Imaginary Lines (New York Leopards 3)

“Oh?”

She nodded. “Part of what I liked about you during your interview was that you’d written an article about a topic that’s often considered taboo, and you didn’t back down. That’s what I want to do this year. Do you know the reputation of sports journalism?”

I nodded. There used to be an unspoken law not to rock the boat. Sports journalists were dependent on their contacts—coaches and players—to get scoops, and if they ruined relations, they could be kicked out of the press box and the story.

Sports Today had proved itself ready to rock the boat a little bit, and given my brief impression of Tanya, I could only assume she wouldn’t mind sinking it in a blaze of fire. “I know it.”

“Good. Well, this is the year people start taking us seriously. We get a good story, we’re keeping it. In the past, if drugs or rape or murder turned up, they were almost uniformly handed off to the news beat. But we are the news, and if anything happens this season, I want you on it like glue.”

“Um...”

She scowled. “What, you have a question? You can ask a question.”

This woman terrified me. “Won’t that jeopardize our relationship with the teams?”

“I don’t give a damn about our relationship with the teams.” I stared at her, and she sighed. “Sorry. Basically, it’s great that we have a relationship and we can talk to them, but that’s not the most important thing. I value truth and accuracy above buttering people up. We’re not in this to churn out cutesy interviews or glowing features. We’re reporters.”

After an hour, Carlos picked me up and ran me over to HR to get my pic taken and ID badge printed. After that, I got a brief tour of our building before Carlos brought me over to our desks. It turned out he had the one beside me, across from Mduduzi. I sat down with a sigh of relief. “Now what?”

Carlos smiled. “Now I’m going to forward you a bunch of stories, and you’re going to write them.”

I tried not to gape. “J

ust like that?”

His smile widened. “Just like that. Don’t mess up.”

Not two hours later, I picked up a phone and dialed a number Carlos had forwarded. “Hi, this is Tamar Rosenfeld, calling from Sports Now... Can I talk to Dennis Gardner?”

And just like that, some fool receptionist put me in touch with an assistant coach of the Leopards.

Chapter Six

A week and a half later, Tanya strode by my desk. “Rosenfeld. You’re with me.”

I almost tripped as I shoved my phone and recorder into my purse and caught up with her. “Where are we going?”

She ignored me, instead snapping her fingers at Carlos. “You have her badge?”

“Yes, Tanya.” Carlos fell in beside me and we flanked Tanya all the way to the elevators.

I turned to him. “Do you know where we’re going?”

Tanya didn’t look at either of us as she responded. “Open locker room.”

“Wow—does that mean we’re going to the Leopards Stadium right now?”

Carlos leaned over and muttered out of the side of his mouth, “Be grateful it’s not the MetLife. The commute to Jersey’s a bitch.”

I was grateful to be headed to any stadium. I’d spent the past few days refusing to drown in all the information, but rather trying to absorb it, and a change of pace was welcome. Not that I didn’t like my new job—far from it. My first articles went live on Tuesday, after taking a beating and a half from Tanya’s editing wand. I almost cried the first time they came back drenched in red, but quickly figured out the preferred style. After all, my first three stories weren’t really that: one was to deliver snark on an inane tweet one of the New York Leopards had made; one was basically a rewrite of a story that another publication ran; and one was a three-paragraph write-up on a video that was making the rounds online of Jensen Clay being an ass to a reporter.

I also genuinely liked my coworkers. Mduduzi was not, as I’d first thought, African American—he’d come to the States from Zimbabwe for college. He had a faint, almost British accent, and despite sounding very posh and classy was relaxed and laid-back. Jin, who’d moved from Minneapolis to New York after journalism school, was cool enough that he intimidated me a bit—sort of a slouchy hipster intellectual, the kind who knew about music but didn’t seem to care about much else.

Except for sports, of course. We all cared about sports.

Carlos was upbeat, engaged and happy to help. He was approachable, the kind of guy you wanted to tell things to, which I suppose made him good at interviewing people. More with honey than vinegar, and all that.

The Leopards Stadium was located in Chelsea, above the old rail yards. It had a media parking lot, but none of us owned a car. We arrived at 11:00, which gave us fifteen minutes before the open locker room period began. Tanya briefly pointed out pertinent directions that I promptly forgot, and led us deeper into the labyrinth.