Deadline Man

***

I walk around the block of my building, absently touching the 120-year-old stonework that frames the first floor. The rough, damp texture is somehow comforting. Everything appears normal. The small lobby is empty, the elevator door open. On the second pass, I enter through the alley door. It takes a key to get in and I quickly close it behind me. Residents use it to take down their recycling. I climb the stairs up to my loft, lock the door, and leave the lights off. The city lights fill the living room with a diffuse blue glow.

I own 850 square feet on the corner of the building, with three rectangular windows facing First Avenue and one window that overlooks King Street. The ceilings are twelve feet high and the windows are nearly tall enough for me to stand in. I have a large living room, a pocket kitchen, and a sleeping loft up three steps and surrounded by a low wall that separat

es it from the living area. Tall IKEA bookshelves line the walls opposite the windows. I got the place for a steal during the last recession. It was the only smart money move I had made in my life. I love my place, but tonight it smells musty and unlived-in. The wood floors were reinforced against earthquakes when the building was redone, so they don’t creak. Still, I walk carefully to the big front windows and look out. I keep my body against the wall.

A steady flow of people pulses along First Avenue, none looking up toward me. I’m attached to this place partly because there’s always action going on. You can always look out the windows, day or middle-of-the-night, and see something happening down below. Melinda Hines told me it was the ideal Seattle pad, that a person was less likely to feel depressed on dark, rainy days if there was something to see out the windows besides another house. The Melinda my federal agents didn’t know about. The lights are on at Cowgirls, beckoning drinkers. An employee locks up a pricey rug store. No black SUV is parked at the curb. Yet the trees aren’t bare enough for me to see far beyond the middle of the block. I leave the lights off.

When the door knock comes it’s like a kick in my middle. It’s a hard rap: one, two, three. Like a cop knocking. I let it be until the knock comes again, harder and faster. Just act normal. I’m still in my suit. I set my face, cross the room, and unlock the door.

Amber stands in the hallway. She is wearing a gray knit cap, leather jacket, black sweater, denim miniskirt with a wide, grommet belt, black tights, gray leg warmers, and off-white tennis shoes. She has a plastic bag in her hand.

“Do you like to sit in the dark?”

I tell her I just got home and invite her in. But I stop her from turning on the lights.

“Kinky,” she says, shedding the coat. “I brought Thai.”

“Thank you. Do you still have a job?”

“I do, but four other reporters were escorted out today. Sucks.”

She finds a candle in the kitchen and lights it. I don’t object. We sit in the living room, drinking beer, and using the takeout joint’s cheap chopsticks to eat out of the containers, sharing them back and forth. One is pad Thai and the other is a dish with pineapple, rice, and pork. I realize I haven’t eaten all day as my stomach growls loudly.

I tell her everything. This time, I hold nothing back, including the note from Rachel. Hearing my voice, I realize how incredible it sounds. “In-credible”—lacking the one thing a journalist carries like gold: credibility. Your former girlfriend’s note sounds intriguing—where is it? You were served a National Security Letter—may I see your copy? Yet Amber has lived some of this: the dog attack in Ryan’s apartment, his lifeless body hanging from the bed frame. Unfortunately, she didn’t see the tattoo on his leg. Nobody has screamed “eleven-eleven” at her on a darkened street. I just try to tell it straight, chronologically, keeping the doubt out of my voice. I know it’s real. Amber says nothing. She sits so close that our bodies meld together. Her warmth comforts me as we hold communion with containers of noodles and rice. I broach eleven eleven, cautiously, watching her green eyes. She nods sympathetically.

“Do you think I’m crazy?”

“No.”

I reach for the briefcase to show her the documents but she pushes me back firmly on the sofa, shoves away the food, and starts to undress me.

“Will you ever tell me your life story?”

“No.” Her wide mouth parts in a smile. “Maybe. Boring, fucked up family.”

“Bet I can top you.”

“Shhhhhhhhh.”

My suit is soon in a pile on the floor. She kicks it away. It has to go to the cleaners anyway. She strips off her black tights and gray turtleneck, tosses aside a black bra, steps out of skimpy black panties. She must be the only woman of her age in Seattle without a tattoo. My body reacts inevitably as she climbs onto my lap. I am unfaithful to my loss, to Pam. Amber sits astraddle me wearing only her knit cap, which I pull off to free her lush hair. Tonight she’s wearing it straight, parted in the middle.

I cup her face in my hands and kiss her, lightly at first, then more deeply. She gently bites my tongue. My fingers are daredevil divers, making slow-motion plunges down her soft waterfall of hair, which assumes the color of buffed copper in the ambient light from the street. They land on the smooth skin of her back and slowly find their way to her hips. Her breasts are small and perfectly formed, topped by prominent nipples. She orders me to suck them harder as she throws back her head and moans. When she leans forward, her hair falls around me, blocking out everything.

The world is gone for now. Death is outside the force field of her hair. She reaches down and readjusts, gasps and begins to ride me. Between the urgency of kisses, I whisper for her to slow down. She ignores me, moaning, and bucking against me. She sounds close to hyperventilating. Her hands and arms grip me more tightly and she whispers obscenities in my ear, over and over, then… Her orgasm is a long, loud eruption: sudden, lingering, rising and falling and soaring again, a seismic wave, finally giving way to sobs. She cries a long time as I hold her, feeling her tears pool on my bare shoulder.

I am swimming in very deep waters with this Amber. As I have told myself so many times before, I will mourn later, later.

Chapter Twenty-one

Amber is naming people who were laid off today. She lies on the sofa now, only her head visible under the blanket I brought in from the bedroom, funereal disbelief in her voice. The room smells of sex.

“I thought the Free Press was one of the stronger companies. I know everybody’s in trouble, but this just came out of nowhere.”

“The heirs want their money,” I say. “Greed is a powerful thing, maybe especially in a recession.” I am standing beside the window, staring into the street.

“Do you think someone will buy the paper?”