and 90 or 120 days after that to get paid. We were about to be broke like I hadn’t been broke since I’d quit advertising. Any unforeseen expense would blitz my credit card and start a full-scale war at home. I started to hyperventilate, and began to see sparks in the air. I saw myself wearing the wool liner from an old army coat, wheeling a milk crate across a catering hall in a luggage caddy, setting up an easel to do caricatures at a bar mitzvah.
I sat there flipping mindlessly around different news sites, keeping my brain in neutral, trying to process what had just happened, maybe hoping to find a funny animal video to distract me, when a headline caught my eye. For only the second time in its history, a major book prize had named a cartoonist as a finalist for its highest award. For a moment, I wondered whether it was me. But the accompanying photo of Angel Solito, who I’d eaten breakfast with, cleared up any confusion about why people had been congratulating him. In the photo he stood in a gray T-shirt, arms crossed, with a defiant look. I logged off the computer and pushed back the chair, chuckling to myself, although the sound began lower, deeper, shivering, rattling. I had to get back to class.
Climbing the stairs two at a time, I felt a wild energy, and strode into the room, infused with a saintly desperation to enlighten and instruct. I knelt beside Vishnu and did the pen-nib demo he’d requested after our first class, pointing out the parts of the pen, the barrel of the nib, where the ink was held, demonstrating to him how to grasp and hold the nib, moving quickly, showing off, controlling the line, pulling it toward me, turning my arm, rotating the paper.
“As a general rule of thumb,” I said, in a loud, sharp, patronizing tone, “the pen can only move in so many directions.” As I raised the pen, he gave me a worried look. I thought of driving it through his eyeball, into his brain. “And now it is time for me to re-dip.” On his desk sat a cup of ink, a murky cup of ink wash, a stack of empty coffee cups, and a pile of inky blotting tissues from his hours of failed experimentation. I went on, possibly screaming, about the viscosity of various inks. There was also a bag from the bagel place, crumbs in his lap and all over his shirt. “Now you do it,” I said. A strange chill came over me. My vision became blurry, clouded with auras. Maybe this was a dream and we were all already dead.
I went around the room, offering harried technical instruction and hollow, condescending compliments and encouragement, moving on when I felt my aggression spiking. “Nice try.” “Staircases are tricky.” “That looks wrong. Start over.”
On the kitchen table in my apartment I found a note. “My arm is killing me,” Amy wrote. “I’m going into town for more drugs.” Her handwriting looked like the goofy scrawl of a child, since her good hand was purple and immobilized. “P.S. Where is my car key? I have to go.” Good. I wanted her to go, get as far away from here as possible. We’d had our fun, although it was nothing really, and fucking her was killing me. “I’m going to New Hampshire to get Lily, then I’m heading home to deal with Mike.” The paper was creased from her effort and her letters had smudged in the struggle to keep pace with her thoughts. “I’ve had it with his attacks and blame and projections.” Maybe she was using her broken hand. I couldn’t tell. “I am working on myself. I’m trying to be better. If I dropped dead tomorrow he’d trip over my carcass and not notice, although he is generous to others.” Then the note broke up into random upper-and lowercase block print. “He is rude to me on a daily basis.” A grapefruit I’d brought from home had been demolished, and she’d left its pits and guts on the kitchen counter.