I rub my hands together, push the blood along. “So that’s it? That’s all there is to it?”
“Give your notes to Hoffmann.”
“There aren’t any notes, asshole!”
I’m practically shouting. Derek picks up his phone and dials. “I’m calling security,” he says, his voice suddenly gone shaky. “You’ve got five minutes to pack up.”
I walk back to my desk, every eye in the newsroom on me. The only good thing is that a few years back, when the thrills had gone out of my job, I got rid of all the shit that had accumulated in and around my desk, so I have nothing to pack—no files, no personal effects, nothing. It’s as if I always knew my departure would be sudden and ugly.
And I have no photographs to take off my cubicle walls, because I never hung any pictures here. I hate the whole idea of trying to turn the workplace into a little piece of home. This was never home, it was where I went to make money.
Until today.
Hoffmann is looking at me over the border between our cubicles, both fascinated and scared, as if getting fired might be contagious. He’s about fifteen years younger than me, single and wild, a true cowboy of tabloid journalism. His blind quotes always sound as if they’ve been spoken by the same person, a person who sounds a lot like Hoffmann.
I put on my jacket, straighten my tie, tap on the partition separating me from Hoffmann. “Feel free to knock this down and make a duplex, Hoff.”
“Are you really fired?”
“I am canned goods, man.”
“Aren’t you going to appeal it?”
“No.”
Hoffmann extends a hand over the partition to shake with me. “I’m really sorry, Sammy.”
“Water my plants, would you?”
“You don’t have any plants.”
“Good point,” I say. “Good luck with the Britney story.”
I walk to Derek’s desk for the last time. His hands are trembling as he pretends to read the latest edition of the newspaper.
“Hey Derek—”
“Don’t come any closer! Security will be here any minute to escort you to the sidewalk.”
“Fuck security, I’ll be gone before they get here. Listen to me, Derek.”
He sighs with mock impatience as he looks up at me, feigning courage. “I’m listening.”
“I’m sorry I fixed your fire engine that time.”
He stares at me in genuine wonder. He doesn’t remember the favor I did him, all those years ago. “Fire engine?”
“Never mind.”
I flip him the bird and begin my final walk down the long hallway to the elevator. The walls are covered with framed front-page stories from years gone by, three or four of them written by yours truly, back in the days when my heart harbored something that resembled hope.
I have been a reporter at this newspaper longer than I have ever been anything else. I didn’t love the place, and much of the time I didn’t like it, but I did fit in here, and now I’ll never be coming back. I guess I should be crying, but I’m not. I’m just numb over how such a momentous thing could happen so abruptly.
I don’t know what my next move will be. For that reason I’m almost glad I have to go to my son’s school, to find out what this fuss is all about.
CHAPTER TWO
Being fired doesn’t fully hit you until you leave the building, look around, and take your first breath as an unemployed person. I’m standing there on Sixth Avenue and Forty-sixth Street, and the sidewalks are jammed with people, and all I can think about is whether or not they have jobs. They’re all in motion, and they all seem to have destinations. You know you’re in trouble when you’re jealous of strangers.
It’s Friday, and Friday is a big day for firing people, if only for clerical purposes. I can’t be alone in this fix. I don’t want to be alone in this fix.
I head west and north, in the general direction of my son’s school, my blood tingling as if it’s been carbonated. The sidewalks are peppered with young people wearing Walkmans, or iPods, or whatever the hell they call the latest thing they need to ensure that they’re amused every waking hour of the day. The sight both bothers and pleases me. On the one hand, these kids are missing out on the sidewalk sounds I’ve loved my whole life. On the other hand, it impairs their ability to concentrate and keeps them good and stupid, and a whole generation of stupid kids buys me another five years in the workforce. Or so I thought until today, when a stupid kid fired my rapidly aging ass.
I walk all the way to the school, and as I enter it the smell is exactly as I remembered, an all-boys’ school smell, a testosterone and no-showers-after-gym-class odor. It hangs in the air like an arrogant, dangerous cologne, and I get the feeling that if a fertile woman walked in here and took a deep breath, she’d miss her next period.
On my way to the headmaster’s office I pass a series of carved marble plaques featuring the names of all the school’s headmasters, dating back to 1732.
Seventeen thirty-two! This place has certainly been around. Part of what you’re shelling out for is its history, and right there at the bottom of the newest plaque is the name of the guy who phoned me, the latest keeper of the flame, etched into the marble: Peter Plymouth. How fitting that a guy named Plymouth should have his name carved into rock. His start date is carved in next to his name, with a dash next to it. When he dies, quits, or gets fired, a guy with a hammer and chisel will chip in his departure date. This has got to be the only school in Manhattan where part of the tuition fees go toward a stonecutter.
There’s a secretary seated at a desk in front of the headmaster’s office, a sixtyish, owl-shaped woman with her hair up in a tight gray bun. She’s perfect for this place, the kind of woman no young male will lose valuable study time to over masturbatory fantasies.
I tell her who I am, explain that I have a one o’clock appointment. At the sound of my name her eyebrows go up, a clue to me that I’m in for some serious business. It happens to be one o’clock on the dot. She gestures at the closed door and says, “Go right in.”
But I can’t. Just being in a school setting has made me timid. I have to tap on the door first, and only when the voice from the other side tells me to come in am I able to do it.
It’s a big room, with windows facing out on the branches of a sycamore tree. Headmaster Peter Plymouth sits at a wide mahogany desk with his back to the windows. He’s wearing a dark blue suit, a white shirt, and a black tie, and his long, bony body seems to rise from his chair in sections, like a carpenter’s ruler. His hair is cut short, his face is unwrinkled, and his handshake is hard and dry. He gestures for me to sit down before returning to his own chair.
A lot had been made of this headmaster’s appointment the year before, because he’d graduated from the place twenty years earlier, gone to Yale, and then begun an academic career that took him from campus to campus all over the Northeast, with a “year out” somewhere in the middle, when he got a grant to write a book about Great Sailboat Races of the 1930s.
I know all this stuff because the school bombards my mailbox with letters, keeping me abreast of this kind of news. I throw out most of the mail without reading it, but there was something about the “Return of the Prodigal Son” memo that caught my eye.
So now we’re both seated, looking at each other. He’s giving me a bit of time to drink in the diplomas, the awards, the ribbons, and the sailing trophies that adorn his office. There’s even a ship in a bottle, right there on his desk.
“Well,”