After work, Mac hit the gym for an hour, and then ended up at Anchors for happy hour with Steve’s team. They talked sports mostly, he found, which was fine, and about beers which he just listened to, bemused, because when he had been a drinker, beer was pretty much a half-dozen brands, and a Heineken was thought to be avant-garde. And the hamburger was still good.
Mike waited until they were walking out to bring up his research. “So, preliminary results?” he said, sounding troubled. “There’s been a huge up-tick in mentions of guns in the civil records, and it’s growing almost exponentially. I’ve never seen anything like it, Mac. I need to re-run the data, to make sure I didn’t do something wrong in the search. And geographically? I did it per capita, but the hot spots are in Seattle suburbs stretching north to Bellingham. Not what I would have expected. Grant you, gun collectors in rural areas might not be considered note-worthy in these kinds of proceedings, but...,” he trailed off. Mike shook his head. “It worries me. I’d like to do a sampling from five years ago for comparison. You OK with that?”
“Sure,” Mac said, wondering why Mike even asked. Maybe initiative isn’t rewarded over in Special Projects.
“What do you want me to do with all this data?”
“Build an infographic to accompany my story?” Mac suggested. “Put in whatever you think is significant.”
Mike tipped his head to the side and looked at Mac quizzically. “Janet give you that kind of freedom?”
“Freedom?”
“Yeah, I’d have to present all this data to Steve, and we’d review it as a group. Steve would decide what should be the most prominent finding, and I’d build the information according to his directions. And then a graphic designer would be brought in to do the packaging.”
Mac shrugged. “We don’t usually have that kind of time line,” he pointed out. “I’d tell Janet I had some numbers, and I was going to graphic design to get them to do a graph or chart or map or whatever. And when I had it, I’d tell her what the dimensions were. Then she’d review it when she edited my story. Of course, usually those kinds of graphics are much simpler. A locator map, or the crime stats for last month. But you’re the expert on the numbers you’re finding. Why would I dictate what you should do with them?”
Mike looked conflicted for a moment, and then he sighed. “How much do you know about the newsroom politics happening right now?”
“Not enough,” Mac said. “What’s going on that’s got you bothered?”
“Rumor has it that there are going to be major cuts in this budget — July 1. The probability is that the Special Projects unit will be eliminated, and we’ll be merged into the general newsroom. I’m not as opposed to that as I was on Monday. Working with you on a beat story makes me see why Janet thinks that’s how it always should be: that special projects should come out of the beats and not be completely separate. But the big issue is who would run the combined newsroom — Janet or Steve?”
“Two very different styles of management,” Mac said. Shit, he thought.
“Yeah,” Mike agreed, and he headed away from Mac toward his own car. “Top down, or bottom up. You wouldn’t be allowed this kind of autonomy if Steve Whitaker is the news editor.”
Mac just nodded, and got into his car. He wouldn’t be in Steve Whitaker’s newsroom, he thought. Either by his choice or by Steve’s, he’d be gone in a month. Just how deep were those cuts? And who would know? Someone outside the editorial division would be best to ask. Advertising? Circulation?
He put that on the back burner, and thought about where he needed to go next — a painted lady Victorian in the U District — and the talk he dreaded to have with Kate Fairchild.
He sent her a text inviting her for a walk as he took the exit to the U district, and then he focused on his driving. Driving through the U District was worse than a military defensive driving test. Pedestrians ignored sidewalks, crosswalks and even traffic lights. Cars made left hand turns from the right lane, or U-turns on yellow lights. There was music blaring from a house party, and down the street, a group of young men were hanging out a window and yelling at the young women walking down the sidewalk. Mac couldn’t tell if the young women liked the attention or hated it. He doubted the men could either.
He parked in front of the old Victorian Kate and her mother ran as a boarding house for Christian college students, most of whom came from rural small towns and found Seattle overwhelming. Kate was now a teacher herself at 26 and working on her master’s in biology — which seemed odd for a woman who didn’t believe in evolution, Mac thought yet again.
She came out the door with a light jacket on and smiled at him. He smiled back, took her arm, and tucked her up against him.
“You’re ending things, aren’t you?” she said when they’d walked a block or so without comment.
“Yes,” he said, grateful to her for making it easy. “Yes, because I will never be able to give you the kind of home you want. I want a home, too. But I can’t give up who I am and my relatives and friends to fit into your world, Kate. I won’t ever believe what you believe.
