“But executive assistants aren’t covered by the contract!” protested Jinnah. “You’ll be completely at his mercy!”
“A chance I’m willing to take, Hakeem.”
“You’ll be utterly under his power — completely in his thrall,” he went on, leaning closer and closer to Crystal. “What if, Allah forfend, he sexually harasses you?”
Crystal opened her mouth wide and squealed at this audacity.
“That’s a rich one, Hakeem!” she shrieked.
“I’m serious,” said Jinnah, having pressed Crystal against the desk, the only thing between them the cardboard box. “What if he starts rubbing up against you, placing his filthy hands on you, slobbering disgusting things in your ear like, ‘Voulez-vous coucher avec —’”
Crystal wrenched herself sideways and twisted the box, partly collapsing it to create a small space between herself and her oppressor to escape Jinnah’s embrace. The movement sent him stumbling against the desk and Crystal, laughing, continued on down the steps and exited the glass cubicle.
“Bye-bye, Hakeem. Come visit me some day up in the corner office.”
Jinnah watched as the young woman walked out of the newsroom and stood in the foyer, waiting for the elevator to take her up to the fourth floor and out of his orbit.
“But you can’t leave me!” he wailed. “We need you!”
“You’ll live,” said Crystal.
The elevator door opened and she stepped inside. Jinnah could not resist making one last attempt to appeal to her basest fears.
“But what if he asks you to do a Lewinsky, for God’s sake?” he cried.
The doors closed and Crystal was taken up to her new incarnation. Jinnah turned and saw Sanderson’s face buried behind his newspaper, shoulders shaking with laughter. How dare he laugh at Jinnah’s despair? He stalked over to Sanderson and tore the paper out of his hand.
“Hey! I was reading that!” Sanderson protested, still laughing, waves of merriment rippling across his freckled face.
“Read it from cover to cover, you won’t find a byline of yours in it!” said Jinnah cruelly. “What the hell happened to you last night?”
Sanderson sat back in his chair and put his hands behind his head.
“There wasn’t a story,” he said, smugly. “There was no pimp to rescue the teen hooker from. We’ll have to try again.”
Jinnah looked at his colleague and sighed. How many times did he have to tell Sanderson there was always a story — it just wasn’t always the one you’d been sent for?
“What do you mean, no pimp?” he demanded. “Where was the bastard?’
“Apparently he’s on ice somewhere. Tried to stab a cop or something and he’s doing time. There was nothing to the rescue.”
Jinnah shook his head put a hand on Sanderson’s shoulder.
“Ronald, Ronald — get up, please.”
“Jinnah, no —”
“Just get out of the chair,” said Jinnah firmly.
Reluctantly, Sanderson rose and watched as Jinnah sat down at the computer they shared. His fingers pounded on the keys, bringing a story template up.
“Jinnah,” said Sanderson hotly. “I will not allow you to do this!”
“Relax, Ronald — it’s just a little exercise.”
Jinnah typed Sanderson’s byline and glanced up at his friend’s flushing red face.
“Right. Tell me what happened.”
“I’m telling you, nothing happened. We picked this mom up and drove to this Surrey flea bag motel where her daughter was supposed to be shacked up with this horrible pimp —”
“Whose name is?”
“T-Rex,” said Sanderson, flipping through his notebook and checking. “Allegedly he has a dozen girls working in Surrey and Vancouver.”
“Disgusting. Now, Ronald my friend, tell me what happened next?”
“Nothing. This young woman comes to the door dressed in a teddy-bear T-shirt and says ‘Mom?’ and the mom says, ‘Cindy!’ And they hug. End of story.”
Jinnah shook his head.
“At least you acknowledge there’s a story now,” he admonished Sanderson. “In my mind, an excellent story of courage and danger —”
“Not a user-key story, Jinnah, please!”
“Absolutely, my friend! User-key two in this case.”
“I thought user-key two was ‘Why did he/she have to die?’ “’
“That’s user-key one,” Jinnah corrected him. “User-key two is ‘Lucky to be alive.’”
Jinnah flexed his index fingers. He was the last of the two-fingered typists in the newsroom and although he used but one digit per hand, he was the fastest hunt-and-pecker at the Tribune. He was almost ready to write.
“What was this mom’s name?”
“Darlene Spencer. Hakeem —”
The brown fingers rattled the keyboard. Sanderson’s story was being “Jinnahed.”
“Darlene Spencer had her heart in her mouth as she broke down the door of the Surrey sex-house where her daughter was being held prisoner —” he read as he typed.
“She didn’t break the door down!” cried Sanderson. “She just knocked on it!”
“As she hammered on the portal behind which her daughter, Cindy, was being held as a sex-slave —”
“She ran away of her own volition, Hakeem.”
“No one runs away to Surrey of their own volition, Ronald. Now then — but fear turned to tears when she saw her little pig-tailed girl —”
“Pony-tailed.”
“Pony-tailed,” Jinnah backed up the cursor and made the correction. “Girl clad only in a flimsy teddy-bear T-shirt.”
“Hakeem, really! This is too much!”
“This is called news writing, buddy. One day you too may become a reporter, Ronald, with considerable tutelage on my part. Now, where was this T-Bone man?”
“T-Rex,” said Sanderson. “I told you — in jail.”
“Ah,” said Jinnah. “Fearing at any moment the appearance of the vicious teen-pimp who held her in sordid bondage —”
“He’s in his twenties.”
“Is he likely to sue you for getting his age wrong? Besides, he must have started as a teenager.”
“That’s not the point! What about the truth?”
Jinnah looked up at Sanderson sadly.
“And Pilate asked, what is truth? Don’t you read your own scriptures, Ronald?”
“I’m too busy reading the fiction you’re pawning off as my story at the moment!”
“My stories are very real to me, Ronald. Now: Fearing his appearance — how much did Cindy charge for a Lewinsky, by the way?”
“Jinnah!”
The story, such as it was, was almost done by the time Frost made his way to Sanderson’s desk and tapped Jinnah on the shoulder.