She could do some producing or work on the assignment desk. She had good story ideas, lots of them. This was a decision about how she was going to live, how it could all be better. She exhaled deeply. She felt wonderful with this new idea. Assignment editor. Why not? They were the ones who really made the news. They were the ones who picked out the stories to be covered.
Two cars were coming at her, side by side. She caught her breath, waiting for the car in her lane to make the pass or to pull back fast. At the last second, when there seemed to be no chance he could do it, he made the pass and as he flew by she saw him, a wild, death’s-head-grinning kid of a driver.
Tomorrow she would talk to Brown, to Carter. She would tell them her plan, tell them what she wanted to do. She wanted a career in television but no more reporting, not now, at least. Ellen was right. No wonder she was depressed. It was a depressing job.
Two cars sat crumpled and glass-strewn at the intersection that marked the end of the desert and the beginning of the city. An ambulance waited, doors open. A group of men had gathered. She could not see what was in the middle of their small circle. The cop in khaki and mirrored sunglasses impatiently waved her on.
All right, maybe in six months she could do a little reporting to keep her hand in. But right now, it wasn’t good for her. She’d forget that vision she had of sitting at a typewriter, smoking a cigarette. That’s what Ellen looked like, sitting in her cubicle, her sunglasses pushed on top of her head and her fingers flying across the keys, punching at the letters. She could be that later or never. Now, she needed a plan. Now, she had one.
The traffic rushed by. In her side mirror she could see the angry face of the man tailgating her in his black Mercedes. Suddenly he swung out, passed and pulled in front of her sharply as though shaking his fist in her face.
Tomorrow would be different. For the first time she knew that. Tomorrow was, what did they say, the first day of the rest of your life. And, it was, it really was. Gosh, she told herself, she was happy.
43
“Ain’t no flies on me,” he said out loud as he turned on the engine. “No flies on this black boy.”
He chuckled. Close to dawn and he was still running hard. His bags were in the back and his tapes on the seat next to him. He patted them. It took him only a few hours of editing and dubbing after the six o’clock news.
He did it fast, without thinking. He opened with spot news followed with a hard news package, sports footage, and a feature piece with some tricky editing. He closed with two of the medical stories he did with Ferguson along with a clip from the kidney transplant. The tape ran less than fifteen minutes.
A few people passed by the editing booth as he worked. He could see their shadows move to the small window, stop and move on. Steve was there, working late or coming in after a few beers to find some company. He knocked before opening the door.
“Late story?” he asked.
“Working on my escape tape.”
“Gotcha,” Steve said and closed the door.
He finished by midnight and went back to the apartment to pack his two suitcases. That’s what he came to town with, two suitcases, and that’s what he had now, and the stereo. He wrapped it carefully in his electric blanket and buffered it with his pillows. The whole muffled pile rested on the floor behind the front seat. The speakers went in the trunk separated by the suitcases.
He patted the tapes again, five tapes. He gave a laugh. That’s all he had after more than a year of humping that camera all over the desert, up and down mountains, in and out of vans. That’s all he had for all the heat and the sweat and the fifty-hour weeks and George mouthing off at him, telling him where to go and how to get there and expecting four stories a day and one at two o’clock in the morning, some house fire nobody but nobody cared about.
The rent was paid until the first. He had only used the oven a few times, not enough to eat into his cleaning deposit. He put a letter through the slot in the manager’s door to let him know he was leaving and would call in a week.
So what if they decided to screw him out of the deposit? A couple of hundred bucks, he’d eat it. It was worth a couple of hundred to get out of this town. Like he said, he was going to New York and he would sit in that NBC office until they gave him a job. If they wanted references, they could call Steve and Ferguson, even George. Not Brown. Brown would screw him. He knew that. Brown would screw him good.
He thought about calling Debbie or going by her apartment but stopped himself. He was done with that.
He’d call them from New York and he’d say, “Well, here I am here working in the big time. How’s it down there? A hundred and ten? My oh my.”
He laughed.
The Buick started with a hum. What he needed was a map, a big one. He knew he had to head north until he saw the signs for Albuquerque then hang a right. That was all he needed to know for the next few hours.
He pulled out of the parking lot. He tightened the muscles in his shoulders, pushed them back, sat up straight as he hit the street.
He gritted his teeth. In thirty
