Absent Friends

Phil finished stretching, looked around, saw Jane squaring up for a shot. He barreled from behind and stole the ball. Cursing, she raced after him, jumped to block his fadeaway. She fouled him, but the shot was good. Brian hollered, “This a grudge match, or can anyone play?” Phil fired him the ball. Early morning sunlight filtered through the Y's high, dusty windows; they sorted themselves into teams, and leaving behind what had happened, what would happen, they started to play.

LAURA'S STORY

Chapter 3

Complicated Work

October 31, 2001

Laura came back early in the morning, looking for Leo.

It was Halloween, but that meant nothing to a reporter. (Christmas, Easter Sunday, their mother's birthdays meant nothing to reporters chasing news.) Some years the newsroom sprouted pumpkins and black- cat cutouts on Halloween, but this year what could be more frightening than the view out the window?

Reporters, chomping on bagels and slurping coffee, glanced up as Laura walked by. Some tried to speak to her, to say something kind. Laura nodded to each, didn't stop on her way to her desk. Seated, she fixed her eyes on the glow of her monitor as though she were waiting for something. She wrenched the lid from a coffee cup and gulped at it without tasting it at all. Her comforters retreated.

She stayed at her computer, waiting, tearing through e-mails, not understanding their messages or caring that she didn't, until finally Leo surged from the elevator and sliced through the newsroom like Sherman on his way to the sea. She watched him through the glass of his office like a sharpshooter while he dropped his briefcase, switched on his computer, pulled his fried egg sandwich and coffee from the deli bag. Then she rose and went to his door.

His eyes, colorless as tin, rested on her before he spoke. This was unlike Leo. “Stone.” He pointed at a chair. Given permission, she sat. Steam from Leo's coffee cup slipped into the air as though hoping to sneak away before Leo noticed.

Laura said, “I want the Harry Randall story.” She wished she knew a way to demand things from Leo, to sound imperious, not like a street beggar. Her only comfort, cold, was that all the reporters she knew felt, always, that they were on their knees before Leo.

His answer: “No.”

“Leo—”

“Forget it, Stone.”

“I'm the only—”

“There's no story. If there were, you'd be—”

“I knew him best.”

“You screwed him.”

Through gritted teeth: “No law against it. Not even Tribune policy, Leo.”

“You checked?”

She nodded. Leo's eyebrows shot up, usually a good sign, but not this time. Another beat, and then, “Forget it.” He swiveled his chair, began fingering the papers on his desk. Every reporter knew what that meant, but Laura stayed.

“Leo, there is a story.”

His square iron head nodded, not turning to her. “A full and fitting obit. Carl's writing it now.”

“He didn't kill himself.”

Now Leo did turn, and though she never would have said as much to anyone for fear of being called insane, she swore she saw a softening in his eyes. It was not in his voice, though, each steel word spoken with equal emphasis: “He jumped off the bridge.”

“No.”

Laura meant to say more, but Leo's words burst open in her brain like a booby-trapped box, and out of them sprang a vision: Harry, angry first as his car was forced over, then disbelieving, kicking and wrenching against the grip, frightened, being dragged to the rail. Harry, shouting, cursing, throwing punches that missed—not much of a fighter, he'd always said, that's why he became a newsman: they let you watch. What must it have been like, the push, the fall? How much of a struggle, how tight his grip on the stinging steel? Then Harry untethered, floating, flying, Harry—she suddenly understood—exultant as he knew it was unstoppable.

She heard “Stone!” and she'd heard it before, just now, maybe two other times. The scene on the bridge receded, and Laura was looking at Leo. He held his coffee before him like an amulet, his eyebrows knit tight together. She almost laughed: Leo looked so desperate. It's all right, she wanted to say, I'm a reporter, you can yell at me. I won't dissolve into a puddle of tears on your office floor.

She swallowed the tears she was not going to dissolve into and said, “He didn't jump, Leo.”

“Stone, he jumped.”

“No. Leo”—leaning forward, trying to draw Leo into what she knew—“Leo, the McCaffery story was too huge. It was real. It was Harry Randall. He was back, he knew it, he loved it. Loved it, Leo.” She was trembling, vibrating the way the high-tension wires did.

“Loved it?”

“Of course he did! How could he not? Harry Randall? On to something like this? It's the story he needed, Leo, all these years.”