“I suppose we should.”
“How about today?”
“Well-”
“Super. I’ll have Suzie make reservations for us at Speckley’s. Say twelve-thirty?”
I was too shocked to tell him that you don’t need reservations at Speckley’s. That as long as you comply with the NO SHIRT, NO SHOES, NO SERVICE sign on the door, they’ll seat you. I told him twelve-thirty would be great. That I would meet him there.
“Meet me? Maddy Sprowls! What kind of men have you been eating with? I’ll drive.”
And so in three hours I was going to have lunch with Bob Averill. And it was no mystery why. He finally had the ammunition he needed to force me into retirement. Or as he once put it: “The common ground you and I need to find vis-a-vis your tenure at the paper.”
I was not going without a fight. I grabbed a piece of scrap paper and drew a line down the middle. On the left I listed the various infractions he might bring up: my long lunches, personal long distance calls, my usually foul disposition. On the right I listed explanations or denials. When I got to my snoopfests into the Buddy Wing and Gordon Sweet murders, I noted that while they had been unauthorized, on the sly, and initially troublesome for the paper, they both had resulted in some very good journalism.
Then, while I was pondering how I could good-naturedly threaten filing an age discrimination suit, Gabriella Nash appeared in front of my desk. She announced that she was “totally apoplectic.”
“About what, dear?”
Like a bad actress in a bad movie, she flung that morning’s front page on my desk. “That is my story, Mrs. Sprowls.”
I knew what she meant of course. But with my hours at The Herald-Union down to a precious few, I was in no mood for foolishness. Especially hers. I pretended to study the story she was thumping with her finger. “According to the byline, it’s Dale Marabout’s story.”
She curled her lips at my flippancy like a rabid raccoon. “This is serious business, Mrs. Sprowls!” She went on and on how the story shouldn’t have been taken away from her just because it unexpectedly evolved from a “fluffy piece of shit” into a “hard news murder story.” The Washington Post, she said, didn’t take Redford and Bernstein off the Watergate story when it grew from a third-rate burglary into a constitutional showdown between President Nixon and Congress. She should be allowed to follow the Never Dull story wherever it lead, she said. Redford and Bernstein had been young reporters, too, she said.
I neatly folded the front page and handed it back to her. “In the first place, it was not Redford and Bernstein. It was Woodward and Bernstein. Robert Redford was the actor who played Woodward in the movie. But I suppose you deserve some credit for at least having heard about Watergate.” Her eyes dropped. I hurriedly crumpled my list of job-saving excuses and slid it off my desk into the wastebasket. “And in the second place,” I said, “you should be telling all this to Alec Tinker-not me.”
She went from rabid raccoon to vulnerable bunny. “I was hoping maybe you’d go with me.”
I showed her the most empathetic smile I could. Then I lowered the boom. “I just don’t see that happening, Gabriella.”
Bob Averill appeared in the newsroom at twenty past twelve. He gave me a big John Wayne thisaway wave. I grabbed my purse and followed him to the parking deck.
Bob is extremely well paid. And his wife comes from money. But he still likes to think of himself as the regular guy he was forty years ago. So he eschews his reserved parking space by the door and deposits his Mercedes wherever he can find a spot. It’s not one of those big roomy Mercedes. It’s one of those sporty, midlife crisis two- seaters. Yellow as a ripe banana. He wedged his 200 pounds behind the steering wheel with the help of a laborious “Augggghhhh.”
We headed toward West Apple Street and Meriwether Square. “You think we can get there in five minutes?” he asked.
“If we don’t get behind too many buses.”
He chuckled like some old soldier fondly recalling the Battle of the Bulge. “I remember when I had to take the bus.”
As we buzzed along, I pictured him that morning calling Suzie and asking, “Any idea where Maddy Sprowls likes to have lunch?” And when she answered Speckley’s, him asking, “Where the hell is that?” And when she said Meriwether Square, him harrumphing, “That figures.”
In case you haven’t spent much time in Hannawa, Ohio, Meriwether Square is our city’s version of Greenwich Village. It’s a four-block strip of coffee shops, thrift shops, and hole-in-the wall bars, each geared toward a particular sexual orientation. The strip is surrounded with wonderful art deco apartment buildings and once-grand turn-of-the-century houses. The brick streets are lined with shaggy oak trees and badly buckled sidewalks. Dale Marabout calls it Differentdrummerville. And he’s pretty much on the mark. Meriwether Square is lousy with angst- riddled college students, old hippies, even older Beatniks, artists who never sell anything, writers who never get published. It’s a real bouillabaisse of daydreamers, outcasts, and kooks. And I just love the place. And I just love Speckley’s. I’ve been going to that wonderful old diner since my college days.
Bob found a parking space right in front. But he couldn’t find any quarters in his pocket for the meter. “It’s on me,” I said.
Inside, he announced his name to the waitress. “Averill.”
She squinted at him the way James squints at me when he’s trying to decipher the strange sounds coming out of my mouth. Finally she figured it out-or at least thought she had. “I don’t think we got any of them,” she said. “But I’ve got some Tylenol if that would help.”
It was Bob’s turn to imitate James’ squint. I came to the rescue. “He doesn’t have a headache,” I told the waitress. “He has a reservation.”
“Oh, he’s the one,” she cackled. “We all thought that was a prank call.” She grabbed a pair of menus from the counter. “Right this way, Mr. Averill. Your table’s waiting.” She gave us a booth by the eight-foot plastic bipedal cow statue drinking a chocolate milkshake.
I talked Bob into ordering the diner’s legendary house special-meatloaf sandwich, au gratin potatoes on the side. I told the waitress I’d have hot tea. Bob pointed at the plastic cow and said, “I’ll have what she’s drinking.”
Good gravy I was nervous. I decided to take the bull by the horns. “Bob,” I said, “I know why we’re here.”
“You do?”
“Of course I do! Now shoot!”
He cringed. “Shoot? Don’t you think that word is maybe a bit inappropriate under the circumstances?”
I attacked. “Come on, Bob. Give me your best shot. Then I’ll give you mine. Then we’ll enjoy the meatloaf.”
He dug his elbows into the Formica. Propped his chin on his fist. Looked me straight in the eyes. “What in the hell are you talking about?”
“My retirement. What else would I be talking about?”
His face withered until it looked like one of those old cooking onions I keep on top of my refrigerator. “Oh no, Maddy Sprowls-you can’t retire now. I need you.”
It was my turn to look him straight in the eyes. “What in the hell are you talking about?”
“Eddie French.”
“That cab driver they arrested? What does that have to do with me?”
The waitress brought our beverages. Bob pounded the wrapper off his straw. “Nothing to do with you-not yet, anyway-but unfortunately it does have something to do with me.”
I zeroed in on the most pertinent part of his answer. “Not yet, anyway?”
He drilled his straw into his milkshake. Took a long suck. “I need your help with something, Maddy.”
I finally knew where he was headed. “Absolutely not!”
He grabbed his temples. Grunted in pain. At first I thought he had an aneurysm in his brain that just popped. But when he started gasping like a beached fish, I realized he was just having a brain freeze from the milkshake. I laid into him without pity. “I’m not a detective, Bob. I’m a damn librarian.”
The pain on his face slowly subsided. The self-confident, always-in-command Bob Averill I’d known for fifteen
