“Stop looking at the base of my neck.” She looked off into a far corner of the newsroom. “You know, I’m not sure this is working.”
“What? Our marriage?”
“No, you idiot. Our marriage is fine. You working for me, that’s the problem. Reporting to me. I hate it.”
“Do you find me a difficult employee? Because, if you’re considering giving me a poor performance review, I think we might be able to come to some sort of an arrangement.” I gave her my best “come hither” look.
“Oh, shut up,” she said.
“I have to admit, though, there are times when it is a bit distracting. For example, when I’m talking to anyone else in the newsroom, I’m not thinking about what color underwear they might be wearing.”
“Not even Sylvia, in sports?”
I paused, perhaps for too long. Sylvia, who keyed in late-night scores, possessed an amazing superstructure. “No,” I said. “Not even Sylvia.”
“Then you’re the only one,” Sarah said. “I swear, those have to be implants. I have two things to say to you. One, this kind of talk is the kind of thing that could get you in trouble with the paper’s sexual harassment police. And two, what color underwear do you think I’m wearing now?”
I studied her blouse. It was dark blue. That made it tough. Plus, Sarah was standing with her arms crossed.
“I’m betting the black one, with the clasp in the front,” I said.
Sarah mulled my answer.
“So, am I right?”
“You’ll never know,” she said. She started to walk away, then turned on her heel. “I nearly forgot to ask. What happened at the auction?”
I steeled myself. “We have a new car.”
Sarah looked wary, afraid to ask. “How much?”
“It’s perfect,” I said. “Not only that, it’s something we can be proud to own.”
Sarah’s eyebrows went up. “Oh my God. You went and bought a Beemer.”
“No no, not that kind of proud. That’s showy. I’m talking proud in a civic-minded kind of way.”
Sarah continued to look suspicious. “God, just tell me.”
“A Virtue.”
“A who?”
I explained the whole hybrid concept, as best as I was able.
“An electric car,” she said dubiously.
“Only half electric.”
“So, you got us a car that needs an extension cord? And you still haven’t told me what this cost us.”
“Not that much,” I said.
Sarah was starting to glower. “How much?”
“Just a little over eight thousand.”
She swallowed. “How much over eight thousand?”
“Nine hundred.”
“Nine hundred? So the car was nine thousand? Dollars?”
“No, just $8,900.”
Sarah shook her head. “There goes the budget for the next six months.”
“It’ll be okay. We’ll be saving hundreds on gas. Just wait and see. It’s a good deal.”
Sarah shook her head. “I think life was simpler when I only had to put up with you at home,” she said, and turned to make the trek back across the newsroom to her office.
I turned back to my computer screen and started typing. A moment later, I felt a pair of hands on my shoulder, then noticed the familiar scent of Sarah as she leaned down and put her mouth close to my ear.
“You were right about one thing,” she whispered.
“About what?” I said, eyes on my screen.
“Black, front clasp.” And she strode off. I would have spun around in my seat to say something, but I had responded, involuntarily, to her comment, and felt that keeping a good part of me under the desk was prudent for the next couple of minutes.
Stan poked his head from behind the partition. “That was a good guess on the clasp thing,” he said, startling me. “I wasn’t even sure she was wearing one at all.”
“You probably know, Stan, that Sarah’s my wife,” I said.
He nodded. “I had a feeling you’d met her before.” He came around the partition, dropped a contact sheet on my desk. “There’s the auction stuff. There’s another copy with the desk, whenever they want it.”
I glanced at the negative-size shots. Stan could take something as mundane as a lot full of cars and, with the right angles and lighting, turn it into something special.
“Great,” I said. Stan didn’t acknowledge the compliment. He’d been praised by people a lot more important than I. One of the frames caught my eye. “That the guy?”
Stan squinted. “What?”
“The one who wanted your film? That him there?”
The angry short man was off to the left side of the frame, not doing anything in particular. Stan’s focus had been a pair of guys looking under the hood of a Pontiac. “I think so. I wasn’t even shooting him. Asshole.”
“Hey, Walker,” someone on the other side of me said.
I looked around. It was Cheese Dick Colby, the paper’s star police reporter, a heavyset man in his mid-fifties. A police search of his medicine cabinet would be unlikely to turn up any deodorant.
“Hey, Dick,” I said.
“Thanks for the call the other night, about the hit-run outside the men’s shop. Just so you understand, I do the breaking stuff, you can do the puff pieces.”
“Sure, Dick. I just hope someday I’m trusted to handle the big stories like you.”
Colby, evidently oblivious to sarcasm, said, “What you working on?”
“A feature.”
“This still the same thing you were working on the other night, hanging out with the detective?” He was leaning over my desk, forcing me to hold my breath, and looking at the contact sheet Stan had presented to me.
“Whoa, the fuck is this?” Colby asked. “That’s Barbie Bullock there.”
“Who?” I said, leaning in close to the pictures, not only to see them better but to put as much distance as possible between my nose and Colby’s armpit.
Colby pointed to the guy who’d roughed up Stan and demanded his film.
“Him. His actual name is Willy Bullock, but everyone refers to him as Barbie Bullock. He’s been attempting to run Lenny Indigo’s organization ever since Lenny got sent away for everything from dealing to robbery.”
“That name’s popping up everywhere,” I said.
“Lenny’s number two guy, Donny Leppard, he got sent up, too, but he’s going to be out in less than a year. Barbie here’s under a lot of pressure to do well while Donny’s gone a few months. He does a good job, Indigo’s likely to make him his number two guy instead of Donny.”
“So why do they call this clown Barbie?” Stan asked.
“He collects them. Barbies. Got hundreds of them, they say. All sorts of rare ones, plus accessories.”
“His key chain,” I said. “It was a like a mini-Barbie. I figured it was his wife’s or something. Doesn’t a guy who collects Barbies run the risk of being made fun of?”
Colby paused. “Last guy who made fun of Barbie Bullock had his face shoved into the running propeller of an Evinrude. You doing something on Bullock?” Colby eyed me warily, like I was trying to work his side of the street.
Stan spoke up. “He just happened to be in the picture. We were there doing something else, Dick, so chill out.”
Colby snorted, and I shifted in case any of it landed on me. After he walked away, I said to Stan, “So, don’t you feel special? Pissing off an important underworld character?”
Stan shrugged. “Listen, when you’ve pissed off the Taliban, everything else kind of pales in comparison.”
