Chump Change (25 page)

I continued seeing Lola and it was great. I don’t think I’ve ever been happier. After all, a
zaftig
19-year-old bartender, what could be more ideal as a girlfriend for yours truly? In the afternoons, after work, I’d hang around Pauper’s reading the paper and sipping free drinks while Lola worked. When things were slow, she’d come over, sit on my lap (which never failed to get me going), and proudly introduce me as her boyfriend to her co-workers and regular customers. Most nights, I’d hang around until last call, then go in the back room with the staff and kibitz while they counted their tips. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a sexier sight than Lola, pencil behind her ear, expertly riffling a giant stack of bills, efficiently totting up sums from credit-card chits.

Then, one night, Lola announced she was “off sex.” She meant it, too: no matter how many times I laid seige to her ramparts, the answer was always the same: no, not now, I don’t feel like it. I was completely cut off. After work, I followed her to booze cans, or sat across from her in late-night restaurants, listening to her happy chatter, the typical self-involved chatter of a 19-year-old, waiting for my reward.

Which never came. Finally, around dawn, we’d go to bed. I’d sleep for a couple of hours, a light sleep, tortured by terrible
dreams, of huge, painted hookers laughing, bouncing up and down on top of me, only to wake up, in a cold sweat, with four ugly realities staring me in the face: a) the alarm was ringing; b) it had been ringing for a long time; c) I was late for work; d) I was fucked. Jump out of bed, dress, kiss Lola (“Mm, bye,” she’d say, roll over and go back to sleep), dash off to work, no shower, no shave, no coffee. The next night, repeat.

“Why, Lola, why?” I kept asking her. “What’s the problem?”

Finally, one night, it all came out.

Somewhere between Andrew and me, she had been date-raped by a customer at the bar. After Andrew, she fishtailed into a shame-spiral, had a string of casual encounters, mostly with customers — trying to perk up her mood. One night she brought home a guy who had been making passes at her at the bar, but changed her mind on the way home. However, they were drunk, she allowed him to stay, but “just to sleep together.” She stripped down to T-shirt and panties, he crawled in in his boxers, and suddenly he wouldn’t take no for an answer. He overpowered her, and stuck it in.

“I kept staring in his face, saying, ‘I don’t want this.’ But he didn’t care,” Lola told me angrily.

“Why didn’t you call the police?”

“I didn’t want to. But if he ever comes into the bar again, I’m going to slap his face and yell out to everyone: THIS MAN IS A RAPIST!”

Poor Lola. She reminded me, in a way, of the flower in
The Little Prince
, that brandishes its thorns, like fearsome weapons. Call the police, bust the guy, I told her. Call them now, it’s not too late. That’s what I’d do. But Lola didn’t want to, for her own reasons.

I sympathized with her, I really did. But it’s one thing to sympathize with someone during the day, quite another to
sympathize when you wake up in the middle of the night with your dick sandwiched between the cheeks of that person, and she just happens to be a big, beautiful, 19-year-old Danish-derived sex-bomb. It’s tough to be Mr. Sensitive Guy at such a moment. Still I didn’t force myself on her, boys. No, I took the high road: I begged. I pleaded, wheedled, and cajoled her, but I never raped her.

“Please, Lola, please. I want you, I love you. I want to show you how I feel for you.”

Sleepily, she would brush me off.

“C’mon, please, it’ll only take about a minute.”

No, no, no. I even tried the Magic Soup out on her one night, but it must have lost some of its powers in the fridge because it only half-worked this time.

I invited Lola over for leftovers. There were candles, hors d’oeuvres, drinks. Again I served the Magic Soup in bowls with garlic bread. After dinner, more drinks; by the end of the night we were completely loaded. Georgie was getting on my nerves, flying around manically, chirping like a crazed thing, sometimes dive-bombing the table. I chased him around, trying to get him back into his cage but he kept eluding my grasp. Finally, he flew behind the bookshelf. Ah, fuck him, I thought drunkenly, and went back to trying to beg and cajole Lola.

That night, Lola put me off as usual. Finally, though, worn down by my wheedling and whining, Lola said: “You can boink my butt if you want to.” Horribly, I knew exactly what she meant — rub it between the cheeks of her ass until I came — and even more horribly still, I was grateful. Oh, you lucky, lucky bastard, I thought, as I climbed on and devoted myself to this travesty. The fact Lola was half-asleep, lying there like a sack of hammers, didn’t dampen my ardour a bit, didn’t stop me from saying: “Oh, wow, oh, Lola, I love you.”

When it was over, I rolled off, deeply ashamed yet immensely relieved. Lola rolled over on her back, put her hand on top of my head, and started applying downward pressure.

“Do
me,”
she said. “Make
me
come.”

“I thought you were too tired?”

“All that other stuff got me horny.”

What could I do? Fair’s fair (in love and war). I scooted down to the end of the bed and got to work.

I was used to waking up in my apartment to the sound of Georgie singing sweetly, but the next morning there was silence. I was late, hungover. I took a dump, had a shower, then came out wondering what happened to Georgie. Finally, prompted by a dim memory from the night before, I looked behind the bookshelf, and there was his little, lifeless, yellow body.

It was a bad omen, I felt.

My honeymoon at work was short-lived. And it was no wonder, considering I was hungover every day of my Cosmodemonic career. I guess I was bound to fuck up eventually.

I was moving around from show to show, being groomed, I felt, to be an all-around writer who could be parachuted into any show at any time. Lately, I had been working on the
Afternoon Newsbreak
, with Alison Bartlett-Jones. Alison Bartlett-Jones was a woman whose ambition was matched only by her hair-size; despite being relatively young, she had a huge, matronly, freeze-dried hair-helmet. The camera-operators had to dolly way, way back to accommodate both her daunting ‘do and the “cell” (the little box proclaiming the subject of each story) into the shot.

One day, it was especially busy; someone had called in sick, there was no one to plug in the gap. There were only two Cyranos on the desk: me and Sheldon, a lean, balding macrobiotic
enthusiast about my age. Every day, he brought a Tupperware container of ricey goo that he ate with a spoon, like pabulum. He observed with horror my dietary habits, which I felt were in the grand old tradition of journalism. I started every day with a special Cosmodemonic anti-hangover “mud” of my own invention, a witches’ brew of sugar, cream, coffee and hot-chocolate mix. That was followed by a lunch of two quick-fry burgers, an order of gravy-covered fries, and a Diet Coke. Chips, chocolate bars, and assorted candy rounded out my diet. “My body is a temple, yours is a bar,” he said to me once.

Sheldon and I cranked out the facts in a cold sweat, script after script. Above us, on a shelf on the wall, there was a row of about a dozen television sets labelled: NBC, NBC FEED, CBS, CBS FEED, OUTPUT, VIZNEWS, CNN, etc. These were the various international feeds supplying everyone in the Cosmodemonic fact-factory with raw footage, as well as keeping them abreast of what the competition was up to. All Cosmodemonic Cyranos have to keep an eye on all these and another eye on the wires, while phoning reporters and the various bureaus for the latest updates.

One thing about hangovers: they tend to focus you on the present, on the task at hand. When I’m hungover, sitting at a computer, you could bounce a ping-pong ball off me, I wouldn’t notice. Sheldon and I beavered away, our heads rarely turning from our screens. About an hour before air-time, I finished writing. I looked over at Sheldon. He was typing like a fiend, staring at the computer, obviously way, way behind. He looked a little ill. Loudly, so the producer, Maggie Williams, could overhear, I asked Sheldon: “You need any help?”

He glanced over, glassy-eyed.

“Yeah,” he said. “Would you mind? Could you take a couple of things off my hands?”

At three minutes to air-time the last script was split, the editorial assistant tore off quick-like-a-bunny down the stairs to the studio, and the show went to air. Sheldon and I relaxed, and watched. About ten minutes before the end of the show, Sheldon said, “Well, that’s it for me. I’m off.”

“I’m going to stick around in case there’s an earthquake or someone’s assassinated in the next ten minutes.”

He smiled. He already had his hat and coat on.

“Later.”

“Later.”

A couple of minutes later, I spotted an “alert” on the wires. They’re marked by a capital “A” next to a story, and a number of stars denoting how serious the wire editor thinks it is, from one to five. This one had five stars. Something about a bomb on a train in Johannesburg. I brought it to Maggie’s attention.

“There’s a five-star alert on the wires,” I said. “Train-bomb in Johannesburg.”

She called it up on her computer, and quickly skimmed through it.

“Yeah. We’d better do a 20-second copy story for the update,” she said.

“O.K.”

I fired it off. There were only about three minutes until the update. Therefore, I had about a minute to write the story; the producer had 30 seconds to check it over; and the E.A. had a little over a minute to run, run like the wind distributing it around to everyone who needed it. I wrote:

Anchors love to say “Mangosuthu Buthelesi,” because it rolls so trippingly off the tongue. Same with “Nagorno-Karabakh,” which is the only reason, I’m convinced, that godforsaken backwater ever made it into the news.

Maggie Williams quickly looked over my script.

“SPLIT!” she yelled. The E.A. came scurrying over, split the script, ran off to bring it to everyone. I leaned back, relaxed. The show was almost over. Soon I’d be home, a vodka and 7-Up with a twist of lemon twinkling and sparkling in my hand.

“Hey, wait a second,” Maggie Williams said. She was staring at her computer screen. “It’s not 14 people
killed
in this bomb blast, it’s 14
injured.”

“Huh?”

I checked. It was true. Suddenly, I was soaked in sweat.

“Shit!” Maggie said. She picked up her phone, pressed the lift-to-ring button hooking her up with the studio. “Listen, we’ve got to change that copy story on Johannesburg.”

I looked over at my television screen. Just then, Alison Bartlett-Jones was staring into the camera, saying: “…the work of Inkatha chief Mangosuthu Buthelesi.”

Maggie was talking frantically into the phone.

“… a mistake, a MISTAKE. The writer got it wrong. It should’ve said 14
injured
, not killed. We’re going to have to do an apology. No. No, we have to. We’ll have to put it in the goodnights. Yes, well, I don’t like it any more than you do.”

She hung up. She didn’t even look at me. Five seconds later, an ultra-grave Alison Bartlett-Jones said to the camera:
“A few moments ago, I said 14 people were killed in a bomb blast in Johannesburg. I should have said 14 injured, not killed. On behalf of everyone here at
Afternoon Newsbreak
, I apologize for this error of fact.

“Well, that’s our show for today. I’m Alison Bartlett-Jones. Thanks for watching. Have a good evening.”

All over the newsroom, people were watching this newscast. Silence — or, at least, a lull — descended upon the newsroom. On-camera apologies were very, very rare. Heads turned towards the
Afternoon Newsbreak
info-pit.

Alison Bartlett-Jones came out of the studio. She yanked her telex out of her ear, and asked me (it was the first time she’d ever spoken directly to me): “Where’d you get that about the bomb in Johannesburg?”

“I read it wrong off the wires, I’m sorry.”

She stormed past me, in the direction of Frizell’s office. The director came up from the control room.

“Where’d you get that about the bomb blast?”

“I read it wrong off the wires, I’m sorry.”

He shook his head and walked past me, also in the direction of Frizell’s office. Maggie Williams didn’t say anything to me; she gathered her papers, stood up and walked over to Frizell’s office, all without a glance in my direction.

I looked over at Frizell’s office. People were literally lined up in front of it to complain about me. Inside, Alison Bartlett-Jones was yelling and pointing in my direction, her hair-helmet quivering with passion and rage. Outside, the director and Maggie were waiting their turn, to point the finger, to assure Frizell the fuckup had nothing to do with them.

I thought I should probably join that line, do a little damage control. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Maybe tomorrow. I grabbed my bag and slipped out of the newsroom.

The next morning, when I arrived, there was a note in my pigeonhole to see Frizell. I expected the worst, but actually he was quite gentle.

“I’ve got to beat you up a bit here, Dave,” he said, after I sat down.

He chewed me out, but with a smile on his face. He didn’t seem angry, it was more like something he had to do, like reprimanding a star pupil for a minor delinquency. Perhaps the memory of “more chips off the Communist bloc” and “they decked the Wall with boughs of holly” were still fresh in his mind.

“Frankly, they all came in last night to complain,” he said. “Alison was particularly upset. She was in tears. She said she’d spent all these years building a career, only to have it shattered in a single blow.”

Pure histrionics and melodrama, I thought to myself. “Maggie asked me where I got you from.”

Still, I said nothing.