The One & Only: A Novel (22 page)

T
he following Monday, two days after a decisive win over Arkansas, I began my job as a sports reporter. Smiley didn’t give me a start time, but I left my apartment at six in the morning so that I could beat rush-hour traffic and arrive at the Bank of America Plaza in Dallas by seven. His assistant, an older lady channeling the sixties with her teased hair and cat-eye glasses, met me in the lobby and humorlessly escorted me to his office.

“Good morning, Ms. Rigsby,” Smiley said, glancing up from a completed
New York Times
crossword. His office reeked of cigars, though there was no sign of ashtrays or smoke. There was, however, a half-empty bottle of scotch on the corner of his desk.

“Good morning,” I said.

Smiley cleared his throat, as if on the brink of issuing a proper welcome, but thought better of it. “C’mon. I’ll show you around,” he said instead.

He then embarked on a tour of the newsroom, consisting mostly of a maze of cubicles under drab fluorescent lighting. Smiley made a few introductions in what he referred to as the “sports corner” of the floor, but only when he absolutely couldn’t avoid it, often omitting the names of his colleagues while making me sound as uninteresting and green as he possibly could. “This is Shea Rigsby. Kenny Stone’s replacement. She comes from sports information at Walker, but contends she can be objective,” he said once, mumbling a footnote: “We’ll see about that.”

He pointed out the assignment desk, where two phones were currently manned, explaining that it was a command center where various leads were phoned in on hard news stories. “Doesn’t really apply to us,” he said. “Our stories aren’t generally a surprise. Although these days you never know what athletes are going to do … If someone shoots his girlfriend or tortures dogs, it’ll be phoned in right there.”

I nodded as we stuck our heads into a bare-bones break room with a microwave and refrigerator, then an even more dismal room housing a watercooler and a copier adorned with a sign that said:
ANOTHER DAMN PAPER JAM
. He concluded our tour with my very own cubicle, located just outside his office. Lucky me. The whole floor was much quieter and less glamorous than I’d imagined, and I felt a dash of disappointment as I reminded myself that this wasn’t the Woodward and Bernstein era of journalism and most writers probably worked from home.

“So that’s it,” he said curtly. “Any questions?”

I shook my head.

“Okay, then. Your first assignment. We need a pregame piece on the Walker–Baylor matchup. Give me eight hundred, not a word more because space is tight. Damn advertisers,” he grumbled. “As for angles—maybe focus on the running back situation. Maybe look at the rash of injuries that squad has suffered … Find out if any of the assistant coaches hate each other. And I need it by eight
A
.
M
. tomorrow. Not a minute later.”

Before I could so much as nod, Smiley turned and headed for his
office as the guy one cubicle over glanced my way and said, “And you caught him on a good day.”

I smiled, and he reached over the partition and shook my hand. “Gordon Chambers.”

“Shea Rigsby,” I said, feeling an instant rapport with this new colleague, as much for his comment as for his face. Everything about it was warm—from his honey-brown skin, to his full lips, to the dimples in his rounded cheeks that remained even when he stopped smiling. “What’s your beat?”

“Dallas Cowboys.”

I must have looked impressed because he said, “The low man on that totem pole. I do social media. Smiley’s necessary evil. And I cover injuries. Pulled hamstrings? I’m your guy.” His grin grew wider, his dimples deeper.

I smiled, wondering if he had ever talked to Ryan, as I put down my bag, then did a cursory exploration of my cubicle. I opened and closed a few drawers cluttered with stray rubber bands, paper clips, and a package of saltines that another reporter had left behind. Then I adjusted my chair, and inspected the ancient desktop computer, trying to figure out how to power it on.

“I wouldn’t bother with that piece of shit,” Gordon said as I noticed that he was typing on a big silver Mac.

“Right,” I said, fishing my laptop out of my bag and plugging it in, then staring at my ESPN home screen for a few shell-shocked seconds, wondering where to begin.

“Wow. You better get off that page before Smiley sees it,” Gordon said as he passed by my cubicle with his empty coffee mug. “Don’t you know that’s the network that puts entertainment ahead of sports? Get it?
ES
PN.”

“Right. Thanks,” I said, shutting down the browser, then pulling up a blank document and typing
Baylor–Walker
at the top of the screen. It was an inauspicious start to say the least, especially when coupled with the utter blankness in my brain. It was as if I’d never read a pregame
piece in my life. The escalating din around me didn’t do much to quell my nerves, as the few writers on the news end of the floor seemed to be typing away with great caffeinated efficiency, but I took a few deep breaths and told myself that they probably weren’t penning Pulitzers. They were just diligently doing their job, covering mundane events—funerals and fires and fairs. Or, in our corner of the sports cube farm, pulled hamstrings. With that in mind, I took another deep breath, then went to Baylor’s official athletic site, clicked on the football tab, and got to work.
Just write what you know
, I told myself.
You were born to do this job.

The day passed quickly, but, by two o’clock, I had yet to eat lunch and had written only four sentences, none of them keepers. The only really productive thing I did, other than fill out a bunch of forms for human resources, was schedule a phone interview with the Baylor sports information director for that evening. I had also brainstormed a few basic questions to ask him, which was pretty easy to do given the number of times I had heard J.J. on the receiving end of such interviews. Meanwhile, I eavesdropped on Smiley lecturing Gordon for overusing adverbs and, apparently an even greater transgression, synonyms for
said.

“He
said
, she
said
, they
said
,” Smiley shouted, socking one fist into the other open palm. “That’s the only attribution you should use in here. Keep it invisible. We want to hear what the guy said, not
how
he said it. Should I hang a sign in your cubicle?”

I couldn’t hear Gordon’s reply, only Smiley droning on. “So I don’t want to hear your sources comment, claim, assert, suggest, state, disclose, imply, admit, concur, argue, or remark. And they sure as hell better not guffaw, chuckle, or chortle either.”

As he dismissed Gordon, he caught me looking at him and barked, “Did you get that, Rigsby?”

I nodded, resisting the urge to tell him that I heard what he
said.

Later that afternoon, I headed back to Walker for football practice. It was like high school all over again, with Coach granting me access that he didn’t give other reporters. I caught him afterward, as he was walking back up to the football complex, and asked if had a few minutes to talk about the Baylor game. He glanced at his watch and said he needed to get home to meet his handyman, something about a problem gutter, but could talk later.

“When’s a good time?” I said.

“For you? Anytime,” he said, patting my shoulder.

Around eight o’clock that evening, I worked up the nerve to send him a tentative text:
Is now a good time to chat?

He wrote back:
Not alone. Can you text me the questions?

Okay
, I typed, then specified that we were on the record before asking him to confirm our starting backfield.

He texted back:
They can all play. Who do YOU think I should start?

I laughed, then typed:
Ha. If I pick your lineup
,
will you write my piece?

I stared at my phone, waiting, knowing that he was a slow one-finger typist:
I don’t think your readers would appreciate my third-grade writing style.

I smiled and wrote:
Don’t try to play the dumb jock with me. I know better.

And the conversation continued from there, the screen filling with our banter:

CCC:
Really. And what else do you know?

Me:
I know you’re sitting in that big armchair, with the TV on mute.

CCC:
Ha. You got me.

Me:
Probably with a Shiner Bock on your drink stand next to the remote.

CCC:
Where’s the hidden camera? How many fingers am I holding up?

Me:
One. As in: number one. Which is how we’ll finish the year.

CCC:
You give me way too much credit. Always have.

Me:
Nope. Not possible. But back to the story. What do you think of Lache?

CCC:
That kid can run like small-town gossip.

Me:
Can I quote you on that?

CCC:
Yes.

Me:
What else can I quote you on?

CCC:
Tell ’em it’s going to be a flesh-on-flesh, in-the-trench battle.

Me:
And your strategy?

CCC:
Hold on to the ball and score more points than they do.

Me:
Sounds simple enough.

CCC:
Yes. But don’t be fooled. The best things in life only seem simple.

I smiled down at my phone, thinking just how true that was.

The next morning, at 7:58, I filed my first story with
The Dallas Post.
Twenty minutes later, Smiley stormed over to my cubicle, barking at me to call it up on my screen. I did as I was told, discovering that he—or someone at the copydesk—had already heavily edited the piece.

“Not awful,” he said, which felt like high praise. “But you need to tighten it up, lose some of that flowery description, and cut down on the quotes. I get it. They’re down a lot of men. Say it once.” He pointed over my shoulder as I tried to follow all the electronic changes made in red in the margins.

I nodded and said I understood.

Then, as if he knew how long the first draft had taken me, he added, “And I need it back ASAP. Ten minutes ago.”

As he returned to his office, I noticed that the only sentence without a single edit was my lead, lifted directly from my cellphone:
According to Walker University’s Coach Clive Carr, Saturday’s contest against Baylor is going to be “a flesh-on-flesh, in-the-trench battle.”

Later that day, after I had refiled my first story and worked on the next, I met Lucy at the practice field, like old times. She brought us gourmet sandwiches from her favorite deli, and we sat in the bleachers, talking and watching practice. At least
I
was watching practice, while she did most of the talking.

“How’s Ryan?” Lucy asked as she handed me half of a portobello mushroom, mozzarella, and red pepper sandwich. It was her favorite topic these days, and I was happy to give her a good report.

“He’s great,” I said, watching a weak-shoulder run drill in progress. Coach was holding a shield at the fifteen-yard line, while his running backs lined up across from him and pressed his outside shoulder to get back up the field. Somehow he managed to look sexy in the process, right down to the way he blew his whistle and bellowed instructions, his voice a little hoarse. I looked away from the field, back at Lucy, telling myself to get a grip. Stop looking at her father like
that.

“Could I get a little more than ‘great’?” Lucy said.

I smiled, thinking that my vague answer was the kind I’d hate if I were doing the interview, and said, “I’m staying over a lot lately. It really is convenient to work.”

“The ol’ convenience factor, huh? That’s the best you can say about it?”

I laughed and said, “Um. I can also say I
love
his house.”

“So, proximity to work and luxurious accommodations? Sounds like the perfect relationship.”

I took a sip of Snapple lemonade and said, “What do you want me to say?”

“I want you to say that you’re in love.”

I gave her a close-lipped smile and shook my head.