Thief of Words (20 page)
He’d always wanted to ride in one of the horse-drawn carriages. Two years before, he’d broached the idea to Kathleen, but she wanted no part of it. She’d worried that a fellow conferencee might see the two of them together. “Besides, it’s so hokey,” she’d said. “It smacks of prom night—or middle-aged affair.”
It was odd being here in the evening without her. Jack’s usual conference routine was to go to dinner, separately, with colleagues; beg off late-evening drinks, pleading fatigue; return to the hotel, shower; and sneak to her room, not to emerge again until early the next morning.
“You know, they had to tear up all that work on the Sixty-fifth Street bridge,” one of the carriage drivers was saying. “Yeah,” the other answered with a long-suffering sigh, “this city…”
Annie would want to go on a carriage ride, Jack thought. She’d love the combination of kitsch and romance. Maybe tomorrow night I’ll write her a carriage ride e-mail. He started to plot out a little adventure but it was washed away by a sudden wave of loneliness. The joy of traveling alone didn’t extend much past five in the afternoon. And a laptop screen was a poor substitute for a real redhead.
It was only when Jack reached Fifth Avenue that he awoke to the obvious. Why am I fretting about e-mail? Annie and I are both single and free; we like each other; we want each other. On the first possible weekend, we’ll come up to New York together, pay a driver, and go on a damn carriage ride for real.
He walked down the avenue as midnight came and went and didn’t feel at all a day older.
A
nnie now knew how it felt to be a sixteen-year-old boy. Since Saturday night, her brain had slipped below her belt. While she could occasionally think of things other than sex—say, work—her thoughts quickly bounced back to the subject of pleasure. She was so acutely aware of her body, that if she turned a certain way she could feel her blouse rubbing against her chest and her underwear pressing into her. Since Saturday night, she’d been turning that certain way a lot. Even going to the bathroom was an erotic experience.
“I don’t get it,” Annie said to Laura. It was their nightly phone call. “If God could come up with the lock-and-key theory of enzymes, why couldn’t he do a better job with the human race?”
“Annie, nothing comes more lock-and-key than us. Penis. Vagina. I don’t know about you, but it seems like a pretty good fit to me.”
“You’re being too literal. So the body parts fit. Big deal. Wouldn’t it be better if the psyche parts fit, too? Boys turn into walking dicks when they become teenagers. It’s not until they hit their forties that they can start thinking about anything else than sex. But bam, we hit our forties and get hit upside the head with the estrogen hammer. Now the only thing we can think about is what they were thinking about when they were sixteen. I feel like a Georgia O’Keefe painting with arms and legs and wet underwear.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Laura said. “Strategic error on the Creator’s part. Steve says I’m going to kill him if I don’t calm down. It’s good to see you so stirred up—finally. I was worried you were going to waste your forties on electronics. I assume Jack DePaul has something to do with your biological rant?”
“Yuuup,” Annie said. “He’s coming here Saturday night. I don’t know if I can make it till then.”
“Annie, just get in your car and drive to his house now. Attack him the second he opens the door. Men love that sort of thing.”
“I would, but he’s in New York.”
“Right, I forgot. The circle-jerk conference the paper could find money for even though we’re supposed to be ‘tightening our belts.’ But I have to hand it to Jack. I’m going to Houston after all to do that story I told you about. The dying girl. He finally weaseled the money out of them. I’m leaving Friday morning and I’ll be back Sunday night.”
“It’s a hell of a story, Laura. I wish I were doing it.”
“I know, but let’s don’t get maudlin. Don’t you have sex to think about? Surely in that tower of books by your bed there’s something steamy. That should keep you occupied till Saturday.”
“I’ve got something better,” Annie said. “Jack’s e-mail, when it comes tonight. He’s taking me on a train ride. Tunnels. Trains. Locks. Keys. I’ve got Mr. Giggles plugged in and ready to go. I’Il read and you-know-what at the same time.”
“God Annie, just don’t electrocute yourself. Remember, the
Post
runs cause of death in its obituaries.”
An hour later, Annie lay in bed with her laptop on her thighs. She’d tried to read, but a computer game of Hearts was the only thing her mind could track. Sort of. She’d eaten the queen of spades four times in a row.
She’d cleared her mailbox so she could watch the little red flag pop up with each new message. The first two were trash. The third was from Jack. It was called “Night Train.”
By the time Jack had Annie rocking to the train’s metallic beat, the tap-tapping of the rain on the roof of their compartment was mixed with the buzz-buzzing of the Conair Touch ’N Tone in Annie’s hand.
You’ve unwrapped your skirt and now my fingers rest on bare skin. “Touch me,” you say.
Annie mouthed the words “Touch me.” Suddenly, before she could read Jack’s next line, the little white Instant Message box popped up. Someone called Plot-Twister had invaded the upper right corner of her computer screen:
“HI, IS THIS ANNIE HOLLERMAN, THE BOOK AGENT?” The vibrator dropped from her hand and buzzed on the sheet like a dying moth. “Jeeesuz …” Annie cried out and looked around, half expecting to find someone watching her.
“Damn Big Brother Instant Messaging,” she said as she clicked the X on Plot-Twister’s message and sent him tumbling back through cyberspace. This wasn’t the first time a would-be author had found her e-mail address and Instant Messaged her. But it was easily the most inopportune. If it hadn’t been past midnight, she’d have called Laura to tell her about it.
Instead, she scrolled back to the top of Jack’s e-mail.
The Singapore railway station is sweltering …
And so was Annie.
F
or the next two nights, Jack and Annie’s e-mails criss-crossed the wires between New York City and the nation’s capital. On Wednesday night, Jack took Annie to his kibbutz, where he rewrote both their pasts. This time, he was single. This time, a new volunteer with long red hair arrived on a scorching summer day.
“At first we didn’t recognize each other, it had been 15 years,” Jack wrote. “But there was something about your hair and eyes, the way they matched each other, that seemed so familiar. Then when you said, ‘Hi, I’m Annie,’ I realized you were my snake slayer.”
That night, after picking grapefruit, she and Jack sat before a campfire and sang songs with all the other volunteers. During “Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme,” they slipped away. As a crescent moon fell below Mt. Carmel, they made love for the first time.
Then on Thursday night, Annie found herself in the Marais district of Paris. She and Jack were lying on a bed in a room so small they could reach out from the side and touch the walls. In front of them was a loaf of ten-grain bread, dark purple grapes the size of Ping-Pong balls, two buttons of goat cheese wrapped in oak leaves, and a bottle of red wine. After dinner, they made love on top of the breadcrumbs. Two hours later, they walked arm in arm down the four flights of stairs of their pension that two hundred years before had been a Carmelite nunnery. At a sweaty subterranean nightclub they danced to bad French rock and roll.
In return, Annie told Jack about her summers in Atlantic City, about the gallant Mr. Peanut, who looked so elegant in his top hat and cane, and how Singing Sam the Ice-Cream Man would sell her a chunk of dry ice for a nickel.
“Then I’d drop it in a pail of seawater,” Annie wrote, “and a big cloud of smoke would rush around my face. I’d close my eyes and pretend I was up in the sky. You make me feel like I’m up in the sky again. Do you think we’re moving too fast?”
Jack read this message at 12:50 on Friday morning. He’d been so wired after writing her the Paris e-mail that he had gone out for another late-night stroll in New York. When he got back he’d signed on just in the hope of a return message from Annie.
He quickly wrote back two sentences. “Hell, Annie, at our age, we’ve got to move fast. Hang on tight, my love, it’s going to be a great ride.”
Annie read those sentences Friday morning at work. They made her feel like she’d had wine for breakfast. By 4:30 that afternoon the buzz was still there. She tried to concentrate on the task at hand—a cover letter for a promising new collection of short stories—but all she could think about was the e-mail she’d be getting from Jack later that night.
She was thumbing through the thesaurus for a more intriguing word than “promising” (“Auspicious”? Too baronial. “Inviting”? Too Southern. “Tempting”? Too salacious.) when she heard Fred’s voice beyond the glass partition. He was speaking to a squat man with frizzy brown hair. Fred left him by the front door and poked his head into Annie’s office.
“There’s a guy here from the
Baltimore Star-News,
” he said. “He doesn’t have an appointment but says he needs to talk to you.”
“What’s he want?” Annie said.
“He wouldn’t say, only that it has something to do with a story he’s writing.”
“What’s his name?” Annie said. “Arthur Steinberg.”
T
he man walking into Annie’s office wore a frayed green-checked sport coat and gray suit pants. His tie was too wide, his shirt wrinkled. He could have been a homeless man trying to keep up his dignity with a professional look, but he lacked the shopping cart and the painful air of failure. He stuck out his hand.
“Hi. I’m Arthur Steinberg with the
Baltimore Star-News.
Sorry to drop in like this, unannounced, but I had another interview in D.C. this afternoon, so I thought I’d stop by here on my way back to Baltimore.”
“What can I do for you?” Annie asked with a bland smile, though there were alarm bells going off in her head. Something was wrong about this. She knew very well that reporters don’t just “drop in” unless they have particularly unpleasant questions to ask and don’t want to tip their hand by calling first. She learned back in her college newspaper days that it’s easier for someone to hang up on you than close the door in your face.
“Well, I don’t know if you read it, but a few weeks ago there was a story in the news about a reporter at the
Pittsburgh Press
and a case of plagiarism.”
She’d steeled herself for something unpleasant, but not this. It was like a wild punch to the head. Her ears rang, her body went numb, the bland smile froze on her face. The careful life she’d built for the past twenty years, brick by brick, to close off her past, lay around her like so much straw. Everything that happened afterward in her office seemed unreal, removed. Arthur continued with his explanation. His overly concerned voice was full of the same tired euphemisms that Annie herself had once used when she’d been a reporter trying to get unwilling people to talk. But it was as if she were seeing him through binoculars and hearing his voice down a well.
“We’re doing a piece on him—why he did it and how he’s dealing with the aftermath. He’s been incredibly cooperative. He told me it’s cathartic to talk about it and hopes his story will help other journalists.
“Anyway, along with the
Pittsburgh Press
story, we’re doing a sidebar on other reporters who’ve faced similar traumas in their lives. I’ve talked to a number of others and wanted to talk to you. I’d like to know how it affected you, what you think about it after all these years, and how you’ve made peace with that part of your life.”
Annie had no idea what to say. Had there ever been peace, or had it been just an uneasy cease-fire? Finally, she stammered out, “How did you find out about me?”
“The same as all the others I’ve interviewed. You know, a Nexis search, and I also talked to some experts. There’s a guy at Poynter who specializes in plagiarism cases. The
Commercial-Appeal
printed an apology on the Metro cover. It didn’t mention your name but the local alternative weekly did a big story on you and the whole incident. I’m sure you remember.”
She remembered.
Creative Loafing
’s media watchdog, Jerome Klein, had written a column about her and the
Commercial-Appeal
’s reaction. Andrew Binder had been mentioned; so had the term “A-Squared.” The headline had read, “Shooting star shoots herself in the foot.” And then she remembered something else: Jack.
“I don’t need much of your time, Ms. Hollerman,” Arthur was saying. “A quick comment is all. People like to know that you can overcome mistakes and move on to a successful life. You’re a perfect example of that. Besides, it’s not that big of a deal, it’s a small sidebar, just a few quotes, that’s it.”
“No,” Annie said. She wanted to shout it, scream it, but it came out a kind of low rasp. She cleared her throat. “No, I have nothing to say about that.” Then she hesitated. “Wait. Do you know Jack DePaul?”
Arthur looked at her with a quizzical expression. “Sure,” he said. “He’s my editor.”
F
red approached the door tentatively and peered in. Annie was standing by her porthole window.
“What was that about? Are you okay?”
She turned and said, “No, not at all.”
Fred walked into her office and sat down in the chair by her desk, the same one that minutes before had held Arthur Steinberg.
Annie turned back to the window.
“Want to talk about it?”
“No…Yes…I should have talked about this a long time ago,” Annie said, still facing the window.
Fred waited for Annie to speak. She stood by the window for a long time, then walked to her desk and sat down.
She fiddled with a pencil, rolling it between her fingers. Then she looked up and said, “He’s doing a what-ever-happened-to story.”
She paused, then finished: “And his what-ever-happened-to subjects are plagiarists. In other words, me.”