GERI
Busted.
As Steffan Kim read Doug Blanchard's column aloud at my kitchen counter that Saturday morning, I stood on the other side, too stunned to move, my right hand still gripping the espresso machine. I'd really screwed up this time. Maybe even enough to get myself fired.
"Did she jump or was she pushed?" Steffan had one of those rare voices that I could hear, but today, with my mind buzzing, I concentrated on reading his lips. "Kathleen Fowler, who founded Half Moon Blooms and grew her nursery to a five-acre, multimil-lion business that supplied exotic landscaping all over California, was well known and liked in the community, where she was involved in numerous civic events. Yesterday, her mail carrier heard a scream and, after investigating, spotted Fowler's body sprawled on the jagged rocks beneath the cliffs beside her Ocean Boulevard home."
"I should have covered the story," I said, sickened by both the content and the very real fact that I was in big trouble with Marie, our editor at the paper.
"Blanchard's a columnist. This is a news story, not column material."
"There's a sidebar on the front page," Steffan said. Then with a look that was part apology, part guilt,
"Blanchard's is above the fold, though."
"He took a hard-news story and made it a column." I stared down at my purple Doc Marten boots, the same color as my hair. "I was out drinking. The only time I've ever done it, and he was able to steal my story."
"Others could have written it," he said. "You aren't the only one who dropped the ball."
"But I was the one scheduled to work."
"Along with a whole shift, Ger. Don't forget that." If I'd been at my desk when I should have been, I would have heard about Kathleen Fowler's murder that Friday. Instead, I was feeling no pain, as Mama would say.
That's what you're supposed to do at Christmas-time, isn't it? Sneak away from the office early? Have a drink with your coworkers?
Except the holidays were not the reason Steffan and I had left the newspaper early Friday afternoon. Not the reason we had consumed Meyer lemon martinis like branch water at the gay bar where Steffan sang as Simply Kim. We'd left the office after reading the announcement that I'd been passed over for a position that Marie had all but promised me--for the newspaper's new lifestyle column, "Off the Record." A column that newcomer Doug Blanchard--Doug Bastard, as the staff members called him--had snagged, just as he had snagged the Fowler story.
Stretched out beside me on the floor, my dog Nathan looked up from his nap, the way he did when he sensed that something was wrong. I reached down, patted him back into a peaceful snooze, and wondered how the hell I'd get myself out of this one.
Steffan glanced over at my blinking answering machine and my drained-dry cell phone that was parked beside it charging. "I'll bet they tried to call you," he said.
I flipped the switch, and steam rushed through the espresso machine with a blast that even I could hear. That accomplished, I poured two small cups from the steamy glass carafe and handed one to him. "What shall it be?" I asked, feeling so rock bottom that I could barely manage a smile. "Bagels or cyanide?"
GERI
"So?"
That was the way Marie, my editor, whom I'd recently tried to stop referring to as That Bitch Marie, usually approached me, as if in mid-conversation, on her way to catch a train, maybe. That Monday, it was the elevator. As she scrambled in beside me in those pink suede boots that went up farther than I could see or speculate, I knew that I was going to be found out.
TMB was a good-looking woman, in spite of the weight she'd lost recently. But she wasn't so good about what Steffan called engagement. In my case, at least, she'd gotten less good about it lately.
I can usually handle an elevator, although my lack of hearing adds to the discomfort of the closed-in feeling. "So?" I replied, trying to make it sound like a friendly question.
"Where were you Friday afternoon, Geri?"
Just what I was expecting. Steffan and I had already invented an excuse, but inside this cube, I had nowhere to run.
"Flu shot." I couldn't say more. The very lie of it filled my mouth like mush.
She looked down at her pink pointed-toe boots, then back up at me. "You were getting a flu shot Friday afternoon?" she asked.
And darned if I couldn't answer.
After an eternity of silence, the doors opened. She didn't move. "I was with Steffan," I said, and stepped out before I was trapped in there with her again.
She got off, too, and gave me an unreadable expression that was part polite and part command. "Mind coming to my office?" she asked. "We probably ought to talk about this."
Steffan was already there, just as he'd promised. He raised an eyebrow as if to warn me to stay silent. As if he had to. I wasn't sure I'd be able to speak. I hoped whatever he had to say would convince her to leave me alone.
"Good morning," Marie said to him, and I could feel more than hear the hard professional edge to her voice. "Do you have a minute?" he asked.
"Actually, I don't," she told him, glancing at me.
"I'll call you when I'm free."
She unlocked her office door and motioned for me to come inside. I did so quietly, thinking please don't let me be fired. I looked through the glass partitions out at the office full of people tending to any number of jobs. I wanted to be one of them, column or no column. Why had I taken off Friday without telling anyone? How did I think that I wouldn't be caught?
I was so distracted that I didn't realize that Steffan had accompanied us inside.
"What is it?" she asked him as I stood there between them beside her conference table.
"About Friday," he said.
"Geri and I were just discussing that in the elevator." She sat at the round table with its fake wood finish and motioned for me to do the same.
"So, tell me, Geri."
"Flu shot," I managed.
"That's what I was going to tell you," Steffan put in, speaking so rapidly that I could hardly follow.
"Geri and I realized that we hadn't gotten flu shots yet. There was a shortage at first, you know."
"That was sometime ago," Marie said, glaring at me as she answered his question. "You know that there hasn't been a shortage of the vaccine for months. You could have gotten shots at any time."
"We've been too busy," I said.
"But you weren't busy on Friday? You weren't busy right after the announcement of Doug Blanchard's promotion?"
Busted. I knew it. My lip trembled. "Marie," Steffan said. "It was Friday. So, we left a little early. What's the big deal?"
"You didn't leave early," she said. "You came in at seven, remember?" Her eyes bore into mine again. "We tried to call you to cover the murder in Half Moon Bay."
"My cell phone wasn't working," I said.
"Are you sure?"
"I left it at home," I admitted. "I thought I'd be able to pick it up when we left here, but we didn't go back to my place."
"And where did you go?"
"Marie, please." Steffan interrupted. She rose and said, "There's no point in your staying for this discussion, Steffan. You worked a full day on Friday."
He shot me a helpless look, then got up slowly and left the office. Through the glass, I could see the curious glance that Bridget, our fashion writer, gave him, then me. I stared back, blank-faced, unable to move. Steffan shook his head, and Bridget followed him toward his cubicle, her golden hair spread down the back of her turquoise sweater so perfectly that it looked as if someone had raked it.
Marie's office felt as suffocating and small as the elevator had. Too many chairs, too large a table. The bookcase littered with framed photos and awards stretched the whole width of the wall beside her desk. She looked at me as if I were an insect, and she was trying to decide between the fly swatter and the Raid. Then, when she reached over and closed the blinds over the glass, I felt as if I were being swallowed up in the dim room. I couldn't move, not even when she came back and sat beside me.
"I swear that I remember seeing you and Steffan in the flu shot line last month," she said. "I can get the sign-in sheets if I have to."
"I'll make up the time," I said. "It was only, what? An hour, at the most? And I know I was supposed to have my phone, but--"
"So you did leave early." Her eyes grew even colder. People always said they wanted the truth, but that's not how they acted once they heard it. I should have learned that one by now.
I nodded, feeling so full of shame that I could almost taste it. "I was upset about not getting the job, and I just left. I know it was stupid, and I'm sorry."
"I didn't promise you the 'Off the Record' column," she said with an embarrassed flush that made me pretty sure she thought she had.
"I know that. But you did go on about my article about the razor killer last year."
"So, I liked the article." Her flush turned angry. "I didn't promise you the position, and you had no right to expect it."
"I didn't expect it," I said. "I was just disappointed when I didn't get it." She crossed her arms tightly across her sweater, and my blood went cold. I loved this job, needed it. "I'll make up the time," I said.
"You know I'm a good employee and that I put in a lot more hours than I report."
She slammed her hands over her ears. "If you're working overtime and not clocking in, I don't even want to hear about it."
That's what we all did, and of course she knew it. Crikey. I'd said the wrong thing again, just by telling the truth.
"I'm only trying to say that I care about doing a good job," I said. I felt like crying. I'd had excellent reviews. Because of what I'd done, I'd be written up the way I used to in school when I couldn't hear what was going on in class. "Please don't write me up." Most of all, I thought, please don't fire me.