He sat down at her kitchen table, and she poured them both iced tea.
“Mac?” she said.
“I may have broken up with Kate tonight,” he said, which wasn’t what he’d planned to talk about to her at all.
“Tell me,” she said, and he did, ending with Angie’s summation of what he’d been looking for.
“She’s not wrong,” he admitted.
“No, she pretty much nailed it,” Janet agreed. “So, you going to convert?”
He shook his head. “All this time I thought they were being welcoming and accepting me as I am, and it turns out they were trying to convert me.”
Janet nodded.
“Jesus fuck,” he swore. And then he grinned. “And doesn’t that feel good to not watch my language anymore? You knew.”
She shrugged. “Well, yes,” she admitted. “But I don’t see it as anything wrong, per se. Impossible. But not wrong.”
He laughed. “OK, I can go with that,” he conceded. “But that’s not really why I came knocking on your door. I found out that the newsroom has as much gossip as the cop shop, and I’m out of the loop.”
She laughed. “God knows what Angie told you,” she said. “Gossip has been running pretty wild about you and your girlfriend. I think there’s been a betting pool going on whether you get married or go back to cussing out the receptionist when she gets a message wrong.”
Mac rolled his eyes. “So, when were you going to tell me there are people out to get you fired?”
Janet looked down at the table. “Someone is always out to get the editor,” she said vaguely.
“This internal or external?”
“Both?” Janet shrugged. “It’s fallout from the fall. The holy trinity,” Mac smiled at Janet’s nickname for the publisher, executive editor, and managing editor, “assure me I have their support and not to worry about it. It will blow over.”
“But?”
“And they’re probably right. At least from the outside pressure. I’m pretty low profile for them to keep it up for long,” she said.
“Keep up what?”
“Mostly calls to the publisher, a few to advertising, and a few to circulation,” she said. “Saying I should be fired because I’m not objective, that I can’t be trusted to be objective. That I’m an atheist, a feminist and probably a communist. You know, the usual.”
“Ad boycotts, subscription drops?”
She shook her head. “No, and that’s why no one thinks I should take it seriously.”
“But Angie thinks there’s something,” he persisted. “And she seemed bothered by it. Worried.”
Janet sighed, and ran her hand through her hair. It was her only tell for nerves, and Mac used it to tell how stressful the morning was on deadline. So, he paid attention to it now. Something was happening, and it bothered her.
“There are similar sentiments being expressed internally,” she admitted. “That I’m now too controversial to be seen as objective, that I tainted a promising Pulitzer Prize winning story with my own personal life and biases and that’s why we didn’t win. And there are some who think I’m an atheist, feminist, and probably a communist.”
Mac was silent. He had a good idea where that was coming from.
“And do you think you tainted the package about Pregnancy Care centers and their anti-abortion funders?” he asked. “Or do you see that there were other, better, entries this year, and that’s the way it goes? I thought the list of nominees and the winner were pretty strong; I was proud we were a finalist.”
She nodded. “And maybe we would have won, if I hadn’t been a part of it,” she said. “But really? My piece was small, and they could have dropped it entirely if they’d wanted. Personally, I think the mistake was when they decided to exclude your stories on the bombings of abortion clinics that followed. Maybe should have included my editorials even. It showed the story had impact. And I suspect that might be what really pissed off the investigative crowd. I wanted to break apart their precious packaged unit, and include some messy breaking news. Or so they saw it.”
She shrugged. “I’ll be OK, Mac,” she said, but she sounded tired. “Truly.”
He took that as his signal to leave. He patted her awkwardly on the shoulder, and he patted her dog Pulitzer who came out of the back room as he was leaving.
He didn’t like the sound of it, and he didn’t like how defeated Janet sounded. Time to develop some gossip sources in the newsroom, he thought. So where do reporters go after work? Were there news bars like there were cop bars? Of course, there were, he thought disgusted. Tomorrow. Tomorrow he would begin social networking, both online and “in real life.” And wouldn’t all that be so much fucking fun? He could hardly wait.
Chapter 6
(Wednesday, 5 p.m., Pioneer Square, Seattle)
Mac went to the gym and worked out, before he sought out the after-work crowd of the Seattle Examiner. Angie had said to come find her at the Zocalo: “happy hour margaritas!”
Sure enough, she was at a big table in the bar with a bunch of other people he vaguely recognized. Most he could even attach names to. There were platters of nachos and bottles of beer scattered on the table. And Angie was drinking a pink margarita. “What the hell is that?” he demanded as he pulled up a chair next to her, ignoring the protests of a guy from sports.
“Strawberry margarita,” she said happily.
He shook his head, and ordered an O’Doul’s and another platter of nachos. Working out made him hungry, and the appetizers looked like they’d been picked over. Maybe he needed to get there a bit earlier next time.
He let the conversation flow around him, told a funny story about a cop, a dispatcher and the dispatcher’s now angry wife.
“So, what did his wife do then?” someone asked.
Mac grinned. “Her wife,” he corrected. “Her wife.”
People laughed, and someone
