Deadline Man

“What time?”

After a second, I remember. “Before I put my head down, I actually looked over at the digital clock on her night table. It was 11:11.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“I thought how weird that was, but it said 11:11. Then I went to sleep next to her.”

“That’s the last you remember? Are you sure?”

I nod. But the memory of the clock brings back more. How looking up and seeing those numbers chilled me with dread. How I cradled my arms around Pamela, already sleeping, held her in the tight embrace of mortality, her skin soft and arousing even after an hour of lovemaking. Her soft hair close to my face as sleep overtook me. I keep all this to myself.

Amber lets go and takes a step back. Her voice is businesslike. “Act like nothing happened. If the police ask, tell the truth like you just did. But you left her house after midnight to come be with me. Got it? You woke up with me this morning, here. And you damned well better be a good actor when the cops tell you she’s dead. They’ll watch how you react.” She raises a strawberry blond eyebrow. “Just pretend you’re lying to one of the women in your life. We’ll sort the rest of this out later. I’ve got to be in Bellevue in an hour.”

She slips on her coat and starts to go, carrying the trash bag.

“What are you going to do with that?” I ask.

“Dump it far away,” she calls over her shoulder.

“Wait.”

She stands in the doorway.

“Why are you doing this?

She tilts her head, tossing her red mane, and examining me as if from a far distance. Her expression is neutral. “Maybe you have potential.”

Chapter Nineteen

After trying four times, I knot my tie correctly, a dimple in the middle. I had started to reach for a favorite Ben Silver, but realized that it was one Pam had given me. My hand withdrew as if it were a snake. So I settle for a burgundy tie with no history. The cops will take my tie and belt so I can’t kill myself. I slip on my suit coat and walk out the door on rubbery legs.

Just act normal. Easy enough, when I am expecting to be intercepted by a SWAT team when the elevator doors open, or when I step out onto the street. Yet everything outside is normal, from the homeless guy sitting on his scuffed plastic crate selling Real Change—probably a failed business columnist himself—to the hoodie-clad techies streaming into the software company three doors down. I become aware of the coolness of the day, the brilliant reds and forlorn faded greens of the leaves on the trees. Soon Pioneer Square will be without its shade canopy. I should have worn a coat, but the chill steadies me and in ten minutes I step off the elevator into the newsroom.

It is 10:16 a.m. and I have no idea what I am going to write.

“I’ve been looking for you.” It’s the business editor, and she should be in the ten o’clock news meeting, and yet she’s looking for me. I get a sour wave in my stomach. The detectives are here. Act normal. Act surprised that Pam is dead. I can barely breathe.

“I know this is late notice, but you’ve seen the market today…”

I nod. I haven’t a clue, but it’s probably down again, maybe big time. That’s been the story for months, years.

“Can you set aside what you’ve got going for tomorrow and write a market explainer?” She is tense, out of breath. All my muscles relax by fifty degrees. “I know we’re all kind of burned out and there’s not much new to say. But the head-shed wants it.” She nods toward the fishbowl, the glassed-in conference room where the news meetings are held.

“Sure,” I say. She pats my arm, thanks me, and strides back to the meeting. I lean against the wall for a moment, feeling my chest expand with air, studying my hands, fingers, and fingernails for any traces of Pam’s blood.

Then I am on deadline.

I am saved by the news. Once I left the Army, every day of my working life I have wondered if I could sit before a blank computer screen and produce a story or a column. I know that I am a fraud, whatever readers might think or however many awards I have won. When will I be found out? What day will I have nothing fresh to write? What moment on deadline will I finally freeze? That’s really one of the determining characteristics of the ones who succeed in newspapering: they never freeze. I don’t freeze today. I create a new file. It is named like all the others over the years, with my name and “col” and the publication date, all rammed together, a cabalistic computer tag for editors and designers. We still call this a “slug,” one of the many holdovers in our tribal patois from the days of hot type and Linotype machines. Then I start to write.

For months I have been wanting to write this: We have entered a period of discontinuity. Anyone looking for the market to return to what we used to call normal is on a fool’s errand. The next thirty years won’t be a replay of the past th

irty. Too much is different: peak oil, a hollowed-out economy, too many bets made on financial products that turned out to be swindles, global warming. The easy days are gone. It’s too blunt for the careful Seattle Free Press. But I write it today and to hell with it. Discontinuity. Nothing will be the same again. The clean white bedclothes are fatally stained red.

I write like a maniac, banging the keyboard. I am in the crazy zone of time telescoping in on me. At four minutes before one o’clock, I hit the key that sends the column into the editing queue. I check to see that it is there, the button on the CCI menu glowing a festive green. Outside my window, even this high in the building, the fall leaves blow up and linger before flying away forever. The column is filed. Only then do I push the chair back, walk to the door, close it, turn away to my desk again, sit, and bury my face in my hands, weeping.

***

The rap on the door is sharp. I wipe my face off, swivel my chair and turn the knob. The managing editor stands in the threshold, rubbing his beard. It is newly trimmed, looking like a mowed lawn of dead winter grass. He’s nearly as tall as me, but reedy like a runner, and he has terrible posture. His body can’t avoid a slump for long, and he tips himself against the wall.