The Love Experiment Page 26

  He released her and she fled to her desk. She heard him tell people to settle down, go back to work while they still had jobs, and half-blind with emotion, she ran straight into Eunice.

  “You and Jack.” Eunice was steamed. Derelie did a grimace, nod combination. “Jackson Haley, who you said was boring and what else I can’t remember, but it wasn’t ‘I’m sucking face with the guy.’ You lied.”

  “I, ah, omitted.” A ten dollar word, felt so much less incriminating.

  “You sucked face with him.”

  There really was no dodging this. “I plan to continue sucking face with him.” Never mind other body parts.

  “Duh.” Eunice grabbed her shoulders. “That was so hot.”

  And now her life didn’t need to revolve around a secret, but that privilege had come at Jack’s expense. “I need to go.”

  “I need to do the love experiment,” Eunice said, which was so “I’ll have what’s she’s having,” they both laughed.

  Derelie looped her purse over her shoulder, picked up the dry cleaning and her gym bag, and made her way back to Jack. He was surrounded again, but only a slice of his attention was on the people around him. He held out a hand and then noted she had no easy way to take it. She was about to give him the gym bag so they each had a spare hand, but he bent and grasped her under her knees and to great shouts of surprise, he lifted her.

  She wanted to hide her face in his neck like Debra Winger in her flannel shirt did to Richard Gere in his dress whites, and at the same time she wished she had her cell ready to record this. Mom would never believe it. Bags and baggage in her lap, arms around Jack’s neck, she tuned the stares out as he carried her across the office, accepted his suit coat dumped in her lap by Annie and smiled at Spinoza, who held an elevator for them.

  “Way to go,” Spin said, which made her laugh. He’d echoed a line from the movie. “Expecting you at Donovan’s. Kelly has opened a tab in Madden’s name.”

  “We’ll be there,” Jack said.

  Spin reached inside and pressed the ground floor button and the doors closed.

  “You can put me down.” It was peak elevator use time.

  “I could.” But Jack made no attempt to do it, and when the doors opened two floors later to admit people he stared them down and they stayed right where they were. The second time it stopped he said, “Next car,” and Derelie was so choked up she had to do a Debra Winger and bury her face in his neck where his tense breathing was more apparent.

  At street level, he did put her and her baggage down in a remote corner of the foyer where they could be undisturbed by the stream of people leaving the building. Derelie watched Jack try to keep it together by staying focused. He answered a call and spoke sparingly, another and thanked whoever it was for their concern. To a third he said, “I’m unemployed, like a lot of reporters. I have zero income, rent to make and a cat to feed.” He let the next call go with the words “My father. Proof bad news travels fast. He can wait” and then he turned his ringer off.

  “When did you know?” The thought that he’d known and kept this from her was a live fuse of fear sparking through her.

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m out.”

  She wanted to come at that question again, but now was not the time.

  He turned his screen so she could see his social feed. “The official word is my skillset is not aligned with the Courier’s strategy going forward. Fucking corporate speak.”

  The next message that followed was Spin’s:

  Jackson Haley has been martyred for the crime of journalism.

  That got a wry smile out of Jack, and they watched as a dozen more messages like that appeared. Meanwhile, his cell was blowing up, little envelopes and message counts multiplying on his screen: emails, texts, calls.

  He closed his eyes, a hand to his forehead. “I have no idea how to respond.”

  He refreshed his feed and another series of messages appeared.

  Jackson Haley’s firing heralds dying days of serious journalism.

  Who defends our city now? RIP Jack Haley’s career.

  Courier without Jackson Haley. Courier without truth in reporting.

  Please won’t somebody give Jack Haley a new job.

  Jack Haley out. Journalisms death knell.

  Courier dumps Jackson Haley to become more digitally focused.

  Bob Bix would still be ripping off Americans without Jackson Haley. What now?

  It was an outpouring of shock, anger and grief. Derelie recognized the social handles of colleagues, who were risking Phil’s wrath by posting about their discontent. Annie tweeted:

  Vale investigative reporting. No one did it like Jackson Haley.

  Derelie touched Jack’s arm. “Maybe you don’t have to say anything.”

  He looked stunned as his cell continued to light up, not that it was all supportive. Amongst the messages of distress there were the victory cries.

  Good decision by the Courier to exit scaremonger Jackson Haley.

  The Courier steps up. No more of Haley’s lies.

  Doomsday reporter Haley out. City sighs with relief.

  Jackson Haley on the scrapheap. Toss out the junk.

  Haley is a prick. Great decision to shut him down.

  To this last one Spin replied, May you never feel the prick of injustice. You’re on your own now.

  Jack shook his head, turned the phone off and slipped it in his pocket. “I never wanted to be the story.” He reached for her and she went willingly into his arms. She didn’t know if he simply wanted to go home or to join the others at Donovan’s. She didn’t know how best to support him except to stand by him. In the pocket of her jacket, her own cell had been vibrating like crazy, receiving some of the same feeds.

  “What do you want to do now?”

  “Get very drunk.” He tipped her chin up. “Is that okay with you?”

  It was better than him going to church and chasing a black eye or worse.

  “I was going to take you to dinner tonight to celebrate.” He dropped his arms from around her and heaved a breath. “Fuck.” And that answered the question. He didn’t know about this until today.

  “We’ve got plenty of time for that.” She opened her mouth to say more, but he was staring off into the distance, lost. She tugged his arm. “It’s going to be okay, Jack. You’ll get another job.” Of course he would—he probably had offers already in his messages. This was awful, but nothing was going to keep Jack down. “Come on, let’s get you drunk.”

  He gave a grunt of assent, and together they went out to the sidewalk and headed toward the bar. They got one block and a man in dark suit dodged in front of them. “Jackson Haley, I just heard. I’m appalled. I’d like to help.” He handed Jack a card, said, “Call me,” and walked on.

  Jack stared at the card, an expression of disbelief. “Who was that?” she asked.

  He handed her the card. “Ambulance chaser.”

  So not someone he knew, not a job offer. Kingston, Biddle, Alfredo and Low, Labor and Employment Law. “A lawyer came up to you on the street and handed you his card because he thinks he can help you.”

  “He can’t.” Jack took the card out of her hand, crushed it and pitched it toward a trashcan. It missed and the wave of passing footsteps blew it out onto the road, where a bus with his face on it ran over it.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said.

  The bus sat there in traffic and Derelie willed it to move, to evaporate, to be taken by aliens, anything but sit there rumbling, mocking them. It was unfathomably hurtful that Jack would go from savior to needing to be saved in the space of a day. That this morning the Courier wanted his face everywhere and tonight they had no role for him to play.

  She pressed her face into his arm. “I’m so sorry this is happening to you
.”

  He looked at the bus long and hard while it spewed diesel fumes and half the city pushed around them. “I can be fucking grateful there’ll be no more of that.”

  They didn’t walk on till the bus passed, till Jack smoked a cigarette, and by the time they got to Donovan’s Bar it was jammed with Courier employees who let up a rowdy cheer when they came in. The whole editorial team was here. So was Phil, sitting awkwardly alone at the bar. Someone put a drink in Jack’s hand. Annie had packed Jack’s desk and brought the contents in a box and the irony of that, in the same week as Bix and his sad box had been all over the Courier’s pages, made Derelie want to take the contents of Jack’s desk and shove them one by one up Phil’s ass. She hoped there was a really enormous stapler in that damn box.

  Monday morning she’d sit in an editorial meeting with Phil and there’d be no Jack sitting opposite, studiously ignoring her. There’d be no Jack to flirt with as the meeting ended or pass in corridors, hands grazing, eyes greedy and glancing. There’d be no Jack to play wait five and follow with as she arrived at work, and no one to check in with about what time she was leaving for the night. There’d be no Jack, full stop, in her work life and there was no way not to be deeply saddened by that, or by what that meant for the profession she’d chosen as her own, for the paper she’d moved across the state to work for.

  She stood with Jack while Spin jumped on a chair and led a rousing toast.

  “This week two titans of the city lost their jobs. One was a crook, a thief and a weasel. His name was Bob Bix, and our own Jack Haley brought him down. The other was a good guy, the best, a journalist and a hero.” There was a huge cheer, and Derelie tucked herself under Jack’s arm. Let everyone see what he meant to her on the night where the celebration was so bittersweet.

  “Bix will go to prison. Jack will go on to defend the city for someone who appreciates what he does.” Another cheer. “This is a sad day for the Courier, for journalism. I might only be a sports writer—” that got a chuckle “—and robots are already taking over parts of my job, but I can’t help thinking this is a sad day for the whole city. Tomorrow, people are less protected from fraud, corruption, and here’s a ten dollar word for you, malfeasance—it means doing wrong, you knuckleheads—than they were today.” Spin raised his glass and the room followed. “To Jackson Haley, the Heartbeat of the City.”

  Jack dropped his chin, closed his eyes as the response rang out. His body was taut. Derelie could feel muscles flexing and shifting though he was standing still, not something the one drink he’d had helped.

  “I have to say something,” he said, and pulled away, going to the chair Spin stood on and replacing him.

  It took a while for the applause and shouts of Jack’s name to die down before he could speak. “It’s true what they say, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. Spin might only write about athletes who’ve gotten their jockstraps in a twist, but he’s right—journalism is changing; the rules, the way it’s consumed, how we produce it. Anyone with a social feed can break a story. Facts are less important than emotion, and the news that’s cheap to serve up is more entertaining than it is enlightening.”

  Someone heckled, “You won’t believe how we used to write the news,” aping a headline style that was popular online. There was laughter, but it wasn’t a happy sound.

  Jack went on. “We’ve entered the clickbait age and long-form, thought-provoking journalism is an endangered species. We’re saying too long, didn’t read. That made me a dinosaur even before today, but like the velociraptor, I didn’t see it coming.”

  “Meteor takes out journalism, live at five!” another wit shouted. That got a hearty laugh, but it was black humor.

  “I’m out, but you all have a job to do. Bring the city its news in the best, most comprehensive and engaging way you can. I may be off the payroll, but I’m not off the clock.” He paused and the room held its breath. “I lost my job, but I won the love of a great journalist and wonderful woman.”

  He tipped his chin up to look for her in the crowd and smiled at the hoots and cheers. If he’d glimpsed her face he’d have seen it glistening with the tears she’d wanted to shed earlier. I love you, Jack Haley, in your darkest hour, in the moment your dream died and your worst fear came true, I love you all the more.

  “I’ll be reading you.” Jack didn’t have a glass, but one was passed to him and he raised it. “To writing the news.”

  There was a chorus of “To writing the news” as people bent their elbows to drink.

  “Hear, Hear.”

  “To the news.”

  She wiped her face and looked around. She wasn’t the only one to feel this moment as something bigger than what’d happened to Jack, but she was the only one who’d live closely with its consequences both at work and at home.

  Before she could make her way to Jack, Eunice appeared at her side. “You need to check your cell.”

  “I saw some of the chatter on Jack’s.”

  “You need to see this.” Eunice shoved her own cell in front of Derelie’s face and there it was, her An Officer and a Gentleman moment. Jack sweeping her off her feet in one slick move and stalking across the newsroom, as people scrambled to get out of his way or stood back applauding. She looked surprised and delighted, Jack looked strong and fierce; together they looked like true romance and whoever made this had captioned it Swoon.

  “Oh my God.” Yes, she knew everyone had seen this go down, it was really no surprise to learn there was video and that it was well shot, but it was wild to see it in replay, to know she could have her own copy to keep.

  “That’s not the OMG part.” Eunice took her cell back and switched apps, turned the screen so Derelie could see. “You’re trending.”

  “Oh.”

  “You and Jack are a meme.”

  “My.”

  “You made the evening TV news.”

  “God.”

  “Nine months from now Derelie will be the most popular baby name for girls.”

  “No!”

  Eunice laughed. “Your five minutes of fame have arrived.”

  Her face was on fire. “My mom will have seen this.” Everyone back home would be talking about it.

  “That’s what you’re worried about?”

  “Apart from Jack—” and how drunk he might get tonight and how angry he might be tomorrow “—what should I be worried about?”

  “What our editor-in-chief wants to do with it.”

  Now her issue was less about getting to Jack than getting to Phil. She thanked Eunice and made her way to the bar where she’d last seen Phil. He was still there, beer in front of him, drinking with his back to a room full of people who worked for him and didn’t want to acknowledge him. It had to have taken courage to show up. She slipped onto the stool beside him. This was where she and Jack had first tried to get to know each other, two bar stools, a questionnaire. Nothing about that awkward, stilted exchange, where she’d almost kneed him in the manhood, would’ve lead her to believe they’d be a viral feel-good news story now.

  Phil glanced at her when she sat down. “You did get the story.” Not the way anyone had envisaged. She shrugged and he laughed into his beer. “A fucking love experiment and it worked.”

  She needed to say what she came over here for. “You can’t use the video.”

  “Two of the Courier’s employees, filmed on the paper’s premises. I told you to get visuals. I think I can use it.”

  “Jack wasn’t a Courier employee when it was filmed and I don’t give my permission.” It wasn’t a strong argument. It would take more effort than she knew how to muster to remove that footage from the internet. It was public property now, but it wasn’t the way Jack would want to be remembered.

  Phil checked her over. “Tougher than you look, Honeywell.”

 
“What exactly is tough meant to look like?” Like Jack’s source who’d acted to right a wrong, despite being afraid, like Phil’s booming porch dog bark, like Jack standing on a chair trying to help others make sense of what had happened to him. Surely tough came in a variety pack to account for all the ways life could beat you down and force you to get back up again. Sick, disadvantaged, disabled, minority, poor. Sometimes tough was fighting for justice, sometimes it was trying to live a bigger life, sometimes it was getting out of bed in the morning.

  “Right now it looks like my most junior section editor ready to fight me for what she believes in.”

  She’d take that.

  “We won’t run the tape, but I still want the story.”

  “I can’t write it without Jack.” And Jack’s last story for the Courier wasn’t going to be something he never wanted to do.

  “Sure you can, you’re tough. You’ll find a way.” Her way would be to write the story with Artie Chan like they’d agreed and then sell it to Phil as his only option and double-dare him to fire her for it.

  “Why, Phil?” He knew she wasn’t asking why he wanted the story.

  “The work Jack does is complex, takes time, and it’s bitterly contested by the people accused. The Courier doesn’t have the budget for that anymore. There are only a handful of media companies that do. This wasn’t personal, and I agree with Jack and Spin and everyone here, it’s a sad day for journalism. And the timing fucking sucked. Just don’t you go telling anyone I said that.”

  Courageous of him to admit that. “I kinda hate you right now.” And kind of respected him too.

  Phil turned back to face the bottles lining the bar. “I kinda hate me too.”

  But the man she loved was standing behind her frowning. She swiveled her stool and he put a hand to her shoulder and stopped her knees with his thigh. Had someone shown him the video?

  He bent so he could whisper in her ear. “Is Madden bothering you?”

  She brought her hand to his face. “Not anymore.”

  “I’m sorry about the video. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

  She stood and he was so close she was pressed against him. “I’m not.” He shook his head. She drew a heart over his heart and ran an arrow thought it. “Jack loves Derelie.” And he’d declared it for all to see.